001to recall the meaning of order would you please join me in a pledge of the flag to remained standing for a moment of silence 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 you all please keep in your thoughts this evening um Greg larua Bethune resident who was uh co-chairman of the last building committee I spent a lot and spent a couple of years here he was very instrumental on the building that we have now he passed away I believe about two weeks ago we hadn't met since so uh please keep him in your thoughts along with the men and women protecting us around the world okay thank you very much so would you
002call the role for attendance please Mr Cirillo it's mama Fitzgerald here Miss tisler Mr Hayden and Mr LaMontagne president um do you appreciate a motion for the October 11th and October 18th minutes so move any discussion on either one all those in favor then you want to pose Mrs Martel could we have a cash balance report please so we had an opening balance on October 3rd 2022 of 2 million oh Thirty one two two three point eighty seven plus deposits on October 4th through the 28th in the amount of 3 million 0.55 891.60 less payroll on October 13th of 980 711 cents payroll on October 20th of 953.09 and payroll on October 27th of 972 000. 9 35 and 51 cents we had a warrant on October 4th 85 590.92 a warrant on October 11th
003of 396.034.70 a warrant on October 18th of 19 640 and a warrant on October 27th of 445 366 dollars giving us a book balance on October 28th of 2 million 185 895.14 and a corresponding bank balance on October 28th 3 million 174 599.52 and the mmdt account we had an account balance on October 3rd of 8 million 846 359.12 with year-to-date interest 29 454.43 giving us a total on the mmdt of 8 million eight seventy five eight one three point fifty five and a total operating cash balance of 11 million 061 708.69 Joe would appreciate emotion for the cash balance report it's a move discussion all those in favor anyone opposed okay revolving Consolidated cash Reconciliation Report is a handout uh revolving fund report it's a handout budget reports to hand out any questions or
004comments on any of those Mrs Fitzgerald not on those but on the warrant if I could take a moment or two okay okay so many many months ago I brought up the fact that we seem to be charging an awful lot or ordering an awful lot through Amazon and my question at the time was whether it is saving us money or costing us money I totally understand the convenience of going through Amazon however I feel that we two things one aren't necessarily getting the best price on things they were in this warrant they were pencils ordered not through a I use that as one example I have probably a hundred examples in here um stainless steel tables being ordered for the concession stand two different prices hopefully they were two different sizes but we have
005restaurant supply places we have other uh vendors that we have an established relationship with I'm not saying that everything goodness knows we don't need to get three quotes on a dozen pencils or um the the many many things that were ordered that just seem to be taken there were legal pads audited um for the phys Ed Department um I sound like I'm picking on it but I they were the first ones up and for instance um they ordered a Bluetooth speaker for uh 300 and something dollars and I know why they're using it and um but and I'm not looking for our teachers to have to go searching for every best price but I feel as if it's out of control this amount this time was only fifteen thousand dollars it's been up as much
006as twenty five thousand dollars per warrant and when you look it's almost across the board the no number of shops that are not I shouldn't say shops the number of departments because most of our vocational areas use particular vendors and most of them are local but I think of all using office supplies as an example there were chairs audited in here and we know that we could do better so I get you all hear me all of the time I get so excited when I see how much interest we earn on our MMD account and how long it took us to get there and I don't want to see that interest earned then lost because we didn't get best prices so I know I am like the one that keeps beating on this but it's
007probably seven or eight months ago when I first brought this up the same thing with our Bank of America card um I just want our either our department heads or even more importantly the administrators that are in charge of that to make sure they're not just rubber stamping something when we could get better prices and I actually did some pricing out I did some of the stationary items meaning office supply things and went online and looked at the Amazon price and then looked at things from Staples or WB Mason or Office Max and I we're just not doing a good job of it so I'm asking and I if I have the support of the committee that's wonderful if not I'll Stand Alone on this I'm asking that we make it a priority to do
008a better job and not just take the I'm not looking to create more work for anybody but we certainly are taking the easy way out on this so that's all so I think well I know on one of the items you mentioned there the uh for the concession stand though I know that they got other prices on those um I think part of that too was the uh how quickly they could get it is one of the reasons they went with some of the items are very difficult to get these days they seem to be able to come quicker on Amazon doesn't mean we should just go with them but in any case I think um one of the ways to try to curb this would be for us to require uh lowering our quotes
009so in other words before you use Amazon we want to see two other prices that you've got so require everyone before they're using Amazon or any anybody for that that you at least submit to other quotes to us so we know that they're doing due diligence to the best pricing well right now it's like 10 and they only need in order to get they have to give us a quote for over was it a thousand ten thousand yeah we're talking about most of these items on here being from a dollar up to five or six hundred dollars but put all together Department by environment we are spending a lot of money and again I understand it's convenient but I look at something as basic as concession stand is a and I'm picking on that one
010only because I saw the stainless steel tables and how do we know when we order from a restaurant supply place or one of the vendors that we deal with through um culinary we know the quality of what we're getting when we order on Amazon unless it's the exact description of what you wanted you do not know what you're getting so I I'm just asking for us to take not necessarily to keep taking the easy way out and if I sure the faculty would like to hang me right now because I don't want to put more work on the teachers in particular and the higher up level is where we need to do it the teachers say I want um 50 yellow legal pads then they get the 50 and I know all of this is
011budgeted every single penny is accounted for on the budget I'm not questioning that at all I'm just saying here on one hand we're saving money and on the other hand we're just not doing our due diligence but I'm not looking for quotes on five dollar items or something but um it's I just get frustrated when I go through the warrant every time and it seems to be getting more complex instead of less thank you Mr Cirillo do you have a question yeah well you see American you know could you tell me what page you're on you know what I don't even have that it's something it's separate okay so uh what's the resolution then gun well I can have the administrators be a little bit more diligent to looking at those kind of items that
012are being purchased if they're simple things that we could use other vendors for or typically like pencils and all those things those are usually yearly supplies that's unusual somebody's going to go out and buy 50 pencils and not all you have to do is go and see Sue and so we I guess what we need is number one we'll I will have a discussion with the administrative team that oversees each of their departments budgets to be more diligent about due diligence to looking at what's being purchased and where it's being purchased and number two if it if we need to get quotes for stuff that is you know at a certain price range so we say anything over 100 or 500 that we at least at least for a while want to know that they're
013getting in the habit of looking for the best price and so that might be a way to handle it at the get-go sounds good Mr Sewell thank you Leo and through you um so teachers are placing items buying items without getting a prior approval you might understand that correctly no they every item has to go through the process and go through the budget process so the administrators signing off on everything that gets in anything in that Warren has been signed off by an administrator before it's purchased because we spending almost fifteen thousand knot in Amazon and a lot of these items are up there it doesn't look like to me like with and not for anything but I've shopped Amazon and other stuff that comes from there it's not the best quality um so I
014mean we should they should be going through the proper channels and making sure we're going to sign off and making sure we're getting into certain things and pens papers and notepads that's should be automatically in Stockton it's cool so why would teachers or anybody be having to go buy that if we don't have that in stock we have that in stock that's absolutely true and um so that's where I think we need to just make sure we have we'll have a conversation with administrators to be careful about approving things that they should at least so if administrator sees that someone's looking for paper or pads or anything first thing they should is question the teacher did you go to the front office to see uh the uh super nut supervisor but the clerical person that's
015in charge of overseeing all our supplies and see if she has what you're looking for before we go out and order anything like that so it's us at each level making sure that we're doing a better job at ensuring that we're not purchasing things that we already have number one which is critical and number two that we're getting the best price when the volume starts to go up there and um and uh so we'll we'll I'll follow up with a discu a meeting when we have our uh administrative meaning to talk about you know procedures and protocols in terms of purchasing moving forward yes everybody Mrs Fitzgerald yes I just wanted to make it clear that I was not questioning whether um these should be approved in that they're already in the budget and that's
016not what I was questioning I was just questioning the fact that we are not yet necessarily getting the best price for each item thank you okay is uh everybody's satisfied with the superintendent's explanation and okay moving on uh donations stratum Manufacturing Incorporated in Andover Massachusetts has donated an a Haas tm1 CNC mill machine it's quite a donation uh miss Karen uh sones uh mother of uh Ethan uh Cabello a student from Lawrence donated a two uh wheeler bicycle for use of building an electric bike to promote student interest in robotics and automation engineering and Public Health articles well I'm sorry I just wanted to make a comment on the strawman uh donation that we have lots of Milling machines but we don't have a milling machine that's as precision as this particular machine so we're
017very thrilled to get this machine as we look at some other uh pathway some other um parts of the curriculum that we're trying to address this machine will help us get there for particularly in our 12th grade program so we're grateful to them for that we're good uh excuse me articles uh great launch technical school students are creating hardware for the International Space Station and a shining example uh public participation see any of this evening okay reports from the superintendent uh John please Sue's going to do the MCAS report and the October uh since I've been away for two weeks the uh I have not reviewed the MCAS all the MCAS data with Susan uh the last couple of weeks so Susan's going to give the report that she's been working on with our data
018person thank you superintendent you should have the report in your packets I just want to walk you through it so we have our final report in terms of our MCAS results from last year school year 2122 and as a reminder we are now comparing the Next Generation the the newer MCAS tests before we had a long trajectory of comparisons but we want to make sure that we're comparing Apples to Apples so I'll have those results later so for our English learn ELA test our achievement levels this year we have you know a smaller percentage not meeting and a little bit almost the same on the bottom so we're pretty happy considering we're still recovering from the pandemic and trying to do a lot of recovery and catching up um overall we're pretty happy with the
019results of course we want to see um more you can see where we were moving from 35 to 47 we moved from 47 to 50 percent we want to see it move up but overall for ELA it resulted in only five students needing to take the re-test and that is this week um in terms of our math we also have a lower percentage of math not meeting but you can see the results are almost kind of the same within the middle of partially and exceeding expectations for Math and Ela I also want to share the student growth percentages the percentiles this shows growth from grade 8 to grade 10 and as a vocational school that's Regional we always look at this data because we have students from a variety of middle schools that all come
020together so we really kind of look at what we do in order to grow and prepare our students from when they get here to ninth grade to when they take the test and this is how our students perform compared to other similar students across the state here's our proficiency rates compared to the state as well as some our sending districts and a comparative Vocational School and you can see us up top in the red the numbers on the side are the numbers of students that are in that percentage so again in terms of results we are always looking to improve but moving forward and looking from last year we've moved up in ela we have some work to do in terms of all of our students on the bottom left is our proficiency rate for
021English for for the ELA test for our English learner and former English learner students you can see that there's 88 students included in that and 39 percent that's a 39 percent proficiency rate for those students and you can see that's compared with the state and our communities and on the right hand side that's the same with students with disabilities we have 46 students in there and the percentage compared to are sending communities as well as a vocational school you see it here with all students and I'll move on to math again we have that same comparison we have our 29 proficiency rate in the in the SGP compared to the state you can see our number for math in this compared to the state is a little bit lower than we'd like we also have
022been doing and I'll talk about this the ad on the work what we're doing in terms to support students and also unpack what we're going to do in the future here is math with all of the students here in the set and this is our our science our biology rate biology the retest is not until the spring so we have some more planning time which we are working on right now um and some some districts do the physics test but we specifically focus on biology and I also wanted to include our previous years many of you will be familiar with this chart because you've seen it and we just didn't want to have the data all together because it's not comparing the same tests the test is now electronic this is kind of the what
023they call the Legacy test and you can see kind of our direct trajectory and how we've moved along from when we started to collect this data in 2007 up to to 2018 and um again in the beginning you'll notice that we are it's 2019 here we don't have any results from 2020 so that's kind of just a missing year for right now um currently just an update for this is math in our Legacy followed by biology and that's all for your reference just to see how we have progressed throughout the years currently just to update the committee as well this week is the ELA retest as I said we have five students that are participating and since we've received these results those five students have been working with teachers during the win block to kind
024of get some additional support and prepare for the test we also in two weeks we'll have I believe in two weeks we will have 29 students taking the math test and they have also been working with their teachers or working with grade 10 teachers to get additional support all of the teachers received reports score reports for each student so they know exactly the areas to Target for students we are in the process right now of preparing for the biology retest all of the students that need support in that are currently being put in Wind blocks they have a little bit more time we're also looking to see if we could create a time during the day in a in the seminar blocks we're working with the science department on that um so we feel like
025we have a good plan moving forward the students that are participating in the retest will stay in those supports until we get the results um but not for the whole year so we only want to keep them there for the supports that they need and they're also not there every day they're able to also access the work so say for example if they're in English they have the three other days to work with other teachers during the win block um some of the other things that we've been doing which we've had success on is we've had success in any student that was eligible for a um to appeal to the state so that they don't have to take their retests so we're in the process of doing those appeals and we are we're getting some
026results back with that and so with that I will open it up for questions regarding our MCAS questions and the appeal process what are the criterias for the for the mate to be able to appeal um so some of the um and we have an internal process which is an educational proficiency plan which anyone that needs to that doesn't pass um that's how we work on it and in terms of a student appeal they look at their average in the content area so say for example they have not yet successfully passed the math MCAS they will look the state will look at what their average is in math class and what their grades are and also they look at attendance and any opportunities afford to the student for assistance like attendance in after school MCAS
027or any other like right now if we had the Wind Block we would um put that so those are I may be missing one but those are the areas of the Appeals and what would be the result of the um the appeal is it they attended school and they get a certificate or they're being waived the MCAS and they're allowed to um attain a diploma it's waived it's waved indicated diploma what we don't have many at all okay um and I'm seeing that we struggling most of our students are struggling with within math and biology is there what are besides the Wind Block while the strategies are we put in together for them yeah that's and and I it's going to be a two-part course sir okay um you know and so you know in
028it is also language comprehension that they they're struggling with or teaching styles that they have to adjust to uh because a lot of students are finding that they're not connecting well with the material um and because I'm looking at the end because now we have actual data that we could start looking at have formulate that plan yeah so um just recently we have the whole admit we've had the um we have this data we have it by student we have it all of the teachers have also received their data in terms of their individual students so what we're doing there is um kind of looking for pattern and trends like what are specific areas that we see that some of our students um have struggled with and then building that into instruction for for this
029year also when you say language sometimes even though it's a math test it becomes a reading test sometimes so we're looking at that in terms of how we can work with students in terms of understanding the question we also recognize that the test now is on the computer which our students are pretty Savvy on the computer but just even making sure that they understand how to navigate the platform so we continue to work with the math department and refined what's going on in those skills but we have looked at that data and we'll continue to look at the data by student by question and that's why sometimes if you're looking at oh well you know the student need didn't pass well they might have just missed one question as so we need to really really
030Dive In by student it really needs to be an individual Thing by students so we'll continue to work and biology again we are looking at that biology the retest isn't until no February so right now the biology team is looking at exactly where our students had areas of opportunity for growth and trying to determine what students need each skills and they have a little bit more time to dig into that we're doing a lot of work this year and you'll see it when Susan reports on the October report on developing better assessments so having better Assessments in math particularly in our mathematics class will help us better understand where the gaps are and where the students are struggling and looking at students performance at the end of each quarter to better understand what kind of
031support they need so that we can offer that particularly with our new schedule having more time to offer support with the winblock and also beyond the wind blocks offering opportunities after school that were for those students so really it's collecting better data and doing a better job assessing what they are able to do and what they know doing a better job at that as well is going to I think help us help students with the MCAS okay just to hate him sue you got us you got us compared to only one vocational school do we have any other data on any of our sister schools like Whittier or Shawsheen that we can compare and how do we fare yeah we can look at that sometimes we even spread that out in terms of this presentation
032I only chose one and I chose it for kind of comparison like I could compare it to I could compare other datas but it could be number of students different communities proximity so I don't have that off the top of my head but it would all depend I could get that for you we could bring all sure foreign so I think as I mentioned before we're doing professional development a little bit different this year for our staff and our uh for those days as students instead of half day days where students are dismissed we have delayed openings and we have in some months two sessions and we have professional development days and what we're calling professional collaboration days which is usually an extension of the first day so for our October professional development our Focus
033was on our school Improvement plan goal four which is all around implementing as Mr superintendent Lavoy talked about implementing Benchmark assessment tools as well as looking at all of our schools so we had our instructional coaches develop this session and it was entitled we're all data scientists because some people are more comfortable with data than others so this session was around and a line to this goal and and action steps for developing an assessment Candler and reviewing models that we have as well as in the future we're going to look at an actual Common Assessment platform so one of the things that we wanted to do for the staff was we wanted to set this session up like what we expect in their classroom or career area and so we did a school-wide pre-assessment we've
034been in a pandemic there's we have new staff members we have some different processes and one thing that the superintendent and I have talked about is we still have this area that of need in terms of data so that's why we kept goal 4 on our plan so we met at this as a staff we did an overall presentation and then each teacher or staff member depending on if they were guidance or wherever they worked went and took a self-assessment on data use names were not collected but we collected grade levels and areas and the whole idea was that is for us as an instructional leadership team was to find out exactly where our staff is on the use of data and what supports they identify they needed after that they met as departments and
035we did the same thing in departments so as common planning CPT teams whether it's grade level Shopper department they sat down and and they compiled a list of what data they use and what data they would like and what training they needed so at the same time on that day we talked about star data and one of the things that star is is our Benchmark assessment and like was mentioned in our MCAS we've just implemented this year we just gave our first star quarter one star test the star data has indicators that align or supposed to um align and their predictors for MCAS and so now instead of waiting for once a year to find out whether or not a student what they have scored at MCAS we can look at the star data and
036we can use it as a predictor of where they're trending and provide supports prior to waiting for just a one-time state test um so we walk this through the staff and we aligned it to our roadmap from the beginning of the year and really this is our plan to as a school Community use data more in our decision making in all areas and in classroom practices it's the same thing USS you analyze and then you act so this is our beginning of assessing so we're kind of in the assessing phase again you can see on October 19th we did the pre-assessment common planning time teams did discussions on the 26th which I'll get to there was more time for for teachers to actually look at data because that's the biggest time we can give a
037lot of data but if teachers don't have time it's it's very challenging for them tomorrow in our instructional meeting we are going to be looking at a report that shows us the results of of all the pre-assessment and we'll be sharing that up with staff December through March we're going to take a list of everything that the staff asked for when we said what data do you use and what support do you need we now have a prioritized list of the types of support staff has asked for and that's how we'll develop the professional development and or give opportunity or support by the end of this year it is our hope and we will have a school-wide assessment calendar that will include all of our state assessments as well as common assessments CTE performance assessments
038and kind of a calendar so we know who has Assessments in what area and by the end of this year we plan to look at a common assessment platform where teachers can actually upload their assessments and they're able to align into standards and different indicators and that may makes it easier for them to analyze the results so this is our roadmap we're still kind of in the beginning um and this is just a review of that second day we had on the 26th we train staff for our requirements of our tiered Focus monitoring for the English learner program our CTE team had an opportunity to meet as a full team for an overview of curriculum and it was all around a lens using data we explored the star data as I mentioned which is for
039some teams they were looking at that MCAS alignment and then we also had I know I've mentioned it here we are continuing with our program with bar which is building assets reducing risks it was a freshman program we are no longer part of that three-year we kind of had like a three-year opportunity with Barr we've chosen to continue it on our own and we're expanding it into the grade 10. so this was our kickoff meeting for staff to kind of talk about Barr and include the grade 10. so it was a busy month all around data and it's timely because we are just getting our MCAS data and we are also just took our first Benchmark assessment I'm looking forward to sharing out the results of the our formative assessment and sharing with the teachers
040our action plan on how to respond thank you Leo through you um you know we're walking away from the bar programming we expanded into 10th grade is their reason we walked away from it oh I didn't mean we walked away from it before we had kind of a we were part of a program where um they it was almost like it was we had to apply for it was like a three-year kind of a um a grant and that was the three years was over but we chose on our own to continue with it and we're actually they're actually looking at us as one of the model schools so they really wanted us to stay so we not only are continuing it but we are trying to expand it into grade tens we're just doing
041it now not as part of that Grant amazing Pro Mr Potato Miss salinsky have there been any challenges or complaints from either teachers or parents regarding the changes of schedule to hold these professional developments um it depends I would say it's getting used to I hear from some students that they love it because they might work the night before they can sleep in or they can go to breakfast you also hear the other side where they might prefer it the other way change is hard I will say the same someone asked this at the last faculty check-in whether some people like some teachers like it and other teachers are saying oh they liked it the other way so I think it's it's kind of I haven't had any complaints so to speak or any access
042issues for the first couple times it was it was new to all of us because there's a lot of things that we don't think about in terms of supervision and what time do the buses come in but I will say and this is just kind of anecdotal on my end it has been more focused because in the afternoons before there was still a lot of students in the building in terms of sport and other events and now we are everyone's able to focus on professional developments and areas like the discipline office are actually able to work with their staff which were before they were always supervising students so it's probably 50 50. some people like it some people don't like it are you ready now Mr hater that's the delayed opening every Wednesdays not every
043Wednesdays yeah it's uh it's once a month and then some seven months or two anything further thank you very much this time the chair would appreciate the emotion from this committee to adjust the agenda back to public participation for a special guest no motion please I make the motion all those in favor all right we're opposed would you introduce to Mr Cirillo um I want to come over here my apologies for coming late hi yep that's fine that's okay um allow her to introduce herself um quiet no she could take my seat um thank you everyone for having me um and again my apologies for arriving a little bit late um so I guess I'm here to talk about the event was it or my situation so I'm an alumni I graduated in 2003 I
044went to um I was in office Tech I think it's called business Tech now and um the vocus home for me um I was a student that struggles with the mccast so when you guys are talking about the m test I'm like well if they still have the MCAS I had the first I was the first school year to have to pass the MCAS in order to get your diploma a lot of my other peers unfortunately didn't get a diploma because we were so new and it was they were they struggled I struggled as well I remember the state came in and I was able to take a little bit extra math support um but fast forward from 2003 till now um I am finding myself in a situation where I have a one-year-old daughter
045that needs a liver transplant she's at Boston's children's hospital and I knew that I could count on my school for support So we had a fundraiser last Friday that was amazing here at the Elks I called I had a connection with my a friend of mine who called Frank and said hey we need some support for this fundraiser can culinary give us a hand with like sandwiches and salad and pasta and things like that and they came through for us so all those years later I can still count on my high school to have my back um and so I thank you guys so much for that um I have some posters we were able to do like um have all of the sponsors um have a you know the red Alliance logo and things
046like that it's a little story on my daughter's condition um it's a rare condition um one in 15 000 it's called biliria treasure and so we have a QR link for you guys to follow along on her journey but um she's at Boston's children's we're waiting for the call and I thank you for your time thank you very much we wish you well wish you well please keep please keep us informed all right we'll do okay and when I got the call she's a constituent from Methuen and alone from glts I connected with John and Scott and Sue um and they made it happen so I want to make sure that we acknowledge all the efforts that done by all these three individuals to make this happen Scott delivered the food on on the day
047of the event and they made and the students help with making the food John was very eager to to help and support the community and members of the community especially I learned from the school yeah all those years later thank you for coming thank you very much make sure they get put up okay thank you for allowing that ladies and gentlemen um back to the regular order of business out of state travel we're going to do these one at a time please out of state travel for Mr Chris watersworth Advanced manufacturing instructor to travel to Hartford Job Corps Academy in Hartford Connecticut for the NASA visit on November 14th through 16th it's no cost to glts the cost is picked up by the host school you have a motion on that please second discussion all
048those in favor anyone opposed okay out of state travel for Mr John Delaney and Ms Nicole uh though Bernie their softball coaches to travel to Montvale uh the cty for coaching education for softball coaches and players convention on January 13th through 14th 2023 the cost is 139 dollars per person uh 278 if you do the math correctly for the registration have a motion on that please move discussion follows in favor anyone oppose a Ms Colleen Abdullah McGrath a guidance excuse me guidance counselor and Mr Michael let uh Automotive instructor along with all women in automotive and auto body to attend Toyota of Nashua Nashua New Hampshire on November 18 2022 for a tour and to speak to women in the field the only cost to us I believe is a van or a bus would
049be transportation from what I'm reading here discussion follows a favor how do you want to pose in your calendars and November calendar exploratory grade uh rubis is uh in your packet uh report from committees none oh John I just want to speak quickly to the exploratory uh grading scorecard a lot of work went into this uh by uh my committee to end up you know one of the important aspects of things we're trying to do with exploratory this year is to ensure that there is more equity in students getting their first choice and having fairness and opportunities for all students and I think this grading form for the player uh the rubrics that was developed goes a long way in providing more equity for students at the end when it comes time for making selections
050so that grading is fair and clearer and students have a much easier understanding of what they're actually going to be scored on so that it makes it uh clear for them in terms of motivation in terms of understanding what's important day-to-day as say perform in each of the shops because it's important for in each of their shops to do the best they can in order to get the most points they can when it comes time to picking selecting the shop so this was not an easy task but I think it's a task that goes a long way in providing a lot more equity for our for our ninth graders this year so I think it's a pretty exciting it'll be great to see how it all plays out and I think it's going to result
051in something a very positive you got any questions for the trooper excuse me any questions for the superintendent okay oh I'm sorry I didn't see your hand that's odd that I don't see you go ahead okay um on the safety one I unless I'm misreading I think all four of the same so um I I didn't see that on anything else just looking quickly at it so the it's labeled safety and each one reads the same I believe sort of differences that uh they're following those safety rules at a higher percentage of the time okay I see the percentage there thank you thank you did you say old business new business okay no I I had something under old business okay um you had mentioned that it might be spoken about later but I was
052concerned about the continued issue with the busing and what's going to happen no what I said is one of the committee members had asked me uh under future items to ask the bus company to come back again to to address us not that it's going to be discussed at a that's so I didn't mean to be okay so um so when would be the next meeting all right and we can't talk about it tonight no all right never mind well no go ahead what do you have I'm just I I'm just you have a solution no I wished I did but I get more Angry each time knowing that each of our communities have solved their problem and I use the term of low man on the pecking water and it's just beyond frustrating I
053still keep seeing it on our unofficial glts site and I can't imagine the frustration of the kids and the parents that are dealing with this and nothing has happened so I that's it Mr Cirillo I know I was asking for this later on to be added to the agenda but Maryland and I'm in total agreement as a parent I get the emails I was seeing how many buses are late since before the we had the bus company since the bus company has been in and I guess as I'm sitting here today before the meeting started I'm watching how Lawrence got 24 new electronic buses and the big hoorah but yet they still don't have drivers our kids are still being almost two hours late um and the three bus drivers they claim they that they
054were going to have in two weeks which everybody knows anything about the bus company is two to three months of their training and that's if you have other bus drivers to finish training them after they get their certification or their licensure so yeah I'm asking for the bus company to come back right so I'm in total agreement with you and the frustration yep anything further okay oh yes John sorry so well before I left I know I reached out to the bus company on a couple different issues uh particularly the three supposedly drivers really isn't three drivers it's three drivers are now qualified to go into training so it doesn't really help us in terms of that the other thing I had spoken to them about because they said one of the big issues was
055they didn't have drivers that were getting in the English classes to be able to be able to pass the test so we offered them to offer a course for as many of their drivers to offer that particular English ell class to help them learn specifically targeted towards passing the tests that they had to pass they said they had like 30 drivers but they have not responded and presented those drivers to us at all we said get back to us we're willing to do it and but they haven't really responded to that after they said that was and they had said when they were here that was a critical part of it so we are trying to do we what we can to help them resolve this problem um so I guess um our next step
056which I'll be calling out to our attorney and he has looked at it once already but I'm going to ask him if he can there's got to be some kind of way of at least compensating the loss to both to not even so much to the school itself but to students themselves and to families that they have to deal with this so we'll reach out to them and see what what's possible regarding that issue in itself Mr Sorella and to staff because we have to have staff here winning around um to support these students they're still behind they were here and they said they had a partnership with greater Lawrence Community Action Council um to teach English classes my the next day I had a meeting with greater Lawrence Community Action Council which then informed
057that they don't have an agreement yet because they it's hard to get the bus company in to even sign the mou so Goldman and total poll whatever it is we're not flashy enough but we pay more than most communities yeah it's it's time um to have this conversation with us with the attorneys Vivian I just want to make sure if we're inviting this person back to speak on any updates that we're actually holding her accountable because she's completely misrepresenting the process um because it was news to me as to you know it was I was under the impression that we would get two to three drivers pretty quickly and this was already it's been what two months since her last visit and they're just going into training so that's my thing it's like if we're
058inviting this person to provide us with updates how do we make sure that we're not just accepting any falsified uh information in order for her to satisfy whatever challenges that we're presenting to her that they're clearly violating at this point um and I believe Maryland brought up in previous meetings that um like the contract that we have with them are we Contin are we going to continue to honor the contract as is or are we going to perform any adjustments to it based on their performance talking cheers first of all I I would ask the bus company insist that they send their CE send their CEO someone at the highest level we don't want to talk to having someone that doesn't really have the authority to give us the right kind of information we're looking
059for so I'll ask for the CEO to come and talk to the school committee so that we can hope it's better to hold him accountable and he he has to be upfront and honest with us I think that's a better way to go and then in terms of the contract uh I will sit down with the attorney to look at each step of the contract to see under the Clauses of each aspect of the contract what do we have what is it that we can do is there a penalty Clause yeah what are the things that we can do to enforce some of uh they're not meeting their obligations to that contract and Mrs uh Fitzgerald yes I it really and truly is something that I think about every single day I feel we're being
060discriminated against we are the only community of the ones that they serve that has continued to have it we have a signed contract with them I believe we have more buses than any other community that we've contracted with and it's just as far as I'm concerned we are November and it is inexcusable that all of the other communities are being serviced in full and we are not and I think it's time to Rattle a few cages by way of our attorney I'll stop now Leo for that Mr Savella promises promises Mr Cirillo um Maryland and I am total agreement I mean just I think it was last week or something where I drove by one of the buses and it said Andover public school which a tape over greater Lawrence technical public Technical School so
061it was a tape over greater Lawrence technical um so so yeah in Miami uh she sat here and instead of them calling their their bus driver has been June in July to start getting ready for the next school year for our contracts that never happened so yeah John it's more than just senate representative they they didn't need somebody that actually has authority to come before us on the CEO um whoever that is these days being that they've gone corporate um because now we can't continue to have been doing this and then I had a Converse and being that they're the biggest Monopoly in the Commonwealth we gotta go really hold them accountable sorry Leo no problem did you break your promise already Mrs Fitzgerald yes I did so for those of you that um haven't
062been around quite as long as I have my Mantra before I even got on this committee um my neck of the woods when I was working here was down that end of the building and every day when school got out I would stand out on the little ramp by the pool exit door and wave to all the kids watch them go by when I first got here every single bus that left here said great Lawrence technical school actually it might have said the abbreviation Regional Vocational Technical school then as time went on I it there were less and less saying that and more and more saying other things I had asked and have asked and if we go back in the minutes you'll see how many times I asked that when we sign our contract
063with him that a certain percentage of our buses say greater Lawrence technical school it never went through and got put into the contract but it is so frustrating and now that you're saying that they actually taped over our name um it's just infuriating I really feel that we are being discriminated against and I can't believe the parents haven't started yelping about it I meant by going by way of the newspaper okay we also said Johnson will uh ready get this not try we will get to see you in here okay okay uh for policies section b b d e a establishment of capital Improvement plans I have a motion on that don't move all of the flavor are you going to pose sorry I didn't answer the discussion uh do business table matters Personnel consider
064Personnel considerations resignation from a data assessment specialist and security is that a security officer John sister or maybe what you know they resigned security officer yeah well I know you I'm just saying you know you've been aware no leave of absence no retirements no opponishments and I see no job postings on my sheet of paper future agenda items ongoing projects John you have anything to want to fill us in on uh well right to any chance yes I know if you want to I did take a walk around take a look at what's going on what's going on and uh as you know cause it's pretty much done there's still some little uh items that need to be taken care of um ready Cafe cited the project pretty much done as well there's a little
065bit of painting in this I don't I believe that it can open next week you just got to get it set up now which will probably do during this particular week and then we were still waiting for some of the doors you like your phone John I'm sorry oh I'm sorry we're not we're still waiting for Ron even still waiting for uh some of the doors to come in that we ordered way back in July The Swinging Doors to Maple doors with the steel bucks still haven't arrived yet so some of those still need to be put in in both in Cosmo and in the Reggie Cafe which uh once those are put in we could actually probably open both sides of the of the restaurant because there's a bathroom and a storage area that
066doesn't have a door on it right now so as soon as those go on we can open that up [Music] because that's pretty much in pretty good shape too we do have an outside exterior door that needs to go in in uh in the new uh in the Four Winds Restaurant which we're still waiting for that door unit to come in uh was doing actually I think sometime this week so hopefully if that shows up we can get that in and so that outside patrons don't have to come through the building they'll come out from the outside there and then that can be reset up and and opened up as well uh the um the other big project is the child care center the students are um the next big part of that project is
067doing the HVAC system and um I've got I got a price to do the duct work for that for a hundred thousand dollars so I went to HVAC department instead of the students capable of doing that he said they were so we're going to save 100 000 because the students are going to do that project uh they actually uh put together the specs and ordered the material and students will start sometime this week uh putting together that that's about a two to three week project on that ceiling goes in and then we're ready to do the Finish which is the cabin so we're trying to open up uh in uh sometime in December at the latest July uh January 1st for that particular project and of course we started the playground on the outside you'll
068see there's some excavation that's been doing we've been doing getting that playground ready the students have been doing that project as well to save us a substantial amount of money as well the landscape departments doing the playground for us out there and the library we're just waiting for the furniture in the library to arrive so we can finish up that project and that furniture was ordered way back in July as well so we're still waiting for that questions and comments uh Frank um Tom and I the other day had had a the pleasure of taking a little walk and looking at cosmetology and let me tell you that place looks amazing it looks brighter in this cheerier I'm just we took a little glance at the folk perform Winston and let me tell you um
069it's well well worth the investment it looks it's going to be it's going to look amazing but with that where are we with the um Automotive um Edition or expansion um when I look when I had left looked like it was going to start to move a little better they were getting ready to pour the floor I didn't look at that today so I'm not sure if they got the floor poured um so that's two months behind schedule is what I've been told by the contractor himself so that would take us to sometime in February before that project would be done at this point I'll take a look tomorrow but I would expect it would have started putting in the block walls on the outside so and I think it's two on Tuesdays we have
070the uh Rob meets with the uh Rob and John meet with the contractor on Tuesdays and sometimes I attend the meeting sometimes I don't but I'll make sure I attend tomorrow to see if there's any issues at this time we're having some difficulties between for a while there between the architect and the contractor on some of the proper way of doing some of the construction so I think we've ironed all that out and it seems when I left when I was left that it seemed like it was going a little smoother anything further yeah um we extended it to February thank you I'm Leo um and correct me wrong some cementing during the winter well doesn't that become an issue on its own yeah if the block well we still have some time to get
071the block wall if they jump on it right now I still think they could get the block walls done um before it gets so cold that they couldn't do the mortar but if it gets to the point we get into you know the middle of December or later then we have to enclose it with uh polyethylene uh and heat it in order for them to do that which is an uncommon on a construction site you can do it the costume anything further okay uh moving on then uh marketing and uh social media John do you have any comments on that or do we have any questions on that nothing okay I'm out do you have any questions both does anybody have anything want to move on it or what yeah well okay all right John
072oh you do okay I remember I asked to sure you got the floor go ahead John do you want the floor yeah okay John they're giving an update because I remember I said at the last meeting um that why are we using our social media to promote the amazing to promote the amazing things that the school is doing the projects okay I I'm like jogging our memories here okay Frank yeah um I think the camera there's been a couple of good events that had taken Inspire um processary place here and there was no photographs um being taken thing I mean we had Cassandra on Friday took some good photos of the event um but we're missing it yeah they were posted um but we missing um others weren't that's why so it brought up the
073um the fact that we make sure we have somebody there doing their yeah good hey John so I I did meet with the uh company uh represent from the company who who we hire to do all our articles and uh I'm meeting with him at least once some once a month and to reconcile what we know is coming up for events so he can be sure he covers the events for us so uh there should have been coverage on Friday and there should have been coverage for Sunday the company they'll do an article so he'll come in and meet with um different people from the building who were responsible for overseeing the uh the events and myself to talk about those events and do a story on those so both open house and Friday should
074have there should have been something on that I'm not sure if there was any anything beyond our other than our own social media uh we had somebody taking pictures on Friday I don't know about Sunday but as I was walking in today they were I was looking at the big TV in the hallway and it so it looked like it there was a presentation being done by Miss sadinsky and I'm and I'm looking at that and it's like that would be something really great if we had it oh on a commercial or YouTube promoting um the school and all the great stuff that's being done um that's actually the only time I've seen it that's who I know I was I was not here last meeting when this was discussed but I just want to
075assure the committee that it is a priority of both the superintendent and myself as the principal to utilize social media to promote all the good things happening here at glts and I can say that although there may be some Mist like on that day I've actually received compliments people have reached out to me that don't work here to say that they think that they've actually complimented me on it so in terms of right now one of the things I want to update you on too is our Twitter account was kind of M.I.A and that actually account has been reactivated so our goal is to connect all three social media platforms and expand in terms of when we post on Instagram it goes to Facebook and we also include it on Twitter one of the things
076that I think is a challenge is um you know I I think and I want to say that I've been working with Cassandra and she has been doing a great job in terms of when we say hey can you cover this event one of the things that I will say that we need to do a better job on and I'll take responsibility for it is to kind of schedule out certain things that we know are happening to ensure that we give her adequate time to not only make sure she's there but make sure that we give her like um you know what we put out there in terms of content we did post and we actually tagged the um the members of the army that were here on Friday and we captured some amazing photos
077of yesterday which will be going out in the post but there was a delay in that today I it's a goal of mine we've also tried to do more in representing glts and recognizing certain events in the community and will continue to do that so I appreciate the feedback and I think that's right now the best way to get I'll share all the good things that are happening here so we will keep improving on that yeah because I do remember seeing Cassandra yesterday she was had the orange suit on um those sound corrected on that because she was here that's right Vivian did you have something you want to add no no superintendent so we're trying to uh Cassandra does a lot of the work with the social media and um and Eleanor works with
078her on our on the newspaper on that uh newsletter that goes out from Sue and myself Cassandra Eleanor myself Susan we work as a team on that particular uh piece that goes out and also we're trying to because we don't have a specific marketing person anymore we're trying to uh have trying to hone our help Cassandra develop more responsibility in overseeing it along with some guidance from Eleanor particularly when there's some writing that needs to be done and along with trying to connect with our agent that's working with us so I think that as we move forward you'll see some improvement in that and uh but it it takes a real planning and organization takes a lot of planning to make all this stay on top of all this so between Sue myself and everybody
079trying to pay more attention to meeting specifically to look at what's happening or eat week to week that needs to be put out there every week it's something that has to we actually have to actually almost have a meeting scheduled once a week to say okay this is with the people that are responsible to help us get it out there so we'll we'll try to do a better job with that this is uh the show yes speaking of the newsletter it was terrific who does that all go to does that go to all the parents faculty everybody that needs to know the nitty-gritty that was it was great Frank are you all set uh Frank did you have a question it goes to the parents um The Faculty students alumni and the advisory committee of
080course the school committee um quick question and business Tech do they have like a little bit marketing their curriculum because they're um seniors or Juniors that help out with um some of this there it's a small there are some uh competencies that fall under the marketing it's not huge um we haven't uh since we've kind of reorganized we haven't really put any we haven't connected them but it's actually a good idea maybe to connect them with uh Cassandra and Eleanor to see maybe they can even do a piece for us and and take a look at some of uh over helping us with that task okay what about um information technology yeah that doesn't really fall under their framework anything further see nothing okay uh is there a need for an executive session so you
081know no good morning okay no further business the chair will accept the motion to adjourn [Laughter] dollars in favor thank you very much our next meeting show today please I'm sorry they don't sell those 20 seconds