Acton-Boxborough School Committee Meeting - March 5th, 2026

001Well, on that note, I'd better get things going. >> [laughter] >> Noting the hour and the presence of a quorum, I call the Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee to order. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may use Acton TV's YouTube channel, which is found at the top of the agenda. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on Acton TV's website at actontv.org. So, we are going to start with our budget hearing. Detailed budget material is posted with the five March 5th, 2026 School Committee meeting materials on the abschools.org website. And also, please note that the vote on the proposed fiscal year 27 budget and assessments will be taken at the next School Committee meeting on March 19th, 2026, not tonight. Welcome, Sherry. All right, so before Sherry gets started,

002um just as a reminder to everyone, the budget hearing is not another version of a budget presentation. Um this is actually just a really an opportunity for community members to provide public comment specific to the budget. Um but what I wanted to have Sherry do is just do a couple of anchoring slides just to make sure everyone knew what the numbers were um and and kind of ground us in what we're talking about. Um but as I said, this is not a full budget presentation like what we've been doing. It's just an opportunity to hear from community members. Hi. Um as he said, I have like five or six slides, very quick, just to kind of go over the highlights of what you've already heard in the past. So, at a glance, our total recommended

003budget, 122,593,238. That is the number that was voted by the School Committee when we had the preliminary back in January. The town assessments, Acton is up 3.75%, Boxborough is up 5.57%. Our biggest cost drivers are our health insurance, which we have finalized numbers is 12.11% and our special ed tuitions are increasing by 16.09% and our long-term goal stabilize long-term financial health and leverage savings from reorganization to protect student facing supports. You've seen this slide many times. It's giving you the 5-year history with next year. Over the last 5 years not including this year, it's an average of 4.19% over the 5 years. We did have that outlier year when we had the override of the 9.29%. This breaks down again the assessments for Acton and for Boxborough and their percentages. These next two pages are

004by character codes. So, the last time we presented, we only presented admin code. I now actually have a line item budget. I believe you all got it. One thing I do want to point out is I had to come up with names. I put upper and lower. The admin page still shows the schools and the Conant school does still have their variable costs in there until we have the students enrolled in the schools, then we're going to look at the those supply lines and divvy them up by the enrollment and where the students are going. But, if anyone has any questions on this, I will also have it on the website as well as the line item budget tomorrow. But, um final assessment increase summary Acton's going up 2.9 or actually almost 3 million 2995247.

005Boxborough is going up 935899. We did meet with the Boxborough Finance Committee this week and um it was a pleasant meeting. And we didn't really have We had a lot of questions, but they were thoughtful questions and we answered everything they needed. They did ask then and we've had this page before about our 5-year outlook. I did adjust this to make it so it now matches our budget. Oh. I did. That's not the right page though, so I put the wrong one up. So, [clears throat] I will make sure that's fixed by tomorrow because the 243,000 in my version it does have the 243,850 that we did add. And just noting on the bottom the contingency line, that is the $1 million that's coming directly from E&D. That will be used for transition costs. And

006like I've mentioned before, anytime we use the money, I will do a budget transfer to have it signed off by the school committee and approved to be moved to the right place. And then this just shows you next step and key dates. So, our next the school committee vote on the budget is on March 19th, Acton town meeting May 4th, and Boxborough town meeting May 19th. I know that's very quick. But you all have the information. Is there anybody that kind of look through the line items or anybody that has any questions about anything? Thank you, Sherri. So, in that case, we will move to public participation specifically on the fiscal year '27 budget. So, if anyone would like to come up and give us some comments or ask some questions, you're welcome to do

007so. All right. Clearly Sherri did such an excellent job presenting that. Well done. Thank you. So, in that case, I will entertain a motion to adjourn the annual budget hearing. So moved. Second. So moved by Liz, seconded by All those in favor? I. Any opposed? Any abstentions? All right. Great. That transitions back to our regular business meeting. Um So, as we get started, first of all, a note from Julie. Nobody touches this part of the microphones. The reason they keep we keep losing they they keep not working, we have to touch the bottom. So, if you need to pull it closer, you can move the base. You can talk from a pretty good ways back, and it still picks you up. Okay? Everybody good with that? So, can I add a clar- Okay, so just

008clarification, we've been having some problems with mics where they're cutting out on us. We actually had our tech person troubleshoot this, and what was happening is he he watched some clips, and what was happening is people were using the microphone neck to pull it closer, and when that happens, it actually pulls the microphone neck from the connector at the base. And so, that's why, even though your red button here was turning red, the mic actually was disconnected from it. So, you know, if you want to move it closer, use the base, please, and but you can certainly still adjust this. This is designed to pick up voice from between 12 and 24 in. So, you actually don't need to be as you can see, I'm sitting up straight and still the same projection through the

009mic. So, um I know they're new mics, so just figured do the PSA up front. Got it. Awesome. Thank you. >> [snorts] >> Um so, yeah, this has been a a tough year, School Committee-wise. We've We have done some challenging things, and I'm sure a lot of us thought our key milestone was getting through the the AB forward vote, and then things were going to calm down. And I think at this point in time, we realized that implementation is really hard. And we're all in different places with this. Um we have members who are angry, we have members who are checked out, we have members who are over-involved. We are all trying to manage this both here in this room, and also in our personal lives, and it's a challenge. Um I got a lot

010of feedback about our last meeting. We went well over 4 hours. That was fun. Um we were not at our best, not individually, not collectively by the end. Um nothing good happens after 10, and possibly not even after 9:30. Um we can't magically resolve all the tensions that are out there in the community right now. We are going to have to continue to work through this stuff that is hard, and we are going to have to continue to do it together. But what we can do is make the time we spend in this room effective, constructive, and we can use it to continue to strengthen our incredible schools. So, I just want to pause before we get started here and name some of the things that we can do, concrete moves we can make tonight

011that are going to get us through this meeting at a time that um makes us all feel like we're still effective, and we're not all frustrated at the end. So, anybody have thoughts on that? You're going to make me use teacher wait time? That School Committee Chair can do that, too. Go for it, Glenn. I think reinforcing our shared values with this is good. Conflict is okay. Disrespect isn't really. And we can manage this going forward. Um we're here because we care about students. Lisa. I will just echo what Glenn said, 6 inches away from the mic. And uh I think you're right at the week it's possible to have healthy conflict. We don't all have to agree, but we all have to speak to each other with respect. And so, I just I really

012appreciate you saying that, Glenn. Thank you. Okay, so I'm going to own my piece of this, right? Helping keep us focused and helping draw attention to when we are running long-winded, um sharing the air. So, if you start getting the eye from me or I kind of cut you off, it's not personal. It's just recognizing that we don't have unlimited time here in this room together. And also, um might look at some opportunities as we talk through this to get a sense of the committee. When somebody proposes something, you know, just getting a quick thumbs up, thumbs down, that is a way to be able to understand if we have lots of people who are already on the same page and we don't need to continue to drill on something. Okay. Sound good? All right.

013Let's welcome our student representatives. Um I believe we have Zeynep and Diksha here to speak to us, and we need another chair over there at that table. Let's move this one here. Thank you, Lisa. I just like Okay. Hi, everyone. I'm Diksha Mathre, and I am a senior at AVHS. Um just to give you a few key updates from I think it was January when we last saw you folks. So, um just kind of what's going on in the school right now. Tomorrow is our senior versus staff basketball game, and we're partnering with our class leaders of 2026 to help drive up donations for senior events as well. Um furthermore, um next week we're having our student spotlight panel with the multilingual learners. So, um I'm personally super excited for this one because we focused

014on cultural identity and it's really nice to hear from multilingual speakers as well. Um and for seniors but especially um there has been a lot of focus on getting scholarship applications in now that college applications are done. And just something of note in the future is I'm pretty sure it's April 11th or April 19th. I'll get back to you. Um of a we have the suicide awareness walk which is run by the Active Minds club. You you may have seen my email. So, there's that as well and please tell friends and family to join us on that walk. It's a lovely spring morning, so yeah. And now to transition to some more serious stuff. Um uh the AB Students for Equity and Justice Club ran a Jewish student panel 2 weeks ago. And two key

015parts about this was I think the school community um really it was really impactful to hear from about personal stories from the students about hate and bias that happens in the AB community, outside of the AB community, and their personal experiences. And this kind of connects with the Interrupting Hate and Bias um training that happened I think it was it this week, Zainab? Or was it last week? >> it was last week. It was last week. And and some general feedback from the student body was that they loved the content that was covered. It was very comprehensive, touched on historical points, and we just felt that um something that was impactful about the student panel was hearing about personal stories. And we found that kind of integrating that into the slideshows and the presentations would

016be would help spread the message better. Um Just a cute Just one quote from this that we wanted to share with you is from an ABRHS student that was um at the Interrupting Hate and Bias Assembly. As someone who values the principles of Judaism, I have always been proud of my community's resilience. The swastika drawings at the school show that some people here do not understand the pain the symbol causes. Seeing this symbol at school makes many Jewish students, including me, feel afraid and unwelcome. I worry that some classmates might dislike me just because of my ethnicity. Our community needs to do better at accepting everyone, regardless of their background or beliefs. And so, um that was the general feedback, and I think it was really important for a lot of people at the school.

017And one last quick point that we want to touch on is um about budgets or up surrounding extracurriculars. Um we know that has also been a tense subject as well. And um the student council is trying to help this with our um biannual club grants. Um I think this is our third year of club grants, and we allot 5,000 for clubs to donate. Um just for basic club events and fundraising, just to give them a little head start and boost. What we have noticed is that there have been a lot of clubs applying, and we do not we no longer have the capacity to answer every request. And we're glad that the system is working, but we're also feeling that pressure internally. And um that's definitely an issue we're trying to work on with Ms.

018Dean as well. So, yeah. Thank you. Good evening, everyone. My name is Zainab. It's a pleasure seeing you all again. I know it's been a little while, so we do have quite a few things to cover. Um speaking of student voices this week, we've also have celebrating World Cultures Week in our language classes. On Monday, we had a cultural food event where students prepared dishes from their own countries and shared them with classmates. I know on Tuesday my Chinese class made dumplings together, which was a fun activity. On Wednesday, we had our wear your traditional clothes day um and we had student panels where students got to um talk about their cultural identities and shared aspects of their backgrounds and experiences with the school community. And it was really great to see so many students

019participating and celebrating um the diversity we have at AP. And tomorrow we'll be wrapping up the week with a read-aloud day where high school students from different language classes will visit elementary schools and read books to younger students. And it's always a really nice opportunity for students across different grade levels to connect. We also recently celebrated Lunar New Year with clubs like Dear Asian Youth and Asian Culture Club hosting celebrations and activities um that help students learn more about the holiday and its significance. In addition, we held our Martin Luther King Community Service Assemblies where students were recognized for volunteer awards and we heard a we heard from a student speaker reflecting on the importance of service and leadership in our community. And before I wrap up, I'd like to highlight one upcoming event um

020that many students are looking forward to. So, we have our junior prom for the class of 2027, which is coming up soon. Our class leaders have been working hard behind the scenes to organize the event and I know many students are as excited as we get closer to the date. And with that, those are the updates from the high school for tonight. Um thank you all for listening. Thanks for being here. Before you jump up, I see a hand in the air. We have a question for you. Go ahead, Glenn. So, thank you for this and thank you for your detail and I did see your email about the Out of Darkness Walk. I did check, it's April 11th. Um so, that's perfect. I'll do my best to attend. Um You mentioned the You mentioned

021Asian Culture Club, cultural awareness, anti-bias initiatives, um the Walk Against Suicide, Junior Prom. Can you talk a little bit about more the budget constraints you're dealing with with So, you have 5K allocated total for grants to distribute among student clubs. Is that correct? Okay. Can you say What could you do with 10? Well, then Well, so what we try to do, um at least we allocate 2,500 per semester. And so, we're seeing clubs having difficulty fundraising because they don't have a lot of money to start with. So, with 10, what we would be able to do is give clubs enough to be able to sustain themselves. Is there a specific initiative you're excited about? Something that you've had to be like, "We'd love to do this, but"? Right now, what is happening, we would say,

022is just clubs are really scrambling to get funds for some events. We have cut a lot of events that have happened in the past because of these um I can't think of one that comes to mind at the moment, but clubs have been trying to resort to having events purposefully just for fundraisers instead of for community-driven purposes. So, Glenn. I hear I see the nod. Okay. I think we should give them 10. Can I just do a point of clarification? When I think what you're saying, though, that's not money that comes from the district, the 5,000. That's money that you've raised to be able to distribute to other clubs. >> Yeah. Yeah. I still think we should give them Yes, so awareness is It's thing to have. Yes. Lila. I just want to say thank

023you. It's clear that you both prepare um before you come here and it's really helpful just to hear about what's going on day-to-day. So, thanks for coming and sharing. Thank you. Thank you. And I want to echo how much I appreciate hearing you talking about the importance of having hard conversations and the things that are working. I think we need to hear about more of that in our world right now. So, thank you for doing that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. All right. So, with that we will shift to public participation. For school committee policy BEDH, members of the public are invited to speak for up to 3 minutes. Public participation will only take a place at this time during our meeting. Speakers must be recognized by the chair before speaking and the committee does

024not typically respond to comments during public participation. All right. Do we have anyone who would like to make public comment this evening? All right, come on up. Oh, let's Yeah, we'll get your mic turned on there. I think I got it. How's that? All right, thank you very much. My name is Eric Bauer. I'm a recent move into the community. I have a 4-year-old who will be joining the Acton-Boxborough school district shortly. What I wanted to provide some comment on is some concerns regarding the the revised geographic scenarios provided for tonight's discussion. I understand in down selecting the scenarios that some things have to be given up, but it feels as though scenario four and scenario five aren't created equally. Despite having the ability to move the boundaries to ensure things like correct racial and

025ethnic distribution and high variance across demographic variance across the schools, Uh clear from the materials that are provided that those aren't the same between scenario four and scenario five. Um the boundaries in scenario four, I believe, should be moved until that racial and student demographic balance is struck in order to inform the decision points that you guys have to make. Uh it seems critical at this point in such a a decision of great magnitude that the materials um it seem it seems critical at this point that uh you have at least two viable and equal scenarios in which to have that debate and discussion on. And from the materials provided, it seems to be sending the signal that a decision has to some extent already been made or decision is already clear, right? The The

026materials themselves state um that scenario five uh is the recommended scenario and that further decision points should be made uh based off of that. Um sending that signal at this point, it makes the process, especially when there's still an opportunity for covered public survey and comment, feel somewhat disingenuous and rushed. I'd suggest uh so that you can get the viable feedback from the public that you deserve in making these decisions that there be a revision to scenario four so that these feel equal and viable. You can get that feedback and then make the most informed decision you can. Thank you. I appreciate the time. Thank you. Thanks. Hi. Um Matt Gilman. Um This is not where I thought I'd be tonight. Um I just uh very disappointed with some of the redistricting that I saw

027um in the new proposal. Um I moved my family here 8 years ago um based on walkability and our ability we were back in the time when we could choose school choice and our major decisions were based on walkability and ability to kind of connect to our community. We live in the blue zone. Um and both of my kids are very excited um to be able to hopefully in the future um be able to walk to school, have a connection with the downtown Acton community, uh Danny's Place. They love the the Citizens Library. And right now, they spend 40 minutes uh on a bus uh when it's a 10-minute walk. Uh I think that there really needs to be some focus on looking at communities that need to be bused versus those that can walk.

028Um right now, we would be moved to Blanchard. Uh that would eliminate walkability completely, biking, um any of those activities because Massachusetts is not a safe road to put my kids on. Um there's no sidewalks. People drive The speed limit's 40, but people don't drive 40. Um if your stated outcome is to keep in the integrity of established communities, why would you disconnect the blue zone? I I I think that it makes more sense to s- you could send I mean, the red zone alone would put Blanchard within occupancy numbers. It just seems a little short-sighted. And if you're really intent on not breaking up these communities. My kids walk downtown all the time and to send them to another school where they can't have that and then we'll be on a bus for most

029of their day and not have any access >> 30 seconds. to any of that. Okay? Thank you. Uh Jared Rice, 25 Birch Road. Uh my wife and my wife Laura and I have two boys, uh Daniel and Ben in third and fifth grade at McCarthy-Towne. Uh when we moved to town uh a few years ago, we weren't given a school choice. Uh our kids' IEP needed to be serviced by Compass and so we were placed in McCarthy-Towne. This worked out wonderfully. Uh the McCarthy-Towne community has been great. Uh the teachers have been great. And at the end of the day, we've been able to be in a situation where Ben doesn't need that support anymore. And both of our kids have thrived. Um as the AB Forward process has progressed, uh and we learned that

030we'd lose McT. Um we grieved. But we talked it through as a family uh and we knew that we'd receive the support our boys need wherever they land. Um and we looked at potential regional districting and thought, given walking priorities, we'd probably end up at Boardman and that would work out. We'd have a school we walk to with our community. Um Seeing scenario five this morning uh seeing that our neighborhood along with um all of our neighbors would be sent to Blanchard with that plan kind of sent our entire neighborhood text message into a tailspin. Um I won't pretend to speak for anybody other than my family. Um but the ability to walk and bike to school, my my 5-year-old got or my fifth grader got to bike to school for the first time this

031fall to McT cuz going down Mass Ave even with a sidewalk is a little bit sketchy. Um losing that ability that was going to be a silver lining in this kind of storm of transition and turmoil. Um losing that would be devastating. Um during the last meeting when you were discussing scenarios 1 through 3 I came away with the feeling that walkability and kind of keeping those communities there within walking distance of a school together was really important. And so to read this new set of proposals that seems to discard that priority for balancing and avoiding, I guess, islands of people being bust out of Acton. Um it hurts. Um 30 seconds. >> well, I understand you have a very difficult choice to make. Like there is no scenario where anybody is going to be

032happy with the results of this redistricting. I urge you to prioritize keeping the West Acton community together and allowing those of us who are within 0.7 miles of of Boardwalk to allow our kids to walk there instead of being more than a mile away from Blanchard with no walking or biking. Thank you. >> [applause] >> Uh ladies and gentlemen, we don't applaud and So, so here's why. I mean, I get what you're feeling, but we have to make sure everybody feels like they can come up and say whatever it is they need to say and not worry about whether they're going to be applauded or booed. Thanks for that. Hi folks. This is very tall. Alyssa Nicole. Um I live in South Acton. I'm a member of the Select Board, but I'm here tonight just

033speaking for myself. I wanted to let you know that on Tuesday, I received an email from the Massachusetts Municipal Association. So, I thought I would come and share their ask with all of you. The joint committee on ways and means is starting their budget hearings for the FY27 budget. So, they'll be talking about the governor's proposed budget. After those hearings, the House and Senate will work on their own budget proposals. So, now is the time for all of you and everybody listening to contact your legislators. You can even contact aside from Senator Eldridge, Representative Cataldo, and Representative Sena, everybody who's on the joint ways and means committee or at least just the chairs. But, here's some things that the Mass Municipal Association is concerned about and I'm concerned about, too. The governor has proposed only

034a modest increase to the unrestricted general government aid, which is also known as UGGA, 2 and 1/2%. That's not enough. We need a lot more. We need to bring those traditional state aid levels back up to to where they used to be. We also want to ask our representatives Beacon Hill to support full funding of the Student Opportunity Act, also the special education circuit breaker, minimum aid increases. And I want to ask everyone to to take action to contact folks and request this additional funding. Now that I've seen the presentation and the expected increases in costs for the district that are above 2 and 1/2, 3%, which is all that we are allowed to to increase our revenue. That puts, you know, the unrestricted general government aid puts strain on the towns' budgets, which then

035translates to strain on the school district budgets. And I remember that Chair Campbell reminded us during budget Monday that our advocacy um had an impact. So, I want to rally everybody again to to take action and check out the state website, find your representatives' emails, find the emails for the Joint Ways and Means Committee, and ask them to increase the um funding that that they're sending to towns and cities because our costs are definitely outpacing inflation and um towns' ability to raise revenue. Thank you. Thank you. Okay, this is going to be our last public comment. A bunch of people walked in late, so I did not do a show of hands earlier. If you have not had an opportunity to speak and you have something that you want to share with the School Committee,

036please email us. Go ahead. Thank you. I'm David Martin. I live on High Street in Acton. Um I just wanted to say that there is a um a sign at the entrance to the Board Walk campus that says no trespassing. This sign is almost never enforced. Um um and but um a no a no trespassing sign that is almost never enforced is inherently arbitrary and discriminatory when it is enforced. Um I ask that those that sign, and if any other signs exist on um any other campus, either be enforced or taken down. Um uh to avoid that discri- that possible discrimination. Um the in the case of the Board Walk sign, it would be difficult to enforce it, right? There is a long tradition before the current building of people using the boardwalk um cross

037from one kind of part of Westford into the other. And in fact that was explicitly stated when the boardwalk campus was built that that the boardwalk the new boardwalk covered boardwalk would be open to the community. In any case you guys can decide what you would want to do but I would like you to either like I said enforce or take down the sign. Thank you. Thank you. All right, we are going to move on to our community wellness presentation. Heather Stouck, welcome. Well, Heather's coming up. I I want to there's no superintendent update tonight but I there no we don't have one scheduled but um I just want to put something on your radar because it may need to come back to the school committee. Um during the commissioner's conference call that he does

038about quarterly with superintendents yesterday um he had announced that many districts in the state are now trying to seek waivers to the 180 day requirement because of the number of snow days that that school districts have had um and they do have a process to consider that and I just want to make you aware of a few things cuz we are at you know the Thursday now to get out um you know we have one more snow day gets us to Friday but then it would put us into that last week of June and no one you know thinks last week of June is a good time including the state. They have they have said that they want to avoid schools going into the last week of June. Um couple of things there's two requirements

039in the state of Massachusetts. One is that we attend 180 days minimum. Um and the second is that we have 990 hours of instruction for secondary students, 925 hours of instruction for 900 hours of instruction for elementary. Um they are considering waivers to the 180 days as long as the hours of instruction are met. And a whole series of criteria. One is that a district has to have used up all five of their snow days that they build in, and our fifth snow day would be tomorrow. Um meet the instructional hour requirement, evidence that instructional time is taking place through Friday, June 26th, which would you know, we have we're at the 25th now. Um evidence that the district repurposed any remaining district-wide professional development days or school closure dates outside of April vacation or

040required federal holidays. So, for example, Good Friday is not a required federal holiday, nor are the Eids. Right? And so, in order for us to be considered for any type of waiver, we would have already had to have shown that we've repurposed those dates. Um as school days. Um and then there's a graduation requirement that districts can maintain their regularly scheduled graduation date regardless. So, that's Those are the criteria. Right now, we've used four of five snow days that we've allotted, and we're set for the last day being June 25th, which is Thursday. Right now, you know, we don't have reason to have to necessarily consider that, but I at least want you knowing that that may be something that has to come back to the committee. March is a very unpredictable month, um where

041we just don't know what's going to happen. So, um wanted to just put that out there. Does that become a one-to-one uh between like Good Friday you mentioned? That brings us back to what, Friday? Or is it How does that work? Is it Is Did they stay? Correct. Say we Say, for example, we used all five dates, and we decided we were going to attend school on Good Friday. That would then bring us back a day, because we would have met the requirement. And you can't couple like two half days together to equal the whole day. Yeah. So, that that if we ever had to go in that direction, that would have to be bargained with our associations, things like that, but I just want to make sure that that's on your radar uh in

042case for some reason we needed to get there and we'll pretend that's real wood. Thanks, Peter. Welcome, Heather. Thank you. >> [clears throat] >> Thank you. Um I just wanted to join you tonight to give you a high-level overview of some of the things that we have done so far and what are some of the things that we're currently working on or thinking about as we move forward through the spring and into the summer. Um just to give you a big picture, um we started a community wellness working group back in November. Um the design of the group was focused on looking at systems and structures and supports um that we might need through this time of change and uncertainty. The makeup of that group is predominantly uh school leadership and also cross-disciplinary representation from

043the district level with some sub working groups from the elementary mental health staff, so that's psychologists and school counselors as well. Um we have relied predominantly on the information and communication structures that have been embedded within the AB Forward process. So, surveys, um the online question submission uh the the webinars that have been provided, the leadership teams, principals holding coffees with their communities to field the questions and the concerns from the community and the educators in order to for us to respond and to sort of keep um a temperature read on where we're sort of at with that kind of thing. Um and then we are also putting out information through those webinar and fort platforms, the weekly and bi-weekly updates, and then occasionally a parent square post if it's really specific and targeted toward

044um a particular event. So that's one thing that's been ongoing since November. We also recently started um following the the decision in January, we formed a community wellness advisory council um in February and have just started meeting. The design for the council is to provide some oversight and guidance for the structures that we're putting into place um from a trauma-informed lens as we work through. There is district representation on that team as well as community representation on team. It is myself um as the coordinator of SEL and mental and behavioral health, the department chair for elementary counseling at the district level, and also the nurse leader in district, Michelle Riley is a part of um that committee. On the community side, we have Dr. Jasmine Darling who is a pediatrician at Acton Medical and the

045district physician. Uh we have Stacy Swazi who's a licensed clinical social worker and a partner through Cartwheel Care, the tele our telehealth service provider. Um and Joe Ristuccia who we've been partnering with for the last few years on trauma-informed practices across the district. He is um he works out of Lesley Institute for Trauma Sensitivity and has many years of experience in supporting districts, um state organizations, uh and departments around trauma-informed practices and In children's needs. In addition to that just structurally as we move forward we have also put into our budget request for FY27 two additional elementary counselors as we work through supporting students and families into the new year. Um primarily these structures are focused on centering a trauma-informed lens through psychological safety doing system system systemic assessments tiered interventions looking at data and

046progress monitoring and maintaining and sustaining outside clinical care partnerships for our community. So I'm just going to talk about some of what we have done so far in terms of our ecological system. So starting with families we have created a AB4 community wellness webpage that QR code should link to the website. On that website we have provided guidance for families around how to support their children through uncertain times. We have the director of special education has also added specific information related to supporting students with disabilities navigating the change through through of reorganization through that lens. We have curated between a partnership between the mental health staff in the district and also leadership within the library and media department in district the books for fostering resilience and having conversations about friendship and change and transition with

047the children. And then we have extended our community mental health partnership to include Care Solace which is a referral service and they make partners they make referrals through matching insurance with mental health providers and substance use providers in the area. Um the one thing that distinguishes CareSolace, there are a few but one of the main um things that distinguishes CareSolace from our partnership with Cartwheel is that CareSolace is also extends to the entire family system so that um family members other than the student can also access those services and those referrals. Um in addition, we have added to this um the website the recordings of the Cartwheel Care webinars that sort of relate the topics that relate to organization reorganization. Um three of them have been presented this year and have gone out. Two of

048them are from previous um previous years and you can access all of those video recordings and materials through the website. In terms of leadership and mental health staff, we have done some targeted professional development this year. Uh in September, we started um and this was a K-12 um professional development opportunity. We did 13 hours of training with our mental health staff around mental health crisis interventions and responding to acute traumatic stressors in schools. This is a um set curriculum that is put up by the National Association of School Psychologists um and we had a presenter come and facilitate that workshop for us. Um it aligns with our practices that we already have in district for our district safety teams and our district crisis teams and so it was just deepening that work from the mental

049health lens. Um and then in December, we hosted a emotional intelligence workshop um with district-level administrators and also K-6 principals um to talk through how to support the staff in the community um and the students as we navigate this change while also navigating our own experiences throughout the change. Um each of these uh uh resources and presentations and the work that we're doing at the leadership level has been designed to then take back to the building level to implement with staff. And then some of those materials are also designed to then be implemented within the classroom for the students. So it's sort of um trickling down in that way. Uh for educators, we have as I just mentioned some of the um materials that have been done through we're largely using our uh staff meeting

050structures in order to for principals to do the and mental health teams to do the work with the staff. Um they we have also designed that wellness committee designed um wellness modules that can be implemented during staff meetings that target different areas. Um we have done trainings with the staff on supporting students through difficult times, looking at commas common stress reactions, and also some activities or ways to process those reactions with the students within the classroom environment. Um and also um provided some guidance and resources on responding to student questions and helping uh students process what is happening and what what we're talking about in a way that um grounds the conversation in a sense of psychological safety. And on the personal resources side for staff, we continued our partnership with Care um Cartwheel Care

051where the mental health staff can do their own self-referrals for telehealth through Cartwheel Care. Um they are also eligible for Care Solace access and referrals, and we have the employee assistance program which continues. For students, um we are looking at supporting students through the tiered model lens, looking at our using our existing structures that we have in district and the existing data in order to help identify students that may need additional levels of support. We are talking about doing something for all to support the transition. A lot of ideas have come through and been discussed here, but things like the school tours and the classroom visits and packets and digital welcomes and all of those other ideas will be universally available to all and then we're using data and structured systems to in order to

052identify who may need additional levels of support beyond that. Right now, we have our cares team which is a standing structure within all of our elementary schools comprised of the building leadership, the building mental health staff, and the school nurse, and the special education coordinator identifying students who may need additional supports and then the mental health staff are working through assessing some of those risk factors and the level that those risk factors are currently or have impacted in the past the child within the learning environment. Some of those key buckets that are listed there on the slide that you can see, those translate into several different spaces that we're considering in terms of the evaluation process. As we identify students who do need more, we will be looking at developing structured transition plans for some

053for some students pretty significant intensive and transition plans. Those plans will be developed in collaboration with the mental health staff, the administration, and the educators, and also with the families and anything that we would put into place a family would have say on whether the components that we are implementing or not. Um in addition to that model, we are also continuing with Cartwheel Care Services for our students and um Care Solace access for our students. Um Looking forward, these are some of the things that we are either just starting to talk about or have on our to-do list, but we have been I think Pierre had mentioned last week that we Jen Faber was work started working with the principals. We met with the principals around some of the school closure. We provided some resources

054that were produced by Cartwheel around activities that you can do with the educators and then with the students. We're talking about school celebrations and how to do that way that both brings closure and bridges to hope for the future. We're considering and exploring having listening circles for families that choose to opt in with a licensed mental health provider in the spring through our partnership with Cartwheel Care and then the individual transition planning which you know, I just sort of highlighted for you where we are in the process with that. In addition, we also have Alex Hershberger who's working with our staff and will continue to work with our staff through next year around escalate de-escalation and regulation strategies within the classroom environment. Um and I lost the last thing I was going to say. Oh,

055and we're going to be looking at data metrics and how we're going to be monitoring going forward in the fall how the transition is going for individual students. Happy to take any questions. Yeah. Glenn. Thank you for this and I'm glad we as a district and as a committee are taking wellness seriously to support our students. Um So you mentioned some excellent things looking at data metrics, progress monitoring, listening circles for family sounds like a great idea. Uh supporting staff and supporting community and cultivating psychological safety. I When was the last AB staff wellness survey? I'd like to know that. The staff wellness survey? Correct. We took feedback from the most recent survey that Peter did around some of the concerns that staff currently have as it relates to the reorganization. Is that what you're

056talking about? I I remember and Peter, I think you Do you remember when I a few months ago I remember that there was one survey that I believe did get brought up there. I think it was from 2022 about how you look like you recognize something, Lisa, but I thought that was the youth risk behavior survey. Maybe that we were referencing. Okay. Oh, that was probably 2022 or 2023, I think. Okay. And that's a staff sort of like staff well-being survey. >> Yeah, that was part of what district management group had used in terms of developing the next strategy. Okay. I feel So this is a comment now and then I'll just close now. I feel it would be given the transition we're going through and the increased volatility and just the fact that we

057need to be absolutely clear that we have each other's back throughout this. I think now would be an appropriate time for another staff wellness survey. Lila? Thanks for sharing some of this. Um I was curious if you might not know specifics now, but if you could add any kind of color to the piece around kind of data monitoring as the year progresses and what that might look like. Yeah, so it's a very high-level right now because we haven't unpacked all of the different structures that we're going to implement for the transition plan. Um, foundationally though, we'll be pulling from what we already have in place. So, we already monitor student success and transition annually based on um, the DESSA screener that we do in October with the students. We look at school attendance and um,

058school refusal patterns. We look at disciplinary patterns. We look at nurse visits. Um, so we'd be looking at those metrics in addition to whatever supports we're putting in place in terms of this specific event. Thank you. Lisa. I just wanted to quickly say thank you for all of the work that you and the rest of the team are doing. It sounds like there's quite a number of people that are um, working collaboratively together to support students and staff. So, I just wanted to say thank you. Um, the uh, work that you're doing is quite extensive and um, it just sounds like it's no small feat. So, thank you so much. I wanted to ask about the emotional intelligence building workshop. That was something that piqued my interest. What happens at an emotional intelligence building workshop?

059What was a highlight or something maybe they enjoyed? So, the focus of that it was it was based out of it was rooted in Dan Goleman's work. Um, and so the focus of that was sort of us being able to identify our own triggers and our own responses. Um, some of the strategies that we use in order to put a pause in place when we need to before we respond and sort of manage our own responses to our own feelings before we're supporting others. Um, and then we focused a lot on communication and aligning our communication framework and how we're communicating with our staff and our schools and our students in order to make sure that we are validating and not minimizing anybody's any parties reaction while also laying a foundation of hope for the

060future. So. That's incredible. Thank you and thank you especially for all the work that you're doing. Again, I can't thank you enough. So many thank yous and I really appreciate it. Thank you. So I really appreciated how you showed using the MTSS framework as the way that you're identifying what we need to do for every student and where we need to um identify students that need more support and how we can do that. Um, I also really appreciated hearing the way you're thinking about bringing families into this. Um this is all much more extensive than I think I ever even imagined could be possible when we first started talking about this and I know I am certainly hearing a lot of the anxiety and worries that are that are out there as we're still you

061know in this period that feels very very uncertain and knowing that you are bringing all of this together and that you're here for our students and our families and our educators really means a lot. So thank you. Thank you. Okay. Glenn You've Yes, and you've already done one. So what I'm going to tell you for the rest of the evening is start with your one. We're not we can't do loops on everything and still get through everything under four hours. Go ahead. I'm done. Okay. Thanks Heather. All right, so we're next going to move on to Dellinger Red's presentation. Nick Stalton is going to come up and join us and while Nick's getting settled, um I'm going to observe that we've heard a lot of questions about how this process is working. Um and I'm

062going to tell you how I understand it and then Nick is going to correct me on anything that I get wrong with my understanding. But um effectively this is an iterative process. So Dellinger put together an initial set of scenarios, put those out for um for comment at the same time that those were coming into the school committee. And so we're bringing together what we hear from our community and then we're seeing it as a school committee and figuring out how do we take this and then align it with what goals we have from the systematic perspective um and bring it all together. And so it's interesting to think that um sometimes what bubbles up as the majority results in in a questionnaire which may or may not reflect complete understanding of the question is

063not necessarily what we're going to take as and then say that's what we want to put into it. It's an interaction. It is a data point and we also bring in the goals that we have set as a school committee for what we want to get through this process. Um that iteration is going to continue to iterate um all the way up through April 9th when we are planning to um make our final vote. But just letting everybody know that we are not at a final place. We are still taking input. We are still figuring out as a as a committee what the right system level perspective is that keeps our excellent schools excellent and awesome and also makes it work into a sustainable future. So, Nick, I'll turn it over to you and you

064can tell me where I got that wrong. Thank you. And good evening, everybody. And you pretty much got that right. I'll go into a little bit more detail in terms of process, but pleasure to be back and I appreciate your all's time. As you sort of mentioned, I appreciate that this process is challenging. I believe I told the superintendent when we started this is you're just you're essentially the whole process of AB Forward is going to happen again because at the end of the day we're now making it personal in regards to where students and families well, really students are where they're going to be going. So, I do appreciate that. I do want to emphasize all of the feedback to include emails, surveys, conversations, email back and forth, conversations with the school committee, and

065conversations now are all encompassed and incorporated into the iteration process. We'll get into what it you know, what feedback we've already incorporated into the scenarios and we'll dive a little bit deeper to that as we proceed forward. In terms of who we are, like I said, we're just a Connecticut-based nonprofit that helps usually schools, districts, and nonprofits wrestle with a lot of complicated problems, especially through the use of data. We are partnered with the regional school district in designing sustainable elementary attendance boundaries to support AB Forward. In terms of the agenda for this evening, we'll just do a quick project update. We are going to go through some data points from the last meeting. We had some really good conversation again just trying to understand and better build out where we're going. We will go

066into the revised scenarios four and five and then really focus our attention in terms of what is going to what this process, to your point, is going to look like over the next 2 weeks. I have a proposal, but obviously would love the school committee's feedback. So, in terms of the project to date, we've met with you all twice. This is our third time. We have one have met with uh parent webinar once on February 3rd and we will be doing so again next week on the 10th, uh in which we'll be going through some of this data as well as answering questions, concerns from uh the community. We've been meeting regularly with the district. Uh emails have started to pick up pace, and so uh for the school committee, um just for the frame

067of reference, if the email is addressed to the school committee, I will allow you to all respond to it. I will not respond. But usually I've received a good 30 to 40 emails um in regards to address to me, and I do go back and forth with them usually fairly regularly. Uh in terms of the participation uh in the webinar, like we had said, it's 150. First survey, we saw uh 1,249 responses. Second survey, uh in terms of again taking that feedback about defining some of the the words that we're using, and really trying to get specific in terms of the information we're gathering, uh we've uh we're up to about 460 now, and we're continuing to uh receive uh responses. In terms of the data analysis, uh we continue to iterate on both our

068understanding of uh where uh the folks are across the district in terms of different modeling, along with uh trying to project out future uh moves of different uh community members, as well as um understanding special education needs, um and other again utilization capacity numbers across the the schools. And then finally, we are in the process of uh continuing to iterate uh beyond the first three scenarios to now four and five. All right, so jumping into last meeting, uh we did have a good conversation around the decision points, and I think this gets to the part of some of the comments and some of the emails that I've been hearing in regards to uh the walk zones and uh the bussing and the Blanchard, right? So, if you remember last uh week, when we showed scenarios

0691 through 3, one of the biggest issues we saw was that uh the utilization, again, the number of students that are filling out uh Blanchard was significantly lower than the other uh schools. That was a point of concern for many community members. Um and so part of this, when we're thinking about how we're approaching this work, and I think which is also part of the consternation of that first survey was you can't have everything. So, if you're going to achieve utilization, you have to give up something else. And that is inherently the trade-off challenge that we see when we do scenarios like this. Um and that's just the nature of redistricting. So, in this case, we went ahead talked to you all and had asked to help prioritize where we were going uh to the

070top three again, core continuity, school capacity, and hometown priority were in and still at the top of the game of what has to be accomplished through this this work. I did take the opportunity to reorganize slightly in order of priority the following set of decision points. Balance student demographics, I think it was at the top of most of your all's list. I can tell you from the community it was at top of their list as well in regard besides for walk zones, uh was top because at the end of the day from the open open enrollment perspective, you were able to achieve that to a fair degree, and I know that was a hallmark of Acton-Boxborough's student experience. And so, we have sort of prioritized that as being the big focus. Walk zones, and and

071I will sort of reframe this to be neighborhoods that are within walking distance of the school should be prioritized to go to that school. And we've identified that, and so as we get to the scenarios, you'll see we we did really try to focus on that. A couple points, there will not be a perfect 1-mi radius around each school. That is kind of the challenge that we're facing, as well as sort of understanding and I'm still getting mixed signals here in terms of what is a safe walk zone and what is not a safe walk zone. And so, again when we're thinking about some of the major arteries and thoroughfares, our understanding from some of the feedback is those are not too safe, and so maybe we're not prioritizing that to we're just getting information.

072That is secondary to just trying to make I think the balancing of all the schools work. Then we look to recognize neighborhoods, future enrollment trends, and then contiguous zones as the fifth priority. Again, none of these are being ignored, but we are trying to prioritize how we develop the scenarios. In terms of the population projections, uh had some good conversation in terms of trying to think more critically about what can we know to be true in regards to the next 5 to 10 years. So, part of what we had talked about last meeting was around the idea that demographic So, overall, Acton, I would say, like many other towns, goes through different life cycles, if you will. And these are really for specific neighborhoods as well. But, the idea is that you have a young

073set of family, you have a whole bunch of kids, the parents in the family start to grow, and as time goes on, those neighborhoods start to age. Kids grow up, they leave the school system, and now you're in sort of a neighborhood that is more uh slanted towards the older demographics. There's not too many kids. Eventually, they hate the weather, and they don't like the snow, and they move away. And so, now you have a flip, as we like to call it, of the demographics, where instead of the older generation, you have new families coming in, and so thus the cycle begins again, where now you're sort of expecting the idea that kids will start to populate. And so, you could see ebbs and flows within specific either neighborhoods, zip codes, or as we like

074to look at it, census block groups. So, part of this was trying to understand by section around Acton where those quote-unquote neighborhood flips would happen. Um as we did this, we did access census, ACS, which is publicly available survey data, and we tried to marry that up with enrollment data as well. So, just in terms of our data constraints, we only had 8 years of student address data, which is probably more specific in regards to student movement, parent movement, and sort of that life cycle, but it was still helpful in terms of what we were trying to accomplish. Um so to that point, what we ended up doing uh was sort of approaching it from this perspective. When we looked at the past 10 years worth of data, so that was 2014 to 20 2015

075to 2019 and 2020 to 2024. Nope, other way around, sorry. 2016 to 2020, 2021 to 2025. There's two Those are two broad segments of the census data that we were able to leverage. And so what we were able to do was look at sort of the trends in regards to both uh demographic distribution, so 65 and older, 35 to 44, 20s, 50s, etc. And actually more importantly, the medium median age of that specific area. And so what we found, generally speaking, in Acton is that once a specific area hits to hits an average age of about 50 to 51, the neighborhood flipping process starts. And so when we saw, and I'll go into some of the data, what we saw was in some areas you hit 50 and then the next time they took a

076measurement, the average age dropped by 10 to 15 years, which suggests a lot of people moved out and a lot of younger people moved in. Adding to that, we kind of did some broad analysis. Acton-Boxborough in general has essentially stayed flat since 2020. So it was 29,500 in 2020, it was 29,364 in 2025, and it's projected to be just that, 29,500 or 300 in 2030. So overall, you're not seeing a huge influx of new or an additional set of families. Households essentially stayed the same to about 11,000 has remained to is this is assumed to be projected to stay stable as well. Like I pointed out before, that flipping of that neighborhood flip in in essence starts at age 50. Um and what we were looking for is ultimately when we saw or we were

077anticipating that an age uh group would switch from 50 to say 40, two things can be true in this regard. One is you could have a bunch of 20-year-olds who are young as we, you know, define them, young professionals, right? They are probably young and they are probably not having kids yet. So, even though this flip has happened, you could still have another 5 years until the the enrollment starts to move considerably. You could also see on the other hand your 30-year-olds-ish kind of move into the area. They could either be ready to have kids or actually have kids. And so, that's another sort of dynamic. Now, which demographic is going to move in, that I can't tell you. That's one of the hardest things to sort of project. What's interesting is um a couple

078other pieces of flavor. Uh Acton, in comparison to Massachusetts, has um an older generation of individuals having kids. So, to put it politely, your uh women between the ages of 35 and 40, uh more than likely are having the predominant number of kids in Acton. Whereas in Massachusetts, it's usually like 30 to 35. Um add that to the overall uh fertility rate of Massachusetts, which is going down, the average household probably has about 2.6 kids. So, how do you read that? That means more than likely a family has one kid, and that's usually on average the most that they would have, which is also a difference from previous years when you saw people moving in with multiple kid families. Um so, put that all together, um what we're seeing is in what we do here

079in the next few slides is really just flag a couple different areas that are either we should anticipate a potential for having new kids, or rather an increase in enrollment, to we have some time before we start to see some movement. So, I'm going to pause there. Just any questions about what I just explained? Okay, great. So, uh we have five-ish slides here grouped into five different categories. And I same kind of thing, the shift timeline. I tried to give you a time in terms of when we think again that neighborhood flip is happening. And I do want to emphasize just because the neighbor neighborhood flip happens, there still could be an additional set of years following that before you start to see the enrollment. I give you a quick description. So, in this case,

080these three census block groups, the shift has happened. And so, these are where demographic flips have occurred or are underway. The data shows a clear pattern that the 65-plus demographic is declining while the 25 to 34 and 35 to 44 whole cohorts are growing. So, here again, you can see I've labeled each section one, two, and three. And so that you can kind of map marry to the left-hand side of the one, two, threes. So, section one, they went from 48 average age between 2015 and 2019 to 41. Again, 50 to 38 and 44 to 42. And so, ultimately, really actually kind of just cool to see that like the flip happens, the average age demographic drops, and so you know now a new set of individuals are here. Another one final piece of color

081that I wanted to add was your median home values. You guys have some expensive houses. God bless you all. And so that adds another challenge to it, too, in terms of thinking about who has the means in which to buy some of these houses. And so you have to kind of take that into account as well. And so then at the bottom, I tried to just sort of again provide that color for you in regards to what are we seeing in terms of enrollment. So, in this case, your number one section has been showing an increase of enrollment. And so what I saw in that regard was your 35 to 44 cohort actually grew the most in terms of demographics. So, that hypothesis of people are moving in with a set of kids actually probably

082is true. The other two areas though, even though the shift has either happened or is happening has not sort of born out in terms of the enrollment. The second group here is imminent or is happening. And so we are anticipating that it will happen here in the next year, two years, or three years. And so again, you have the 1 2 3 4 and then you can see that the medium age now it's approaching 50. Right? That's where we know. So I would imagine the next census block you're going to see that all drop. But as of the as of the latest poll, we don't think the flip has officially happened yet. I provided you with the medium home values. And then in this case, excuse me, you have a decrease in enrollment in three

083out of the four. And again, that's section four, which is right on the border of Boxborough and Acton, is showing that increase of enrollment. Your next group are the three to five years. This is where again, you're starting to see that increase in age, but they still have a couple of years until they get to that 50-51 mark. Again, I won't read through all the stats, but you can kind of see the but again, here's the interesting part, right? You're seeing an enrollment increase. Here I would imagine is you're getting the tail end of that 35 to 44 age group coming in and you're starting to bear the fruits, so to speak, of that population. Finally, 5 to 10 years, you have, as it were, an a young cohort at the moment. 43, 38, 43,

08438. And so ultimately it's going to be probably another 10 years before the flip happens. I would anticipate that some of these areas potentially could start to show some enrollment shifts, but as of what we're seeing right now, that is not happening. And then finally, these last groups, this census block was broken up into two. And so ultimately we do not have previous year 2015 to 2019 data. So we just provided you with the color of they're currently in their mid-40s, give or take, along with again some interesting fluctuations in regards to their current enrollment. So, how would I look at this? Generally speaking, I was trying to basically understand, ideally, to the point of from the conversation last time was where again these areas are. And I think the big important point is you

085can see that there's no concentration of one particular area. And so, they have and are split across a lot of the different scenarios that we've created. Finally, expanding the Blanchard zone. This will be a point of conversation for sure. And it was indicated by one of the gentlemen talking about the blue zone and the red zone. So, what we wanted to highlight here was again during last meeting, it was identified in last a lot of the feedback, they we wanted to add more individuals to Blanchard. So, initially, if you look at scenarios 1 through 3, the uh green zone that has 45 students, was originally had chosen. It was chosen because it was on the border. It was a self-contained neighborhood that we could isolate, and it was closest to Blanchard. So, and generally speaking,

086it's hard to sort of convey, and I've had a couple people recommend, why don't you use the satellite zone farther away? And so, to the point of travel times and whatnot, I don't know why one would be better than the other, only that this neighborhood is closer. And so, from that perspective, that was sort of the decision-making process at this time. In the event that we did want to increase utilization at Blanchard, we had to add more kids. But, two constraints, we had to have the right number of kids, which is around 50 to 60, and it has to be in a self-contained neighborhood. We do not want to cut up neighborhoods. So, as was identified, we ended up going towards the blue zone. Part of the challenge, which a lot of people did identify,

087is that blue zone is dangerously close to Boardwalk, which gets into the walk zones. So, again, as we start to think about the tradeoffs, right? Is it more important to maximize Blanchard realization, or is it more important to kind of preserve that walk zone? So, knowing that this was going to be sort of a decision point, what we did was say, "Okay, well, what if, you know, instead of going to the north, why couldn't we just cut to the east and go into the red zone?" That red zone, I think, has two entryways. So, you're talking about a very large neighborhood. And I think what people sort of misconceive sometimes is the sheer number of kids that are in the neighborhoods. We've had some individuals kind of write like, "Hey, I only have like five

088kids in my neighborhood." And that is just not entirely the case, given the data that we have. So, here what we identified was is that the red uh neighborhood is, arguably, too big to add on to yellow. But, what you could do is, instead of doing yellow and blue, you could just do the red. And now you're sort of in the position of which neighborhood do you, quote and quote, want to choose to have to make that move to Blanchard. And so, we'll go into this in further detail uh after we review the scenarios, but this we wanted to And there are further slides in the appendix, as well, that kind of detail out each uh significant area, but this is the sort of process uh that we're working through when we detail out um

089the how and the what's of what neighborhood should be moved to uh what school. All right. So, we'll jump into the scenarios, unless there's any questions. Excellent. All right. Okay, great. So, uh in terms of the scenario objectives, these have not changed. Uh we are trying to prioritize stability to the best of our ability And I would say this to the best of our ability, given the situation. Uh we do want to have representative classrooms, cohesive communities, and safe and accessible routes. Uh like we had mentioned before, we are utilizing the 25-26 student residency as a modeling tool in which to sort of map out what scenario can best support uh the Acton-Boxborough district as a whole. Uh again, these are not final decisions. These are still being iterative and they're used to sort of

090help again test these trade-offs. Um I do want to identify and at the bottom, uh building on your feedback, um to the point which I think people are like, "Are you really listening to us?" Yeah, absolutely we are. Um and I'll kind of read this out. We have synthesized community feedback to prioritize demographic balance, which you'll see in the next set of scenarios, which I think truly achieve that. More equitable utilization across the elementary schools. We heard from everybody that Blanchard should have a higher utilization. And so, we absolutely did that, but I'm going to tell the community, if you're listening, to do that, kids from Acton have to go to Blanchard. Uh but that is there's no ifs, ands, or buts about that. And then we focused on maintaining neighborhoods within 1 mile of

091their respective schools. It did not mean we nailed it completely, um given the constraints of some of the other uh decision points that we're trying to achieve, but I feel like these scenarios do achieve a better representation of uh that walkability uh across the schools. So, as was indicated, uh scenario four, uh this is as we dubbed it the north-south scenario, where uh Parker uh Damon would be north, uh Board Walk campus would be south. And as we had sort of detailed out before, I tried to provide a couple different considerations on the left-hand side. And so, in this case, uh we did successfully with the increase of that uh Bock uh the Blanchard zone into Acton, we were able to achieve a 96% utilization at Blanchard. And then across the other two buildings, we

092had again between 91 and 99%. Part of what we heard in terms of how we're moving uh special education programs to Board Walk, we wanted to make sure that Board Walk was on average slightly lower than the other two schools, given that we knew more students, given the special education programs, would have to be coming and moved over there. Um larger portions of Acton zone to Blanchard here and the LEP population uh in Acton is skewed more towards Parker. Uh the racial and ethnic distribution is better than the baseline, but not ideal. And I'll go into that in a second. So, here again I tried to color code everything in terms of what we were able to achieve green, what we kind of were able to achieve yellow, and then what we weren't able to

093achieve. And so, in this case when we think about these this scenario, there is some high growth areas in the south and so that is really predominantly put on to Boardwalk. And a lot of the other areas that we are seeing declines are is a more focused in Parker Damon. In terms of balancing student demographics, we kind of put that in yellow because you'll see in here in a minute there is still variation across different schools. Again, the recognized neighborhoods I'm going to say is to be determined. Again, we have put out an interactive web app which we've actually received an incredible amount of response already within the past 24 hours. And so, that is really the tool we're going to use to try to identify how we're doing in terms of keeping neighborhoods together.

094So, again a lot of data here in regards to how it all plays out. I do want to bring sort of to your attention to the percent LEP column which does seem to be the trickiest student demographic to balance out. What we're seeing is that your lower schools like we've talked about before will have on average higher percentages of LEPs. That's to be expected in comparison to the uppers. But so, what I'm really interested in is how do the three lowers compare? And what we started to do going forward is we actually took even though Blanchard is a K-6 to help create the accurate comparison, we did break out their K-3 and 4-6. So, in this case for percent LEP, you can see that 14%, 10%, and 24% as compared to Boardwalk and Parker Damon

095does sort of represent a fairly significant shift between the three schools. I'll also bring your attention to the the uh population and the percent white population does have a little bit of a I won't say significant variation cuz I think in baseline you see it worse off. That was one of the reasons why when I color coded I color coded it yellow. There is variation, but it's actually technically better than baseline. And so from that perspective I I would see that as a win. Uh again, as you can see here, we did try to uh really focus on the walk zones and so those are detailed out as well. The biggest concern here for the walk zone is as was indicated the southwest portion of the Boardwalk campus, which is in within I believe one

096of the parents said 0.7 mi, um is rerouted to uh Blanchard. And that was does really sort of conflict in that zone. Uh in terms of the historical enrollment, again, we just give it to you as if uh or what it would have been if the scenario four had been in existence the entire time. We kind of flagged for you, you know, the the Boardwalk campus is significantly showing an increase in population where your uh Parker Damon is really showing a decrease in population. All right. So then there's scenario five, which we dubbed the east-west scenario. Um and in this case uh again, zones, we kept the same exact zone structure for Blanchard, uh and then the utilization in my mind is better uh from the perspective of it we still achieve 96% at Blanchard

097and now we're at between about a 93 and a 98% uh balance between the other two campuses. Um a large portion of Acton-Liberty as I talked about before is zoned to Blanchard. And then in this case, when it comes to the racial ethnic distribution in the LEP population, um you can't I I don't want to say I I won't say you can't get better than this, but this right now is truly I think one of the best uh scenarios that we have so far. And part of this in terms of what we were happy with is up in the north when we were looking at the distribution of LEP and low socioeconomic status, it was brought to our attention in terms of using satellite uh zones that you could run into the problem of if

098you have different students who have high mobility, meaning they're moving fairly regularly, you could easily have a situation where they are moving and then now they're falling out of their zone because of where they have to stay locally and so now they have to go to a different school. And that resonated with me when we talked about it and so in this case as we're thinking about how the boundary runs north to south, we did try to kind of cut the major strip in half so that you now have two fairly sizable blocks of populations that people can sort of move around in without falling out of their current school boundary. So in this case, as you can see, we've achieved a lot of good things. We really nailed the student demographics in this regard

099and I'll show you that in a second. The school capacity, cohort continuity is all there. Future enrollment trends really does do a better job of breaking out the different zones that we've had across both boundaries. The walk zones again are in yellow because of that southeast portion of uh Acton that's getting pushed to Blanchard, but we did continue to have contiguous zones and really, like I said, address that future enrollment trends. So here, again, really hard to see, but I'll point out that the LEP percentage across the three lowers 14, 17, and 17%. I mean, that's basically equal across the board. If you look at the racial demographics, they are almost equal across the board as well, which is significantly better than what you had before. And then if you look at the special education

100percentage, you do have slight variation here, but that is to be expected as we sort of play out a little bit, but definitely not out of, I would say, what the baseline is in terms of what we tried to accomplish. And so all in all, you know, again, thinking about that student demographic experience and that representation, it's going to be it's going to be, Yeah, not saying we won't try, but it's going to be really hard to sort of achieve a better result than this. In terms of the walk zones, so in this case outside of the southeast, there is the north Sorry, southwest portion of Boardwalk. In terms of the northeast portion of Parker, you can see that there's that little cut off that now is being allocated to Boardwalk. We have heard from

101a couple people about their children biking also and or being able to walk. So that's sort of a tricky piece where again around the margins based on the interactive web app feedback that we can receive, we might be able to play around the margins here in terms of moving a couple of the borders left or right. In terms of the historical enrollment, again a little bit more balanced in terms of what we're seeing and not seeing too huge of an increase or decrease. So you did all ask in terms of thinking about it from the context of okay, if we did this scenario, how many kids would move? As is indicated, we would have including Conan, you would have 68% of students across the district have to move buildings. If you don't include Conan, it's

10252%. And so here very subtly you can see we use scenario five as an example. And so what you're seeing in terms of the red and the yellow is the distribution of students who have to move buildings. And so what the reason why, and I hope this is sort of what you were looking for, is it's just indicative of the fact that there is not much you can do in terms of how kids are going to have to move buildings given the fact that you're switching from a K6 model to a K3 or 4 46 model. All right, so this is in the thoughts and we'll push this out as well, but this I would encourage everybody to please log into this. This is a interactive map for you to dive into the street level

103to the address level. It'll tell It'll show you with the scenario five overlay where your what boundary you're in, so you can get down to the granular level. It allows you to highlight specific areas and provide feedback for that specific area. You can do it as many times as you want. And it's helpful for if you're saying, well, I think this is the neighborhood or this road is really bad. It really helps just provide that kind of clarity in terms of what we're looking for. So, I would encourage everybody to please take a minute and fill it out. So, I'm I'm going to open it up for conversation, but I kind of wanted to bring this up and this is sort of my sort of pitch, I guess, to the school committee. Um I really

104do feel passionately that scenario five is probably one of the best scenarios we're going to get out of this whole process. Again, I'm not saying that we won't iterate if I don't hear otherwise, and I'm not saying that scenario five can't be tweaked specifically around some of the borders around the walk zones, etc. But, at the end of the day, we have to be careful in regards to the idea that we can continue to kind of like iterate and do a couple different iterations on the scenarios, but and hint, this is probably not something I'm telling you that's a big surprise, there are actually four huge areas that deserve your attention that will actually, in my opinion, be a little bit more important at this moment in time to help shape the final set of

105scenarios. So, the first one is the Acton-Boxborough agreement in terms of ensuring compliance with the AB regional agreement, and we'll go into that here in a second on what that means. Second is about the expanding the Blanchard zone. No matter what we do, we have to explain expand the Blanchard zone, and so nobody's going to like any scenario I give if we don't have a an agreed upon way that we want to approach that. We had talked briefly about flex zones, and I have a slide for each of these, which we'll go into, but flex zones both can do two things: establish flexible attendance zones for the future, but can actually help establish attendance policies for the now. And I sort of see that as a potential idea and how we want to think about

106them. And then grandfather legacy, you know, part of this is just ensuring that we are all completely understanding what if any type of uh grandfather or legacy option we will do going forward. So, in terms of the AB regional agreement uh through some emails uh back and forth and I know the school committee got it as well. Um, if you're interested, it's on the website. Uh, section 3 D and E. Uh, there were some a lot of questions that came up in regards to um well, if the agreement says this, uh how do we move forward with the AB forward? And so, um uh there was a legal uh review uh and I believe that is included in the packet. And so, to to sort of answer I think a lot of questions, there was

107some concern if you read uh section D. And I'll just kind of pull out one sentence. As of July 1st, 2019, the first option described in the preceding two sentences will continue unless the option is altered by the regional school committee. And so, the legal review basically indicated that the reorganization does not violate the first provision because the regional agreement expressly permits alteration of the first option model by vote of the regional school committee, which the committee exercised when it approved the reorganizational plan. So, essentially, and I'm no lawyer, but you know, ultimately at the end of the day, your vote to move to forward with AB forward essentially uh satisfied the first requirement of section D. In terms of section E, it says school transportation shall be provided by the regional school district for

108all eligible students residing in the member towns who are enrolled in the district. Uh, I talked with the district. Uh, the district has confirmed students will continue to receive transportation regardless of the proximity of the school. So, even though you might be 2 ft away from the school, you will be assigned a bus and you will have the option to take the bus if you want. So, just so that we're all on the same page in regards to uh that moving forward. Please. Just one other comment on that. I also talked to um one of the licensed daycare providers and child care providers in the community and also confirmed for them our intent is to continue to provide the transportation to licensed child care facilities as well. That's consistent with school committee policy, so our

109intent is to keep our transportation policies around who qualifies for transportation and where consistent. Thank you. Uh so this section is really just meant to uh it's been clarified and I think as long as we understand this and the community understand this and we can continue to speak, you know, with one voice that this is how uh the situation is understood, I think that will sort of help uh the process moving forward. Uh again, this is the exact same uh graph as before, but it's really to emphasize the does it make sense to identify other areas for action for consideration, right? So we could leave it and again, I part of what I should have said earlier is my recommendation is if scenario five is where we want to at least really ground, I think

110our understanding right now, uh the next two meetings provide us with an opportunity to dive deeper into these specific areas. So in terms of thinking about the Blanchard zone, again, there is about 100 kids that need to move And and I think what's important for folks to understand too is I'm going to really be deliberate here. The plan needs to outlive the next 6 years, right? So regardless of how people feel now about them their kids moving, 6 years from now, the situation still will remain, they won't have kids that have to move anymore, and so the situation has to be sustainable in that regard. Then separately, there is also a decision point about how do we manage the current students and their experiences now. Two separate conversations. So that's one of the reasons why

111I'm saying scenario five, scenario six, scenario 10, whatever the case may be, is going to be impacted by this specific uh decision, irregardless of if kids are currently there or not. So that truly has to be made because no matter what scenario I put out following this, people are going to be mad at this, and so the you all, I think, need to really kind of establish how you want to approach of uh this going forward. And it would really help me in terms of finalizing that last scenario. Okay, in terms of the flex zones, we did ask on this last scenario. And again, I'm sorry, the last survey. If you're interested in how the other survey questions played out, please go down below into the appendix. I just didn't want to spend time kind

112of reiterating that. But basically one of the interesting pieces that I was interested in was understanding where the community felt was an important piece of when we're defining a flex zone. So, I'll sort of I won't belabor this or read it, but I'll show you right here in terms of the highest numbered support was the sibling preference, which was ensuring all children in a family attend the same school. I took all of this input. I took some of my own research and my own thinking, and I took the opportunity to sort of develop what I would call a draft set of uh reason draft set of definitions when it came to the flex zone. Again, this is something you all have to I think grapple with and then come to a decision and agreement across

113the school committee yourself. But for those that, you know, are listening, what I had sort of suggested, especially given some of the feedback I had, was that our flex zones are specific geographical regions that will only apply to students living within a specific designated region. I will say that region can be the entire Acton-Boxborough area or not, you know, it can be anything you want it to be. But it's a definition in and of itself. Apply only to new students, those entering kindergarten or moving into the district. Have a designated base school. Only may be activated when a school school reaches 95% capacity. Now, I I would like to say, especially being from the military, there's a difference between may and shall, right? So, may, even if a school hits 95%, the district could choose

114to not implement it. Ensure all children within a single household attend the same campus regardless of the zone flex status. Be utilized to maintain a diverse mix of student backgrounds across all campuses, preventing the concentration concentration of disadvantage in any single building, and then be subject to an annual review by the school committee to adjust for evolving neighborhood demographic trends and neighborhood flips. So again, this cannot be I think a stagnant zone, but more one that kind of evolves with the district as a whole. Again, I don't expect you to decide on this tonight, but I do feel like and again, I can be the one to facilitate or you all, whatever you want. These are the kind of meaty conversations we need to go into in terms of the next meeting. And then finally

115implementation, when we think about implementation, this is a I think an oversimplification. I had a conversation with the superintendent earlier today and in retrospect I wish I could have changed this slightly, but in you know, from a broad perspective, right? When we're thinking about just implementation, everybody can move all at once. You can establish grade legacy enrollments, right? I just want the sixth graders to stay where they are and and move forward from there. Or you could have geographical legacy enrollment. I would also say too, I think given the uh given the unique nature of Acton Boxborough, there's other different types of policies, regional policies, or thinking about how towns are sharing that we could also implement as well. This is really left to our own imagination and devices, but it's something again that I

116think we need to codify so that people understand it when we're going to vote on the scenario because people like to not like to, but people will conflate the two options and that kind of prevents and makes for a very difficult decision as we move forward. All right, so I kind of blew through that. I apologize, but again just to restate, my suggestion would be next meeting I do not come with a scenario six, but I come with let's talk through the flex zones, the the Blanchard zone expansion, and the implementation plan to codify those before getting to the final scenario. Any questions? All right, so why don't we do questions? Before we do that, I also want to ask is there are there is there any specific feedback that you need from us now?

117Are there any comments that you also would want to hear right now? I would appreciate your thoughts on how you want to use the next two meetings. That would be helpful. Okay, so let's do a round of questions first. One round of questions and then we can have that conversation see where we go from there. Who wants to start off? Start here, Lisa? Thank you so much for all of the work that you've done. There's a lot and you did lay it all out in such a clear concise way. It made it so easy for me to look at everything and understand it. So, that was great. When I obviously scenario five stands out as you know the the golden child here with you know it it's checking all the boxes. I really appreciated socioeconomic

118status and special needs and all of the different um all of the different ways that were you know making sure that there's balance throughout the buildings uh taken into consideration. So, that was really important. Um I just want to note not for you but just for anyone listening and watching that the reason that there's a difference between the upper and the lower for each of the schools is the fact that we've seen this major shift in enrollment over the years and because of those changes that's resulted in a higher number of limited English proficiency students and uh lower income. So, that's just an aside for anyone listening. The question that I had for you was when I was looking at scenario five and ways to possibly possibly tweak it. Um I appreciated the the blue

119and the red and the um the different ways. So, it looked like red could be um used independently to um satisfy that uh requirement for having higher utilization of Blanchard. The question that I have was how much overlap is there between that and that area that's experiencing high growth? Because I it looked like in the map that it was in a similar area. And then so then that kind of begged the question that if just that red zone was chosen instead of blue, because I just want to voice the fact that I'm a proponent of having those walk zones, and if several parents are saying, "Hey, no, if I'm in the blue, and I would want my kids to walk or ride their bikes or whatever to school." Um I'm a proponent of that. So,

120just with red, would it require if that was used independently to bring Blanchard to 96% utilization, would that require a shift in the other lines, and would that impact a lot of those numbers in terms of uh the demographic balance? excellent question. So, in the uh appendix, you'll see that we broke out each region and tried to give you a color uh or flavor in regards to how their enrollment is changing. And so, you can see that the overall size of the K-3 population has been increasing. And so, ultimately, you should anticipate that that uh zone will increase in size, uh probably in the coming years. Um from a demographic uh perspective, uh one of I would have to sort of I think run the numbers. Uh I don't think it would drastically affect uh

121it off the top of my head, but I'll kind of get you an answer on that. I don't think it would drastically affect the the the way um Blanchard and the two other schools change that much, but I'll get an answer on that. Yeah, I think my question was also for that those increasing numbers, and then thank you for those charts, was more of from a sustainability perspective, and wanting to draw something that's going to last for as many years as possible. So, I think I was just trying to gauge how likely or how soon, and I know you're looking at a lot of data, and this could be a very tough question, or maybe it's very easy for you. This is not my area of expertise. Um >> [gasps] >> you know, does that

122endanger the or put into jeopardy the potential of the sustainability, you know, because of that. I think that's what I was trying to figure out and if there was some metric for, you know, determining that and that way we could have more informed, Love that. I'll get you a specific answer on both. Wanted to give you a second to write. Oh, thank you. I'm sorry. Your your desk wobbles a lot and so it's like uh Yeah, no, thank you. Pencil, please. So, I appreciate this very comprehensive, um, packet and I agree with Lisa that I am also leaning more toward, um, you know, tweaking of the option five. One concern that I do have because I I feel that a lot of the parent that parents who are within the walkability of a building feel

123as passionately about that as the Boxborians do about being able to go to Blanchard. And so, what I would love to see cuz even that red zone dips a little bit into a walkable area. So, kind of what I'm wondering is if there's any flexibility where we'd still be able to have something comparable but going up north where those kids are most likely going to be bused or driven anyway because it's completely not walkable. There were a couple of census blocks, um and I know that the most, like if you go to the one if you go to the slide that shows the different, um, census data, I think it was the green census data. You know, so there's sort of a little bit I wonder if there's some opportunity, you know, that first white

124one and then maybe dipping up into, um, the larger green one that's along the upper border of Acton. I will >> could be potentially be comparable and then because I I feel more protective of keeping our, you know, walkable areas. Totally. The issue I might have with that Hold on one second cuz that's the one Yeah, I guess. So, um yeah, that's the special education. >> if it winds up shifting, you know, maybe Boardwalk has to go a little bit more here, you know, even if that winds up shifting, I just want to, you know, hopefully if it's not that big of an issue, maybe we can creep a little bit northward to incorporate into into the Blanchard building. From my understanding is that as you go more north, especially on the northern boundary of

125Acton, that is a significant walking neighborhood. Um and so you can see the the population density right there that's just north of Boardwalk. We'll look into that, but I'm 99% confident that my colleague Katie did look into that and that was almost a no-go in regards to how many kids would be affected that were in uh walking boundaries in terms of being able to get that 100 kids basically. But I I can definitely double-check that and uh confirm. Thank you. Thanks, Katie. Uh thanks a lot, Nick, for everything you've done with this. It was a full fire hose here and there was a lot of so much your presentation. I'm sure it's going to be hard for us all to speak to everything. I did have a couple of concerns. That Blanchard nub that goes

126in to Acton, um the area on Summer Street up to West Acton seems You got it. It's the 5645, the blue and the green. That's actually blue, yeah. The nub that sticks through there. Um it seems like one of the things you're doing is focusing on I know you have to manage the utilization of Blanchard, but also the hometown guarantee that you're working on. That hometown guarantee goes both ways. And I know that Peter had some stuff that came through from our our lawyers about it and they talk about the word preference. But you know, it's it's law and there's two ways with contracts. There's how the contract's written, how the contract's executed, and part of it There there to be a magazine called Reader's Digest and Xerox would write an ad in every Reader's

127Digest that said, you can make a copy of a copy on a Xerox copier, but you can't make a Xerox of a Xerox on a Xerox. And that speaks to trademark law that if you don't protect what you do, the how you execute your your ownership defines whether you're able to protect something. Um, our enrollment policies as it stands right now uses at Hometown Guarantee, the word guarantee. It's in our enrollment. It's um, kindergarten enrollment. Uh, it's section 4E, I think. And I think it's important for us to be able to remember that there's other ways of being able to talk. And the last thing I want anybody here to have to deal with is outside lawyers coming in and complaining if we take this away. Um, so I'm I'm I'm curious about trading the

128respect for Boston or for Boxborough's guarantee with the respect for Acton's guarantee and how we manage that. A couple of other we talked about walkability a bit and there is a difference between the way the crow flies and the way that it's safe. And I don't know if you've had a chance to be able to explore our roads and see how the difference of what it's like to be in these areas cuz I think that could be really helpful to inform what's going on. Um, the north-south versus east-west. Had some calls from some people in in the community, um, who were talking about how north-south is how the state recognizes us with our representation. And that that representation of north-south basically on either side of Route 2 is has some contiguity that is beyond just

129the district. And I don't know if there's a way of being able to implement that as well. It seems that that's aligned to our representation. And of course, can you sorry, build out that point just a bit? >> 2, the red line that goes through there, uh, North Acton South Acton have different representatives in our state legislature. And so there's there's outside legislation, the outside representation, which again could cause issue. [snorts] Um, and I know we had a number of folks come in here tonight. We've had a lot of emails and I know we had a lot of conversations at Stop & Shop and everybody's really talking about this. Um about the tradeoffs between demographic quotas and the current kind of life patterns people are in. Could you speak to some of the concerns you

130were here earlier and you heard some of the people here. Could you speak to some of the concerns they've had uh about this that we've talked about as you're you're dealing with all of this? I think that'd be helpful for the community to hear how you're reacting to you know, all of the conversations that's going on. Yeah. Uh let's see where to start. So, part of So, the Blanchard piece, I think, is sort of the the quintessential challenge that we're facing right now. And you talked about the hometown guarantee, right? Let me ask you a question. If we are How do you want to hit the utilization across Blanchard without having to get Acton people to go to Boxborough? It's not so much that, it's more a matter of we are using as a reason

131to maintain Blanchard. Remember, there was Adam last week, don't mess with Boxborough. Um he said that that thing. And it we are very respectful of all the things we have to do. I'm very respectful of Boxborough. Um but I think that as we kind of swallow all of this as a community, recognizing that there's one community that's getting uh treated one way and one community that's getting treated another way can create some additional frictions. And so, talking to what we're doing there, I think, will be helpful. No, no. It's So, this is a this is a great point. So, let me say I take 50 kids from Boxborough. That's now making the problem worse. I'm going to have to take 150 kids from Acton. Like, utilization space-wise, there is literally no way to do this

132without sending some set of kids that are not Boxborough kids to Boxborough. So, that is the quintessential challenge. So, if you don't want to and I support the idea I understand why there's it's an impossibility to get this right. Nick, can can I jump in? I'm asking questions. I'm not saying a preference. No, no, no, but but you Sorry. Uh so, I've actually been thinking just about that because I think one of the things I've been thinking about is how do you create policy in a way that can apply equally and fairly to both communities and not inadvertently only apply to one and not the other. So, I actually have an idea that around implementation that I want to get your feedback on tonight because it comes with a potentially a partial solution to that

133and some of the feedback we've heard, but it also carries implications and so I actually had intended to bring that up, but I wanted you to get through this presentation first and then come back to that idea because I've been thinking about the same thing and I've been trying to reconcile how do we work through that. So, Well, I think there are a lot of policy things we need to figure out. Like the the flex zone stuff, thank you for the the stuff. That's a policy thing we've got to figure out. We haven't defined it. >> Right. We haven't defined what it means to be a flex zone or how to manage it. We don't have a governance around it. We need to do that. How do you appeal it? And that's I appreciate those

134pieces. Um but let me just talk to you for a second. >> I'm going to jump in here. Let's let Nick You gave three questions. Let's let Nick work through there and Well, to to the fair, I asked a question. I'll go through the rest of the group. No, but but so this is this is the problem, right? Like your question is there is no possible answer that will work. A set of Acton kids have to go to Blanchard. Period. End of story. If you say all Acton kids will go to Acton, all Blanchard Boxborough kids will go to Blanchard, you will be operating over 100% capacity in your Boardwalk and Park Damon Park Damon schools. I cannot like there's nothing I can do. So, for the community that's listening, I am sorry. We are

135in a constrained environment in which some set of Acton students have to go. Period. So, to that point, when we think about this, and this is one of the reasons why back last meeting, I had asked you guys to please, please, please prioritize the decision points. Because at the end of the day, and this is for the folks in blue, right? I need to balance utilization. Is utilization more important than walk zones? Yes. Is walk zones more important than bussing? I have my opinion. My opinion doesn't really matter because it's really the school committee and the communities opinion that matters on this. So, it comes down to, again, I I don't know if I said this at the beginning when we first started, but there are three aspects of this project. You need to have

136a technical solution. That technical solution will not be 100% correct. You need to be politically correct, and it needs to be administratively feasible. Okay? So, at the end of the day, from a political standpoint, it comes down to there are those who are feeling sort of the pain in terms of having to move, and then there are those who are not. And that creates challenges, and I respect that. And so, part of my job is to provide you with options that are not perfect in terms of that technical solution, but that still achieve what we're trying to accomplish to the best of our ability. So, one of the reasons here, which I'm providing you, and I think you kind of nailed this, is yeah, I can give you good reasons on why red should be

137chosen, or why yellow and blue should be chosen. In the end, it's six one way, half a dozen the other. And I don't mean to add any insult to that in terms of the parents and the families who are living there, but at the end, it comes down to is the walk zones of the people in the blue zone more important than the people in the red zone who have to get bussed? I don't I don't know. It is that is a an impossible question that I'm asking you all to answer, and you're going to have to answer. And so, when it comes to thinking about how we're approaching, again, those tradeoffs, a little it's a little bit of this and a little bit of that in terms of trying to eke out again I

138I kind of go back to the decision points here. It's not we're not ever going to have a situation where it's all yellow and I'd rather have a lot of greens and a little yellow than all reds. Um but we get to the point where sometimes the voices of the individuals who are being affected sort of have that and then they kind of play that out. So I would sort of tie it out in that regard where yes we are trying to make the best of a almost impossible situation and so these decisions like we had talked about before specifically with the flex zones and specifically with Blanchard need to be decided upon by you all and then that will help really I think frame the scenario. In terms of the north-south east-west um part

139of what I heard from you all was you know we don't want to affect housing costs, right? In my mind this splits everything down the middle and so there is no one way is better than the other and so that to me is going to really maximize that. If you go north-south in terms of the different zones I think you could very much see a bifurcation of your student demographics across both schools. And then finally and I liked cuz I had a chance to talk with the superintendent about the attendance policy. I will say this the attendance policy I think is a good way to alleviate concern for existing students. This problem will be here in 6 years. So you're going to have to figure out a solution with the the Blanchard sort of zone

140that is sustainable going forward. I'm sorry and thanks for all the data and the information and the very comprehensive presentation. Um maybe this is you have presented it and I missed it but I'm assuming flex zones is is going to be part of the whole plan not going to be kind of an option to think about as an afterthought because with the capacity you are projecting it, flex zones has to be there, right? Because we are at the tipping point at any time based on your projections being off a little bit, you need those flex zones. Completely agree. I what I'm proposing is like this scenario right here, I can layer flex zones on regardless of what scenario you give me. Flex zones serve a purpose of helping balance future enrollment. So the principles of

141the flex zone will be true no matter what. The geographical or however we determine it design of the flex zones will be based on just how the scenario is laid out. So what I'm suggesting is is if you all decide about the rules of how a flex zone is, I can layer that on to any scenario. It should not be a part of the scenario because ideally what we want is the projections to be accurate and so that this the scenario and the boundaries exist on their own and you do not need to use the flex zone. I'll be honest, I would not ever want to use a flex zone. So that is that is our intent. I'm not saying we won't have it planned out. I'm not saying it won't be decided upon and

142it'll be there, but it should be used in case of emergency only and that's the case. So going with with all the kind of basic what are we want to accomplish I feel like if they have to be more aspirational than being so rigid. Um The flex zones are No, no, the other things the walking and walkability and all those yes, they're nice. They're very aspirational. We should try to but try to is the key word, right? I I don't think we should be so rigid that it ties ties the school completely down to stick to I mean here like you stated, we have constraints. We have budget constraints. We have constraints and then there is this um um the sway based on a shiny new school that is really at the back of my

143mind. It's like, why is everybody going for a shiny new school? Does that improve a student experience? And that's what really is kind of driving a lot of this. I want my kid to walk to school because my kid is close to board board maybe not everybody's saying that, but that seems to be the way that things are going. And that is really very concerning to me. It's I'm stating it very blunt. I that's really sad. Thank you. I It wasn't a No, no. I Thank you. Glenn. Thank you for this and for all the engineers who live in Acton, the those who took a statistics class are having a field day just listening to this. So, I'm having a great time in this. Um regarding the part So, when you say that the plan

144needs to outlive the next 6 years, that's one aspect and then separately there's like the managing the right now. So, we're I am very glad that we're prioritizing utilization rates. I I'm personally not really comfortable voting for any plan that has any of the schools have a utilization rate below like 92%. Like that to me I feel pretty strongly about. Um for and regarding the flex zones that seems like probably the most complicated aspect of this entire thing. Uh there's a lot of complications here, but like that even I'm kind of like jeez, and I'm scratching my head over that. Um but I do remember that you said last time that the plan has to be able to sustain itself without needing flex zones. So, when we think about how we can set this up

145in such a sustainable way that maximizes utilization rates, balances out the diversity that is crystal clear that is a top priority for this community and this committee. How Can you just explain a little bit about how exactly we could set the architecture up of this implementation in a way that having this in over the next 6 years is more effective with that would you this having those flex zones is like a in case of emergency use flex zone. Would that help with making it more adaptable to things that could come up over a 6-year plan? Is there anything besides flex zones that would increase the stability that I know you mentioned the not using satellites is also probably beneficial for that in case kids get moved around a bit. Yeah, I'm not going to steal

146the superintendent's thunder cuz I think he did have a interesting idea. Um I will say that uh there is a flex zones and attendance policies are kind of could be synonymous uh depending on how you define the flex zone. And by that I mean right now in terms of the flex zone definitions that I provided, they were very structured in a way that there was no choice. Um you could make the flex zone like a a it it a world in and of itself where if you live in that flex zone, the you know, the current physics uh outside the flex zone look different than inside the flex zone. And I know that's really opaque and probably not very helpful for people who are listening, but at the end of the day, what I'm suggesting

147is that um yes, I mean the the sky's the limit in regards to how you want to sort of manage it. My point is is there are the current challenges right now of students who want to go to the other school that they're not zoned to because they were going to that other school. That is a separate problem from just looking at the scenario saying in seven and and the reason why I said in six years is because in six years every kid who's here right now in those schools will be gone. So then everybody who's in the school will this is all they will have known. And so at the end of the day that's sort of what I'm suggesting is that in the event and right now just to rehash your enrollment's kind

148of going down. You have pockets of enrollment that increasing but generally speaking your enrollment is slightly dipping and it's not going back up. So and your utilization is kind of tight. So yeah, we don't have a lot of room to play with but like all things being equal if we do this right you shouldn't have to adjust you shouldn't have to cherry pick students to go one way or another and we're trying to avoid that at all costs. Thank you for mentioning that point in particular cuz I mean I do want to acknowledge and honor that like for a good there is it is really important that we reiterate and acknowledge that there is literally no plan we can pick that doesn't cause some angry parents. Correct. >> And we just have to be kind

149of cool with that. So with that going forward like let's treat this tenderly. Like this is tough for some people. It's fine. We want kids to have a good education. That's why we're here. Okay, my turn. And then we're going to go to Peter. And then we're going to have a conversation with Nick. Um does this account for our students in our special education populations yet? The specific percentages no, but we did run the percentages and you're still within comfortability of it basically it's approximately 15 kids coming from Parker Damon and another 10 kids from incoming Blanchard coming to the special education programs and so it moves the Boardwalk campus up to about 95 96% so and it lowers the other or Okay. And then an observation, um something that kind of hit me thinking

150through the numbers of kids moving and from from what schools, you know, 100% of Conant kids most of when we talk about most of kids changing schools, those are mostly kids who are originating out of schools at Parker Damon or Boardwalk because, you know what? We actually almost already have a school that has a geographic enrollment. Blanchard. >> Blanchard. Yeah. Um and that kind of hit me and I think that's, you know, some of the emails that we've seen about small populations of students, um and so, you know, acknowledging that we are looking to treat everyone equitably and also understanding that there's just there's some stuff here that is not the same, um not for kids from Conant, not for kids from Blanchard, um this is hard. And with that, um I think Peter, I'd

151like to hear your idea and then I'd like to kind of think about the what next together and then we can do a time check and see where we're at, okay? Nick, could you go back to the previous slide or whatever slide you were on before? Yeah, this and and I'm only using this as an example. What I'm going to talk about would apply to either four or five or one or two or three, it doesn't it doesn't really matter. It's one of the things that that I've been thinking about is and and I'll preface this by saying I can't solve every problem in in all of this, but one of the unique elements that is different to me at least and I think what I'm hearing from the feedback from the community is it's

152different to be zoned geographically within the same town, right? Like there's a boundary between Boardwalk campus and Parker Damon, no matter what we do, but that that boundary feels different than the town boundary between Acton and Boxborough. And if you are we heard very loudly from Boxborough that they did not want to be forced to attend an Acton school. Right? We heard that at early in the process when we eliminated option six, and we've heard it since. And then similarly though, what we've heard now is is people living along that boundary who might be in Acton, that idea of being forced now to attend school in Blanchard, I think sits the same way. And from a how we implement policy perspective if we whether intentionally or unintentionally create a policy that treats the two towns

153differently that has a different feel to it. And so that's something that I've been trying to play with. And one of the thoughts I had would be to think of this more as like a controlled flex zone from an implementation standpoint, not not a geographic because what Nick said is correct. And this is what we talked about back in December with you, which is in order for this math to work in a geographic system, there are too many students from Acton that can fit in the Acton schools, and some will have to go to Blanchard. Over time, we have naturally established some of that equilibrium through the open enrollment model that we have, right? And that has that has been the case, and that's how we balanced. In addition, we're also closing one of the

154Acton schools, which drives the urgency of that to a higher level. One of the things I was thinking about would be if we have a knowing that the town or excuse me, I'll back up. Not knowing anything. If we want to believe that the town boundary is a higher priority than any other type of geographic boundary within the town. One of the things that we could consider doing would be to for to employ some type of an open enrollment on a cross-town basis. So, there would be an opportunity for students who are living in one community who may want to attend school in another community to provide us with that information in order to help balance kind of the cross-town piece of this. It will not I don't think solve the entire problem of that

155geographic area. It could mitigate it to some degree. And the reason that I'm thinking that is if you had an order of priority and Andrew and I have played this out and I played it out with Nick and so I that's why I'm I'm brainstorming here. If we did something where we surveyed families and said like for the students in Acton, maybe we even start with just who already attend school in Boxborough and students in Boxborough who already attend school in Acton, who or we could open it up further than that. It's up that would be a for discussion. Who is interested in attending school in a cross-town scenario? So, that there's some level of choice to that. Additionally, if you are in this one I don't know what we call it the the area

156of Acton that is zoned to Blanchard on this screen right now, you also could share with us your priority to remain in Acton. So, we're staying true to this idea of priority in the regional agreement. And then what I would suggest with the way we would work about this is we would prioritize students who want to remain in their town. We know from an operational standpoint, if we place the students from Acton who would want to remain at Blanchard first, that actually frees up space in our Acton schools. The second order of priority, if we prioritize hometown, would be to place students from the enrollment bubble here. Uh enrollment knob, is that what you called it? Um in in Acton. They would be placed into the the geogra- I would propose the geographic zone, which

157would likely be Boardwalk. Um and then you would be able to open it up to any additional Boxborough students who may have wanted to attend school in Acton. I think it would be likely that Boardwalk would end up being full soon because of that geographic consideration that's up here. I'm pointing there and you're looking here, so I apologize. Um but for the students, I I think Boardwalk would likely fill up, but I think Parker Damon could end up with some capacity. So, if if there are Boxborough students who want to attend school in the other town, if there's space at Boardwalk, great, we could do that, but if there's space at Parker Damon, we could also do that. I think there are Uh uh this is in the relatively early stages of trying to play

158it out, but it would help alleviate some of the feeling of being assigned crosstown without any type of choice to it. I think the one caveat that I want to get your feedback on, that there's going to be a tradeoff with this. In order to proceed with something like this, people have to know what the geographic boundary is, and they have to know what the flex zones are and things like that. And then we need to be able to ask them who's interested being considered for this, right? Um in those those limited circumstances. Um there's a some period of time between the time that we set the geographic boundaries and we confirm what schools people are going to, that actually it just takes time, right? And it's not about workload, it's just we have to

159communicate. There's also some period of time that we would need to then open up a survey for the families in that limited set of scenarios, and they would need to respond. And then there's some period of time that it would take us, you know, let's assume all 100 Acton families who currently attend Blanchard want to stay at Blanchard. Let's assume that there's 80 potentially Boxborough families who want to continue to go to school in Acton. I think that might be lower, but I'm not sure. Um and then let's assume that there's some subset of this population that also wants to be considered to continue to attend school in Acton. Let's call it 40 families or something, 50 for that sake. We would then have to process those 200 and change families and figure out how

160to match that up best by grade, by families, all of those nuances, and then communicate that back out. The challenge would be class placement. Can't actually start until after that's done. Because if you start class placement before that, you actually run into the problem where now all the classes that we our educators thought they were placing kids into are now disrupted, and you end up with imbalanced classes again, or when we thought we were thoughtfully placing kids into cohorts, now those cohorts get blown up to some degree, and and I think that could be frustrating for families. I think realistically that's probably a 4-week process minimum, unless we only want to give families a few days or week to respond to that survey, and then we want to try and rush through it. I just

161think realistically it does push our class placement process out by several weeks. And if we get into late May and early June, I am worried that we would start to take our educators' voice out of the class placement process, our current educators, because of all of the tight things that are going on for educators at the end of the year. So, I I just I don't want to I I haven't had time to play it out fully, so I don't want to overcommit right now. But what I'm looking for your direction on is this idea worth pursuing and trying to further develop. Right. >> Or for whether it's political reasons or any of the reasons that you feel it's just not worth pursuing or uninteresting or something like that, just let me know cuz I

162don't want to spend a lot of time trying to play out how this could work and how we could get the timing of all this to play out. Um but that would be my idea of how can we try to create the fairest policy that can apply across both communities. Can I just chime in for 2 seconds? And I know you will. Uh two things. I'm recommending to build on what Peter just said. This is like a just given the time, this is a really good conversation for our next school. Like we can extend this out to have a broader conversation and we can come up with other ideas. Peter's idea, though good, is not I'm just going to say not 100%. There will be people who are going to be stuck moving. And so

163I just want to emphasize that don't be fooled in the idea that this is going to solve all of our problems, but it could solve half half the problems. Lakshmi. I think I I like the idea for the current families who are impacted. Maybe that helps, Peter, but I think offering this as an ongoing even after the current families are have passed, I think it's going to open the Pandora's box because we we what happens if a kid from North Acton chooses Blanchard? That kid is going to sit on the bus for an hour or so. And I think that those those those are the things we are trying to kind of avoid now. Um instead of trying to please families, right? I think we should we should like I'm going back to let's try

164to aspire to achieve what we have laid out, but don't try to be rigid on them. Okay, I saw Lila next and then I'll work around like that. Yeah, appreciated um the piece around staff and also wondering what this timeline might mean for kind of all of the cascading student activities that we had thought about to kind of um support students for the next year knowing that there's going to be transitions and what visiting your new school might look like and things like that. Maybe that's also for the next meeting, but that just came up for me. Andrew. I think it's a really interesting way of looking at it. Having some malleability around the barriers could be really worthwhile. I think having the um you mentioned the 100/80 back and forth, it allows some, you

165know, it allows some compassion to those families. Um also, I think that we can set the constraints around this. You know, we can define the the process for this. Until whatever we decide is decided, we can't do placements anyway. And if we include fold this into what we're deciding, that could be helpful as well. Um and I think that it would also allow us to be able to um to to use this as a way to set the standards for what we're doing inside the other schools. So, it's to not have the problem the Lockesleys worrying about, but instead to kind of set the tone for how things are doing. I think it's an interesting way of looking at it. We can set the constraints and the policies around this and it can lead to

166the policy of governance around enrollment that, you know, parents are going to want to be a part of. As, you know, we my family lived in Waltham before we came here and um we saw how this kind of how their districting was going. We opted out of transportation entirely and drove every day to school and that allowed us to kind of go where we wanted to go and not have to worry about it. Those are the kinds of things we're able to do here. So, I think it's a really worthwhile conversation to have. Glenn. So, I agree with my colleagues here that this idea is certainly worth exploring. Um I do have I don't envy trying to get all of those families on the same page of exactly like what that will entail and what

167the decision like that's going to be a communication challenge. If there's anyone who who could pull it off, it's you. So. Lisa. I think it's a great idea. I definitely have a lot of compassion for Boxborough families who want their kids in Acton schools and Acton families who really wanted their children in Blanchard. It's interesting because I'm looking at the from the last meeting February 26th, there was an enrollment update and um So thank you for that, Andrew. And 101 Acton residents attend school in Boxborough, 88 Boxborough residents attend school in Acton. It's not even, but it's pretty close to that in terms of that trade-off. And so I think one of the questions concerns that I had was if families were given the option to do this, I would worry that it wouldn't alleviate

168that capacity or that utilization issue for Blanchard that we would kind of end up being stuck back at the drawing board. And then another thought I had was around how that would impact the drawing of the current geographic lines with taking into consideration those families and then how that would be done. And then worried about how that would throw off future balance. So not students that are allowed now, but then going forward kind of what happens there. So I think that was just just a couple of things that came to mind. And also um I I realize it it might initially come across as um equal to have the two of them be able to have the choice, but in my mind it's kind of not because um if you're a Boxborough resident getting to

169be in your town, you know, is has been stressed by many town members as a priority. And I think for Acton families to be able to have the option to do so or not do so um if it alleviates, you know, an issue, um I think those things are kind of on even playing field and I just um I guess what I'm getting at is just allowing to them to trade might not really be even because it you know, it's I don't know. I'm not doing a good job of explaining it um but I just I feel like it's um giving Acton families the choice to go to Boxborough is only cuz it you know, it it solves a problem and there are many who want to do so. But >> Can Yeah, and My

170my guess, Nick, when you bring Blanchard to 96% utilization, you're talking probably about what, 24 sections? Yep. Uh well, talking about it in terms of enrollment, but I I hear where you're going with this. Currently, Blanchard K-6 has 400, my eyes are going, 53 kids. Right. Uh to make it at 96% for any scenario, you have to get it up to 530. So, to your point, and I say this in the context of you don't want Acton and Boxborough to be a one-for-one swap. You actually want Boxborough to say, "No, I'll stay." And you want the Acton kids who are going to Blanchard be like, "Oh, I want to go." and then alleviate the concern. But, to your point, cuz I'm plus-oneing everything you just said, you still have to send kids that don't aren't

171going currently, and you still have to have a zone to where if all the parents are like, "Nope. Don't want it." then fine. The the math will work itself out. That's why I like that policy and I think it can alleviate some of the tension now. And we had talked about, too, it's one of those policies that can have a 6-year time limit because then you can basically say, "Well, let's revisit it after 6 years." But the scenario is going to be the scenario and it has to live on its own without the flex zone and that's what I sort of meant. Lisa, I think one of the reasons I picked the order of priority I did was that you place Acton students at Blanchard first who might want to go. That frees up space

172in the Acton schools. You then place the Acton students who want to remain in Acton to the capacity of that. And then the only time you can open up any space for Boxborough students is if now the Acton schools have additional capacity. So that that was my thinking around that was you it allows for some of that disequilibrium that we need to to happen. Got it. With some sort of cap in mind for if, you know, whatever it's set at for either building if it reaches a capacity whether it's like 98 or whatever it is, it's 96, whatever it's set to. Saying okay, once we've hit that cap and then having those different layer well, different levels or stages of, you know, priority. Yeah, it's it What I know from having worked with Andrew around

173open enrollment, worked with Marie for however long I've been here is open and anytime you do open enrollment, there's a messy process because it's not just about any one student who wants to move, but if they have siblings, there's considerations there, you know, that that also can impact who can move and why and you know, you could run into a scenario where yeah, you have space in second grade at Boardwalk, but you don't have space in sixth grade. Um and so now you have to talk to the family and say, "We could only place one child, but you can't have both. Do you really want Do you prioritize having both together or is it only one child moving?" So there's there's nuances to all of this that I'm not doing justice to in terms of

174how it would play out, but I think that's the the general principle is to just try and be as sensitive as possible to minimize the requirement for students to move across a border. And this is minimizing it and it's diminishing it, but it's not solving it. Okay, folks. I'm just going to observe we haven't made it all the way around yet. We still have to give Nick some answers. We're all going to be succinct, Peter, that includes you. >> [laughter] >> Okay, Liz. Uh I appreciate the idea. I'm a little reluctant in implementing it. Um even if we put the guardrails of, you know, having it be a shorter timeline, I would almost rather see if there's a way that we could do, um you know, if there's like equal swap, like you get your

175assigned geographic school and then, you know, put in a request, you know, I'm an Action student, I'd really love to be considered for Boxboro and if there's a you know, for Blanchard or Park, whichever. And if there's an even swap for like sort of a one-time grandfathering deal, I feel like that may be something that we could potentially look into, but I think this is going to open more It's more worms than we want to deal with. My curiosity is if you identify that on the timeline this is going to mean that we can't get classless out with educator input, I'm actually really curious to know what parents think about that cuz that's a trade-off we're looking at and that is something that we identified as helping to ease transition. So, I'm curious if this

176trade-off is seen as worth it across our community and I'm wondering if that's something you could include in whatever next iteration of feedback we have, Nick. That'd be a good parent webinar coming. Okay. So, I would like to move us to providing Nick the feedback he needs for the next two meetings, um noting the hour. Um do you want to give us a little more input on what that sounds like? Yeah, I think there's there's two things that are at play here. Flex zones and the Blanchard zones need to be decided on. So, my recommendation would be our next meeting we'd I don't want to say we don't leave here until that that comes out, but you think in almost some level you have to I don't know if it's a vote or you have

177to be confident in what you're telling me is going to happen. That's going to happen. From there, if we can align on those two pieces of the puzzle and I think the other two which I had indicated which was the AB agreement which is really just codifying and understanding what that meant, as well as the implementation grandfathering. If we can kind of get some clarification on those for the next meeting, that final meeting in April would be essentially a here is and I'm going to say scenario 5 plus of however we decided how to do the Blanchard to layer on the attendance policy that's tied to that with the flex zone, and then that's your sort of answer, I think. But, these components need to be decided on. Like, I don't want to bring you

178another scenario until we get a decision on these things. Can I get a thumbs up thumbs down on how that sound that just that last statement sounds? I'm seeing some thumbs up. Anybody have serious considerations that they want to see otherwise? This. Um, just thinking about like where we're you know where we'd be choosing for Blanchard, you know, just like percentage wise. Do you think that there's any scenario where you go and you're like, you know, maybe we could do something where we take out sort of that blue zone and have something that's a little bit north or a different area? Just wondering how feasible that seems. Uh, no no, I mean like I can I can pick any area in Acton, right? It doesn't I'm I'm telling you logically the areas that I gave

179you geographically make the most sense. If you're telling me Nick, absolutely not that blue area. I'll go find something else, right? Either take the red area or Nick, go find another 50, you know, families somewhere in and around the surrounding area and we'll we'll adjust accordingly. But that's why the the Blanchard the Blanchard extension piece, I could pick it anywhere and then I'm just going to slightly tweak the boundaries a little bit. So, I just need guidance from you on how you want that done. So, can I get a Is everybody kind of in agreement with Liz we'd like to see an alternative to the blue? Can I add one thing? Relate related to this, yeah. So, with with each of the flex zone options that you would investigate or do analysis, could we get

180an idea of how the bussing works? Because geographic it's very clear. When flex zones are thrown into the mix, that I think makes a big change. Now, everybody bus bus routes get affected. Right? Not really. So, you got to think of flex zones. Again, flex zones, the way I've determined it, is onesies and twosies come in, new kids come in. Oh, you're one that you're going to go to the school over here. All right, so it's not it's not like huge swaths of kids are moving. Not but not with what Peter said. That's not ones or twos coming. That's different. That's not a flex zone. And this is where like this is the conversation we need to have, right? And and I will say this So, now that there's sort of three meta levels here.

181You have the plan, you have the flex zone, and then you have the current attendance policy, right? And I I was conflating the two and I think you could conflate the two, but they are three separate things that will have three drastic effects across three different areas of life within the families. So, to answer your simple question, no, flex zones, I don't think we'll have a drastic effect on transportation. Okay, give me a moment before I keep keep going around. So, thumbs up for that we want to hear what Liz is asking for. I see one thumbs down. I see I need to clarify my Quickly. I just preferred the red instead of finding somewhere north of the blue, and I was going to comment on why. When we're talking about keeping the Let's let's

182let's yeah. Not. That's fine. See if you can find something else. Don't break your head trying to do it. Continuing to work around this way. We'll let uh Andrew. Uh flex zones are really undefined in in our conversations. Nick has a definition he's offered, he's determined what it's going to be. We haven't defined what where it's going to be. Andrew's got a thing he'll need to do with it, and I didn't mean to call you out, you're safe. Um but the policy around flex zones seems to be something that needs more debate, more discussion than we have time for in our [clears throat] meetings here. And I almost think like because it's a policy, it should be part of policies sub that has that. Um because there's so many components to what we have to

183come up with, and to come up with just a common definition in order to make a decision. I don't feel like we have enough data, enough information, or enough opinion to be able to make that clearly for us. So I I would I would take suggest we have some way of being able to fill that definition of flex zone into something more concrete. So certainly our our enrollment policies will go to policy sub to get rewritten once we figure out what it is that we're doing. Um you're saying that you want the definition of the flex zones >> zones have been defined The flex zones have been defined at a few different ways, and even when Nick put up his bullet points, the last one kind of says, "And it could be anything." Um I

184think that we've not come to a decision as to what we mean when we talk about flex zones, even the onesie-twosie thing that you were mentioning, or or um whether it's a geographic area that can be flipped out along like that last bullet point on annual review. How do How do we approach flex zones? The flexibility of the zone is the flexibility of the district to manage the enrollment of the children, the students inside that area. Some folks here flex zones as in I can go either way. Some folks here flex zones as in I I I'm I'm going to I'm going to go to this one and I'll stay there forever. We haven't defined it and I think by not defining it, we're doing a disservice to the discussion. So, am I hearing you

185say that's probably a March 19th, I think is our next meeting, March 19th discussion cuz I I don't I don't know. Do you meet before that? Policy meets on the 13th. Is it helpful for you guys to take a first dive on that? What is What does policy subs agenda look like this? >> [laughter] >> And I don't know if it's policy sub that should. It just feels like in the way that we add additional depth of our conversation inside our subcommittees, we would need to have some kind of internal based additional depth and definition for these things. Because we haven't and a lot of the stuff that's been presented to us, which is fine, but we haven't come to a decision or a definition internally. I think it's important. So, can I clarify? What's

186What would be the ask? So, I think the ask was to to take what is proposed up here and um have a more in-depth conversation since we have this challenge of Yeah, we have to do this following open meeting law. Um can a can a subgroup work a little bit more on that? There's time, I guess and is or we when we're saying what we're talking about is it really around defining flex zones or about what Peter sort of has floated initially or both. >> We're talking about what What do we mean? What does flex zone mean to the committee, to the district? And just to have a set definition of it. Cuz I don't think we have a set definition of it. Got it. Yeah, sure. Lila. What would you like to do with

187this so chair of the policy sub? I'm not opposed to having the conversation in policy sub. My concern, hesitation, whatever the word is, I don't know that I have a sense of what enough of a sense from 11 members of our committee to take it to policy sub and be able to have a substantive conversation to come back to the full committee with something that feels helpful. That same hesitation is what I have when I'm looking through this. It's like we don't have a definition. How do we find it? Is it policy sub? Is it something else? Is it Andrew? Is it Is it what? And I just feel like until we have that, we're not fully able to make a decision on anything with this. You have to have that decision made. Can I

188chime in? Yep. That's one of the reasons why next meeting, let me come and help you define flex zones, the attendance policy, and the implementation plan. Sounds good. Could you provide us with some reading material ahead of that so we can come prepared for the discussion? Yes. Okay, Glenn. I'm good. Lisa. I'm so sorry. I just want clarification. So, are we asking him to change like the red, blue, and green that were below that we were thinking about could be included in Blanchard and like look at other areas or we're saying we're still looking? >> That's not a flex zone, Lisa. No, no, no, not for flex zones, but for redrawing or any different iteration. That's what I was asking. >> um I think we are asking if there is another option besides the blue

189the blue section that would involve a bus ride instead of taking people out of a walking area. And it is okay for that answer to be no. Okay. I just was just trying to be clear on what we were asking him to come back with, and I appreciate the clarification. >> Yep. Okay. Do you have what you need for the next meeting? I do. Thank you. >> Okay. Awesome. Thank you, Nick. Okay. Uh just uh for the public, uh so where we are, and I just want to kind of rehash this, is that um we are currently on March 5th School Committee meeting, March 10th is going to be the parent webinar. We will be going through some of this uh together and answering questions uh specifically around, I would say, scenario five, um if

190possible, maybe a scenario six where we tweak some of the boundaries, but probably not. Uh then March 19th, I'm going to come back here, and we're going to have a wonderful conversation about flex zones, attendance policies, um and I keep uh implementation plans. Um I will try to get some type of reading material and questionnaire and all that wonderful fun stuff, and then that would build us to leaving March 19th with a decision, so that April 9th I can come with a full package of a scenario that kind of works for you all. All right. Thank you guys very much. Thanks, Nick. All right. So, that moves us into the audit report addendum. Sherry? Um you all got the quarter two report in your packets, so my question for you is does anyone have any

191questions regarding the quarter two report? Never mind, I was looking at an old copy of an agenda. Sherry, thank you for going to the thing we're supposed to be talking about quarter two budget. I see no questions from the committee. Excellent. All right, so let's move forward, and let's talk about the AB Forward Transition and Engagement Task force proposal. Um, kind of where we left this last time was we like the general idea. We're trying to figure out what the format was. Um, and Andrew, you were seeing JPTSO and getting some feedback. So, the the conversation I'd like to have, I'd like to hear first about JPTSO and then kind of the group discussion about what do we think the format is and then we figure out where we go from there. Yes, so we

192did have some changes since the last time. I want to thank the estimable Liz Fox for entering into the phrase co-chair this and she helped uh refine the document as well that you see today. Um, we specifically called out within the document the addition of uh principals administration to the list of folks we'd like to be able to hear from and have involved in the efforts. We think it's important to be able to not only collect what we're going to what we are, but also what we're going to be. We also placed a mid-year check-in in the school committee for progress uh per what um Peter was talking about. And did connect with the joint PTSO on this past Monday when we had the opportunity to talk a bit about this and a bit about

193things that they're looking to do as well. They've already been in the process of starting to collect the things that they do into a common spreadsheet. And uh this looks like it could be a really interesting way of being able to, you know, the group would be a way to celebrate the legacy, but also bring together the community community around creating our new future. This could be a way of being able to bring in the families, the parents that will help form these new organizations inside the new schools to have this kind of common space, this common thread. I hate the name. I'm sorry. I came up with it. I still don't like it. Um, this common space for us to be able to work together to point our our new schools towards what they

194can be. To build a commonality around the cultures in the area to be able to make sure that the conduit for parents to be involved is there through our PTOs when they are involved when they form, but more importantly to be able to remember who we are as AB. And so that as we go into the next phase Um as to the format and other questions, I think a lot of that will come with the formation of this as we get the people together and start forming it. But we had great um feedback from the JPTSOs. They are interested in being a part of it. Individuals in it have reached out to me directly. Many people in the community have reached out directly about to how they could be a part of what this is.

195And it's it's Amongst all of the turmoil that we're doing, it's nice to have something that's kind of creative and bringing people together. Alyssa, is there anything you want to add to it? Um that's a really great summary. The only other thing, just because I am a results-driven person, I'm in operations, is you know, sort of what I see coming out of this is one or a handful of events that we can, you know, plan as the task force to bring the community together and more so a sharing of values and of best practices in terms of creating our new our new school communities. Okay, so a couple of logistical questions here. Um Subcommittees and task forces of the school committee, when you look at what their outcomes are, it's generally a recommendation that comes

196back to the full committee. And I'm not sure that this feels like that. Um this feels like it is an action-oriented body instead. Um so that's something different. I just want to I want to call that out. If it is a task force, we have to actually define a membership and vote it, because we have to know what quorum is. What's the proper cuz I brought this up initially as a subcommittee. You suggested it be a task force. What's the proper organization for this? Because it's something that needs to happen as we go on forward. I think for the school committee's involvement in the next phase of this, the school committee should be the one that's organizing at least this group to come together and to um kind of facilitate what we do there. We

197have to have some ownership on it. Cuz it's the only way we're going to be able to build in what do we need to do? What's the correct pathway if you think that there's something The other side of it is that we can create whatever we want because we haven't done anything yet. Yes, I'm thinking two things. It feels like the fastest way to do this is to the very fastest way to make things happen is to do it in an existing structure and I know that's not the way you want to go, but the very fastest way to make that happen would be to vote Liz as an additional liaison and drive that direction through JPTSO. Hold on. Let me finish. The to to do something that is a task force or a subcommittee

198task force of of the school committee I would say that the thing that we would do tonight is vote you two as the leads for it and then you would need to go through a formal process. And so that would involve an an open process for people to raise their hands and say they would like to be considered. Um you know, what we've done with our task forces in the past is that we have we have recruited the people who have to be there. We've invited people um to apply and we have chosen them based on a rubric. Um we have uh also then gone out and found the people that that weren't represented as well. Um Is Peter, do you can you pull up the elementary budget task force charter? >> task force might

199be a better one to talk about that we did for the Boardwalk school um or one of the other not not tied to money, but I think what you're talking about is easy thing. If you want to vote if if Liz you're up for it, if you want to vote for us to lead this and then form it, that might be the best way to go. Let me give you a little more look at >> naming task force? It was your task force. I think you you had set that up. Well, we had a bunch of folks. We had Marie did that. We had a lot of folks on it. >> on. >> [laughter] >> Um representatives of every aspect of our community and it was uh it kind of similar to what I think

200we might be able to do with this. And if we have a task force that has a a need for quorum, there's an opportunity for leadership as well as engagement. And the leadership of it would be the force the folks you would have to have for quorum. The engagement would be anybody who's there to be able to do open meetings. I'd suggest that and I think that if Liz and I can be can can kick this off tonight with, you know, hopeful uh approval, we can build the right organization around this idea to be able to make it really work. So, the other piece that we have to vote is a charge. Um and that is a that is a succinct output driven the what is what is the task force charged to do? Um

201yeah, so how do we boil down three and a half, four pages into about two to three sentences. So, listing that out as as kind of structure, I see some hands. Why don't we go around and get some more input? Um >> Just real quick. Yeah, go ahead, Liz. Um just a a suggestion for because, you know, what I'm hearing is that if we're having a task force, something that's this formal, we have to have a deliverable at the end that the school committee would then, you know, act upon. And perhaps what our deliverable could be is a set of, you know, three to five recommendations to provide to the elementary school principals to sort of like, you know, implement in all three schools, if that would be. I'd say a calendar of events. I

202would think it would be something that because there is a a need for a separation between principals' control and what PTOs control, it can't just be delivered to the principals. It has to be a collaborative with the principals, obviously. But, I think if we come up with, say it's a calendar of events, it's a a document of recommendations, it's a here's what we want to do and and hand it out. Like, if the charge is to come through this with a catalog of a b a calendar of activities and a set of recommendations, the calendar of activities can include the events that you're talking about as well. So, what I would propose is that we if we proceed with this direction, what we do is we we vote to make you two the co-chairs and

203figure the rest of it out and keep moving it forward. Um let me go around for some feedback here and hear what people are thinking cuz I feel like I've done a lot of talking. Um Lakshmi, you had your hand up first, did you? I'm still not really clear on what we are trying to accomplish here. Are we trying to accomplish um with the task force what Liz said, the outcomes of where we are going to engage with the community and how we are going to do do that or over a period of time? Is that the outcome that we are going to look look forward to to we deliver to the school committee? I'm sorry, can you repeat that? I was zoning out. >> What What What is the outcome of this um task

204force? At the end, what do we What do you deliver to the school committee? So, the outcome and what we would be looking for and I'm I'm not going to lie, it does sound a little bit more like it should be, you know, sort of the PT PTSO liaisons and then sort of like, you know, not school committee, but Liz and Andrew, you know, run this and, you know, really work with all the PTOs to, you know, get this going because we really want to create this sense of unity and start sort of a growth of these new elementary communities that we're going to have. And so, what we're looking for is, you know, coming together to share ideas, come up with some ideas that we could or that families could use to implement and

205then also specifically have a couple of events around it. >> going to come up with a framework on how to do the liaison work? Yeah, the only thing about using >> we're talking about? The only issue with using PTOs is that they go away on June 30th. They don't exist until you >> PTSO? There's no PTOs to join together. I mean there's the high school and the high school Blanchard and junior high, but all the elementaries aren't there anymore. So we can't do it that way, which is why we I meant to say that earlier. We can't do it. That's why having some other pro format of it would be helpful. And Lakshmi, I think what we end up with is events, as Liz was saying, a definition of what we do and what we

206have been of as our legacy of cultural events inside of AB and recommendations for what we want to do going forward. Let me jump in here as well. Um, I think Lakshmi, the other thing that we were looking at is the summer is the hard piece because of course the school committee doesn't meet. We're hopefully going to have class lists out so that classrooms can get together and and like families can start to meet, but our educators are also not necessarily around on in the summer. We wouldn't expect them to be doing that. So some of this is maybe can we help enable through that really unstable period so that as new PTOs are standing up in new schools, there's kind of a menu to hand to them of things that they can take and

207run with when they are worried about the hard things of defining the PTO, getting it established. I mean it's a nonprofit. That's kind of a pain in the rear, right? You got to do all that stuff. Um, so looking at being kind of a supportive role, I think was something we talked about last week. Okay, so this is this is where I think I'm I'm I feel like we'll fall short. The if the goal is to get the community engagement and the togetherness going, I think the local ones will be there. I I don't know. I would like to see how you would reach out to the rest of the community and I think that that should be the goal. The ones who have been engaged will be engaged. So, I think we need if

208we want if we [clears throat] want this to be truly an outreach, we we need to figure out how to do that. Glenn. I have proposals for deliverables and outreach. So, I think having a focus for the summer is good. Um one idea I had is that you could just have like a June town hall kind of thing. Call it a town hall, call it something else, webinar, whatever. Some type of community building outreach event. June, July, August, you have three. Maybe broadcast it to Acton TV, YouTube. And then share stories, have a listening tour, and then at the end of the summer provide some feedback for the school committee when they meet in this in the fall saying here's what we learned, here's what we heard. That's a relatively simple thing like on the

209document it is like I do think having some refinement more defined more having some of the ideas more clearly defined within the limited scope of the summer with maybe like three big events and then like a synopsis. That seems like a reasonable sort of focus. That's one idea I had. Thanks. Lisa. Um one quick question. I thought that did the PTOs finish submitting all their bylaws cuz there was the wondering if they could do business as or just change their organization name or maybe I misunderstood that. Okay. All right. I'm just calling myself out. Um and then one of the questions that I had for the scope of work um was just around um those celebrating long standing district traditions and practices worth sustaining. I really I really love the idea of, you know, you

210know, trying to carry the torch from some of the other places. I guess the only question I had would be if there would be room to allow for some of those newer traditions as newer identities are established and everyone has that opportunity to families when they end up in their new buildings to kind of build some of that, too. So, just making sure they had space for that. It's brilliant. I think it's important. I think we're we're evolving into a different district with this and I think it's important for us to not only have a sense of who we've been and to be able to keep some of the things that made the kids excited about going to school a part of it, but also to look at new opportunities to do things and and

211grow. Yeah, so don't think of this is, you know, this group we're talking about may stop at some point next year, but don't think that the effort of building the culture and building the the the joy of education is is lost. Yeah. One, I think my recommendation would be to approve some form of this to get moving forward because I think every time we wait 2 more weeks, it's going to delay the impact of it. One thing that I would just ask is to think about how recommendations come out in in a way that doesn't put the school committee directing the operations of the schools, right? And so, how that and I don't know how to do that right now. I've been trying to think about it because but the intent of this is good

212and it's the right thing to be doing. And I just want to make sure that there's that one arm's length piece for principals. Yeah, this should not be school committee should be kind of guiding but not doing and that's that's part of the document and it's more of a facilitation and it's more about doing this. We're the entity that that exists when the other ones are forming. We're already here and we're still here. So, let's use that as a way of being able to to grow. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't disagree with this at all. I just want to make sure there's that one buffer for from an operational standpoint for principals. So, I would entertain a motion to uh approve Andrew and Liz as the AB forward transition and engagement task force

213co-chairs. Moved. Second. That was moved by Lisa, seconded by Glenn. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Okay. So, charge and let's figure out how do we go about membership and we'll go from there. Awesome. Peter, you're on with naming of schools. All right. So, one of the There's a memo in your packet. Um one of the critical steps we have is we have to submit this paperwork to DESE cuz Sherry can't create line items. We can't create PowerSchool accounts. We can't do anything um until we get moving on this. I don't I do not envision the superintendent being involved in choosing the actual names of the schools, but what I do need to do is submit something to DESE. And so, what I'm proposing to you is until unless you tell me no,

214what I would at least submit to DESE on paper is you know, Blanchard Memorial because that still is Blanchard Memorial. And then Parker Damon upper, Parker Damon lower, Boardwalk upper and Boardwalk lower with the and I would actually include this year I would say at least initially put the grades so that there's a real clarity to that um when people are looking on websites, things like that. And that will get us going on the back end technical side of things with what we need. And then the School Committee can figure out how do we want to proceed with naming and what's the actual vision for names. This is not naming the school. It's just me submitting paperwork to DESE and getting something going. Glenn. I move to do just that. We're not voting on it.

215Thank you. That's not a vote. Thank you. >> [laughter] >> Andrew, so I spent 20 years as a brand strategy consultant and naming is a big part of what I did. The brand architecture of what we've done inside of the district makes a lot of sense to be able to maintain this as the the going forward. And even if it ends up being make Boardwalk Upper um you know, Peter Light Memorial um minimum minimum security educational facility, it is still Boardwalk Upper makes a lot of sense. Boardwalk Lower makes a lot of sense. I I'm all for this. I'm going to just acknowledge we're getting on towards 9:30. >> [laughter] >> Lakshmi. If if you if we try to change Blanchard's name, I think the whole town will be up. >> [laughter] >> So, I

216would say check with Acton folks to make sure you're okay moving those names off. Gates, Douglas, McCarthy Town. >> So so so what we're doing, Lakshmi, this isn't like official naming forever. This is a holding >> even consider. I'm asking. Maybe we you should talk to town folks. So, how does that happen in time for us to be able to do the reorganization? >> the select board can help. I mean, these names have Blanchard has a historical He's a historical name. I don't know about the others in Acton. >> We We are not removing the opportunity to make the names whatever people want to make them, but we want those new communities to make that decision. Okay. >> So, this is just a holding pattern. It is something that we can do because they are

217existing facility names. Yep. And it allows those new communities to define themselves when they're ready, not when we told them that we had to just do something. >> Okay, but I thought you were stating down a deadline, so Yeah. I thought you needed to move fast. Yeah. Um I'm going to wrap around this way and I'll come to you. Uh Liz. Um just a quick question as a follow-up from the last conversation that we had on this. Did we find out if moving to, you know, Parker Damon or upper lower, if we're able to still maintain any of the previous data and if we go to Parker Damon and then rename it, will we be able to take the data that starts from the day of renaming? Like are we able to then continue that?

218>> No, you know, one of the things right the day after the vote, the original vote on January 22nd, we reached out to DESI and evidently they received the response from whoever the hierarchy is at the state but forgot to send it to us. But the the bottom line is we would need new school codes anyway. So, this is just consistent with that process and we're moving forward. DESI has for the same process they have two different forms published. They have an online form and then they have a conflicting version of a paper form that spell out two different processes. I'm not shocked, but that is the way it is. So, it's been confusing getting information out of them exactly what we have to do next, but I think with as long as you let

219me proceed to submit something, we'll go figure it out. It will get this rolling. Lila. No, I was just going to say that this feels like a paperwork administrative thing because they're regulatory things. It's not substantive for us. No, I just want you to know that I'm submitting something with a temporary name because that has to be submitted and it's not actually the name of a school. It's just a temporary placeholder. Okay. You good on that? Awesome. In that case, I am absolutely delighted delighted to find my script for how to do the Oh, no, we can't do the consent agenda yet. We need a capital sub update. Um and I don't know sure Liz, do you want to talk Can you talk about it? Awesome. I actually came prepared, wrote stuff down. Um so,

220the capital subcommittee, we met on Wednesday, February 28th and we reviewed the plans for the end of 2026. Uh spoiler alert, there have been some outdoor projects which were interrupted by weather. >> [laughter] >> Um you know, and just kind of plotting out the wrapping up of the things. One of the big pieces, of course, is the um HVAC for the top of the high school. Um and that is something that like there's a grant that's tied to it, as well. So, we do have more of a timing issue that we need to get to that sooner uh rather than later. Uh for 2027, um I can't remember what they were specifically, but there were three priority projects that we're looking at. Um a couple of them were safety-related, like wheelchair ramps um or wheelchair

221lifts, I think. Um and then some auditorium. So, they're kind of some bigger pieces. And looking into FY18, we've got, you know, some of the we're kind of get nearing the end of sort of our last um batch of funding that we uh bonded for this. So, we will be looking to come to the school committee for a potential vote to um allow us to bond up to a certain amount. Um right now the figure that we're thinking is maybe up to 5 million, just because we do have some other big projects that, you know, FY18 and onward that we're going to need to be funding. So, one of the decisions before the school committee that will have to decide is you going to bond it within the operating budget or are you going to

222try and exclude that debt? Um both have implications, whether it's the flexibility of the operating budget or whether it would pass, right? Um but the the bottom line is the some element of this has to happen because we have, you know, the 11 rooftop units at the high school that are well past the end of their useful life. They're failing. They need to be replaced. We have, you know, 2.5 million dollars already set aside for that in a capital account. We also received half a million dollars from MassCEC toward the replacement of those rooftop units, but it comes with a timeline that it has to be expended and the work needs to be done by the end of FY28. Right? By the end of FY28 in order to receive that funding. And so, if we

223don't put ourselves on a schedule to get this worked on, we will have given up half a million dollars, which then ends up falling to taxpayers. So, we're going to have to figure out something in the next year to get this going. We just wanted to give you an early preview that this will have to be a point of discussion in next year's budget process in a potential article for town meeting. In Acton and Boxborough. Next spring, not this spring. Thanks. All right. I am going to do this. Items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like an item held for discussion and a separate vote. I will read each item and if a member would like it held, please say hold. Members

224do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes. Item A, approval of Acton-Boxborough Regional School Committee minutes uh for February 26th. And item B, recommendation to approve budget transfers per policy DJB. Given that no items were held, is there a motion to approve the consent agenda as presented? So moved. >> That would be Lila. Is there a second? Second. That would be Glenn. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? Consent agenda has been approved. Anything in the FY No, fancy that. Move to adjourn. Second. Moved by Glenn, seconded by Liz. All in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Any abstentions? We are done. Thank you everybody. Well done. Good meeting.