001call to order at 603 Chris you want to start sure yeah I'm going to read the uh statement the Kensington school board meeting is located on endina which is the traditional ancestral homeland of the abanaki Penacook and wabanaki peoples past and present we acknowledge and honor with gratitude the land and waterways and the AL Noak people who have Steed endina throughout their Generations we will teach others to know and honor Native Americans thank you um okay we are going to go on to nonpublic but I'm assuming we're going to wait till the that okay um I'm going to open public input at 604 and the first thing we'll look at is uh approval of minutes from the March 15th meeting did anyone have any anything to change I think in the first paragraph stating that
002I read the uh uh the statement that Chris just read anything else okay I didn't have anything [Music] nothing okay yeah Beck your eyes really good so I was waiting for you the P up okay um anyone want to make a motion to approve I'll make a motion to approve the minutes ased committee reports take a full vote on that oh I'm sorry all in favor I um uh committee reports Josh do you want to go first do you want to you want to save that one for no I can go first it could be a little bit shorter than last committee okay yeah so there's five policies to talk about this time around five of them or all five are new uh there were several others that we reviewed during the committee but they
003were applicable to uh the other schools in the kington El School um I actually do have a couple of questions for the for the group on the first Lev um but the first one's health education and exemption from instruction as you'll see when we go through these I four out of the five are required by law okay um this first one required by law um it uh goes through the requirements for health education and talks about how um there is an exemption request that can be filed by parents or Guardians if they don't want their child to participate in the instruction so it outlines the requirements talks about that um opt out provision um and also um goes into details around notification of uh the training um what I had the question I had for
004the group is yes this is required by law but I don't know if we have have any um health education or sex education for kids at the elementary we do at the fourth and fifth grade level so and parents get a a a letter a couple weeks ahead of time um prior to that um it's like body development sort of thing you know beginning puberty kind of stuff um so the parents are notified ahead of time and on occasion we do have parents choose not to have their children participate in the conversation okay okay great um and as you can probably see through the materials there's not a whole lot of uh or any red lining here because they're all new um the next policy is uh teaching about drugs alcohol and tobacco uh goes
005through the state requirements there as well um you'll see towards the bottom of the statement here on page eight where there's a requirement around information uh about this policy to be distributed in student handbooks if you get to the actual policy itself the language isn't as strict as what we're calling out here in this document I think there's a few other means of uh having the information distributed I'm not sure if we have a handbook um or you know how we might distribute this information if it's even something that we have for or so the family hbook has um information about the we about wellness and it references our wellness policy which is Wellness nutrition and physical activity okay um let me see um give me a second let me just pull up that um
006paragraph about wellness and see what the exact language is [Music] do not have a setc okay I didn't know if that was we have actually been doing a lot of work with the wellness is a something we're looking at um reviewing for corc this year 12 and so on the March date we actually met with all the elementary um PE teachers who some teach Health some don't talking about what could be consistent where we would teach it at what level so the discussion is happening so the both of these policies will probably support that work okay but right now there's not a set curriculum that is used um it's infy St okay this is something that know as we looked at I've heard Rumblings yeah like reamping yeah sorry I'm just scrolling through my realizing
007it's not in alphabetical order so bonus policy um it just talks about General Wellness and it does link to the St for wellness policy from the family inbook so it's not we could always add this link to it under that Wellness paragraph because this is parent sign off that they are aware of this at the beginning of every year so that's something that we wanted to link to the wellness section we could yeah it's just another one I kind question with regard to kind of the younger kids whe you know how this would fit into [Music] whatever all right so so moving on to the next policy selection or selection of removal of Library materials this is the only one of the five that's optional I think least from what I've seen over the past
008couple of years this is something that's probably a good thing to have um but uh it goes through all the specifics around what goes into Library materials how they're chosen when they should be reviewed wow I can provide more on this too so this was written by our library media specialist okay um they did not have this policy so a lot of question how do we get books how do we remove books how do we look at it so this policy was written by all Library specialist K12 to give support for the work that they do um it is taken directly from the American Library Association so a lot of this language is standard American Library Association best practices and then it was also we we took some information from another bordering District that just
009implemented this policy as well so um it's a policy that really supports the work of our library media Specialists and how we're selecting and removing books over periods of time I ask question I think so I yeah we were a few families and I were talking about this one particularly does this have to do with a lot of what there's like a lot of media and politics going on kind of about removing books that state certain things is this kind of like that or more a curriculum base NOP this is just how library of media specialist select Books Okay so it gives the process why our books are in our schools okay and then if we're reviewing books over time some become outdated or some do come in question because of the materials that are
010in there that may go against house spill to the divisive Concepts that we would look at um we do have policies if if a book is challenged uh we already had those policies but we didn't have the criteria of how books are selected okay so that's why this this policy was directly created to give that background of where of how it happened okay so it's not about all this crazy craz and it it will support that but it's not specifically for that it's this is the work they do um but you know how it's not the library media specialist just don't point and say these are the books we're getting there is actually a pretty in-depth process to how they're selected why they're selected and how how closely they're vetted because you know there's there's
011books that they this is the right age for right kids and that we're not selecting something that would go to a kindergartener so they have they have a criteria of how they do that okay yeah Chris the way I kind of think about this is if there was ever some input or question from the public there would be something to lean on to explain why the books exist in all right next policy deals with daily physical activity a lot of the information in this policy is I guess you can kind of say it's phrased as suggestions there's not a whole lot of like set requirements here but it's still uh provides a good guideline for what would be appropriate for to dated physical activity and is a requirement by state of hospital um so just
012to point out the 30 to 60 Minutes range um is a little different than what's in the the existing wellness policy which says 60 minutes so I don't know if we want to just make that more consistent or this is law language law and it's only a recommended 30 to 60 because I asked that same question but isn't the minimum standard 60 though so this is the new change in law so the the 30 60 has to be there because I asked the same exact question yeah and they said it's it's recommend so we're recommending that at least 30 to 60 by the board in the policy so we've been work operating under the 60 just thinking about our schedules and stuff but yeah it's a great question so okay yeah then finally distance education
013this policy supports uh the the district the elementary school for um any days where education is provided virtually um and includes remote learning days goes over the outlines and considerations um for any distance education days and what that program looks like those are not our favorite days yeah yeah we talked about that a little bit at the at the committee as well you know in the future at some point there could be more review there but I know that's probably a a topic to thank for our two traditional snow days Josh if I could just brace back to um I there's two things just to um that weren't caught that we talked about the committee the first one is in the name there's missing a c and exception so I'll just if we make a
014motion that we accept it as amended but the other part we talked about um in the opt out form the last sentence we talked about in the committee about putting a period just out opt out rights and not citing other policies within a policy unless it was required by law and so my suggestion is that we would go with that recommendation and just take out under board policy IG um so we just edit that and that the um paragraph would end under opt out rights y thanks appreciate that good third bir money third board meeting of the month I cat it we're lucky we get the [Music] thir all right so should I make a a motion so I'd like to make a motion that um we [Music] approve policy ah as amended I'm sorry
015I just went the wrong here IAM as amended IH a m a i j l i m a and i m b [Music] a thank you which of the five is not required a J L selection oh okay um Safety and Security we mean meet next week superintendent evaluation committee yeah I we haven't really decided but I'm happy to do that okay yeah either way I think last minute we said we were going to decide decided so I think Jenny will do the same that she did okay so for the um Kensington School study update Jenny forwarded to and I went to that meeting yeah so I'm assuming she'll do the same when she gets the information from the super the super um and I feel like that's kind of in a spot right now
016that not much is happening yeah I don't think till they'll meet again in May as the transition is ending or okay starting over okay um Kensington School study sure yeah um so we had a meeting on APR 5 and um just tell me if I should say more or less I don't really know what I'm doing but I'll just get S of high perfect just stop that's um so the objective is to find a way to get classroom teachers more time in the day SL week for planning and Grading and also to give the students more open-ended collaborative opportunities while balancing the needs of the special ed team um basically the classroom teachers want more flex and the special ed team needs a more rigid schedule to fulfill all of their meetings and consults that
017they need to do state so that's sort of the the balance that we were trying to to strike so a bunch of ideas were put forth the one that we spent the most time on was the idea of having one week a month dedicated to a sort of passion project um and the lots of ideas but one of them was to have so one week a month and it would be Tuesday Wednesday Thursday afternoons so regular instruction would still happen in the mornings on those days and on Monday and Friday but it would give this sort of um block of time to do a big project um one of the ideas was the for the passion projects to be facilitated by The Specialist so the the physen library art music stem um students would choose
018the project they want to work on each month from sort of this set of options and the projects would be interdisciplinary and would focus on competencies and the groups would be mixed grades um we didn't talk a lot about specific ideas I think the thought was that you know each specialist would have some some ideas and and it would be different each one so um but it would give the classroom teachers planning time and it would fulfill the objective of the collaborative work they would be sort of working with different um different groups uh the three days in a row each month um except for September and June since those are sort of beginning and the end of school it would allow for more in-depth in students learning since they would be that sort of
019concentrated time right in a row um it would give an opportunity for demonstrated learning if the students presented their work to teachers or commune members and then the project days would also Al give special team the special team time for their all their ad they need to do which it was sort of their goal that they they wanted um some issues that we talked about about it would be the challenge of scheduling The Specialist teachers some of them are at 50% they're not a whole week um and just how how that would look to their time their schedules how that would how that would work out and then another question was what classroom teachers need to be present during the project week for to Be an Effective use of the students time and then if
020that was the case it would it actually gave them any extra planning time or would it just sort of be another another thing they had to do um and we decided to come back to the next meeting with some more concrete ideas that we can sort of put on a schedule to kind of visualize and see how it really work in the weekly monthly um so that was that big idea and then another thing we discussed was the wellness wake up program and how that's going a survey was sent up to the teachers um and most of the responses were positive though at the time of the meeting it had only been out for a day so not all the teachers have responded so we'll probably revisit that and imagine the next meeting to get
021the full the full survey but those that did respond for the most part PR it um they said it gives the students giv them a good FR for learning allows them this socialization time throughout the grades or their own class um and then it also gives the classroom teachers that prep time in the morning um one of the concerns from the survey was that participation by teachers and stuff wasn't always equal so that was something that would made to be addressed um pretty much we about and the next meeting is [Music] May the I'm I'm assuming we'll hear more about the last's communications and Community engagement committee at the next joint board meeting which is Monday I believe that is on the agenda okay I think it's on the okay um and then General correspondence
022okay board fact is a current year Financial um expenses went down $752 since last month the main drivers of that are we had to change our encumbrance for our retire um we were reimbursed amount of money from Northampton so we would releve that expense um for various line items um and great news is when we do the budgets for next year we project to the health insurance gmr guarantee Max rate 15.6 that's what Health Trust had told us at the time uh we did get the official rate last week and it's 10 so the way our health insurance works for teachers is the July and August um it's in the next fiscal year but they pay for it out of this year's paychecks so that's why you see a little up tip in this budget
023but then next year you're going to see the savings for majority I love when Molly brings good news good news you just let's just keep that I don't know if anyone will change health plans so we'll train um so yeah and then we had uh the additional sources of revenue that we had last month so did anyone have any questions oh and I brought the Manifest right there for you guys I question it seems like for the trust funds that balance remains constant mon month over month and I imagine there's some sort of requirement on where that money can sit but just wondering if they're like if that's true and if not is there a way that they could earn some interest on that money that just inside so um we get statements uh it's
024quarterly or sometimes even annually so they are sitting in bank accounts where they're below interest but this is actually managed by the trustee of trust funds so the town of Kensington has the truste of trust funds um and they're actually the responsible for investing the money if like if they typically it just it's in the bank account money because we don't want to Investments but we actually don't manage accounts it's the truste of trust funds in Kenzie then when we want to use the money we approve it in the board meeting minutes and I submit the meeting minutes to the TR trust funds for to release so it's actually them that would be investing the money it okay is that something we could ask them to take a look at at it um it was
025Ken I don't is there a new trusty um yeah so be worth yeah just kind of like good to know yeah a good [Music] question I'm happy to have the conversation of who effort is is so yeah yeah know like I I can't advocate for anything one way or the other I just think about cash sitting idle and I know that there's pretty decent interest rates out there right now that could be helpful sure yeah and we are seeing I didn't list it here but we do do have um earnings on investment higher than plan because of that [Music] principal um the first thing I wrote about under positive community culture was um a recent mini field trip from kindergarten um they walked down to the town hall um couple week two weeks ago two
026weeks ago um they um joined the seniors who were there the rec department was sponsoring a te for our um seniors in town and the children went down and sang to them a couple times same song just on repeat um and then to have a chance just to talk with them and it was delightful the police department kind of um escorted them down so were're safely walking down the street so I'm very well received the rec department has asked us back again next week CU they're going to host another tea so while they're permitting the king of reers will walk down again and join the seniors for the tea so I don't know if there's anything else you wanted to say no he put the the Delight on the kids as well as the seniors
027was just yeah yeah Priceless it was great and they were asking what life was when they were little and just to hear the response some like you didn't have internet you didn't you know just just put it into perspec kidos so it was good and you have a different song to sing next week or we do have a different song to sing and we're going to bring some books and read to the seniors so they're going to take their just write books and and read so that's great the new tradition I think maybe we can uh be joining them at their te's during the nicer weather not during the winter corre um under health and well-being I was highlighting our first graders um who've been working um with Miss escalin throughout the year um and
028they recently um were talking about awesome actions and bummer behaviors um and they came up with some of their own um posters that they've created with Rhymes and they've drawn them out and put them all up around the school and they are spoton and hilarious um um like don't start a riot stay quiet stand on the swing that's not a thing um stay in sight you'll be all right at lunch don't take a bunch that comes from the grape hoting that was happening on the lunch line um the first classes were coming through and taking all the grapes and so we had to have a conversation about you have to leave some grapes for the remaining classes so um it was great they're really cute I think we're maybe get a we'll take a walk
029later and some of them are up on the the wall so they did a great job and it made a lot of sense to them so so um I think they could really Market some of them um and then under meaningful learning I was highlighting um a unit that our fourth graders um are doing it's actually kind of been a year-long unit they're studying the different regions of the US um and recently they've traveled into the west region and they launched that with some good old um gold bining out back so um they uh they did their best attempt at finding some maybe pre-planted gold and um and then they sort of had to take on the life of someone in the gold rush and keep some journal entries and that sort of thing so
030that's been a lot of fun for them um and then they'll they'll wrap up um their study of all the US regions um with the USA passion project as we were just talking about so they get they'll get to choose some um something that they've come across in their region studies and then and dive a little bit more into it themselves so it should be tons of fun for them and Mrs Eastwood will um help them with that project didn't collaborate with the fourth grade teachers on that so that fun and then as far as um some data and information that I'm sharing with you today today was um enrollment attendance and behaviors couple things to share um so the first thing is um just what our KES enrollment attendance have been we started the
031year with 29 students were at 132 this does not include our preschool numbers um this is just the children in the building so um you can see each month the number of days that we're in school the average daily attendance and then that that percentage so we hover anywhere between 89% 99% um you can see December's a tougher month for attendance which I don't think is a huge shock we tend to have the beginning of winter sicknesses and then we also do tend to have a fair number of families travel that week before the holidays or leave a little early and um so that week right before vacation we tend to maybe not have Stellar attendance um but that's that's pretty typical um so if you can see the overall and the totals we've been
032in school for 139 days averaging about 124 kids here each day so we're missing on average seven or eight kids every day um which is about a 95% attendance rate which is great yeah which is good overall news for us um I do know third fourth and fifth grade parents got letters I think today about our SAS testing and as part of that letter highlighted the 95% participation rate um so if we have less than 95% of our students particip ating in that test um it is it does negatively impact our scores so being that our attendance hovers right around that 95 I just am really hoping that we can you know have all of our kids here during those testing days and have them participate so that it doesn't negatively affect us so yeah
033um and then the last bit of information was just more Staffing information um front line only allows us to pull information for 90 days and so this is just looking at um substitute requests in the last 90 days and 82% of our substitute requests have been filled um and 18% of them have gone unfilled so that's just a little statistic on where we are with substitutes um I thank our retired teachers every day because they are Our Saviors with when we need a substitute wheny and Lily sposa are here all the time um subbing for us which is super helpful because they know the kids they know the building and um so they they are a large part of that 82% filled yes they are Becky what what do the unfilled represent does that mean
034that means somebody is out and we don't have a sun for them so we have to cover internally so that may mean um uh that might mean a Shannon takes both third grade classes and cover if we don't have a sub for Chris or we may pull a pair of professional from Barbara's class to cover a first grade class or it just means we're shifting internally because there isn't an extra person got it yeah not that you have these backy but it' be really interesting to see this compared to Statewide numbers because I bet this is probably pretty good like I would think our attendance rate is probably pretty Dar so yeah it's impressive I'm not sure if that's available on yeah I don't know either I just I was it is under the um
035I report so you go to check out the there is always the state New Year school so it's by district and by schools see that yeah no this is It's always year prior okay sure a couple years PRI level a littleit so the next chart that you see is sort of a a matrix of um various types of discipline um incidents within the building so um everything on the leftand column is things that um generally teachers or staff members try to manage with students um and everything on the right hand column are things that are are brought to my attention so um that require my um um intervention that's not to say that I'm not also involved with some of the things on the left because I am on recess Duty and then the lunchroom
036and the hallways and so sometimes I do intervene when things happen um but generally classro teachers you know try to take care of the things on the left if the things on the left happen more frequently or with greater intensity then they can naturally shift over into the column which I'm working with those students and families as well um and then I also just indicated which of the behavioral um incidents um also then rise to other levels so any claims of bullying um must be reported to the superintendent's office per policy um and then per our protocol any threats um to bring weapons or harm um I also bring to the police department's attention um just to making sure and ensuring that children don't have access to weapons and guns and that sort of thing
037so that's something that we've worked with the police department on so um at any given moment these things happen at school I can looking at this entire chart um all of these things have happened at least once this year so um it is you know something that we we do deal with with kids um we do try to use this level as a teaching opportunity for students when they make some of these choices that we learn from our behaviors and we learn to make better choices and safer choices um I'm super thank thankful that the teachers can handle and manage um a lot of the things that happen within their classrooms I'm also super thankful for Kelsey eselin who helps me with some of the other behavioral issues that pop up and been trying to
038figure out what's you know what stemming what's the reason behind some of the behavior she's super helpful in um trying to understand that too so if there's any questions about the kinds of incidents that we try to work with kids and families is there a um a level at which parents are notified and or involved like does this right hand sign automatically trigger that or generally if it's something on the column on the right um it's generally something that I've um connected with the families about not everything on the left would warrant a collar email um obviously there's a pattern it happens more than once but um it kind of depends on the severity of yeah what's happened but possession of weapons there's an incident that happened there um or the Box there's yeah is
039possession of what or threatened to to bring weapons okay so that is something that we've you know had to work through with children and families and um the Kensington Police Department's been a good partner with that too okay and I think the next one is um not quite yet on our agenda yeah new business thank youy was great thank you always so I brought fourth today um your general asses which need to be signed by the board chair in this public meeting this is is um saying that we will follow any um follow the guidelines given to us by the federal government for any grants that receive either the state or through the federal government so it just outlines the process that we have they're managed by our grant manager but then how um Kenington
040for the monies that they're given can spend them so we'll follow those guidelines so we need you to go through and just initial each page here and then if you can sign it back great year ago Chris we had to sign this when it came through every year yeah you're required to it used to be you could to sign it but now we're required to sign it at a public meeting it has to be on the agenda the board chair has to sign it I think last year how fast can I you just bought yeah what is kind of what do you like tesl I Tes let me get [Music] my whole signat this one this one okay correct thank you so much and the next um the number we're going to go into nonpublic
041for any old business there's she say Staffing yeah do that one in public up oh in public uh okay so um student programming and Staffing for the next school year 2023 so that was the next two um pieces of paper that I gave to you it has three options listed there and the drive behind um these proposals is that we have a very large kindergarten class coming in much much larger than we had anticipated and as you can see in our numbers it's the largest class that we've had in the last 5 years so um right now we have 32 students um on our um registration list so that's obviously needs to be two uh two kindergarten classes which is not something that we had originally anticipated ated when we budgeted um we haven't had
042that in a while um as far as like this number of students so um so I put together a few options of um what we can do to try to accommodate this bubble since we didn't anticipate it when we did our budget last you know last fall um option one um would show the um hiring of an additional teacher in order to um maintain all of the other classes as is and not touch any other classes and just hire the an additional teacher for the kindergarten um by adding the second kindergarten class it would also mean we'd be adding a pair of professional because um it we always have a pair of professional in kindergarten so it's not just a teacher and 16 students that we do have a teacher and Par in both kindergarten
043classes um also looking at the needs of the student students coming in we would want a teacher and a parah in both kindergarten classes so option one is the hiring of an additional teacher and an additional K is that just two and two and 10 Becky on on the chart number 10 says teacher but I think yeah so it just means right now we have nine teachers and in order to make option one work we have to hire a 10th teacher so whether that's new at kindergarten or new at fifth grade just we'd have to hire a 10th teacher in order to make option one work okay but it's either put in put the new teacher at the kindergarten level or fth grade yeah if we just kind of keep everything else as is yep
044so option two um have one more question sorry um there is there are two kindergarten classes right now with I'm assuming two Paras is it that that par is going to have to move on to first grade okay got it um in option two The Proposal does affect other grade levels in that it would take the current third graders and put them back in or not shouldn't say back put them into one classroom which would make a fourth grade class of 25 students um that's large so if uh the proposal on this option number two is if that there are 25 students in fourth grade that we would need to have additional supports in that classroom and would require the hiring of an additional pair of professional um it's still also going to require the
045additional K PA so kind of regardless of what we do we're going to have to hire another pair of professional for kindergarten is is this is um if you the due diligence to ask all the questions um is it a requirement to hire a pair for the fourth grade class or is that like a this is a lot of kids we need an extra adult body it would not be a requirement no um but with that many students and the need to be able to do small group instruction and meet needs I I don't know how you would do it without more support in the clost be a regular par so it would be like what we do for kindergarten regular may need to help out with student management right um and then option number
046three um just a throw more options out there thinking about um departmentalizing fifth grade so that um what there'd be three teacher sort of assign it's Sim a similar model that we used in Co um when we came back from Co for for fourth and fifth grade um so one of the teachers would teach math um it would require Miss McCarthy then to teach science to fifth grade to all sections of fifth grade and then um it this would propose increasing um Mrs Eastwood's time and she would teach content literacy so it would be a departmentalized fifth grade um also the Karo which we know we will need to do regardless um and so then there's the cost for should say option three not four sorry and for like the stem teacher Library you know
047that reduces availability to other grades because you're spreading it then at that point it came off right so she more of their time would be spent with fifth grade which means they have less time to spend with the other grades which is what happened during Co so all three options um are going to cost some money that we're going to need to talk about I don't think we're looking to make a decision tonight but we need to think about um financially how we can move forward with one of these options or some combination of these options um it's a similar situation that we talked about at the end of last year um when we decided to split the kindergarten um sort of at at last minute so it's a similar sort of um money conversation
048um but this just sort of gives you three different options on how we move forward but we'll need to move forward in some way with some additional Staffing and is the data for enoll pretty firm at this point yeah we haven't we 32 we had one added a couple weeks ago we haven't had anyone add in a couple weeks so we were at 31 do we have like a deadline probably not they can come on the first day and we still take them yeah yeah okay typically when fourth quarter comes you work with a semic school it's usually not the best transition time depending where it's at okay but also how far are they traveling yeah so yeah but we do find students over the summer moving in moving out okay so we'd ask you
049just to digest it figure out question questions you have I'm sure community members are going to share their opinions which we would we would absolutely appreciate because it does come with money that we didn't budget and again this is our budgeting system what we were budgeting and done in December and January was based on what we have and now it's new numbers um so we'll have to discuss at the next meeting how we would pay for whatever option you have some of it could be like last year we used un Reserve fund balance at the end of the year and pre spend for oil and and um the things that we know we have to spend for to be able to alleviate but when you get into that higher numbers of the 127,000 that then
050may cost us having to look at trust funds to be able to pay for things in advance so there's different consequences unintended with how whatever option is chosen y thank you for putting it all together so as far as far as the ask this like in the next meeting are we going to talk more about pros and cons should we do that now or like how do we how do we go about making sure that we give this a thorough review yeah if you have more questions we can talk about them now and I think the other thing to think about also regardless of what option knowing that this extra class of kindergarten is coming in it will sort of bump all of the spaces and we do have several professionals who share a space
051um um Mrs fusus Mrs Schwarz and miss rafman and miss Merl all are in that last classroom so they will have to find new homes in the building um which Chris and I did a walk about sort of the other day to kind of figure out where those new homes might be uh so is there so there may be some construction costs as far as like constructing a new office or splitting a space and that sort of thing because we will have four professionals dis to in order to create another classroom if if we go with option two though does that not happen because it will still happen because we'll have two kindergarten classes again two kindergarten and two first even though we're losing the additional third fourth grade um let you think about what
052you just said for a second because I'm sorry let me let me play that shell game in my mind um and it might be because of the way it shifts it might not right we might not need to however we have to think about placement because physically putting 25 students in one class without some overflow space for them to be able to do like I know we have 22 students in fifth grade right now and it's like sardines like we physically really probably couldn't put more than 22 in that room some of the other classrooms are a little larger so you can put more students but we just have to think about space and size of classroom and where the where 25 students are if that's because it's a large that's a large and I
053just also think about just teacher expectations that's 25 conferences 25 um you cards in words it's you know that's it's not exactly Equitable and you're looking at other classes of 10 and 12 and 13 so we just have to think about balance that as well is that is a walk like we did for over the summer with the Kinder in class is a walk through something that we I feel like that would be helpful yeah it was when we did it earlier we could start up mebe like that next me you want really helpful for Becky and I and you're running out of space yeah numbers continue to grow yeah I mean that's a major concern too are we looking at mobile units are we looking at yeah and we've had a lot of conversation
054as staff too and just how can we be creative and thinking about like we've talked about multi-age classrooms we've talked you know we've talked about different things and even doing something like that still requires additional classroom space for this big group coming in so um Becky is there any for option numberb three is there any benefit for the fifth grade to to have these different I mean sort of it sort of sounds a little bit like they would maybe get them ready for middle school because it's having different teachers and that sort of is that anything so I think um because it is a similar model that we follow during Co and I do think um in thinking about how great it was for fifth grade because they got a lot of science it was
055wonderful it really came at the expense of science and stem for the rest of the building and I I do feel like we felt that in the rest of the building not them not having stem and Mrs McCarthy as much was great for fifth grade because she's wonderful and lovely and they all love stem um but it really was what it seems like kind of Ideal for the rest of yeah School having that extra content literacy would be great for going into Middle School that seems like good skills but if it's taking away from the other it's not great and a sim a similar thing happened Mrs e was one of our remote teachers tring Co and the library shut down for the rest of the school essentially because she wasn't available to I'm kind
056of looking at this like the the first two options seem at least to me like the overall best two to consider but you we're talking about two extra people two extra people significant cost difference between the two I guess from a from a historical perspective do like have we ever had 25 kids in a class before like have we ever worked through something like that and how did that go trying to think 25 we years so actually um so we had 24 in kindergarten how many years ago and we did a co- teing model in that was that was my yeah that was your current third grade so we uh rather than split them we put a second teacher in so there were two teachers and 26 students but two classrooms so that they had
057two spaces to spread out into yeah so that was not because there was more space in the other grades to work with at that time yeah yeah so but it was two teachers for 26 kids not one teacher for 2 yeah yeah so that's the last time yeah that we had a group that big I think some things to think about as we're digesting over the next month are um if this is an inevitable um this option if we're looking at higher numbers and we're going to need that attentional staff member at some point does that mean we need to do it this year where our budget's already so inflated I don't know I mean I think that's a question for sure um and you know I think looking at putting on different hats if
058I wear my my mom hat and my school psychologist hat I would give you all the teachers and so um and I know I have a fiscal responsibility to the town so trying to weigh those two options and there are schools i' go into every day that have 30 kids and one teacher in them and so that's like the other end right I have I have to think to weigh both ends in my head and so I think all of that and then doing the walkth through and trying to hopefully from the town about you know some thoughts or ideas or input um so we come back next month we have some some good conversation yeah about this because it is not insignificant amount of money I mean our our general enrollment um does seem
059to be continous slowly climbing back up um I think my third year here we had dipped down to like 99 students and then we've just sort of been on a slow climb back up yeah over the last I've been here 10 years almost and you can see it happening right yeah well there's still hous yeah there still new houses so I don't I don't know I don't think we're anticipated to go down [Music] M I think any other question if we have questions between now and may can reach out to you yeah s to me uh Becky and I meet every Monday so we'll look at them every Monday and be able to shoot your back answer or start to collect them so we have them and walk through those so that would be our
060big ticket item to talk about Becky's report and our data okay um so that'll be a whole walk through oh perfect yeah that' be and I don't know if we want to if we could gather um anticipated revenue for next year based on things that we budgeted versus Revenue that we know we're getting for yeah I guess for next year cring I don't um you can't spend an anticipative Revenue no I'm not saying spend it but just have it in our mind of what we know we could anticipate looking at next year's budget it's a really hard question um we have an idea of what we get for special education Aid that's going to be probably the biggest wild card and again it's so drastically different from what we project to what we get I
061think the other question um is is there anything that we we kind of spoke briefly about is there anything we could pre preby this year in anticipation of having this like we did last year like we did last year yeah like number numbers options number like if we were to and this might not even be viable but like we look at the budget today actual spending today and we think about option one option two option three and what that might look like so right now the projected you can't go over your appropriation so even though we have some excess Revenue like the special 8 of $56,000 we can't spend that right so right now the remaining expense after we get the money back from um I we receive revenue from Northampton would be 4,696 um
062I don't know copy that but I'm guessing the lowest one's 47 um and um cop things like the the things like the fuel um you're not supposed to do um you can do it but it's really not what we're supposed to do the rule of them is you need pay for things in the year that it's used so if you if we've ordered something like like a tractor we know there's supply chain issues all over the place if the intention was to get to use it this fiscal year we would charge it to this fiscal year but if we know we're not going to use it this fiscal year it should go in the year that we use it um the only thing that you really should at year end with unti Reserve funds is
063stuff that can't happen when students are in the building so if you want to P the parking lot or if you want to do um things in this classroom now I did have a conversation with our Auditors who all of our other districts who this um third party auditor we use a locally elected auditor um the third party auditor who's well KN law fir audit f like um the advice they would give us is to do it in the year that it's supposed to happen but during Co they do what you got to do to get through um and so we made the decision on the prepaid oil because we we needed to do it I wouldn't recommend doing it but if we need to do it we can but with that argument Lolly um
064we know the haac system is 109 and if we wanted to prepay for that because we can't do that when in session correct we could use a portion to pay for that that Supply correct and um services in this year's budget knowing it will start ju after July 1st that would be totally acceptable because it's not it's something that can't happen when it's in like I'll use Brentwood for example Brentwood knew they needed money available this year they hadn't budgeted for they had a Paving project s so he said let's do the paving project let's encumber the money for the paving project students can't be in session when it happens so I would always want to go to that type of stuff that Chris mentioned okay not the prepay of fuel if we have to
065because why because that helps us with the budget next year having a big swing is that why well it would help the more we can pay this year we'll free up the money next year because we can't we already voted for it yeah um but if someone is to come in and look at your books um it would be an audit finding and if we had the audit if the Auditors in the other se6 districts had done cing in these books we would have had an adjusting journal entry now what happens is is we finalize the year and then I have to fix it the next year so it's really the same effect but it's it's not the correct thing to do you'd always want to go to things that students can't be the building
066for so rule thumb and like that's why I tell all of the secretaries like you need to order your second now that you know you're going to use for the end of the year we can't on June 30th be ordering like 10 rings of paper it always has to be we going to use it in discl that's happening or inity of a project that students can't be in the building for can do they not can they not be in the building when the the Heating units are replaced no we have people on the roof through St yeah that space will be not accessible and that's where lunch the kitchen and El all that so we shut the kitchen down and plus by doing that we probably save as cost go up for supplies by doing
067so we're saying we're saving that's a viable option but the risk is the auto finding hearing that well no so for the HVAC project if we want to say we want to pay for a portion of it now because we want to get a jump we' have to order it we'd have to order it now that we would legitimately put in this year now keep in mind you only right now have $45,000 that's how much under the appropri I also think about when we developed the budget we and we went through it at the end it was like it was $30,000 of discretionary sort of things that we decided to keep in there so that's something to me we can go back and revisit not that I want to take the permanent sub out because
068it's something that we've talked about doing but if that $155,000 is better towards a new staff member in another capacity that we know we need that so to me that makes sense to it does stoping it's still stopping money it's just kind of moved to a different place within the budget so I feel like there's money that we could look at within what we did okay what was approved that we could put towards new Staffing yeah shifting how you spend yeah I me one other option we have and I have to look into this is um long time ago it was put on the warn article potentially in Kensington to expend un anticipated Revenue but you'd have to have a public hearing to do so now if I go into our permanent file in the
069Dr it shows that we never voted on that in Kensington and it shows that only two districts in the sa6 did I think it's East Kingston and stratum Maybe or east Kingson and Brent no it's East Kingston and Bren I think um I don't know why it would only be on two districts not all of them so there is a chance our permanent file wasn't updated so if it's on the if we voted on it many years ago then we could potentially have a public heing and spend that unanticipated special ID but I'd have to go and the archives and research if it was ever on the ballot okay so you'll be able to bring that to us yeah I can I can do that okay cuz the Dr perm files were created but they're
070not always correct um so I will have to go back to the annual reports and see if it was ever put on the ballot and if p and if that's the case if it did pass then we could have a public hearing to expend that 56,000 potentially now with something like the permanent sub budget is that like an amendment the budget what does that look no because you still have a bottom line okay so the the voters passed your budget okay how we if we had to reorganize we can do that as long as we do not go over that appropriation that has been voted on Goa okay okay I I mean I would love to look at you know creatively how we can look at that budget because obviously the best option for kids
071is number one because it's the smallest Cass sizes across the board I know it's also the most expensive option um but I'd like to see how we can you know what we can do with maybe pre- buying some of the rooftop unit and looking at the permanent sub and looking at some of that 30 you know that other money that was more discretionary um the other thing that's not I don't think is in this this number is any construction that would have to be done in order to that space work okay but that's going to be something to consider for each of the options right regardless because it's the same amount of people maybe not for two okay um there may be some but not right because we do have several people sharing spaces this
072year that we did because we needed to but um probably would be best to not have some of those same shared spaces and find some spaces for people yeah okay do we feel confident that we have enough that we can go I think yeah I mean I think if we see some some more data and numbers like we talked about for the next meeting I think that that would be a really big help and kind of poting one of the or making one of the options more clear I'll see if we ever had that in the ballot so okay um public input on this something that comes at the next meeting or between now and then like next meeting okay yeah so they can comment and have have questions okay not necessary something know about
073I'm sure people will ask you hey I heard you talking about this and you can just say yes we're looking at options uh review the Minutes review the tape give myself give Becky a call what we talked about be super appropriate okay to say like if you want to more about three yeah but you want to give us information to bring back to think about that's yeah okay so old business do it have anything okay related matter do you not have anything Personnel nothing for personnel okay so we need to go into nonpublic how do I can you me under yep so under chapter 91 a semicolon a thank you thank you that's 710 a second for that we also close comment you want to do that first sure we'll close public comment at 7:10
074and we're back in public session so I can uh make a motion to accept the nomination list from Becky Ru Chris andisi as presented all in [Music] favor thank you very much we appreciate that make a motion to at 718 we at 718 yes perfect thank you we'll see you all next one