COOP School Board Meeting 6/18/2025

001calling the um monthly meeting of the Hollis Brookline Cooperative School Board to order at 6:01 actually, but it was 6:00 when I started talking. Um I'd like us to go around and do a quick introduction starting with Mr. Solon. Tom Solan, school board member. Sydney Vancet, school board member. Linda Sherwood, director of business operations. Lauren Daneiro, director of student services. Gina Bergog, superintendent elect. Holly Derlo Babcock co-op school board chair Kate Stole co-op vice chair Beth Williams school board assistant principal student services at the high school Patrick West principal at the middle school. Thank you all for being here tonight. Um we have some absences. Uh Rob Man and Amy Kelner both have excused absences if that's a thing. and Andy Corey. This would be his last official meeting, but he has other things that

002he needs to get done. Blowing us off and and we and Tim Gone is on a much needed and he's blowing us off with his family. So, um but this is this would be the last meeting for both of them as they are moving on to other things. I'm not going to say bigger and better things, just other things. So, goodbye. Nothing's better than us. No, I have a little goodbye for them. So, okay. Do you want me to do that now? We I don't have any agenda adjustments. Do we have any agenda adjustments? Does anybody No. So, then we want to correspond. Do you have anything or should I just go? I don't have any nominations or resignations at this time. Okay. So, um just because both Tim and Andy are leaving the district

003and both of them have been here a long time, I wanted to take a moment to acknowledge them. It's a ve with a very small token of the board's appreciation. I will say that the school board is not aware of doing this. So, I'm not supposed to speak on behalf of the school board, but I kind of am. So, but I'm not really officially, but I kind of am. So, um I believe that Tim began his career at Hollis Brookline. Um I think he began I think this was this was his first job. He has been a teacher for us, a coach, a department chair, and an assistant principal. um I'm sure other things, but that's what I could remember. Um he left for a little while, but then he came back to us and

004began his career as principal at Hollis Brookline Middle School for two years before moving on to the high school as our principal four years ago. Um the one thing about Tim is that he has always been about the kids. He cares deeply for his students and he focuses on them. And that is the reason that we chose this photo as a small token of our appreciation. I'll show it in a second. Um, the photo is of our 2025 graduation. The moment that Tim announces that the grads have made it and they toss their caps in celebration. It makes so much sense to send Tim off with this photo as this is the group of kids that he came into the middle school to. He helped them through COVID and he dedicated his talent and his

005time toward them. And he has been the only HB co-op principal that they have ever known. And they have been the only kids that he has been a principal for. Um, so just personally, I have a plaque in my house. I don't have a lot of those plaques, but I do have one that hangs and it says, "Home is where your story begins." And I would like to edit that for Tim and say that HB is where his professional story begins. We will always hold a special place in our hearts for his time here with us. And we hope that he always keeps us in his hearts as well. Um, we wish Tim, you all the best as you continue your story as an amazing ed educator. Your new district is lucky to have your

006dedication, your compassion, your sense of humor, and your commitment to your staff and students. Um, and this is the photo. So, I will show it to all of you. Photo framed for him. I'm sure he will hang it happily in his new office where his kids in his new school will say, "Those are not us." But maybe he will. There you go. Yeah, he can pass it. And that's the thing. Okay. So, that's Tim. This one got a little mangled, but it's okay. He's not here. So, so um Andy is also leaving us. As many of you know, Andy Corey has been our superintendent for um 11 years. He came to the SAU 11 years ago. I think I'm remembering this correctly, but members on this school board have been with him the entire time.

007I didn't join until he had been here for a year or so. But if I recall um correctly, the Hollis Brookline Co-op had just been embroiled in over a year's worth or more than a year's worth of discussion, debate, heated debate, and division regarding the aortionment formula. Um and this was a really tough time. I did I was a witness to all that as a member for our two communities. frustrations were really high and we did pass the formula before Andy came to us, I think, but he came into an environment like that. Um, where there had been a lot of anger and a lot of frustration and a lot of discussion. Um, and the thing is, I feel like Andy caught the sense of what we all needed pretty quickly. He methodically approached taking

008on an SAU with four boards, three districts, all in some form of discord at that time, six contracts, and six buildings and grounds. Slowly and steadily, he found his ways to bring our community together by being present in the community and by talking and talking and talking to community members and parents and staff and students. His approach to budgeting and facilities to his team and to his staff has always been about taking time to build consensus, paying attention to the needs of his students, and always keeping the taxpayer in mind. So in a small way, we felt like a photo that represented Andy's legacy, the district would be the most appropriate. And his leg legacy, to put it simply, is HB1 community. I believe this is the motto of our middle school. I believe it's

009on our thing where the kids from our two districts join as one. Andy truly believes in Hollisbrook line and he cares so deeply for our students. He wanted to make sure that all kids felt appreciated and every decision always came back to what was best for our kids. After our co year, we were able to gather in the fall for sporting events again. And we all remember, many of us remember the first time that the bleachers were full at the turf field. Kids cheering on kids, parents, and communic community members watching and rooting for HB athletes. So, it just felt like the photo to remind Andy of his years at HB would be this drone shot of the turf field with our students on it. I believe from what I can tell the kids are

010gathering for some sort of photo, probably a yearbook photo. It doesn't look like a practice to me. It looks like a mixture of kids. The turf field is a symbol of HB1 community and it's example of one of the most significant facility projects that Andy oversaw. So, as Andy moves on to his retirement, his contributions to the co-op will be felt for years to come. We will miss him, but we know that another legacy is the depth of the leaders that he has mentored and he leaves us in very excellent hands. Um, we wish him the very best in his future endeavors. And this is the photo of the trip field drone shot. We can pass that to you. There you go. So, goodbye. Good luck. That was lovely. Well, I hope that they actually

011watch it or maybe I will send these to them. So, I kind of edited as I went along, but that's okay. What you do is you tape it to the back. Oh, that's a great idea. You guys are smarter than me. That's terrific. So, elaborate. It's a consensus building thing. Great. Okay. So, are there any other correspondence, notifications, resignations? Nothing we need to know. Great. Um, I need a process observer. a few last year I tried to make a calendar that doesn't really work. So, is there anyone who'd like to do it? I'll do it. Thank you, Cindy. Okay. Um, approval of minutes. Let me go to my outline. Kate, do you want to take that? Oh, sorry. Okay. Space. All right. So, we've got some minutes to approve from the May 21st meeting. Um,

012we had Beth, you were absent, but you know that you can still vote. Um, it's up to you. You can also abstain. It's your decision. So, um, we have the following amendments were offered. Page 7, line 3, N should be in. Page 8, line 31, replace full with fully. Page 15, line two, replace or with four. Page 21, line 29, start the sentence with capital width. Um, page 23, line 13, replace he with she. And page 27, line 13, replace members should be singular. So, I need a motion to accept as amended. So moved by Beth and a second by Kate and I don't have a um I do. Thank you. All right. Are there any questions or comments? Yes. Can I take a minute to recognize Joe? This is his last meeting with us

013and I want to thank him. I didn't know that for all the times he's been here every night. I didn't know that. Oh, Joe. Well, we will miss you. And I don't have to buy high shoes. You say it ain't so, Joe. Joe, I don't have to buy high shoes anymore. So that still viable. No, you should just take them all with you. I was going to say I did them all. Thank you, Linda. Thank you, Joe, for your time. Okay, so I need a motion to accept as amended the minutes. You did, Beth and Kate. Okay, I need a vote on that then. Is there any more comments on the minutes? All those in favor? Uh, and a no. Any nos and absentions? Okay, so 501. Nope. 401. Sorry, got to watch my math,

014everyone. Motion carries. Okay, we have some non-public minutes with no amendments. So, I need a motion to accept as presented. So, moved. Moved by Kate. Second. Second by Beth. All those in favor and opposed and abstensions. 401. Motion carries. And then we had a second non-public. So, I need a motion to accept as presented. Moved by Beth. Second. Second by Kate. All those in favor? for and absentions one 401. Okay. So, moving forward, we have a public hearing on the expendable trust that's supposed to start at 6:15. Oh, we'll be good. I think we're pretty close. So, um, do we wait four minutes? There's nothing else to do. We could do the athletics. All right, let's do the athletics board report. So, we're going to move a little bit to the athletics board report. I

015need someone to do that. Um, Patrick, y we had a pretty strong spring in the middle school, so fire away. Uh, excited to announce that HB is home to three champion teams this spring. HBMS baseball team won their third Tri County Championship in a row. Uh, which is really impressive when you think about it. Uh, HBMS boys outdoor track team won their second of back-to-back Tri County League meets champions. uh sorry, championship and HBMS girls lacrosse team won the Tri County Division One title in exciting fashion on the turf field. I believe this is uh the second championship since the inception of the program in 2019 when they won that championship. So uh congratulations to all three teams, student athletes and coaches on their tremendous success. Uh despite some challenging weather weather patterns which hopefully

016will change tomorrow. Uh experiencing some majority of the spring season uh high school athletics is quickly windows sorry is quickly windows down thus far. You've been winding down. Winding down. Thank you for reading Mr. Bumpus' uh words marking another success successful year. Uh several of our teams had fantastic seasons marked by championships. Uh boy tennis who fell into a strong golf town squad in the finals. That's not a sore one there. Uh, and yet another finals appearance by the boys volleyball team who will square off with Co Brown on Saturday the 14th. What happened? They lost. That's a bummer. I'm sorry. In four sets. Oh, in four sets. Okay. Awesome. Uh, in addition to these successes, the uh baseball, girls lacrosse, boys lacrosse, and girls team each fell in the quarterfinal round of their respective

017tournaments. Outdoor track team is also competing with Sam Bruno, Grace Dao, Brady McCammock, uh, each representing HB at the New England Champions. Uh, last Saturday. I don't know how they did. They had a strong showing and seeing him I feel like was fourth or seventh. Yeah, I I feel like it was on but I can't know. I don't remember if it was the meet of champs or the New England that he did so well. So yeah, I can't remember. But congratulations. Either way, making it to the New England Championship. Yeah, that's amazing. Is a big deal. That's a big deal. Uh looking forward to celebrating the accomplishments of all the teams at the end of the year awards which was Monday night. Uh middle school update. Uh, as I mentioned, three championships this spring. Uh,

018boys lacrosse team also earned a spot in the Tri County tournament, uh, falling to Londereerry. Uh, girls outdoor track also had a strong showing in their league meet, earning a second place finish. Looking forward to a fun-filled summer with several of our teams participating in open gyms and pickup for fall sports kickoff. Uh, a few thank yous. The 2425 uh, athletics come to a close and uh, start of the next year. Uh, it's just around the corner. The athletic department would like to extend its sincerest appreciation and gratitude to all those involved in our athletic program. Thank you all coaches, parents, and student athletes as well as the booster club for their support and dedication. Thank you to the co-op school board as well as SAU and building level admin for their continued support which

019allows us to grow, improve, and provide positive experiences for our students year in and year out. And then there are open coaching positions for next school year. Thank you so much, Patrick, for going through that course. And congratulations to all of those teams and athletes and um our powerhouse middle school baseball team and all of those teams that won their championships um and those kids who made it to New England because it's a big deal. So all of the kids, congratulations to all of them. So thank you. All right, moving forward. Is there are there any questions on the athletic report by the school board? No. Okay, great. Sounds like it was a successful spring even with the bad weather because it's never going to stop raining. So know if it's ever going to stop

020raining. Okay. So at this point we're going to move to our public hearing on the maintenance trust. Um so I need a motion that the board recess until the conclusion of the public hearing on the of the Hollis Brooklyn Cooperative School District maintenance expendable trust. Moved by Beth. Second. Second by Kate. Um all those in favor 5-0. So we are recessing at exactly 6:15. Now we need to find the outline for the fender which I should have. Shouldn't I have it outline? It's usually a separate outline. It was I didn't bring it and I didn't hang on. That's okay. I'll just pull it up. Just give me one second. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. Great. Do you want me to go through that? Um, yes, please. Okay. All right. So, every June we

021uh look at our trusts and here we are June taking a look at maintenance expendable trust. So, the background, our principles and our facilities department take a look at all of our repairs and improvements needed in both the middle school and the high school during the budgeting process. As we go through the months, we shift some items from the budget to the maintenance expendable trust. Um at the budget hearing for the FY26 budget, the Hollis Brookline uh bud cooperative budget committee recommended along with the school board that the funding source for these particular items be the Hollis Brookline maintenance expendable trust. So item number one is FY25 requested item of the middle school final elevator expense of $5,820 and that is an expense in response to um a final inspection of the upgraded elevator. FY26

022requested items with estimated costs were um phase 10 of 10 of the high school roof section for $80,000 and phase two of three of the high school elevator retrofit. So if you recall we were going to do this in three phases so that by the time we complete phase three we would have the money to actually do the retrofit of the elevator. So no work would be done just simply set aside. Um and then phase one of the middle school roof section for 150,000. So the total requested dollars to be spent from the Halls Brooklyn Cooperative School District Maintenance Expendable Trust is 33,820. So the current balance is 154,990. 300,000 is to be added in FY26. That's what the voters approved in March and were able to do. um that expenditures would total $33,820 leaving

023us with an available balance of roughly $151,170. I say roughly as those um dollar amounts might be a little bit less than what we are requesting, but those are our best um understanding at this time. So that is the maintenance expendable tested. We want to speak in favor or against it before we discuss the special interest. Um why don't we just talk about this? is the special trust too and then it just super easy. I didn't I didn't think that we discussed it during the hearing. The hearing is mainly for the public. I thought we're not going to discuss it but she was asking should I open the public floor for this then then close it then do that. So we're going to just do them all together. Okay. Is that okay Tom? If I

024approve. Okay good. Just check it. So this is really complicated but for the special education expendable trust there are no plans to use any money at this time. Our current balance is 290,153. We did not uh have an article to move any additional money to the special education expendable trust, giving us an anticipated balance of $290,153. Okay. And just a question, um I know that we have to keep public comment open for half an hour in a traditional meeting in a public hearing. Does this do you do not so we can open the floor? If there's no public comment, I can close the floor. Correct. Okay. So, at this point, I'm going to open the floor for public comment on the on the maintenance expendable trust and the special educational expendable trust, but since that's

025not really part um and uh if you have a comment, you need to state your name and address for the record, be respectful, and at this particular moment, since we're in a public hearing, this is all that you can really talk about are these trusts. So, is there anyone interested in making public comment on these particular items? Oh, I'm opening the floor. Sorry. At 6:19, you don't have to keep track of the time for this one, though. I don't because it's not a 30 minute. Okay. So, seeing none, seeing no comment, I'm going to close the floor um at 6:19 as well. And I'm going to end the hearing. Right. Perfect. That's how I do it. Right. And then we're going to come out of recess. Now, I'm going to go back to my other

026agenda. Linda, thank you so much for this. I didn't even write on it, so it's nice of you. No problem. Okay. So, we are back into our regularly scheduled Hollis Brookline Cooperative School District meeting. And at this point, I'm going to open the floor for public input. And since we are doing this a smidge early, I'm going to leave the floor open until 700 p.m. Um, so 7:05 and that way, um, that will follow the agenda. Um, so again, if people have comment on our regular agenda for tonight, this would be an opportunity for them to do so. They need to state their name and address for the record and try to stick with the topics that we are kind of focused on. And this is not a time for back and forth. It's just

027simply a time for the board to hear your concerns or your comments. Is there anyone interested in making public comment? No. Okay. So, the floor will stay open until 7:05. All right. Moving on, we are now at the principal reports and we will start with the um HBMS greenhouse report or do you are we doing the greenhouse and the principal report? However, is kind of just uh embedded as part of the principal report? I can go through that very quickly, but uh I'll start with just my principal report. Perfect. Uh end of the year celebrations this week uh went really well. We had our luau dance on Monday night for our eighth grade uh which highlighted uh a slideshow from PTSA member and parent MJ Shapiro. Thank you so much to her for all of

028her work. It was a 25m minute slideshow and students really enjoyed uh seeing it. We hoping to send it out soon uh to families, but it's a it's a really big video. So, so we're working through the technology piece. Um we had our awards ceremony yesterday morning uh on the last day of school. Recognized about a third of the school. Uh it was a it's a really nice tradition to have to bring our students in, do our awards, see each class for about 10 minutes, and then send them off for the summer. Our spring concerts were last week, the 10th and the 11th. Um both groups did a really nice job. I just wanted to give our new music teacher who took over for Nancy Spencer, Alyssa Costa, a big shout out because she had

029130 students in her chorus this year. Um, and you can't see the full gym uh in that picture, but the the gym was filled with uh families and it was just a nice vibe that night. Also, thank you Liz Null for her uh spring band concert. Uh another great production by her and her group. Seventh grade science did a solar ovens project this year. Um and it was no pun intended or pun intended uh tasty. Uh they put s'mores, they made some uh ovens out of cardboard boxes. Uh left them outside last week on a nice hot day. um and got to eat the samores after they baked inside. Um and it was a fun end of the year activity uh for all students. Uh greenhouse update which is attached. Um again I just want

030to give student services administrator Katherine Ransom, our seventh grade science teacher Claire Delay, Ricardi from Brookdale Fruit Farm, and the Rotary Rotary Club a big shout out for all their help this spring. Uh there's a Rotary group coming in on Saturday to do a little bit more cleaning around the greenhouse. Um, if you look at the attachment of the greenhouse updates, you can see how nice it is looking. Uh, but there's still some weeding and other things that the Rotary is going to come by on Saturday and lend an extra hand. Um, but if you take a look at the greenhouse update, I know it's kind of a part of the uh border report. Um, you can see all the great things that uh Miss Delay and Miss Elin are are incorporating into their seventh

031seventh grade science curriculum. Um, rock groups are going out there frequently, taking walks in the morning. Um, and it's just been a really nice addition or revamping back in the middle school. Um, and part of her Miss Delay's projects is adding more uh flowers and pollinator plants to different gardens throughout the the school. Um, and I'm not sure if you guys noticed right on the corner of the school, that's been an area where she's planted some uh different flowers and plants. Uh, so it's been really nice to see her and her group. She's got about 20 25 students in her greenhouse club. Um, and I think those numbers will continue to rise. Just 25 students in her greenhouse club. That's amazing. Where our first year I think we had five. I know. That's a lot

032of kids though. That's awesome. It is. I think that speaks to her connection that she makes with her students. She's been an absolute wonder to a wonderful addition to our building here um in so many ways. And one is those one of those is the greenhouse. uh some end of the year dates and then some crazy to think uh beginning of the year dates that I added there. That's all I have for my board report. Open to any questions. Thank you. Does any you have a question, Tom? You know what, uh what happens with at the greenhouse with the greenhouse during the summer months? Yep. Thank you for asking that. Uh Claire put together a calendar that she shared out with our staff. She shared with the Rotary and I'll send it out to the

033community. I can send it to all of you for people to sign up each day to come by and water and just maintain during the summer months. Do they grow any um produce? Yep. One of the goals is next spring for us to bring in some of the produce to our cafeteria. I'm working with Amy Cassidy. Um and it's looking like we'll be able to offer some of the foods, cucumbers and veggies uh from the from the greenhouse. That's great. That is really great. And I'm so glad that that's back up and running and so grateful to the community members and the staff members who are doing that because it's really great. And the ovens project sounds cool, too. everything. What's powered by the solar? Uh, I haven't gotten necessarily an answer on that. Um,

034I think it just goes back to our like energy. It's not specific to the greenhouse. No, I don't think so. It was supposed to be specific to the greenhouse. It was supposed to be, but I don't I don't know if it is because we don't use It's a statue. I don't know if it's tied into anything because it was only tied into the greenhouse. There were some switches out. We we looked Lance uh Fenmore and I looked and that's something else I think we'll have to figure out in the coming months. It is operational. I just don't know where that energy is going or if it's even collecting any at this point because our greenhouse doesn't use too there's only one small outlet out there. So I'm just not sure that's something I didn't know

035if you're running pumps or anything for any irrigation or We do have pumps out there but they're I think just connected to the school. Interesting. So something to Thank you so much. Great. Thank you so much and congratulations to those kids for all of their hard work in music and the concerts and 130 choir members is a lot of choir members. That's pretty crazy. Great. Glad to see that it's a vibrant active community. And then we have um Tim's principal report. I'm going to share that out. It looks short and sweet. Yeah. I like that. Bye. because the advisory leadership team which I have two representatives of their I had a feeling that's why they were here be sharing um a presentation with you that has been uh a little bit altered so that it

036is a better representation than the first draft that we shared but we'll be able to to bring that up for you to view. Uh and then he also mentions in here about the HBHS theater department. The spring play was Our Town. He says bravo to the HBHS theater department for their recent production of our town. As always, our students shine on stage and behind the scenes. And there are some photos there, which I actually think my old cell phone iPhone 13 can take credit for. Surprising that came out. Um, and then he mentions in here the exciting news about um Mr. Jacob Hess will be taking over for the HBHS next principal. Um, has been presented for and involved in a number of the end of the year activities at HBHS. Mr. has attended our

037walk for change, our graduation, our eighth grade stepup day just last week. And also, Mr. Cole Eden, who will be taking over for Mrs. Amanda Zeller, has also been meeting regularly with the administration to begin his transition into a new role as assistant principal. Excuse me. Says HBHS is once again in good hands. Great. Thank you so much for taking care of that, Tracy. Appreciate it. Is Mr. Hes the one who's caught up in the extended year in his current district? No. No, that's this is what we're doing. Okay. So, um thank you. Great. So, at this point, we're going to move to our discussion section and we are going to have that advisory update. I'd like to invite Lynn and Beth to just join us up at the table. You don't need to sit

038there. Um yes. Candy. It's leaving you. You had your chin. You need refreshments for the movie. For the movie. Yeah. So, this is different than what's was in the packet. It looks like it's a little bit Do we have it presenting? Where is it? Where is it coming up? Oh, we're No, the Yes, you're up. Sorry. So, you guys are up. The advisory presentation is up. Sorry. Joe will plug it all in for you. I think we're getting That's cool. There it sprays on. I like when it sprays on. It's nice to see so many board members and also so many parents that I know. Yeah. Are they one of the same? Some overlap. Can I show you what we need to do? I'm super excited. There's no new on this year. He is looking

039at the uh physical mental um preparation and like sort of like what your body needs to do in order to turn. So he's doing a ready friends. All right, here we go. 29 ft of So just be mindful that the microphone shows the whole thing. Yeah, you need to you need to speak into the mic because although Oh, thank you. I didn't realize that this uh doesn't focus on doesn't do presenter view. That's okay. Okay. We're used to all different things. It's okay. Tracy, I'm so sorry. Is it possible to focus the projector with the remote for the What I need is just [Applause] I'm so sorry. It's okay. Don't don't worry. We have a few minutes. We're ahead of schedule. We're way ahead of schedule. And all the public that needs to come still

040and speak. They'll be they'll be filing in in droves. Lauren did let me. All right. So, just I didn't realize that this thing will broadcast presenter view. So, we'll just do slideshow present. That works. That's great. All right. All right, friends. So, if this isn't the presentation, can you hear from here? Just you need to speak into a microphone because that's how the public speak. Any microphone will do. All right, let's just sit over here. You can sit as long Yeah, that's fine. You just need to speak into a microphone. Marvelous. Thank you. And it won't help us hear you. It only helps the public hear you. Okay, great. It doesn't actually do anything to our voices here. Unfortunately, I have a laptop in front of me. Did the not. Okay. Thank you for this

041opportunity for us to come and give you an update and talk about um the roll out of HBHS advisory program. Um as this is my first year, I am I got the opportunity to be here for the roll out but not the four years in the making. So my understanding is that there has been an immense amount of hard work and planning that went into this actual rollout um for the student center initiative HBHS advisory program and it's what we have to share with you tonight is to show how a dedicated 15 minutes a day is making a great shift in our community. All right. Can we just can you guys just And Tracy, you were if you Lynn and Beth, could you just say your name so the public? Uh Lynn Ellingworth. I teach

042English at the high school and have had the pleasure of being here since 01. What a great district. Um our second slide. Thank you, Patrick. Of course. The heart of the program is one trusted adult. That was the impetus. Um so one trusted adult. Make sure every student has one person who's going to know their name, who will notice if they're absent. We'll celebrate their growth, connect the students with support as needed, and it's a chance for students to connect with their peers across academic and social lines, and it fosters inclusivity and belonging, not just fitting in. Slide Oh, I'mthic. Thank you. Thank you, Joe. No problem. Uh, finest coordinator at the high school and also on the advisory leadership team. So, um, our program is built on three pillars. The first pillar is community

043culture and communication. So, uh, we have, uh, spent time being able to support the community, uh, culture by connecting both with the greater community within school, um, the greater school community and then by grade level. We've even had opportunities to connect to the lower levels. Uh so this is a picture of Cole etin's um advisory that created a connection through pen pals with some elementary school students and then did a little field trip down there to spend time with them. There we go. Um this next slide demonstrates pillar two building connections. Uh we've hosted Oh you right. Um this is students interact and with a range of peers and deepen relationships with advisers adviserss whether decorating the school entrance or simply checking in these small small moments build trust. It's also our hope next year

044to have more um things like this that really bring in the element of service and the idea of service and connection. So the next pillar lifelong learning skills and this will be our focus for year two as well. Our advisory program is a chance for the students to learn the essential skills of collaboration, communication, self-reflection, listening, checking in, self-awareness. And these are things that don't always fit into traditional academic classes, but we all know it's vital for life success and satisfaction. And this is Mrs. Paul's advises learning some problem solving through the Pringles ring challenge. Try it. It's very tricky. And I would say in regards to the three pillars, um, as a first year program, we spent a lot of time focusing on connection. This was an opportunity for us to get to know

045our students. Um, I work with sophomores and I advise the sophomore group, but we know we have three years with the with these groups. So, that was amazing. So, we knew that as a starting point, we needed to be able to really focus on just getting to know each other and helping the kids see the mission of the advisory. So, the advisory is built on the six uh key um dimensions. um a clear purpose visible in every room. We do have um the each advisory develop norms and have um the three pillars in each area. Students are able to see um that clearly in their space. Um organizationally we are um we we have the all leadership team. There are four of us. We each as well as our administration uh we each um oversee

046one of the grades. So we work with those adviserss um all on the same grade level understanding of their specific needs in that grade. Uh our content and curriculum we spent a great deal of time putting together a resource guide um developing a number of activities and then materials that we could have available to the advisers so that they could have that information and ability to roll that out. um professional development was provided to all of the adviserss regularly both on PD days through staff workshops, staff meetings so that they were regularly getting some information on how to best move forward as well as really a a lot of informal support. So um we were communicating, sending out emails, checking in with people to see what they needed so that we could um help staff

047that were not as comfortable stepping into this role to be more comfortable with it. As an assessment tool, we um did a more formal assessment both with staff and with um students um at midyear and then at the end of the year to gather feedback from them to see what uh their thoughts were and what they would like to see as they move forward. And that was really helpful information. And then as you can see, our leadership has, you know, our our leadership started with Rick back in the day when he was first following the NEAS recommendation. Um, beginning to work on how to put together advisory and then um, you know, Tim was here to roll it out and now we have Tracy um, to to move on with us uh, who has just

048amazing skills in that area. So that's been really wonderful. All right. and our next slide. But I just wanted to take a moment to to thank Tim um as he's departing because Tim's really had faith in the project and he had to hold that faith until it was the right time, the contract agreed, all of those things. And I thought that took a lot of investment and faith in the project. And I'm very grateful for that opportunity to work with him. Uh, good teaching is good advising. The overlap. I think originally we had a slide on here that kind of talked about what advisory is not. We wanted to talk more. Oh, I am next slide. Okay. Okay. Teaching is curriculum driven. Curriculum driven. Advisory is responsive and supports the whole student. The overlap is

049good teaching has the whole student at the center. academic achievement is best supported by the development of social skills and interpersonal skills. We we saw students and I think this picture is a great representation of um students from different peer groups, different friend groups that spent time together and really developed connections that they otherwise wouldn't have had and it just allowed for um more confidence in our students and their ability to interact with each other and support each other. This is my advisory and I will say they look really happy because we had just had an ice cream social but um that is not what we looked like at the beginning of the year. So it really was transformative. It was a process. And I'm going to just share a little anecdotal thing I heard

050today from a teacher. I said I don't know does this sound weird but I just I think of these as like kids I'm really connected to like I'm they're kind of funky auntie. and she said, "I know. I actually tell them just think of me as your aunt." But um this was a teacher who was, you know, at first a little nervous and to know that that teacher feels that way about her advises meant the world to me to hear. So what advising is and isn't. Um, and this we really had to establish at the beginning because we all know if there's just a little opening for relaxing, we don't have advisory. We have something else. Fortunately, we had this advisory is a time to connect, reflect, and reset in the day. It's a place

051where each student is valued, seen, and supported. It's a person who will know the student, can help them connect with resources for success. Best day of my advising life was when a kid said, "I hope I hope it's okay. I can we just stay and talk a little bit? I I need some help with something." And it was like, "Yes, I feel like a real advisor." Um, and a purpose because I think it really helped reconnect a community. I think that we all had a lot of community reconnection to do after the last 5 years. So I think it was a really good vehicle and what it isn't work time study hall phone time no next steps next steps and this is all based on the research that we did the assessment we did and

052we crunched the data and crunched it once twice thrice to look at what were the commonalities. Yep. So, moving forward, um we will be working this summer um for two days. The alt team will get together to refine the program um to look at this feedback and be able to um both align with our new principal um Mr. Hess also look at our SAU goals and develop the pro the guidelines and protocols for for um supporting the adviserss ongoing. Right? those are already in place but making those adjustments um doing that continuous improvement. Um we are going to be developing a master guide uh based on some feedback looking at developing themes for months um skills grade level um curriculum that works for the various needs of various uh grade levels and then some all

053school activities. So we can do some things that bring grade level um advisories together and then also sorry um the whole school together. So like and as an example this year in our level we did a um a tournament in the spring a game tournament. So in order to um have each advisory meet another advisory play a game and get to know them a little bit and kind of build community within the sophomore class. That's great. I just want to add a little bit to that the level we talk about you know the playing games and things along those lines and and what we have discussed as a important aspect of advisory is that debriefing these activities aren't just playing a game and walking out the door but taking the opportunity to sit as a

054group and talk about um where did our communication break down and how could we do that better and it's just it's really um addressing those skills those soft skills that are needed in a way where they're relevant and internalized by the student. And I'd be remiss if I didn't give a shout out to our other team members. Um, so Justin Belaloo just completed being the adviser to the senior adviserss and he's looping to the freshman. Griffin Fletcher advised the freshman and he'll be looping to the sophomore level. Beth advised the sophomores and she'll be looping to the junior level. and the juniors. Uh we're all very excited to be senior adviserss now for the class of 2026. We're very excited for what has been done, but we're even more excited for what's possible next year.

055Thank you for your time. Thank you. Thank you so much. I think that was great and a really lovely summary of all of the all of what's happening. I think there's a lot of work that's gone on to make it happen and it's very clear from that that there's been a huge effort and a lot of work and that goes that does not go unnoticed. Thank you very much for that. Thank you. I'm sure we have some questions. So, um, are there any board members with questions? I'm going to look around before I look at. Is there anyone with questions? Cindy or Beth or Kate? I do. I do have a couple. I do actually. There you go. Different voice. start with me. Um, so I had the opportunity to be involved on the committee

056when this was we were building and that was great. I also am a social worker and I also work at a school and we have an advisory program. So if this is I'm so excited that we have this now and and I was really excited to see how this year went and I know coming into it last year and when this started getting introduced to a lot of the teachers there was definitely different levels of interest and you know it's easy to get a little concerned then that with different levels of interest there might be different levels of well buy in and then even maybe follow through in the classroom. So, I'm just curious having sort of been leaders in the in the years and sort of following through this year um or in the

057grade years, how has that been and how like how has that been managed and how you know this one? What is it like by sort of by the end of the year and what do you do with that? No, go ahead and then if I uh I'd like to start off and then I'll pass it to Tracy. I apply the same sort of thoughts as you would in the classroom. If a student seems disengaged, the first thing you do is get curious. What what's what's in the way of engagement? How can we support you? And so that happens conversation by conversation. It's also a cultural thing. You know, if 90% of the students feel engaged and then 92, then 93, then the whole room, the same thing can happen with an adult community. Mhm. So

058there are incentives. There are social positive incentives for buy in too. Um yeah, thank you for this question because it is something that we addressed and looked at all year. We would roam through. We as administrators, we were each assigned to a grade level. Um we participated in our own advisories and connected to individual advisories that way. Um, and I think that these guides did an amazing job of when there was someone who felt like they needed support, they felt free to articulate that and free to ask for support and the support was given. So, there were tangible things like resources online um opportunities for somebody who felt more comfortable um facilitating an advisory to be a model and I think that as we grow in this as a community, it's going to become part

059of our community and not feel so uncomfortable both with the students and the staff. So now the ninth graders, that's all they know of the high school. So as they continue on and we go through four years of this, I think it will become more comfortable for everybody. 100%. Yeah, totally agree. Question. Can I add? So I I absolutely um had that focus and concern um and felt like we really needed to meet the teachers where they were as a starting point. And I do think all all the front-loading of PD that we did with some really concrete um ideas and support all the way through really helped them. So I was really impressed that they came and they might still say and we had sophomores and for those of you who know sophomores, they're

060they're a difficult group socially. Um they they really just kept they just kept at it, right? and they were able to recognize the challenges but not step back and not step into it which was really amazing. So um knowing that some of those folks were on my team and then seeing them move through that felt really good that I think we did enough um of that support upfront but then continuing on to help them make that change make that that shift. That's great. Thank you. Um, finally, I also believe that when teachers see that we are responsive to the wishes they've expressed and the needs and concerns they've expressed and things like, can we do more all school activities? Can we have themes? Can we have a little more overarching kind of motif going on

061when they see that we're responsive to that, I think that also increases engagement. Great. And lastly, just as as an administration, we had discussions about the efforts to not make any teacher feel like they weren't doing it correctly. And I think that that was really important. So, if they needed support, that was okay. Um, and it was really um an effort to say we're not going to go in and have an expectation of this is what you should be doing and and make everybody have the opportunity to feel successful. So, a learning experience for everybody. Truly, that's great. Um, I'm curious because obviously teachers don't stay forever. Um, How is it handled? So, we have this group of kids who've bonded together and some of them have bonded with a teacher and then we have

062a teacher that leaves. How do we handle that kind of turnover? That's a great question. That's an agenda item on our summer work. There you go. We're going to develop a protocol for two things. One, for if a teacher if we're hearing that a teacher struggling or an advisory is struggling, what's our protocol that's going to make for safe spaces for problem solving? And also um what's our protocol for those looping? And we've already had teachers who were teachers of seniors say hey if there's an opening in this level and this level I would I would be open so that they you know some of our more experienced teachers were saying hey I'll step in as needed. So there's that good factor. That's great. Great. Thank you. Anything else Kate? No I'm good. Anyone else

063have any questions? Okay Tom you have any questions? Shockingly I do. I know. But thank you, Kate, because uh you shortened my list. There you go. I'm sure I can think of a few more if you want. No, I just because of uh remembering all of the concerns that were expressed up front. Um, sort of piggybacking on what what Kate had asked in some of your answers, did you specifically have um any situations where you ended up having dual advisors where you because we talked about pairing a comfortable person with an an uncomfortable person or or was it more that people had their own but the support was there on an as needed basis? Both. Yeah, it's kind of a both and. So you did have some where they were double. Yes, we Yes. So,

064so counselors did not have their own, but they paired together. So there was that opportunity for dual um adviserss and then administrators as well. So there was that opportunity. In addition, we each had a partner. So um you could do things together with that partner and be able to like uh be supported by that person as well. So there were a lot of opportunities for that which was great because as like the alt leader I can't necessarily leave my advisory to go to that other person but I can bring my advisory with me and go and do it with somebody else. Is that a long-term strategy or was that a first year strategy? Yeah, I think we'll talk about that more this summer. But I can tell you it was very successful. I mean friendships

065were built um connections were made, new friendships were made. It really did a lot of community building among staff and it got people in friendships across grade levels and across disciplines which is good for the culture. I see it as a long-term strategy because it also managed some logistics and that if there was an adviser that was absent that adisey that class knew to go to their partner advisy and just things went smoothly that way. Makes sense. To what degree was the structure of the advisories based on predetermined call it curriculum even though we're trying to avoid that versus um something that was either student directed or just pure unstructured time. Uh who wants to feel it? Do you want to start? Sure. Okay. Okay. um we modeled some structures but we modeled some structures

066that had flexibility within them which teachers really liked. We did a lot of research. We visited other schools. I mean we were working on this project for years and you were in the room a number of those times and I remember some of those conversations. So we did our research but we also knew that HB being HB saying here's a can program you must do this would not create what we are looking to create. We knew it had to have some organic HB mojo. So, it was structure and there was also flexibility within the structure. And in our feedback, teachers really like that. They want to be able to say, "Hey, this week, I just want to look at the at the activities calendar and do those things," which we did. Um, or, oh, it's

067day one. let's do our routine day one check-in and and what we called uh Tim's notes and then you know we had sort of a on Tuesdays we do this on Wednesdays we do this on Thursdays we do that but um a lot of advisers said the days that went best or the days they went off script and said hey this what do you want to do today and those organic moments are the heartbeat how how big are the advisories on average about 12 average. Yeah. I don't I think there's maybe one or two that are over that. There are a few that are a bit under that. Yeah. So, I was going to say uh I just wanted to say that connection because we were talking about connection the pillar that we really felt

068like had to be reinforced this year. There is a process called connections that we that we do where everybody gets a chance to speak. Um and it's not interactive in that way. It's just kind of open and everybody gets a chance to respond to it could be just open and anybody can share whatever they want or it might be like how was you know what was the weekend like for you or like what's your favorite summer treat and it gives you an opportunity for kids to share. So we did really um ask the adviserss to set up an opportunity for a connection at least every week um and then maybe do a game. We also asked them to help the students decide how they wanted to structure their three sessions a week. Um so like

069my advisory decided they were going to do connections and then a game and then something with another advisory on that third day. Um but that also like shifted and changed but we really um encouraging adviserss to have students be more proactive in what they want to do. And I do know that there were some advisories where they were very studentled. really depends on the group that you have and the leadership that you have and the confidence for those students as they started out. And sometimes we have things that go viral like for lack of a better term wisdom circles like uh two two advisories of graduating seniors compiled advice for juniors and my junior group went up and we hung out and had snacks and they're like, "Look, you guys, here's what you need to

070know next year." and other grade levels did that and that that's just what you want in a community. Um that is great. You know, we were there when it started and I can tell you Tom, it is so much more than even my expectations this year. Beth described with the student. Oh yeah. Is there a feedback loop beyond the alt just being obser observing what's going on? Is there a feedback loop for staff and or students to provide direct input? We need to talk about solid. Yep. Go ahead. You want to Yep. Go ahead. Go for it. Okay. One of our goals for next year, we had the idea the first year, but we said, let's pilot first. Next year, we need to add some salt to the to the dish. And salt is the

071student advisory leadership team. We'd like to develop a protocol and process for each group to select a representative from their group. And we don't know if it's going to be quarterly or monthly, but we're going to meet with our salt and they will bring some some honest flavor to the dish. We think so. Th this is I just have to say it's really encouraging to hear this this feedback because as you say, Lynn, we had hopes, we had concerns, and we had a lot of skeptics. Yeah. And I my congratulations to you all for Thank you. Absolutely. For making what sounds like it was a incredible success with a lot of constraints and a lot of unknowns. I think it was very I think Tim was very tuned in to working with all interested parties

072to find the right time to launch. Um the readiness was here this year. I also see from the names up there there were key players some of whom were in the room and Justin and Griffin played amazing roles during some of those sessions. Yeah, I saw that you went down to someone went down to the uh Hollis elementary schools. Are is this does the same opportunity to connect with the Brooklyn elementary schools exist? We'd love to. We'd love to. I actually I'll put that on our agenda for summer. Thank you. That was kind of organic because Cole had worked there before, so had a connection and yeah, so it was a great he was like thinking about what he wanted to do, had made that connection. They actually wrote back and forth a bunch of

073times before they had that that meeting. Yeah, I just I'd hate to see Brooklyn feel Yeah. left out. Um, thank you, Tom. That just We'll get that in the notes. I just have one more question. 15 minutes three times a week. Is that working out? We want more. Yeah, actually. But the staff is starting to say we want more. Okay. And that's very hopeful. Yeah. Yes. I think we say it that's when it'll absolutely happen and how how so a field trip I would expect that would take more time. So that's like a special thing that that advisory group does. And so um great I I'm so impressed and so happy that it's working the way um it was intended to work because um the the basic thing that these have kids need to know

074is how do I get along with people? How do I connect with others? How do I talk to people? How do I deal with a conflict? And all of those things are really can really be learned in this experience. So, thank you so much. Thank you. Is there anything else? Very good. Great. Thank you very much for your time and happy summer. Thank you. Enjoy. Good luck with your latest version. Um can Tracy can share the link with you but give me a No, I just could be appended into We need to put this into the current agenda notes out of the margins. Yeah, it doesn't matter cuz Thank you so much for your Donald put it in the minutes and say what time people can watch. Happy birthday. She usually puts a she puts

075a link in the minutes and says like two 2 hours and 20 minutes. Okay, but this wasn't 2 hours and 20 minutes. Thank you. Great. Thank you very much everyone. Okay, moving on to my next moving on to we're becoming presentation heavy which is great. We have our writing curriculum review and Lauren is here to present that. Let's have to do the writing piece. So, Patrick and Tracy, I'm going to have you guys stay through the writing presentation and then you can take off after that because I don't think there's anything else really related to the principles. You are welcome to stay for as long as you want till the very end, but you do not have to. So, but I thought the writing presentation might be good because you guys might have something to

076add. I think we're good on Do we have anything on policy? We have lots of policy side. I don't think so. I think JICD isn't on this month. Academic integrity, but I know this one. Yeah, I think we'll be okay. We'll be all right. Okay. Lauren, hi. Um I'm Lauren Graass. I presented um an update on the writing work back in January and I'm just here to follow up um talk a little bit about the work that was done in the second semester of the year, share some of the findings and then the recommendations as we move forward. Um so as a quick review, the guiding question that we developed was how do we develop competent, confident and eloquent writers here in SAU41? The goals of the review uh again just a quick review to

077determine the degrees to which the writing curriculum and writing instruction is vertically and horizontally aligned from K through 12 to determine the strengths and any potential weaknesses of the curriculum. Um to see if it's producing the desired learning outcomes and to also hear teacher and administrator perceptions about the writing curriculum in all grades. So, we had completed all of the elements from September through December as planned and January through June went more or less as planned. One piece changed, but it was a very positive change and I'll get to that in just a moment. Um, so I'm going to talk about the work that was done primarily from February through June. Okay, so the first half of the year, very quickly, just to remind everybody, we looked at the writing curriculum documents in every grade,

078especially the new curriculum that was being implemented in grades four through six, um, the CKLA and Amplify program. We reviewed student data, SAS, SATs, and teacher assessments, especially any common assessments by grade or course. We held some initial meetings with administrators at each school. Um it technically included Hollis Primary and RMMS as well because the curriculum administrators work in both to gather feedback from administrators about any visions, questions, comments, concerns they had as we started out with the work and English teachers just to introduce the project and hear if they had any specific goals that they had in mind for this. Okay. So from February through June, we worked on a handful of items and I'm going to go through the findings of those items and explain them piece by piece. One that we did

079just in the past couple of weeks was a teacher survey for those um teachers of grades four, five, and six in both Hollis and Brookline. So I waited until the very end of the year because I wanted to give them a chance to understand and experience the full scope of their first year using the new curriculum. um they were asked more or less to identify the degree to which they agreed or disagreed, felt strongly um or not so strongly about different elements of the curriculum. And I have a couple of the sample questions on the next slide, but we were really focusing on the individual components of the writing program. So, right down to the grading feature that's embedded, the frequency, level of depth of the grammar lessons, um the option to differentiate for students,

080pacing, really trying to hit on all of the different pieces that matter when you're the teacher in that room and also that matter to the students and their level of comfort and success with this. A couple of the sample questions that I wanted to share with you um are up here. I feel that the writing lessons and assignments in CKLA amplify ELA are effective at improving student learning outcomes. We had 12 teachers who agreed and one who strongly agreed and nobody said that they disagreed with that. So that was very impressive to hear that feedback. Um we wanted to know teachers perceptions in terms of how students are challenged and how students are performing with the curriculum. Um we did have a couple disagrees here. Three nine agrees, one strongly agree. However, those teachers who

081disagreed followed up with some narrative feedback, explaining to us why. And that was really about differentiation and pacing. Just hoping that there was a little bit more time to dive deeper with the students who needed it, a little bit more time to differentiate. And also, some teachers mentioned just the hiccups of trying something new that can be very overwhelming the first year. It can feel like a lot. Uh, six teachers felt that students would benefit from supplemental materials being added to the writing curriculum. Uh, this question was on there because it's an it's an ELA program, so it's a reading and writing program and grammar all mixed into one. And we wanted to make sure that the writing components were adequate and see if we should add anything else. Um, although six teachers out of

082the 13 who responded said that students would benefit from supplemental materials, they weren't exactly writing lessons or writing materials. They were things like anchor charts and some visuals that might help. Um so that's something that we can certainly consider moving forward but there were no glaring um omissions from the program. Overall people were very satisfied with it. Okay. One of the other elements that we completed in I believe this was in March on one of the PD days was having a vertical alignment meeting with all of the sixth grade teachers and many of the reading and writing specialists from CSDA and Hughes and the seventh and eighth grade English teachers. And this is the part that morphed from we were originally thinking of having the middle school folks go and visit the sixth grade classrooms,

083but after proposing that to the teachers, they felt that a conversation was better because they could ask and answer and really have um a dialogue about the experience using the new program and asking the questions that they wouldn't have the chance to do in just classroom observations. So beforehand teachers from the different grades gave me the questions and I had them prepared to share at the meeting and shared them before so teachers could start thinking about their answers and we could dive into the details there. So some of the findings from that meeting most of which were positive were that students stamina for writing has improved. Um the sixth grade teachers especially at CSDA really felt that students were ready to go when they had a writing assignment by this point in the year. um

084they didn't have as many questions. There wasn't that hesitation or reluctance. They knew what was being asked of them and they more or less enjoyed the writing experience because they had had so many writing experiences that semester already or that throughout the school year is what I mean. Um students are writing most days especially paragraph responses. So the level of writing the rigor is increased and also the amount of writing that students are doing. Some teachers reported that maybe not quite as many full essays that are more than one or two pages. However, they felt that that was well balanced with the paragraph responses that were much more frequent. Um the written responses really require the students to use evidence from the text, which is huge when they get into seventh grade and beyond. And

085the sixth grade teachers liked that students were starting to do that then. Um, and the seventh grade teachers were excited about that as well because the students can come to them and hopefully in theory dive into the literary analysis portion, which is what a lot of the seventh grade writing focuses on, without having to teach those skills of how to find the evidence, cite it, use the proper citation methods in those pieces. Another interesting finding was that there was a a large increase in participation in class discussions. Um, again, I think it was the CSDA teachers who were really excited about that, but they felt that the kids felt confident sharing their answers because they could say, "Well, no, I'm looking at page 76 and I'm seeing this." And then if someone wanted to, you

086know, share their their view about it, and if it contradicted, they could go back and forth looking at the text instead of based on a feeling. Um, they were interpreting and reading a lot of non-fiction text as opposed to fiction. That being said, one of the concerns brought forward from the sixth grade teachers that's not a peer was perhaps there aren't as many novels as in the past. Not necessarily a negative thing, just a factual piece of information that they noted. Um, and that actually is one of the questions there. How will reading fewer novels in sixth grade affect students in seventh grade? We did talk that through at the meeting and the thought was it might affect them. It might be harder to get used to reading full-length novels if they've only read a

087couple in sixth grade. However, the skills with the writing and the deep reading and the vocabulary that's embedded in this program should really give them a strong foundation for the literary analysis in seventh grade. Um, one of the key points from seventh and eighth grade teachers was just letting the sixth grade folks know that students do primarily write about literature. So, that will be one of the changes, but again, they should be well prepared. We also had the second of our joint department meetings in the co-op. So that's when grades 7 through 12 teachers of English meet. Um the second meeting was really about updating them on the findings from that meeting between 6 and 7 and 8 to ask teachers in the co-op knowing that we're going to be receiving these students who had

088this strong foundation what can or should we do to adjust our writing curriculum? And that took a long time to hash out. um we have a very strong writing curriculum um in most of the grades and especially the 10th grade writing program which all students go through. However, knowing that the students from sixth grade are already reading and writing about very challenging highle texts, we're aware that we might need to make some adjustments and the overall feeling is that most people are on board with doing so with waiting and seeing how the students arrive in the fall, what skills they actually have. um looking at the reading piece as well because reading and writing are so interwoven there but keeping an open mind that some things in the curriculum may need to be adjusted as

089we move forward. Um one of the other pieces that came out of the joint department meeting was the idea of having one of our own um especially between 8th and 9th grade regularly. So, I'll get to that a little later, but one of the recommendations is actually to do a monthly joint PLC between the eighth grade ELA teachers and the nth grade ELA teachers. And those involved have already been asked about it and they're very enthusiastic to begin that work. Follow-up meetings with administrators. Um, I met with Patrick quite a bit and Katherine Ransom, also Abby over at Hughes. And one of the pieces we worked on here at the middle school was ensuring that the seventh grade and eighth grade writing curriculum is evidence-based because CKLA amplify is. So just reviewing the standards. Um

090everything that is in there is based on the standards, but making sure we're really hitting them all and especially those that maybe weren't touched on quite as much with the Amplify English program. Um, again considering that we may need to review, revise and or develop materials that build off of the new foundation that the sixth graders have and then of course the fifth graders and so on because the hope of this is that each year the students come up to the middle school with stronger foundational skills. Um, one piece that I left off of here, it could be on another slide, but I'll mention it now, is seventh grade actually developed a baseline writing assessment that they're going to have all students complete probably in August or September so that they have a full essay

091baseline to see where the students are when they arrive. Okay. So, a lot of this work has just been determined and it's actually going to continue through next year. There's some action items here. So, we'll continue to gather feedback from teachers in K through six because next year is when students in K through three will begin using the program. So, I think it's important to give them the same opportunity to speak to myself and everyone else involved about the experience. Um, apart from the training that they're getting in their PD days, continue to support and follow up with teachers in fourth through six. Um, 8th and 9th grade teachers are going to meet monthly for a PLC. probably some of the um reading and writing specialists will join too when they're available. So that should

092be really productive. 7th through 12th grade teachers agreed to review, revise, and align writing rubrics. So some of that work has begun, especially with I think it's argument writing. And I know there's a literary analysis rubric floating around. But the idea with that is to have one rubric for literary analysis essays that all students are using regardless of the teacher or course in 9th grade. And the same for 10th and 11th. Um, I won't mention 12th grade because that's when you really get into either AP or the electives and it just doesn't work. Um, that's not to say that the rubrics weren't fairly aligned beforehand. There's a lot many commonalities in the curriculum. However, with many new teachers coming and and some going in the past handful of years, we did want to make sure

093that there was a new tool that's updated um that better meets the needs of students now than what might have been developed three or four years ago. Um, another piece that we're probably going to tackle um in the fall or over the summer is revising the curriculum for the 10th grade writing course. So, looking at some new styles of writing to meet the current needs of students, and I can elaborate on that a little bit. It's broken into four different units right now. They probably don't need quite as much narrative and descriptive writing as what's in there at this point. They've had a lot of persuasive writing um probably in seventh and eighth grade. are really looking at how we're chunking out our use of time. Um, incorporating things like workplace and school communication, some

094of those soft skills where appropriate and where they come into play with writing, things like even emailing your teachers and pieces like that students struggle with, especially in ninth and tth grade and synthesis writing because that is the backbone of a lot of the writing they do in the high school, especially in other departments. So reading non-fiction from various sources and then coming up with their own opinions and ideas and sharing that in their writing. So we're hoping to add some of that. Those are just a couple examples. Um ideally create daily lessons for new teachers to follow. And that would be teachers who maybe have never taught writing before but have been in the building for 12 years. That that could be the case. And it's it's daunting when you need to come up

095with all of that material on your own or collect it from others. So, if we can have it in one shared place where everybody who's teaching the course or has taught it has had time to meet and revise the lessons and there's one document, if you will, for each lesson that everybody uses, we're again ensuring that common experience for everybody and also that we have a lot of cooks in the kitchen making sure that the lessons are the best that they can be for the students. Um, that's really all. Again, the work will continue throughout next year. I think it will take most of the school year because some of these are big projects to tackle, but overall the teachers are on board and there's a lot of enthusiasm for the work. That's very impressive.

096Great. I mean, again, you know, you guys come here with a presentation of 10 or 12 slides, but the amount of work that it took to get that information and the conversations and the hours and hours is so appreciated. So, thank you so much for that. Um, I'm going to ask if the board has any questions. Gonna go around see if there's any questions. Um, I can't think of one right now. So, Tom, do you have a question? I do. But first, I want to be I don't know if you want to close public input. Oh, I do. I actually want to know close public input when Lauren is done. I'm now closing public input at 7:16. It's been open for a while. That's good. Well, first, thank you. Really interesting and helpful to understand.

097um sounded like a lot of the uh experience is related to Hey Tom, can you get close to the mic because people have told me they have a hard time hearing what interpreting um literature and things like that? Is creative writing just uh self-generated content also included in in this program? No, there's not much creative writing in there. That was one of the um comments that I saw the most on the surveys. And teachers are really careful not to say that that's a negative thing, but it's an observation they've made is that there's not a lot of opportunity to write creative pieces. Do they actually write or is it is it mostly keyboard input? Okay, it's mostly keyboard for the essays. However, the shorter pieces are handwritten. We had a pretty long conversation about that

098during one of the joint meetings. Um, the sixth grade teachers said they get workbooks, the students do, and they usually have the students write by pencil in the workbooks or notebook paper. I've heard that it's a very different thought process. Yes, it is. Yeah. To to to write as well. Yeah. Um, how is the writing judged so that it's u not subjective? So there's a grading tool embedded in Amplify that I think actually some of it is done by the computer, Gina. I don't want to misspeak on that, but my understanding is that part of it is computerenerated, but there's also very clear rubrics that the teachers align. Um, so they practice grading the different essays and talk about the rubrics that they're ideally interpreting them the right way and some of it is computer

099scored. Are the teachers responsible for correcting grammar? What do you mean by that? Can you clarify? Um, my observation is that that there are a significant number of adults who do not know grammar rules real well. Okay, I understand what you're saying. So, one of the pieces we talked about quite a bit actually was is there a grammar program that we can adopt for ideally like grades four through 12 because a lot of teachers feel the same way you just shared. There isn't one that will fit or one that can be continued for each grade. So, what we're trying to do is identify something that will work at each grade level, even if it's a different program. Yes, the teacher should be correcting the grammar as much if this is an area that you relied

100on the software to do. Oh. Oh, I don't know about that. I'm sorry. Okay. Great. Any other questions? I'll withhold. I just want to say that it has been an absolute joy to meet with Lauren every two weeks to talk about the progress. I, you know, had a particular goal in mind and I think the work has far surpassed that and I was so excited when I was asked for permission to continue the work success. That's great. So, I'm really excited about what's to come. Yeah. Thank you. And so, that's my only question is do you I don't want to put any pressure on you. Do you think you want to do like a whole year and just come back next year in June or did you like the January check-in? I think January was

101good. Whatever works for you is fine, but I do think that a significant amount of work, especially for the writing course in 10th grade, will be done by the fall. So, okay. So, yeah. So, maybe we can schedule you in January and we'll let you know, we'll kind of make a note to do that. And, um, but if for some reason it's not a good time for you, you can let us know. So, um, yeah. Does anybody else else have point and Hollis using the same programs and are they implementing it similarly? They are. Yes, they're using the same exact programs at a similar pace. Um I think the ELA block the amount of minutes is a little bit different um in each district, but overall they're doing the exact same thing at more or

102less the same time. Excellent. And the thing that's so tricky about writing or any of the humanities, if you will, is that you have to balance the need to get everybody on the same page and have the same rubric, but also allow people to be individuals as teachers and allow that flexibility. And so it's such a challenge to it's different than math. It's just different. And so it's it's more complex in a lot of ways because it's just not like 2 plus 2 equals four. But what makes a be what makes a great persuasive sentence. What makes a great and and you identify those things, but it's still there's always going to be a little subjectivity in that. And that's okay because that's what life is. So it's great that you're you can I can

103see I can hear it that you're working through all that. And that's fantastic. So, so slightly off topic, but it just made me think of this um and I think relevant. Are we using softwares like Turn It In or something similar to Check and Balance? Yes, we're using um Turn It In at the high school and I believe Patrick, do they use that at the middle school? No. So, Turn It In is just discontinued. That's what I for June 30th um at the request of both the English and um history departments. So they found a different tool that they would like to implement and so that is moving forward for 7 through 12. Gotcha. Great. And you said that one of the things you'd like to do with the writing curriculum that I do really

104that I keyed in on is helping kids learn how to write a great email or a really good thank you letter. Um because I have kids in their 20s that will often say to me like, "What do I say?" And I'm like, "Oh my gosh, you should know how to do this." So, it's great to like kind of do some business writing or that would be that's a great idea. So, that that way I don't have to do that. Upper case uppercase letters in texting. Period. No, they don't have to do fluctuation in texting. They do not. Okay. Thank you so much, L. Appreciate it. Oh, great job. Thank you. And um you guys are welcome to scoot. You do not need to stay for the rest of this meeting. Okay. Thank you. Moving on

105to Oh, all the fun stuff is over. Wait, you don't want to listen to the revenue report? I love the revenue report. Like, I really do. You're not making Linda feel. It's the fun stuff, too. I love it all. Thank you guys. Thanks, Tracy. Can't lie. No, it's just All right. Are you ready? But you do such a great job presenting the numbers that it makes me like love. No, I know. I really do. Every time she presents it, I'm like, "Oh, okay. It makes complete sense now." Sure. Thank you. Bye, Patrick. Bye, Patrick. Um, happy summer. You, too. Okay. So, I just did this a month ago, you know, not a lot has changed, but since the last report in May, we're continuing to project a savings and expenses. And because of these savings

106last month, as you recall, the BA recommended purchasing three things. Lab tables, ADA renovations for the middle school, and part of the middle school roof section. So on this expense page, the first two of those items are encumbered. The lab tables and ADA renovations on this report are in the incumbrance column. So that's part of that expense balance. Now, so we still have um $971,000 in savings and expenses. Then in the revenue on the revenue side, it's slightly increased from the May report due to additional grant money. So bringing our total revenue surplus to $582,000. So the projected fund balance at the end of the year now stands at $558,643. And from this balance, we need to hold the amount of our prepaid expenses, which are 344,000. The prepaid expenses include the Chromebooks, Chromebooks, laptops,

107and interactive flat panels, which we were able to purchase early due to avoid um to avoid potential price increases due to the the new tariffs. But the 344,000 are actually being charged to the FY26 budget. So, we're just holding that money per the auditors. That's what we do every year. So, we can't spend that. So, after accounting for the prepaid item prepaid items, the amount we're expect to return to the taxpayers is still over the 200,000 that we had promised, 214,327. And we have a few weeks to go. But if history's um going to repeat itself, typically our encumbrances keep dropping. So the number should do should increase. Great. That's fantastic. Yep. So we were able to get some things done this year and Yeah, that's good news. Great. Y there any questions for Linda?

108The um Put your mic down. Yeah. Put it in the right place. We talked about bringing some of the middle school roofing forward for work. Is it also being brought forward from a payment standpoint? And is that the Yeah. So the last month you guys um ordered to approve um as as Linda mentioned um the lab t so three items lab tables um ADA um accommodations and then the um the roof the section two roof one roof section one was part of the maintenance expendable trust section two we're hoping to expand how much we could accomplish this summer on the roof with the idea that we would use um some of this fund balance. So is that what's she referred to under the encumbered items under So what we've encumbered are $52,000 for the ADA

109renovations and about $12,000 for the lab tables. The roof section from last month's memo was 173,000. That's not included in this report because if we were to put the 173,000 in there, we would not be able to return the $200,000 to the taxpayers on paper. However, as I said, as incumbrances reduce, um we still may be able to do the roof, the 173,000, but we can't reflect that now with these projections. if um are we going to do their work regardless of whether it's paid out of 25 or 26? So that's a really good question. So 26 has section one in it. Um 26 also has the Chromebooks, the laptops, and the flat panels, but we prepaid those to avoid tariffs. So whether we hold the money in 25 as we have to for the

110auditors for items that are literally sitting in boxes in the classrooms because they the boxes can't be opened till July 1. Whether we whether we hold the money in 25 and and pay it out after 25 ends or do a transfer from 26 to pay it. Either way that frees up $344,000. So we would be able to complete the roof this summer. Okay. Not complete it. I would say complete sections one and two. Yeah. And um at the discussion about the project, the um facilities project and we talked about the 5%. You had mentioned the whole thing about the the wording allows for us to prepay up to 60 days and still conclude it. Do we have the the is it a cash issue or or an accounting issue? It it's neither. So, um No,

111I mean we could pay So, we could use money from here and then the bond pays it back. Um are we are we actually likely to get build early for it? I mean, have pay the bill or just get build? We we'll receive an invoice. Okay. So, it's not a question of us having having the bank balance to pay it. Correct. And the um EEI is well aware of when the bond money becomes available. So, it's it's not a concern. Okay. Thank you. Are there any other questions for Linda? Thank you very much. It's great. A comment for Linda, which is thank you for keeping things sane during all the insanity. Thank you. Excellent job, Linda, as always. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Okay, so um and you are welcome to you do not

112have to stay. Thank you. I appreciate that. I mean, these meetings are so thrilling. Like great. All right. So, moving on to the facilities committee update. I don't think we have too much, right? Because we did everything last month and last week we did the bond. Uh I signed the thing and we're good. We voted to approve that. The only thing I will uh say is we have scheduled the next facilities meeting for currently for July 9th for anyone who's interested. We did that because it's after the date that we the earliest date we think something might be decided on a federal level, right? and uh we're starting to get to the point where we're likely to look at future facilities things beyond just the um HVAC and solar project. So I think that this

113board may be asked in the near future to prioritize other facilities type projects for that committee and see whether there's any adjustments or additions needed to the makeup of the committee. Okay. It might be helpful for the board to get um a capital improvement plan update from Lance or something in the near future if if we're going to be asked those questions. I think it would help for us to know what the needs are. Yeah, because we've been so focused on this stuff. We have to figure out timing wise because I want to talk at the end about whether or not we're going to meet in July and all of that. So, I have to figure that we have to figure that out. Gina, do you just do you know when they're actually going to

114start work on on the uh propane change, the oil to propane? Uh I believe tomorrow. Wow. Teachers were still in today and then tomorrow at the building. Watch out for holes. And then Tom, moving on to the budget committee update. Oh, I had one question. It's not really facilities committee, but does anyone know if the um the town committee about that Rob was appointed to the Hollis? Have they met? I am unaware if they have. Okay. Is there someone I'm supposed to know notice that Rob is the committee person or we don't even know who's in charge of that. Okay, I'll figure that out. I'll ask one of my friends who's a select board. Okay. Um, budget committee update. I missed the last meeting because of a con, but Okay. Well, that's great. We can

115all go watch the meeting so that we'll get the update that way. Well, the minutes are out, too. Okay, great. Thank you. Um, next is a stipen committee update. I assume that comes from you, Cindy. Um, I can do it. Um the committee met on June 2nd. I actually was not here so I met with Brian ahead of time. Um we started looking at he had a spreadsheet which is not part of this um stuff that he sent in from a survey that was sent out to all the people who had been in clubs or the coaches and wanted to get an idea of hours that they had spent um in their view from the last year. you know, one day a week or three days a week when their meetings were. Um, and the

116overarching thing that we noticed was some of them vary differently from the middle school to the high school. When you look at like a play, the, you know, play time go the amount of time that goes into it is pretty much the same. It might be, you know, they do a shorter play, but the same type of timing um was part of the conception of what how we were looking at it as how many hours. So the main thing that he sent for the the uh projections of what we thought was some of them are to um kind of even out those um tiers for some of the Let me find the last I think it's the recommendations is probably what we need to look at the most is the because everything else was just

117pretty much where we're at, right? And then it's the recommendations page. So, for the recommendations that you have, um some new things that have not been part of the budget. Um some of them have not been part of the budget because they haven't been in effect for more than two years. So, you'll see on the spreadsheet that he sent um he has two at the uh three at the middle school, two is adding um because they don't have those at all. And I guess they've had them in the past and I think that they anticipate that they'll have someone else um step up to that because they had someone that did it for years previously that was not no longer here. Um robotics they wanted to move tiers because of the timing and the amount.

118Um so they want they felt like that that should go this is from the committee um and the looking at the findings that they got from the survey that they sent out. Um and then you can see a couple of them are shifting. Those are the ones that we saw that didn't seem like that they were being looked at like the middle school ski club kind of same thing. The timing is pretty much the same. Um but for some reason they were in a much lower tier. So the shifting for the tiers was the recommendation based on what we looked at with all the the big spreadsheet. Um and then for the um two in the bottom he is hoping to do a JV wrestling and a JV golf and those would be added because

119he sees that they have the um participation numbers and would like to be able to provide those you know students a chance to um do something. I mean, golf is a pretty small team in a very short season, but he they've had a big interest in it. Um, and the same with wrestling. So, when when um Are you done? I'm sorry. I can ask a question. So, when when he's recommending adding a club, the club will have run for two years. So, is it the second year of the club or it's the third year? It's the third So the club runs for two years without any stipend and then you get to the third year and that's when the stipen three technically three because we're budgeting for 27. Right. Okay. I see what you're saying.

120So two years of success puts you on the budget for another year. Okay. So the yeah these are payments that have not been made out of the budget previously. We haven't had these clubs or we've had these clubs but we haven't been we haven't been paying a stipen to those um people. And I think that's one thing. There's, you know, a few things that we would probably look at um beyond the budget to recommend and maybe that's one of them because it's been noted that if you're doing a club here at the middle school, you only have two years. Yeah. So, you know, there may there may need to to change that or look at that. Um, but this was something that we just wanted to get try to even everything out and then we're

121going to be looking at, you know, some other ways maybe um like that for to change the timing or um the um I think that you know they may have interest you know we may have somebody come up with a club that in the fall that we don't know about. So, I think that was one of the things that we would like to try to figure out a way to, you know, make that happen even then they don't have, you know, we it may not be on our tier right now, but in two years it would be. Um, so there's just some little things that he wanted. He feels like that the coaching is, you know, pretty steady because he spent a lot of time on that obviously, but we're just trying to get the

122arts um up to par with the amount of times that they've spent And I'm not sure if the if the committee will um remain the same for next year um as far as the school the um Cole is on it. So Cole would be one of the administrators basically to take Tim's place. He was already on the um committee and I believe everybody else would like to stay on it. Tom, did you have a question? Yeah, a couple um first is a comment that the idea of uh having to shorten the cycle in the middle school. I actually think it's better to have it stay at three because that will show whether it's a program that is dependent on just a certain cohort of students who are moving through versus a program that has longevity.

123if if the program survives with new students coming in, that's indicative of it being a program worth continuing. That's just my point of view, right? But um I it looks as though in the comparison when there are two groups that have similar amount of times but different amount of pays, the assumption is the one that's getting paid more is the that's the right amount. What I don't see here, and maybe it exists, but it would be nice to see the level connected to an amount of time. I suspect there is a either a guideline or at least a rough feel for that, but it would nice to see um for for understanding that a a program at a certain tier has an anticipated um workload associated with and that's what the survey is. Brian has

124all the raw data so he I can have him pull it for the ones that he's sent. That would be for like next year's presentation. Like, you know, we don't need it this year, but but maybe next year it would be nice to see a little bit like what the averages are. Is this like does this average an hour a week? Does this average 20 hours a week? Like what's you know, what are we looking at that way? And that's why the recommended shifts is because there was a big variation in some of them and participation. I mean, we did get those numbers. Um, but you know, the advisers running the club whether they have five or 30. So, it I really we decided that the hours was really more a comparable um way to

125look at it to begin with because this is just our first recommendation. And I kind of disagree with you, Tom, on the whole two-year cycle mostly because I feel like I don't know if I'm comfortable with someone running a club for two years and never getting paid for it. And sometimes it is cohort driven. Like sometimes you do have a group of kids who really want to do Dungeons and Dragons and you do that for two years at the middle school and then you don't have those kids. But should you not get paid for that second year? Like that person's not getting they're not getting paid for that second year anyway. Well, I'm saying if we shorten the cycle so that if it was a a one-year successful club and we know it's going to

126rerun that the person would get paid at year two instead of waiting for Yeah. There's just no way to budget though. Oh, okay. Budgeting is the problem unless we put a budget a line item in for those type of situations. I mean if if you want to create a pool of money available for clubs under evaluation, you know, I I can support that. But my my point is not so much the idea of of withholding pay as making the club a tenured activity. Yeah, I think that's maybe that's what it is is maybe a little a stipen pool that's or a pool of of like a startup where it's not even it's small amount but it just it's for those folks. I mean you may you may specifically want to have something that you've got

127a group of kids that you know it's it's a one-off group but these kids are doing something special and you want to support it right and but and you want a teacher who feels like they are getting compensated for it. So I think there's a way to solve the problem that makes you feel comfortable and me feel comfortable as well. That being said, um there are there for example, there was this doesn't usually happen. There was a club adviser ready to go for a particular club here. Maybe it was video game club, I can't remember, which used to be wildly popular and and nobody stayed to participate in it. Um so we didn't pay out the stipen. Right. Right. So, and so over time, just as we add over time, if we don't see that

128there's participation happens, sure. Correct. So, and then this is just a procedural question. I know that we're supposed to review the stipens every year now. It's part of our deal that we've made. But is this something we need to approve as a board? Do we approve the stipen recommendations? You Well, so you review the stipens which were provided to you all these, right? Um but then I think to in my opinion you should at a minimum direct me as to like we already started FY27 budget, right? Uh, do I add this uh $14,000 to the budget under new items? I think there needs to be I think what there needs to be is a formal request from somebody to make the changes and or add the activities to it. So the review the the review

129itself does not inherently um do anything other than present the data to us and let us look at it. that just like we have discussions and deliberations, there should be a a formal request to add these clubs and and change these things. I mean, we could do it ad hoc on based on what we've got here, but I think going forward that second step should be formalized and in our agenda. So, so do you feel like it should go into like the rounds, the budgeting rounds like round one? and it's a request from the like a the stipen committee and then that goes into the rounds and so then the superintendent and the team that goes through the budget rounds can look at that and say these are the recommendations from you know there's $14,000

130in additional stipend money that would be that's been requested by the stipen committee and then it would just go if you're going to do the same process of doing those rounds just two elements one is does the board support these clubs existing yeah So we can make and the other element is do does the budget support the payment of the stipens necessary to do it? So how do we do that? Make a formal motion and approve the but that's not the way we would do that. Um well if let's say it were a class how would we do it if it was a course we would have to approve the addition of the course right? We would approve the program of studies. Okay. So, I think that we would have to approve that these courses

131exist and then in the budgeting process then the people making the budget would have to say whether or not it work. We have it. We can afford it. Right. So, are you saying that without board approval, the baking club can no longer exist, or are you saying I don't think that I don't think that's No, I'm saying without a without a board approval, it cannot become a paid a paid activity. Okay. Because I heard you say approve whether or not these exist. Well, I don't know what the distinction is between something that people choose to do and something that gets funded because we were never asked Sure. to to do it in the first place. We only get asked when they want money. I feel like this should be part of the budget process and

132we don't vote on every single thing as the budget goes through like the the superintendent has brought forward the request from you know the athletic director or the principles or whatever for all the different things. So this is like a request from the stipen committee. It would be like a I guess a new line. But don't we approve anything that that involves hiring of a new staff member? Yeah. So uh for professional staff. Yes. Not support staff. So these might be support staff. No, I'm just I'm using it as a model. So if it's an activity that's going to require having a paid uh individual adding to the payroll, whether we call it or not. Um so we typically spend two months on things. We review it. So we're provided a recommendation right at this

133meeting. at the next meeting, let's have a deliberative items to move these to new item spreadsheet by supporting their existence or their increases or whatever. Yeah, that makes perfect sense. And I think I think this would be the appropriate time if people have support or objections to them in principle, right? Do you have any of those? Pardon me. This would be a good time to say, do you have anything that you don't support or No, you're good. Firstly, I'm looking at the That's great. the financial impact of this versus the the benefit that our our population gets from these activities. And I think that's a it's a very small amount to pay to to get the benefit. The only one that just keeps cropping up is the fishing one that's that's still there. And I'm

134just wondering, we don't have a boat. Do we have Well, just wait till you see the new item. Okay. The fishing's not on here. No, it is. It's It's on You're right. It is. So, my question is, should that be on it for the next round? Okay. So, Tom still Tom is still questioning fishing. Wait, we have we don't we don't have an adviser who has a boat, right? It's a good question. Okay. Maybe we should combine them with crew. So, we fit. Do we still have a crew club? We It's combined with sagen. Yes. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, this is great. Are there any other questions or comments? Thank you for hashing the process through with me. Um, some of my brain doesn't work that way. Um, is there anybody who has any other

135comments on what we're funding from uh, um, what we're doing, not just with the recommendations, but overall like Tom has some questions about fishing there. Is there anything? Let them fish. The question is, are they able to fish? Yes, I think that a few of them can fish. I think a couple I think we had a boat last year, but that is you know what that's a good question for Brian and we'll go back to Brian. And that was the question that I was told that that we don't have a boat. I thought we had a boat last year. We don't they had a boat, but somebody had somebody this last season. We were told they didn't. No, they did. They had a boat this last season because they actually in the fall there was

136a boat and there was it is a very small number of kids who participate because you're only allowed to have that in the tournament. It's not a very significant amount of money that we spend. So, and the people who are interested in it are passionate. So, but I I don't mean to blavor this, but you can only have four in the tournament. Y there's a lot of activities we do where only a small portion of the group gets to go to the States or gets to do this even even in our band. So, if we're gonna have it, I would like to have it open to anyone who want wants to fish. I think it is open to anybody who wants to fish. I think right now we have four kids who want to fish.

137Okay. No, no, no. We we made cuts. Oh, see that that that's my point. Okay. So, you'd like it to be a a cut-free program? Um, I would like to have it be a one with a larger opportunity for to participation even if only you if you have to have cuts to like you have to qualify to go to the tournament. So, we're going to buy a lake and a boat and multiple boats. Okay, we're going to move on from this because I'm not hearing anyone else, but I hear your kick. We can talk more about it next month. It's worth talk having it done just to shut me up until next. So many things that could go that way, Tom. But all right, moving on. Okay, so moving on. So we've got that. Thank

138you, Cindy, for that and for all the work the committee has done because it's a lot of work. Um, it's it's really come a long way as far as meeting our our requirements for the Oh, that was this the last question is how are the stipens and the opportunities to participate being communicated to the staff? because that was a big a big question during uh contract discussion is how does staff know what's available to them. So the stipend chart is available on the website right next to the um CBA. Okay. Um, and for coaching openings, there's an email that goes out directly to first the school, so the middle school or the high school, then to the SAU in total. They're also um those are advertised within frontline as you would apply for a teacher

139job. Um, for the clubs and stipens, that is communicated at the beginning of the year, existing stipens um for any openings to the whole to the staff. And that was a qu that process is is something that was questioned. Is having done it for a previous year guaranteeing you the pos is a f that does that give first right of refusal or is every year it open to anyone who wants to apply? It is not guaranteed that you are coming back. Um, but if there is not a concern, it's not they're all they're not all readvertised annually. But if at any point in time a staff member said, "What do I need to do to be considered for this position, sometimes historically what has happened is um there becomes like a co-advisor for a period

140of time and then with a with an intent to transfer. Is there the possibility of somehow in the document or or whatever that describes the stipen also describe the process by which a a faculty or or a a person can apply to be considered for a advisor advisory position. Let's do it. She's got a note. Yes. Going to make a change. Okay. So, moving on to deliberations. Um, I'm going to see what action the board will take regarding the maintenance expendable trust. So, I need a motion to authorize the expenditure of an amount not to exceed 300 3,820 from the Hollis Brookline Maintenance Expendable Trust Fund for the purchase of the maintenance items identified during the public hearing. So, moved by Kate and I need a second. Second by Beth. Thank you. I don't know

141why I write this down. I do every every single time I write it down. Never look at it again, but I write it down. In case Don asks you. Yeah. In case John askked me. And you're right because she might. Okay. Um so is there any more comment on this? So those are the items that Linda highlighted, right? No. No. These are the items that were highlighted in the public hearing. So this is the um Gina Gina. This is the roof section phase 10 of 10 at the high school. This is the elevator retrofit page two of three at HBS. And then it's the roof section. I believe it's section one. Oh, it's not the section include the finishing of the middle school elevator, too. Yeah. Oh, and I'm sorry. Yes. And the I and

142the elevator. I missed that. Yeah. Is I'm just curious. Is Is the elevator here done? Done. Now it is. Okay. So, we just have to pay for it, right? Well, the five So, we thought we were done. Yeah. And then upon final inspection, we had to um do something else. Do something else. And that's the 5,800. That was done. That was done. We're good. Okay. So, are there any other questions on that? All those in favor? 5. Thank you. Motion carries. You are welcome. All right. And so, this is how we're going to try the policy memo. There are a lot of policies on here. There is one policy that we have to move forward to adopt. So, um, what I'd like to do is put the memo on the table as presented. Um, hopefully

143you'll be willing to adopt that first one if you pass. Tabling is putting putting it on. Sorry. putting it I need a motion to approve it and then putting a motion out there and then um and then if there's any changes or questions or comments with any of the ones that are we are simply reading I ask that you will allow us to just take those back to the policy committee to make those amendments and changes so we will talk about them or trying to consolidate this so I need a motion to approve the recommendations identified in the policy memo as presented mented. So moved, Beth. Thank you. I need a second. Second. Okay. All right. So, the first policy on the memo is the fourth reading and adopt of policy a IKL. Um that's

144the academic integrity and honesty um policy that we read in September and October and then we amended it greatly in January. Um, and we had no comments um that were uh no changes. We made no changes based on the comments. Um, so if there's anybody who has questions about that one, I have to look at look at it. So again, there were no changes based on the um January 25th meeting. So is there anyone who needs to comment on that one? I'm going to move through these pretty quickly. So, um, seeing none, we'll move to the second reading of policy KFD, which was, um, the use and location of automated external diffs. Thank you. ADS, they're life-saving. Um, we are on our second reading of that. Um, we also did not make any I don't

145believe we made no changes to this based on our notes from the 521 meeting. So, are there any comments or questions on that one? Okay. So, moving on. I'm going to move quickly. So, um, JLCC makes me itch. This is pediculosis management. Um, we made some amendments on uh the first reading, but I don't believe we've have any changes here. So, we amended it obviously to bring it forth for the first reading. Um, we didn't get any feedback that made us want to make any changes to it. It follows the law. It's itchy, but it follows the law. So, I'm just curious, was it the law that created the situation where you can't make anyone? Was that the big change to the law? you can exclude children from school when they have lice or nets.

146Um, and so we've written the policy as per our recommendations by legal counsel and and I think NHSBA. So, okay. So, that's particularis management. Then we've got JLCJA which is an emergency plan for sports related injuries and additional protocols for athletes participation. And again, I have to look at it myself, but I believe there are no changes based on the comments from our 521 meeting. This is just to develop the plan. Um, and again, we haven't made any changes. So, if there are any questions or comments on that one. Okay. So, moving forward, we have policy JLF. Um, again, I don't think we have changes. I think we went through it. And again, most of these policies are coming to us from this is reporting child abuse and neglect as all of you know. Um,

147we uh kind of have to follow the law on this. We did have some questions about um how reporting works if someone overhears something. And I think um the answers that we kind of all stated at the time probably um fulfilled. They were my concerns. I read through the thing in depth and I'm I understand it better now. Yeah. I also want to point out that you had mentioned there was maybe controversy at our last read. So we in policy we reviewed all the minutes from May 2021, June, August 2021 to see what all the comments and any concerns raised and um we don't really see any. So we don't know it might have been a different policy but it did this one did not garner a lot of conversation in its first readings back

148in 2021. So yes, just ask um committee to fix the um the font. Sure. Thank you. It has different Yeah. Oh, we have different fonts. Sure. Okay. So, we'll go back to policy and change the fonts, fix the fonts. Yeah. You know, we do it probably gets fixed eventually, but sometimes it happens all the time. Like we bring it in and multiple people work on it. Yep. Okay. So DAFF is administration of federal grants. This one is a is a short easy policy that doesn't take a long time to review at all. Um and again we uh made the changes that were necessary based on the law. And where are our policies actually posted now? They are posted um on diligent. So you can click on co-op or Hollis or Brooklyn or policies and then

149once you hit policies then you click on co-op and then they're all listed there. Okay. You could also do searches for like child I was asking where they're hosted where they hosted they're on diligent. We also just so we all know once we update diligent we also update a shared drive so that we have a um an electronic copy of every single policy that's current and up to date just in case because we had that thing happen. So they're not hosted at NHSBA anymore. We Well, we but we moved from there. We went to Did we go to Borocs for a while with them? Yeah. So Diligent is um the upgraded Box. So it's the same company. Oh, it is the same company. So that thing I sent you about, did that impact Diligent too?

150Yes. But um so what it impacted certain districts and they were notified. We are not one of them. We don't hold you. We can as a board hold content um that's private for only board member viewing. We don't put any So we don't put any of our non-public minutes up there. We put our non-public minutes, but the one once they're approved. So we don't hold but the sealed minutes are not there. Correct. Okay. Yeah. So we're fine. Okay. So moving on from DAFF. I don't hear any comments or questions. Only got halfway. I just want to share out some of these policies we did a first read in January and then with our the break of the policy committee they um yeah that's true were just sitting around for a while. So we mean we

151made changes in version one or sorry um first reading took a couple months off. So now we're bringing back second with no change. Yeah. But we the ones I'm telling you when I say no change, it means we didn't make any changes in policy. So we we went through it to see. So we're at JI J DF. We're on JIC at this point. That's the student conduct one. Um just for your information, this is just an overview of our student conduct, you know, and then there is an another policy that we brought forth for first read in January that we um have not brought forth again because we have some more work to do on it. So, um it's a it's a lot more detailed about all the different things. This is just a general

152policy that's required by law. And I would say the one thing that I would add to these is that we have not put that on here. like at least the ones I have in front of me. It doesn't say whether they're required or priority or I don't know if you have those in front of you, but I I don't know if we need that, but that's we don't need it. But it's it's helpful to to know when they're required, I think, so that we know that they're okay. Um, so any questions on JIC? All right. So, E, EBCB, which is fire drills. Um, we've changed the language. It's no longer fire drills. We're calling it emergency drills because that is exactly what we changed. So, it's not um they're not fire drills. So, that's the

153only change we made on it. And that was based on a a suggestion from somebody last month. H members Solan suggested the title be changed and we did. Look at that. See, we listened to you, Tom. Look at that. There's proof. Proof's in the pudding. Um okay. Next is uh eh public access to school district records. So I guess we call this the right to know. Um right is that pretty much and that one did we make a change? We did and it's hard to find but um I just had to look it up because I couldn't find it. It's district records. So they were sometimes in parentheses, sometimes not, sometimes capital, sometimes not. So we just made it consistent throughout. Well, the current one isn't. Oh, what do we need to do? What is

154the uh uh the first line and the second line have them in quotes? Yeah, there's a reason for that. Then the fourth line does not because the first line is defining it and then it moves on to just using the term. So that's why it's in quotes. It's intentional. It's intentional. What wasn't intentional is originally it was um like there we missed a quote once um and then there was a capital R a lowercase R and so now it's capital D lowercase R in quotes on the first and second line. Okay. So that's what we did with that one. Just a little clean up. All right. And then EHR that's now the procedures um which I don't think procedures absolutely have to be approved by us but we have them. And the the change this

155one now has to this is now required by law procedure. So you can see that the changes we made are in number six, seven and eight. Um it's it's not required and Gina can speak to this more. So so um they amended the RSA around electronic records to allow us to charge. Um and that was last year. We originally brought this forward in January without six, seven, and eight. Um, but as we brought them forward in Hollis and Brooklyn, who have since adopted EHR, they've adopted a fee associated with electronic records due to the fact that the 99.9% of the records requests are electronic in nature and some of them are 30,000 emails where we're paying exorbitant amount of legal fees to redact content from there. We certainly go through the process of requesting that

156the scope be narrowed to make it more reasonable. Um so the the idea is that um the first 250 records are are not going to be charged but anything above the 250 records when it reaches that point of being very costly for us to produce we would have the ability to charge um 50 cents. And I think we can charge up to a dollar per record. Um, and to be just to to I think Hollis and Brooklyn are both charging 15 cents per record. Um, but we in the policy committee said why not charge 50 cents um because there is an expense to um redacting and all of that. So, we're throwing it out there for you and if you don't like that, we can certainly take it out. It's 50 cents per It's per

157record right now. But my my question is on six, which is copying. That's what I was looking at. Sorry, I was confused. That's what I was thinking. Wasn't there a per page fee? Yeah, it is under confusing. It's under the copying instead of being under the electronic records. It's No, but we have a fee if you request photo copies and we're allowed to charge a fee, but it's a per page fee. It is a per page fee. So I don't but it's not stating that. No, I understand. That's Yeah, that's why it's because a record could be five pages or 50, right? I think the electronic comm communications fee is just per record, right? So we'll we'll take a look at that because the intention was 50 cents per page. I agree. I I think

158it was just it just got caught up in the the right editing net. Yeah. So that was my comment for you. So that's an easy thing that we'll bring back policy and I hope that you'll approve the memo even though it's not exceptional. Well, we got feedback. Feedback. Great feedback. Thank you. Um now IG which is um parental objections. This is for first reading. So again, you know, if you have other things that you want us to change, we can bring it back to policy. I have a comment that covers it's on IG and the next one IHAM I I highlighted on IHM and I'm trying to figure out where it is on this one. Um did you have something you wanted to say to introduce it? No, this is just in line with um

159updated language that were required by law to have in policy. Where is the It's in the last section, I think. Well, do you want to move to I am so you can find it and then you can we can talk about it for both. Um I I do I can say comment um that historically we've done this pretty much across the board, but it was um very much mandatory for all of our co-op teachers this year to buy course send out the course expectation sheet along with at a minimum a link to the curriculum that includes all the instructional materials at the start of the year. and it was sent out by a parent square and then you had to acknowledge that you received and read them. So that was confirmation that you you were

160provided notice of any particular let's say textbooks or novels that you might find um that you don't want your child reading and then therefore uh the policies would then be able to okay that basically my question what I highlighted says this the line says parents and legal guardians shall be notified by email or other written means website blah blah blah not less than two weeks in advance of the use of the curriculum course material and I curious how do we do that to everybody and that was and that is that the first day of school or it's yeah it's the first day of school it might be the second day of school because kids are still doing ad drop but right but it's provided right away and um you know if a student then changes

161courses it's the second semester or whatever they're shared just in case there are different expectations or different what happens if you don't get a response um we are required to get the response and so then the teacher communicates with those and so they have the list of who said yep I received it or I read it and um those who have not. Have you had any instances where someone comes back to you and said I didn't know this was going to be on it and you have to show them written notice that they agreed to it. Um you know this year we have not had a situation like that. We have historically um had concerns that they weren't notified. We provided evidence that notification and the information was available at the end of the day

162then just com you know you can still object. Oh yeah. No, I just I'm just it's this is one of those they've pushed so much down to the schools to have to be proactive and I was curious how we're able to manage that and are we capturing our labor costs of doing so? When I say capturing it, obviously we're not charging anyone, but but uh this is one of those things when people ask why do we have as much administrative help as we have. It's one of the things that has to happen. And I would say our curriculum needs to stay updated and our teachers do a lot of that work and our department chairs do a lot of that work, but somebody needs to drive the work. That being said, I will say that

163parent square specifically um has minimized that. I mean they still have to create the the documents certainly but um at the push of a button you're pushing it out as a form which requires a response and then then they have the report so it's not like counting and checking off the boxes. When I was a teacher I had to go back and like okay got it from Holly you know and and so at least one small thing has been made easier. Do we have a significant portion of our um parent and guardian community who will not accept electronic communications? Yes, we have some. Not a huge amount, but yeah. Okay. And so we have alternate methods for the outliers. Okay. Does this does this happen at the other school districts or just so that was

164your question and IHM was the same question because we made those changes again based on the new laws. Yeah, I wasn't asking to change anything. I I just wanted to understand so and first reading for both of those and I will just add that um we do that at the start of the year for specifically health education. We do it again at the two week mark to ensure that um that we're providing ample notification. So the two week mark before we start some of the the more the topics that they really want us to do. So you do it in the beginning and then you do it one more time two weeks before that. Is this a semester course? Health is health every every other with PE freshman year. So it's a half credit course

165but it lasts all year long. So you don't have to do it twice a year then? No, just the ones. Are there any other questions or comments or any feedback? Yes, Beth. Just one. I know like with all the fun um policy and I really do like policy, but I know sometimes we leave things a little open in policy intentionally, but sometimes we leave it like so there's really not question. And the only one I had with um IHM is just the second um line just when it says instruction or programming must be appropriate to age level course of study and development of students. the word like must be appropriate. I just wanted to throw that out there that we don't need to spend a lot of time on it, but appropriate per who? Like

166that's the one that it leaves it really open. Is it age appropriate? I might think something's age appropriate. Holly might say absolutely not. Not age appropriate. Subjective. It's a subjective subjective. And I do like leaving some things subjective, but this one makes me a little uncomfortable because um I mean I just see it across our community, whether it's kids watching movies, you know, what's appropriate for an age level books that we read. So I just nervous about that. If there were state level instructions on that, what content could be? Well, we can if there are, we can put that in there. We can refer to that like appropriate as per RSA or whatever. So we can we can be more specific to that or we can play with that language. Discretionary. Yeah. No, I think

167we need to like tighten that up a little bit or have guidance behind that. It's also, you know, with that, you know, we also do policy so that, you know, when this policy committee moves on or this principal superintendent, it's still applicable because what Gina might think is okay, the next person is really not. So, I don't that's a good catch. Thank you. Thank you. Perfect. Thank you so much for that. Um, okay. So that being said, um the only policy that will be adopted tonight is the first one which was um IKL and the rest of them are for reading. The agenda had two n one second reading wave third and one that was a fourth and adopt. The first one is a fourth and adopt and then then it's second reading no changes

168and then second reading as amended and then first reading. So there's only one that will be adopted tonight. And the reason we want to move, just so you know, the reason why we really want to adopt IKL is because we want to publish it in the student handbooks. So we don't have a meeting prior to when that has to happen. Makes sense. All the second readings that had no changes, legal, more or less legal. I mean, should we do second and adopt if there's no changes? Some of them it's been a long time since let's keep them let's keep them as just because we're doing it this memo way we'll try to we'll we'll move them to third and adopt and that'll be fine. Okay. But that was a good suggestion too. So all those

169in favor 5. So then the um memo passes. Okay. So I think that concludes our evening meeting. We are going to have a non-public, but I would love to have a report out from the process observer at 8:15. We are on time. 5 minutes late. Pretty good. We actually were ahead until we went to the stip. We got more questions on that than we thought. But um other than that, I I thought both of the presentations were excellent. Um I really am happy to hear about the advisory. um they seem so positive and I think that was that was a really good presentation to have at the end of the school year. So everything else is on time. Great. I think those presentations just need a little more time like allotted to because they take

170more and there's more questions. They're kind of the coolest part. I mean to me that's like where you get more of the feedback is I think that's important. So, and um I think with Gina's, you know, new position on July 1st and becoming our superintendent, I think we will we've talked a little bit about making sure that we get some nice academic presentations in um regularly. So, fun stuff, you know. Forget that. And that's fun. I just I would like to say thank you for completing this year and in the dual role of assistant superintendent and superintendent elect. You have u juggled it amazingly well with a great attitude and put us in a really really positive position for the upcoming year. um along with your teammates. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah. Ditto. So that's

171great. All right. So we are going to go into non-public and then for the viewing public, we will be adjourning from there. So, I need a motion to um that by a member that the board by roll call go into non-public session pursuant to RSA 91- A3 um 2A the dismissal, promotion or compensation of any public employee um which discussed in public would likely affect adversely the application of a person other than a member of the body or agency itself. So moved. Moved by Beth and seconded by Kate and I need a roll call. Tom I. Cindy I. Holly I. Kate I Okay, so we are in non-public at 8:18.