Greenfield School Committee - March 11, 2026

001Mhm. >> Mhm. >> All right. It is 6:30, so I think we'll go ahead and get started. Thank you everyone for being present in the room. Um I can hear a little bit of feedback. So, I'm going to go ahead and read the chair's statement. This meeting is being recorded by Greenfield Community Television, GCTV. If any other persons are doing so, doing the same, you must notify the chairperson, me, at this time. Anyone else recording? There we go. All right, good. Thank you. We'll go ahead and do call to order. We are called to order at 6:31 p.m. Secretary Webb, would you please call the roll? Member Goodwin. Here. Chair Sexton. Here. Secretary Webb, I'm here. Vice Chair Childs. Here. Member Geneve. Is not here. Member Desorgher. Here. Is online. Member Duckman. Here. Here. All

002right, we have a quorum with one absence, although we've heard that member Geneve should be joining us in a few moments. Um, before we move on to public comment, I do have an announcement to make and to read out. It is not a happy one necessarily, but I hope that you will join me um in taking a moment of silence for Brandon Hoyt, who is was a seventh-grade student at our middle school, who passed away suddenly on Monday morning. He was 14 years old and leaves behind his sister Joanna, his mother Regina, and his father Shawn, who are both employees of our district. So, we will observe a minute of silence now. >> Thank you for joining me in that. Um and I hope that you'll be sending your condolences in your spirit or in

003person if you know those that family um for their loss. Um and it is truly a loss to our whole community. Um at this time, um we will open up to public comment. If you have not already signed up for public comment, you can see our recording secretary Nan over there. Um we'll start with we'll start with some folks in the room and then we're all we'll alternate uh with any folks online who would also wish to give public comment. If you are online, please put your name uh in the chat. Um okay. So, who's who's on first? Uh first I got Virginia Haskell followed by Allison Smith. Thank you and give me just a moment. I need to get my timer. You will have 3 minutes and if you could say your name and

004how you are affiliated with the schools. My name is Virginia Haskell. I'm here from the Federal Street PTO. This statement is being shared on behalf of the Federal Street School Elementary PTO. We support the safety requirements for volunteers including CORI checks, fingerprinting, and trainings. However, the current process requires multiple steps and at least one trip outside of Greenfield which creates barriers for many families. Our volunteers are giving their time to support our schools and for some families the extra travel time and training requirements make volunteering difficult or impossible. Some families do not have transportation outside of Greenfield, which prevents them from completing the process. Research consistently shows that when parents are actively involved in their children's education, student performance improves. We respectfully ask the district to offer a regular opportunity to complete the CORI checks

005within Greenfield, such as one scheduled day each month at a district school or office. Making this process more accessible will help more families participate and strengthen our school community. Thank you for your time. Sincerely, the Federal Street Elementary School PTO. Thank you. Isaac Mass, followed by Elizabeth Myers. Okay. Hi. And if you could say your name and your affiliation with the schools. Yeah. My name is Isaac Mass. Uh I'm a taxpayer in Greenfield and the parent of three children who are educated by Greenfield public schools, including My youngest is a senior in Greenfield High School and I'm a spouse of a Greenfield educator. Um the reason why I'm speaking to you today is first I want to thank you for all of the hard work that you do. It is sometimes thankless. I know that

006to be a public servant and to be engaged in the very important work that you do and you do important work for our district, so I appreciate each and every one of you. I um followed the reporting of last month's School Committee meeting where there was some discussion about going into mediation during executive session. And as you all know, um I sent a letter to the Attorney General or an email to the Attorney General's office because I had some concerns about how that might violate open meeting law. Um the response came from the Attorney General's office. You all have that. I think you all know what parameters exist now. But I am somewhat concerned about um the school committee and the the interaction it has had with public and other bodies of the last several

007years. As I sent the when I sent this message out, I didn't receive any kind of response within a couple of weeks, which by the way, I'm not owed a response, but I would I wanted to make sure that the school committee got that. And so I sent a follow-up just confirming that it was received and I started to hear from members that there is a policy of the school committee that when something is sent to the school committee, only the chair can respond. Um I don't know if that's accurate or not. If it is a policy, I I think it's a poor policy. I think that all of you are elected officials elected by all of the citizens and you all have the right, not the obligation, but the right to respond to um

008constituents who bring things before you. Um if to the extent that this comes from a misunderstanding of the open meeting law, you have you certainly can't respond to a about a policy thing that you copy all of the rest of the school committee on because that would be a violation the open meeting law, but individually, you have the ability to do that. Um I encourage you to continue to be open and transparent with the public. And as a former city councilor, I it would be remiss of me not to say to work cooperatively with the mayor's office and with the city council as the as your budget comes before them and it's very important to have a good relationship with the city council. I always did in my tenure on city council had I what

009I thought was a good relationship with um the school committee. You guys are doing great work. I appreciate you. And to the extent I can ever be personally useful to any one of you in understanding how the open meeting law or per se or process works, I'm available and willing to help at no cost to the city. Thank you. Clearly, I'm new to this. So, my name is Liz Martin and I am the vice president of the Newton School PTO. Um thank you for having me. Um this is mainly in concerns with what the Federal Street School PTO also mentioned. If we are looking to have more families in our community join our school and we love our schools, um but we want more families to have the opportunity to come and be in our

010schools. Um and so, I would really love for the policies um to take a good look at the expectations for volunteers in our schools. And um if we could have the community engagement really take a look at that, that would make a lot of families happy and um more likely to want to volunteer in our schools. So, that's that's it. Thank you. All right. My name is Rose Skulaf. Um I am a uh teacher at the middle school. Um and I love my job. I'm a fifth grade teacher at the middle school. There are six of us that work uh as fifth grade teachers, three of which are ELA and social studies teachers and three who are math and science teachers. So, I work with one other teacher and then we teach the same two

011groups of students throughout the school day. So, the fifth grade students have two academic teachers, whereas the sixth grade students have four. And I am feeling confused about why the conversation about moving fifth grade to the elementary schools is still happening. And the reason I'm confused is that I love my job. And the reason I love my job is because of the colleagues that I have. They are some of the most hard-working, dedicated, compassionate professionals I have ever met. We have so much joy that is happening throughout our building. And we are also receiving positive feedback from our families. We just had parent-teacher conferences last week and we had several families who shared how afraid they were to send their student to fifth grade at a middle school and how thankful they are that they

012did because of all of the opportunities that are available to them. And so, if we aren't seeing this picture on why it needs to move, then I'm assuming it's coming from outside of the house. And so, I would like to personally invite each of you, if you are interested, to come to my classroom and to see what fifth grade is all about. You can come see me teach math in the morning or teach science in the afternoon. If you come in on Fridays, you will see our walk to reading literacy program that the ELA teachers painstakingly put together using data collection and analysis to give students targeted interventions and enrichment. If you come in when we're not teaching and students are at specials, you'll be able to see the seven different unified arts classes that

013are available to them. If you come after school, you will be able to see six of the different after-school activities that are available to them, one of which was started by a fifth grade student this year, our writing club. And um we just really if you are going to be voting on whether or not to separate us, then you should deserve to have the evidence that you're looking for us to why that needs to happen. And if you come in and visit our classrooms, I guarantee you will not find it. Thank you. Is there any other public comment in the room? Okay. Um for me for the Yeah. Uh I just want to give a couple more calls for public comment in case anyone who didn't share in the room want gets gets a feeling

014that they would like to. Um and also once again for the folks online, I've uh I'm not seeing anyone put their name in the chat or raise their hand. Um so I'm assuming that no one online would like to give public comment at this time. All right. Excellent. Um then we will close public comment for now um and move along to the report of student representatives to the to the committee. So if our student reps could come up, um got some seats right up front here. All right. To start us off with student council, 19 students attended a state leadership conference in Hyannis on March 4th to March 6th. While there, they had the opportunity to hear two national keynote speakers and attend four student-led workshops. Everyone jumped in the ocean for the polar plunge

015for Special Olympics dressed as superheroes. As a school, we raised over $1,000 for the Special Olympics. Key Club. Key Club is excited to be hosting a blood drive with Baystate Health on March 18th. There's a lot of interest in this event. We hope to make this an annual or biannual thing. Athletics. Winter sports are over. The boys basketball team lost to Boston United in the first round of the MIAA state tournament, finishing with a record of 15 to 16 or six, right? The girls team lost to Lenox High School finishing 10 to 11. Ice hockey made the sweet 16 after beating Boston Latin Academy 4 to 0 in the round of 32 and then losing to Wilmington 4 to 3. The boys track team went 5-0 and won their league. Congrats. The girls went 4-1.

016Great seasons by all of our teams. French Club. French Club and Spanish Club co-hosted the 30th annual Taste of World Cultures on Tuesday, March 10th. Taste of World Cultures is a celebration of language and culture which featured a buffet dinner donated by local businesses and performances from GHS students and community groups. Drama Club. The Secret Garden will be performed on March 27th and 28th in the auditorium. The story is geared towards all ages, but especially children. We hope that the elementary schools will be able to enjoy a performance on the morning of Friday, March 27th. Tickets can be reserved ahead of time or bought at the door. Library Club. The Library Club had its final book to movie event last Friday collaborating with Mosaic, the Students of Color and Allies Club to separate separate celebrate

017celebrate Black History Month. We showed Hidden Figures, a film and book about three African-American mathematicians who worked for NASA during the space race. Coming up, the group will have a movie and bonding event on March 18th after school. And finally, we have Spectrum. In March, we will be discussing nationwide news, organizing a fundraiser, and making plans for Pride Prom. Pride Prom is a favorite event for our LGBTQ+ students and we try to team up with Franklin County Pride to help them with organization and set up. That is all. Thank you so much. Do members have any comments, questions? Yep, member Goodwin. You did great. Thanks. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. At this time, I'm very excited to welcome up three of our principals. Maybe we'll do it one at a time or all three

018of you, I'm not sure. Um we have Michael Browning, principal from our high school, Michelle Fenimore from the middle school, and David Potter from Four Corners. And they're going to be telling us a little bit about what's going on in their schools. Um hopefully this will be the first of many times. First of many. Yes. Yep. Yes, um thank you for that introduction. Want to welcome our three principals here and um as Chair Sexton mentioned, just a brief overview of some of the great things that are happening at the schools and we'll have the three other principals come the next month. There and cuz I know that many times our business our meetings are done with business and a lot of things that are happening and I think it's nice to hear what's going on

019in the schools and how they're dealing with things and and kudos to all the teachers and everybody who's involved district-wide as well who helped this week with the unfortunate uh passing of one of our students. The middle school did a great job and had assistance from other schools as well on that one. But here tonight, they're going to give you some quick overviews and you know, if you have any questions related to what they're talking about tonight, that'd be great and it's just probably the beginning of seeing them a few hopefully, you know, at least once a year in front of you. Thank you. Awesome. About now? Okay. I just want to start with a shout-out. I you know, we have incredible we have some teachers here and I've worked with all of them except

020for Rose, but Rose reach out. But we have a great great faculty and staff and I worked in three of the buildings, but it's just there's so many good things that we do. Some of you are out at Taste of the World last night and just a really good place to be in a good place to work. So I just echo so much of what I heard Rose say is throughout the district and so it's it's just a good place to be. I'm going to start talking about our first goal. Emphasis is on attendance. Attendance was abysmal going into this last year and so coming out we ended up at a 88% attendance. So this year tracking the same time where last year we were at 92% Our chronic absenteeism was our biggest issue and

021that was at 40% last year. We've there's a lot of different things we've done with our attendance team that meets weekly to work on that. So currently we're down to 27%. So huge drop and just a lot of that work that's you know, that continual weekly meeting with parents, meeting with kids and just staying on them. A long ways to go, but just we're really impressed with the work that's going on. And just to give you a sense of some of the you know, we're we're not just focused on overall the school, but also some of our subgroups to make sure that we're really understand what's going on and so like for instance our EL group population was at 52% last year chronic and they're down to 33. You know, our Latino students were at

02259% last year down to 40. So some big chunks that we have ways to go, but just making some really good progress with that and we're just excited about what's what we're seeing come out of that. We're also we've worked on implementing MAP testing we had for eighth grade. We now moved that up to ninth and 10th. And so the impact we're having already we saw just looking at winter um report from last year to this year. Last year they're at 38% in ELA proficient. This year at 48% um just from winter to winter. In math, we started at 27% last year proficient now up to 36 this year. So, things are moving in the right direction that we want to see um and that's exciting. Um as a building and thinking about practices that

023we're doing as staff, we're working on a staff read um that's called grading for equity. And so, it's a book that we spend um every week in collab they spend some time as a collab team. Our collab teams are not necessarily department um teams so we also have some time throughout the year in our um faculty meetings that we do some department time as well so that we're really as a whole school looking at this and just some critical reflection on how we grade, what these practices look like, especially considering our subgroups and just thinking about how um we're looking at what we do and how we improve that. And so, again we're um about two-thirds of the way through the book. We've seen several different um kind of areas that come out that that

024staff are working on. And then we're just continually to work on what are some some schoolwide as well as departmentwide um practices that we can make. And so, that's been a really good experience for us. Um we also working on uh just building a strong ILT. And so, it's something that that um we've been working hard on to kind of grow them as a team. So, this year they really focused on peer visits and so, that opportunity go into classes and have um another staff member come and observe you as well as you observe them. And and so, and I know this has been done at the middle school and they had a really great model of this and where it is kind of a slow start of just some some things that you notice

025and some things you wonder and then each time every quarter we're doing a new one with a with a little more of an intense um look at things. And so, we're on our third one this quarter. Um they actually had the fact we had a chance to do their their pre-observation with the person that they're going to observe and that's going to observe them. So they have that chance to really target some areas that they want some input on and get some feedback on. And so again, these are just some of the things we're doing and that we're excited about that we're really seeing staff start to move the building in a direction we need to go. Great. Thank you. Yeah, and if you give me a second I've got your PowerPoint and I can

026share it with the zoom. I'm not going to go full screen cuz then I miss seeing the people on the zoom. But feel free. Hi everyone. It's nice to see you all again. I do want to start by acknowledging the White family and on behalf of the entire GMS faculty and staff we're sending our condolences to them during this difficult time. And I I do want to shout out all of my teachers and staff who did something incredibly hard this week and they did it with such grace and class and love and and the kids are just so wonderful as well. So um thank you for letting me say that. So what I'm going to share with you is four areas of where we focused attendance, accountability, instruction, and then student achievement. These were born

027out of when Desi put us into a status. So, um without understanding the fifth grade's place in the middle school, it's hard to understand how we got to where we were and made the progress that we made. So, the fifth grade, um allows for a team teaching approach. So, we can be more efficient with the people that we have in the building and around the district. So, we're able to concentrate resources and interventions to one school, which I think has allowed us to make the progress that we've made, um in a short period of time. And, um the the the kids love it there. Um after a couple of weeks, they're they're comfortable there and and like Teacher Skriloff said, I I would it's an open invitation for you all to come and visit, um

028during lunchtime, during dismissal, during arrival, um during recess, um and see see what's going on there. So, you can Um this is our accountability percentile growth. So, in 2022, we were at 3%. So, a lot of other schools were doing better than us in the state. And then, um we had some incremental growth over the next four years that put us at 21%. And that, um that has allowed us to exit the the status of the state. Another, um area we had to focus on was attendance. And so, um we have a robust, comprehensive chronic absenteeism plan at GMS, um that involves a lot of incentives, a lot of parent meetings, um and a lot of student meetings, um to figure out why kids are having a difficult time coming to school. So, uh we've

029we've improved um significantly in a very short period of time. Um our student achievement growth from 2022 to 2025, you can see that there was double-digit growth in each subject area um between those 3 years in math, ELA, and then science. Science is only grade five. This is a a bit of background on our classification. From 2018 to 2021, absent of COVID, um there was limited to no progress. So, the state had given us our marching orders, so to speak, and we weren't making any gains in those areas. From 2022 to 2023, we um were in the comprehensive support, so we still had assistance from the state rights system of support, um and we needed assistance and intervention, which we worked with the state on. And then, um in 2024, we exited the status, and

030we remain out of the status. We do not require intervention or um or assistance, and I that, you know, I'm up here talking about that, but it it really says something about the the level of dedication of our staff and and their skill in the classroom. Um I'm also very proud of We have four um aligned curriculums for all three grade levels, so grade five, six, and seven, um in all four subjects and our SEO curriculum. So, ELA, we use CKLA and Amplify. It's the same same program. Math is Illustrative Math in all three grades. We are using Investigating History in social studies, and then in science, we are using Open SciEd in all three grades, which is a It's new for sixth grade this year, but it's it's um very hands-on and problem-solving based.

031And then for our social-emotional learning, we have Second Step that is done in our advisories every week. And then we're we have a lot to still work on. Um and some of those things are making sure that we are strengthening our tier one instruction. So, it allows access to all students, um including students with disabilities and our MLL students. Um like Mike said, building our instructional leadership capacity. So, really delegating and um distributing that leadership to the teachers so that they can start to to teach their colleagues. And then using data to make sure that we have equitable student outcomes, attendance. We We're using data to to um improve. And then um One of the other things that we do at GMS is is we have these almost monthly family events that it was born

032from the teachers and they started volunteering doing them. And we have one every other month. And so, working on expanding access. So, with the support of of Assistant Superintendent Sullivan, we're able to provide transportation to all of those. So, um we're very proud of the work that we're doing. Hello. It's on. Hi. Um glad to be here. David Potter, I'm the principal of the Four Corners Elementary School. Um and uh I also want to shout start with a bit of a shout-out to the district um uh for welcoming me and for supporting me. It's a very collaborative and collegial uh place to be. Um a lot of good um progress moving forward and uh I'm I've been very impressed um, and glad to be part of the team. So, um, yeah, at Four Corners, um,

033we have a little bit of a different story in terms of our accountability status as as compared. We we um, we are in a position of not requiring assistance or intervention uh, having made moderate progress toward targets. Um, so, um, I apologize, that's my alarm. What's it time for? I was going to say. That's right. Exactly. So, um, you know, while that speaks to a a great um, sense of success and progress with the school, um, we understand that there's lots of things going on um, below that sort of uh, um, number, you know, and that achievement that there's still a lot of growth to be made um, and a lot of work to be done. Uh, I'm fortunate to be working with a wonderful staff um, of teachers and IAs and and others. Um,

034and speaking of staff, just to give you a brief overview, we we are nearly fully staffed. We've been working hard all this year. Um, we are still looking for one special education teacher um, and otherwise uh, we have a couple of different unit C positions building base substitute and an IA that we are still looking to bring on board um, but we've hovered right around that full staffing um, and it's been very difficult uh, to uh, to locate that special education teacher, but we're in a process where we think we have some viable candidates and looking to um, bring somebody on board real soon. Um, with that I'm going to tell you a little bit about our school improvement goals. Uh, I've had a a great experience so far working with our school council. Have

035some very invested parents um, who, uh, heard a draft, and, um, uh, I don't want to say pushed back, but asked questions, wanted wanted clarification, wanted some history. Um, and so, uh, the first goal that we have is about, um, uh, providing, uh, and accelerating student learning and literacy through the use of, uh, focused, uh, data-informed small group literacy instruction daily. Um, and this is with every classroom teacher, uh, providing, um, uh, interventions as needed, uh, in small group settings with students, uh, with similar needs. Um, and then what as well in conjunction with our reading interventionist. And so, each grade level team is supported by a third teacher whose focus is reading, um, and who is, um, as we all have been growing through this year of professional learning, um, taking on more and

036more ownership of this, um, uh, system and this matrix of of working with students, um, in what we call the science of reading. So, uh, determining through progress monitoring and benchmarking not just, um, where you may be in the total, uh, spectrum of progress, but why? And how your issue or challenge may be, uh, similar to somebody else's, but different from your peer next to you. So, um, grouping is very, uh, important and focusing on, uh, the key elements that's really, uh, holding a child back, uh, in terms of literacy and, uh, and, uh, reading and overall reading comprehension. Um, and so, this has been very exciting, uh, and very challenging, uh, but also, um, uh, very, uh, spirit building for our our community of of elementary teachers. And I'll speak to my building that

037people are really, um, invested in this, um, and that I I'm fortunate to have joined in the second year. I understand the first year as you might, you know, uh, understand and, uh, you know, that sort of storming, norming, forming kind of, uh, process, um, is challenging to take on a brand new, uh, set of expectations, um, and, uh, and learning new curriculum. But, this is, uh, been a wonderful experience for us and and the the circling back to my school council, they wanted to know, well, this is your goal, uh, to, uh, through certain objectives, meet these benchmarks of, uh, you know, say 70 or 80% success of students reading on grade level. They said, how practical is that? How how plausible? And we looked at the data from the last year and we

038were able to look at the mid-year your benchmarking data that we have and we decided that 80% of students reading on or above grade level, uh, was plausible. So, we put that, um, in our draft and we'll get to the to the final, uh, you know, version at some point real soon. Um, and I think it will stay at that. So, we're supporting reading in lots of other ways and and speaking to that is, um, our next goal, which is technology, um, because it's such a big part of our world. We're trying to use it in ways that are thoughtful and strategic, um, and students have access to independent, um, uh, reading, uh, instruction through a program called Lexia. Um, and the teacher has access to a number of, uh, different curricula that are presented

039online and can benefit from some of the sparkle and some of the engagement that you get from students, um, but, um, the use of technology, um, is the second goal that we have. And just to continue, uh, with that, we're also having teachers able to use, um, AI through two different, uh, platforms and they're finding, uh, that it's very successful for them to create and fill gaps and and again target instruction, uh, just by saying, this is this is the vowel team that we're working on. So, uh, that's been very exciting for them as well. Our third goal is about absenteeism and it was discussed also in some detail earlier, um, uh, and, uh, again, I'm pretty fortunate, I think, we are at Four Corners to have, um, pretty high rate of uh, attendance, but

040always looking to improve and just enforce or reinforce and emphasize the importance of coming to school every day. And we've been working this year with the B theme that has been throughout I think the elementary schools something that we've worked with to create some sort of social and behavioral expectations. And so we have coined the phrase at Four Corners to be here and be amazing. And so we're using the be here to really reinforce attendance and being at school showing up and even students at that young age can speak you know advocate if they're if they're feeling okay to go to school or if that appointment ends you know a little quicker than they thought then then just try to you know push the parent. I think you should go to school. Often it's not

041up to the child and of course you know there are sickness that's that you know we understand there's there's actual reasons and and excused unexcused are accounted for and we also follow up with I think a very similar program that's used throughout the district to send out letters to folks you know at 5 10 15 different absences and make meetings with people to just try to understand how we can support them to do better. And so we've been enjoying the be here aspect of that and the the be amazing part is to try to up the ante for you know positive behaviors in the building and we try to recognize students for being amazing. And each month we honor one student from each class and we highlight how they were amazing and they can they're

042invited to lunch with with me at the end of the month. So a lovely way for me to spend some time with some students and reinforce attendance and and being amazing. Um in other respects I want to talk a little bit about our involvement with Playworks which is a a new program I think to the district, which is trying to enhance the way we handle recess and and some of the unstructured time and very thoughtfully introduce games that maybe we all grew up playing, but maybe are less played out, you know, in the backyards and and on the street than they used to be. Even to the point of teaching kids how to do rock, paper, scissors and using that as a real fair way and when you don't have a coin to flip, you

043know, and we don't want to say you know, we don't we don't shoot it out anymore. I don't know if you guys grew up with that of throwing out one or two fingers. But now we do rock, paper, scissors and it's a a lot more efficient usually and as kids understand that then then then you know, so much of the of the conflict can be settled very quickly. And so that's become more part of our school and we've also utilized through that program and we're implementing the junior coaches aspect, which is using our fourth graders as mentors to the youngest students out at recess and we have I would say almost 3/4 of our fourth graders volunteering to go out and be trained and help out with the recess and teaching and leading these games

044that students have learned either in gym or through the recess program. So with that I'll wrap up and say thank you again for having us. It's been a great night. Great. Thank you all so much. Members, comments, questions? I see member Goodwyn. All right. And then member >> guys been? Thank you for coming. I joined school committee, I don't remember what month it was, but to find out I had to do a record request to find out how many first grade teachers were in the district and I paid $100 for a records request to find how many So you being here is really helpful because we're here where you're striving to go. And that is important as we look at every single dime and how it's being used. And um I just want to thank

045you for being here. And I know what it means that you have to get up tomorrow and be there for the buses. I know exactly what that means. Thank you. All right. I saw member Dateman and then I've got member Child. Um thank you. Thank you so much for being here. And uh thank you Principal Potter because I'm just so happy with what's going on at Four Corners with where my daughter is a second grader. Uh but my question is for uh Principal Finnamore. Um because there's such an important decision to be made regarding fifth grade. Um could you uh help us understand a little bit more about um what the team teaching is like? How many How many students are in a team teaching classroom, for example? Um and what in your mind would

046be um the consequences of moving fifth grades back to the middle or to the elementary schools at this point? Thank you for asking me. Um there's probably in each classroom um anywhere from It averages about 15 students. Um so I'll use Teacher Skirlo as an example. Teacher Skirlo teaches math and science and Miss Murphy Davis teaches ELA and social studies. So there's a group of students 20-ish that switch back and forth um but it averages about 15 depending on students um um needing other services during that time. Um and I think that and and I know many of you have received letters from from my wonderful fifth grade teachers this week. They are tenacious um and I think the biggest benefit is that we are able to concentrate our resources. It's difficult when you have

047grade bands split up among three different schools to have cohesion. So, when we get them all in the middle school um in fifth grade, it's a little bit of growing pains, but then we're able to really align our instructional practices, our curriculum, and and our interventions. So, in fifth grade we have a model that the the fifth grade teachers did on their own um and with the support of Assistant Superintendent Sullivan and myself, we have a targeted intervention instruction that happens every Friday, sort of like a walk to read. Um and they've seen incredible uh gains with student um student literacy and on our map scores. Um so, I would say the the concentration of resources, it's also efficient to have everybody in one building. So, I'm not sharing in uh any teachers with anyone.

048I'm not sharing an MLL teacher. Um Miss Erickson is our fifth grade uh inclusion special ed teacher. So, that's all Miss Erickson works with. So, we can concentrate those resources to ensure that we are meeting the needs of the students um more globally. And we also have access to two interventionists. We have a math interventionist and we have a reading interventionist full-time. So, um that would be a huge benefit. A consequence of that uh none of that happens, right? Because they they they go to three different schools um and you you lose the cohesion of the curriculum and the instruction and just the school culture. Um and I think delaying that past fifth grade, I think it is not helpful. Um the students, like I said, there's a little trepidation, but after about a week

049and a half, they are super happy at the school. Of course, we have our our issues, right? But they're very happy there. And we just had parent-teacher conferences and a lot of my all of my fifth grade teachers shared with me that they have not heard a single family have a regret with sending their kid to fifth grade at the middle school. And so I and I've also received that feedback. I would encourage people to to look at that group of people who have actually sent their kids to our school and and um and ask them their thoughts and certainly my teachers. We would love for you all to come in and see how it runs there. The school looks big and scary, but it's not inside. We're nice. And I think that it's I

050guess what we're sort of thinking about when we're we're processing this is what what is the problem that we're trying to solve with this? And so it sounds like we're there's a problem with fifth grade, right? There sounds like there's something that's going wrong there or something that's going wrong in the school. And and we think that, you know, we don't think that there's a problem and we actually think we're the solution. I'm a child and then I'll put my cell phone. So going looking at the data of the years, so 2022, would that refer to the 2021-2022 first school year where everyone was back from COVID? No wonder it was in the bottom. So congratulations on the amount of growth and the amount of recovery from those years which were really hard developmentally on

051our kids. And also I'm so happy to hear about all of the extracurricular and family events that we have going on at all of our schools. So, thank you and keep that up. All right. I've got myself and member Deneve and Secretary Webb. Um thank you. I do have two questions for you. Um Mr. Potter, you started talking about staff, which I really appreciate. I would love to know how are your staff doing? How morale-wise? How How are they? How are your people? Um and then secondly, you have us right now. We're sort of a captive audience. I know that you send all of your requests, your needs, like you're you're in regular communication with with Superintendent Joel and the other um you know, central office administrators. But while you're while you're looking at us

052right now, what's your one biggest need? How can we help you? I would love to know that. So, how are your staff and how can we help? Sure. I think when I think about what is the biggest need, it's stability, right? So, we have conversations around budget season, we have conversations around student shifting, I think stability is the biggest need that we have. Um our staff are great and they're doing great. I think they're doing um we had very minimal hiring going on this summer because we didn't have the need. We had staff that stayed, and that speaks volumes to me about where they're at and how they're doing. So, I think they're doing great and I think that they're um they enjoy and and you see that in all the events that they're part

053of. Our staff are so involved with our students, not just in their class, but there's all these activities that they're doing after school. They're all part of and some of them in in several different hats they're wearing because they're involved in several different ways. So, I think they're they're doing well, but again, stability would be the biggest need. So, and I know that that's a kind of a simple but it's it's it's the truth when we think about where um budget leads and what that that's going to lead to just stability is going to be the biggest piece, especially thinking about where I think about Michelle and the work that they've done to get out of this status, right? And that required that kind of stability. We're there and we're working our way out. And

054so the same thought there that we we we want to make sure that we're really careful about preserving what we have so we can keep doing the things we're doing to move forward. Thank you. Um yeah, I think um I can echo a lot of what uh Principal Browning is saying. Our our staff has energy and uh and spirit. Um they love doing what they do and uh creating the joy with the kids. Um and um you know, they work hard, for sure. Um and uh but overall I think the the spirit is is um um very caring and and um um very analytical. They There's a lot of discussions about um how to do um what's best and um and how to do it differently sometimes. Uh and a lot of a lot of

055um room for social emotional support and outreach um because it's it's uh it's really uh kind of a big family. Um I think um um yeah, sort of building off of what Mike is saying as far as stability, I think continuity. Um that that sort of is an outgrowth, I guess, of stability, but um uh you know, things uh feel um in a very positive and progressive place right now. Um and um I think uh uh you know, allowing time for more data um to to see how things work and and to to see growth um relies on on on, you know, um uh oftentimes um maintaining and uh supporting what's happening. So, that's what I would say is is uh is my request. I don't want to I don't want to speak for them

056behind me, but I think I think I think they're happy on on a general um uh day of the week. Um like I said, they they've been amazing this this week and and they've really shown their their dedication to our students, but overall um we have a really collaborative staff. Um they are always willing to to help each other grade level wise or or um outside of grade level. And I think that it's um it's very atypical to have a staff that I have in a middle school um because there is a genuine wanting to see everyone succeed and um they have my back, I have their back, and and we just have a good time together. So, they're they're doing great I I I think um and the the thing that I would um

057I would ask for is I again I will echo the stability and um the the budget and you know, it's very nuanced as some of you know, Mel, you know how nuanced a budget can be. Um and while there are numbers on lines, I think that there is more to that and there's um reasoning and rationale behind these numbers. And so, we have we have some of that information, so we would love to be asked um and and also just going back to um the question about fifth grade. I I would really really like if if um folks would come by and and see what's going on in the middle school, fifth, sixth, seventh grade, any lunch or recess. Um we're very proud of what we're doing there. Um and I think it's it should

058be seen and celebrated. All right. Member Deneve, and then member Webb. Thank you all for coming. This is a question for Ms. Fenimore. I'm sorry to talk about instability after you have so eloquently asked for stability. But in our redistricting conversations that have taken place over many years, moving the fifth grade to the elementary again was only one side of the coin. So, I'm wondering if you've had any conversations about what would happen if eighth grade moved back from the high school to the middle school because that is the other side of the redistricting that we were talking about. So, I'm just wondering if you've begun any conversations about that or or what you think that would look like, or if it's possible at all anymore. Um I'm unsure what that what that would look

059like. Um I I really haven't had much much thought or talking about that side of the coin, but I do know that that is is something that people are interested in talking about, and I don't know, Mike, if you have any any thoughts on that? No. Do not move them back. Uh I don't know why we would. I don't know how that would benefit them. Um and it's nothing to say that there's anything negative about going there, but the reality is it's appropriate, um and I think they're placed well, and they're doing well where they are. So, I would not move them. Thank you for speaking to that because that was really what we talked about when we did all of that redistricting work over several years. That was the main thing that we were

060planning on and that's what we voted to do. So, to hear that things are different and that changes have been made or you're experiencing different things and through a different lens, that's really important and maybe we need to revisit all of the listening sessions and have new new listening sessions in this new span of time with the new data that we have so we can see where you all are at. So, I really appreciate you coming in and telling us um that the information has changed. Thank you. I'm Annette. Thank you for being here. Um this is more for Mr. Brownie and Ms. Fontamora. I know that when we were doing our tours, we got to see some of your really cool shop exploratory shops. I was hoping that you could give more about what

061you are offering for UAs at GHS level and for Ms. Fontamora, what you guys are doing for UAs at GMS. I mean, I know there's makerspace which is a a favorite of my child. Yeah, so we have to begin with, we have the things that have been there for a while, right? We have our culinary um we have our um Bosch room teaches both uh construction as well as sustainable energy um sustainable agriculture rather. We also have our um a few different art um classes that are provided and they they kind of vary through the years, but there's um there's ceramics as well as graphic design. Um we have our GHSTV um that is also is growing all the time and and continuing to move in a direction we want. So, that's exciting to see

062as as well as he does the yearbook and a few things like that, but just that idea that that students are seeing more um episodes of JHS-TV and what the good things we're doing. Um we also have our um What's new to us is our innovation career pathways that we've been working on. So, with Assistant Superintendent Sullivan, we've been building um our team that's working on this new pathway um and it's a way to to really kind of start finding some students that are looking for something that isn't necessarily um shifting to another school to find it, but they can find it here. So, manufacturing is the is really where we're heading with that right now with other options down the road as we build that. And so, that's where they would have that pathway

063that starts at 9th grade with a concentration each year um that leads them to an internship and and then involvement. So, we we kind of have this close um relationship with local manufacturing, so we can have students that that want that. And again, other options that'll come after that. So, a lot of good opportunities. Hopefully, I didn't miss any. And then our our foreign languages I guess as well fall in that category, um which is awesome, both Spanish and um French. Um we have makerspace for all of three grade levels. We also um our unified arts department is is pretty diverse. So, we have makerspace, we have theater, we have graphic design, art, we have a PE, health, and our band. So, we have a fifth grade band, a sixth grade band, and a seventh

064grade band, and wind ensemble. Did I forget any of them? Okay. And so, wind ensemble has it has their own time that they meet, but each band each grade level band meets every single day and they do lessons and they prepare for for their shows that you've all seen and students have two unified arts classes per day. I miss our band. I can't believe that. Our band is amazing and tomorrow night I hope many of you come out to see our district wide but they are amazing and have grown so much with with Hannah Cherry who has truly taken over so we have that as well. Any other questions? All right, I see member Goodwin with another hand. This really isn't a question but it's a response. I mean to a question. Is that a

065response to which question? About fifth grade. Or do you want to wait till the Can we save it for the motion? Thank you. Any other other questions? Seeing none. I will thank you for your time. And for sharing your your experiences, your schools, your invitations with us. We hope to see you back. Thank you for having us. All right. Moving right along tonight we are getting many presentations and I love it. Next up we have our transportation study presentation given by Richard LaBrie. I will do another screen share but as a reminder this was a study that we commissioned to better understand our transportation program here in the district and so Mr. LaBrie's company did that study for us and has a recommendation. Give me just a moment to get my screen share set up.

066Who what? Yeah, give me just a moment and I'll have that screen shared. There we go. Can you put it up to full screen? I can. That is as full screen, but I can try to zoom in a bit. How's that? Uh I'm sorry. Yes, we do. Oh, okay. Yeah. Okay. Uh then I'll work from my copy. You're good. First thank you for inviting me. Uh this uh study was needless to say very interesting uh to do. Uh before I go into the study, just uh give me a minute to give you my background and it'll kind of give you the paradigm from which I come from to look at this at transportation. Uh I was director of the Lower Pioneer Valley Collaborative for the better part of uh 25 years. Uh and while there

067over a 7-year or 8-year period, we developed school transportation services. And over that period of time, we took over all the transportation for all seven school districts. We built four uh bus depots across the county uh to service them. Uh and uh we were transporting about 14,000 students daily. Uh 2,500 about were which uh were special ed students. And over the course of that time, I got to know a lot about uh school transportation both from a self-operated standpoint as well as a contracted standpoint. Uh so, uh when we first started looking at the study, uh we were told or asked that uh it was primarily to look at special ed transportation. But as I said to the superintendent in our first meeting, you really can't pull special ed transportation out from the total transportation

068operation because you're taking it out of context. And so we looked at both regular and special ed transportation. We looked at both contracted and self-operated transportation. And just as a reminder, roughly 50% of your special ed students ride regular buses anyways. Transportation efficiency when you think of it, it's not just the number of students on a bus or number of students in a van. There are a lot of factors which go into the measure of efficiency and cost effectiveness. Not least of which is the the size the geographic size of the district, the distance between your schools, whether you're using a manual routing system or computerized routing system with regard to routing efficiency, your student riders that are scheduled, in other words, your eligible riders versus your actual riders that are actually riding. As you

069probably know, probably close to 30 or 40% of your high school students don't ride the bus even though they're eligible to. They either carpool or or drive. The time available between school starting times is is one of the biggest factors which affects efficiency. That's called your transportation tier time, the time between your bell schedules that you actually have time to do transportation. Often times if you have a short bell schedule or short tier time, you could pick up more students if you had more time, but the time limits the number of students that you could pick up and the length of the routes. Your distance traveled, your travel time, your population density, highway road infrastructure, especially in in Western Mass, given winter conditions and in some cases mud season in the spring. And not least

070of which is the community expectations for quality of service. Everyone wants to watch their child get on and off the bus from the from their their window or their door and sometimes there's a there's a real expectation that that can happen as opposed to students walking to to group stops. Typically the morning routes determine the number of buses that you need because typically more students ride in the morning than in the afternoon because of after school activities. The other is that when you look at a 71 passenger bus, doesn't necessarily mean that you can fit 71 students on that bus. These are 13-in seats and when you get to middle school and high school, you just can't fit three students to a seat. And therefore it's two per seat which is the standard for middle

071school and high school students. We looked at operational expenditures. We look at the transportation expenditures. We look at the transportation expenditures as a percentage of the district budget. And this is a DESE benchmark that typically they use to determine whether school district is spending more for transportation than they should be could be and often times if there's a question, they'll call us and they'll ask us to go out to the district and investigate. In your case over the past four years, your transportation has increased a modest 5.88%. And that's that's a modest number compared to your district budget which has averaged about a 6.26% increase over the same amount of time. So it's it seems to to fit well. We looked at the uh ed actual transportation expenditures versus your contracted regular transportation expenditures with

072regard to uh the line item growths at each side. Uh and you can see that the uh uh your special ed has been reducing slightly. Uh your uh contracted has been up and down. Uh and your pupil transportation, uh which is your contracted, has gone up uh in the last several years uh and seems to be dropping slightly. Uh whereas your contracted uh regular transportation uh is looking to continue to increase slightly. Uh one of the things we found in looking at uh expenditures in particular uh is that the uh district typically uh uh appropriates money from its transportation uh uh reserve account uh to uh uh as needed to to balance your transportation expenditures at the end of the year. Uh we looked at again the uh regular transportation, your route metrics for your

073uh uh regular transportation. Uh and these are the metrics that we we we pull out. Uh they'll bore you, but uh the uh the bottom line is that right now, uh based on your load capacity, you're using 61.6% of the seats that are available uh on your regular transportation. Uh typically uh you you you would like to that to be at about the 70% range. Uh you want some excess capacity on your buses so that when a driver is out and and a bus has to do a a a double route, you want some capacity to be able to do that. Uh the last thing you want is to have kids sitting at the school for an hour for a a bus to finish a route and turn around and come back. So, you want

074to be able to spread that load over several buses and have that capacity. That's why we don't recommend that you go to anywhere close to 100% uh scheduling in capacity. Uh you have some relatively long routes already that you're running. The longest route you're running in the morning is 76 minutes. Uh, you're running 66-minute routes in the afternoon. Uh, to do anything any different with those routes uh, in terms of the number of buses or the uh, reconfiguring routes uh, would probably extend those routes even longer uh, and that's not not a good practice. Typically the benchmark is uh, 60 minutes. Uh, you want to be under 60 minutes uh, with your routes. Uh, the PM routes are are much the same. Uh, capacity is a little better uh, 64%. Uh, your deadhead time and

075your average route time is 40 minutes. Uh, again 68 minutes is your longest route in the afternoon. Uh, and uh, your average number of stops by the way is uh, 13.7 in the afternoon or 1.2 stops uh, per mile traveled which is not a lot of stops. Uh, and especially for a relatively rural area it's it's to be expected. Um, uh, conclusion with regard to the regular transportation routes uh, you know, typically for a district uh, uh, of this size and with these demographics a student capacity ratio of 61 is and a half 61.6 is considered relatively efficient. Uh, therefore based on the routes and the data and probably more importantly the conditions under which transportation operates with regard to the bell schedules in particular uh, it's our uh, opinion that the uh, ridership capacity

076is relatively efficient. Um, uh, and as I said it's considering the current bell schedules and the available tier time that has the greatest effect on on your ridership. Uh, one important uh, is that, uh, you're using between 75% and 82% of the total time available uh, to transport students. Uh, so it's not like you have any extra time that the on these routes for these buses. Uh, when we allocate, uh, 5 minutes, uh, for, uh, drop-offs at the schools. Uh, and, uh, sometimes, uh, uh, it takes a little longer. Sometimes it takes a little longer to load kids in the afternoon. Uh, and so when you're looking at, uh, 75% to 82% of your tier time being used, that's that's a very high factor with regard to looking at the efficiency of what you're doing.

077Uh, we then went to look at, uh, special ed transportation in particular. We looked at your out placements, uh, and at the time of the study, and believe me, these things change almost daily, uh, on the special ed transportation side. Uh, but you were transporting 21 special ed students and homeless students to 14 outside placements. Uh, and the transportation's provided by both district personnel and six private vendors, uh, that you use, uh, uh, in addition to your own self-operated. Uh, and you currently cost-share three of those routes, uh, with other school districts. Uh, your route metrics, uh, look pretty good. Uh, you're at, uh, you know, on a special ed side, you're at 61% of capacity, uh, which is very high for special ed transportation. Uh, the benchmark that, uh, the DESE uses across the

078board, and this is a statewide and doesn't necessarily apply apples-to-apples to rural school districts as it does to metropolitan districts in the eastern part of the state. But they consider, uh, any more than four students on a route to be a to be efficient. Uh, singletons are what you try to get away from. Uh, taxi service for individual students. Uh, and you're at four and a half, uh, average students per per route. What so making your special ed transportation again relatively efficient. Uh your a capacity ratio of 61% uh and again you're using about 76% of your uh the tier time that's available. Uh the tier time for for out of district is is 60 minutes. We try to keep routes under 60 minutes. Anything over 60 minutes requires parental approval uh by the parent.

079Uh our conclusions with the special ed uh is that uh uh again for a district of this size and demographics, uh 61% and a ridership of 4 and 1/2 uh is considered to be highly highly efficient uh by both DESE and industry standards. Uh again, uh any changes would require a school bell schedules and with regard to your special ed out of district placements, it would require the the placement school to change their best bell schedule and quite frankly that's probably not going to happen. Uh and again any increase in ridership uh would require changing placement bell schedules and would end up resulting in longer longer routes and more uh student time on vehicles. Uh we looked at your district owned fleet. Uh your your metrics are uh you only have 17.6% of your vehicles

080under warranty. Uh uh you have 17 your average age is 5.6 your average mileage of the 124,000 miles uh and uh you only have three of them as I said under warranty. Uh we would like to see an efficient capital replacement plan for the replace sequential replacement of of vehicles as opposed to just buying them when money becomes available. Uh that's allows you on the long run to level fund your capital outlay for replacement vehicles over time. Uh we recommend in the report that you use a either a three-year uh lease purchase uh for vans and a 5-year lease purchase for buses. And that allows you to build a fleet where you have 50% of your vehicles under warranty at all times, level funding your capital plan going forward. Recommendations, again, establish a capital plan.

081In addition, instead of buying seven passenger vans, the state now allows 10 passenger vans. And I would suggest that you you buy 10. Allows you more flexibility, allows you to to handle more students if if it's required. And also provides more opportunities for cost sharing with other districts. And then an alternative instead of buying all new vans and 10 passenger vans, you may want to consider buying additional type A school buses, your 19-20 passenger school buses. Again, giving you even further capacity and ability to cost share routes and to increase your ridership. Right now, your five-passenger vans, if there's a monitor, you really only have three or four students on the on those. Um We then were asked specifically to look at the the cost-benefit analysis of whether it made sense for you to continue

082to run your own vehicles or whether it made sense for you to contract out. It was one of the key questions that we were asked. We look had to look at several assumptions when we looked at your self-operation. We looked at the the fact that you outsource all of your maintenance. That you would consider to outsource your fuel because you you buy fuel by albeit tax exempt, you're buying it locally. We looked at the cost per day per bus uh in your contract, uh which was uh $486.45 for 20 uh year 25-26. Uh and we used that as a benchmark uh to uh to look at cost-effectiveness and cost of the operation. Uh we uh we were fortunate that we had done the uh the bid last year for Amherst, Pelham, Shutesbury, and Leverett. So,

083we had a good information uh which we considered be local information to to benchmark your cost against. Uh even though it's not an apples-to-apples comparison, and I and I I admit that. Uh but, it's it's the best benchmark we had that's local. Uh you know, it makes no sense for us to benchmark you against uh uh a district like Milton or Duxbury or or or anything in the eastern part of the state. Uh or even at some of the large regional school districts that run a a a different type of operation. They run a single-tier operation as opposed to a two-tier operation. So, uh because we had uh we had done the Amherst bid, we we knew pretty intimately what they what their routes looked like and and uh uh what what it looked like.

084Uh and ironically, uh Kestrel Bus uh was the low bidder there also. Uh and so, uh we felt even a little better with the with looking at that as a as a benchmark since it was the same contractor that you currently have for your regular transportation. Uh we found that uh uh when we looked at the the bid that was done and was a coordinated bid for multiple school districts in Franklin County. Uh the only school district that we saw that had a van cost uh in it was Mohawk Trail. Uh now, I I I agree Mohawk Trail is nothing like Greenfield in terms of size or demographics, uh but uh we wanted to look at their cost also uh as a potential benchmark for comparative purposes. Uh the current contractor increases of average uh

0856.81% over over year to year. Uh the district uh transportation has increased an average about 4.53% uh over multiple years. Uh and uh with respect to all-inclusive compensation uh for your uh self-employed staff, uh we extrapolated uh that the compensation leave with pay, everything else that's in the collective bargaining agreement equated to about 34.6% of wages. Uh and that's not unusual that we see that uh for school districts that have uh self-operated and have their own collective a collective bargaining agreement. Uh for the purpose of cost benefit analysis, uh we we looked at special ed transportation for in some cases 200 days, in some cases 220 days, uh because many of the outplacement schools run extended year and run summer programs. Uh and then uh again, we we looked at the uh the data from

086the district budget and contracted for was uh $493.64 for fiscal 27 going forward. Uh we then took and pulled apart your your uh your budget for transportation. Uh and because contractors work on a cost per day per bus model uh for budgeting uh and uh expenditure, uh we had to develop a cost per day per bus uh for comparative purposes. And so we took driver time, we took fringe benefits, we took management cost, we took maintenance cost, we extracted that from the budget. Uh we even threw in a capital cost of of two vans uh uh per uh per year uh on a at least purchase basis, and uh our average cost per day for the district operation uh is uh $235.81 per day on an average. Some of the routes are longer, some of

087the routes are shorter, but that was uh that was the average. Um Uh when we looked at comparing that to uh Amherst, uh you'll see that the Amherst bid cost uh for is the top uh and that is uh 250 to 275 uh going through 325 in 2029-30. Uh that's straight from their bid. Uh Mohawk Trails bid cost uh started at 446.15. Granted, they have longer routes, but still uh it shows you that that uh 7D van transportation for special ed can be very expensive uh depending on the demographics. And again, uh your district self-operated comparative cost is the bottom chart uh going out uh with uh 4.53% increases each year uh to 2029-30 for comparative purposes. You look at the cost difference calculations, uh and uh this year you're 5.68% cheaper than Amherst. You're

08847% cheaper than what Mohawk is doing. Uh and as you look at that going forward, uh because the self-operated cost increases from year to year are less than the contracted cost increases from year to year, uh that becomes a divergent uh uh uh in terms of looking at it uh over period of time. If you look at the next two charts, it actually shows you the divergence. The left one being Amherst and the right one being being Mohawk. Uh in some cases, depending on on how the the the the expenditures go and uh with uh collective bargaining whatever, sometimes those lines can cross, but in this case, uh they continue to be divergent out into the future. Uh we actually went and attached a dollar value to all of this. Uh and uh the cost

089difference for uh uh for Amherst this year uh is your uh about $39,000 less than uh if you was the Amherst cost. Uh and as you look going forward, that goes out to 100 uh a savings of 121,704 in 2029-30 given our extrapolation. Uh the next page is uh Mohawk. Uh and uh this year you're be $588,000 less than uh than Mohawk is spending uh for a comparable number of of uh of vans. So, what does that all mean? Uh it means that whatever cost structure you want to look at and for comparison, whether it's Amherst or Mohawk or any of the others, uh that it makes sense for you to continue to self-operate as much as you can as opposed to contracting out for it. Our conclusions, I would just be repeating myself, so

090uh I'd be happy to answer any questions you have. Or at least try to answer the questions you have. I'm a good one. I have So, we used to have staggered starting and ending times. So, would that save us on transportation costs? Uh where you could save transportation is if you extended the tier one time by uh by 20 minutes. All right, what that would mean is either starting the high school and middle school 20 minutes earlier or starting your elementary schools 20 minutes later or splitting the difference at 10 minutes each. Uh but the caveat is we never recommend changing school bell times for transportation. Transportation is a support service to the educational process. You change length of the school year, you change the length of the school day, you change bell schedules for

091educational purposes, not for transportation. Good to know and I want to give a shout out. That 61% is because of Terry at central office who is looking at those special ed vans and calling everybody who and adding students to those vans and that's really she's a wheeler and dealer, so I want to do a shout out to her. All right, member what? Um I'm just curious, do you recommend buying versus leasing buses is one of my questions. And your cost per day, is that 365 days or is that when we are actually running these vehicles? Uh it's either for 180 days or 200 days or 220 days because the actual time that the vehicles are in operation transporting students. And I recommend lease purchasing. Uh the reason being is that over a period of time

092once you get to a a fleet that is 50% under warranty, you can level fund your capital cost going forward and it has less of a budget impact in the future. Uh and typically what we did is we did a 5-year lease purchase on our buses. Uh annual payments in advance which meant that we would pay the first year upon delivery of the bus uh and then finance the other four years, so you're really financing only four of the five years. Um and uh it it made the most sense cuz we would start turning our buses over usually at 8 years old, 9 years old when they uh and they still had some residual value at that point uh for trade-in. Any additional questions? Yeah, superintendent. Um Richard talked about 10 passenger vans and maybe

093my assumption might be those might be like the Ford Transit vans, some type of scenario and that Um what's the availability of actually purchasing those? It's my understanding Amazon's buying all of them and they're pretty tough to do and and could you just talk about that? And also um I I got what you said that you don't really change things for bussing as because it's a four-tier kind of talk about the two-tier thing, but um if you have any experience with districts doing three tiers, like with some many places will do three runs, if that was to happen, would there be a potential cost savings as well? Let me go back to the the first question first. Um you know, it it typically when you when you uh look at at at purchasing vehicles, uh

094uh the idea is uh to uh uh take the bumps out of the road in your budget from year to year. Uh and lease purchasing allows you to to do that. Uh with regard to a multi-tier systems, we we do those kinds of studies a lot. Uh people ask us, "Does it make sense to to go from a three-tier system to a two-tier system?" Uh uh in your case, uh if you went to a uh a three-tier system, you would end up having some of your elementary schools on a different tier than your than all of the elementaries. Uh not a good necessarily a good practice to split elementary tier time uh because you could have a tier for the high school you could have a tier for the middle school but it's the elementary

095school's loading that drives the number of buses that you that you you have and and you need. And just going back and is there a availability of those 10 passenger vans on the market? Post COVID you couldn't buy a 10 passenger van in this country uh if uh regardless how much you wanted to pay uh but today uh they're available. Uh it's about a a 6 to to 8 month delivery time ordering new uh but I've seen enough of them sitting around in in parking lots uh and yes they're Ford uh Ford Transit vans. Uh they're not cheap uh compared to a a Voyager or a uh you know some of the other seven passenger vans. Uh but they're built on a on a truck frame as opposed to a car frame. They'll run 10

096years uh relatively easy uh and we look around at Vanpool uh Vanpool is using them almost exclusively now in terms of how they're replacing their fleet. Uh and uh they have a they have good reliability. This wasn't something that we asked you to look at in this study but it is something that I know residents might be curious about. What's the deal with electric buses and the potential for that? I I know I hear you Matt. I'm not necessarily asking this because I am gung-ho about the idea but I I would be remiss if I didn't raise the question. Um you know I I have seen in other larger more compact districts um that they can be really like they can be done well um and that they can be a useful useful tool and

097because sustainability is something that is important to the larger Greenfield community, I feel like I must ask. Um so, I'm just curious, you know, this wasn't something we asked you to factor in, but what are your thoughts? What have you seen? We have We have three clients that are running electric buses. Uh and I've been with them over a number of years. Uh quite frankly, the cost of electric bus is 2 and 1/2 times the cost of a diesel bus. Uh the only way it makes sense for a municipality or school district to get into the electric bus business is with state and federal aid. Uh they they would bust your transportation budget at $400,000 a piece. Uh the other is that the battery life on the buses are warranted for 7 to 8 years.

098Uh even though the body may last 10 years. Uh and batteries have to be disposed of as hazardous waste. Uh and replacing the battery pack on a school bus is roughly almost half the cost of the bus. Uh so, without state and federal aid for both the purchase of the buses and the purchase of the infrastructure needed to support the buses, uh it's it's almost cost prohibitive. Uh now, the state is releasing and the federal government is releasing uh $2 billion later this year nationally for the third round fourth round of electric bus acquisitions. Uh and it's a it's by priority school districts. The poorest economic districts are highest priority along with those that have uh uh uh tribal schools have a high priority. So, uh what I have also found is that the further

099north you go, uh the less reliable electric buses are uh with regard to battery life uh in on in during the day because of the you know, request for heaters and the time to heat them up and everything else. Uh we've done several studies where we've shown electric buses are not feasible at all uh and the district has put purchased a propane fleet and are very happy with propane buses. Uh they're an alternative, they're fundable under the EPA uh along with electric buses uh to the extent that you can get qualified to uh be eligible for those grants. Thank you. Welcome. Any other questions? Seeing none, I will Thank you for I have a question. Oh, sorry. I totally missed Jenny on there online. Jenny. Um And I'm going to stop sharing. >> Thank you.

100That was a great presentation. Thank you. Um I just wanted to know, do you feel that what we are charging the uh other districts has been appropriate as well? And has it, you know, increased year over year uh commensurate with other expenses? Uh we did not look particularly at what the revenue source was uh in the that went to the revolving account. Uh we just looked at the total revolving account. So, I I certainly can look at that and and uh forward an opinion to the uh to the superintendent. Thank you. That was very helpful. Yeah. Typically, you take your cost and if it's uh it's if it's a percentage of students, if you have uh 50/50 most of the time for McKinney-Vento uh homeless uh transportation, that's typically what the split is between school

101districts. Uh I would invite you uh if you have questions subsequent to tonight, uh feel free to give them to the superintendent, he'll forward them to me, and we're happy to uh answer any questions. We're local company. We're not far away and we we enjoy uh the work we do. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Really appreciate you. All right. Let me find my agenda. All right. Okay, I think that we are ready to move on to reports of the administration and we'll start with you, Mr. Beckett. Good evening. You have in your packets the budget update as of March 6th. Um I'll say it's all quiet on the western front. We're uh proceeding ahead. Uh believe it or not winding down the year looking at open purchase orders and encumbrances, but you

102have the status as of that day. Uh and we also have the revolving account report included as well. Uh and just uh not to be alarmed regarding in particular the school lunch revolving account because there are revenues that by the when we were reporting this is just hadn't been posted yet. So, that's in a positive balance. I can answer any questions that you might have as of this moment in time. No questions? All right. No questions for the business manager, so I think we'll go ahead and move on to uh Mr. Sullivan and superintendent. Good evening. Um you have my report. I want I do want to point out uh number one and number three. I included some an attachment. Um so, it's the blue hyperlink you can see and one it says slides and

103number three it says flyer. Um I I read the whole thing on number one to you. The slides are probably easier to follow and I I think the principles touched on a number of the points around our work around professional learning, specifically around our literacy initiatives. Um literacy has been our district-wide focus. This is at least our third year. Um as a district requiring intervention, considering we have two schools in the needs intervention status, we have to have a district instructional priority plan that's submitted to DESE um built around literacy. So, we've submitted that the past few years and our goal is this year we're we're really about building school leader capacity to design and deliver professional learning. One of the things last year, in my first year, we heard a lot of feedback from

104teachers that it felt like vendors were coming in and delivering PD and then they were leaving and there was not necessarily this through line through what teachers were getting in prof- professional learning um and being able to follow up with questions. So, that's something that we worked really hard at over last spring and summer to plan for and then continuing to build robust literacy systems and structures. Um we've talked a lot about our ability to fill certain positions and challenges that come with filling some of those certain positions and we made a really intentional decision last spring to try to support teachers in building their capacity and building systems that can outlast, hopefully, any one of us in this room um because there is a structure and a system to the way we're doing things.

105Um this started last winter when we introduced, and it was optional at the time. Our U-Fly intervention curriculum and I'll say like the K-4 teachers took it in stride and while I had some questions about how much we put on people's plate, they kept coming back and asking for more to their credit. You know Miss Raincourt doesn't want to be doing U-Fly and she shouldn't have to be doing U-Fly as a fourth-grade teacher. And this is what we're saying to teachers. Like everybody has bought in, everybody has stepped up to the plate right now, but Miss Raincourt's right. We shouldn't have to do whole class intervention when students get to fourth grade. Teachers should have most students at grade level. And that's why we focused on building a system, a foundational system that we can

106build on every year. And I can tell you there are a handful of classrooms across the district already that have flipped our intervention model. I'll say it's upside down, but it's really right side up. When I was saying last year 70% of our students were reading below grade level, we talked about this upside down triangle. We flipped it upside down flipped it right side up in some places where classrooms classroom teachers, everybody they have during intervention block is at or above grade level and the interventionist, the special educators, the multilingual learner teachers are pulling those students for intervention. Now our students at grade level and above are still getting an intervention to try to accelerate learning, but there are glimpses across the district in each of the three elementary schools that is demonstrating some progress.

107I think the big shift that we've and in my report it talks about teacher mindset and it's not that the teachers were negative about it, like I'm saying, they wanted more. They found, as we've started digging into some of the data, right? There was a period where students were taking dibbles, and if you were below or well below grade level, you got pulled for intervention, and everybody got the same thing, and then you went back to class, and the teacher continued to teach the core. As hard as teachers were working, now we've added some diagnostics that allow teachers to dig into the specific reasons why a student might be below or well below, and the resources now allow teachers to target those specific interventions. Um And I think the mindset shift that I'm talking about

108is like teachers are saying, "Okay, I want more data on this. Like, the student I'm seeing them make progress, but they fell off in this area in terms of segmenting digraphs, but they're making progress in segmentation. So, like, what is what is that about?" And they're asking more and looking for more data. Um And we've also said to teachers, and I don't know that the message was miscommunicated or anything in the past. We've said the intervention time is sacred. Do not give it up. Do not finish the curriculum. Don't use your intervention time to get through the curriculum. Like, the intervention time is that individualized focus. And I've talked with some principals and said, "Maybe we even need a little bit more intervention time as we're building this foundation because as students get older, then

109they have more time with the core content." So, there's more information in what I provided in the report. There's more information in the slides in terms of that. And again, I would welcome any of you, if you have questions, please reach out. I'm happy to answer questions and talk through it. Um Remember Dighton and I had a significant conversation about this shortly after he was elected. We talked about our approach to literacy in the district and I'll echo what the principal said. We've made a lot of progress and there's plenty of work to do. But please if you want to come if you're planning to visit the middle school or one of the schools, I'm happy to go with you and talk a little bit about the literacy work that we're doing. And over February

110vacation, I let folks know prior to the break. We had This would be our third vacation academy. We offered it in February and April last year. We this year we had 37 students from all three elementary schools. Teachers had a provided a blend of academic activities with specials and STEM and phys ed. They had different themes based on the grade levels. Some of them were animal fun. They talked about the four seasons in some classes. Some of the teachers tied it into the Olympics. I know the teacher we had for phys ed had been testing out bobsled runs and curling. So they were connecting it to the Olympics which which was going on the week that we were in school and I think all in all it was a very positive experience and I didn't

111list the teachers in here and the IAs who worked the program because it's really a credit to them. It wouldn't happen without them. They're the creative engine that makes it work. They're willing to take on students from different schools that they're not familiar with and it's it's like you walk in that Tuesday morning and kids from Federal Street and New England coming into Four Corners like like oh, where is this? What is this about? And then literally by the end of day one they have friends from all three schools, they know the teachers, the teachers know them. So, it's been a really positive experience and we're already planning for the April break. And just want to give a shout-out for this coming Saturday. We have the second annual um cardboard challenge this year based on

112the pop popularity of the event last year, which was the first time it was tried. It was at Federal Street. It's now moved to um the middle school so that we have a larger space. We have more parking. That was a need we identified last year and really want to credit the elementary PTOs, um Secretary Webb, and the PTOs at Federal Street and Four Corners for their work on this. They again, they are the engine to drive this. They're collecting cardboard. They might be driving around Greenfield on recycling day grabbing cardboard. Um please let them have it because we will use it this Saturday. That event is 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at the middle school. Um so, we hope to have a great turnout again. And I did that I did include the flyer

113there too so folks can see that. Great. And I think we'll go ahead and hear from the superintendent before we do questions. Thank you. Um you have attached enrollment, which is pretty steady. Included in there, I also want to give you a quick update as to the repairs at Federal Street School, which are just about ending from our New Year's Day um water break up there. The contractors have just finished uh just about finished up. The teachers' rooms will be completed this week and next week we'll be putting furniture back and turning it over to the teachers next week. Uh room 101 is Mrs. Richardson. The floors are being finished tonight and buttoning up any loose ends Friday. Monday and Tuesday next week the contractors will bring everything up from the basement that's boxed up

114and move them and start reassembling them into the classroom. The basement, the work downstairs cuz it did go through three floor, you know, second floor, first floor, basement, uh will be a couple more week weeks worth of work there. And the hallways, we're fortunate enough to be able to replace these red hallways you may some of you might remember at Federal Street. We actually are going to wait though until April vacation to do that. Um they were able to work with us in terms of delaying that cuz it's all being covered right now. But that would be the light the least disruptive to everybody to be able to do that. And that way things will be complete for that. Also, um as you've heard from everybody, the three principals, I think they did a great

115job and I'm glad that they were able to come before you. You'll see three more the other three next month. And that um and they did a nice job of inviting you. And if I haven't done it, but I think you actually have know that you know who how important you are. You can come whenever you want to all of our schools. I always tell people there's no secrets. Like you don't need a time. You can call or email that morning um cuz we should be doing our job, right? And doing all the right things that are going on. So I don't need a two-week notice for you to come through the door so I can put on a dog and pony show to doing it because our teachers aren't putting on dog and pony

116shows. They're teaching and they're working hard every day. So if you came through, you would see the great things that are happening. So please as everybody's mentioned, anytime you want to come through, I know that you know, we did have the quick facilities tour, but if you ever want to see instruction taking place in the day, feel free to call or make some arrangements with myself or anybody else and we'll get you in. I just wanted to touch on school closings and delays. We've had quite a few this winter and and the weather Well, after yesterday, you would think it's over, right? And and who knows? Um 78° when we're driving home yesterday. Unbelievable, right? After uh getting up at 4:00 in the morning a lot of times and dealing with, you know, the DPW

117and I don't mean dealing in a bad way, working with DPW and the other Franklin County superintendents who are in text groups um and working with our director of facilities, Mike Boudreau. Uh none of these decisions are taken lightly. Obviously, when we have delays, um the reality of it is it's safety, right? Safety first. And we'll always say that um it's unfortunate. None None of us want school to keep progressing into, you know, as I into the summer in that sense cuz these days have to be made up. Uh yet, you know, we're responsible for almost 1,400 students and transporting them to school. So, we need to make sure people are safe and for the most part, right? Barring an accident, um you're not going to have a bus slide off a road or too

118many accidents on ice in the middle of June in that sense. So, generally, a lot of times we will err on the side of caution on those. And a lot of times we'll actually wait, too. I mean, many of you have seen weather and the predictions all the time. The weatherman will tell you this is going to hit and we're going to get this many inches. Uh there's a big difference and I I've always liked to hold off a little late. I've been I've made some calls earlier this year that the night before, don't get me wrong. But there's a big difference between 4:00 in the afternoon and 4:00 in the morning. In that 12 hours, storms can can slide south, they can slide north, warm air can come in, cold air can come in.

119Um Did it really ice up the night before? You saw last Friday. Many of our friend Many of our I say our neighboring towns, right? Franklin County superintendents called for a 2-hour delay the night before. Um Mr. Sullivan and I talk a lot. We waited till the morning, right? And then, you know, the reason you you probably know or you may not know, the reason the cancellation that day is students had a half day early release as well. So, with that, they were going to be going home. They weren't We weren't going to bring students in for 1 hour, eat breakfast, eat lunch, and and walk out the door. Um our neighboring district, Gilmanton, had to do that on Wednesday of that week, just 2 days prior, where they had to cancel school because they

120had an early release as well. But that morning, you saw some of our neighboring districts go from a 2-hour to a cancel in that sense. So, um so while I know that everybody likes to have arrangements made the night before, etc., I think in this day and age of the internet and the capability of watching the weather, we know what's coming for the most part, and I think parents have a clue, at least an idea that uh there's some weather on the way, and and the kids will definitely tell you cuz they're hoping for days off as well, and our seniors are. So, I'm always looking out for everybody's safety, and yes, we are right now up to Wednesday of that last week, the Thank you. 17th. Wednesday the 17th. They know. They know. Absolutely.

121And um and I know we're going to be talking about many other things tonight um that take time, and talking about our teachers today, the work that they're doing, and our principals. Things take time, and we appreciate you, you know, being patient. You've seen some schools. You've heard from the middle school tonight. You'll hear next week from Federal Street, some schools that have come out of right, assistance and needing some work, and other schools that are still in assistance. So, given time, they will make progress, and they need to do things. And some of our other motions, to jump a little ahead, um are I think are great suggestions and some great topics for further discussion that we're going to see a little later on tonight about um why do we do certain things, right?

122Um sometimes people will ask me, "Why do we do things?" And obviously, I don't have a lot of history here right now, and but the reason we we in education do a lot of things is because we've always done it that way. Right? And it doesn't mean we can't change. We can definitely look at things, and I appreciate you being the school committee asking those questions about how we might be able to tweak different policies, right? We're going to look at a few different ones. I think they'll be referred to subcommittees. We've briefly talked last week about or last month about the field trip policy. And kind of come to maybe maybe a little conclusion or consensus, but it still has to go through the proper channels. Um so, just because things have been done

123that way doesn't mean they always have to continue to be done that way, but that is the reason why they're done, right? People have set precedent, we have policies, so um we can always look for better ways to tweak or get some answers and have some rationale behind that. So, thank you for that. And once again, I know that the mayor is online tonight. Um I'm continuing to be impressed. I was mentioning to my wife the other night that your attendance at these meetings um is excellent. Not even just good, it's excellent. The fact that everybody shows up and gives of your time. So, thank you for that. That doesn't generally happen at a lot of other districts. Don't get any ideas. Um I did just want to know I'm not sure if the enrollment

124report did make it into the Oh. to the enrollment report. >> make sure then. Cuz I have a copy in my packet, so I thought it was there. I'm sorry. Yeah. Um any questions for either the assistant superintendent or the superintendent? Yes, member Webb. I don't really have a question. I just want to um echo what um Assistant Superintendent Sullivan said, that we really are looking forward to the cardboard challenge and everyone here on school committee is also welcome to come. And it's a really great K through 4 event and siblings are welcome. We had like 90 families last year. So, we're really hoping to have a lot more. Read member Goodwin. Just a quick question for people who may be listening. Has our enrollment grown at all this year or is it stable? Our

125enrollment is stable. We were down two last month. That's generally stable. We go up and down. We we've grown in I I a question. Yes. Uh Mr. Sullivan, uh thank you for um all that information about literacy in the schools. Um my question is uh do you feel like the district has a sufficient number of interventionists at this time? It's a challenging question, I think. We do have a sufficient number of interventionists because we're building the capacity of our teachers to serve that gap, and we have intervention positions that have been posted for 2 years that we haven't been able to fill. So, I guess double-edged sword, but I think we've tried to take a practical approach to the challenge of filling those positions. But, we'll always take more. All right. I also just wanted

126to really thank you for providing us with this PowerPoint that includes a lot of rich data that we can use. Um I just really appreciate the transparency, and I just feel like between your PowerPoint and and Principal Fenimore's PowerPoint, I'm like, give me more PowerPoints. I I love to see them. Um so, just really wanting to positively rein- reinforce and positively encourage more of this. Thank you. Appreciate the feedback. Thank you. Any others? Any others? All right. Seeing none, thank you, uh administrators, and at this time, I think we can move on to our consent agenda. Um little bit of a typo. I don't think we had an item B, or if we did, we removed it to somewhere's else. So, um I'm looking for a motion to approve the consent agenda as listed. However,

127are there any members that would wish to remove an item from the consent agenda? Okay, seeing none, I put forward the motion to approve the consent agenda as presented. Second. All right, motion from Chair Sexton, second from Member Goodwin. Uh I think because we've got a member online, every vote needs to be a roll call vote. >> Yep. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Geneve. Yes. Mayor Desorgher. Yes. Member Dietmann. Yes. Motion passes unanimously. Um just looking at the way that our agenda is structured, we usually have a break available to us at 8:30. I don't know if we're going to be able to get through the School Committee reports in 7 minutes. Um so, I would like to know just a quick poll for members. Would

128you rather have a break now or after the School Committee reports? Yeah. My opinion is now, so we can also figure out what our community members still here are looking for and possibly bump that up in the agenda so that we don't have people waiting till 9:30 at night. Great. Any objections? All right. Let's have a quick 5-minute break. We'll come back at 8:28. >> Mhm. >> And I call us all back from our break. Um hope you enjoyed either walking around, talking to people, eating banana, whatever it was that you were doing during that break. Hope it refreshed you a little bit. Um all right, school committee reports. Um, we'll start with the the chair's report. The biggest thing that I have to offer to you is the subcommittee descriptions. Um, did folks have

129a chance to read through those? I see a yes and a no. Maybe some maybes. All right. Um, do I even have them pulled up? I do not. Um, in general, like this was my best first pass, um, based on what I know these subcommittees to do. Um, so I've included the Executive Subcommittee, Policy Program and School Committee Handbook Subcommittee, Budget Finance and Warrant Subcommittee, and the Community Engagement Subcommittee. Those are our four sort of standing, all the permanent subcommittees. Um, and then I included also an ad hoc Long-Term Facilities Use Advisory Subcommittee description. However, that subcommittee needs to be voted on in order to exist, so sort of like leave that as a as a nebulous maybe. Um, at this point, I think they're fairly comprehensive, but I would like to give, um, each

130of these subcommittees an opportunity to basically compare this against what you know your your work to be. Um, bring that back, and maybe we can meet in the middle. Uh, I think they're fairly comprehensive. I do know that once we have settled descriptions for at the very least the four permanent subcommittees, those can live as a sort of addendum in our policy handbook. That is a per- that's just an ongoing description. That way, not only would the public know what our jobs are, but we would know, future folks would know, um, and it would just be there, um, for all members to see. Um, so that's that's my report on that. Um any questions for me? Yes, member Danahy. You did not include the ad hoc redistrict redistricting and re-envisioning our school subcommittee. Yes, thank

131you. Um I will share that one of the reasons that I did not include that is because I I do intend to ask for us to dissolve that subcommittee and replace it with this other ad hoc long-term facilities planning. Um any other questions or comments for now? So, what I am asking is for each subcommittee to take their description back to themselves, discuss, please, at the next time you meet. Um and then come back in April, assuming you meet between now and our April meeting. Um with like yeah, good to go, or here are some changes we would like to see. As long as it's not giving yourself less work, that's not allowed. Um the other thing, it's not here, but I did promise our director of technology that I would bring this up. Um

132we experienced a minor snafu earlier this week where all basically all um group emails, like our school com emails, or teachers@gps, they were locked down because they've experienced a lot like a subsequent incre not subsequent significant increase in phishing attacks, and if they get access to one of these groups, then they can send out phishing attacks to our staff en masse, and so that's why our school committee email was locked down. Um it's it's reopened. Members of the public, you can email schoolcom with one m um @gpsk12, and it will come to all of us plus the superintendent. Um however, at the request of our director of technology, um we I would like to have us all do two-factor authentication on our school committee accounts, our Google accounts. So, I have a lovely little write-up

133that Ian provided for us that I will be emailing to you each if you are not familiar with how to turn two-factor authentication on to get that done, but I'm asking you to do that definitely between now and our next meeting because that just helps keep our entire district safer, more secure digitally. That's all I've got. Um budget and finance. Okay, I'm going to try to be short. The So, the primary topic of our discussion surprisingly was the budget. I'm not going to go into detail on it because we've got our budget hearing on Monday, but I was first passive questions so the administration had ideas of what kinds of things we'd be looking for. We talked about the timeline. Again, Monday is when we're scheduled for the budget hearing. We are We were looking

134at 3:25 for the full committee vote. The budget and finance subcommittee plans on meeting between the hearing and that in order to discuss anything that comes up with the administration. Any discuss anything that comes up at the meeting with the administration. Okay, so let me see. We heard about the biggest cost drivers, but you'll hear about it in more detail on Monday. Um The full committee charged us to take on warrants, so we discussed what it would look like and we have a proposition for the full committee to approve of or to say no, we don't want it that way. What So, recap from February full committee meeting. We voted that a member of the budget and finance subcommittee will sign the warrants at least 24 hours after they've been made available, but within that

13572-hour period. Um what we would like to do for on top of that, how we would be reviewing them, we would like to have a regular subcommittee meeting set during the week before the full committee meeting to go over and discuss all of the warrants since the previous uh meeting. From this warrants meeting, uh we will provide as meeting materials for the full committee the full contents of all of the warrants that were signed and discussed in that month period and a cover sheet where we would flag any questions, concerns, or explanations that arise during our discussion of the warrants. Uh we voted unanimously to submit this plan to the full committee, and if approved, we would implement it for the April full meeting. So, with that, uh I move that the School Committee approve

136of the Budget and Finance Subcommittee's recommendations for warrant discussion and presentation at the regular monthly meeting. Second. All right. We've got a motion from member Child, a second from member Goodwin. Discussion on this. I just want to really thank you as a subcommittee for taking that on and developing a plan to get this out. Um I appreciate that you know, as a as a result of that being part of our regular discussion and presentation, that means that this cover sheet and memo would be come part of our regular meeting materials as well, and therefore be accessible to all of you. Um And so, for that reason, I would I would support this. Any other discussion or questions for the subcommittee? Yep, member Webb. I guess I just have a clarifying question that our hope was

137to be able to bring the actual paper copies to the School Committee meeting. Is correct? Or just digitally? I don't know if we discussed the paper copies and while I'm not at all opposed to that, I was thinking the meeting materials that are provided online for the community. And so as just part of that would include all of the warrant information that we have, that we sign, that we discuss. So. So digitally they would be available in the materials. Yes. Any other questions? All right. I say we move to a vote. Could you please call the roll? Member Webb, I mean member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yes. Secretary Webb, I'm a yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Deneve. Yes. Mayor Jessouroun. Yes. Member Deighton. Yes. All right, that motion passes unanimously. Okay, the next thing

138I have is that we continued working on the subcommittee budget priorities and guidelines documents that we would have our goals for this budget season. That was included in the meeting materials. Um I I don't know if you want me to walk through every last thing or just jump to the question where we did not have a consensus and felt that it would be better that the full committee weigh in because it was a charge. So do you want me to walk through? I think it would be good to hear what your pros, cons, questions were um so that we're not duplicating the discussion you've already had. For Do you mean for the question we had or the full document? Cuz I was asking if I should walk through the full document of our budget guidelines

139and priorities versus just the question we have. Mhm. Yeah, I mean I'll just Yeah, abbreviate it. So, curriculum and instruction, it was of course a priority. A lot of it is uh continuing to support the high-quality instructional materials and assessment tools that the district has adopted because they have ongoing costs. Um continuing to invest in programs that are working really well like expanding the restorative justice pilot that's been doing wonderfully at Federal Street School because we want and also we've got other programs uh anti-bullying programs at other schools that it's working there. We want to expand it, grow those programs. So, that's the kind of things under curriculum and instruction. And of course to maintain and expand art and music and get long-term stability in these areas. Um second uh priority that we have listed

140is staffing and volunteers. We want to maintain a level of staffing needed to have small class sizes and have the individual supports students need. Don't think that's controversial. Um and that's where we do have In that category is where our question is which I'll ask after this and it's if we should add a grant writer to the FY27 budget. Um and third category we had was professional development. Uh a lot of it's provide needed resources to support staff in teaching neurodivergent students, consistency of IEP implementation, resources to support staff in English learner populations. Um just the areas that we've identified as groups that we really want to work with and and improve the way we work with. Um and uh then the last category, transportation. We want to make sure that we continue to have

141our equitable access to sports and extracurricular activities and to increase accessibility for parent engagement uh in district activities, which we heard a little bit from Principal Fenimore tonight about how the middle school has been doing that and how that has helped families participate in programs that they otherwise would not have gotten into. Um and then at the bottom of it, we have our assumptions and guidance. A lot of it is just here are the laws, here are the legal mandates, we are going to follow the law, we are going to use the best available information we have. We're going to prioritize the welfare of our kids, we're going to be responsible with money. Um you know, that kind of thing. So, going back to that question, so the grant writer was a topic of discussion

142at the meeting and the question that I'd like the full committee to weigh in on is should we add a grant writer? Um the pro to that is if you have a good grant writer, they will more than pay for their own salary. Uh there were some cons brought up at the meeting though, such as we already do have a fair amount of grants coming and going and those grants also require personnel to implement them. So, there was the capacity question of, you know, you get the grants, but can you use them? And then the bigger con was yes, a grant writer is a good idea long term, but when you have a kid who has a literacy crisis, do they need a grant writer right now or do they need their literacy person right

143now? So, it's not that a grant writer is a bad idea, it's that are there more urgent needs that should be prioritized in a lean budget year above the grant writer? And again, on the other side, the grant writer brings in more money, so you have more money to do these other things. So, yes, that is what we would like committee in committee input on. Well, committee, let's discuss. I have a question. Um it perhaps Superintendent Jewell could answer this question or anyone who knows more about it. Is the position of grant writer a common like a specific grant writer a common feature in school districts? With your word common, probably not. Um are grant writers in districts? Yes, but they're not everywhere at all. Member Dini? Our de facto grant writer is Steven Sullivan.

144And all these assistant superintendents that have come before you have also been grant writers. Um and when we're looking for business manager positions, that is one of the things that we ask the candidates. Are you a grant writer? Do you have experience with that and are you willing to do that in addition to being the business manager? So, I think that grant writing has been covered. Um and I would not support in this budget climate adding a grant writer position only because it's already handled. If we didn't have that capacity, if we didn't have that talent already on deck, then that would be a different issue for me. Okay. Other thoughts, questions? Yeah, member Goodwin. I would I would go back to member Deitman's question. Districts that don't have a lot of poverty, grant writers,

145they know they're not going to get funds. A district that has a high level of poverty often seeks a grant writer because they have the numbers to go to Worcester and shake hands and get funding. Greenfield survived bankruptcy with an expanded learning time grant. Those people, they're still here in Greenfield. Um, you know, you can talk to Joe Russo. You know, it's it's going to Worcester. It's going places and advocating for Greenfield. The poverty in Greenfield makes us able to access grant funds. And unless you have somebody actively out there doing that, you're leaving money on the table. There is As a principal in Greenfield, I wrote grants. $50,000 innovation grant, links to library grant, a grant with the food pantry. There's a It has to be an expectation of grant writing. We've lost that.

146We had a full-time grant writer. Um, and she made her money double. Um, we also had a grant with um, Deerfield, um, which I was part of. So, I would say to you, as a taxpayer in this town, if there is a way to spend somebody else's money, I am there. And if you hire somebody, and I was hired and told in North Adams, where we had $6 million worth of grants and high poverty, that you make your salary and more, or you lose your job. And I think if ever there was a time, as we're looking at a 7% increase in our budget, to add somebody who can bring in things that we may need, I We lost a lot of money. Grants were let go six years ago. Just there was like we

147don't need them. That money paid for so many things in Greenfield. We lost a lot of things. It paid for swimming lessons at the elementary school. It paid for the Chromebooks. Without that amazing Gary Tashjian who had boxes of Chromebooks from our ELT money, we would not have survived the pandemic cuz we would have had nothing to give out. So, all of the things mentioned tonight, you know, at the middle school, their seeds were out of our expanded learning time grant. We were required to explore those other things. Some of the things that are in existence, they're not our taxpayers' money. They came from a grant. We were the only schools in Western Mass to get millions of dollars for an expanded learning time grant. So, what I'm saying to you is, without someone who's

148politically aware, drives to Worcester a lot, and says, "Hey, there's this place called Western Mass, and we need your money." We're just Again, I look at everything that we're asking for, and do our schools deserve it? Absolutely. But, our taxpayers, we are also And I got this number from somebody during the election. We are the lowest in the whole state of Massachusetts at bringing in money to our city based on business. We are at the bottom of the chart. And so, everything is falling on a taxpayer. Businesses are not bringing money in. And so, I think a grant writer, I mean, it's worth a try. Um if it's if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. If you vote it down, you vote it down, but I just think um in today's world, um

149it's a way to accomplish things that we may not be able to afford. All right. I'm going to go with member Webb cuz you haven't spoken yet in this discussion and then come back to member Deneve. I actually have a question. I guess this is more for Andy. Is it realistic to ask uh of a business manager to also write grants? Uh I'd say it's really not common, but it's not saying it's out of the realm possibility. I mean, I I we've got staff on our team that actually write the entitlement grants uh that, you know, Mr. Sullivan does for here, but as far as they actively seeking out grants and writing grants, there's schools of thought and you know, I hear what member Goodwin is saying and it's not at all wrong or incorrect.

150It's just some of the things that some I go back to my audit days. Um are these grants that we're seeking going to be used to enhance our existing programs? Are they creating new programs that would then divert from the attention of what it is that we're all about? Now, I'm I'm going to make the assumption cuz I know of Miss member Goodwin's experience that she's not talking about diverting attention from the thing, but it's just a matter of the the goal of what it is that these other grants are. The expanded learning time grant was a phenomenal grant that this district received and it brought in a lot and created a lot of programs, but uh what is out there and then does it then potentially divert from the other things? And again, that's

151beyond my purview as far as even a business manager goes, but long answer to your question is business managers I can tell you do not do a lot of grant writing. Okay. They help out with the grant management side of things as far as a financial side, but because you're talking about you know, writing what it is as far as educational goals and objectives, you know, we're numbers people. So. Thank you. Remember the name. The day that Superintendent Judith Wole canceled the ELT grant was the day that I decided to run for the school committee. I come from the flagship school of that grant. The school that I came from before Massachusetts was the one that really created that grant and got it off the ground and so I'm very familiar with that grant and

152had been a recipient of its uh many uh wonderful advantages uh for several years. So, when I saw that they gave away that grant without talking to the community, without having listening sessions about that, I became very angry and that is why I ran. Um I took a course with Kate Martini from the Massachusetts Association of School Business Officials and we took a how to hire a school business officer course and one of the things that they suggested was that we specifically ask about grant writing. So, that is where that came from and that is um why we talked about it and have asked candidates if they have experience with it and every candidate we spoke to said yes and it wasn't a problem. Um I do believe um we're now in the many millions

153of dollars of grants, is that correct Assistant Superintendent? Do you know what the amount is so far? Last time we talked it was like 2.5 million or something like that. >> to say, I think the last report that we had done in it last fall was 2.4 million over a 16-month period. Yeah, and there was a time when uh former superintendent Pat Nodden, when she was the assistant superintendent, got $5 million worth of grants. Um this is something that we cover, and I'm I'm not opposed to having positions for the things that we need. Like, let's pay people to do the things that would most benefit us. But, we also have people making a lot of statements about how they do not like the money that we're paying for the administration. The administration is making

154their money over you know, they're already making their money by writing grants. So, I just don't really see why in this particular climate, when we're about to hear probably about how we don't have enough money to do anything, is what I'm guessing is about to happen in 10 minutes. Um why we would want to hire grant writers. So, I just don't see what the problem statement is. So, I guess I'd like to hear what what is the problem? What is the specific target amount that you think that you could get a grant writer to go for? Um what kinds of grants would you want them to go after? What you grants come with stipulations. So, you could get one, but it could mean that you have to do X, Y, and Z in order to

155maintain it or deserve it or you know, satisfy it. That also takes maintenance and awareness. So, I think that it's a fairly nuanced problem, and I think that we have what we can get covered, and I think that I strongly trust our administration to continue to go after the grants that will benefit our community the most. And if there are some that are out there that we need to get, I'd like to see a detailed description of those and the likelihood that we could get them based on the salary required to hire a grant writer. Thank you. All right. Any other comments, questions? Are you ready to vote? Let's Oh, are we doing a vote? Does this require a vote? Well, uh This isn't formulated as a motion per se. >> It wasn't formulated as

156a motion. It was less formal to It was a temperature check to see what the will of the committee was before saying, "Yes, we the subcommittee are directing the superintendent to include this in the budget." So, could it a less formal vote? Like a straw poll? Yeah, straw poll. Okay. But do we have a number first? I mean, if we're asking And we don't even have a number of what this would cost, so. Yeah, I mean, we haven't we don't have a position description, we don't have a a sort of really much to go on about what this role would be. Um Yep. Oh. I think it was more like uh member Child said or vice chair Child said just to like test the waters and see if this was something we wanted to pursue

157to come back with numbers of how much this would be. Or the benefits. All right. Okay. I move that the full committee direct the budget and finance subcommittee to investigate how much this would cost, what the average salary rate is, and what amounts a grant writer could possibly bring to the district. That's very wordy and I'm sorry, but we could workshop that up. But that's my motion. Go find About cost >> Budget and finance, go find. cost-benefit analysis kind of a deal. Go find cost-benefit analysis. All right, that's a formal motion. Um I'll >> that. Great, we've got a second from uh member Childs. Uh any discussion on that motion? Yeah. So the one thing I will say that I I think with our budget hearing literally next week uh does mean that we will

158not be asking for this in FY 27 as part of the budget that is about to come before us. I think that Can we just save it for the meeting? Yeah. It's good information to have. Okay. You're You're just getting ready to call the call the >> No, I mean I think it's something we I understand that this is not something we're looking for for the 20 6 27 budget, but maybe the 27 28 or maybe I'm doing that wrong in my brain. We're heading in like next year, not like this coming year, but the year after. Yeah, we're heading into FY 27, which spans academic year 27-28. Yes. No, 26-27. That's Yeah. >> Okay, I had it right. All right, you did. You did. You're good. Okay. All right. Please call the roll. I'm

159really confused right now. We have a motion on the table to direct the budget and finance subcommittee to go do a cost-benefit analysis of getting a grant writer not for this budget, but for the FY 28 budget. >> Okay. Thank you for clarifying that for me. Yep. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb, Ms. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Deneve. Yes. Mayor Dzaugar. Yes. And member Dietemann. Yes. Passes unanimously. And the last thing under budget and finance subcommittee report comes from member Goodwin, so I'm going to pass it to her. The agenda lists your motion to direct the superintendent to post for a district registrar. So this motion is based on the fact that we need to follow the money. So school districts get their funds from the state based on data that is

160entered into PowerSchool. The data is entered in many, many places by trained people who um know the community through the registration process. So they walk into central office um and in many cases um they register with one person. Person you know, does everything from you need a birth certificate, proof of residency, um health records. They coordinate all of that. They contact the schools. They They do that work and all of that is entered into PowerSchool and monitored by the schools. Um I think it was I just found out that that position no longer existed and I guess my concern is that if there's a lot of people um and there's a lot of change in staff in our school secretaries. So in some schools secretaries are changing very fast. Um that that data may not

161be as accurate as we would like it because if you look at chapter 70 funding our funding is based on that information. And so a district-wide registrar, which we had for many, many years, the amazing Lisa McGinnis, um helped monitor everything, school choice, residency, um also helped with kindergarten registration. So, the process was very, um effective. And so, I I didn't know that it had changed and till I heard somebody say something about what was happening with a secretary at a school and a principal who said they were there till 9:00 or 10:00 at night cuz the secretary couldn't figure it out. So, I guess my concern more, um was to bring that to superintendent, um that that is a position that most districts have and it's kind of a critical for money, um because

162it's how our money how we get our money, is what I'm saying. And so, um I think our superintendent looked into that, um and I would support that that position, um again, follow the money. That's where our our dime starts is at that moment in time. Okay. So, that there is the motion uh that has been made, um and would need a second to bring discussion. Second. Okay. All right, second from member Dietman. Um and then I also wanted to acknowledge that superintendent, you were referenced directly. Did you have any additional information that you've provided to member Goodwin in the past or to any of the other members about this issue that you would like to share with the full committee? Um this this just came up last week at our budget and finance subcommittee

163meeting. Uh we do not have a registrar. That was cut last year, it's my understanding so prior to July 1st when I came. So it is now taken care of when I started our secretary a secretary administrative assistant as they're called in each school takes care of that. We also do have a data specialist working for our IT department who is not a registrar. Albeit, but does take care of the counting as member Goodwin mentioned and making sure things are reported to the state correctly. I've got a question and then and then member Dini. Do we have evidence that we are massively misclassifying or like under enrolling or is this solving a problem or do we believe that our our administrative assistants are Did they get training to do it? You know, is there actually

164a lot of shuffle among our administrative assistants that would lead me to to like fear that that knowledge is getting lost. Um You know, I want to understand a little bit more about like is this problem a problem? And I like that we can prove is a problem. Um That was my question. What was the problem so Okay. My question can be strong cuz my question is your question. Okay. Um Do you have another question or a response? >> Response. Okay. I'm more than happy to give a direct response on this one. During kindergarten registration there was some confusion and one of our PTO members actually stepped in and was helping do registration of kindergarteners at um kindergarten meet and greet with families. I've also seen some chaos happening in the office when we are

165getting some kids registered. Um but then if you go to the AEL side, you have the admin assistant over there who is amazing at doing registration. And she is also amazing at making sure kids at AEL are registered for kindergarten. Um so I think it's just maybe providing our admins with proper training to do the job. Any other questions, responses? Yeah, member Goodwin and then member Deneve. So one of the things that um having a district registrar is the I call it institutional knowledge. So if you've registered a child at kindergarten, you kind of know the family like what's going on all the way through 12th grade. And you also know about the siblings. So if all of a sudden um a school reports one child has moved to Athol, you're now thinking that there

166may be three others. Um maybe all of a sudden a child is in the custody of DCF. Um then maybe the siblings as well. I mean it is a it's an amazing job um and it is a hard job. Um and I think as a district, it's really been helpful especially with our subpopulations. Um keeping track we have to do child find and a lot of times it's the registrar who's keeping track of a child who moved to Orange or a child who moved out of state and all of that needs to be reported. And you're supposed to keep student records for children who just all of a sudden quietly disappear. Um and it's the registrar who maintains those records. It's I've been subpoenaed as a student record holder. It's it's a it's a it's

167a thing. You think of colleges, you know, the registrar. Um it is a person who maintains those records. How long do we keep those records? There's a lot of law included in it. So, I think it's something um I think we're just missing an opportunity. Um you know, when do we destroy records? Um when do we put it in the newspaper we're going to destroy your records? All of that is part of the registrar's job. So, it's and I don't know if that's been assigned to someone else um to do all of child find and all of the records um or not. Sounds like we want to know a little bit more about the registration process. And how some of these duties are have been reassigned to other staff. Yeah, the the reassignment of registrar

168duties was done prior to the start of this fiscal year. Prior to July 1 last year, it was reassigned to as I mentioned administrative assistants at each building. Obviously um at times you might have turnover and we do have we did have this past summer three new clerks or administrative assistants start in our schools who were mentored by some of our veteran um administrative assistants as member Webb mentioned in that scenario. Um since then during this course of this school year we have not had any turnover in the administrative assistant ranks that we up to this point. So, all those duties were assigned. It was I guess I'd use the word bargained into the administrative assistant's contract that some of those who took on those duties in each school one of one person in each

169school received an additional stipend for the additional work that they were doing. Um at this time as we we sit here um some we had mentioned the the problem. I'm not aware that we've missed or lost any children. I mean, could we always maybe do small things better in paperwork, etc. Always. We'll We'll be sending out this week um they're being prepared today, but they will go out the next day flyers for um kindergarten registration cuz we received the census. We We worked with city hall and the department down there and sent us from the clerk's office all students who were eligible for kindergarten next year. So, while we know that uh for example, I have three children, right? Your first one when your first when you it's time for your second and third to

170go, you kind of know the routine and and you got it going, but when if it's your first, you may not be aware of some of those things. So, while we're sending things home to our current students' families, right? Emails, newsletters, etc. That's kind of a given, right? They're in the school. They're reading the newsletters. Um we thought we found that we needed to reach out to our new families who are out there. So, we're sending a mailing out to every eligible 4-year-old and their families. Superintendent When we hire a superintendent, we trust that they are going to know how to do this aspect of the work. That's what they do. When we have a budget cut of 1.89 million, we trust that superintendent to cut what they need to cut with the knowledge that

171they can take that work and give it to somebody else who has the training and the capacity. So, we trusted Superintendent Patenaude to cut the registrar position and anything else she needed to in order to preserve the educational functionality of the schools under a budget cut that we had last year. So, we trusted her to move that work along to who she knew would handle it and I trust that Superintendent Joel is not losing records or misreporting things to the state because that's his job and we hired him to do that job and I fear that by having these discussions, we are descending into micromanagement of the day-to-day operations, which is not our purview. Our job is a school committee. We are the macro view and we need to remember that. We are looking at

172the overall vision of the district and oversight of that. That's what we're doing. We're We should not be micromanaging who's sending records to who and who's minding that. That's your job and I trust that you do a very good job, or else we would not have hired you to do it. So, I can't support hiring a registrar because I think we're about to hear about some budget woes. Um unless you come to us and say, "Gosh, I'm having a hard time. I am struggling getting this these records to the state and we need some help." Then, gosh, we would empower you to do whatever you needed to do and trust that you would hire the right person to do it. Thank you. All right. Any further discussion? Hearing and seeing none, um I call for

173the vote. Sure. Member Goodwin. Can you remind me of the motion, please? Motion that the school committee direct the superintendent to post for a district registrar. Yes. Chair Sexton. No. Member Webb, I'm also a no. Vice Chair Childs. No. Member Geneve. No. Mayor Desorgher. No. Member Deatman. No. It does not pass. Okay. With I'm going to say one yes and six no's. Right. Thank you. Um now on the agenda we have a special report from Mayor Desorgher um as a request um about the city fiscal year 2027 budget. And for those following along at home, the document you want to be looking at is called copy of 2026 0224 ways and means presentation. Um the title of that document on the document is tax rate recapitalization sheet. Um and I will be sharing my screen

174so that folks online can be looking at it as well. Um and members should have access to it in your folder. Thank you. Correct. It's as far as I'm aware just these tables. Um and I will turn it over to Mayor Desorgher um with the just a a humble ask that you keep it you know, five to five to 10 minutes at most. Five minutes, I promise. Thank you. I shared this with um the superintendent as well as ways and means and the superintendent thought it might be good for you to have this information as well. So, as you can see from the first page, our total operating budget was 67 million 925,100 last year. Um and uh uh there were additional amounts to be raised. I'm just going to go through quickly that brought

175it to a total of 75 million and change. Estimated revenues, a lot of that comes from the cherry sheets. Um and um that total last year was 28,629 29,000 change. We um the city put in things to make the budget balance, OPEB stabilization, which there's no longer any money in OPEB stabilization. I'm sure we will add money this year from pension stabilization. That fund has, I think, $385,000 in it. I feel confident we'll be adding that to stabilize the budget as best as we can. And I, at this point, I don't think we're going to have any free cash to add. Um I just want to go on to the next page to show you um under the levy limit calculation where we are with uh 2 and 1/2. Um our levy allowed last year

176was 43,725,546,000. By law, we can only go up 2 and 1/2% to the to the budget. And in addition to that, you can add in any new growth that the city has. New growth are things like new buildings like Aldi's coming to the city. So, every year, our new growth has has been an average of 425 to 450,000. So, you can see that that we can go up about a million and a half plus what additional funds we can add to the budget. Going on to the next page, which is what I really wanted to to speak with you about, were the charges that we if you go on to page one, um look at the contributory retirement. Um this goes up a half million dollars every year. Um the city contributes to everyone's retirement,

177and that's on an actuarial scale. Every year it increases by a half a million. That's something that we can't do anything about. And the next page, um you can disregard the workers' compensation. I just want any unemployment insurance. But please look at the health insurance and see what's happened with that. Um since I've been in office, um we've gone up over three million dollars in health insurance, and we've met with the health insurers and I'm meeting with them again next week. It's projected that our health insurance will go up another 19.4% which will be two million dollars. Um I'm struggling with that because to balance a budget with the retirement going up a half million dollars and the health insurance going up uh two million dollars, it will be very difficult to balance this year's

178budget. Um as you can see by the last two pages, the pages that are in color, um this talks about the the the cherry sheets estimations of what we will be receiving this year. Although it is estimated that our cherry sheets receipts will be up um by 300,000. You can see last year our total estimated receipts were 22 million 7,031. And it's estimated this year that our cherry sheet receipts will be 22 million 386,000 dollars. Uh that's an increase of 300,000 dollars. But if you go down to the assessments and charges you can see that our assessments and charges uh cancel out and are higher far higher than last year. Last year our total estimated charges were 5 million 369 thousand 155 dollars and this year they will increase to 6 million and 40,806. It's

179a negative loss to the city of over 300,000 dollars. That in addition to the health insurance increases make it ex- extraordinarily difficult to balance this year's budget. I've already been in touch with some department heads about cuts in budgets to personnel that we'll have to be making. So I'm just sharing that because we are going in to the budget meeting next month I mean next week. We're all in this together and the the budget does need to balance. And um I struggle with it and I'm hoping that we'll all work together to get to the finish line. If you have any questions for me, I'm happy to answer them. I know it's been a long night. Thank you, Mayor. All right, I see it. Remember Goodwin and remember Denief. So now that we're all depressed,

180but um I think I don't know about you guys, but the world is a mess. And I think I just want a number. What is the number you need from us? I just want to know how much we're looking to cut from what's in front of us because the reality is that that has to happen. But I guess I need I'm looking at all these numbers and I sort of want to know you know, are we cutting a million? Are we cutting um how much we need? Um for to help with the process. Um I I I just want to know that number, I guess. And I don't know if you know that number. I don't think I I can honestly say today I don't think I know it that number is. But you know

181I will pitch in from the city side whatever we can to put into the pot because just like all of you, I want class sizes to be appropriate. I want our children to get the best education that we have, but I highly want to look at the budget this year because it's such an enigma. I meant last uh week we talked with um Sean Cronin, the head of the Department of Revenue, and Joe Comfort because it is such a the this health insurance thing is what is putting people just many municipalities over the edge. And I'm already talking to department heads and not anybody's favorite today. But um you know, a $1.7 million increase in addition to that health insurance is it's not sustainable. And it's the health insurance that's that's killing us. And that

182is killing every municipality in the state. And the state we survive on our our education and our hospitals and and our insurance. So, it's not like the legislators are going to go after the insurance company. So, it's a struggle that has to be fought on the local level. And I am here in here with you as your mayor saying this is a very big problem and I appreciate the the chance to bring it to everyone's attention. All right. Thank you. Um unless there Yeah, sorry. Remember to mute. Thank you for giving us all this information, Mayor Sordoni. I appreciate it. I had a question. Um are these health insurance companies that we're dealing with open to plan reform? Is that something that we can pursue as a municipality? Yes, we can and we have 14

183unions. So, if we do a plan reform, which we are looking at, and we have brought brought plan reforms up each year. That would mean that every union would have to agree with the plan reform. It's a pretty tough thing to ask for. As a mayor who loves the employees as well because we all go to the grocery store, we know what's happened to to the price of food. We know what's happened with the price of utilities and what's about to happen at the pump. Um it everybody's pocketbooks are pretty slim. So, to ask for that change I we were almost there with the plan change a couple of years ago and we will be bringing something forward in the next couple of weeks. I'll keep my fingers crossed that it will pass, but I

184I don't imagine that it will. We have a couple of different thoughts. Um and we certainly reach out to every insurance company that we can. You know, we may be looking at change to the GIC, but that would be a whole year out if that passes. Thank you. My other question is um there is a house bill aimed at this municipal Medicare retiree situation. If we I know everyone's like, "Oh, these things don't even work." But if we were to write a resolution say supporting it, could we then sign it and have the city council sign it and have you sign it? Could we Would it be worthwhile to try to do a little bit of grassroots supportive energy on something like that to help you at the state level plead our case? It might

185help. We're trying to organize up and down with um we've had uh legislators from different towns coming to meet with Greenfield because every everyone is struggling with this. So, certainly uh we're not leaving any stone unturned. The reform is going to take a a long time, but by all means uh I'm happy to sign on. Thank you. All right, I'll bring one whether it's useful or not, at least we can do something. Thank you. All right. Um if there's no more discussion on this, I would love to move us along to the remainder of our agenda. But thank you again, Mayor. Um okay. So, Chair Sexton, yes. Not on this, I would like to move that we bump item 12 O up in the agenda. Because we've got people who've waited long so long that

186we've lost people who are explicitly waiting for it. Heard. Yes, item O which is the motion about moving fifth grade, which I think is what brought a lot of folks out tonight. Um Yes, so I'm I think I'm happy to do Do we need a vote to change the order of items? We do need a vote to change the order of items. All right. Well, I'm happy to have that vote. Motion, second. From me. Let's do it. Um member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Order. >> Change the order to bring O to right now. You want to do O right now. Secretary Webb, I'm yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Geneve. Mayor DeSorger. Yes. Member Dietman. Yes. Did I get you, Stacy? Nope, but yes. Chair Sexton. It's all good. All right. Looks like that passed

187unanimously. Great. We are now ta uh going to tackle item O, which is a motion from member Goodwin that the school committee direct the superintendent to move the fifth grade to our elementary schools. Member Goodwin, would you like to motivate this motion? Yes. So, constituents um came forward who um are feeling very strongly that they would like the school committee to um make this motion for fifth grade to return to the elementary schools. Uh they feel like we postponed a decision last year and they would like to know now so they can make decisions about next year. Um and it's a a good chunk of people who feel like we postponed and we kind of moved on. But I I heard that it was fifth grade. This has nothing to do with the fifth grade

188teachers. This has nothing to do with performance or anything else. This is parents looking at choices for their children who still feel like they would like an elementary school model where the fifth grade is in the elementary school. Um and as somebody who sits on school committee, I feel that I have to voice what um people come to me with. And um I did my student teaching in fifth grade and I spent a lot of time at the middle school. And it is the time I spent in the middle school, the fourth grade was there and we spent a lot of time trying to bring parents into the middle school. It looks like a big school from the street. And there are a lot of parents who still um have reservations about that. And so

189um and every parent, you know, has heard from me, go see whatever the choices are, go see. And but there is a key group of people who after we postponed want to know um if And the eighth grade wasn't added because of the cost. There was a cost to the eighth grade when it was the original motion, it was like 400,000. But there wasn't a cost to fifth grade. Um there is room in the elementary schools. Um and one of the things I think also um you know, is is important is that everybody is heard and maybe this is one place where this motion is for fifth grade to return to the elementary schools where they were located many years ago. Okay. Thank you for that rationale for your motion. We need a second in

190order to open up discussion. Second. All right. Mayor has seconded, so now it's open for discussion. All right, member Deneve. I really feel for these parents that feel this way. I was a parent that felt this way. I was on the districting subcommittee for two plus million years and we talked about this endlessly, endlessly with so many listening sessions and I heard from so many parents and so many teachers and we worked on this so hard. I still feel deep frustration in my soul that we were not able to make this happen. But Robert's Rules got manipulated by someone and we had to we couldn't do it and then the second year we had the budget cut and we couldn't do it. So it it's not that we didn't want to do it, it's that

191we couldn't financially do it. And now I'm so thankful that the fifth grade teachers came to speak to us and I'm so thankful that Ms. Fenimore came to speak to us because what I heard is that they had to have some sort of make it work moment over there because that's what they had. That's what they had to do and they really pulled it together and now they've got a great team. They've got a great situation. They're feeling confident. They're seeing a positive movement. They're out of Dessi status. They're feeling really good and I want to honor that as well because something changed between the time when we voted to do this and we were ready and then being unable to and we got these years now and they really had to step it up.

192So, great work to them and but I hear there is harm and pain here because this is what the community wanted. This is what we voted for. This is what we promised. We did complete part of the work by redrawing the lines, which I think was an important active equity. So, I'm glad that we did that. But I don't think that we could do this this year even if we wanted to, even if we poured all of our energy and intention into it. I don't think it's possible. It will take a second Herculean effort for the administration to figure out how to make this work. And I think that we have to revisit all of our discussions with the community and I think we have to revisit the building situations maybe even. And there's definitely

193a cost associated with all of it. And then that leaves the whole eighth grade thing on the table, too, which would maybe is another discussion, but it's all just one whole of a problem that I have heard and I acknowledge and I wish that I could turn back time and not have had any of the decisions I wish I could have stepped in front of the decisions, but I couldn't. I was only one voice. So, I know that's not an answer or even a question, but it's a it's a feeling and it's a motivation and I have to vote no because I know the amount of work involved to even do it and we're not in that position now financially or uh administratively. Thank you. Other members? Member Webb? Um I definitely would like to

194say when my child was in fourth grade going to fifth grade, I had lots of fears of the fifth grade transition, and I think that between the bridge from elementary to GMS has definitely been the gap has closed, you know, they go over there for visits now. Everyone's invited over to their hot diggity dog end-of-the-year celebration where they do give like tours of the buildings to incoming families. I definitely had a fear of my child going to the big school, and it was again, I'm speaking my personal perspective, was one of the um the great things. There's so many ways over there, so many more opportunities for them to stay after school with their ELA teacher or their math teacher. Um and I know like the seventh grade, for example, is going to the science

195fair this year. So, I just I know it's seventh and not fifth, but there's just room in fifth for them to get comfortable in the building between two transitions between two teachers and then up to four teachers. And you know, I think sometimes we don't think our fourth graders are ready for that step up. I know I didn't, but then when it happened, I really realized my child was ready for that step up. Again, that's my child. I know others who have not had similar experiences. Number 10. I'm going to be pragmatic. Um looking at the timeline for doing it for next year, when we had to pause last year because of money, and we're looking at a just as if not more dire financial picture, I don't see us finding the money, and I

196don't see us finding the money by our budget hearing next Monday. So, just in terms of practicality there, I thought that we heard some very compelling arguments in favor of fifth grade at middle school both from the people here tonight and also the emails we've been getting. One of the things that was said that really stuck to me was the support teams that they could offer for the fifth grade. I'm I'm thinking, okay, how are we going to keep everybody employed and paid? And so if I'm hearing that we can have this support team for the full grade versus three support teams one at each elementary school for fifth grade. I'm thinking dollars and cents there. Um So that's just strictly financially pragmatic. And additionally, I don't like the idea of pulling the rug out

197from under our teachers, our school administrators, and asking them in March to, oh by the way, redo all of the schedule and all of the planning and all of the budget for these. I I think if we do this, we need to do this in a very open, transparent, everybody sees it coming from 100 miles away rather than a quick rapid turnaround and make it work right now. Um I think if we rush it, we'll do a terrible job regardless. Um I think the biggest problem the fifth grade has is PR. And I I I'm glad they were here and able to talk more about that. And then my last question is, do we know how this would impact class sizes at the elementary schools? Would we have to force more kids in classrooms to

198make space for those extra fifth grade classes with the numbers that we have now projected and they're now expecting? And would we be able to run those calculations quickly enough in order to juggle things around? I I think for me this for this question for this next school year uh from strictly pragmatic standpoint comes down to time and money and I don't think we have enough of either of those. Number nine, please. >> I'm also a person who if you would ask me a month ago on this question, I it would have been very clear to me to move fifth grade to elementary schools, but we've heard from a lot of people recently who are directly involved. A lot of people working in the middle school um and they're defending the team teaching model. They

199say it's working great. I don't see how the team teaching model would be possible to implement by when they're all spread out in the different elementary schools. Um and we heard three principals ask us for stability right now. So I think we have an obligation to recognize that the terrain has shifted since this decision was last addressed. And I will be voting no. Um give me just a moment. Um I think for a lot of the similar reasons that have already been named, I'm not going to be voting yes on this motion. But and I I understand that there are going to be some parents who are not happy with that choice. But what I heard actually out of your comments more than specifically wanting fifth grade moved back was a a desire for clarity.

200Is this going to happen or is this not going to happen? Um and trying to balance both giving parents clarity and giving our staff stability, I won't support changing everything up in March for a for a fall start. Um and so that's that's sort of where my head's at. Um any other comments from any other members? Seeing none. Oh, sorry. Remember Childs. I'm going to jump on what member Deitman said about stability. It give me another thought that this is probably something that I mean, we love you Superintendent Joel, but this is probably a decision better for someone who will be seeing through it and implementing it. So, I think that any change should probably come with the long-time full and not an interim. Though, if you clearly would be fully capable of doing a

201good job. But, just in terms of sticking around and being the one that when people are mad, they'll be mad at. And then the other thing is perhaps this is something that if we vote on the ad hoc long-term facilities use advisory committee, they might advise to use these facilities for fifth grade versus So. Okay. Mayor, did I hear you come off mute at all? No, I'm I agree with um I agree with with what member Dietman said as well, hearing that the need for stability and what many of the teachers said, I'm going to be voting no as well. I think it I think we need to look at it a little further. All right, hearing that I think we're ready for a vote. Or are we ready for a vote? All right. Member

202Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. No. Member Webb, I am a no. Vice Chair Childs. No. Member Geneve. >> No. Mayor Desorgher. No. Member Dietman. No. It does not pass. Okay. Um thank you everyone. I really appreciate you sharing your thoughts and uh and having this discussion out. Um okay. So, moving back back up to the top, um I will just say that like this um executive session is a potential executive session if we feel like we need it specifically to discuss the superintendent's contract before we vote on it. Um do we feel like we need it? Do we all we all have copies of it? It yes. You should have it in your packet. It is under new business. That's helpful, just so you Yep, new business CK contract {parentheses} one. I really hope so. Did

203folks have a chance to read it? I'm pretty sure I did. Good. Are we ready to vote? Can I Can I Can I have 5 seconds more on this? Absolutely. Just make eye contact with me when you're ready. I've read it. I just want one more one more go through. Yeah, totally. Would we Yeah, that's my I guess I have a kind of question. Would we want to let the two members that weren't at executive session know what was changed or would they be able to notice it on the contract? I want to know who were not there, too. Um yeah, there is there's a back-and-forth discussion responding to a counteroffer, um but the result of that counteroffer was they dropped it and um took took two vacation days instead. All right, I think we're

204good. All right, I think we are ready for a vote. So, motion from Chairwoman Sexton to approve the contract with Carol Cruiser and authorize the chair to sign the contract. Second. All right. I don't think we have any discussion on that. Please call the roll. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yes. Secretary Webb, I'm a yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Geneve. >> Yes. Mayor Desorgher. Yes. Member Deitman. Yes. Excellent. Thank you. I will be signing that tonight. Um Whoop. Um Carol's going to be thrilled. Okay. Next motion from Chair Sexton to dissolve the ad hoc Superintendent Search Committee formally. Cuz we just did it. Second. Any discussion on that? All right. Please call the vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. Yes. Member Geneve. Yes. Mayor Desorgher. Yes. Member

205Deitman. Yes. Passes. All right. Passes unanimously. That subcommittee is no more. Um and hopefully we won't need it again for a very long time. Uh next item, setting meeting dates for FY 2027 budget. Is that coming from you, Superintendent, or coming from you, Chair Childs? This was coming from somebody. Yeah. Was this about the mayor changing the dates possibly? And we didn't that. No. Was this about the 325 vote? Unsure. This was on here when it was shared with me as a draft. I did not put this in. Moving right along. meeting dates for next I I was thinking when you mentioned it, Chair. I'm sorry that you meant we're thinking next year's school committee. It does say budget. So, it was just to notify I say just, but to notify people of the meeting

206at public hearing on March 16th and then another meeting on March 25th. Okay. Great. We are duly notified of the meetings on March 16th and March 25th about our budgets. So, please any members of the public who are watching this now or will watch this later, um come to those meetings. Right. And we did do a advertisement in the newspaper where we have things available at central office. It is online. You received the agenda already for next Monday with all the uh documents. So, I think we're covered pretty good shape. Okay. And they can access it on our GPS website. All right. So, moving right along. Um item D was something that I was bringing as a carryover from last year, but it is non-urgent and in the interest of getting us out of here

207cuz it's already 9:45. Can I bump this to April? Yeah. The policy sub com will meet on March 30th. So, we're going to do all of the things from the last pile Great. for April. So, all of this for us will be on the following pile. For May? For May. Okay. Just FYI. Thank you. Um Perfect. So, we're bumping D to April. You can bump any policy thing to April cuz it will not get to us until mid to end April or May. I'm just telling you. All right. So, what is that? That's item E. E and E and F and D E F G. Uh not that, not that. I'll have them on the agenda for April. All right. Not March cuz March is already a doozy. Okay. So, do you we need I

208think we need a vote to postpone items. I would like to take motion G Mhm. and move that possibly to our community outreach to review it first before going to policy. It sounds like we have time for that. Um Sure. Can I um Can I get a sense of what it means for you all to review it? Um I think I would just really like the um community It's really late, so I'm trying to I should have wrote this down sooner. But the community engagement to really look at what the policy currently is and if there's any maybe give some recommendations for policy on changes. Maybe giving people time to like write in. Volunteers. Like the volunteers. So kind of host a listening session about it to generate more information. Okay. Or like kind of

209dig in a little. I know I've tried to dig um dig in deeper with um the superintendent about how many people we have for volunteers, where our volunteers are volunteering. Um just to have the community engagement really dive in deeper. Okay. So I think in terms of process, we actually if we're going to if we're going to postpone items D, E, and F, I think we need a vote on that. Then we can come back to G. Um Can we take that vote on items D, E, and F right now to postpone them? I make a motion that we postpone items D, E, and F until April's meeting. Great. And then I have a comment about G. Okay. I'll second the motion. Okay. Any discussion about moving moving items D, E, and F to our

210April meeting? Seeing none, please call the roll. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Genevieve. >> Member Dischinger. Yes. Member Dieteman. Yes. Passes unanimously. Okay. And then motion G as written sends says to say it says to send this item to policy, but I am hearing that there is a desire for an amendment to to instruct it to go to community engagement. Um however, community engagement does not have like policy is not its purview, but I would um support you all doing some finding. And this is actually a question that I have for the broader committee is how do we do business that might touch multiple subcommittees cuz I would actually love to see the two subcommittees do this work together cuz it's kind of a both

211and. Um We should have a motion to discuss this. Motion to dis- How would we even phrase that? Motion to discuss where to send item G. Second. All right. Please call the vote. Wait, what are we Okay. The motion the motion is where to send. >> Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yeah. We have a motion >> Motion and a second, so now we can discuss it. We have we don't have a vote on it yet. >> Okay. It's real late at night. >> we're doing. >> Okay. It's real late at night. It's time for discussion on A D D A. I've got to discussion point. Well, the motion itself was to open discussion, so now we're discussing whether or not to discuss. Yeah, well, we're discussing now and then we're going to vote. >> Yes.

212We're opening the discussion. >> We're Does the discussion is open? No, we we Nan. Nan. That's right. Um we began at motion G to which member Webb suggested pertain to I am so sorry. Quick, throw a Ricola. community engagement to which Vice to which chair Sexton realized there was an issue of issues that touch on multiple committees. To which sparked, well, we need to just figure out where to go. What are we doing with G? So, the discussion we voted a discussion on how to decide what we're doing with G. We initially had a motion, but it's like, wait, we can't do that. So, you're just backing up your G motion to discussing what to do because it touches on multiple Yes, but we haven't actually voted yet to open that discussion. We are discussing

213to discuss. And so, I was hoping to get through that vote to them. >> discuss where to send item G was brought up by It's too late in the night. We don't vote to open discussion. We just discuss after somebody makes a second. You guys have done this like 50 times tonight. I mean, I know it's almost 10. Like, I completely understand my brain is mush, but What if we >> the motion, somebody seconded it, so let's have a discussion. >> All right. I I totally get I literally want to fall down dead asleep right now. I'm sorry. All right. Okay, so real quick. Yeah, like policy has to look at this because there's legal things involved with it. And so, that like this whole thing when it starts to talk about queries, I'm going

214to have to I'm going to have to send an email to Royal. I'm going to have to send an email to the council. I'm going to have to like figure all that out, but you guys over in community engagement have this like great moment here to figure out what could volunteer situation in the district look like and start to build your system of how you'd like it to see how you'd like it to be seen and used and happen. Like you can build that. And you can gather your forces, but then we have to find out in policy what the legal ramifications are are going to happen. Words are not working now. It's almost 10. But do you understand what I mean? We got to make sure that like all the Corey's and the fingerprinties

215and the thingies are in place so that everyone is safe and that's all the policy is going to do. The policy isn't going to say like whether someone can, you know, what the volunteer job is. That's for you guys to work with superintendent on. Sure. Uh one thing another way I've seen this done as well would be to as member Dennett mentioned it's policy issue, but to have a policy subcommittee meeting and also invite not too many, right? But a member uh depending on people to come in and give opinions on what the policy could well So you could your committee could do some work potentially and send a representative, maybe not if there's three, not a voting not a school committee member, but you can attend meetings. You can't vote. So there's a difference.

216So >> speak at the meeting. You can You can make public comment, but it's weird. Yeah. You shouldn't. Yeah. So you if you had >> Watch them all later. Yeah. You could have somebody else come and bring forward say, "Hey, here's what we talked about." And we did some of this then the policy committee could take those recommendations and potentially do what they want with them depending so you don't have to move it from bang bang bang and now you're 4 months out before anything happens. Just some different ways to do it. Member Goodman. As somebody who's done the volunteer process, it scares volunteers away. So I think it's really looking at the process and then sending it for legal straight to policy because right now um the way the the process of volunteering is

217um making it hard to get volunteers. Member Childs. Is there anything we could do from a non-policy perspective to help volunteers? Like instead of sending people to Westfield for fingerprinting, could we partner with local law enforcement for fingerprinting? Is there any way or one of the ideas I've heard, could we try to get someone to come in once a month? Mobile quarry or something? >> Yeah. So what would it look like? How could we help there? I I think that's one of the reasons why I kind of wanted it sent to community engagement. Just ask some of those questions. Okay. So Those questions won't interfere with the policy work. Great. So we're kind of in the middle of a motion, but I've lost sight of what that motion was. The motion is Oh Exactly. >>

218Nan, what's the What motion are we discussing right now? We are discussing Uh excuse me, I'm going to Nan's going to kill us. We're sorry. So the language I have here is there was a motion to discuss where to send the item, but I understand now that we walked that back because we just needed a second. We initially were discussing a motion the G, the way it's written. And then there was an amendment request, I think, from member Webb. Mhm. Okay. I think the cleanest way to do this is we vote to send the policy parts of it to policy and then we have a second motion to send the more community procedurally thingies to use scientific terminology to uh the I don't even remember the name. >> Community engagement subcommittee. Yes, community engagement. Thank

219you, member Deneve. Okay. Great. So given that let's take those two motions in order. First motion is the one as written that allows you to go forth and do all the legal background digging that you need to do in policy and then we'll make a new motion about the community engagement part of that. So but first we need to vote on G now. Or I guess I motion. Anyone want to second G as written? >> Second. All right, we've got a second from member Deneve. Let's vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Uh Secretary Webb. Yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Deneve. Yes. Mayor DeSorger. Yes. Member Dieteman. Yes. Passes unanimously. Great. Now, a motion to instruct the community engagement subcommittee to review our existing volunteer process and gather information about how we can

220improve it. Can I have a moment to Please. Yeah. Um the subcommittee to review to review the our existing volunteer processes. With statement and with stakeholders? Sure. I mean, I that is you guys get to decide how you how you go forth. >> volunteer policy processes. Specifically processes. Um and make any recommendations for improvement. I I'm looking for a second. Second. Second from member Deneve. Any discussion? Seeing none, let's vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Secretary Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Deneve. >> Yes. Mayor Disorgere. Was that a yes? Yes. Yes. Member Dietman. Yes. It passes unanimously. Excellent. I look forward to seeing that report in a future meeting. Um, ideally sooner rather than later. Uh, okay. Now we're on to item H. Motion from member Deneve to create a resolution

221to support House Bill H4361, which is also known as an act relative to benefits for teachers. I believe we received a public comment about this last meeting. Member Deneve, do you have any additional motivation or rationale for this uh that you'd like to share? Uh, yes. Um, first of all, it's part of our job in policy to do these things for the constituents that come before us with these issues. Um, as long as it's something that we support and that's within our purview and our mission statement. Uh, and this is. Um, so, uh, I have my motion and my rationale and I have the action. So, hope I hope I hope all of you read it because it's really late, but I'll read it if you really want me to. Has everybody read it? No?

222Yes? Did you all read it? Are you okay? Cuz if you all are good with it, maybe we could just vote it, so I won't read it. Okay. Um, great. I'll second. You'll second, great. Okay. Motion on item H from member Deneve, a second from Member Childs. Any discussion? Seeing none, let's call the vote. Call the vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Member Webb. Yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Deneve. Yes. Mayor Jessop. Yes. Member Dietemann. Yes. Passes unanimously. Amazing. Thank you all. Um Adam, I motion for Member Deneve to support the Mass Foundation Budget Review Commission. Second. Okay, you know what? I feel this motion is not in this in the >> did it not make it in? I don't see it, but you know what? It I think it Yeah, I

223know. It never made it into >> Not a problem. Okay. >> the digital packet. I will happily find it if you give me a second. And then we I can read it to you real quick. If that would work. >> Should we move that? Um Or we can move it to next Is this a Is this time sensitive if we don't do this if we don't like support this now? >> No. No, it's not. Uh but come come over and knows it's coming from us eventually. Okay. But it's not time sensitive. So, if you find it, you can put it in to next month. Postpone it to April. Um >> send it to you, but if you do not have it, then I don't know why it didn't make it in. There were many things,

224but um apologies for that. Yeah, we uh Vote to postpone that to April. Fine. That's right. The only thing you want to postpone before we do that. Is there any else of that that did not make it into the packet that we should postpone? That's the only thing that I saw that didn't make it into the packet. Okay. All right. Motion to postpone I to April to our April full meeting. Second. All right. Please call the vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Member Wyatt, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Geneve. Yes. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Member Dayton. >> Yes. Passed. Oh, not even on. Passed unanimously. Amazing. >> Sorry, it was not on. Thank you. I appreciate it. Um all right, item J. Member Childs, would you like to motivate uh the liaison to

225the Yellow Conference? So, the Yellow Conference, which has been happening annually at the high school, is a great way for our students to talk to civic leaders. Um usually it happens early in the year. Haven't heard much. Want to make sure it's still happening for our kids. Want to see if there's any way that we can make sure that it still happens and support the conference. So, a point person is what I'm asking for. Um Okay. I would second that. Um discussion. Just as an FYI, I did just earlier this week receive an email from the AmeriCorps person who helps to facilitate it asking for participation. Um so, it is happening this year. You know the date? And I'm looking at that email. >> GHS? It should be at GHS. Friday, April 17th from 12:00

226to 2:00 p.m. at the high school library. Oh. Could Could you forward the email for participation cuz I Did you send it to School Com? I didn't send it to School Com. It came to my personal email, which is weird, which I asked them to not have it do that. Um Cuz last year it came to my School Com email, but I haven't gotten it this year. Fascinating. >> So, you said it was April April 17th. Um cuz I asked if I could forward this to you all and also to the city council, and the reply that I got was about invitations being tricky because they want to have a decent ratio of students to officials. Um They have They have invitations out right now to folks, so I think that they're going to do

227another round of invitations if they don't hear back from those other folks. Um That being said, I will follow up with this person and just be like, "You should really send it out to all of the school committee." Like it's weird that it's seems strange, but that being said, it is happening. Do you still want a point person? Or was this mostly to make sure that it was happening? >> It was mostly to make sure that it was happening and see if there's support, but it sounds like you're already in talks with them, so scrap it. Motion withdrawn. >> the dumpster, set it on fire. Motion withdrawn. Okay. I hope that when you all get invitations, if you do, that you go because it is the very best day of the entire year. Yes. From

228my perspective. Hard agree. Um okay, item K, motion from member Denief to donate historical materials to the Greenfield Historical Society. I T. Um okay, so if you go into the GMS basement, as you're going through central office, there is a very large hutch and it's full of really wonderful things. You can find out who was absent in 1954. You can find out who won some football thing in 1943. There are vast troves of wonderful things that are going to deteriorate and be gone forever. So, someone needs to take them and they just live in there and I've spoken to Becky about it. I spoke to Karen Patnode about it. I spoke to Debarge about it. Everybody's like, "I don't know. It just lives here." So, let's make it live somewhere else, hopefully in the historical

229society. That would be great. So, I think what I'm looking for is that somebody con- does the work of contacting the Greenfield Historical Society and getting them to come and get the things. So, that they can be properly digitized or whatever they choose to do with them. Are you volunteering? No, I'm so busy. I do not have the time to do that. I'm hoping somebody else will be excited by history, passionate about absenteeism from the '40s. Um okay, in order >> And do you want to do it? Thank you, Nan. Okay. Wonderful. I'll second the motion. Thank you. That's what we needed. Um so the motion was made by member Denney, but it was seconded and we have dis- some discussion. Just say yeah, quickly Nan, let me know. And if you know, we do

230find that they will take the things and have space for it before they just come in and I say grab that stuff in the hallway. Keep me posted and I can put an all call out to principals to see what other things cuz I know that there's some things down in the conference room and some other things that maybe could go at the same time. >> That's a great idea. >> Excellent. >> Nan, would you come and tell us what happens after you do that? Yes. In the future? Um Superintendent I will object to the first. Just say what's the scope of what it is that we're asking them to take. And then I'll only talk to them and then Yeah, let them go for a quick walk through and somebody If for whatever reason

231the historical society says, "No, we don't want your yearbooks." Um or other attendance records or anything like that, I would like to encourage you to reach out to the alumni and see if any of them for whatever reason might want it. Um I just don't think we need to stop at the historical society. Fascinating. Nan, you're the person. You just tell Nan's Nan's the right one. Um okay, so I think we need to vote to authorize Nan and Superintendent go forth and do this project. Remember my mic's on now. Member Goodwin? Yes. Chair Sexton? Yep. Member Webb? Yes. Vice Chair Childs? >> Yes. Member Deneve? Yes. Mayor Desorgher? Yes. Member Dietmann? Yes. Passes unanimously. Great. Um item L. Mem- Member Deneve, do you still want this motion on here given the vote we took earlier

232under the budget uh report out about warrants being included in our meeting minutes or regular meeting materials? Uh I was thinking about that and ye- yes because I think that they need a spot on the website. The public needs to be able to click on them. Okay. Um All right. So, that's the motion. Looking for a second. I'll second it. All right. Any discussion? Yes, Member Webb? Just to say the way the motion is written, it says or published, not and. So, to have the warrants published or have them included in the electronic packet for School Committee meetings. Yeah. Okay. When you read it, it says warrants in meeting materials or published on the Greenfield Public School website. So, would you like to amend that to just say to include warrants on the Greenfield Public

233Schools website? >> Yes. Is that an amendment that's accepted? Okay. So, that amendment is there. Um I just have a question. Yeah. Now is the time. I guess is there I mean, I've never seen it like on different websites. So, is there a reason why we wouldn't put it out there? I know it's supposed to be public, but maybe it's just it's so much information people don't Ask the mayor. How are we allowing the public to access it now? I don't know if that Who's Who can answer the question from that table. They could ask. Nobody's asked. Well, that's always been the problem is that if people >> Right. That's why you're talking about this now. >> Yeah, if people wanted to look at it, they had to go down to central office and request

234it. Um which people don't know that they can do and don't do. So, I think that's the point I was trying to make. I see. So, this is really about um I I feel that people speak a lot about transparency and so when people tell me that, I think that things are transparent, but maybe they're not like I'm not seeing it from their perspective. So, I'm trying to see it from their perspective and I would feel if I felt that way, I would feel better about transparency issues if I knew that I could go and do that and if it was available to me in a transparent way is I guess what I'm saying. So, in the interest of making everybody happier in town, like let's just let them look at it and make it

235easy for them to do so. Oh, yeah. I don't see a problem with it. >> Yeah, I mean, it's public record. So, I'm just saying like let's just make an accessibility thing occur. I'd say because the meeting materials for the public are one big enormous PDF, whereas the warrants come out a couple times a month, I think having it in a separate spot alongside meeting materials is a good idea for that accessibility. So, I strongly support this. All right. Any additional comments? Let me make sure I'm not missing someone. Additional questions? Additional comments? I have in the chat here. What is that? Um Okay. Um All right. So, I think that we are ready to vote on the motion from Member Deneve to include warrants on the Greenfield Public Schools website. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair

236Sexton. Yep. Member Webb. Yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Deneve. >> Yes. Mayor Sarger. Yes. Member Dietmann. Yes. It passes unanimously. Great. Thank you. Next item. Three left, folks, and then we can move on to old business. Um motion from Member Deneve to request an update on the Yondr Pouch program efficacy, current contract status, and cost. Second. Okay. Any other motivation that you'd like to make? It's just we've had it for a while. I just want a little update as to like is it still working? How's it going? Do people still use it? Just that. It's just a check in cuz it is something that we pay for every year and it is an integral part of our school culture. Yep. So, we can absolutely do that. If there are specific questions that you

237want answered, um you could always send please send those. So, that way we don't come back next month potentially with it a generic report and then somebody says, "Well, I wanted more." Okay. And that's um please feel free to send me any specific questions. >> Deadline. Deadline for questions. >> week. So, give us a couple weeks to prep it so we can get here in April 4th. Things move fast. All right. So, by this time by this time next week, please email any specific questions you have about Yondr Pouches to the superintendent. Um Uh we have a motion. We had a second. I had a second from Member Childs. Any other discussion? Let's vote. >> Member Goodwin Chair Saxon >> Yep. Member Wyse Vice Chair Childs >> Yes. Member Deneve Yes. Mayor Desorgher Yes. Member

238Dietmann Yes. Passes unanimously. Excellent, thank you. On to motion N, motion from Member Goodwin that the School Committee add two additional members to the Business Manager Hiring Committee, one from the subcommittee of Business Finance and Warrants, and one to represent the City of Greenfield, um, which presumably that would be the mayor. Would you like to motivate this motion? Yes. So, this is something that we've been trying to accomplish, and there's been multiple attempts, and so I guess I think um, having three people versus one, maybe will be supportive, and maybe making, um, just having all stakeholders included, maybe we'll have more ways things happen. This needs to be done, and I think it's just, um, we seem stuck with it right now. So, I'm just moving that we add somebody from, um, the subcommittee for

239budget, and somebody to represent the city. All right. >> Instead of just one person. This motion needs a second. Second. Okay, discussion. Member Deneve. I've taken the volunteer training to do this. Um and I've taken the budget and finance training voluntarily. Um and I've been on budget and finance. And also I would say we are a separate entity. We are elected in a separate body. We are not the city. Our job is to do oversight of our budget. The city's job is not to oversight our budget. And I think that that's something that people forget all the time, but we are we are the school district. The city should not come in and oversight us. We oversight ourselves. Also, there's already eight people in the room. Six to eight people in the room already for

240these, and we also have no one applying. And we can't force people to apply. We cannot magically make candidates appear. So, adding anybody is will make the room considerably fuller and the interviews take longer. Um and I don't see the problem statement. I don't see that there's a problem with it because it's not going to help anything be materialized. And thank you very much for voting for me to continue this work, and I have all of the qualifications required to do it and have already done it. How much time? I do see that concern about too many cooks, and I also want to ask the superintendent uh what the usual makeup of a hiring committee for business manager is, uh what number of school committee members is the norm or range, and if uh the

241city usually does have representation. Just what what is the norm? Norms can vary, right? There's always they're averages, right? So, when you say what's the average, the average is on any interviewing committee, uh many of you would just part Well, you all participated in the superintendent hiring at the end, but some of you did the screening as well. Two big committees are tough. They're very tough. Um so, smaller is always better in in my opinion. You're going to be screening some people first and you you being the school committee, you hire the business manager. So, should you have finalists other There are other things in life where I may bring recommendations forward or I say I the position of superintendent hires, right? This isn't one of the things that are under your purview in that

242sense in this the committee will bring to you finalists. It could bring to you finalists or candidates to move forward in that sense. I also agree with member Deneve on separating and not having somebody from the city and then not that we don't want to um engage with the city, right? We're I think we're engaging every month by showing up at city council meetings and talking with them and being on different committees and and sharing a lot, but this is your your job in that sense. Um for that. So, I think smaller is better. What what is smaller? It's relative, right? It's like what's a lot in life? What's a lot of money to you is not a lot of money to somebody else. Um in that sense, but the more you have, the more

243the tougher it gets. You do have six candidates um right now for that and I was delaying and I'll use the word delaying uh starting putting anything together. Obviously, I knew this motion was coming here tonight, right? I knew you were going to potentially be hiring a new superintendent tonight. So, now with those things happening, I will involve I would assume and I would like to involve the new superintendent on that along with any other members that you choose to, so we can get that going. Is a member what? I'm really sorry to keep going here, but I'm curious who is current who is on this committee? I guess will be my question. Because you said it's the school committee who's hiring in it. So I'm guessing it's member Geneve and yourself in the room

244maybe assistant superintendent Sullivan. I wouldn't see our Yeah, no so that committee I know that we I have the I have the notes cuz it's on my desk from the last month or month or two ago when member Geneve was voted and some of the camp members who would be in there. I will not be sitting on that. Okay. Um committee the new superintendent will be. It's not a committee. It's not a committee. It's a It's a >> Yeah, it's a screening. >> Uh it's I'm would be the liaison to it and how it worked before was it was superintendent Patnode, it was David Messing, it was Steven Sullivan, it was uh two people from the accounting office and myself. And the And we pre-screened people, we talked, we chose candidates that we thought were

245worthy of interviews. We interviewed them and then anybody that want that we chose would have They wouldn't make the decision. I would have to bring it to you. Mhm. You all still you Like I'm not picking this person. I'm just sitting in on the interviews and then I would bring the candidates that we all thought were worthy to you and then you could make the determination and we would all hire together. Like just as we would with the superintendent. So that will have to happen. It's not like my job to do this, but there's some screening that has to happen and the last pool all said no and disappeared. So I'm pulled their their applications for various reasons that we have already discussed. I did have another question. I had two questions. Um is there

246a crossover work between the city to the school side. Like we're asking the uh business department to have a representative there to interview. I'm wondering if there's crossover that we would want a person from the city side there. There was a One of the interview questions was about the relationships with the city business manager because they do have a relationship. And And well, at the last meeting you said how important it was for us to have input from people in the business office to make sure they had someone they were comfortable with. Would it be just as important to have someone from the city side to make sure they're also comfortable with them? I don't necessarily know. When I took the training from MASBO, they said that you obviously want the two parties to be

247collegial and cordial and kind and be able to work well together, but they are separate. They are separate. And so, while while by nature they will work together, they do not work necessarily with each other into each other because we are a separate organization, and we have to constantly remind ourselves of that and talk about that all the time, or we will lose control of that. And and people do want to make us lose control of that, but we are our own separate elected body doing this work, which is separate from the city. So, there is really no reason for the city to be there. But, then again, you know, everybody kind of knows each other. They probably already know each other, maybe. The way the superintendents all know each other. It's a small pool.

248Remember good one. So, the mayor sits on the school committee to be that bridge um and has the whole city the whole budget everything in her head. And we have struggled with a collaborative approach in the past. It's been more blame. Um and I would like personally to have the mayor sit on the superintendent search. I felt that was appropriate. I also feel it's appropriate if she can't do it that she appoint somebody. I mean, they don't have to have a vote but they should be in the room. I've seen hiring committees in South Hadley that had 30 people in the room to hire a superintendent from that but stakeholders felt they had a voice and I think that's important. Um I just don't want to be in this position. There are six people who

249have applied. I guess I would love to see a finalist in front of us. Um you know, by next month. It's just it's it I feel like we're just kind of stuck. And so this motion really is about hopefully getting us more stakeholders, more energy into this. Member Childs, and then I would really like to move move us along. My concern about being stuck and slowing things down is if we add more people, that adds more schedules that have to be juggled to find times and I worry that adding people might slow us down. Also, I wanted to know what you meant by let me see where is it a rep someone to represent the city of Greenfield. I was thinking the mayor or somebody who she would designate to represent her if she couldn't

250do it. Any additional comments or questions? Yes, member Deneve. I still don't see the problem statement. What is the problem What is the problem statement? Like what what what is the issue? I think that the issue is personal rather than an issue with the actual work. Personally, um and we do have a very uh mayor-centric city. Um and the mayor is very busy and I would can't imagine her wanting to do six interviews. Um so I don't see what the problem is. The problem is that I don't think one person represents all the stakeholders. Um when we did a we did the whole thing for searching for a school committee member, we had three people from the school committee doing that process. By having one person from a school committee do the business manager search,

251I I just This is not personal. This is really about feeling like there to me, both jobs are equally important. And and I feel like we're just um it's not happening and I I just and I hear that people aren't applying. I get that. But I feel that we need to move forward. Um I watched three people hustle a superintendent search in a way that I haven't seen, like the energy that you guys put into that was amazing. And I just think I I would like to see the same energy and I don't think you know, I mean the idea when we work together in subcommittees, there's three of us. I mean, we bring energy to a group. Um this is not personal. This is not in any way. The idea was that many hands

252make the work lighter. It was not in any way personal. Um so, if it gets voted down, it gets voted down, but I I think what you should hear is frustration on that, you know, how can we help this process along? And that's what this motion is about, helping the process move forward, but also including the stakeholders who work with this person. This person who will work with the city. I mean, we all have the same the the that's going to happen. Um if you don't want to include them um in that process, I mean, that's what your vote will say. So, I'm just I'm going to say one thing on this if I may. Go ahead, Jamie. >> Um Um I I you know, I think we did have a lot of good energy

253when we had a few people from the school committee being on the superintendent search, but I am feeling, you know, I'm hearing what others are saying. I don't feel like this big need to have oversight into what is happening here, but um um maybe we could have a compromise by adding another person from the um ways and means committee. That That's what I was thinking as I was listening to all of your, you know, back and forth, much of which was very valid. I I don't care about that myself, but maybe we should put another person from ways and means on it so that two people are looking at it. And and yes, I am very busy. I don't have the need to do it, but um maybe we should have one more person on

254it cuz we do want to get it to the finish line. I think that's what I'm hearing is that we do want a new business manager. Are you saying just question, Ways and Means is part of City Council? Are you talking about the subcommittee for Oh, I meant Yeah, I I call you finance. I call you finance, Ways and Means all the time cuz I think of it like that. You're budget or finance committee. Maybe have one more person from that on so that but that's just a thought. All right, that sounds like a uh an amendment that is being offered to Did you say you hate this? Um, an amendment that is essentially to drop the second clause after the semicolon uh or actually Oh, uh sorry, to drop the clause after and like

255after finance, no one to represent the city um and just do one from business and budget and finance, not business. Budget, finance, and warrants. I don't know why that's in there like that. Um is that amendment accepted by the mover and who seconded that? I think one seconded it. Who? You Did you second it or no? I made it. No, but who seconded the original motion for member Goodwin? I think it was member Webb. Okay. >> me. Great. Um, member Webb seconded Okay. Do you accept that amendment? Uh I just want I just like clarification on the amendment. So, it's that the school committee Oh, no, wrong wrong line. It's really too late for this. Um So, we would have one person from the school committee and one person from Ways and Means. That's the

256amendment. Or just one person from Ways and Means. Nobody from Ways and Means being very clear that Ways and Means is the name that the City Council has for that. It is Budget, Finance, and Warrants, and I want to be really clear because we are not allowing the City Council to have a vote in in in in the screening committee. No, no, no. Yeah. Yes. So, just being being very clear. Um So, you're the the mover of the motion is good with that amendment. Is the second amendment. >> Yes. Okay. So, that is the new amended motion that is on the table just for one other person. Um From my perspective, we would have been moving already except that the superintendent had to pause the process so we could have this discussion now. Like, we

257could have already been scheduling if we didn't have this motion. Um you know, and I don't want to lose any of these six candidates. I want you to talk to them all so that you can then have a smaller pool that comes to us. And I really appreciate the um really appreciate what people are saying about the energy of the superintendent search. I agree it was a very energetic process, but if we're wanting candidates by next month, like the superintendent search was a 4-month process. Um we don't have 4 months, I think, to get this done. Um So, for that reason, I will not be voting uh yes on this on this motion uh even as amended. Are we voting tomorrow? Well, I don't know. Are we Remember to leave, and then I would love

258to Call the question and move along. Yeah. Okay. When I vote no, that doesn't mean that I'm ignoring stakeholders. And I do not think that anybody should state what somebody's vote means. Everyone here can vote however they want according to their conscience or whatever, and I personally am not going to make any judgments about any of you however you vote. I have taken some real difficult votes. I've been the only one. I have like started all kinds of crazy things. And I hope nobody judged me, but they certainly have. And I'm not going to judge any of you. If you want to vote yes or no, that doesn't say anything to me about the type of person you are or whether you're including stakeholders. So, like I'm just going to say that that I don't

259think that that's okay to say that about anybody's vote. I'm voting no because this is just job hiring. And I'm going to bring you the people that you guys will all get to talk to you and hopefully form a relationship with. And also, gosh, Andy, thank you for sitting here and listening to all of this and sticking with us. And I'm so incredibly sorry that we're having this discussion in front of you. And I just feel real bad about it all the time. And I just want you to know. If you I'm not If you're going, I totally understand. I know judgment. So, I'll be voting no on this. And I and I hope that I go forward and do a great job for you guys out there. It was It was smooth and easy

260last time, and I'm sure it'll be smooth and easy this time. Thank you for that reminder um to not ascribe people's motivations to them. If you have a question about someone's motivations or why they vote a way they do, you are welcome to reach out to that person individually and have a conversation. Um I would like to call the question. Please call the vote. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. No. Member Webb, I am a yes. Vice Chair Childs. Abstain. Member Geneve. >> No. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Uh Member Deitman. No. Sounds like I can't abstain. That's correct. To me I see it is six of one half dozen of the other. I I I don't see that much of a functional difference one way or the other. So I'll just vote yes and we'll be done

261with it. Okay. Okay. So the motion passes and now budget finance and warrants needs to nominate someone to be part of the sub committee and I would love for you to send the name of that person to tomorrow. Or I guess actually we need to nominate that person now because we all have to vote on it. So amongst the three of you who's doing it? I'll nominate um member Webb. Do you accept? I will accept. All right. Motion to appoint member Webb to the screening committee for the business manager. Not a committee. I'm sorry. It It is. It's a screening committee. It's a group. Okay. To the screening group. Do we need to vote on it as a sub committee now? Nope. We need to vote on it as a whole committee. One time second.

262All right. Um so I've I've made the motion. Is there a second? Second. Second. Okay. Well, we've got All right. Let's give the second to Jenny and um I'm going to call the question. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yes. Member Webb. Yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Geneve. >> No. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Member Dietman. Abstain. So it passes. All right. Motion passes with one no, one abstention. Moving on. We already did item O. Yes. Moving on to item P. Motion from member Goodwin that the school committee form an ad hoc committee. Can we please move this to April? Please. All right. >> Second. All right. Um let's call the question on moving item P to our April agenda. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yes. Member Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Geneve.

263>> Yes. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Member Dateman. Yes. It passes unanimously. Excellent. Thank you so much. We are now moved on to old business. I'm going to make a motion to postpone item A to April as well. Second. Great. Call the roll, please. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Member Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Geneve. Yes. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Member Dateman. Yes. Passes unanimously. All right. Thank you very much. Um item B is a housekeeping motion from Chair Sexton to rescind the mediation vote that we took on February 19th given the new information about its potential illegality. All right. Second from member Childs. Oh, sorry. Second from member Goodwin. My apologies. Um any discussion on that? All right. Please call Did you have Please call the vote. Oh. Oh, sorry. Did you actually

264have I also spoke to the uh Attorney General, but I think I think it won't affect what we're about to do right now. So Okay. Member Goodwin. Yes. Chair Sexton. Yep. Member Webb, yes. Vice Chair Childs. >> Yes. Member Geneve. >> Yes. Mayor Disorder. Yes. Member Dateman. Yes. It passes unanimously. Okay. Thank you. Um item C. We obviously made the vote about mediation for a reason. Um but if we can't proceed in the way that we had intended and and we still think that it is a worthwhile thing, then we need to figure out a different mechanism. I'm not expecting us to figure it out right now, but I would love to generate what do we need to know in order to have a better discussion about this in April. Remember Danie. I had a

265conversation with the office of the Attorney General and with MASC about this issue. Um I know that there was an article in the Recorder and I know that a member of our public um sent a message to the AG saying, "They're going to violate the law." So, I come from a family of lawyers and that's what lawyers do when they want to make you scared. And so, I changed my language and I wrote to the Attorney General and I said, "Hey, we would like to work better as a body. We have heard that we cannot do this in executive session. Can you please advise us how we should do this?" And they said, "Yes, in fact you can't do this in executive session, but there are all kinds of things you can do as a

266public body without posting for the public. And they would love to advise us on that. And then I also called MASC and spoke with Glenn Koocher who said, "Well, of course you can because you and I both took the training on dealing with toxic people and one of the training suggestions was having mediation with the School Committee. How do you do that? You do that by not deliberating School Committee business. So, if we are not deliberating School Committee business, we do not have to post for the public. And shocker, we can even have retreats where we don't discuss School Committee business. We can have workshops as a group where we don't discuss School Committee business. We can have interactive group functions to become a better public body without having to post for the public as

267long as we are not deliberating. We do not have to do it in front of them. We can do it on our own to become better public servants. So, there is a way forward. It's not through executive session, but that doesn't mean that we cannot do it. And there are groups that will help us. Thank you. I look forward to hearing more about this in April. Member Childs. I wanted to make it clear that that dealing with toxic people, though I didn't attend it, that was not editorializing. That was literally the title of the panel. These titles are flashy and attention-grabbing to try to get attendees. In no way was Member Genevieve calling anyone on this committee toxic. It was literally the name of the panel. >> it in 2022. Yep. Uh can I I

268just want to reiterate what Member I did my charting the course on Saturday. Um and it was also mentioned train you know, trainings. As long as we are not discussing specific items >> specific item agendas or making any uh motions that motions or voting that would be occurring. And that was from Liz LaFont. Great. Thank you. Um Member Genevieve, would you be willing to forward any email exchanges you had with the Attorney General's office or MASC about this? Yes, I will, but the MASC conversation was via phone. And I would encourage every one of you to call them anytime you ever have any questions about anything cuz I'm not kidding you, they will pick up the phone. It's not a phone tree. It's their private cell phones, and they will drop everything and talk to

269you. So, you can all have this conversation with Glenn. Can confirm. Um okay. Thank you. Uh we will return to this item in April. Um to figure out exactly what how we would like to move forward with this. Um I would motion to adjourn. Oh, sorry. Uh if I may, um I was reminded I did forget that Member Webb had asked earlier about the warrants. Are they post They are posted on the city website all the time. So, we will connect the link through that. Is that a correct statement? Yes, the city uses open checkbook, so you can go and search every vendor, every payment, every check that's been cut. Amazing. The more you know. Great. Thank you. Um motion >> Motion to adjourn. Second. Excellent. Um Is Mayor DeSorcy Wait, you forgot Wait, what?

270>> You forgot new business for next month. >> Oh, crap. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. But we've had a motion and it's been seconded. If you have any new business, please email it to me. Email me your new business. Member Goodwin? Yes. Chair Sexton? Yep. Member Webb? Yes. Vice Chair Child? >> Yes. Member Deneve? Yes. Mayor DeSorcy? Yes. Member Deitman? Yes. We're We are adjourned at 10:43 p.m. Thank you, everyone. >> Mhm.