Brookline School Board Meeting 6/25/2025

001So, I would like to call to order this meeting of the Bookline School Board, June 25th, 2025 at 6:00 p.m. We have a couple of agenda adjustments to start. The first is a request was made that the agenda be adjusted to include under deliberations board action on the resolution to authorize 1,131,000 No. Yeah. $1,131,750 of the lease purchase financing of energy conservation equipment and related building improvements at district facilities. An additional request was made that the deliberative item intended for the board action regarding the public hearing on the maintenance expendable trust fund also include action related to the public hearings on the retained fund balance and that the special education and the special education expendable trust fund. I will make a motion that the agenda be adjusted as requested. Uh all in favor? Perfect. Thank

002you. All right, we're going to move on to uh nominations, resations. I had a question about the agenda just in case I had to make um I don't see the committee reports on here. Am I looking at an old It's under E number two. It says committee updates. Got it. No problem. Perfect. All right. Uh any other questions? Okay. Uh nominations, resignations, correspondence. So, I'm just going to be giving an update to the board because you did grant Gina per permission to do the hiring um and to accept resignations. So, we did receive a resignation from um Liam Tre Tremble who is the K to6 music teacher. Um so, we are currently trying to fill that position and we had a resignation from u Melissa Leaf, grade five teacher, who will be going to the

003co-op. Okay. Um for hires, we have hired a school nurse for CSDA. We have hired Melissa Mack uh master step 1478,94. Um so still to fill we have the K to6 music uh grade six long-term sub grade three long-term sub grade five one-year interim and school counselor long-term sub. Can I ask obviously without violating any sort of confidentiality was there feedback on your music position because I know we've had feedback in the past about the schedule. It says that he's going closer to home. Okay. So, so the fifth grade interim that will be to replace Miss Lee. No, the fifth the grade five. Oh, no. So, we also have the grade five. That that literally just came in that res that resignation. Um, so we will have the five-year interim for um Miss Can Canton

004and then we will have to fill Miss Lee's positions for grade five as well. Okay. And that's all I have. All right. Um, first we want to I've got one correspondence I would like to read, but before I do that, um, I do want to recognize Jonathan Very. Thank you very much for your time with us. U, we wish you all the best and we are sorry to see you go. Um, but we we do wish you all the best in your in your future endeavors. A little token of appreciation. Awesome. All right. And then I have this correspondence to read. Um, this is a message of gratitude from the Brookline School Board honoring Principal Patricia Boule of Captain Samuel Douglas Academy. Tonight, with full hearts, we wish to honor and thank someone who has

005given so much of herself to our school, our children, and our future. Principal Boule, your years of service to the students and families of Captain Samuel Douglas Academy have been nothing short of extraordinary. Through your leadership, our upper elementary school has not only grown academically, but it has thrived as a place where students are seen, supported, and celebrated for who they are. You led with strength, compassion, and steady purpose during the most difficult of times, helping to guide our school community through the challenges of the CO 19 pandemic with courage and care. In moments when answers were few, your calm and thoughtful presence grounded us all. But your legacy extends far beyond those hard days. You spent your career lifting up students, encouraging teachers, and building a school co a school culture rooted in respect,

006joy, and high expectations. Whether it was in the classroom, in the halls, or at countless events and meetings, your belief in our kids has been unwavering. One of your lasting contributions will quite literally be grounded in our school for years to come. The new playground you helped bring to life is more than a collection of structures. It is a symbol of your belief in play, in possibility, and in childhood itself. That is why we are so proud to dedicate the CSDA playground in your honor. Every laugh and every game on that playground will carry your legacy forward. The inscribed rock to be installed will read, "Play is our brain's favorite way of learning." Diane Acriman. The Brooklyn School Board dedicates this playground to Patricia Boule in recognition and thanks for her commitment to creating a

007place of play and creativity for our students. You're going to make me cry. Everyone know. As you step into retirement, please know how deeply grateful we are. You have left a mark not only on CSDA, but on the hearts of all who have had the privilege of working and learning alongside you. Thank you, Principal Boule, for everything. We wish you joy, rest, and new adventures in the days ahead. You will always be part of our community. With gratitude and love, the Brookline School Board, June 25th, 2025. Thank you. We also have a a little another a token of appreciation and um we made this for you to take with you but it is a picture. So it says a leader takes people where they want to go. A great leader takes people where they don't

008necessarily want to go but ought to be thank you so much from us. Thank you all. Thank you all. Oh, that's overwhelming. Thank you so much. Absolutely. Our our pleasure. Do you need to turn that in for Yeah, I think I'm going to keep a copy. I don't know how we could like tried. Okay. Set us up for failure here. All right. Um, approval of minutes. So, we have from the Brookline School Board May 28th, 2025 meeting, the following amendment was offered. Page seven, line four, to replace request with result. Page 8, line 17, to correct the spelling of board. Page 11, line six, correct the spelling of alert. Page 12, line 23, delete R. Can I get a motion to accept those? I will make a motion to accept the May 28th, 2025 minutes.

009Second. All in favor. Perfect. Um, let's see. And I just need to accept the non-public as presented. U, we don't we don't need to, but you could skip that. Just kidding. All right. End of your presentation. The principal. All right. So, we're on to the principal's report, which which for tonight is going to be the end of the year presentation, right? End of the year presentation. Dan will start. Patricia, see you again. Yes. All right. Good evening. You all see this? Okay. So, first we're going to just start off with a different presentation. It's from the PTO. Um, this is a slideshow we put together and it relates to our year in review. As you know, our PTO is very supportive of our schools and our students and they do a lot of fundraising throughout

010the year to support the learning in in the programming at our schools. So, this is just going to take you through the year of events that they sponsored and just showing you our students at their multiple trips in programming. Our grade three visited the these are just some of them. They visited the L Mills this past December. We have grade K had Lindsay in our puppet house that visited in our library. They also um help support our program for forces in motion for kindergarten. Our second graders have to visit the C science center in Manchester. Wait, Dan, excuse me. Do you Does Joe, does Dan need a mic or do you think he's able to come up? Okay, just just double checking before we and this was this was nice too because at the sea

011science center the students had multiple labs that they got to experiment with. Grade two got to visit uh Beaverbrook having a great time. I believe this was early April. Eyes on Owls came and visited our first graders in the gym. This is um we've had them year after year. Great program. This is the one time that we have pets in our building. Um grade one visited Stone Zoo. Great field trip. First graders always love this. We have lots of parent um volunteers that come. So, we appreciate all the volunteers as well who come support us to ensure the safety but also the enjoyment of the kids. Oh, let's go back to this. Oh, yeah. That's the And then we had Friendly Farm. I think it was in late early June. Kindergarten visited Friendly Farm. They

012love the chickens there. Oh my goodness. They have chicken related casualties. Yep. And then Greg visited uh CSA Woods. And this is kind of like their first time as a grade going to CSDA. So they get to go through the woods as a grade level and then um they walk through the hallways of CSA and then they meet with they used to meet with Mr. Boule at this time. Chaz Miller came and he got to meet all the third graders. He also went on the walk with us as well through the woods. Third grade also had geodome and then grade six brown center. So these are most of the programs that um the PTO supported us with this year and we want to thank them for all of their support. Well and Dan I just

013want did the PTO also help the preschool go to farm? Yeah. So we want another as well because that's a very valuable Yeah. There's there's a few other events. We just had some quick pictures decided. So, our year in review. Um, we showed this back in October. So, this is just a we're just revisiting this to kind of summarize our year. Um, as we just now know, we have the now. Um so but now Boule playground is built was built um administration board and planning board have initial discussions regarding for client's population growth um and we continued our offsite evacuations we've had a successful one at CSDA also at RMS we had successful one at the um safety complex and then for budgetary action steps we are looking at lighting controls boilers air handles and

014AC units which we will present again in the fall when we go to look our budgets. So, I would say we met that goal and this was our infrastructure goal. Trish, you good if I just All right. Uh, for future ready, I don't know how that got over there, but we can delete that. Um, our highlights for schoolwide behavior matrices are continuing throughout our schools. We did those two years ago. We just continue to refine them, reflect on them, and those are part of our morning routines in our morning meeting. Um they're addressed at assemblies, in the lunchroom, throughout the day. There's um different components of our matricy that hits all aspects of our building. We continued our blue jays and puzzle boards at both buildings. Grade six went to the Brown Center for their

015field trip. Grade level guidance lessons happened throughout our buildings. Uh we had full implementation of morning meetings K through six which all the teachers are loving. The students really respond well to them. We had schoolwide assemblies and then as you saw the presentation earlier was our PTO sponsored events which support the whole social emotional learning aspect for essential standards. Uh many of you were able to attend both of these RMS and CSA uh steam nights. We had the RMS pangia mini golf around the world. That was a highlight of our year. The students did great. They got to really practice their critical thinking, their problem solving, working as a team, practicing those innovative um skills that they have. And at CSDA, they had a curriculum night to summarize their school year and their academic achievements.

016Do you want to anything about the curriculum night? Um yeah, the thing that we changed this year is that we made it um relevant to exactly what is being taught in the classrooms. So parents could actually see you know what's the progress that students are making on different projects and they also got to um take part in some of the lessons for instance you know what is taught in the health class and how does that class actually occur in the um in the gym and parents actually got up and got involved with the actual lesson as students were kind of taking the focus of it for habits of the learner we continued and refined our MTSS districtwide process that includes our SST meetings, um our student profiles. We deployed Eureka Math squared K through three

017and we also deployed CKLA um the pilot grades four through six. Our next step is we're having CKA implemented K through three here, which will now have K through six um involved with CKA. And then we are going to be utilizing our new MTSS position to support these areas along with any MTSS areas that we need to address. And then our fifth goal was uh our highlights where parent square was widely used. This has to do with communication. Um parent square was really um well received by the parents and the community. Um, it's been used for field trips. I would say there may be one or two families that don't use Parent Square to pay for the field trips through Parent Square. Um, our newsletters were successful through Parents Square. Our classroom announcements each week,

018those are highly uh successful. We're seeing a lot of parents viewing those. Um, and then our next step is looking at how we can um integrate the clubs and programs that you can sign up for. We used to do that through my school books. We can look at that through parent square as well. Would you guys be looking at potentially putting like lunch payments on there or is that a different program entirely? Potentially. Yeah, my Yeah, my school box I believe is getting a little bit more costly. So, that might be another thing that we'll have to that might be a good question when Gina comes back. Unless Lauren, you know, but Don is here. Sorry, Don. Parent Square doesn't do much. That's obvious. So, yeah, if it is getting more costly, that might be

019something for us to look at in terms of an alternative. Yeah, it does the newsletters, it does the field trips, and we can do program, but launch is coming. So, those are our five goals. Any questions about the five goals that we presented? Thanks. Lots of feedback about the staff, which is great to hear. Um, do we have any feedback on how the kids were responding to the goals? um like just in terms of like the morning meetings from the kids point of view, the curriculum nights, things like that, like how are the students the new rollouts of the curriculum, how are they responding? I will say, so I'll speak about the Ureap program. It's the first program I've ever experienced in my over 20 years in education that students and staff have loved. I've

020never seen a program so well received by both. Um it's it meets all the students where they're at and it goes at a very developmentally appropriate pace. Um and the teachers feel really successful um implementing as well. Um so there's been much success with Eureka. We're going to show some more school reports in a minute too. Um as far as morning meetings, I mean through my walkthroughs of the building, I'm constantly seeing them. There's good discussions being had and our staff even went to doing closing circles. That's another aspect of responsive classroom where you implement morning meeting and then you close the day out with a closing circle to you know check in with everybody. So our our staff was successful with that. It's kind of like a sandwich method you know. Um Trish you

021want to add anything about that? Yeah I I would definitely say that with the CKLA and Amplify and maybe you can join in as well. Um I I think the depth of knowledge is much higher with the students and particularly with their writing. um they you know they had workbooks oh sorry they have workbooks um to answer some of the key questions for their um for their text. Um but the biggest thing is that they actually enjoyed and understood like when it says um provide evidence or um what type of evidence the the uh questions were asking for they were able to go back and actually practice and understand what that really truly meant. Um I I also saw an increase in their v vocabulary knowledge and they really enjoyed the topics. They they really

022covered you know from science social studies. So it kind of it was a crosscurriculum which was a nice addition. They are wellversed in yellow fever and I learned that's the one we focused on. Yeah, they were they were like they had you know caution tape and you know different they were they went all in and then the end of the year for sixth grade they did a whole unit on Titanic and so each student was given a passenger so they became a passenger and went through the entirety of the experience and then at the very end they found out did you make it or did you not make it um but they I mean there some of the units were highly highly engaging and the and the students really even outside of their ELA block

023went kind of down the learning learning rabbit hole, which is what we want. I want to peique their interest. So, and they and they learned about chocolate and and what the history the history of it and who actually, you know, has to go out and find the chocolate and and they had a whole debate almost like a debate team um episode. So, I went I had been walking through some of the classrooms and the students were h they were engaged like highly so on what arguments they needed to have and what supporting evidence. So because they wanted to um be the debate winners, I said this is good having a effective argument with evidence behind it. It's great. The nice thing about CQLA is how well it integrates the science and soul studies as well

024into into our day which is nice. The the topics range a lot and and I know that because my child does homework in the car and so she's doing all of that. Yeah. And so I got all the topics and I was wellver. It was it was good because I was like, "Oh, that's interesting." And then the next day be something like totally different. Totally different. Yeah, totally. It was great. It does run the gamut of a whole bunch of things. So, it was fun. And Johanna, to answer your question about responsive classroom, how the students respond, really what we see is more of a connection with the students with their teacher by having that morning meeting. They feel that sense of belongingness, that connectedness. Um, it kind of jumpst starts the day for their

025learning. So, it's an important part of the day. Um, Jonathan, you have Yeah. No, I just the um the Blue J awards and the Paw Awards. Um, I know we've had specific staff really focusing on really utilizing those to reinforce inclusivity of students and we've seen a really nice jump in feedback from a lot of them where once they sort of realized if I do include them, if I do engage, right, it is showing community, it is showing all these other things that we value. Um, and in some of these classrooms to a point that, right, it's it's now sort of faded where these kids are just doing it as just part of who we are and what we're doing. uh even to some wonderful emails we've been able to send home um with some

026of our students who have communication deficits who are openly greeting peers in the hallway without being prompted by anybody. Um so it's it's really cool to see. I I love hearing the staff feedback, but I also I love hearing this feedback that the students are responding as well because I think we certainly want curriculum that the staff are excited about, but we equally want curriculum that people are excited to learn because I would imagine that also decreases issues in the classroom. they're interested. And the nice thing about the Eureka program too is there's a there's a home school connection piece too that goes home which is nice to support families at home so they can talk about the concepts that are being taught as well. Thank you. Can I just add one quick thing? I

027wanted to just comment quick on your communication. Um I just want to say you knocked it out of the park as a school district because um I'm just saying it quick as a parent. I've got a high schooler, I've got a middle schooler and I have an elementary school child. Um, and it was very difficult for me to get five different communications last year when I had like just the first grade newsletter and then the others, but now it's all in one spot. So, I just wanted to just say thank you so much as a parent. That has been so incredibly beneficial. So, great job. Thank you. Um, this is our slide showing the percentage of students considered low risk on Ames web. If you would like to speak to it, you're welcome to. But

028as you can see, our the blue columns are last fall um and the green columns are this past spring. So you can see this some great growth across the year, which is what we want to see. And this is for math. Good job. Yeah, we're happy about this. Yeah, a lot of green. Um so same thing but for reading um as you can see like kindergarten doubled there. So fall is the blue, spring is the green. Um grade six knocked it out of the park. 100% of low risk. That's amazing. Is just a quick question. Is this like um are you seeing kind of typical trend with this between like because obviously in the fall they come back um right they're going to be a little lower because they've had that gap um but then

029obviously we've got this big increase like is this like normal trend or are you seeing that like some of the curriculum that we've implemented do you are you finding that maybe is even actually bumping it a little higher? Yep. So looking at because I'm at the second year, right? So I'm looking at last year's data versus this year's data. I would say right now the Eureka math program at RMS is showing a higher math amount of growth in math than we did last year. Okay. Similarly to a lower level at the for CKLA for for ELA. So that's exciting. Um and then obviously for kindergarten like they're coming in first time first time school. So like we would expect a tremendous amount of growth. Absolutely. I will say though coming from other other districts like

030this amount of growth and the amount of students uh considered lowrisisk at the end of the year is extraordinary. Like that's not typical. So we're we're super pleased with that piece. And then now we're looking at you know what are those next steps and how do we increase it even more and make it and also the Ames web the the benchmarking gets challenging as the year goes on too. It's not the same exact assessment as you take the fall. Right. The the threshold threshold gets higher every every um trimester. So can you guys just clarify for me too? What do we mean by low risk? So Ames web defines it. They they have a nice little triangle thing, but they call it tier one, tier two, tier three. I don't love using that because then

031it also gets confusing with like RTI programs and different things of that nature. So um they consider it low risk as in the chances of the student by the end of their school year or by the end of the next measuring period meeting average attaining that average being in the average or higher band. So it's like low risk of not achieving end of grade level expect standards. Yeah. So does a low risk, medium, moderate risk and then high risk. So in in looking at that then like our sixth graders are 100%. We're confident that them going into seventh grade by the end of trimester 1. We're conf we we have a pretty good feeling that they would all be meeting where they need to be at seventh grade based on or above the snapshot of

032Ames web how they performed here. Yep. Yes. It doesn't always translate to other assessments but yes no no correct. I'm just saying for for purposes of like explaining this. Yeah. With it being low risk, like we don't we don't have any concern sending our current sixth graders off to seventh grade and them not being where they need to be or better by the end of the first trimester in seventh grade is kind of what this is on the skills that this measures, right? Yes. Well, of course. Follow just quick followup question obviously without specifics, but if we're identifying students that say are lower or really are at risk like are aside from just general Are there strategies that are being folded into the classroom to help bring these students? Absolutely. That's where our data meetings

033come in and our MTSS meetings. So, at the beginning of the year, we look at all this information and data and we say, okay, the kids who are, you know, well above grade level, what are we doing to extend their learning at the students who are kind of that at grade level right where they're supposed to be. Perfect. Let's keep on going. Kids who are just below, what kind of supports in the classroom can we give for added learning, closing that gap? and the ones who are maybe showing they're at a higher risk. What are we doing to give, you know, um intervention in whatever areas they need, targeted pieces, looking at what what areas within Ames web they're struggling with, what's looking at the classroom and kind of targeting from there. Okay. Yeah. just

034because I know sometimes not everything gets caught in testing and not everybody can get tested for so just making sure that we're trying to catch some of those kids that maybe aren't at severe enough of a level to require separate testing but still need extra supports outside of and this is just one piece of data that we look at. We also look at a bunch a bunch of other things to kind of be like okay what is the student how you know they might be doing super great on as web but they're not showing it in the classroom. So what's the barrier there and how do we knock that down? um or students who are tested and testing is not their jam but they can they're doing really well in the classroom so why are

035we gonna pull them like so we have we have to balance it and look at the student but we look at all of that I think the balance is partially why we're seeing such great numbers it's because we are bouncing that so it's good to hear that that's something that's not just kind of based on testing because you're right not everyone has to test or was a rough day or you know so that's that's great and the nice thing too is we do it fall winter spring so we get to we have multiple checkin points with progress monitoring available too. So we have if if we have students who are showing a risk, we progress monitor them throughout to make sure what we're doing is meeting their needs and having them grow. So yep. So

036moving on from Ames web, which we use throughout the year, we're going to SAS data and this is our longitudinal data for each of our grades. So, um, for ELA reading area, um, this past spring, our grade three, uh, scored 66% proficient or above. Um, grade four was in the 49th percentage area, grade five was 60% proficient, and grade six was 74% proficient for the SAS statewide testing. And as you can see, that's our historical view of that. And then we have our cohort. So here's um last year's grade three and this is where they scored this year in grade five. Sorry, grade four. Well, they're color staircases. Really hot outside. I just want for math. Um I'll speak for grade three. We are really really proud of our grade three students. um throughout the

037entire SAS assessment. We got audited this year at both RMSA and CSTA and we had um great results from that. But for our grade three students, out of the 81 students that tested, over half of them were proficient with distinction. And I I don't remember a time where we have ever seen that. Uh which was outstanding. Um and again, staircase effect. So you can see like here's where grade six was this year and then how they've done over time. Same with grade five and grade four. And this is grade three's first time taking it. Um what Mrs. Boule and I and Mr. Varity and Mrs. Peterson did see is the students came ready to take their test. The teachers did a great job preparing them for the test to help relieve that anxiety, but really

038the students put in their best effort. um very minimal disruptions but very focused. They really put in a lot of time and effort. Again, this is a one-time test. Um so that's our math data. So I just want to also correct me if I'm wrong, but I just want to offer commentary on the fact that statewide testing is very different than a so again we are targeting like so like it because I I could see you know myself as a parent if I wasn't getting this explanation looking at this and going why is it going down? Why is right and so understand and just framing it that this is one test that's going to test a specific kind of way, but we are targeting across. So, how they're measuring here may not be actually indicative

039of how where their level is at. Could be. Yeah. Okay. Additionally, we what we what we're working on now and we have some summer work um planned for July is looking at like cohorts that are regressing like going from say I don't know like 63 to 56. We're looking I we've started to delve into deeper into the SAS data because there we are able to get reports showing which standards we performed above proficiency at or near proficiency or below proficiency. So we're I'm looking at um which standards were below proficiency to start and then where at CSDA where our envisions lessons and um teaching hits those standards to make sure we shore those up moving forward. Well, and I'm seeing too when you look at the color coding, you can see that it looks like

040there's almost always a little bit of a regression between the fourth and fifth and then they kind of bounce back. I mean, I'm looking at that green one. So, spring 28 like fourth, they tend to bounce back when they hit sixth grade. So, it's kind of like it seems that you like switching to a new school, settling into an existent like also might impact. Okay. I just want to provide that framing for people so that if they're looking at these numbers, they're not panicking that like necessarily we're at under 50%, but it's just understanding that it's a fine and we're digging in. Exactly. And they're two totally different assessments. Okay. Yeah. And then this is our grade five science data. And now we're on to behavior. So this is our grid from last year that

041we presented at the last June meeting compared to this year. Um this year we had 79% of our students um 250 of our students out of the 318. So in our principles report you would have saw there's 318 students you are. So 250 out of 318 had zero instances of behavior which is phenomenal. Um which is pretty much aligned to last year's 80% mark. Um and then again 90% of our students 285 out of 318 had one or fewer instances of behavior. So 90% of the students doing doing great. And then we had about 3% of our students this year that had 15 or more incidences of behavior. And then these are the incidences by month. Um I will say that our September was higher than last September, last year's but from October through February,

042we did see like a a 30% decline in behavior, which was great. And then for whatever reason in March we had a 270% increase. So March is a really long month. We're very very busy. Called March Madness. March is really long. That's what I was looking for. Get real spicy in between February break and April. There's a lot going on. Steam night leprechauns. I mean it was pretty busy. Now can I ask you a quick question? the the incident numbers by by month. In some cases, those may be the same student with multiple incidents. Yes. So, in terms of like the MTSS and the responsive classroom, I know it's not necessarily something you would tie bus behavior to, but like again, like what kind of are our target points and how we're addressing incidences on

043the bus? On the bus. On the bus. So, like so are we prepping like I guess what I'm trying to say is like are we prepping kids at school to Like are we prepping bus behavior at school? Are we just crossing our fingers and hoping for the best? No, I mean if there's a bus behavior, Mr. Ber or I got a bus report and then we review the matrix with the students. We have social stories that we go over with the students. We do some role playing with the students. We'll watch videos and double check that that actually happened because sometimes the bus driver saw something different, right? Um but but even you know when we have assemblies or even in the classrooms we remind students that you know when you're on the bus that's

044part of school. You're representing school and the the same expectations for behavior in school is the same on the bus. And we're very fortunate and we're also very active as far as I'm on the I'm on most buses almost every day. If I'm there at the end of the day I'm visiting buses reminding the whole Memphis and CSD and we're very fortunate in this district. Our bus company works really well with us and they invite us over whenever we want to review a video. um there's good communication um with them and we work really closely with them so that we can prevent this and if there are continued issues then it results in taking the student off for a bus and we have that progressive discipline where now it's a one day suspension now it's

045a two-day now it's a three-day and we work with the family too but you know we try to teach the kids how you behave on the bus should be very similar to how you behave in your parents vehicle as well you know so we want your safety great and for CSDA Today 79.2% of the students had zero incidents of behavior compared to 82% last year. Um and 89% of the students had one or fewer incidents of behavior and 3% of the students had six or more incidents. And as compared to even last year it's um October, November, December is kind of consistent. We had a higher um number of incidents in December this year. Um and then but uh and again we also grew in the February, March and April time frame. March. I also

046feel like it was super cold this year and it was pretty warm in December. So maybe the weather just like really for a little I don't know maybe but that does seem that at least at CSD8 that does seem to be a trend of patterns in the past couple years. So but I'm glad to see that the numbers have declined. Um we did actually have more than last year but overall um compared to the year before or two years before we're still down like 64%. Um and then as you know you're talking about bus incidents we actually had um I had less um almost half um bus instances this year but I will also say that as Molinari was saying I also had a lot of more bus suspensions this year. So those were very

047effective. Yes. So, and these include both minor and major all in this. So, we counted each one as one. Y. So, next steps and considerations. Um, we're going to continue implementing and refining our responsive classroom and all of our grades K through six. Uh, continuing those discussions like the bus, but also what how we behave in the lunchroom, how we behave in the hallways. We're going to be rolling out the MTSS intervention position. Um, which will also be a support. So if say a student does come up for an academic piece but also a behavioral piece, we'll be able to deploy that person to go do some observations and maybe support the teachers or help out with some tips and tricks to support that student. Um behavior response and crisis team updates. We're going to

048work as a K through six district with that. Um professional development of tier one classroom management. We're looking into some trainings for when we return back to school in around December uh to support all of our classroom teachers. We're going to be deploying amplify in grades K through three. We're going to continue implementation of Eureka math in grades K through three and then also CKA in grades four, five, and six. And then for budget focus areas, um we are looking at a we're proposing a behavior specialist that will be between both RMS and CSDA. Uh we are looking at we have a launch recess moni sorry a launch monitor at RMS currently. Um but we're going to be looking at adding another one, but really the goal is to get one at CSDA. So we

049have one at both buildings. And then we're looking at our music and art teacher. Um, we already had the discussion earlier about do we have the funds to make that a a 1.0 or do we need to do two halftime positions? Just different options. Um, because of their split time in both buildings. Can I just ask so the behavior specialist, are you thinking about like an additional BCDA or like can you just describe like what that? Yep. I want to explain that because we actually are putting that position in now for FY26. You're going to see it on FY27 budget because it wasn't budgeted. Um, but for FY27, it'll go in that budget as a new position. So, you'll see that. Um, so this is a behavior specialist who is in training to be a

050BCBA. So, they work in our district. They get their hours and they work under our BCBA, but they have all that same training and that same piece as they work towards towards their license. So, they'll be split um across both buildings. And we do have somebody So, both the overseeing BCBA and then the and the behavior specialist BCBA it's called will also be split. Yep. Our our BCBA has been split. Right. Right. In general, yep. And then the behavior specialist will also be split. So they'll be working together and you know working together on plans and support across both buildings. They might have separate like students that they work with. So correct. But the BCBA will oversee kind of everybody but yes but they might have specific um you know as far as supporting the

051behavior plans and such. And schedule-wise it allows their specialty to be in a building every day, right? They're they're typically not going to double up in a building. So we'll have representation in both. And then we just want to thank you the board for your support this year and um all of our families and we want to thank our teachers for their phenomenal performance day in day out. It's not an easy job but they come dedicated to our district and they work with all of our students and they love and nurture them each and every day. And also we we have awesome students here. We have great families, awesome students. So, we want to thank everyone in the community for your support and we just want to say thank you again to Trish and John

052because we're going to miss having them in the district. Yes, we are. Thank you. Thank you for Thank you. Good job. Could I can I ask just a couple questions? Um Meg, we get I feel like we get a lot of questions in the community about test scores. Yeah. Could you educate me or us a little bit more on how we look at SAS numbers? you know, when do we get concerned? When how do we benchmark against other districts? Maybe it just would be helpful if you kind of explained that a little bit like for maybe parents that have questions. Sure. Um yeah, so when in looking at the SAS data when we get it because we just got it kind of a few weeks ago, right, globally, um I don't know what was done

053before I got here, but moving forward, what we're going to be doing is looking at that. It's it's hard because we get the data and then the kids leave us and then we have a new crop of kids in front of us, right? So, it's a great tool to look at for kind of global trends and are we seeing any trends in any specific subject area. So, what we're going to be looking at this summer and all of next year at CSDA especi math um because we have some you know some trends of regression in some grade levels and we want to know why, right? So, is there something that we're is our tool not what we need it to be? Are we missing something in the tool? I mean, our teachers are wonderful and

054they work super super hard. Um, so we want to make sure what we're giving them as tools to use in the classroom or what are matching the standards that the SAS is assessing. Um, also we're working on with kind of all K to six increasing student stamina. So, kids are doing like we saw earlier doing really well on as web. It's a very different level of stamina and depth compared to SAS. Um, so we want to look at those pieces to see how can we increase their stamina and approach toward the SAS data. Um, in reading will be a shift for grade three. It's hard for grade three because it's the first time they take it. So, it's we're kind of flying blind going into SAS. We're using a lot of the modulars and interims

055to kind of get them practicing how to use the tech pieces. So that's not a barrier in having them perform well and show us what they know. Um so we're looking at the tech pieces kind of case, you know, three through six mostly with three. So they know how to like click and drag and move things and they have like double screens that the story moves and the and the questions are over here. So we want them to make sure they know how to do that. And a lot of them aren't great at using a mouse. like that's not their natural habitat. They use like their thumbs and their fingers. Um so how to drag things and move things is we want we don't want that to be a barrier in getting their knowledge like

056across, right? Um, so I've been working with Abby, who's me over in Hollis, and Gina are really looking at what are there specific standards that we're not hitting effectively and how do we approach that to move that forward next year and then what are the tools that we have for math and science, especially at CSDA level, and then backing it up all the way down to kindergarten to kind of lay those pieces to be stronger as we as we move forward. Did that answer your question? Yeah. Yeah, they do. I think a lot of people tie um test scores to our funding and our budget and things like that. And so I I just I know it like comes up on right the good old faces book so thank you. And also that recent post

057on Facebook was old data too. Yeah. No I didn't I I'm not on the Facebook just to add Yeah. I just say just to add another layer um when I met with teachers, we meet with them at the end of the year um for them to update their goals with us and to see you know what were their individual goals and what how how much progress did they make on them or or what have you. Um but I also sat with each of the teachers to show them what their SAS scores were for their individual class and then we looked at some of the students. Um but I just reinforced also knowing the work that was going to be taking place this summer. um based on the scores um how how they could look at

058it and dig deeper as far as the data. So I want the teachers to be be able to come to Meg this summer when they they do the summer work. All right, this is what my class is showing this is the areas that you know is it how we're like Meg was saying is it the materials um is it our envisions program? Is there other gaps that we're not catching? Um, is it uh, you know, can a teacher sit look back and reflect and say, "Oh, you know what? I do remember my class had a difficult time with this particular lesson." Um, you know, do we need to have the math math specialists come in and perhaps um, prepare the teachers a a different way to present the materials? Um, so those are kind of

059all the the types of areas that we're that everybody will be looking at. So I was trying to prepare them. But um I think that's important um to really you know we talk about teaching the students to dig deeper and understand what they're reading. Well it's really important that the the teachers do that extra effort to look at what is um missing or what are the patterns that can be seen and of course also look at where are the areas of um great success by the teachers. Yeah. Yeah. So just one I'm sorry. No, you mentioned just uh Lauren, did you say the the uh behavior specialist was an was a student teacher or were they were they working on something? Oh lure for for BCBA. Oh, okay. Yeah, because it's a very robust program

060to get a certification uh and you're licensed in BCBA. So, it's hundreds of hours. Yeah. Um why I think it's even more than that. Yep. Throughout the program. So, Yep. So, she's in the course of doing that now. That's great. That's great. Maybe future hire if we need one. Yeah. That's always what we're thinking. Go ahead. Um just one other quick question because I think you're doing a great job um really highlighting like the differences between Ames Webb and and SAS. Can you just kind of give me a feel too like um because Ames Web kind of give me an idea of like like it's pretty quick, right? It's like one-on-one usually. It depends. So for grades K and one they have one-on-one fluency pieces. So, for example, for reading, you're doing oral reading fluency,

061you're doing nonsense word fluency, whole word reading fluency. Um, and that's kind of it. And then you go to math and it's some fluency pieces, but also concepts and applications, right? And you're that concept applications, you're doing it on the computer as a student individually. Everything else is one-on-one with an adult. Okay. Right. Um, and how long does that usually? It depends upon the student. Some it about 20 to 30 minutes is what Ames Webb kind of markets, right? Some students finish it in like four and some students finish it in three hours just because depends upon the student, right? But generally speaking, 20 to 30 minutes. Um, and it gives us some really good data on it gives us a nice snapshot of where a student is generally speaking. Yeah. Right. Not a ton

062of able to like really dig down, while they're really struggling in blank. Um, reading is a little bit better. Math's a little bit more difficult. Matt's a hard one anyway testing wise with um SAS it's a lot more multi-step multiple questions multiple parts put it together synthesize analyze it's a much higher level of questioning um and longer so when you're reading a reading comprehension piece in AS web it might be a paragraph you're reading a reading comprehension piece on SAS and it could be seven paragraphs and some kids look at that seven paragraphs he's like nope I am not reading that. That is a long structive reading. Um, so back to that stamina piece also with the questions on SAS, they're talking, you know, if you an if you reading paragraphs 3, seven, and nine,

063where do you think this word fits best and vocabulary and what do you think the author was thinking about A, B, and C? So, it's a lot more of that higher order thinking, depth of knowledge, questioning um that. Yeah. So, it's different test. Yeah, absolutely. And so and right they are testing multiple days and like how many hours like approximately a day. Yeah. So Ames web it's quick. We do usually it's for the youngers it's different because kindergarteners can only handle it for a few minutes at a time. So we do it we finish it over two weeks at RMMS right with sporadic times that we're testing. CSDA usually a day for the reading test a day for the math test. Okay. For as for Ames web. Yeah. And then or but it's in the

064it's in the morning and we give them we give them like an hour and a half to two hour block the class finishes they're done and there's a break day in between if I remember correctly right for for Ames where we just kind of bang it out like usually it's like for SAS we have yeah SAS it's a we give them a 2-hour block of time the students are allowed to take as long as as they need um typically kids are done within an hour hour and 15 but again it ranges some students are done in 20 minutes and some need multiple days because They're just taking time. This year we saw fewer kids rushing to get it done, taking their time, which was great to see. Yeah. Um but so on average, it sounds

065like for SAS, it's about an hour a day for four days. Up to up to two hours a day. Up to two hours. Yeah. And for ARMAT, for third grade, it's a day for reading, a day for writing, a day for math with a break day. With a break day similar to grades four and six. Fifth grade, you add another day for science. Do you feel really quick, this will be my last question for them, is is the SAS testing progressing like does it change with like our technology and our curriculum like back to what you're saying in terms of looking at like a seven um paragraph uh essay that they have to read. I mean we are learning in a different way now with like I mean even us as adults like the information

066that's coming to us like you know on our phones I hate to say but like um has is do you do you find that SAS changes like with the like progresses or does it pretty is it stay pretty like it's pretty st I I I mean I haven't I haven't heard that it's progressing I would say the SAS that I've seen over the last fiveish plus years looks very similar every year just different types. The types of questions are the same. The details of the questions are they differ. Um the grading of the writing has changed. The grading of the writing has changed. Last year they did it used to be way back in the day you had humans reading it and scoring it. Um last year they went back to that which is why

067we didn't get our results till like the end of June because it obviously takes longer. Um this year it's more of an AI with spot checks of humans. Um, so that made it we were able to get scores back faster which was nice. Um, so but the test itself really hasn't I wouldn't say it hasn't changed much and online there's some practice example there's some practice questions for families to look at too. Um, our teachers do a good job prepping like we starting in January we try to have our teachers spend some time showing them how to use the tools and exposure to some of the questions so that it's not a shock when they first see it. Sure. It relieves that test anxiety piece too, right? And and me had mentioned modulars and that's

068what it is. It's practice. Um and at CSDA the teachers actually can use the modulars on their Smartboard and to demonstrate so they can solve a problem together or read a passage together so that they can understand um you know basically trying to teach them like this is what you are expected to do and this is what they're kind of looking for. Right. As far as I was just going was just making sure like I get that we have to like design our curriculum right so that we do well with SAS but at the same time right like what if there's other things like that we're being you know we're successful at just not on the test right or right you know it is on the you know you know what I'm saying so I'm

069just trying to get a feel for just how it works better. So thank you. Yeah. So I have a question on my thoughts on that, Jonathan. This might be more a question for you, but like I know in past experience sometimes there's alternative testing too that's offered for students that aren't just aren't able to complete this type of standardized testing. Are those included in these scores or are those different those are different because I just was like okay and that's a really small we have I think a very small number of students who yeah who are going to have alternatives that's that's going to be kind of its own assessment. Yeah. Do we get those scores as well or do we get like a sense of like where those students are in addition? We we

070get the scores. So we we do get I don't know if we had anybody actually take them this year. I think everybody exempted. Which one? Well, we have the DM. We had we had a few students that get a couple. Yeah, I think I I think I think there was a couple. So nobody had two. I think we had two. Yeah. Okay. So So in a way we are tracking some of that as well to target. Okay. Yeah. We don't want those ones to go. Correct. Correct. I hate standardized testing. reminded me of like when I was in high school and I was like that's taking me as a skill. Also, there's cupcakes because my daughter will eat all of them and I'm not interested in that sugar. Thanks. Sharing is okay if we get

071a copy of the the principal's report. Yeah, I can I can I can send you I No, we didn't. We usually would, but it takes a lot of time to get that data. So, we we had to wait till the year ended. So, we missed that deadline. So, I will share it to you guys. sharing. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Anything else as the air report? Great job. Thank you. Thank you guys very much. Um would you would the board be comfortable if we excused Megan and John? Yes. Yes. I mean, I'm sure they'd love to hear the public hearings, but the three public hearings. The three public hearings. Um just before you go, Jonathan, in particular, is there anything about special education that we need to know or the trust or anything that

072you need us to know before you deliver on that? No, I mean, I think the biggest thing that I'm excited for the district is that we've been able to bring in a lot of our our own people to replace contracted positions, which and our our contractor providers have been great, but it it is just a different sense of community when it's somebody in in your building is there every day and wants to be here and continue. So, um, I know staff and admin and everybody else involved at the SAU, it's been a lot of hard work sort of getting to this place over the past couple of years, but I think it's I think it's in tremendous shape to sort of take the ball and and move forward with certainly with special education and services

073for students. Thank you. Thanks, Sean. Thanks, Mag. Thank you. Have a good night. Thank you. Okay, so we're going to move on to public hearings. We have three of them. We have the maintenance expendable trust fund, the retained fund of balance, and the special education expendable trust fund. So, I am going to I'm going to go ahead and make a motion that the board recess until the conclusion of the of the three public hearings on the maintenance expendable trust fund, the retained fund balance, and the special education expendable trust fund are complete. Can I get a second? Second. Great. All in favor? Perfect. So, and if anyone comes to the public hearings, you can also have cupcakes. We are going to recess at 657. 657. All right. So, okay. So, I'm going to start by

074explaining um the first one, which is the uh expendable trust. So, principal um Molinari and Boule have identified several needed repairs and improvements for their buildings during the budget process. at the hearing for the FY26 budget, uh, the Brooklyn School Board recommended that the funding source for these items, you know, be through the Brookline Maintenance Expendable Trust. So during the deliberative session, the amount going into the maintenance expendable trust went from 360,000 coming from the fund balance to 300,000 coming from the budget. So the voters approved this change during the 2025 voting session. Therefore, this is the official request to use that expendable trust for the following expenses, but at a reduced amount. So you're going to see on this I think you guys have in your packet this um outlines what the requested items

075are. So you're going to see numbers 1 through five. Um that is currently the order of pri prioritization but hard quotes are currently being developed. Um if the total for all of them come in at 300,000 great and then we'll be you know all set to do all of them. If that comes in over 300,000, which right now that estimate is 349,724, then the 1 through five is the pri prioritization. Um how however, we're going to really look closely at four and five, the roof replacement and the bathroom renovations. Um because the if the if the bathroom renovations are in a little bit of worse shape than the roof, we might swap those two out. So that four and five is maybe tied and you know, we're going to see what condition they're actually at

076at that point. Um so the items that you have listed here are intercoms and bells and phone. That's um phase two of that project. Um and then related to that there was um an additional expense to get the system going through FY25. That's that 10,724 that you see. Then we have the roof placement for the Milford Street side. The bathroom renovations at our RMS. And then CSDA we have um our step program and office renovations. we need to kind of reconfigure some space for the programs that are growing that are fabulous at CSDA we're very excited about. So that's what we have here um for this first public hearing for the expend uh maintenance expendable trust fund. Okay. Um do we ask questions before I open anybody who um you could you could ask questions

077now if you have questions and then we're going to open it up to testimony. What is our I know the hard codes are being developed. What's our target date of we want them in and kind of solidified by? Um, we're looking at as soon as possible because some of these renovations have to happen over the summer, all them. So, we're looking as soon as possible. Beginning beginning of July. Yep. As soon as possible. All right. Are there any other questions before I Okay. Um, so I will open this up for public comment at 700 p.m. on the nose. Um, does anybody have any Do I have to go through this with nobody here? Yep. So, but you don't you don't have to do it twice. You can only do it. So, normally we have to

078do it twice if there is people in the public, but there's no one here, so you can do it once. Do you have a question? Yeah. Just So, this is just kind of like So, we know that 300,000's already been approved, right? You're just kind of giving us a heads up kind of like this is what the estimates looking looking like so far, but we So, tonight we're just going to talk about it. No decisions to make just yet, right? No, you're you're going to vote later on say um giving us the the per permission to spend the 300,000 that the voters voted on, right? Okay. So, you're going to give us permission to spend that 300,000 and then knowing that these are the priorities that we'll be staying within for that 300,000. It's a

079formality. Yes, that's a formality. We just need to know where it's going. And it's also them making us aware that we the voters had agreed to the 300,000. The quotes are more than that. So, they're working to see if we can get that lower. if not the explanation of where they'll be a little give. Yeah. Um and and just so you the one piece I'm so sorry I did not go over is the current balance of our maintenance expendable trust is $64,89. So when we add that 300,000 that balance um uh will be 364,000 but we'll be removing the 300,000. So we're going to stay at that same balance the $64,89. So I just not necessarily question but would just like certainly and like bathrooms need to be flexible. But I would also like to

080keep Dan off the roof this year. Absolutely. If there's anything that we need to do to make sure that that Sure. like he's not up there having to pass it, I would appreciate that being considered. Absolutely. Thank you. Um I will see if there's any testimony in favor and any testimony in opposition. And for anybody watching at home, I did that quickly because there's nobody here. But so I'm just calling that out. All right. So, we have to close public. I know. Can I So, can I go ahead and I can close this? Yes. All right. So, I'm going to close the public hearing for the um school building maintenance expendable trust at 7:02. Sign that after. Yes. I'll send you your copy. Okay. Okay. I'm sorry. I hope I'm not like totally because you're

081just closing. I just want to understand though. So, if we have $64,000 in there and we're getting 300, right? Why can't we just if if it will that can that cover anything that goes over? No, because it that has to stay. You want to keep a balance in that fund. Money in the fund. One, you want money in the fund. Two, these were the items I correct me if I'm wrong, but when we asked the community for, these were things we were going to do with a price on it. Okay. So, we don't want to go over that. No, no, that makes sense. I just wanted to make sure. I didn't know if the the fund was just extra money that we had seen for this past year that we do. You see what I'm

082saying? That like now we could put towards that. I just some emergency money. Yeah. The money needs to stay in that fund. Yeah. Emergency money. So it's like so like when the fire panels needed to be replaced I think came from that when fortunately we are getting a new boiler but like if the boiler had decided to take a little vacayer we would use this. Sure. I just didn't know if there was a separate you know like I just understand what that was. It's a lot. I get it. Thank you. No worries. You're totally fine. There's lots of fun. Um, let's see. Uh, retained fund balance. Is that next? Um, we're doing the retained fund balance next. So, we're going to open that at So, I'm going to open the retained fund B the retained

083fund balance public hearing at 7:03. Okay. And I'll give an explanation. So, there's a business office memo that you'll find in your packet that pertains to this. Um so as you know the projected year-end balance is negative due to largely the number of contracted power educators that we had to hire. Um we are hopeful there will be more potential power educators applying for FY26. However, we do need to cover this anticipated um negative balance. So, in this public hearing, we are requesting to use the full amount of the FY25 retained fund balance, which is $140,000 um to address what would otherwise be a negative fund balance at the year end due to these costs. Cover everything. Um so, it it may so we will know more as the year kind of round rounds out and

084we usually have those numbers by August, would you say, Donna, that we kind of knowish Augustish? Um but that's why we're going to have a plan B um with the next public hearing, but right now we're going to stick to the uh retains fund balance and using the $140,000 and that will take that down as well. And that will take that down if there is. So let's say things do come in, we don't need to use the full $140,000. We would just leave it in the retain like are we going to do we need to get permission for that also or is that just a given? That would just be a that would just be a given if we don't need it and then it goes it turns into revenue at the end. Okay. Yeah.

085Yeah. We're given permission to when we vote and deliberate on this, it'll be to give them permission to withdraw the whole 140 if necessary. And then whatever is not used then goes back. Yep. Um any other questions? What is a retained fund balance? Like what is the difference between the re like just help me understand what's um because there's obviously multiple um funds, right? What is this one used for? If you don't mind giving me like an easy definition. So the retain Do you want to jump in with this one too? This one is is not is not my favorite. This is not my favorite one. Sit with Donna for this. Maybe you could give me a tutorial. How about that? I don't want to take No. And this this is not my favorite fund

086fund balance. It's money for the end of the year. Go ahead. Yeah. So the retained fund balance is um something that they try to carry over every year. So there's x again x amount of money for in case of y like we were just saying you want to leave some extra money in that uh facilities in case of something happening. Um and so the board votes every year on how much they would like to be able to keep in the retain fund balance as long as long as we have it. Yeah. And um unfortunately for Brookline due to large special ed costs, we've been having to sometimes use the special I mean the retain fund balance um or we think we have to but then once the final year is closed out we sometimes we

087settle out and don't need to use it. This year we've been in the negative all most of the year. Um we likely will have to use some of it. We're hoping we won't have to go into the next plan of actually using the special ed trust because right now if you look at when I get to my re um my report you're going to see right now we do have to use a special ed trust as well to cover where we're at. Okay. So that retain fund balance is just something that is there and then um if it's not used it's money that goes back to the taxpayers. Okay. So yeah, for you it could really you as a taxpayer it's probably $2 in the end that you're saving, but you know what I mean?

088It's just it it is a large chunk of money that we have the availability to use in case of emergency, but Okay. And it's focused more around so special education, but what like is there like anything other administrative? It could be used for anything in in the budget. The next the next um one I I'll explain what the next trust is when we get to it with the special education trust, but no, this 140,000 can be used towards anything in the budget. We were just explaining that largely due to special education costs. That's why our budget is in a negative. But we wouldn't use this for facility stuff, right? That would correct. So for myself, that's the previous correct. That's the maintenance one. Yeah. So there's a maintenance one. And then this one is specifically

089for administrative kind of things. General, right? General general budget. This is like general in the budget, not facility. Anything that was in the budget for FY25. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So we can we could in theory and we're not going to combine it with facility if we needed to. Right? Like that's what I understand. Well, well you you you can't combine it for anything that was kind of proposed extraneous from what was included in the FY25 budget. So all the items that were in the FY2, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe. Yes. It's it's it goes towards the FY25 budget. Yeah. Cost. And so our next budget starts on Tuesday, right? July. Is that Yes. July one. Yes. Um Okay. And so is there are we facing just having the same issue but now with

090less funding next year in terms of like being in the negative with Donna is making a face. No that's a yes. Okay. Thanks. Okay. Because that's my concern is it like I hope not. Right. I mean is there is there always the ch but but we have our FY26 budget which is going to cost which is going to um cover the cost that we have predicted for FY26 obviously having to contract more. So, we are hiring and we are working to hire every single day. So, we're not going to have that answer as far as how successful or not successful we've been till later in the summer. Um, but we are I believe we have six power educator position open openings right now. Three in each building is what's open. So, if those six if

091none of those are filled by the end of the summer and we have to have six contract providers, then that's where we're starting. Um I I'm hopeful and I'm more optimistic than most, but I'm hopeful that we will have at least, you know, three or four or five of those covered. If we were like, let's say hire mid year, so like let's say we had to contract in September, in the fall, right? Um and we were able to either hire and or convert positions inhouse, would that then like we would then start being able to like reduce that? Correct. Absolutely. Yep. Because we would we would let that contractor go for the year. Correct. No, we can let go at any point. Absolutely. Any other questions about this before I Sorry, I did have one.

092So, I'm not reading the manifests this year, but I remember from when I was reading them last year, we do have at least a couple of people who are contracted and they've gone from year to year. Are those different positions than contracted parents? So, if so, we we had a long-term sub that was a contracted provider last year. That person is no longer here. We had a contracted speech pathologist, but we've now hired in house. We're very excited for CSDA. Um I'm trying to think of what else we had as a contractor. two names that were listed paras that were contracted but they seem to be contracted from year to year. There there's there's there are two contracted paras that we have kept year to year. Are those budgeted in or is that part of

093this extraneous cost? They're slightly part of the extraneous cost. I'm not recommending you get rid of them because there Yeah. I mean well and that's and that that's Yeah. And I don't want to go too far into detail regarding that, but if you you know I'm just trying to figure out like if those are different positions versus like that we wouldn't so we but we wouldn't consider letting those go. Not right now. Okay. But in the future if we were able to eventually fill you know it's a it's a balancing act of predicting because we have I believe 28 32 power educators. I think we have 32 power educators in the district for FY26. So, right now with our CBA and all these other pieces, do I believe we're going to hire all 32? Again,

094I'm more optimistic than than most, but but it may we we may not, right? So, kind of looking at um but in the future, should anything change and we would be able to, then we would have those contracted positions turn into employment positions. Just trying to get a sense of like what what contract because I know like when I was reading them last year there were there was two line like more than one line for contracted Paris. Just trying to get a sense of like which ones are. Yep. Absolutely. Anything else before I open the floor? Okay. I'm going to open the floor for public comment uh at 711 and see if we have any testimony in favor or testimony opposition. And again, going very quickly for those watching at home, there's nobody here. Okay.

095All right. Just like to call it out. You're out. Wait, we have to close it. Oh, wait. I do. Uh, you have to declare this public hearing in that case. And I'm going to declare this public hearing closed at 711. Okay. All right. All right. And the last one. So, we have the special education expendable. Oh, please. Thank you. I apologize. All right. Yep. So, I'm going to open the public hearing for the special education expendable trust fund at 7:12. All right, Lauren. Now, you and this is also included um on the bottom of your um expendable trust sheet that you had in your packet. Um so, at this point in the year, we are not anticipating the use of special education trust funds for FY26. However, we are requesting to use up to 60,000

096for the FY25 um budget due to the end of the year balance projected to be a negative balance. This request from the public hearing on the retained fund balance is to use the full 140,000 but then utilize the special education expendable trust only if necessary and only up to $60,000. So, right now the special education trust, this would actually be the first time that this trust has been used um in my tenure here um which has been about eight years or so. Um, so what we've done is in we've slowly added to this trust and you know looking at to keep we kind of you know we're aiming for a balance of 250 to 300,000 kind of as a safe spot because special education costs are volatile and varied. Um you know so we look

097to keep that balance. Um so right now our current balance is 292,297. Um we're not we're not adding any for FY26. It wasn't put on the warrants. Um, so we would potentially use up to 60,000. We would not exceed that. So therefore, if we did use that 60,000, it would be 232,297. And if it's not used, it would stay at the 292,297. With this one versus the retained fund, this one, would we specifically have to notate that we were using this to pay Harris? Like would it have to be tied to special education? It can't just be used for anything. No, it it would be applied to the FY25 budget as a whole, but our reasoning and your logic as a board is understanding that a great deal of the costs and the change in

098to have the budget be negative fell in the right. I just want to make sure someone comes to me in the community and is like, are you guys slushing the special ed fund over? No, it is understanding why special ed hiring in order to meet our contracted needs for PARE educators. We needed to take this money. So that's that would be like what Looking at the report, you see where the negatives are. You're gonna see it. It's our special ed account. Yes. Circled it for you. Well, I just want to make sure there's that has come up at deliberative a few times that people want to make sure that we're not just like having hidden trust funds and like so I want to make sure that we're we're being very clear here that we're using

099the retained fund first because it's just it's a budget issue and if needed we're using special ed fund to meet our special ed obligations that have come up over the course of there any other questions about this one for the board? Okay. I'm going to open public comment here at 7:14 p.m. Uh, any testimony in favor? Any testimony in opposition? Again, quick and speedy. Um, and so I'm going to go ahead and close the public hearing. Nobody was here at 7:15 p.m. Thank you. All right. And that is it for the public hearings. Do I have to reopen and resume? Recon. I do. All right. So, I'm going to reconvene our board meeting at 7:15 p.m., but I don't need to take a vote on that. Right. Correct. Okay. All right. At this time, I'm

100also going to open public input um at 7:15. And as nobody is currently here to provide any public input, we're going to move ahead with our revenue and expense updates. Okay. First of all, I just want to um speak again about that parent square question and food service for Johanna. I think you asked. I might have misspoke. Parent Square might collect for food service. The issue might be our food service software that it's mosaic or something. I think the issue might be between those two, but I do know that Kelly and Amy Cassidy have talked about the rising costs and so I do think they're looking into alternatives. Yes. Yeah. That's just something that I've heard quite a bit of of like parents are like, I'm trying to put money out there, but then it's

101also like a fee per if you have kids at different schools. It's like such a pain in the in the butt to apparently Allison can speak to and maybe others like some of them are saying they're having to do more than one fee person. I don't know. Yeah, because they have to do like separate schools. So, I just I would love to put out there that sensitive feedback we're getting if there was a way. I do believe they have been looking into it. I just I didn't want you to look up parents square and say, "Hey, they do do food." I think I might have misspoke. Can you just could you just take that as a takeaway just to make sure that we're looking into that because to Johanna's point like I was one of

102those parents who I put 10 15 on at a time because my kids are hit or miss with buying lunch and then all of a sudden the fees went up and I'm paying fees at two different schools and so I upped my amount but I know not everybody can do that but then also then it's just sitting there because they haven't used it and I can't get it back. So it would be great if we could Yep. might it might seem minimal but Yep. No, definitely it's adds up over time. I understand. Okay. So, as far as the report goes and as we were just discussing um if you just look at the second page at the bottom of the revenue, you'll see um our projected fund balance is currently a negative $156,821. And that's

103why we're proposing to you to use $140,000 of the retained fund balance, which would leave us with $16,821 still that we would need. And that's right now what we think we would need out of the special ed trust fund. Can I just chime in? Um, but there is actually um revenue that's going to be coming in that will be between 16,000 and $20,000 that we're looking at. I that was the what I shared with you a couple weeks ago. that's included with 156 that I already Yeah, I already incorporated that. However, I I will say that um last year we thought we were going to need to use a special ed trust and we didn't end up having to. Okay. So, you know, when we get down to the final days, things shake out, other

104other accounts we can, you know, okay, we stop the spending on other people. And is this something too that will may possibly be addressed with like the new stuff program going in at CSDA? Like is that is is that going to impact this revenue at all with the special ed stuff? Like I know it probably won't necessarily reduce the number of repairs, but like having that space does I don't know. I don't even know. I I don't um revenue how like I I guess I just need a more context. Like there are 32 pairs. If we have kids in the in this step program, are we still required to have that same number of pairs? Like I guess that's what I'm trying to Oh, sure. So I mean yes. I mean really so the number

105of powers is driven by students special education plans, right? So you know those are team team decisions based on the student needs. So it's not really tied exactly to well you have X program so it's X Paris. It's not really tied to that. Um but I I understand what what what you're saying. So that's I can't really speak to whether that really would change based on this. Yeah. And then um are we getting um revenue from Medicare? Like I know some are we charging Medicare at all for some of the services? Um Yep. So Medicaid is is listed here under the federal. Yeah, it's under the federal. It's Medicaid. Yep. Okay. Yeah. I know that's not a huge revenue, but I Yeah. Oh, it's it's it's decent. Yeah. Yeah. Right now it's 31,6 I just

106saw some checks go in my safe today, so it's going to be a little So we're hoping there's more. Um so anyways, yeah. So, I was saying right now we think we would need to use 16,821 of the special of the special ed expendable trust. Again, that could change, but that's where we are at. And this was as of June 17th, 10 days. Almost 10 days ago. Okay, great. Any other questions? Anything else to add? Anything that you want to Anything else that you need to kind of know about or highlight? No. Um, summer is very busy for us at the business office. So, uh, we, um, literally right now are in the middle of payroll one, which involves doing prior year pays for the end of FY25, paying new salaries for FY25. Um, so

107we're working in two separate connection groups. It's a lot going on. Um, and then we'll be prepping for the audit which will be happening I believe it's the second week in August. Okay. And then will you have like final numbers for this year? I think those came in August last time, right? It was the August meeting or the September. We probably will not. It'll probably September, maybe October only because we're also getting a new VA. So it's we got a lot going on. Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. I just want to just want to put it in my head at some point we'll be getting kind of the final numbers and we'll be we could probably give you a better idea of like how much we after the auditor has come but it won't necessarily be

108final. Okay. Great. All right. Thank you very much. Um or do we need a related? Whatever you feel you want to go home. Do you want to go home? Yeah. Thank you. You're welcome. Not a problem. Thank you, Donna. All right. Um, committee updates. So, at this point, I'm going to open the floor to board members here. If you have any updates for any of the committees you'd like to share, like to take this time to open up the floor and you can share them. Uh, yeah. I mean, I every meeting policy committee, I can update that. We've done some good like we've gone through and cleaned some things up. Um, I know they just got the spring review that, you know, very optimistically asked me if I had read. I have not read it

109and do not intend to read it. But, um, that's been so I think we're going to be that our next meeting is in August. So, I feel like we're we're just going to kind of continue planning things up there, but it's been uh for for everything building. Um I got to meet with Michelle Dakota and um Alan Rosenberg this week. Um Michelle is our town planner and Allan is the co-chair of the planning board. Um so, they asked us to help with um our submission to with capital improvement. Um, so I did ask Gina, but it sounds like she's out. Um, but the capital improvement plan is due on Friday. So I'm wondering, Lauren, if you might have access to that, if you could send that to me. Um, as well as the facilities asset

110plan. Okay. Um, and I will work I can work to get those done. Okay. Um, and if if there's anyone else in the SAU that I should work with with on that, you know, please just let me know. Absolutely. Um, so that was on the capital improvement side. Um, and then I had I had a couple other kind of committee things that I was hoping to talk about, but I didn't know if you wanted to talk about any of your like actual assigned things. I know we I I'm not I know Allison, you're heading it up and we have our dates for the teacher uh Brookline teacher negotiations. So, that's all said. I don't know if you want to add anything else there. So, all I was going to say is that we've got we've

111got like five or six meetings planned out and we're ready to rock and roll um August, September, whenever. I don't have an update, but can I like or will you be reaching out to us to us for the Yes. as soon as we get the um the notification that they're ready to start, which will be typically August, then we'll reach out and we'll get our meeting scheduled. Um and then for the co-op budget study, I haven't started that yet. I was wondering like if there are um staff or community members that I should be working with, like just how to think about that over We can get some names for you. Yep. Yeah. Because I think I think Gina had somebody in mind that we can hire to help with that zen between Yeah. Tracy,

112the person we want to hire and Gina maybe to kind of get that going. Yeah. Yeah. If we could owe you a bunch of information, it sounds like Yeah. No, if I mean then that's great. Then we can work on that in the summer and then hopefully start right in September. Um so further so co-op policy is not meeting at present. Um or SAU policy is not meeting at present. Um because I think we are waiting for the first uh evaluation to That was what I think she mentioned to me. Um, so I'll update you if that changes. Um, and then I'm already about a third of the way to the teacher lunchon planning. So I've got that under control and I'm chasing down a rock. Yes. Right now. And you need to include me.

113Yes. And I'm gonna email Heather. Sorry. Um, I I did participate in the exit interview with our outgoing superintendent. Um I I have our committee met, we flushed out what we wanted to ask, we conducted the interview, we did debrief. Um but I really want to share those um what we found with Gina as well. And so I'm holding that until the next meeting. So we will do a non-public I was going to say that we will do a nonpublic to go over those. So just know it was it was done. It was it was great. We got a lot of information. Um it will be shared with you. Just want to wait until um we have our full our full group with us. So that'll be August. You're anticipating. Yeah. Um anything else? One

114other thing I know Lynn isn't with us unfortunately. She was I think had volunteered to look at some policy and advocacy um items um and kind of report back to the to the group. Um, I'd just like to kind of ask some questions in terms of if that is going to be a routine and and a standard committee um or a standard update um given by her or one of us. I'd like it for it to be a discussion. Um I'm not sure like are you talking about like so we I had proposed or one of us had proposed a kind of advocacy or legislation um tracking committee. I forget what we had called it. Um, and in May, uh, we had talked about it and Lynn said that she would volunteer to kind of

115keep track of some of the legislation that is coming down from the state, um, and how it might be affecting us in the district. Um there's been a lot of movement it seems like especially around EFAs, open enrollment, those types of legislative pieces that really are going to affect our budget. I can say that we did talk about open enrollment at the last policy meeting and Dan, you can certainly jump in if you remember. I I asked Gina about it and she was of the understanding that that's not something right now that we just because like there's a lot of questions I think she said. Is that what she said? a lot of questions that it was kind of being quietly not implemented like it's not something that we need to look at in terms

116of the open enrollment right now and I can certainly make a note to follow up on the next policy meeting because they did seem to have okay so before we go down the rabbit hole of policies to Tracy's question I think so I don't know how often you guys check your email but the school board association does a really good job putting out coms with line items And I think that's what Lynn was going to eyeball and and if there was anything that was really red flag to kind of raise it and just make sure we're all aware of it and if we haven't seen it, be able to talk about it. Gina, I also spoke with Gina about doing something similar um because I know that she gets communications particularly from our lawyers so

117that if there is something immediate or more immediate than some of these more hey what if possible things that are being um proposed um that we really talk about that you'd be able to give updates on that as well. So, um, that's Does that answer kind of like what in terms of like a standing Yeah. conversation surrounding it? I think I think it's I think it would be helpful to have it be standing. Um, just because it feels like there are so many things happening. I think there gosh, I don't even know how many pieces of legislation that have been proposed. Um, and again, I I think it's really going to affect our our budget. um and our and our budget planning. Um and so, you know, I just want to make sure that as

118a board we have the space and time to talk about this legislation. So, I was just going to say I mean a lot of legislation that is coming out, we do talk about in policy like it comes up in policy, it's brought up in policy. It's it's something that is on and like um there was one piece of legislation that we had discussed in nonpublic that ended up getting table. Yes. So, we did we did update that. So, I mean, a lot of that is already happening. I'm certainly more than happy to to be more like to share like what we're talking about, but I do think some of those conversations are already happening. So, Sure. And then that would be great because I'm not on policy. I could I could certainly, but how I

119I don't know if maybe though there's maybe two different things here though. Hear me out. Right. So, from what I hear what you're saying is kind of something that I think we also talked about the fact that like how So, how are we making sure that our schools are be being represented with our values? Like we were voted to the school board, right? And like making sure that that is the how it's being voted on at the state level. I think what you're saying is okay now it's when it's a policy, right? So, it's already been voted on. Now, at the policy level, you're it sounds like and I you're just saying you'll keep us informed, but it sounds like you're saying like before it even gets there, like how are we making sure that

120we're advocating because like I know that a couple of us have gotten some communications, right? And is other other sus reaching out and I know that none of us have responded or anything like that because we respond as a board. I think it's more of like are we just making sure that we're advocating for the our values within Brooklyn, you know, to make sure that they're following up with what our like our voters or like our discussions at town meeting at the state level also. Is that what you're asking? Yeah, I think it's Yeah, I think it's both. I mean, I think it's great to know that we can hear how legislation that has passed will be affecting us and our policies, which is great. I think we've we've gotten that. Um but yeah, I

121I would like to to have the space and to dive deeper and to see if we can um you know, discuss it as a board in terms of advocating for what we think as a school board is best for running the like ma having a well-man having a well-run or well-managed, however you want to say it, fully funded school. Um, so I will say that as school boards, we're governing boards. We're not advocacy boards. Um, right. And we're not, but the New Hampshire School Board Association does does let us do that. So, to a degree and, um, I know I personally am not comfortable with us advocating as a wholly as a board. I would like to see us do it as individual members. if we are individual community members if that is something we

122want to do. Um I I did reach out I I believe and I feel this is a little bit outside our scope of what we were elected to do. So because our role as school board we are what we're elected to do in terms of governance when the meeting starts we engage in our role when the meeting ends we are we pause right um so working outside of that capacity um is not something that I am necessarily comfortable with um I also know like to the point of we had spoken about a potential legislation and it was a good 20 30 minute conversation. If we did that for everything that came down, our meetings are going to be incredibly way too long. So, um I on the New Hampshire School Board legislation thing that comes

123out, it does say like please please reach out. Please let your voices be heard. Um, and and I and I asked for some clarity on that because I I I know there are some of us that that want to actively be Well, then I think it should come to a vote as a board. Well, no. Well, it should be I I I should make a motion that Hey, Tracy. No, you don't get to make a unilateral. If I may just jump in for one second. So, this maybe So, because this is sort of a gray area, um, maybe we do have the attorney coming in August. Yeah. And it may be a good time to have this discussion to ask whether whether we can act as a board. Why is the school board not not

124able to do this but the select board, the library trustees and the conservation committee in so I will say from from this from my point of view as as a person who sits on this board but also as somebody who has somebody sitting on the library board the library board doesn't tend to from from what I have been it's the it's the library friends or the library but that's but that's not the library. Okay. So I misspoke. So I I apologize. So one, I think this is also a conversation we need to have with the full board. But two, I think one of the biggest things that we hear at Deliberative and one of the biggest votes of feedback that we get is you guys need to be nonpartisan. You guys need to be nonpartisan.

125And it's not partisan. But it is but No, it is not. No, it is not. It is not. It is for the benefit of our schools. It is for the benefit of our town. We have legislators from this town that are actively supporting legislation that takes money away from us. This has direct this directly ties to policy and it directly ties to our role in budget. Oh go ahead. No, no. I was just going to say I mean I I really I don't think we're going to have an answer tonight and we also have a member of the board missing and this is a very a very important topic, you know, and I do think it would be probably in the best interest to speak with the school board association just to clarify. So what

126they have on their website we shouldn't take at they're coming in August because there's some gray areas about our roles and responsibilities and I'd like clarity from them and not interpreting what is written because yes I' I I've seen what's there right and and when and when I reached out um I got a response back from directly from Becky Wilson um and she said that um we could send communications to our reps or senators from all board members in one email or communication if we are all signed on if we are all signed on. Right. And that's why we should have a we should have but I'm telling you right now I'm not going to sign on to that. So that's not all. So we we're not going to do we're a majority. We don't

127have to. No all. This says all. This doesn't say majority. This says all. And further she says, however, in the situation, if there's a desire for a board member to speak from an individual level about the impacts on you or your district as a resident or a certain town district, we would suggest that you identify that you're speaking on your own behalf, not as behalf as not on behalf of the board as a whole. So, you're not comfortable with us writing a letter saying we okay? And and and I'm not trying to be argumentative, but this says all. It's not a majority thing. I don't want somebody else speaking on my behalf. I think it would be personally my viewpoint is that as I send communications out supporting or not supporting things that are going

128on at the legislative level, if all five of us did it individually, five comms versus one with five names on it is more oftentimes more impactful. Anyways, it looks much it looks so much better. It would look so much better. I don't agree with it being disagree and I disagree with that. That's fine. But we should be having this conversation, Allison. And you didn't put it on the agenda. And I and I reached back out to you and told you why I'm not availility. No. And you I I need to put an end to this. No, you don't. You are not allowed to rule unilaterally. So, right. So, right now, so I I'm just going to as as we look at the agenda and and I'm not saying we have to stop the conversation, but

129I just want to kind of bring us back to the agenda. So, this this was committee updates. that's what's on the agenda and I know there's discussion about what's on the agenda, but as the it's a committee up update piece, I do think that hearing your request for either a new committee or looking at that can definitely be on the table and we can look at that and pursue that. Um, and I do think it would be beneficial for the entire board, all five members to hear and to read more on the website, but to hear from the attorney as well, just to have all the information so everyone can vote accordingly. Um, it just may be best knowing everyone has a different lens on how to interpret it. I don't think we really have

130anything with you and understand where you're coming from. I don't really think we have anything just yet to actually vote on though. Like I think we need to get to a place where like we have a conversation because we can't I I would agree that we can't have a conversation about each and every legislation piece. But I think that what we want to be ready to do is if there is something that comes down that we feel deeply impacts us as a as a town and and is very opposite of the faith in going in the face of what our town's values are or where our budget is at then I think we need to be a little bit more specific is what I'm saying. So like if we came and said there's specific legislations

131that we feel it's going to be detrimental then I think then as a board we can have a conversation to say why we feel strongly about that and if as a board we want to then make a change. I don't think we have that just yet. Is that fair? I just I think we also need to be very mindful of the fact that like yes our job is to run the school and our job is to advocate what's best for the students and No, we're not. Our job is not to run the school. Our job is to govern and make sure the schools are being run by the people we put in place. But we also Okay. So let me finish. Let me finish. So what I was say what I was going to say

132I misspoke. What I was going to say though is I think at the end of the day too though how we do that is we build trust with our community. So I personally would also like some more community feedback on this because they we build trust with our community by not being partisan and irregardless of where it is falling. If the community feels that we're being partisan I feel like that actually breaks trust and that makes it hard for us to get the funding and get so so I I think that's something that needs to be considered also. That's where my is that it's like I hear what you're saying. I personally don't think that's my job as a board member. I'm more than happy to fire them off as a as a taxpayer and

133I do. But I think at the end of the day, I think we also need to be mindful of like but but how we how we keep our schools running the way they are and how we fund them and how we fulfill their potential as we have trust with our community to support us to do that. And if our community sees that we're trying if they feel their perception is that we're trying to tip too much into politics, I feel like it's going to be detrimental to us. Sure. So, I want to be mindful of that, too. Sure. I I guess what maybe it's a bad example, but I'm going to try try to use it, right? Like we as a town, like the school board, I was there presented um the tax cap, right?

134I'm not going to have exact right because I wasn't even on the thing. We presented the tax cap and we had chosen as as a town, the town voted against it, right? And so that's where and that that will impact our school, right? So I think maybe we just need to have a conversation to better understand what the role is, talk to our lawyer, but understand like where I do also believe that our community has put us in this position to help educate them, right? So if there is something that they voted on, but now something different's happening, we have to be able to explain that too because like why are we as a school board um again why wouldn't we be like advocating for you know so advocacy and information sharing are two so

135hang on advocacy and information sharing are two different things we should talk about absolutely I don't disagree that informing our community on things that are coming down like what started this conversation of having some kind of legislative update as to what's going on is a bad thing I think that's a good thing what I don't agree with is the second part of this which is advocating as a whole school board because I I just don't agree with it. Much to the reasons that Johanna much more eloquently shared than I was ever going to be able to about it being a nonpartisan position because so much of what's going on in the legislation now is very partisan driven and it was going to give the impression or illusion that we are leaning one way or the

136other. It's not that we don't want what's best. It's not that we are not working to so so to me there's two different things here and one is a legislative update which I've spoken to Gina she does and she's going to continue to do especially with the immediate things that are coming down and then with Lynn looking if there's anything major red flag but my concern is we're going to go down rabbit holes where these meetings are going to get incredibly long because we're talking about hey what if this could potentially like the like the school um open enrollment or whatever that one is called because that came up in another meeting I was in like it's a lot of that unfortunately right now is what if because a lot of these get presented and

137die in committee some don't which then tracking them and having those conversations is important but the second part Tracy I'm not trying to rule you unilaterally however there is a gray area as to our roles and responsibilities you had asked and I tried to get somebody in for June I couldn't find a date where we were all here so it's not going to be until August So I any kind of v board vote on writing letters like I'm not I'm not in agreement with that this evening. And I think we need more healthy conversation. I think if I do ask for something to be put on the agenda, I am entitled to having that put on the agenda. This is the second time that I've asked for something and it hasn't been put on the

138agenda. board members, if it's I want to talk about Smurfs and I ask for it to be put on the agenda per our policy, it's supposed to go on the agenda. And I think these conversations need to happen and need to happen in a healthy and respectful way because at the end of the day, we each have one vote. But I think if we're going to write letters that No, I'm not but I'm not even talking about I'm not talking about that right now. I'm not going we're not going to go back. We're going to go forward. So, I didn't put this one on the agenda and I explained to you why. And that is within my purview of chair. No, it is not. It is. No. According to policy, BD be BE DB. I'm

139not sure this is going to be this is this isn't going to be healthy conversation, right? because I have a right to have a voice and to have these sort of conversations. I don't think that any of us want to silence that voice. We want to have this be a place where we can have discussions. There's also I think we have to be mindful of like but what is the time and the place and I'm not the chair so I can't I can't say why but I doubt that Allison would have acted without reaching out to other people and asking is this I mean I feel like she would but that is again acting unilaterally. We should be having these conversations about these things in public. Please don't yell. You are. You I'm not yelling.

140You're coming. You're My perception is you're starting to and and I'm passionate about these things and I feel like my voice has been silenced and I feel like I I tried to bring up issues or or comments or have things put on the agenda and and they're not. And I think we all have points of view that we should be able to discuss here. I I I agree with that, but I do think we need more guidance. I think we need to have the full board when we have these discussions. I think we all need to agree that all of us are on this board for a reason. All of us are very passionate about the schools or we wouldn't be here. This isn't like, you know, this isn't a job that like is easy

141to do. So, I think I think if we can all operate from that sense, I I'm not going to pretend to know like what the rules are and what I think I think we just need to also stay focused that we're a team and so this is not a conversation that's leading to that. I do want to circle back to what you were saying Heather though in terms of education that is something we can and have done. The tax cap is actually a great example because we had the lawyer in who did a presentation on the tax cap, why it was like what? So, we we absolutely were able to educate the like about why we thought the town voted not to and that's fine. But, but I don't want you to feel like that's

142not something we can do because from my perspective and my experience, we were able to do that last year and there was no problem. We just like to make sure that it's I just also just personally feel that my my anxiety kick you. I personally like to feel that like are doing things that are above board. So having the lawyers lifted, having their absolutely is important to me so that we can say yes, we checked every box, we crossed every tea, we're we're here to offer both sides of the coin objectively. That's I just want to I don't want to talk about this this evening because we don't have the proper people. I think we sat. I mean, I know. So Tracy, so we hear you and I, you know, I hear you about the

143agenda topic concerns and all those pieces and you know, um, we'll loop Gina into that as well for a conversation. But again, I I hate to I'm so sorry I keep bringing up August, but I think the August meeting with the schoolboard association facilitating a conversation and if we had a list of all these concerns and how you know we're able to kind of hit on all those, I think that will hopefully kind of draw the group kind of closer together to understand um all all the including your topic, you know, about the agenda as well as all the other kind of broader topics for what the school board can do in the broader sense with legislation. Wonderful. I just in August I know. I'm I'm sorry that it's two it's two months away. I

144just um I think that would be a better avenue to answer the questions. Does anyone want a cupcake? I'm getting the cupcake. Go get it. Look at my pen. Even says I have anxiety pens for this reason. Anything else for committees before I move on? All right, moving to deliberations. Do we have to have Do we have another? We don't have one on our end. You don't have one. We do not have one. All right. So, deliberations. This is to see what action the board will take regarding the resolution to authorize 1,135,700 31 1,131,750 of lease purchase finance of energy conservation equipment and related building improvements at district facilities. I need to read the following resolution um into the record. Am I good to go? Yes. All right. I apologize in advance. The school board

145of the Brooklyn School District. The district hereby resolves as follows. I'm so sorry. You have to read the bold as well. Just kidding. Let me back all the way up. Resolution to authorize 1,131,750 of lease purchase financing of energy conservation equipment and related building improvements at district facilities. The school board of the Brooklyn School District, the district hereby resolves as follows. one that pursuant to RSA 33 col 7-E and all other applicable law laws and voter approval of article 2 of the 2025 Brooklyn school district warrant for the annual meeting held February 5th 2025 and March 11th 2025 the authorizations in quotes the superintendent of schools the superintendent is authorized to enter into an agreement with TD equipment finance Finance Incorporated or one of its business units for the acquisition and installation of energy conf

146conservation equipment being CSDA boilers and LED lighting and controls and related building improvements at Captain Samuel Douglas Academy and Richard Mahakian Memorial School. The equipment in the principal amount of 1,131,750 and any such prior action is ratified and confirmed. Two, that the superintendent and business administrator acting singly acting singly are authorized to execute and deliver an acceptance of a proposal by TD Equipment Finance Incorporated to provide tax tax exempt lease purchase financing the non-appropriation clause in the principal amount of 1,131,750. The bank proposal which was accepted shall be on such terms including amendments thereto and in such form as the superintendent or business administrator may approve said approval to be conclusively evidenced by the execution and delivery there thereof and any such prior action by the superintendent or business administrator is hereby ratified and confirmed.

147Three, that pursuant to the authorizations, the superintendent and the business administrator acting singly in the name in the name and on behalf of the district, the lei are authorized to execute and deliver a taxexempt lease purchase agreement with non-appropriation clause with TD equipment finance incorporated to provide lease purchase financing in a principal amount not to exceed 1,131,750 to fund the equipment. on such terms and in such form as the superintendent or business administrator may approve such approval to be conclusively evidenced by the execution and delivery thereof and which and which terms shall be substantially on the terms set forth in the bank proposal as accepted the leie four that to the extent not inconsistent with this resolution and the bank proposal as accepted the superintendent and business administrator acting Singly are authorized to select such

148dates, maturities, denominations, interest rate, rates, place, places of payment, form, forms, and other details of the lei as the superintendent or business administrator may approve said approval to be conclusively evidenced by the execution and delivery thereof. Five, that the superintendent and business administrator acting singly are authorized to covenant on behalf of the LEI that neither the proceeds of of the lei of the lease nor the equipment shall be used in any manner that would cause the lease to be an arbitrage bond or privately or private activity bond with the meaning of sections 148 and 141 of the Internal Revenue Code. Code of 1986 as amended the code. Six that the superintendent and business administrator acting singly are authorized to covenant on behalf of the LEI to file any information any information report and pay any

149rebate due to the United States in connection with the issuance of the lease. Seven, that the superintendent and business administrator acting singly are authorized to execute and deliver such tax certificates, arbitrage, and use pro and use and use of proceeds, certifications, and other documents and certificates as may in the superintendent or business administrator's opinion be necessary or convenient to affect the transaction herein authorized to be in such form not inconsistent with the this resolution. as a superintendent or business administrator may approve said approval to be conclusively evidenced by the execution and delivery thereof. Eight, that the superintendent and business administrator acting singly are authorized to designate the lease as a qualified taxexempt obligation with the meaning of section 265B3 of the code nine. that the superintendent and business administrator acting sigly are authorized to to

150covenant certify and agree on behalf of the lei for the benefit of the le and that the lei will file any required reports make any annual financial or material event disclosures and take other action that may be necessary to ensure the disclosure requirements imposed by rule 15C2-12 of the securities and exchange commission to the extent event applicable are met. 10 that the superintendent and other appropriate officials of the LEI acting singly are authorized to execute and deliver on behalf of the LEI such security agreements UCCC-1 financing statements fixture fillings and other documents and certificates as may be required in connection with the lease 11. The superintendent and other proper officials of the leie acting singly are authorized and empowered in its name and on its behalf to do or cause to do all such other

151acts and things as may be necessary or desirable in order to affect the execution and delivery of the lease in accordance here within herewith. 12. that if the superintendent or any other officer or official of the LE is for any reason unavailable to as applicable approve, execute or attest the lease or any related financing documents the person or persons acting in any such capacity whether as an assistant, a deputy or otherwise is authorized to act for such official with the same force and effect as if the official had herself himself perform such act. and 13 that an att tested copy of this resolution be included with the minutes of this meeting. Is that it? Good work. So, I'll make a resolution entitled resolution to authorize 1,131,750 of lease purchase financing of energy conservation equipment and

152related building improvements at district facilities be approved in form presented to this meeting and that an attested copy of said resolution be included with the minutes of this meeting. Yes. Second. All in favor? Great. Um, I didn't know if you wanted to close public input. Oh, yes. And now I will close public input at 7:56. Thank you. Okay. All right. Um, this is deliberations, right? Yes. Do we need to talk about that? If there's any questions, any questions about all the legal aids that I just got to make? Okay. Um, so the next one is to see what action the board will take regarding the maintenance expendable trust fund, retained fund balance, and the special education expendable trust fund. Um, as a reminder, hardearned queries are being developed. If the total of the quotes comes

153in above 300,000, adjustments will be made to get the cost down to 300,000. Um, and the expenses have been prioritized as previously discussed. [Applause] And these will be three separate motions. So the first one we just need a motion for the So this is just a motion to accept it. Um to to authorize the expenditure of the uh $300,000. I'll make a motion to authorize the expenditure of an amount not to exceed $300,000 from the Brookline Maintenance Accendable Trust Fund for the purchases of the maintenance items identified during the public hearing. I second. Thank you. All in favor? Okay. Retain fund balance. Um the recommendation of the business administrator is that the school board will vote to utilize the FY25 retain fund balance. $140,000 was retained to address what would otherwise be a negative fund

154balance at the year end due to special education costs that exceeded budgeted amounts. I'll second. Well, I didn't make a motion. I was waiting to see if anybody I'll I'll make a motion as move. Do I have to say as moved? No, you would actually need to read those. So, um I will make a motion to utilize the FY205 retained fund balance of $140,000 to address a budget shortfall due to special education costs that exceeded the budgeted amounts. Second. Excellent. All in favor? That's it. Right. Special ed trust. Did I miss that one? I did. Okay. Special education expendable trust fund. At this point in FY25, we are not anticipating the use of a special education trust funds for FY26. However, we we are requesting to use up to $60,000 in FY25 due to year-end

155balance projected to be a negative balance. The request from the public hearing on the retained fund balance is to use the full $140,000 first and then utilize the special education expendable trust only if necessary and only up to $60,000. Hold it. It's on page seven of the outline. Just pass it over then pass it back so I know what I'm doing. Yes. Okay. So, the recommendation is to I'm sorry, halfway done. You're going to read the bold motion to authorize the use of an amount to authorize the use of an amount not to exceed $60,000 from the Brooklyn Special Education Trust in uh FYI25 if required to end the fiscal year at a zero balance. All in favor? Thank you. Thank you. All right. Now, um to see an action the board will take regarding

156the proposed policy memo. Joanna, you walk us through the policy memo or um Lauren, are you Lauren? Either Lauren will tell you the policies and I will tell you what. Okay. Do you want me to start and sum? Okay. So, we're looking at the policy memo. We have some um for first and adopt with his JIC uh weapons on school property. You want to start with that one? Yes. Okay. So, uh basically we were discussing this to kind of be I believe coming to line and you can certainly correct me if I'm wrong, coming to line with other um districts to make sure that we just had a very clear policy and outline of like what is considered a weapon, what the consequences are concerning weapons in school. Um specifically asked there was no specific

157incident that prompted this. just more bring it and Dan can also it's based on RSA. So Oh, I'm sorry Dan. I'm sorry. No, I was just going to say it's also required to be in our student parent handbook. So it's not Yep. So this is required by by RSA which is why we're asking for the first and adopt because it needs to be included in a handbook which is edited over the summer um in time for registration by parents at the rollover. And we we did discuss as a policy that if we would like to review this policy, come back to come back and we're happy to look at it again, put it on the agenda again. Um but In the interest of getting the student handbook out on time with this policy, we wanted

158to have it. I think as of right now, we're going to have the handbook just say currently in review. Okay. But if we if we if we can get it done in time, we'll try to update it. Perfect. Sorry. The policies in here somewhere. They should be under there should be Yeah, they're in they are in the packet under under letter uh F2. Sorry, my internet's like or if you're on the agenda page, you can click on on the policy where it says recommendations number two under deliberations I think under deliberations number two I think you have to go back to the agenda I think that's the meeting find it but um China we did we did make some edits to it yes we did so my internet is not cooperating you want me to

159share which ones they were thank you want to share it yeah please okay so for the weapons on property. Uh we pretty much left the first um paragraph as is, but we did cross out the second paragraph and the third paragraph. Um I'm not going to read it fully unless you'd like me to. But um this was language I believe we took from the sample from the sample. We did take this language specifically from the sample. So, um, just again trying to kind of come in line with RSA language, come in like the other districts to make sure that we're all on the same page, hoping we don't have to use it. That's our plan. Do we not already have like a weapons policy? We did. We just change it. It's an update based on

160based on RSA. Correct. Yeah. So, um, Heather, if you actually scroll all the way down, you can generally there's a history. Um, I didn't know this until like two there's a history. So like the first reading of the last policy was in 2018. So we're just updating it. So yeah, we can get to the next. Okay. So the next policy So can I ask a question? If everybody's good with this with the crossouts, I can edit it and throw it in the hook. You guys I mean I think there other major concerns. I just I was just wondering it says members of the public who violate this policy may be reported to local law enforcement. Is there any reason why we wouldn't? I mean, I don't think the public is allowed to bring So, the

161example was voting day, right? So, voting day, um, I believe we talked about they are allowed to bring they are allowed to carry on to school property at that for that event. Um, I don't know if that applies to like meetings. Does that apply to like town meeting or things like that? I'm not 100% sure it applies to town meetings. Um, but you wouldn't have it at a sporting event. Like you wouldn't have a parent come in at a basketball game. You know, those would be the ones that we So like I believe when it's more like school a school function like a basketball game like a school whereas voting I believe that's why we chose or use the building. Yeah. Yeah. That's why we chose to close the school that day so that we

162could minimize the risk because I don't think we were. That was the example that came up. Right after the next one, but we don't vote on this because the policy committee is responsible for that. Or do we need to vote on you're going to vote on the on the entire memo? So we're going to discuss every policy. make sure everyone kind of, you know, has their has the input. We'll take notes to that for the ones that go back to the policy committee. They'll take those notes and they'll make changes. Um, but you're going to vote on the whole memo at the end. So, if you have questions or you have concerns, you want something edited as we go. Yes. That we talk about it. They'll make the notes and then when we vote on

163the memo that will include the the notes. So, if it was a if it was a read and adopt, but we want some change, it would no longer be. So you can feel free like even if it's like first reading and adopt like we don't have to adopt it. You can say like sounds good like if you need us read through or something like that's yeah we don't normally do a first read and and and adopt. It's only for these ones where the RSA is driving it and we need it included for public dissemination such as the handbook. That's those are the times that we would request that but we very rarely request that. Thank you. Okay, next one. KI visitors to school. So this one um we just kind of we had this I

164believe came to the last meeting. I believe this is is this third in adopt or second? So we're actually not going to be adopting it and none of the other ones are going to be up for adoption tonight. So if anyone has any input we could this is our third reading and we made some changes to this one um because we specifically wanted to be clear about um if like an outside provider or tester was coming in to observe a student what that meant. So you'll see um visitors for the purpose of observation by outside providers. We added that in to be very clear that like you're coming in to observe a specific child for a specific reason. The principal is aware. Um I know in the past we have had some parents be like

165I just want to come observe my child in the classroom and and we want to be very clear that that's not like what that policy is for. um you know we didn't so we crossed out um you know just like signing in at the main office and um visitors not being asked because we we kind of included that in they need to be making a request to the building principal or designate they will determine like the principal will kind of work with them to determine where they so all of that that's kind of brought up into that um all observers need to sign in the confidentiality requirements so we just kind of cleaned that language up we did also add at the request of the principles a very specific Um we've had some issues with

166um siblings coming into school. So like um if visitors or people are coming in and they're bringing siblings who can't then go into the classroom or being disruptive in the classroom and certainly principles can speak more to this. Um so we kind of did add some of that that like visitors need to be obviously SAU like a visitor and a volunteer are different. So we kind of made that clear. Um, but just really added like are not permitted to bring any family members when visiting unless it's been specifically authorized by the principal because we're really just trying to um be aware that like we're going into to live classrooms. So if you as a visitor are going in and you have a three-year-old with you, the three-year-old directing the back of the classroom, that can

167disrupt the educational process. And as much as we love all of the children, sometimes it's not the best idea. Or like there was an example given for like field day. had to infrastructure their test for field day. They were both false flag and we just opted not to do that. So any anything that you guys want to add to that? No, you covered it policy. That one's not under adoption, but certainly any feedback, please let us know. Yeah. Are there any questions or anything that you'd want changed or altered? Okay. Um, so health education, we're just kind of continuing to try and keep it up. Um, so that's I am or I ham. Um, we're just trying to be very clear about what it is that we're actually covering because this can be a topic

168that obviously can be tricky for some parents. You know, what does health education and kind of that mean? So, the policy we had in place talked about reproduction, sexuality, education, HIV, acquire AIDS. Those are not topics that we are covering in the Brooklyn district. Those are topics that would be more in the co-op district. So, really need to be spelled out there. Here we're talking about parts of the body, puberty, related topics about that. So, we really want you to be specific. Um, thinking about it from the role of a parent, like if you're looking at that, you I don't want to have to sift through all that because some of that might cause questions or flags in my brain. Whereas, if they're not going to learn about that, then that's a conversation that doesn't

169need to happen here and would be more appropriate to happen when they are. So, we're just I think that's the only change that we made is just continuing to try and clean that up. But, this is any I definitely want to hear back from you guys. just in terms of just like parents and like what parents need to know. What do you guys think about? Do you think we need to be more specific? Do you feel like that's that's enough to kind of take out? Do you want us to add anything? I was going to say if we're not talking about basic things, I agree. It's why are we opening a can of worms for no reason? So, I was kind of on that. Yeah, because a parent could come in all all like I

170don't want my kid learning about sexuality, but we're not we're not we're not talking about that. But maybe think they are because like we're just like please shower kind of our goal. Okay. So that's I am any other question. Okay. Yeah. I like what you guys have that one. Yeah. So admission um of tuition and non-resident students. So this is something that we wanted to address actually to your thoughts on teacher recognition kind of how we can continue to build on that. Um I'm not 100% sure. This was a very long So, anyone else can definitely jump into that. Um, but the the gist of it was is that tuition for non-resident students, particularly staff that work in my district who don't live in district being able to bring their children here, they pay um

171they pay a percentage towards the cost of that. So, I believe in Brooklyn the percentage was 75%. But in the co-op it was 50%, Hollis is 25%. Hollis will have so they would pay. So, we opted to lower our contribution to 50% because we were getting feedback that staff in the Brooklyn district were um putting their children in the homeless district schools because there it was 75% is a big cost. So we in order to kind of um you know change that we really wanted to be more on board with that 50% um that the co-op uses to to encourage them to like yeah absolutely if there's room in their space and this will make life easier please please apply like we can look at it. Um my understanding is that that these come to

172the board. Is that correct? Just to make sure in in a nonpublic Y. Yeah. So we would make sure that there was room. We would make sure we weren't overriding caps. Um if there were special education, I was to that's that goes to the district provider like the home district would be the one dealing with that. That's more it's more complicated than that. But but that's what it's explained to. Yeah. Yeah. It's more in the absence of Lauren. Yes. Um but either way, you know, because that was a question that I had is like we do we want to, you know, make sure that our resources are being appropriately allocated for our students and districts. So, um but we were hoping that this would be something that would encourage to retention. So, I saw that

173and I appreciate you that you lowered that. I'm just wondering why we didn't go down to 25 like Hollis. Um because I won't speak for Hollis, but the thought process of the SAU is that that is too low and they are thinking about working with Hall to see if it will come up to 50. So, that way it would be a uniform. So, and if you look at the actual cost of adding a student to a classroom, okay, so like you know, you have a class of 16, you're adding another one at 17, that 50% number is more representative than 75% of what that cost would really look like, you know, so we want to make sure that we're being, you know, fair and as we're looking at needs. Yeah. And I believe the example

174given was that the co-op had really done a lot of looking into and factoring out that budgeted. So that 50% was a much better number in terms of what we would actually need. The 25% was quite low. You know me, I would just tell them to come for free. Yeah, right. Make that decision. That was our goal. I mean, we certainly want to provide that that opportunity for our staff and that benefit if they weren't here. Um, we're happy to have them here if there's room, but yeah, we want and the board would would approve every request that comes by. So, so it's not just a blanket. Correct. Oh, I can bring correct. Yes. And um I I did ask specifically about would we be concerned about there being an influx or an overflow? Um

175I was told that was not a concern at this time. So yeah, absolutely they call in on that. And it's also approved year after year. Yes. So it's not once you've come. Correct. Because then if there's a bubble or if there's kids ton of kids move in, you know, right? So it is it is reviewed every year. I'll give you a pers. So in like the last 10 years I've been here, there's maybe been too consider like even consider, but it was too much. Okay. Yes. So, um, so that's that's something that, yeah, we really wanted to put in. Um, unfortunately, if they have preschool age children, you still have to go on the weight list. So, good luck getting off that because that's a that's a whole vibe. That list that list is a

176vibe. But that list moves. It does. Yeah. I I don't know. I was like 39 and then I got a call, but I'd already It moves because a lot of people end up taking a they need a full day. So, yes. I uh I forgot to skip. Um, going back to that one though, the because, you know, I'm always looking for ways if they have to reapply every year, even if they're a bubble. If you're saying that you've had two in the time you've been here, why can't we just say if they work here, they don't have to reapply year? I I'm not sure that this specifies that it does or doesn't. I think that we look at it as like review process. So, we look at it that we're reviewing the grades and the

177numbers and the cohorts and those pieces, but I will dig into that a little bit because I'd like to if I was a teacher and I want to take part of that benefit, I would be concerned that my child gets integrated into a great first grade or second grade or fourth grade and then and they build those relationships and then the next year I'm still there but my kid isn't able to. I think that is a disservice to our teachers. So, I would actually like to see that once we approve that child to come into our district, if they would be allowed to stay, as long as their parent is employed by our district. I I agree with that. I think the one thing that I would just put out there as a caution is

178like at the same time, we can't we don't we would like to offer that, but we have to be careful because I I my question was, well, what if we have too many residents in town who are moving in who need a school? Like, I don't do you know what I mean? back to the No, I know. But I just think that in if you're putting it in a policy though, like you don't listen, do you know? Did you see my teacher lunch? I'm all about the teachers. Love them. But I sometimes you just need to see it in writing. Yeah. I just I don't but I also don't want to handicap us to the point where we interested. This isn't in their contracts, but that that can come back to follow so the policy

179committee can discuss it further too. FYI, the policy that we have obviously could change. Correct. Just wondering is this is this context or is it just No, it's just the policy. So any other thoughts questions about that one? Um this would apply also too to par educators. Anybody employee all staff any any employee employee it could be any employee. Okay, great. So we should educator. I know I'm I'm putting things in my Yeah, we could. Um all right. And so then the last one and Dan actually I might have Dan and Trisha talk a little more about this one. um the promotion and retention of students just because you guys have I'm actually gonna let Lauren do it because she's So we're doing this SA SAU wide. You guys have a better grasp of this

180than I do. So take it away. Yep. So this we're doing this SA SAU wide um to have this policy. So I believe this is um the first time that Brookline has had it. So it just wants to to to outline a little bit more how it's if a parent requests to either promote or retain ahead or keep behind, what is our process? And because we say that that process is in the handbook, it's going to be included in the handbook and that's where you'll see the procedures for it. Um, but this just kind of outlines a little bit of the the the criteria and the fact that that information will be included in the handbook. So, some of my questions just so you guys are aware like how do we have these discussions? So,

181this is what I was asking during the meeting. How do we have these discussions? This isn't a surprise. How is going and so Dan and Trip are very good about kind of laying out that like these are conversations that are started early in the year. They are not surprises to anybody. um they're handled kind of as a team unit but that like if the request is made that they will go to the team the team will kind of talk about it come back and kind of so I just wanted to offer that as well for public but also for you guys like it's not just like three weeks school is ending and now we're having a conversation I believe Daniel you had said these start like way back in January yeah in January so so

182there is lots of opportunity for questions to be asked for reasons to be given for assessments to be done if needed all that and if the request is coming from the parent. Then in the procedures in the handbook, you'll see that there's like a date parents should I believe it's it's March 1st. I don't remember what we said. Um the parent has to make the request by a certain date. So that way there's time to have those discussions and go through that process. Okay. Is that all of them? That's all of them. I'm missing my verbage for this one. Oh, bottom bottom of the question language. Is that what we're putting in the handbook? No, you'll put in the procedure, I think. I mean, does does anybody have any changes that they want to make

183to this language? Does Dan, do you need to put this in the handbook this year? No, this this this doesn't go in the handbook. This is just this is the policy as is the the procedure for the conversation is what goes in the handbook. Okay. All right. So, do you need feedback from us on the language or anything? No, the board doesn't have to approve that. You just approve the fact that it's going to be included in the handbook. Okay. I'll make a motion to approve the recommendations of the Brookline Policy Committee as per the memorandum provided as part of the agenda packets. All favor and also just we are not meeting in giant policy committee. board is also for um sorry we have no non-public tonight so there is only one motion left to

184make but I um if the board is in agreement I'd like to ask not one of us four to make this motion to adjourn it's all you a motion to adjurnn I will second all in favor excellent thank you thank you and that is at 8 8:18 Yeah, perfect. All right. I I am going to have you sign those just in case.