Stratham School Board Meeting 11/13/24

001my name is Elena Rogers and my name is Nelly Romano how are you today we hope you've had a great day we are so glad to be here and to be sharing some information about our community and school hi my name is Ela Rogers and my name is Nelly Romano we are from the SMS student council we are here to share some important information with you today including how everyone in this school has a growth mindset let's get started with a few things first of all the night that everyone's been talking about the Halloween howl the Halloween howl was a fun night for everyone within options of snacks games and a costume contest and all around fun and don't even get me started with the Fall Festival with pumpkin painting snacks and games and pictures

002with fellow friends and family let's sadly move on but to more exciting news I'd like to thank miracles for Mimi for a schoolwide opportunity to see Gordon Corman come to our school schol for a friendly visit in some fifth grade got to do writer workshop with him and everyone loved his visit which reminds me of the cross country team the cross country team is a great opportunity for your child to run in races make new friends and build a good sportsmanship with other team members some quotes from the cross country team I like cross country because it's fun I like thinking it as running for stratom in the team it's fun to know that everyone is on the same page what about about another I like cross country because it helps me train and get

003ready for other sports I also like running because we are a team wow all those quotes were amazing we can all agree on that we sadly have to wrap up with the time but we have one more quick announcement quick shout out to Mrs Lucas our principal thank you for making students your top priority your hard work is a foundation for our achievement we can only start to imagine how difficult the job of school principal is but you handle it with Grace enthusiasm and laughter and we can't wait to see what else you have along with everything you already do I would everyone like would everyone mind saying a quick thank you with us to the most hardest working laughing Mrs Lucas thank you thank you thank you you guys were amazing so good [Applause]

004that was an amazing presentation thank you so much those activities sound great good reader does um would you would you mind a question or two no does anybody have any questions I don't think so can I ask you um I am really sad that I missed the Gordon Corman um when he came in have you guys read his books yeah so in school we read the unteachables for the first book to get to to know him so when he came to school I wasn't there that day but I heard it was really fun yeah and we got to ask him some questions yeah so cool that's amazing everyone gathered in the cafeteria and he did a presentation and he showed us a couple of his books and it was really cool yeah how's um composting

005going um it's pretty good gets Melly sometimes but uhhuh it's good yeah I know you guys are the big kids so you have to well I guess you're not even in the cafeteria with the little kids huh in order to show them yeah there's composting bins all throughout lunches okay and you get to um just put any leftover food in the composting okay yeah well that sounds great thank you guys so much really appreciate you coming out tonight you guys are so good thank you thank you [Applause] all right great so uh I think we'll move on now to uh approval of the minutes [Music] um does anybody um have any changes to I think all of us were here for all of them right um do I have a motion um for approval of

006the minutes and then we can do a discussion if there's any any edits I can move Sophie okay thanks Sophie um any discussion on the minutes any edits anybody would like to make this is the October 16th public October 16th non-public session one and two and then October 30th public yeah I thought they look great yeah all right um all right do I have a um let's see um I guess so now we'll just do all in favor yeah I just need a second do I have a second thank you ER all right all in favor please say I I I any opposed any exensions all right 5 Z ZK you all right moving on um ready for the superintendent report okay so in your board pack um there's two pieces of the finance there's

007the budget and then there's the current year financials so for the current year financials we did add quite a bit of expense over the last um months since we met but I just want to remind everyone this is still early in the year so we are still building the encumbrances based off of student need and still finishing out the hiring process so um while it might seem like a lot a lot of it was um some positions being filled as well as building the incumbrances based on F student need um did anyone have any questions on the items I have a question I'm still understanding like the health and dental was that because it's a pretty large amount was that anticipated or was that the difference that you made a guess of what it would

008be and then that was the difference between them y so at the beginning of the year there's an open enrollment period and so we we get bills once a month so last month this would be the change from the prior month we encumber for the full year so it would be CH people that either made changes that now we're now encumbering for the full year so it looks like this is still in line though we're still looking at it um and balance of 183 correct and at this point in time there's no unanticipated Revenue because the revenues are set in the fall that's what's done right before your tax rate was set which was last week um and so if it was known Revenue I would have included in the planned Revenue so now going

009forward hopefully we'll have unanticipated Revenue that would add to that fund balance okay and again you can't plan to spend on anticipated Revenue but it's there to help your fund balance at the end of the year did you say the tax rate was set it was yeah and published it was um at least in the Dr portal but I and I also do a side-by-side analysis which I'm happy to send to you and I sent to all the superintendents every year I line up the tax rates side by side for all of the the towns that make up sau6 so there's different parts of your tax rate there's the education part the municipal part um the county the state um and what I do is I line up all the sections side by side so

010I'm happy to share that with you if you want yeah yes have people talking about it online today too um and then it's good timing for yours okay do you want to just say it so it's in the sure um for communication next Monday the 18th we have a fireside chat on Zoom from 6:00 to 7: um online only with Miss Molly o'keef the lovely so she'll kind of go over the tax rate what it is how it's calcul ated and how the school budget kind of plays into that um so we really hope you can join it will be recorded if you can't um join from 6:00 to 7 next Monday the 18th quick question on Sophie do you know how it's going to be that's going to be advertised to people is it

011like in the newsletter or um yeah I can I was going to give this in my update but I can do it now um yeah I put it in the newsletters that go out so the SMS new newsletter the PTO newsletter and the town newsletter I also printed out flyers and put those in town hall and the library and just let folks know in town hall um and posted it on stratum talks twice now and I think Sophie we set the date almost two weeks ago so it's been advertised for some time now I can do a blast tomorrow as a single post on Square versus like in the newsletter because sometimes it's easier if it's just some things we're doing a single post so they get more attention so I can do that tomorrow

012I just wrote it my note I'll probably do one more stratum talks post on Monday just to remind folks that it'll be that night can you is that share I tried to share it off stratom talks but it didn't let me no you can't I don't think can't share on stratom talks okay but if you want I you can send me an email and I can email you the flyer and the text and then you can share that or if you put it on your personal I could just share it from your personal okay yeah I don't know if you feel comfortable doing that but yeah but I'm really excited about that that's gonna be great okay just a question on public comment when you want oh yeah yeah thank you yeah we should probably

013start public comment um so we'll do um we'll do 15 minutes now and then 15 minutes at the end of the meeting because we are going to be talking about the budget so we'll start the 15 minutes now is there anybody interested in public comment it can be on the encumbrances or anything else okay so we'll just keep the timer running and just the other thing the manifests are over there somewhere there's four of them one more yeah we just need one more yep just a quorum of the Bo design is perfect so just a couple more questions so that um it looks like there's personal development 20,000 is that more more than anticipated so it's not more than anticipated this is just the change from the prior month so when we start the year

014we encumber what we know um but as people sign up to take classes we know we're going to have some employee reimbursements we have a cohort in this uh Southern New Hampshire University program so it's it's a combination of personal reimbursements for personal p um any PD that um principal Lucas has in the building as well as the SN cohort okay and that again it's and all of this is not above and beyond what's in the budget it's just a change in what we encumbered last month okay that's and you're going to see this change every month because we don't encumber things like substitutes because we don't know how money are going to happen so as the year progresses you're going to see expenses added yeah or decreased like no plowing if it keeps like

015this it just seems large this month you know obviously what you addressed and I'm thinking about um some of the our other expenses so and we do build encumbrances for the full year so at the beginning of the year it will seem larger because when we add that encumbrances for the whole year yep okay and I guess that's great news about hiring yeah are there still outstanding positions um we are looking for one additional ESP right now okay and Food Services but that's not new virtually yeah was the mtss coordinator position hired as anticipated yeah great y she's actually here tonight um Brandon Martin to do the presentation all right sounds great any other questions yeah for Molly great thank you okay um and then uh are you going to walk through the budget with

016us um yes I think Kate were you going to plan to walk through the budget sure do that um the first page that you guys have is sort of um the larger um object codes do you have this page everybody yeah so um in the state they order organize things by function so we have to have all regular under 1100 special under 1200 so that first page that Kate is mentioning is just a summary and by grouping a function so you see behind it is the line by line budget but that first page just groups it by function so typically the first run in November we just look at it sort of as like a 30,000 foot view we don't get into too many specifics um you'll notice um really the big um changes that

017you would notice are um mostly associated with special ed cost which is a national problem but particularly a problem across the state um and that's everything from like related Services have gone up significantly but out of District placements have gone up significantly um and then transportation is really expensive so when you look at the budget that's a good percentage of um the increase that you'll see over um fy2 um some of the other smaller increases are just part of um the bargaining agreement the cbas and just either steps and tracks and um the next year's you know um salaries that they're equated with their um number of years at stratum so we can go on to like sort of the more detailed and if there's any questions that come up for any of you um

018we tried to be I mean we went through this I don't even know how many times um and nearly everything we kept flat or went down if we could and if there's a little bit of an increase it's either inflation like things that are just sort of unavoidable that we can't control um or related to um contract whether that's like the plowing contract or teachers contract um and like I said the vast majority of anything you would see is special ed costs that have gone up um the whole sa is having conversations about how we Kate I have a question this do we do we have out of District uh placement costs for SMS we do they're in the budget y yeah how did professional development go down so much eight 17 18 17% so

019that is based on actuals from the previous years before so part of what um in both of the cbas there is um uh teachers and pairs are allotted a certain amount of money for professional growth and professional learning um and you do your best based on the actuals from the year before with an with an idea of like what conferences have maybe gone up a little bit what have gone down down a little bit what are people historically going to over the past couple of years and you sort of come up with a number based on that and I'm I'm sorry did you mention uh this the uh special ed Transportation cost I did they've gone up significantly so part of um a couple of things so for a student that is placed out of

020District um there are not places that are local so like we have there are students that are driving an hour by by bus to their school and then an hour back in the afternoon um so that alone if you think about that is just a substantial cost um and then we also have um specialized transportation for some of our students that go here as well um and so that has also gone up um and so those are the two really the two items that make up special transportation for our next meeting to Dr Bennett our director of special services is going to give us a synopsis because the majority of our drivers in every budget in sau6 and around other schools is special education so she's going to put it which I think is really

021important for our residents and our voters to know that we really tried to keep this flat funed as much as possible especially here with a possible building project but education is driving all of our budgets up so we're going to give you a rationale to why for transportation cost uh contracted services so we'll have that so you'll be able to understand that a little bit more in depth you just need a little bit more time for this round of board meetings but for December each board will get that rationale you'll see uh costs going up to close to 17% in some areas which again that that drives your whole budget up so just want you to be prepared for that and you'll know you'll have that greater rationale for your December meeting yeah and then

022there's also a few items in here like the office of the superintendent that is your portion of the SAU budget that you vote on in the joint board meeting um last month um in regards to transportation for student transportation we have What's called the 3 plus2 contract and so we would be budgeting right now for the fourth year so that first year of the plus two so it was a three years locked in where we had negotiated it was 2.8 2.85 2. or sorry 2.85 2.9 2.95 and then 3030 the final two years now Dr andisi and I did meet with first student and they are in a negotiation year on their side and so we've we told them that we're deep in the budget process at this point and we are budgeting for the

0233.0% and they've haven't gotten back to us yet on what their proposal is but they're trying to stay as close to that 3% so we might see a slight change next month but we hope to keep it as close that as possible um but also we decreased one bus because we are trying to run a full Fleet but the reality is is we don't think we'll get an a complete full Fleet so that's why you actually see a decrease on that line and then for Support Services that's mainly our health and dental benefits for the entire staff and it was a little bit different this year if you remember for those of you that were on the board before we always talked about gmr guaranteed maximum rate and then we would get the real rate

024in the spring they did away with the gmr it's now the rate but they gave us a different rate per plan so we had to go in and see where everyone what everyone's plans were and it ranged anywhere between I think it was 4.7 and 7.2% um so we had to escalate the insurance is at that percentage Dental was at five it was the health was at that the the those other percentages um but also we try to look at the staff to say who's getting married who's having babies without being Politically Incorrect and asking people um and so that's how we had to um came up with that number there as well yeah I have a question for you this is kind of like veers off a little bit what you're talking about um

025I was just looking at like the line items in here and um there's um a few for like new fin our turn fixtures and equipment that are um more that are asking for more for um and like they're all marked like um Furniture fixtures equipment and then there's another one for replacement of furniture fixtures of equipment and uh I think those were the couple and I'm just wondering because I looking at the summary I assume those kinds of things would be under facilities and maintenance which actually went down even though those were like so I can speak to that yeah so some of those are actually would be in regular education so one of the things that as we had been planning for six years for a building renovation was the soft proc that are

026associated with the building which includes desks chairs all the things that go in classrooms and now that that's no longer um the the scope of the project for the board um we do have to put ourselves on a recycle replacement cycle for the furniture in the building and so that's one grade level chairs desks all of the things that they need in classrooms because that was going to be wrapped up into the building project and so rather than put them all in one year we're going to get ourselves which is what we've done on a variety of other things like the duct work is now on a rotation you try to get the technology is on a replacement cycle and so some of those are in regular education because that's regular classrooms there are things

027within special ed so uh it's a lot that you have all fireproof filing cabinets for all um files um and ours are completely full so we need those those are like significantly expensive because of the quality that they have to be so there are things like that for special ed there are some things that are equipment and stuff that would fall under facilities and that would be like a vacuum or um uh we have like um things that clean the floor like those things so it depends on the line and I think Molly was talking about like 1100 is regular education so you'd see equipment under that 1 12200 is is special Edge you would see it under that so it would fall multiple times it just depends on the major function gotcha okay I

028do see those numbers um on the file cabinets do do we use offsite storage for older files no is there a um a law or a rule for how long you have to keep um files after a child leaves the school so certain files so if we were sending the student to another school the file would go with them it's their last school of record so if we're the last school of record it's seven years and then just to clarify you're saying that um the costs that you have associated with new furniture and fixtures and equipment on here those line items under 1100 are under regular education and those and that only covers one grade level and so we also started the replacement of the cafeteria tables we started that two or three years ago

029um and last year we ended up cutting it so we have to get it back in that's like I think a $177,000 just out of that alone it's just the six or seven cafeteria table so it is furniture for regular education which is all students okay how many speech pathologists does the school have we have three full-time speech language Pathologists I think um I know we're sort of taking a 30 ,000 foot view you know how how did you guys feel about the 4.9% change what is it like what's an average I've only been on the board for this is my second year what's like the average over time yeah last year was it like 3.1 I think I would have to go back um I know this year it's it's hard to look year-over-year

030especially with the years that we had Co um but I will say all districts are experiencing budget increases in line with this budget for districts in sau6 with the exception of one but that one district is also um reorganizing staff so it would not be an Apples to Apples comparison the last year our budget was 4.1 okay after the cuts yeah but what's media salaries the learning Commons the librarian they're not considered you would refer to them as a librarian they're media technology Specialists literacy media technology actually you know it's hard to argue with the increases I mean we can all just say anecdotic that we're all seeing massive increases in our daily lives and and everywhere it's just high it's it's again at the 50,000 foot level it's hard to say okay well we

031had a decrease in the population of the school but we've got you know a little bit l a little bit larger than average increase in cost but it's you know it's it's Death By A Thousand Cuts right you know it's like what do you do yeah to that point Paul what what is the enrollment that this is targeted against I think we're at 477 and the latest report um I'm talking for K through five or I'm sorry yes it's on the last page yeah I think it was 477 477 475 477 k35 okay is that is that what this is targeted against well this includes preschool right in yeah preschool is in this no subsidize though right correct yeah no not always they're going to pay for their salaries there's no subsid there's no income

032revenue from very little PRK very little for the peer for the peer group that comes in still and even if you have to expend it you have to have it in your budget Revenue offsets the expense but you still have to appropriate the funds sure so the revenue will not relieve the expense it offsets the expense yeah I guess I guess what I'm getting at is we're we're just down in enrollment sure so I would I would love to know like what our staffing plans is both contracted and non-contracted um in 2019 we have 534 that was 21k per kid we're at 33k a kid for the year I mean this is a significant jump sure I mean I think if the enrollment was back up or if you were planning on it being up

033and you had some substantiation around that I'd be more persuaded to it but it's a big increase on a per student cost basis what's our average class size depends on the grade level yeah and so one of the questions that we got asked was at what point do we talk about potentially going from five or six teachers per Grade B to less um and that's a conversation we're going to end up having to have but it's a little bit more complicated than just your reducing because it depends on where your spikes and Es and flows are um so that would be a conversation we would have to yeah I realize it's not so simple but I mean we when you say 34 kids you're not talking about 34 kids in a grade level you're talking

034about 34 kids from prek through five and that could be just to a grade level and that doesn't reduce a classroom teacher right doesn't reduce a speech language pathologist it doesn't Oru Staffing when you're talking about a talking about seven grades for 34 kids yeah but just generally are we in the low 20s high 20s low 30 so in kindergarten I think we're 16 kids I can pull it up for you it's actually in your report isn't yeah we have 16 probably is probably is some last page I think our lowest is actually our it's in the report yeah I can pull it up very last page usually yeah there's a lot of policies here yeah it's our current fifth grade yeah y well the class sizes are attractive they're it was a board decision

035a number of years ago this board has talked about whether they want to revisit or not but that was a decision the board set the parameters for minimum and Max and what did the board said for minute and Max please I got it right here so that that was January 8th 2020 minimum for kindergarten is 13 maximum 17 1 through 3rd minimum of 15 maximum of 18 and fourth and fifth minimum of 18 maximum of 22 so that's what the boards have been working on since that meeting and proposal question talked about it's not something you can just adjust each year right like that right right yeah is and and is that is that in contract at all is that just the Target that was what the board put forth it's not in policy but

036that's what they put forth as your your your practice for this building and how we would staff it and and when was that decision made at this by the board in January 8th 2020 January 8th 2020 yeah right before Co what yeah were we in session at that time the school was still operating right until March March 13th I don't know I mean it you know I'll just throw it out there maybe it's something that the board wants to revisit um everybody is struggling you know I you'd have I mean Kate you would know this better than anybody whether the statistics whether you can statistically say you know add shift that all up to by two what happens you know I don't know I I didn't I think there are a lot of factors when

037you're talking about class size that matter and I think it has always been a conversation with Administration the board about what matters to the board and what they want to support and what they feel is not financially something that they can um support it's always been just a mutual conversation about we know there are benefits to small class size we know there are benefits to opportunities to have a community that's small enough that you can get personalized education and part of that is that SAU is committed to personalized education meaning um you take kids where they are understanding they're all really different places and that it isn't just sort of um rot learning and so if that's Remains the commitment of the board small class sizes will remain important if the board shifts their um

038goals and focus then it would shift what the education looked like for the kids based on the amount of kids with a teacher I mean I think that's I think every board faces that exact conversation I don't think this is a stratum specific conversation I think it's a conversation every Community um board has it's easy for a board to reduce it to numbers but it's not easily reduced to numbers from the other side I think I appreciate that I think we all appreciate that I think the complexity of uh student profiles are really different the world kids are facing really different and so they come to school in a very different place to engage in learning I think you probably hear about it as families about what their child's experience like is in their classroom

039on a day-to-day basis and if you have a teacher with 22 kids really trying to personalize with kids that have very different um academic strengths and academic challenges social emotional strengths and social emotional challenges it gets harder and harder the more kids you have and your by yourself is what I would suggest um does every classroom have an assistant teachers's assistant not every classroom but most we're pretty close but not every classroom so that I mean that helps oh makes a our esps are phenomenal they make a huge difference on the experience our kids are having and our teachers are having like it is a really collaborative beautiful effort I think so yeah they're yeah I cannot say enough they yeah yeah do they help all the time and they're what I love I mean

040they are willing to do anything but they also are like the consant Learners so because of their CBA they're engaging in professional learning and so I could say to any one of them out there hey I need you to run a small literacy group in kindergarten for the next six weeks and they're like okay I've done the training I can go do that like that's a gift to be in a place that offers to kids like the personalization and the expertise is incredible a lot of flexibility yeah incredible it's good it makes the small space work yeah I think it's always been my experience too in terms of behavior in the classroom also I know for my kid like sometimes she connects to the teacher sometimes she connects to the pair right so there's always

041um there can be a good relation in that classroom too I think I think the real issue right is the special ed I mean uh it's just phenomenal and you know that's just a story we're going to have to tell uh in March um I mean does this increase in transportation cost does it reflect an extra out of no this is just pure increase yeah the um what we were given for uh an out of District placement for this year has doubled for next year and that's tuition that doesn't include the transportation which is astronomical it is just and in reality there's no one governing that right and I think part of that is there's not governing that's not the right word um they're not supported by like a town budget or a city budget

042it's different funding um but also um there's so few um out of District placements and so even finding um a place that has an open spot is really really challenging you're looking at a six to9 month wait and so what happens in the the the while you're waiting is that you're then incurring um related services or contracted services from an organization who's also astronomical rates to come in and support while we're waiting for the student to be um given an opportunity to get their education somewhere else it's a really complicated process so you know um you know with the the expansion that we've been talking about that's driven we all have the goal that that's driven in part in large part by special needs by providing space for intervention and special education Services some of

043it yeah yep I don't suppose when that's all done that that alleviates some of the special needs transportation that we're I'm the kids can stay here no they have needs that it just beond space so there's both instances Paul there's absolutely um some students need a therapeutic educational Ed um experience that we don't provide that is not a public education that's not what we do but there are kids if we have programmatic space that we can absolutely provide a faith for which is a free appropriate education um we would absolutely be able to do that if we had space but right now we if a student is having a really um a day that's really hard and they're disregulated I don't have anywhere to to go with that student to provide an education except for

044the classroom right um and so that's not an option either because there's 17 other kids like it's a really tough balance and it's we're super fortunate to have the experts that we have here juggling it all the time but programmatic space would make a huge difference because ethically it is not okay for us to keep a kid here and say we're providing a free and appropriate education when we're not and that's what's happening if we don't have programmatic space in earlier iterations of the building committee uh we had talked about that like could stratum be a destination for some of these out of District placements we talked about even like the whole of SAU elementary schools being a if we housed that programmatic space if there was a student from newfields if there was a

045student from exor we could have the pr programmatic space here and be able to service the elementary students of sau6 and that would be Revenue source yeah that's that's a comp that's a complicated formula too is there anything that's not complicated with regards to the budget haven't I haven't found it yet especially when it's our kids right um so uh any other questions um any sort of marching orders um or things we would like to see in the budget for December uh I guess based on some of like my questions just about like facilities and new furniture and things like that I would I would love to see if we were able to cut cut some on some of that how that changes like the overall percentage um just because I I think there's a

046lot there um and as much as I would like to you know have have new desks and things like that if if that's an opportunity if we can't cut you know in the transportation in special education maybe there's some other areas that we can trim up a bit and that's kind of one of the places I just see a lot uh coming out of uh at least in this budget so I would be interested just to see if that makes some kind of movement um for the overall percentage okay yeah so just overall that's about $55,000 in this budget so we'd be reducing $55,000 if we would took out all of the replacement Furniture we put in just to give you a figure of what we we talked about that I brought that up at

047our last meeting what what we looking at because we we tried to be cognizant of just a grade level or specific needs but we can definitely take that out to give you that that driver for next meeting okay does um for that one sorry and I know I'm like keep mentioning new furniture and fixtures like there's um a couple other ones um software which is going under 1112 looks like right now that's uh 11 115 for the change we have to do that it's for um special education software for writing IEPs it's mandated that we buy it's a new expense th000 something okay um what about your um change in curriculum assessment and supplies uh 1122 so um uh this past year we so we've been using I ready for our math um and as

048well as our assessment and now we've uh adopted as also our reading and so that's a new expense that will not be going away I mean let me rephrase that you could make that decision I think I mean you could as the board I just it's it is an sa directive like every school is using it so that we can be um it's been really hard to be able to compare data across the school and what experiences the kid I mean across the SAU and now for all using the same um assessment systems and curriculum it's much easier for us to provide professional learning for our staff but also then to be able to see where we're growing and where we need to continue to work I yeah know I'm not trying to be a

049pain think I'm just like trying to like okay if if this change sounds like maybe it's too much and the office that we're doing the transportation has has grown and there's some concern about what we're you know paying per student has gone up um enrollments down like where like where's where can we like break even and kind of like get to that number um if there's any room there so that's I have another question if I may um Can Can you tell me what the uh 295k for maintenance salaries is comprised of please so we have a facilities director and we have uh cust custodians and then we also have Citywide because we were unable to fill our custodial positions so Citywide is an organization that provides for us nighttime custodial Services okay we have

050a facilities director yep Tim Tim okay and then he's full-time here he's dedicated here Y and then I'm sorry the next we have two full-time custodians um we used to have four we have two currently and then we use Citywide um because we were unable to fill the positions and Citywide is like an organization that it's janitorial organization that comes in at night and helps to clean the building oh it's called Citywide yes sorry Citywide no Citywide is the name of the company um and then there's also um a lotted in there for summer salaries there are parttime summer employees that work here in the summer to do summer projects thank you yep I'm also just thinking about what you said earlier about Healthcare right and how certain plans are more expensive than other plans

051and and how does that work like we offer a certain number of plans um and they can choose whatever they want employees I believe that's part of the collective bargaining agreement as what plans they can choose from yes so it would be a process to change that yeah yeah when when we when we bid it out we look hea will work it because there's a number of plans and typically offer three to four plans based on that that have a different uh variety of what people might be looking for that's embedded to what they can choose yeah it seems like there's a big discrepancy in cost obvious correct yeah what's um what's homeless Transportation please sure so for any family that qualifies as unhoused which there's a process that you have to go through the

052family has to go through to um qualify for that um if they need access to Transportation um we pay for their trans for the students transportation to and from school if they're un if they're if they qualifies as unhoused which is called mckin vento but there's but they stratum residents so it's really complicated so when a family becomes unhoused educationally their school of record is the town in which they last lived before they became unhoused so they might be doubling up with another family in another Community but they last lived in stratum and so this is their school of district and so we provide transportation to wherever they're living now to school and back and that's the federal law or correct it's the law and in my time here that number of families has increased

053substantially all right any other questions or thoughts for eight I guess just returning to the Staffing question like where do we stand with that um is this just going to be a question that will bring like the um fact will bring up again or like how are we going to yeah Tanya's point to to all of our points like it's hard to sell to the community the you know that this is going to be the new rate especially after last year and given that we're going to be asking for a lot of money so um yeah do when would we talk about Staffing again or like what what would next steps on that conversation be yeah I want to add to that because I'm I'm thinking of March so we get through this expansion renovation

054whatever you want to call it it doesn't give us a new school right it's like a lot of emergency things that need to be done we I think we all recognize that but we need need to fund future repairs and maintenance to the school to a much larger extent so the point is we have a heavy lift ahead of us you know if I have my way we're going to have a an annual maintenance fund of a couple of hundred, the money goes into that and it gets used when it's needed for major repairs you can't you can't be funding it at I mean I'm looking at maintenance funds right now it's 100 grand okay and you're consuming it and we need to think about these things or else we're going to have a bond

055on top of a bond someday I don't have the answer for it but that's what I'm thinking yeah so that increasing the maintenance fee does that happen this year well you know I I don't mind asking for it you know I'll stand up and take the bullets but I mean it's you know it's we're in this situation because of the kicking the can down the road just just is you know you've got the the school needs to have repairs it's 35 years old it'd be a warrant article anyway right tell about yeah yeah well I you know I I still don't exactly understand how we would fund um the a maintenance I think we do it every year right you already you already have a war it's just the number that you'd put in there

056it's the number you put in there but the town would vote on that though correct right it's a separate p is all I'm saying so town can determine they can decide or not decide M and I talked a little bit about that there just there's a couple different ways to do it and they're all complicated and they all come with baggage yeah Paul had come and we had talked about um the logistics of the budgeting and when you put on a warrn article you have two choices you can put it from fund balance meaning at the end of the 2425 school year if you vote in this coming March if there's money left over then it would be contributed towards a fund towards the trust fund or instead of saying from fun balance you can

057raise an appropriate so it's essentially just like added in the tax rate did both of them require a vote from the town yes they both require a vote it's just how it's funded if it's funded from fund balance that way you're not raising additional funds from taxation you're reducing the amount you give back in the tax rate but you're not raising additional funds from Taxation and if there nothing that is able to be returned then it's just it's whatever is left always up to the maximum like you have to send back the maximum so say we say it's 200,000 we get 135,000 that would be normally returned that 135,000 by the way the warrant's written would have to be all return if you write up to okay and then um or if you want to

058guaranteed that it was go in then you would appropriate the funds and also remember when we do our um trust funds it's the order yeah so if we had special ed first and there was 135 we won 50,000 to go there then you only go 85 even though we was set up to 200,000 so that you have the priority of how you want to put your your trust funds at the end of whatever's left over and then the board could allocate though prior to or no nope so it's going to it's going to be the order that it's on the ballot so when we create the warrant the order that it's in the warrant up to would fund each of those you can you don't go back and pick and choose think think about the

059public looking at these right I'm just thinking every once in a while there's some flexibility the board appreciates by having the ability to make a decision at the end of the year on something that came up and we had a balance if if by the will of the voters we have to return that money in its entirety we don't get that flexibility not saying we need it but it's it's a different way of operating than I think we probably have't recent years I can't remember the last you'd still have that it would be what you have left over by June 30th Eric so you could still make decisions up so the timing would just matter it's just what happens at June 30th because we can't spend after that because that's when it's allocated to correct

060so like to Paul's point if you put a warrant saying up to $300,000 to the maintenance trust fund then yes those decisions that Chris is talking about would be made before that and then at the end of the day come June 30th if there's $300,000 or whatever is raining up to 300,000 go in the trust fund so your June meeting you would need to have any information about what you wanted to potentially spend out of remaining funds in the general fund we would actually need that by the May meeting because in order to have it done you have to have a purchase order open with a contractual obligation by June 30th M thank you wait I want to make sure I understand that if if we put maintenance if we put money in the mten

061trust fund are you saying we have to spend it we can't pile that no no no no no no what I'm saying is at the end of the year if this board pack I give you says there's $500,000 projected fund balance before June 30th the board has the authority to say I would like to spend 450,000 of that and then only what's left over on June 30th is your your fund balance got it so I guess just to ask like go back and ask Sophie's question again which is like what's the next step and like a staffing conversation a board conversation yeah we we just need a direction from you of what you'd like for us to bring if you'd like us to look at numbers based on what we've got from the 2020 board

062meeting we can look at that as projections um you you are going to talk educational programming so we we can definitely do that we just need a direction do you want us to come back with with projected you know maybe reductions in Staffing if that's the case we can do that we just need to know where you want to go right now I know we're going to look at taking out all the replacement furniture that we've got into the budget which is about $55,000 if there's Staffing you want us to look at then we would need to look at that based on what where we're at right now or is this that change you know in a future meeting I would just like to see it I just like to see what the Staffing is

063contracted non-contracted staff numbers for what we're projecting maybe even for what we have today or whatever we're projecting for next budgetting any new hires at all for next year so what you have today is what we were proposing for next we did not propose any new positions and then also versus I think the higher uh I would like to see it like 19 or 20 like prior to the pandemic I don't the pandemic year was a weird year so I don't know if that was 19 to 20 or 20 to 21 Staffing you mean is that what you're asking okay yeah and I don't know that we have it I if you have it Kate you were here I think that was first year I think Heather might have it we can get it I

064know it's gra bottom sorry I would love to see it so you'd like to look at the the Staffing numbers what we have in this budget and how it would affect based on student ratio in the classroom am I hearing that correctly yes okay compared to what we've seen in the past what we had prior to Co in terms of classroom teachers be the exact same number exact yes and then actually head count FTE just across I'm talking about classroom teachers I'm not talking special I'm saying classroom teachers the um only different difference would be at one point we had a s we had a 99 class with 99 students and um we had six teachers when they were in first grade second grade third grade and fourth grade I do think that's an important

065conversation to have especially with the building project too yeah yeah and uh just to clarify number you said last year's change was 4.1 4.11% okay y I'll have a little bit of clarification when I talk about the building project okay may help okay all right well thank you so much for that hard work really appreciate it any last thoughts before we move on I I have one last thought this must be an agonizing process for you every single year I love doing budget why I became an educator Paul I beg you pardon I said I love doing budgets why I became an educator Paul we um I did not make a note that we passed the 15minute mark but I didn't know if we start that again we have Educators in the audience I don't

066know if they want to yeah conversation um any conversation or or public input anybody all right I I have a I have a question question if I may yeah you said our Mt our new mtss coordinator is here multi-tier system of support coordinator I can't say that three times fast can we is she going to speak I'm sorry to say she she's on the agenda she's on the agenda I knew that all right let's get through these uh board reports and then uh we're excited to hear so um let's talk about building committee PA and Sophie okay I'll go first yeah okay so uh hopefully we're going to have a simplified contract that we can put signatures to this week and it's just a matter of making sure the contract is appropriate for the work

067we're doing right now which is budgeting and scope there's no construction work being done and uh we had a nice Milestone occur this week in as much as Kino came through Kate um headed the uh the the visit we had them come through with several uh trades contractors who are potentially going to bid on on some of the subcontracted work and I and I saw an email today I guess there's another one going to come next week right um I'm meeting them on Friday at 6:30 in the morning so uh I know Kino is going pedal to the metal to try to get all of the numbers that they need um as solid as possible for us and they will have it for the subcommittee for the night of um uh December the 12th I

068think that's a Thursday it's the day after the 11th School Board fact meeting and um that night the plan is for the subcommittee to scrub all the numbers okay to present to the school board the following Wednesday on the 18th now this is what I was saying a moment ago about some clarification we talked several times about an alot menu okay okay we know we need new borers you know that's that's kind of like um not really alakat but they'll give us several options okay on what kind to put in what the advantages are and what the costs are okay and then a lot of things they've gone through their own their own scope and they've gone through the bandw scope and they they're going through the building several times and they're going to give

069us an alot menu of these of the things that you need to do these are the things that would be nice to do and in each of those categories you're going to get shall we say good better best you're going to get a couple of options with a couple of different prices for each so we're going to have a a rather substantial Matrix to look at and we can say we want uh we want um uh this fixed out of column A we want that fixed out of column B we want this fixed out of column C type of thing and obviously to keep within um the cap that we've set so I talked to Todd a little bit today he told me about how he's how he's putting it together and it's going to

070be really nice it's going to be easy for us to take a look at it should be very clear so um that's how that's how that's going yeah that's amazing yeah now that's the good news okay the not so good news is and I'm learn you know I'm learning as I'm going here um it seems like you can't touch anything without having to pull everything apart okay so every you know we're looking at you my hot my hot button is safety it always has been and I would like to see the entire School sprinkled well we're probably going to have to go right back across the street put in all new pipes because the pipes are undersized they're undersized for what's in the school today okay and we're going to have to put in a

071sister new pipes larger diameter pipes I think they said yesterday or that the pump may be okay all right thank God thank God for little things but the point is you know in our original budget we're talking about oh we can do this for maybe $250 to $500,000 no how about a million 250 or a million 500 that's kind of the things that we're looking at okay so when you get into one thing now Ada starts to get important and railings and things like that so it's almost like you can't touch anything without having to rip everything apart that's a that's an exaggeration but you kind of understand where I'm going with it so it's a bit of a frustration um but we'll get through it and we'll and we'll keep to our budget does

072that help yes I I'm very impressed I look forward to the ease of December 18th can I add um one thing to the report can I share a little bit about the meeting that we had last week um met with um the team last week and instead of having like one addition that was two stories they thought it might be a better idea to just have um two or more editions that are on the first floor um so I thought that that was an interesting potential um adjustment to the original thought of a 10,000 square foot addition not just being like one chunk of a building with two stories but maybe two first wi floor that was a great idea whose idea was it Kate I think we were all just brainstorming that was that

073your idea no k k brought it up we talked about that that was a great idea storming different options I have lots of Visions dreams this point you know as as as Todd said it simplifies manufacturing it's simplifies through the build so cuts cost and so on so I think there are ways to be strategic with restructuring and adding first floor Bas it while while still maintaining this pretty much the same wall structure B yeah bones as is Bones as is Bones as would affect the Garden or the playground yep maybe one over there and one over here or something like that so thank you for C I was not referring to the bones I was talking about some the restructuring of larger spaces to medium spaces that doesn't require taking walls down and impacting

074the Fidelity of the building okay that's great yeah thanks to all of you thank you and Kate we recognize time so thank you uh I I want to add one more thing so I've talked with a few other uh people in town uh and mention the name so generally speaking a lot of people don't know the name right and I'm I'm continuing to get great feedback I got an email from a gentleman yesterday he said I know karino he says you could not have picked a better firm so I mean that was really nice to you yeah really nice to hear good um one of the things I did add to the agenda is just thinking about publicity and public and um I'm wondering if maybe on the 18th we could talk about that a

075little bit too or come up with a plan or I'm just wondering how how would we um start talking about public out Outreach yeah I was kind of um waiting to see when we would have some general numbers and um then kind of go forward from there like if we have like this is the this is our plan right that we that we want to sell the town and then think through how many um you know public meetings we want to have and presentations and q&as what other forms of communication will be appropriate um yeah hint a lot as many as possible right yeah and definitely like who are we partnering partnering with how do we you know what media sources yeah yeah okay so could we maybe could you maybe work something for the

07618th and could some discussion yeah yeah yeah I think the 18th is it's going to be a busy night yeah you know we have we're going to have to make a lot of hard decisions that night with this this menu sure you know and I um am am hoping that the um subcommittee will be here to answer questions and Karina will be here to answer questions so it could be a long night if you want to include this at the conclusion of it yeah um well I can do my homework and try and make it as straightforward as possible and then just something for us to kind of work off of an ad you know from our own all of us have you know very unique you know Social Circles or you know ideas of

077communicating so just at least we get it started all right sounds great thank you so much to the both of you um superintendent evaluation committee um uh so we're evaluating somebody who is leaving but um I think we thought we talked about at the Joint board that it is important in terms of giving you know feedback to Chris and to the other leadership team in the SAU to continue um evaluating um Dr elbel so we um laid out a whole sort of calendar of events um and times that we need to uh meet to do the 360 the inperson with Dr asell um and so our first meeting is going to be January 10th to kind of talk about how that how that works out so that's my only update things are happening um even

078even though uh Esther is leaving any questions about that um all right uh Safety and Security yeah so this is my first meeting um it happened on October 17th um so there was a lot of updates uh a lot of updates so um all of the school safety audits were completed for all the schools in the district including SMS and everything was um provided to Homeland Security and they give you um suggestions and improvements basically um based off of those audits um same thing with emergency operation plans um they get uh submitted to Homeland Security and those are completed and submitted for SMS um the they talked about um the new reunification plan um for SAU 16 schools which is now at Philips exitor um and information about that was posted um on the SA

079website and um on parents Square I believe so um I one thing I had a question for for Kate um on this one was I at that time I looked in the um like parent handbook for SMS and I didn't see um that in there for reunification do we post that somewhere so we didn't it didn't wasn't published till September 28th of this year and our family handbook goes out in August um but we actually had our first SMS safety committee meeting today so like Chief King is there Rich Kee from sa is there um and we talked about reposting the reunication on parent Square because it wasn't out when our handbooks went out we've already posted it but it was again in our newsletter so things get messed so we're just going to put

080it as its own um on parent Square we actually had that conversation today perfect okay good awesome um yeah so uh Philips exiter um they kind of ran us through it while we were there um it's very um uh easy to follow there's a lot of signage and things so they have everything um very planned out so um good reunification plan um they talked about schools R running um tabl talkop table toop exercises to ensure preparedness for variety of emergency situations um a lot of the different schools have been running some of those exercises um I am not sure historically if we've um run any here for run one every year our first one is I can tell you is uh this January we're doing one um and we're actually going to be doing reunification

081is going to be our tabletop in January last year it was um a student being kidnapped okay okay um let's see what else do I have um they are doing um some training um and exercises at the seu level for cyber security um and then the last summary I have for or the last um note I have is that um some uh they said they had some Fire Marshals that visited some of the schools in the SAU in order to talk about fire regulations and um the ability to chalk doors and things like that and provided some guidance on the topic and so the SE is looking to do that um like one time a year to make sure schools stay up to date with fire regulations um anything new that's come up and things

082like that so ours was last week we got our report last Thursday Trucking doors Remains the thing that we always get comments about um we actually learned a lot about that Tim went to a training earlier I guess it was over the summer maybe um and the reason so other schools don't other schools can Chuck their doors it's because we're not sprinkled yeah so that is because it was been like a bone of contention like we're like this is so frustrating which Kane has been really helpful he had reached out to the Fire Marshals for us to be like why is this different and it turns out it's because we're not sprinkled and so that is the issue and is that a way to like contain a fire at that point then is to yeah

083okay so that's what I have uh do you have anything additional that you wanted to add to that I would just say we had our first so we have quarterly SMS safety meetings in ours was today it was a great lasted longer than we anticipated but we sort ofi last time we had met was last spring so we went over all the things that have changed at SNS sense last spring which was a significant number of safety features that have changed um we reviewed several of our emergency procedures as things change and they need to be updated so we reviewed those with police there so we can then we'll do a at a staff meeting we'll review the changes so the staff is fully aware reunification was one of those things that we talked quite

084a bit about um and then I just want to make sure I missed anything um we continued to talk about our concerns for walkie-talkies um and Rich Kee had some great ideas so there's some things that we can try there he's going to come back over and we're going to work through some things together so it was great conversation he's going to provide a training we have um new Administrative Assistant staff and people in new positions and so a couple of years ago he provided a training for like when you answer the phone and it's a blank um what is the expectation and how do you handle it and so um at our last meeting office meeting I had asked them if they wanted the training they were all so he's going to come do

085the training for them so it'll be good right that's a lot thank you thanks to both of you uh um all right chair update I just have a couple things um I just I wanted to recognize Chris Dr kisy so thank you um I know you're stepping up into superintendent next year um so that's very exciting congratulations thank you very much um do you see this changing or um who will be our um SAU W yeah thank you we're working through that um there's a lot lot going on we need you so well I'm thinking with the building project yeah so we're we're we're gonna a lot of planning out and then we're going to try and put people in in the right strengths but um that is still to be determined okay yeah all

086right sounds great um I also just didn't want to have a board meeting without um sort of recognizing the laimer family and um you know obviously like such an important family to SMS and um you know someone you know a family that we care about so much and such a background so anyway just wanted to recognize them and also you know um I saw so many teachers contributing um uh to the fund for them and and that was so meaningful to me to see so many of you guys on that fund and um really wonderful so anyway um I also know that we um got some bus emails this month um so um just following up on all those Transportation ISS issues um in terms of some of the bus conversations that we've been having

087um and then my final note is um you know parent teacher conferences student Le conferences um last you know uh couple weeks ago and um I definitely heard good comments about it um even though I'm salty nobody responded to your survey but um I I think it was a nice combination to have the student Le and also have time I'm curious to see how it worked out I know there in my classroom there was a little bit of delay right a parent talked a little bit longer but I was just wondering how it went from your perspective so I did send out a survey to families today in the newsletter asking them based on now having both options what's your feedback on that um so that did go out to in it was in a

088newsletter so you'd have to we through it so who knows maybe I'll post it separate if I don't get a lot of response to it um so I talked to quite a few teachers and I think there are things that we would TW a little bit differently um so one of them was I think we made this assumption that families would know that if they weren't the ones in that they should be waiting in the hallway and they didn't and so then it kind of delayed things or it felt like it wasn't as intimate of a conversation as you would want because the purpose of the adult part is to be talking about things that maybe you don't want everybody else hearing you don't want the student hearing so we talked about like how we

089prep families for better and then make sure there's chairs for them and things like that just more like okay um logistical stuff um but I did hear from a lot of the staff about it was really nice to have both options so it was great to see the kids getting to Showcase but then also be able to connect with their families face to face because as you know most communication is phone or email so that face to face time is also really helpful to build relationships with our community yeah so the feedback was by and large really good we didn't have as many people as we thought that would sign up for the adult part um but people are really busy and maybe now that we've done it once it'll catch on and they'll choose

090to do it in the spring yeah and the spring one is evening right it's going to be half it's going to start at like noon and go until 600 I think because the hours that might not be exactly okay close yeah yeah all right well sounds great and thank you for trying new things there and yeah I do I do think that's such an important part of the student experience okay uh strategic planning I I realized my name's on here but I think Sophie went to right oh I was out of town so I missed it oh okay I give a quick update yeah that'd be great yeah so they met for the first time um I'll start now obviously I wasn't on the first meeting but I will start going to the meetings but

091I did have the opportunity so the the committee met they looked at a bunch of questions that are going to be for uh staff students in for community and just making sure that those those questions make sense that the wording is correct that we're trying to ask for so they worked with um Nicon from um from isobar which is a subsidiary of of qual Trex which is their their their Niche is survey uh that's who does all your sat surveying and a lot of surveying for your secondary colleges and starting to work with uh public education so Nick is is fantastic he'll be the one that be leading us through with his team through the strategic planning process so this part is all virtual um we did have committee members that partnered up and they

092looked at specific questions so Dr asell and I got to work with the student rep which was super awesome um to hear her feedback of the questions and how students would respond to what we're asking and gave some really good feedback so for our next meeting we'll bring that back um make sure that it's aligned with the intent of the questions that we're asking to get the results that we're asking for when we get to that strategic planning model so that me I think we have a meeting um in two Thursdays coming up I'll check my calendar but we have another one very shortly to go over that um it's after our yeah it's after our our our administrative Retreat so on a couple Thursdays we'll meet and that's the second round to review that

093okay sounds great Eric policy committee yeah thank you so we we met as a uh as a group and there's a lot here it's largely around uh some of the title 9 discrimination stuff I don't know if anybody has had an opportunity to take a look I'm happy to answer some questions what I would say is some there was some good conversation in the group um I'm not sure if everyone is familiar with sort of a sort of a contentious there's some contention right now between the state bill that was signed by sonunu regarding Sports and right biological sex and gender and sports versus the federal uh uh I think I don't know if it was amended or something but there's some changes to Title Nine so those two are presently at odds and so

094what we we we asked in the policy should we reflect anything and they said no because we don't know yet like let's just play it by ear see what's happening um and I think the last I do have I see people I don't do you guys know about this have you heard much about this no okay I have a fairly unbiased I think it's pretty unbiased news report can I read it really quickly sure all right and I'm sorry because I know we got people waiting to present this was from the New Hampshire bulletin it says amid fra landscape school districts react differently to transgender Sports ban law and I think this is good for us just to know and to be aware of the issues so that if anybody asks and if they ask

095about do our policies reflect XY or Z why we have chosen to do what what is proposed here which is basically to leave it alone until we we get better guidance on it so it says in August the karge Regional School Board took up a thorny question how should it comply with a new law barring transgender girls from middle and high school sports earlier that summer Governor Chris anunu had signed the law House Bill 1205 which required that schools separate their sports teams into male female and co-ed teams and that they allow only kids who are born biologically female to join female sports teams let me preface all of this with what also was said we don't have any of any anybody that is necessitating a grievance process here at SMS okay because this is

096these these policies that we're adopting are for SMS specifically all right karge had a student a transgender girl who would be barred from playing girls soccer if the school followed the state law the board was meeting to decide whether the school district should do so the body held its deliberations behind closed doors in a non-public session but the final result was clear kir Sarge would allow the student to play on the team ignoring the state law the decision came amid a difficult environment for school districts the legislature had passed a law requiring them to Bar trans transgender girls from girl sports but federal law under Title 9 of the US education amendments prohibits any discrimination on the basis of sex and school districts that violate the law can lose out on federal funding and the

097law was updated this year by the Department of Education to explicitly bar discrimination based on a person's sexual orientation and gender identity transgender rights Advocates argue that title 9 takes precedent and that schools should follow it over the state law The Cure Sarge board agreed but other school districts have chosen to follow the state law and bar their transgender female students from girl Sports and those districts are currently facing lawsuits Barrett Christina executive director Christine I can't ever remember his name met him of course as we probably all have executive director of the New Hampshire school boards Association says he agrees with the approach taken by kirar it is impossible to comply with both both House Bill 125 and the recent Title 9 regulations he said in an interview there's simply no way to comply

098with both on August 15th Plymouth Regional High School informed the mother of per Parker Terell a transgender girl that she would not be allowed to play on the soccer team sighting its need to comply with the law the ACLU of New Hampshire is currently suing Terrell's School District pimmy Baker Regional School District in addition to the school board department of educational education commissioner Frank edbl and the State Board of Education to stop the law which they argue is unconstitutional they also they are also suing the pimbrook school district to allow Iris Turell another transgender student to participate US District Court Judge landia mcaf mccaffery has issued a temporary restraining order against the law allowing Terrell to play on her girl soccer team but it applies only to Terell and Turell and not to all transgender

099students in the state for school boards in school districts the question of whether to comply with HB 1205 is fraud hb25 creates the threat of lawsuits for districts that do not comply the law states that any student who has deprived of an athletic opportunity or suffers any direct or indirect harm as a result of a school knowingly violating the law shall have a private cause of action for injunctive Relief damages and any other relief available under law against the school so far no lawsuits have been filed against the only School District currently not following the law kard Regional School District on the other side Title 9 has clear prohibitions against School discrimination and cure Serge board members have raised the concern of the loss of federal revenue if they are found out of compliance by

100the US Department of Education the question of whether title 9's prohibition on sex BAS discrimination applies to transgender athletes barred from sports teams is a critical central point of contention in the federal lawsuit involving Terrell and turmo the state's attorney Attorney General's office has argued that title 9 was originally created to protect women's sports and that the state law is seeking to do the same by preserving fairness and safety for female athletes by barring transgender girls attorneys for Terrell and turl argued that both girls have undergone hormonal therapies that have eliminated any physical Advantage they might have against other female students The District Court's preliminary decision is likely to be appealed and the case is moving to a full trial in the coming months but Christen has said mccaffery's ruling is nonetheless an indication to

101school districts that they do not need to Barrow transgender girls from their sports teams it's sort of a signal to anybody else that's bringing any further challenges that the courts already going to decide that the law itself is unconstitutional end quote beyond the question of compliance with federal law The Cure Sarge board also received a swell of pressure from transgender Advocates sorry I'm try to wrap this up including the student herself asking for them to allow her onto the soccer team number of parents of transgender children across the state including Sarah Terell and Michelle silly Foy testified in favor of the move as did Christine arau Areno a pediatrician who noted High suicide rates among transgender Youth and the benefit of access to sports other Advocates spoke in opposition such as Beth and Steven scare

102who said unfair advantages could follow a decision to allow trans girl transgender girl to participate the student herself testified that she had played soccer since she was three and benefited personally from the socialization and sense of belonging she received as the issue continues to feature in political campaign RoR rhetoric particularly among Republican candidates who oppose transgender girls participating in girls sports sports events have become new Flash points of conflict a group of Bo parents are suing the school district in federal court because the district barred them from attending sporting events after they wore pink armbands to games in which Bo was facing off against Plymouth the iron bands which were marked with XX to signify female chromosomes were worn in protest of Terell who is playing on the Plymouth team parents have argued their first

103amendment rights have been violated the school district says the protests were disruptive and constituted harassment bristen a declined to comment on the Bose School's district handling of that incident but the school board ass School boards Association has a template policy around Free Speech issues that it encourages school boards to adopt quote no person on school property or during any school sponsored or approved activity May engage in behaviors that are harassing or discriminatory in nature based on a person's actual or proceed age sex gender identity sexual orientation marital status familial status disability religion national origin race or color end quote the sample policy states thank you for bearing with me with that long thing but I wanted everybody to be aware and to understand sort of what the conversation was in our policy committee about that

104and I thought that that article did a really good job of explaining Point Counterpoint and sort of where the state's at and I actually think there was there have been teams also that have forfeited uh their games recently but this was I think a September article so it's this is fairly recent um and I I couldn't find anything else saying that any of those lawsuits had moveed forward or had been determinative in any way so that's why it's not really included here again there's nothing related to SMS uh yet um and of course many of our sporting events are handled actually by the town through the rec department so I don't know you know what implications there would be there but we often have people in the community ask ask us about these things when

105they hear it so I thought it might be beneficial for folks on the board to to know what the issues were yeah thank you yeah and I'll just offer one more um on if you skip down to public access to school district records that was one where we have to we have to incur uh C cost expense when providing um uh what's it called right to know right to know right so it's kind of like a Foya right to know so when somebody asks us for any kind of information that we have um that's public in nature we have to do that if there are things that need to be redacted it it's pretty labor intensive and it requires sometimes going to outside so what the note here was that this amendment allows us to

106a a reasonable charge for those Services one of the things that we had suggested in the policy committee um was why don't we see if we can provide people with an estimate of that first so if somebody gives us a right to know and it's going to turn out to be $2,000 worth of work before we do all this work and then hand them a bill for $2,000 and they say I don't want to do it never mind then we've already incurred a lot of time and exp there's there's some back and forth that could happen there and so we said if we could there's a lot of things that we have like ecovery and things like that that are within our own systems where we can look for expressions or whatever it is within

107email correspondents or other we could perhaps give somebody who's asking their right to know an anticipated cost of what that might be and see if they're still willing to move forward with it so it had just been so labor intensive in the past and and we thought maybe there's some better ways to to do that because we want to be transparent we want to provide answers on right to know but we also don't want people to use that as a tool to us from a labor in fees perspective as well so anyway I don't know if you guys want to do a first read if you want to just adopt them but um that was the update from the policy committee that's great thank you so much um what's your recommendation I mean my recommend

108I didn't have any problems with with any of it there were a few little uh typos that I think um people had suggested I think those have been uh I think those have been uh fixed there was one about hair because it was just the lack of knowledge uh within within the the committee members that it was just something having to do with um types of hair that could be considered or the ways of of of even adorning your hair or presenting your hair um was one of the things and so that was the only thing that just I think included a little bit more conversation in the in the committee about what does that mean and was that a typo or was that uh truly the way that that was meant to be read

109and that was the that was the answer to that one so I mean I I felt comfortable with with the way that they were presented they are all um as with almost all of these they are to come into compliance with with RSA and uh I think we I think we've done that anybody have any questions on any of the policies um anybody um I guess I would entertain a motion to adopt um unless anybody has any concerns well I would move I would make the motion okay to adopt do I have a second second any discussion I just didn't really get to read it as closely as I wanted to but if I um that's on me for not realizing that it would be so lengthy so I'm happy to adopt on your recommendation

110just wanted to say that in case anybody else like that are you saying um 581 AC yeah I skimmed it but I just didn't have all all of them oh all of them okay so would you rather just have it be a first reading um I wouldn't be opposed to it if if other people wanted a second read too but um we've got a lot going on so I'm also happy to just adopt and take your recommendation I'm okay on the second read too like I'm happy to vote against the motion whatever you want to do Sophie I mean do other it's a lot I I'm not I'm not oppose that I did I did read it so I can go either way but if you need time then I'm happy to let's go for

111it okay um so did I get a second I think I did Paul Paul okay Paul all right all in favor I I anybody opposed all right 5 z z thank you all right yeah yay multi-tier system of support yeah see you later set up you want me to okay let me just use my computer do we want to do sck to while she's doing that yeah that'd be great so in your packet I sent you just a letter um I don't have that oh was in our packet I didn't see anything oh I was just searching the word h for as as you know um just so you I sent you an email just a retirement letter uh I don't think there's much to discuss with it other than you know just the years

112of service that the um employees given to the the strata Memorial School District and it is coming up it is during the school year but U yeah okay so just didn't know if there's any questions or if you wanted to say anything publicly um I'm so sorry can you tell me like one yeah uh November 6th 8:13 p.m. oh got it okay yep all right I'm with you yeah so this is you said this is yeah happening during the the school year yep it willary yeah February 21st be the last day yeah why that day just the time of the years of service they've got um I don't know if Kate's had additional conversations with that employee but we've had a couple that this is you know we've had one coming up soon with another

113employee that's that's coming up I think December 13th Al right before February breaks it's a natural time okay and what grade level uh it works with multiple grade levels rights with first gr are you able to fill that position we have one open right now that we're working on and we will I mean the post actually remains open most of the time um but um we will ask we I can call Dian central office like put it at the top of all the postings as we get closer that that does help good that hi I'm Banna Martin I am the mtss coordinator um I did run into someone new recently and we were talking and he said oh my wife works in schools too and I said what do you what does she do and

114he said well she used to be a teacher and now she does something with letters I'm like I bet she does what I do um so mtss multi-tiered systems of support and thank you for having me really excited to talk about what we've been doing here and our goals for what's to come I think some of what is in this presentation we'll hopefully answer some of the questions that came up earlier in the board meeting conversation or um at least speak to that a little bit uh as I go just pause me along the way um if you have any questions or anything I'm just G to jump in sorry you guys um there's a lot here so we will share this with you as well so that when you're processing not tonight the information

115is available to yeah I get really excited about what I do so it's hard for me not to put it all out there but I think I was able to prioritize um kind of most key key information to start with and then there's some supplemental slides separated out the end for you so uh one of the pieces that we wanted to share is what my job is looking like and thinking about listening to Paul today talking about work on the building committee and thinking about hiring karino as the contractor in a lot of ways I think of myself kind of as the contractor that if in a system where you may have the best plumbers electricians carpenters in the world but if there's not someone to do some organization and coordination it can be really

116hard to get a project done efficiently um so a coordination is a lot of what I do I am the 504 coordinator there are about about 50 students at SMS right now with current 504 plans we've had 22 meetings so far this school year I coordinate the child study team uh we have about 80 students with current CST files so I've had 67 meetings for that so far as of 111 we've had some more since then um looking at our data collection our progress monitoring and then serving on a number of committees and also providing some direct student support right now I give about an hour a day of direct student support um my background is in both regular and special education so that's something where I'm able to step in as needed looking ahead

117at what I really um would love to see expanded in the future is additional work around Community engagement and professional development I love working with communities I love working with families will have the best results if we're incorporating our community members um and results driven work is really important to us um and then in round PD there's a component of um my goal is eventually to get to do a lot of accessibility coaching so really being able to look with teachers at say I have I say I'm a classroom teacher with three IEPs uh three kiddos with IEPs five kiddos who are getting this kind of intervention that H how do we look at all of their plans and all of the accommodations that they're getting and find what the crossover is so that it's

118not making plans for 15 different students but making a plan that will address the needs of all 15 of those students um so really that's I kind of defined the purpose there I'm looking at efficiency I'm looking at expertise getting everyone there who needs to be um present I think one key piece with understanding mtss is that I'll have a lot of points around kind of why it's the best thing for students but it's also a tight mtss system is a financially responsible school system in that we're able to really maximize the use of personnel and you don't see assist with a loose or school with a loose mtss system is significantly like more likely to have more special education expenses just because we're not able to support as many of the kiddos as need

119that support along the way and they're more likely to end up getting referred for special education um so that's an area that we can contribute as well so um we took a sample group of students we're trying to think about how do we show the overlaps of need and why it's important to have someone coordinating those different support services and I just want you to take a minute and think okay in this sample size where we have of of a group of students we have 12 who need support with peer relationships eight with social emotional learning four with academics six with physical regulation two with medical supports and eight needing support around family services so if you want to guess just to yourself what you think the sample size that we used might be and

120just take a minute and then we can switch to the next but you kind of have a picture in mind how many students do you think that was 12 say 14 you're stealing my thunder uh that was a single class of 15 students so as we look at the data within that classroom we can see that we have two students who have areas of need in five different areas um number of students four you know it breaks it down on the side the point being that for that classroom teacher who's supporting those students it's one thing for her to or him for that classroom teacher to be supporting in the classroom it's an whole another thing to be coordinating all of the different service providers making sure everyone you know thinking about if a student

121has needs in multiple areas we're going to be able to address those needs most efficiently through a holistic conversation than everybody doing their own thing and hoping that we align that is just too much for a classroom teacher to coordinate um at SMS we have an understanding of mtss as a flexible framework so what you see up in front of you is the traditional model um it's the tiered model that's multi-tiered um where we have at our our tier one the general core instruction tier two it's going to be a more more targeted or strategic intervention and tier three intensive supports so that's kind of the classic mtss Model um we know that all students regardless of um if they need supplemental instruction or specialized instruction are accessing the tier one instruction and if they're

122not making expected gains our supports increase in intensity at SMS we use a model that has the same founding principles of strong Universal instruction collection and Analysis of data and Target instruction at increasing levels of intensity however if you can see with the model that we're using it's significantly more fluid and responsive so it allows us to meet students where they are at a given moment in time rather than having them kind of get stuck in a set level and within actually I'll go to my next slides but we're thinking of it as a gradient rather than those set supports so kids can move in and around they can get um service services in all areas of that pyramid at any one point in time oh can you go back for me sorry I'm trying

123to get through as much as I can but I still have more to say about that one um one thing that's really important to understand and you all may have background in Universal Design for Learning already but it's really one of the key pieces of what we're trying to bring into or emphasize it's it's a practice here but we're trying to continue to feed and build that uh um and when we're teaching with Universal Design for Learning we're providing students with multiple means of Engagement so we're connecting with them in different ways representation which is how we're communicating the information action and expression so giving them choice and how they are um and a variety of options and how they're communicating what they have learned and what you see and in that image there I

124highlighted Universal Design for Learning that's something that happens at all level of of instruction and really the goal of udl is to identify and remove barriers for learning so that every environment is as accessible as possible for all students and what's great about that is there were well a couple awesome pieces one of them is that often the accommodations that are necessary for some students that we start building in as a universal practice are really helpful to everybody so there's that great benefit there and then also we're often able to address needs and support learning in a less restrictive environment again looking at more efficiency in terms of that learning that's happening in the classroom environment or maybe in an intervention so just a quick slide on some of the um udl accommodation or udl

125pieces that you might see at our school we have our classroom FM systems which the um feedback from teachers on that has been universally positive in terms of supporting students with attention auditory processing all those pieces um tools and spaces for self-regulation it doesn't need to just be for that kiddo who has a lot of struggles with regulation almost every kid in that class is going to benefit at some point from maybe taking a space and like sit in that quiet corner or use that fidget um visual schedules visual supports those are a big anchor for the majority of learning profiles whether or not there's a significant difficult barrier to learning um so incorporating those pieces with certain kids in mind it ends up supporting everyone um and then also seating options because it doesn't

126matter which chair you're in as long as you're learning right um and then there's just a little reference about udl versus accommodations that you can look at in your own time if you like our major components of mtss are our Universal instruction that core instruction that everyone is getting and legally entitled to our gradient supports and we have adjusted our schedule this year you may have seen the new schedule where within each um within both literacy and math there's a secondary period called after the core instruction called the gradient support block where we're providing if a student maybe has specialized instruction in that area they can have that during that time if they have an intervention in that area they can have it at that time but also within the classroom the classroom teacher and

127ESP are providing small group sort of um I guess really student focused work for what's appropriate for the students in that room at that time so all students are benefiting from that gradient support time uh we have our child study team where we get together any if a child is having any kind of difficulty or not making the gains that we'd expect we get together people who have expertise in relative relevant areas set a goal figure you know figure out what's going on come up with a plan set a measurable goal and then make a plan to reconvene and make sure what we think is going to work is actually working for them um there's Extended Learning which again can be happening during that gradient support block where we're looking at okay this student may

128have developed Mastery in the skill that's being taught in the classroom right now what's the next step for them and then we have our interventions which are a component of gradient supports available Based on data so we're looking at our Benchmark data we're looking at our progress monitoring data determining who would be eligible for those supports getting a lot of classroom teacher input and classroom data in there as well and then kind of a special piece within that um the components of mtss is that specialized instruction which that's Raymond's world I won't touch it in this presentation but I think again understanding that when all of the other pieces are really tight and really strongly in place we can make sure that the specialized instruction and the funding that goes along with that is reserved

129for students who who have educational disabilities that require specialized instruction so our different areas that we touch on through mtss it's not just the traditional um academics because we find especially in elementary schools there can be a lot of barriers to learning or aspects that need um fine tuning that aren't specific to the content area right so we have literacy supports and math supports but we also have wonderful teams of related service providers our speech and language Pathologists our occupational therapists our social emotional service providers are all working with students as well um to provide shortterm intervention or a whole variety of different types of supports for classrooms um and students just looking at our this is our fall our like right after the fall Benchmark start of the academic intervention um planning so it's

130going to look really different as the school year goes on especially in kindergarten the way we're responding to students in kindergarten knowing that there's a huge variety of um backgrounds that they may bring in terms of school exposure it's going to be mostly inclass support so when you don't see um especially for math seeing that all that support is pushing and there aren't specific students identified that's just what's developmentally appropriate for kindergarten but that'll give you a sense of by grade level our um literacy participation our math participation for um academic interventions and already as we get close to the end of our first round of interventions we're having some students who are moving out of intervention because they met those expected gains other students coming in so those numbers are continuously shifting in terms

131of our related service um we have 40 students who have some level of support from occupational therapy and that can be consultation with the classroom teacher um or direct support we have 12 students in speech and that's kind of expected that those numbers go down as you get into the higher grades because a lot of what a speech intervention would look like typically um in those lower grades is going to be articulation and that's something that we're generally going to age out of and our social emotional Services numbers are I found them staggering um 221 students are receiving some level of support from social emotional services and that could be anything from participation I think the it's important to understand that that could be anything from participation in a Lunch Bunch to receiving one-on-one counseling

132um but we have to understand as we're thinking about I know one thing Kate you talked about with school being a little bit different now than it has been in previous years in the impact of covid my understanding is that the general um the general um thought amongst Educators in terms of long-term impacts of covid is that we have about a 10-year cycle to work through and I think when you see looking specifically at our high high levels in that third and fourth grade for receiving social emotional Services those are our kiddos who were in K And1 during the school Shut down period um we think of those as our years for so where the most work is social um so there's a lot of work that we need to be doing with these students

133now in order to help them develop skills that often would have been develop that in a typical typical time period probably would have been developed through school exposure so just to give you a rundown of the year so far um kind of what our cycle has looked like in August and September we had certain students who at the end of the year last year based off of their endof year data we thought let's start working with them right away in intervention so some students began intervention right away um students who had a CST file that was a communicated to their teachers um if we needed to meet to start the year and make sure the kiddo started on the right foot that happened and then we had our first real round of CST meetings where

134teachers could bring um kids they had question marks about or just kids that we thought let's like make sure the whole team is there to make sure they get what they need and our classroom teachers did an incredible job building Community Learning about their students and they also started collecting some observational and formative data that could be a part of our data bigger data conversations The Next Step was the fall benchmark assessments um those were in end of September into October and you can see the the bye there's a little bit of a difference in terms of which assessments are administered um to which grade kindergarten has some specialized assessments the VMI is visual motor integration so that's looking at those fine motor skills are they going to need some OT support there the Bame

135is looking at speech development um so after all of those benchmark assessments were conducted our grade level teams met with our data team to analyze the results and make plans for intervention and we also take a look at I think there's that individual picture and then the grade level picture so understanding that sometimes the data is telling us oh there's a whole skill set that this is not specific to a student this skill needs Universal support um and that was the case for one of our grade levels with a particular area of mathematics where we thought we need to start the year emphasizing fractions just getting really solid because we can see that that's an area where they might not yet be ready for the grade level curriculum and we want to get them caught

136up so again it's about that efficiency piece and making sure we're maintaining both the individual and Global Perspective and so now we are in our first round of gradient supports just getting ready to wrap up um our classroom teachers are using their data that they're collecting their meeting regularly with our math and literacy Specialists to analyze that data and plan their gradient support BLS so when other students are leaving for intervention they're making sure the students who are remaining in the classroom are getting what they need based off of that data and then our eligible students are receiving that targeted intervention um we have literacy interventions taught by our literacy interventionists and Specialists and they meet four times a week our math interventions are taught by our math interventionists or the math coach and they

137meet three times a week and all of our interventions are directed by measurable goals and regular progress monitoring because the last thing that we want to do is waste a student's time on something that isn't working it has to be effective and we have to have data to support that advocacy that's our responsibility to the kiddos so right now as that first intervention cycle concludes our child study teams are getting ready to um meet again to review student progress and make some adjustments uh right now it looks like I have about um 50 kids that we're going to touch base on toward the end of November beginning of December and make sure that the progress that we're expecting has been happening and if not things need to be tailored and adjusted some um students for

138whom questions about progress have Arisen will be added to that roster and some students who have what we call a tailored support plan which outlines their supports their goals and how we expect that to be implemented um if they're consistently making that expected growth they might have their plan paused which is always an exciting moment um so really I love data um and it's not because I'm a numbers person I was never a math person but for me the data is is so meaningful in terms of how we're directing what we're doing for our children and on the student level we're getting that what does this specific child need but then with overall Trends again kind of looking at that what is a universal piece what's something that's going really well in our instruction that

139we want to preserve what's something that like oh okay this skill set is an area that we need to learn to kind of um approach in a different way next year because our grade level has some deficits in that area really trying to be thought ful about both the individual and large picture of what that data is sharing with us um and in terms of our vision for next steps one of the goals of the framework team has been to develop a whole child learner profile that really gives us a sense of longitudinal progress for a child um consistently over time in a I think more userfriendly way right now we have a lot of great data but it's kind of in a lot of different places so being able to for me as a

140new if I were a new service provider working with a student being able to really understand their history of learning growth what kind of supports they've received in the past what's worked well for them that's um kind of our vision for next steps so you can see within looking at the SMS gradient support process that whole child learner profile we've got the tailored support plan we've got the monitoring that whole child learner profile is something that we're looking at making a more I think detailed and um I don't want to use the word coherent because I don't think what we have is incoherent but just kind of a a more clear snapshot rather than a messy Collage if that makes sense this supplementary this is my wrap-up okay yeah I can I can stop um

141I really just think it's important when we're talking about mtss to understand the different levels of impact um especially when we're getting ready to communicated about it with our community um that on that individual level we have students whose needs are met holistically and intentionally their barriers to learning are removed their learning targets are set and achieved that just feels like the right thing to do right but then also schoolwide there's a huge benefit to our classrooms and our school communities because we have increased learner regulation overall which we know when one kiddo is disregulated in the classroom that's going to be harder for the other kids in the room right um we have increased participation folks who might not have been able to access learning or access a path to communicating about their learning

142are now able to share um and we're all learning from each other in that way and then we also have the opportunity for really looking at Extended Learning um in this flexible system because we're trying to meet every student's needs so that could be someone who really needs very specialized instruction and support that could be someone for whom the grade level curriculum maybe is less appropriate because they're ready to move on to other things and I think the key piece is understanding that Learners who graduate from this kind of a system where everyone's needs are met and they're able to learn and they're able to contribute and be part of their Community they graduate with the skills and understandings needed to contribute to their local communities and support their own well-being we know kids who

143receive this kind of Effective Education are also going to be physically healthier there's a strong correlation with that and being able to support the well-being of others around them so it's really um I think an individual Mission as well as a community- based one and I am excited I think for me I'm very excited for the work that we're doing individually with students and I'm also very excited for being able to support the these students in becoming in increasing their engagement and participation in the stratum community and then there are more slides but I won't throw them at you now does anyone have any thank you so much of course any questions or anything I can clarify I have a question yes first of all I want to say that was impressive oh thank you

144I want to go here um the my kids say that all the time the question I have is you made statement that as a result of covid uh Educators conclude the kids uh students are affected for 10 years it's a 10e cycle so that's my first graders are going to be affected all the way through 10th grade pretty much their entire grade school well and I think you can't think of it as again this is not my well to be clear this is not my area of expertise but in trainings and develop professional development that I've done around this with neurologists neuropsychologists that's been kind of the projection is like 10 years to normaly because it was a traumatic event in a formative age um so it doesn't and I don't love the word normaly

145but 10 years toward I guess repair but we as we look at that 10 years it's not it's not I'm here now and I'm here in 10 years and there's no growth in between it's just going to be any time we have development of children it's going to be a gradual progression so there are going to be skills that are going to be woven in in different time periods and um learning habits that are going to be woven in at different time habits or t times of development um right as they grow this is a K through five um that the effect of Co washes out in in five in five years because those kids the kids get older they're they're moving on in they're in middle school and high school what do you mean

146by washes out what I mean is that the children that were affected when they as they were going into the kindergarten right they go through the schools this school and go into higher grades but the kids that come in after that they were never in school so and I think if we look at it just as the school-based then that's very true I however I feel like you know from having friends who had babies during the um main shutdowns that was a real shift in experience from birth on so I think that we're really expecting I from feedback I've heard from our kindergarten teachers is that they're starting to feel more like they were preo um just in terms of kids coming in at a similar place of development uh can can I just jump

147in really quickly um I think that it is a myriad of factors that we're talking about and when I say that there's no question and the implications that Co has had for for our children it's also how the family and the community weathered Co right so like it's hard because a lot of his like National studies when regionally it was handled very differently in different parts of the country it was handled very differently in different communities within the SE Coast so I think it's really hard like we know in terms of like generally speaking that's what they're talking about in terms of student development child development but I also like some families experienced that is a very traumatic thing and so their family is still bearing and working through that trauma other am it wasn't

148traumatic at all in the sense of like they were well adjusted they didn't really impact them they still had their work whatever it was and so they weathered it differently and so their child's experience was very different like we know that trauma is like generational right so I just think that there are so many factors that play into that but there's no question that we're already this year's kindergarten is experiencing school what I would think was like pre-co typical behaviors and for the most part and having been here um because I I've been at stratum for I think this is my sixth or seventh year now um first in Ed special education having been here through the shutdown of schools um up until now I feel that every year every grade level has kind of

149had their own flavor um where we're like oh okay this and and just kind of understanding like oh this was probably these are the kiddos for whom school was shut down in third grade this is a skill set that we tend to develop especially social emotionally during third grade so this is where we need to provide intervention and support um each year has kind of had its own um trends that it's at first I think we found ourselves thinking like huh it's really interesting that everyone in or not everyone that there are so many kids in this particular grade level who are working on this particular skill and then it's like oh no that just it makes sense within the context of what we're moving through and we just need to be prepared to support

150them okay what I was what I was trying what I was thinking you were going to say because I was that was a little bit of a bait okay but I think you did acknowledge it when the kids come in the the the children that were um not in school when Co hit they were two years old one years old twoy old threey old right they all experienced CO as well so they're coming into the school with that effect even though they weren't in school absolutely and then little at a time as the years go by as kids come into the school you're seeing the effects of covid less and less that's what we hope but again I mean mtss as a system was best practices long before covid um in terms of supporting student

151needs I was just going to say Paul if you think about like the kids who are two and three who and they and everybody's wearen a speech development speech development like delay like big time so not even just like the disregulation functions but like yeah makes sense gross motor fine motor there was lots of so it'll so that's I think the 10 year right so you're talking about a kid who's basically like an infant yes up to fifth grade that that's the whole 10e kind of window and I think it's just also as part of like lack of experience or altered experiences that were atypical of what we had experienced for 50 years right so there's all those pieces that play into it it's not just simply that they weren't in school they weren't doing

152a lot of things that they would have been doing at three years old or four years old and so I think it's a they have life experience es were dramatically different so their skills developed very differently or were stunted because of it if we want to like kind of refer to that like they just need more time to develop them um and there's yeah I have there's a lot of research about it but I think it's going to be you know another I think it'll be a long time before we have a really clear picture I think it's just we're so soon after it that I don't know we're going to have longitudinal data to sort of talk about the larger picture yeah that 10year idea is just a projection um I a question about

153just students who are performing at above grade level like a lot of what I saw was kind of about maybe deficits or or things like that um is do you also do mtss coordinating for the students who are performing at above grade level that is the ultimate goal that's something that's starting to happen it is not I don't think that so something like a child study meeting study team meeting for example would be most likely to be convened if there was a question or concern that we felt like we weren't already adequately able to address and that multiple areas of expertise were involved so I think typically when we're looking at extensions for students who need that more you know maybe next level learning that's going to be something that is going to be able

154to be provided through a small like often the classroom teacher or a specialist working directly together but not NE necessarily requiring something like then OT involvement to support fine M you know those pieces but I it would really depend upon the student I think well we can give you an example the fifth grade team was just looking at data and a postar math coach and they have 15 kids that are ready for they're just ready to go much deeper with the curriculum as it currently is where they currently are in their fifth grade um progressions and so they had reached out to the math coach and said like during our gradient support block which is where that is you can really personalize it is it possible for the math coach to be looking at is

15514 or 15 kid yeah um to provide extension for those students um so it's not as um systemic as the intervention piece is right now um but it is part of why last year when we talked about mtss coordinating was part of that reason is that we needed to be able to have the data to support that and then build this the structures and the systems in place to be able to provide that um and that's this is that would be an example of what um we're doing right now um in the past it would have been more like an individual student like we've had several individual students on extension plans but not sort of on the scale of 15 kids within a grade level or they're going to get an exposure to something like

156that you mentioned extension in there like two or three that's that's what that means right and moving them even further along on the um if when you think about the students progress report so there's like developing proficient and extended extended is that it is like beyond the typical grade level um standards or competencies it is really like the kid is ready for something that is atypical of the developmental process or the progressions in the curriculum yeah I just had a question about um you know these CST teams and all the meetings you're going to and I instantly think like oh my kids's teacher is getting pulled from that classroom 67 times or however many I understand that's not just one class but how how does that work with teachers being pulled from the classrooms to

157be on these teams and that's a great question and I think um very while I may have met on 40 well I may have had 67 meetings it would be on a pretty broad variety of students so typically it's not one classroom teacher being pulled many many times however um we do try to be really thoughtful in scheduling and we also have set Cycles where rather I think what has been um most effective for us is looking at okay every we're going to meet every six to 8 weeks and this is our cycle and you know we built our schedule at the start of the Year sometimes things change a bit but generally you know okay December 12th I probably will have a chunk of meetings and then again eight weeks later I will probably

158have a chunk of meetings the meetings themselves for something like a CST a 504 meeting um I give as much time as they need uh but it's more of a 45 minute to an hour long meeting the CST meetings that classroom teachers are coming to one thing you'll get at the end um or when you look over the slides yourself there's an overview of the problem solving process that we use which is called tips and it takes about 15 to 20 minutes per student um so we try to make that a really efficient time one of the pieces that I try to do to support that um is making sure classroom teacher times are blocked so they're not coming in and out regularly and also um to try to have as much data and information

159prepared within the tailor support plan as possible so we're really able we're not spending our time sitting there inputting data we're analyzing what we have coming up with a very precise problem and then um brainstorming solutions to come up with goals but I I was a classroom teacher for a number of years and then special ad after that and I really did not like missing my students for anything so I try to be really respectful of that yeah sounds good the problem I think if we're on I mean right the number of meetings that are yeah um um required for any any person in this building regardless of the role that they fill um and I think we're constantly trying to be a strategic as possible and think out of the box and how do

160we use staff meetings or how do we use inservice days or like ways to do that and ours are limited right like there isn't and um in addition there are a variety of things that impact scheduling already that so there's you know like we have sacred parts of the day that we refuse to pull teachers from like this is that's where core instruction comes so a teacher won't be pulled from that time um but means that there's other times that they're going to need to be pulled there is not a simple answer but I do think when we there's six of us that were trained in the tips process and part of that is to be really specific and tight with the meetings so that teachers can be in the classroom more often yeah I

161appreciate that is there any kind of calculation of how much time teachers are in meetings and how much they're in the classroom I don't have that information I think it would very significantly depending on the teacher in classroom um and that if we had a teacher who typically in a situation where there was a teacher with a very high need classroom that would be a teacher with some um significant support systems in place as well I think it's something that other schools or other saus tackle in terms of like so I've worked in places where like every Wednesday is a late arrival and then you can have meetings that you're not interrupting instruction um it's still lack of instructional time but it's not the kids sitting in the you know what I mean like there's

162that idea and there isn't this back and forth all the time from people being pulled it's like this is dedicated to that or this is dedicated to the professional learning um because it is a it's a concern I know other districts have gone to a longer day so they have kids from like 8 to 3 every teacher stays till 4:30 and meetings are after school um all things that would be negotiated in your CBA but there are every district is facing exactly what you're talking about um we have plc's every week which is like a professional Learning Community which is absolutely necessary if we're going to grow our practice and examine student work but again it's like trying to find the times that don't impact direct instruction so I think it's a constant um like

163give and take of like what's the high what's going to the biggest bang for our buck in terms of supporting our students yeah well I appreciate that I was just going to ask one more anyway is on that you said that you were going to try to I think put that data into maybe a different way of looking at it or something like that does that require any additional do you guys already have everything that you need for that or we talking about like spreadsheets or what we well I I built a lot but then I think there's also some conversation with the Department of Education right now around um and and Dr Andis you could speak to this probably better than I could about providing access to some data organization software um but currently

164that was I um spent my August enjoying the air conditioning out in the cottage and um entering SAS data from the last three years for students so um we talked about at the elementary principal level because the state has purchased a software for that schools can use for 5 years for free and then districts will have to pick it up um but we've we have lots of questions about where is that data stored does that mean that data belongs to who do it there are lots of questions that still need to be answered and Jill as the curriculum coordinator has been attending a variety of different meetings at the doe and workshops and trainings to learn more about it and she she's been meeting with the elementary principles to talk about it yeah very important

165how you share that data and how you can visualize it how you can analyze it and all that stuff we've done some um next month is our data presentation and I'm going to be able to share with you I want to scrub it clean of names and stuff like that show you the things that we've put in place and we've built to create a much clearer longitudinal picture of our students and I think as we're working in building that continuing to gather classroom teacher input of what would you like what do you feel like has been missing in terms of being able to know what you need to know about your students before the school year even begins and certainly our students are more than their testing data but having a history of the kinds

166of supports that they've been received and how how testing and other data collection have traditionally gone for them can really help a teacher be prepared to meet those students needs right away can I ask one more sorry so you had mentioned like somebody had like the thing about the fractions and like how do you so how she said there's monitoring in place and then there's sorry just a hunger me um so there's monitoring in place and then somehow you would be alerted that somebody's got this that could you just walk through like what a real practical example of that would look like for that kid and and then are you interacting with the classroom teacher or are you bringing in interventionist as a combination like how does that work so when we're doing we do

167three sets of Benchmark data a year and after we're doing that Benchmark data we're looking at it as a student level but also what is our Universal proficiency rate per grade level we're meeting with grade level teams so I might have a student um so the like the fractions unit that was more of okay we looked at our Universal data and a lot of our incoming fourth graders weren't where we expected them to be in terms of fractions understanding and we knew we couldn't jump into the fourth grade curriculum without providing some um foundational work there first so that was data that was um collected through assessments analyzed with the math coach and math team and then shared as a grade level with that um classroom grade level to give us them a sense of

168where their existing proficiency were um areas of proficiency were and where um they need to kind of lean in and start before moving forward and I think there's pieces to that so one of the things that we've been able to do through the MTS system is we now can triangulate multiple points around around the same area the same standard or the same um performance indicators and that was something that was missing before um and so it was really hard to then base a big intervention off just one data point but now we're able to correlate between multiple assessments around the same areas and so for example in math um I think it was 76% of our incoming fourth graders did not have the solid foundation in fractions that we would hope for them to have

169um they had some pieces like they had some parts of it but they didn't have all the different strategies and so we were like okay so they started the year doing their fourth grade curriculum and then during their gradient support block that she mentioned is sort of that 30 minute section that is sort of provided to personalize the entire fourth grade then did a fractions intervention because that was a area that we showed like if we're going to be able to engage deeply with fourth grade math we really need to be solid in the students need to be solid in fractions so that was based on triangulated data and then through that the press monitoring and then that ends and that would the whole fourth grade basically got an intervention because it was 76% of

170the kids really needed to have um a deeper understanding in order to be successful in fourth grade and was it ready math or something that did the well we had multiple data points so I ready was one of those data points yeah but then we also had the universal um screener for number sense and then we had classroom assessments M and we had sass so we had four points actually for this one 76% and then and then you're working with so like in that case where it was AB broad that was like all teachers all hands on deck yeah you got it we've got this and then your math interventionist your math coach and the teachers yeah so when you look at the slides if you look back at the slides and look at that

171intervention by academic area that math number looks really small because I didn't include fourth grade but really in an argument could be made that the entire grade level received a level of intervention for those first few weeks just as a boost I just I it's like it's interesting I'd love to I don't want to I'll follow up after just I want to know more about how that works yeah great I want to keep everybody and and you had asked about progress monitoring too he said you're not going to keep everybody but I am um the progress monitoring is more um student specific so we also we have classroom teachers which we'll be sharing in the data meeting next month um looking at kind of how the classroom teachers are taking their data within the classroom

172to be able to share with our math coach and analy um and with literacy um but then if a students are receiving an intervention they're going to have really specific goals set for U measuring the efficacy of the intervention um and that would be more of a a progress monitoring component that's built into their intervention so if the whole grade needed it though if the whole grade needed it when are you going to recheck that on the next then that they'll have assessments as a component of that intervention that make sure that there wasn't that was effective they just had to they reassessed after they did the fractions they reassessed the whole group on that on that specific thing because they just done the intervention with thems and there will be kids that will remain

173to need but it's not it's like three or four versus right versus 70 right right yeah and there are going to be times where we find data that lets us know like okay this is something we want to touch on differently the year prior and there are going to be times where we find data that really supports the type of instruction or methodology that's being used in the grade level prior so it it informs Us in both ends when it's all hands- on Deck like that and you're like this is a general thing MH how do you get other like how do you how do you get everybody uplevel to the terms of teachers to to that like what does that mean all hands- on Deck uh so that bring an interventionist to explain to

174teacher like to teach strategies so no let me rephrase that so the teachers are deeply engrossed in the curriculum and are experts in teaching it but what I mean is that we then have the math coaching intervention to be working with kids so rather than a teacher working with their 19 kids during their 75 minutes of math they now have maybe an interventionist and the math coach is taking a small group or pulling from a couple rooms and bringing them together to support because even though we're saying that was Universal there were still kids in different places with infractions right so you're really trying to personalize it even across that so that just means there's a lot of um it's more more small group yeah and there's a lot of people with a lot of

175expertise to support that right and they can they look at student work they analyze it together they're able to say like oh my gosh these are the four things that we really should be doing with kids because they're the high leverage Tas that are going to get what we want with this group of kids so it's really just a collaborative effort with far more um teachers Educators to support the group of kids than a typical classroom math block and we were doing some of this already but what parts are new uh it was not built into our schedule so it wasn't um so like now it's like we know that this can happen without impacting core instruction so part of it was before is that if I needed to provide math intervention to these three

176kids I mean I meant I was pulling out from three rooms they might not be in the same schedule so I had to avoid core instruction in this room so that kid might be missing core instruction and now they're never missing core instruction because it's all built into our schedule um the other part is that we're able to because we can look at the whole grade level we don't have to match within the room you can match within your grade level with kids that might be looking on working on a certain strategy or working on a different skill that's cool it's that's good for the first year we're feeling really good and we excited to see where it takes us and there are certainly aspects of my role that were the majority I think in

177little pieces and bits were done by many people across the school I know a lot was on your plate with that but I also think about um traditionally the 504 coordinators have been the school counselers when we look again at those sces numbers of amount of support needed for students right now provided by those people to have them be missing services to coordinate those meetings doesn't feel good or are having to make up and schedule and all of that I think it you know and you have the picture of all of it they only had that little piece of data and the goal is to have that M to all of it to reside in one place under one purview it's exciting and exhausting mostly exciting you speak for yourself [Laughter] girl well thank you

178so much of course and um you so good oh thanks I would welcome any questions or contact at any time I'm sure you can access my email address or you know so any if anything comes up after the presentation that you're wondering about please reach out okay thank you thank you Briana gives me some ideas for the March meeting or something you know if we want to think about how we tell the story um in March in front of the public all right so I just headed back to the retirement letter um you know I think the board would like to extend a sincere thank you um Kim and congratulations on her retirement um it's pretty exciting I can imagine no jealousy on the boook um all right does anybody have any other business if

179not I will entertain a motion to [Music] adjourn okay sure under which one I also have old business just follow up on the um police detail question are my notes I talked to Chief King as I was well you know give me a h second yeah so I can so I talked to Chief king um and we talked about so there are two um officers about to graduate from the academy which is so it was we started with the Staffing as you know staffing has been one of the concerns so that's where our conversation started um and then in January there'll be another person joining the academy and in May another person joining the academy so they have two two coming out soon and two more going in which should be really helpful um that

180said they've had other times where they didn't finish the academy or whatever right so like that's a that's their best assumption at this point um right now their goal based on when they hire is to permanently fill the SRO at CMS first making that a single person um they've had people there it's just not consistent and they'd really like to and I understand that that's their priority that said he does feel like um starting in sometime January is when the other two people are fully out of the Academy and joining he thinks I can submit to him a calendar of saying like once a week 4 hours and see what the details can be filled he feels like there's a high likelihood that will fill most of them especially because we can be flexible around

181what day or what time it is a 4our detail um he did ask that we talk further about whether or not for example if it was him that was doing it because he's like I might be someone that might do it um the option of like what that could look like if it was during a recess time like being out with kids he really feels like part of that is the relationship that needs to be built and that was part of what officer Amanda did here once a week when she was here and he's like that piece is a concern of like how do we rebuild that um he is hopeful um with one of The Hires that they so they have four part-time positions they have two people right now they're hoping to fill

182the other two if they fill that he wants to use one of them to be here once a week that same person every week to be like what Amanda used to be which is awesome and that would be in the police's budget not your budget um so that's really exciting so he is really committed to like how do we get back to a place where the kids here have a relationship with est Strat and py um which I think is awesome so he did say if we put the detail out and it was filled by stratum PD um he would love to have conversation about like what that could look like because I said we had talked about parking in the parking lot and just driving around and he said yep I see the need

183for that I also think it would be really cool if that was a consistent person to start thinking about the relationship especi he's like especially if it's me he's like it would be great for me he's like I have a ton of experience with kids like I can you know and I said I would share that with the board the other thing he wanted you to know is that there's a retired SRO SRO Wayne Young from New Market that's been filling in at CMS quite a bit as the SRO and he um when they fill the official SRO position he is still interested in doing some of that so if he said if he's one of the people that picks up the detail he would be a great person to be in the school going

184to the cafeteria in the lunch not necessarily going into classrooms but just being a familiar face who has done SRO work in terms of like what we had talked about before so that is the update and he said if the board so moved I could submit to him here's what we're looking for he said I can present up to 6 months and that he will get it to his staff to fill the details as much as possible sounds positive yeah this how stand for school resource officer is is that person uniform yes and uh last year we went through last year yeah a whole um the public wanted us to look into getting a permanent SRO and we for a number of reasons didn't recommend that but did recommend moving forward with getting a police

185detail to be present so um do y all yeah where should we go from here do you want to look just re reccommend once a week the four hours and well excuse me did did he say that that's not part of our budget but it would be part of no two different things so the school board had budgeted to do a detail a week one a week he is also looking if he is able to fill the other two part-time positions to have one of them one day a week for a 4 hour because they're parttime it's a 4-Hour shift to be here that is going to depend on filling the part-time positions but it is part of his budget to do that because of um officer Amanda used to come here most Wednesday and

186Thursday mornings was pretty typical for her um and there are benefits to the relationship between students in the stratum PD and our families in the stratum PD so that is a goal of his as well but those are two separate things I mean they love to officer Amanda I know that the kids many of them I'm sure it sounds like it's uncertain until January though should we just like revisit once there's more certainty around what his Staffing plans are that's that's the only thing I was thinking is like if we don't know or we know Kate said they wanted some a direction from us what we wanted yeah I guess yes he's I mean he can't do anything unless I submit a calendar saying here's what here's the weeks that we're in school blah blah

187blah fill details um I think you could set parameters around that like we only want it to be St and py we wouldn't want it to go out because if typically when you request a detail if they're unable to fill it they would send it to local police departments as a board you could say that's actually not what we're interested in because part of what we're looking for is really that relationship I mean those are things that you guys can decide um and then we can set the parameters around that he he was feeling like he he's like if we can fill some of these which it looks like they're going to be he's like I would love to do that he's like I know Wayne Young would love to do that I know there

188are other people that would love to do that um I just don't know I think maybe till January if it would be as consistent as every week but it can't I guess the question is you put it out and see what they say he would have to come back to us and say like actually we can only fill it one week a month or like wow we we were able to fill this and it looks you know um the good news is we have some flexibility it's not like I'm saying Tuesday from 8 to 12 like I'm saying like in a week we' love this he did say to try to put some parameters on that because people want to pick a time yeah I'd like to make a motion to if if that's what

189this to to ask for one detail block per week yeah I guess I would just want to say that you know what we had talked about it as not an SRO right we did not want an SRO and um it was really someone who maybe sat outside maybe drove around the parking lot right but now it sounds like you're talking about them they're actually coming in the building so no what I cuz I got that message last board meeting and I said that to him and he said we can do that that's that's what you're asking his what he was proposing is we should have a conversation about it's or Wayne Young he does think there's a reason to try to build that relationship he understands the argument of like random people every week at

190different police officer like that would be unsettling and it would be in our building and it just and who knows what their experiences necessarily with engaging with our developmental the children of our age um but he did feel like there if it was him or someone like that would be something to consider in order to support some of that relationship build would he come here and talk with those yeah that's l i he yeah he said he would that would be a recommendation i' make after our budget to so you want just detail right now that's your motion right and I mean I would second the motion so I mean we can actually yeah I think so better to vote on it yeah um yeah because I guess I'm just confused about what is the

191difference between Amanda and SRO and maybe you know so sro's just have training she was not sms's SRO she was see us is SRO so she would just come and walk around oh yeah she would just go to the cafeteria hang out with the kids go out to recess play ball she wasn't going into classrooms acting as like an educator for the police department she just happened to be cms's SRO the reason he was mentioning Wayne is that they do have training around being with kids this age and that is a different right there's very you engage with young kids very differently than you engage with adults and so that's sort of what he was talking about I didn't mean come in and ser as an SRO that's not what we were talking about we

192were talking strictly detailed but he was like if I'm the one that's here it would be great if I was in if it happened to be during a lunchtime or a recess and getting to know the kids was what he was thinking he wasn't like I'm coming in and doing education in a classroom that's not what we were talking about does Wayne already possess the training from the cro since he's functioning as a cro he's actually a retired SRO okay he's a nationally trained SRO he trains other SRO and it's not like a grade level SRO he's he's got whatever it is it's K12 okay yeah I worked closely with him in my previous District so yeah he's he's fantastic but that's a whole different Arena and I think you should engage in a conversation

193of what that would entail not what you passed in your budget for for the purpose of that that's why I'd recommend yeah that's different than just a detail which is like just be around just in case right kind of well right yeah I don't so my understanding what I thought was was it was not be around just in case it was more about if there's a if there's no distinguishable pattern of when a police officer is here if someone was planning something it was some sort of level of deterrent is how I understood it because it's not like it wasn't like to say like they're going to do something if someone here was more about like just having police presence driving through the parking lot being visible would show that there's going to be times

194or it's unpredictable when that's happening we currently have a police officer that's parked out front every morning during drop off and the police department does two or three goes through our parking lot two or three times a day so that is something that happens just naturally as a department that's what they do a deto would be four hours of sitting in the parking lot it is what you talked about once a week it's br yeah okay so is the motion we go ahead with the detail for the next month with the assumption that we invite Chief King in next board meeting I wouldn't bring him in next board meeting because we have we have a lot going on in De that's why I'd recommend that we see what it looks like in January okay and

195that we'd probably bring them in after the vote in March to talk about a different type of safety plan but what I'm hearing is that we bring the detail as we put in the budget and which was approved to get that up and run that was the ask from the last meeting where we at with the police detail so this would cover the police detail and we bring Chief King in I would I would recommend March April talk about school safety school safety planning because the merits that U principal Lucas is talking about does have have some benefits you just have to weigh that out what that looks like yeah I think that makes good sense okay all right so it sounds like I have a motion do have a second yeah I'll second okay

196all in favor all all right anybody oppose all right 5 z z I have a new business too okay it's quick um I'm met can I go sure please okay I met with Arin who is the new deij um officer for the district yesterday we got coffee and talked about um a training just for our board which is part of our goals and we thought maybe April would be a good month to do that because there's just a lot going on from now through March um so I just wanted to get a temperature check from you guys and um just let you know that that was kind of what I was thinking any and see if you had any thoughts or comments um I have one question for you does can is she prepared to

197be able to do it in the fashion that she would run a workshop for like the teachers like I've always I don't yeah what what would you like kind of I'm just interested like I know it's a volun like you kind of opt in to do that if you want as a teacher right like it's a professional development type of thing or it used to be where you could meet and you could I think they did what there's a lot going on am I not am I not misremembering that I think you're misremembering we didn't have there was like a professional development opportunities for people to for teachers to voluntarily oh so we've done a lot of stuff on Equity as a school as an SAU or stuff like that during in service days but

198there were workshops led by Andreas I think at the time oh yeah but and and others of us were trained as well to run those those workshops for the staff as well yeah I'm just wondering I would just love to know like I would love to see what that Workshop is I don't know if the one that we went to the last time was the same maybe it was I know I wasn't was it well yours a little bit different what you did school specific the one we did for the joint board was a similar training that we had done for the entire staff oh okay right that was my only recommendation was I would I just want to know what like everybody gets I don't want I was kind of thinking we could work

199with the um Ashley and Whitney who are um the SMS chairs and kind of see what they're doing Within SMS and see how we could integrate with that um to kind of build on what they're already doing and just feel like a little bit more looped in I think a a piece of that is we have our Showcase in January um again the MLK we're working with the stratum racial Unity team and um this year our theme is the dangers of a single story um which is a beautiful um I can actually send you the link but it's the idea of the importance of talking about the whole of a story so we can talk about one part of a group of people or a person and we end up with this like false narrative

200um but if we talk about the whole the um we create a richer um understanding and a richer experience of our own engagement um and so the entire school is doing um the Showcase under that theme in January so as board members coming to that would be a really cool um way to see how we're um uh practicing and um exploring the the concepts of Dei Within Elementary setting great well I'll move forward with kind of tentatively April and I don't know if we wanted to do a separate like in do we want to tack that on to the April meeting or do we want to have a separate date to meet in April outside of the meeting how long is it m probably be an hour well I mean if we can fit it

201in a in one of our meetings what we we should do that I don't think anybody wants a three-hour meeting though so typically April is your best meeting to do it because you have new board members so your your agenda is usually shorter so if you're going to do it at a board meeting that would be the board meeting I would do it at yeah I was going to comment just uh my current interim term yeah will end so I may or may not be present at that all right well then April it is and we'll move forward with doing it during the meeting thank you okay great all right do I have a motion to go into non-public under motion thank you Paul all right we'll do roll call hi hi hi hi hi

202hi all right I'm going to nonpublic thank you all thank you for coming everybody all right we're back in public session is there a motion on the table I would like to make a motion to approve the personel requests thank you second second all right thanks Paul all in favor I I anybody opposed great so five z z on those uh motion to adjourn motion thank you Paul all right I guess that's Roll Call To You Paul hi