Acton-Boxborough School Committee Meeting - November 6th, 2025

001the long time I was on. >> All right, everybody. >> So, it's uh 6:31. Noting the hour in the presence of a quorum, I call the Actton Boxboro Regional School Committee to order. Members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may watch Actton TV's YouTube channel, which is found at the top of the agenda. This meeting is being recorded and will be posted on Actant TV's website at actanttv.org. So, it's awesome to see everyone. Um, I don't know about you, but I'm noticing that we're looking at a very packed agenda. And it's clear that we are both trying to balance our usual current year oversight with um, a whole lot of planning for what comes next. And that is a lot to keep up with. Um, so kind of thinking about that

002as we go through our presentations, asking us all to be very mindful of um, kind of what our timeline is. So, thinking about ask your most important question, singular. I see a thumbs up. Thank you, Glenn. [laughter] And uh or whatever key comment you have. And if you've got something that you want to follow up on, let's just do that by email. Um because there's just a lot going on. [snorts] Alrighty. So, we get to welcome Sandep, who is our um student representative uh coming to report on whatever. Oh, hey, awesome. And we've got Tushara here as well. Come on up both of you. Great. Um they're going to share some student perspective on current events and um this is per our policy JIB, student involvement in decision-making. Welcome to you both. First of all,

003thank you all so much for being here this evening. It's such an honor to be speaking with you. So, we're going to be talking about some events at the high school um from our last meeting and then we'll share some events to look forward to in November. So, to start off, quarter 1 ended last week and teachers are currently working up on finishing up the grades for the quarter by tomorrow morning. Uh November 14th, we had uh like a great uh community day. Um we had a lot of activities from uh this working across the grades. Uh freshman had team building activities with teamworks. They came to the school and we did a bunch of activities with them. Uh sophomores had a field trip to Fenway Park in Boston. The juniors took the PSAT and

004the seniors had an opportunity to visit UMass uh Ammeris or UMass Dartmouth or work on their college applications. Overall, it seemed it was a very good uh community community day and was wellliked by a lot of the students and it was well organized considering that it was our first year doing this. >> Yeah. And the seniors also had their career speakers and I actually had a friend who went to see the chemical engineering speaker and she found it very helpful. So I'm looking forward to attending that next year. >> Since I'm a sophomore, I'm just going to talk a little bit about what we did in Fenway. We took a for a tour of Penway Fenway Park around the stands and in the press box and saw some of the me memoirs of the players

005in the league. Afterwards, we went out to Time Market, which had amazing food, but unfortunately, some tours ended early and others ended later. So, some people ended up getting their food later and they were unable to like sit down and eat for a while. And overall, I think there was a large constraint on time. So, I think better um planning beforehand could be better for future years. On a different note, student council did a great job organizing homecoming last um week on the 25th, which was attended by over 700 high schoolers. And I was able to attend as well. So, I can say that it was a great experience overall. We had lots of music, dancing, and the photo booths were a huge success also. And also with fall sports ending, um a lot of

006students who were involved in sports such as myself, um are finding a lot more time in our schedules. Um, personally, swimming was a large part of my day and we just finished up a very good fall season. We had some celebrations to send off our seniors and my teammates and I got to prepare speeches for our seniors last week and I know a bunch of other teams did that also. And I'm look just looking forward to winter sports starting. >> Uh uh taking a side note on uh more scientific topics, research club is start preparing for the science fair in January where students present a research project of their own to judges who are parents and previous alumni and get scored by them. Currently we are gathering our materials and preparing to start doing some

007experiments for our project and I'm also preparing for some on my own as well. Thanks for sharing that, Tash. Um, we also have some updates for the junior and senior classes. So, the junior class leaders are hosting um, silent auction and spaghetti dinner to raise donations for the class of 2027. So, that will be happening on the 25th. And we also have senior dressup day coming up on November 26th. So, that's just when seniors dress up with with their friends and play a bunch of fun games on the last day before Thanksgiving break. H uh tomorrow we have uh discover STEM 2025 uh a showcase of interactive science, technology, engineering, and math catered towards students in grades 7 through 12 along with uh adults in order to show their uh passion for STEM uh tomorrow.

008And a lot of uh scientific science companies are going to be there such as Boston Dynamics and Math Works. And finally, the Friday before Thanksgiving, uh, our chorus is having the 31st annual cabaret night. Um, they'll be performing lots of different music styles from Broadway to contemporary to ac capella along with bands and dance. And students generally really enjoy this um, cabaret night. So, if you're interested in coming, we'd love to see you there. Um, you can check it out on the morning email for more details. Also, >> thank you so much for listening to us give our update and we hope to see you again in the next meeting. >> Thank you. Anybody have questions or comments for Zay and Tushar? >> Adam, uh, >> I have a a quick question. Um, thank you

009first of all for the update. Really great to hear all those things that are happening. Um, some of us had the opportunity to speak with uh some evaluators from NIA earlier this week who came in, walked around the school. Um, one of the questions that they asked um was about open campus and sort of all the doors. I know that you guys being you're both juniors, right? So, you've been at school, right? >> I believe so. Sure. >> I'm a sophomore. >> You're a sophomore. All right. So, um, having experienced what it was like to have all the open doors and having them sort of more secure, um, and that that idea of the open campus now that you're one of you is a junior, one of you is a sophomore. How do you feel

010about sort of freeze, open campus, being able to to leave if you've got good grades, all of that stuff? Um, I think it's it's definitely nice to have more freedom of like especially to like if you want to go out at lunch to eat outside. Um, so I personally really liked it. >> Is there anything you want to add? >> Yeah, it's uh just more opportunities for the students to be independent and just be themselves outside of just being restricted by going from class to class every day. >> Great. Thank you. Now you're in trouble. Go ahead, Peter. >> You know, um, just hearing you speak about the community days and some of the other in homecoming dance and things like that. Um, I think one of the things that I know from having worked

011with Miss Dean for a number of years now is she's been really thinking about how to, you know, take some of the feedback we've received from students over the years about just a really what can be a stressful environment in high school. Um, and think about ways to soften that and bring some real joy into that. >> How do you, you know, and I know there's been community wellness days, there are, you know, this community day, homecoming dance. How do you have you seen a culture shift as some of these have been introduced and what do you what do you see as different? >> Yeah, absolutely. I think all these community days and the homecoming events that um the school is organizing, I think they're super helpful to just taking the stress off students a

012little bit and um just a focus on something else other than academics. And I person I can speak for myself. Um it I I took the PSAT on community day so can't say it was very relaxing [laughter] but um it was really nice to still have more time for lunch and also to hang out with friends. And I know that other sophomores and freshman um they went to Fenway and um got to spend time with their friends. So I can say that from what I've heard from my friends, they really enjoyed it as well. >> Yeah. Same thing about what Zam said, but it's can also apply to like outside of community day like with uh MCCAST and we have our uh flexbox where we have a a dedicated hour of different activities over the

013school and you can sign up for whichever one that you want. And I think it's also just another great opportunity for students to uh spend more time with other people and just have fun overall. Well, it's really nice to start our meeting off with this kind of update because we're going to talk about some really hard stuff involving budget and all of that. And to listen to you highlight everything from academic interests to the things that you can do with your friends to your sports to your extracurriculars. It feels really good. So, thank you for sharing such such a comprehensive picture of all the awesome things going on at the high school. >> Of course. Our pleasure. Thank you. >> All right. We'll see you next time. All right. So, that brings us to public

014participation for school committee policy. Beedh members members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes on any topic not related to AB forward. We'll get to that later. [snorts] Public participation will only take place at this time during our meeting for all those other topics. Speakers must be recognized by the chair before speaking and the committee does not typically respond to comments during public participation. Would anybody like to speak about anything not related to AP Forward? >> Come on up. >> There it is. Is that it? First time. All right. Uh, my name is Karen Hogath. I'm from Actton. I'm on the Actton Finance Committee. I am not speaking on behalf of the finance committee. Speaking on my own behalf as a taxpayer. Um, I was looking at the detailed budget

015that you sent to us, Tori, for the the long-term plans, and what I saw in there that would caught my eye was that you're projecting a 5 and a/4% annual increase on salaries um through FY31. Then we wonder why we can't stick to the two or two and a half 3% budget increases when 65% of the budget is going up by over 5%. Um, so that's untenable and I know that you're in uh some of you are participating in contract negotiations with the teachers union right now and I hope that's being kept in mind. Nobody gets a five and a quarter annual increase every year. Nobody gets that and I don't understand why that should be the expectation for teachers. Um, if that were 4% that would take through FY31 that would take 15.6 million.

016Did it go off? That would take $15.6 million out of the long-term projection through FY31. >> Oh, all right. >> All right. Um, so anyway, five and a quarter to 4% takes $15.6 million out of the projection for the next five years. Even 4% is too higher. Too high because I assume that's projecting no change in headcount. And given the 17-year trend and you know another six, seven, eight, nine years of projected declining enrollment, the headcount needs to come back into line with what we had you whether it's five or 10 years ago. Pick your number. But if we went back to the studenttoteer ratio that we had 10 years ago, we would have 35 fewer gened teachers right now. That's that's $3.5 million right there. Um, so I really hope that when you you're

017working with this with the negotiations that you get those percent increases back to what the rest of us deal with and also that you reflect um, you know, rural headcount expectations in your long-term projections. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Is it on? It's on. >> It's still on, but it's at my chest. Um, >> that's it. Uh, I may not be able to stay for this whole meeting, so I'm making this comment now. Are you a roadie? There you go, big guy. Thanks. Appreciate that. Um, so I just had a quick question now. So, Scott Sullivan, a Patriots Road, uh, chair of finance committee, active finance committee. Just a quick question. Um, I'm looking to try to get the detail of the $17 million and reference in the AB forward uh Conan uh scenario

018and that's just looking for the detail for that. That's all I have. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> Uh Scott, we'll give that to you right now. That is the number carried by Doran Whittier in the 2016 master fees plan study. Um that is the last you know actual data point that we could point to that we you know have as a source that we could reference. Um that said it's extraordinarily outdated and probably does not even come close to reflecting actual costs. Um [clears throat] you know I did send to our capital subcommittee um through Sherry what the most recent MBA MSBA projects have been. Most are actually coming in as new construction as opposed to renovations. Um but based on what I saw of all the most recent approved MSBA projects, it's more

019like 50 to 100 million. Um in terms of cost of new elementary buildings, um cost have, you know, increased exponentially over the last couple of years um in particular. So, you know, we recognize it's not really relevant data, but it's the only reliable data point that we have. Greg Jarbo, 5 Cherokee Road. And just to demonstrate that um I'm speaking as an individual and not as the third member of the finance committee. I know we must have a lot of time on our hands. Um I want to congratulate uh Actton Boxboro for a data point that um I discovered this week. Um, not only are we now the ninth best public school in Massachusetts, uh, according to niche, that's up from, um, uh, 13 a year ago. So, I know you have a lot of

020challenges in front of you. I know this is going to be a tough time. We'll hear more about that tonight. But um uh using data that comes from u public sources and uh a group down in Pittsburgh with no axe to grind here in Actton. Um you've done an amazing job struggling with all the challenges that you've had over the last couple of years and I hope we can continue that going forward. >> Thank you. any other members of the public or members of finance committee not yet accounted for? >> All right, Peter, over to you. >> All right, thanks Tori. Um, so I'm start with just a kind of a real nice announcement. Uh we're pleased to announce that we were actually just awarded just about a $39,000 grant um from the Massachusetts Department

021of Elementary and Secondary Education to continue our work around hate crimes prevention. Um we received a hate crimes prevention grant a few years ago as well from DESIE. Um and that was important catalyst for some of the work that we've done. Um, as you're aware, we um, going back, you know, at least since I've been here, we've been taking really deliberate steps to combat hate and bias speech in our schools. Um, and think about, you know, making sure that we create an environment where all of our students feel safe and seen. Um, and so one of the things we've seen in our data points is an increase in anti-semitism. And so we have shifted what was originally our uh, leadership coalition that I'm sure you're all aware of to combat hate and bias speech. But

022we think based on what we're seeing right now for data, we want to focus very specifically on anti-semitism. So Jen Faber is our um director of access and engagement. She's actually leading our task force that we've now developed on anti-semitism um in large part thanks to being able to have this grant from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. So um certainly more to come as that task force gets going. They've had their first meeting um to start work, but they will be working throughout the year to really think about how we can use the work that's already been done, which is really good work, to now also focus very specifically on anti-semitism and and additional strategies that allow our schools to combat that type of hate speech. Um couple of things. Um first, um

023November, you know, we celebrate a few different things. Um, one, it's uh, Native American Heritage Month, um, which is celebrating the, uh, rich and diverse cultures, traditions, and histories, um, and to acknowledge the important contributions of Native peoples. I had an opportunity the other day, uh, to go over to the Douglas Elementary School um, and celebrate Veterans Day. That is a long-standing annual tradition that goes back about three decades. um they do a wonderful job bringing in members of the community, family members of our students um and really just celebrating the rich contributions that our veterans have made um to you know the culture that we all are able to really thrive in. So um it is just another reminder of what an awesome community we have and just you know really being able to

024have one of the real great nations in the the world as well. So um certainly thanks to our veterans. Um, also we are coming up on Thanksgiving. Um, and so you know it interesting. I don't know how many people know the history of Thanksgiving, but I think I'd do a pop quiz. Um, so I'm just going to randomly call on people. I have some popsicle sticks that I brought to the meeting. Um, but just to give you a little history, it was after several years of grueling civil war that President Abraham Lincoln proclaimed the last Thursday of November in 1863 to be set aside as a day of thanksgiving to create a sense of unity in the broken country. So, um, really just, you know, it's important to understand the history of a lot of

025our traditions as well. Um, half days, we'll be sending out, you know, half day early release times for both the Thanksgiving break and the winter break. Um, so that families have those. I'm not going to do an AB forward update right now because we have plenty of time for that later. Um, and I will also just do another, you know, really exciting thing. We had a multilingual soccer night the other night. I know Tori, um, you know, I was impressed that you were walking the next day. Um Leela was there playing soccer as well. Uh but we actually hosted about 80 people of all ages um to come and enjoy an evening of soccer and community. So participants played a friendly match. They were divided by ages. Um connected across languages and wrapped up the

026night with some pizza and food and conversation. So um we saw that our adults were kind of taking advantage of our students during the soccer ma match. So uh fortunately the the boys soccer team wandered by. Um after their game, I ran over to them and said, "Our students need your help." Uh they put on the pennies and they they jumped right in and and you know, gave the adults a run for their money. So, thanks to our boys soccer team as well for being great sports. That's it for me. >> And somehow I knew that was coming. But I do have to say that um the common language of sport is powerful. And that was an amazing evening. I don't think I've been nutmeged by that many people half my size that many times

027in a 45minute period ever. So, um, kudos to everybody who showed up. That was really a great comm community event. Um, and I also really appreciate the the grant that you mentioned about the hate crimes prevention work. Um, something that I am really proud to be associated with the district for is the active approach that we take towards how do you see something that looks wrong and know how to speak up about it. Um, modeling that and making that happen and seeing that have an impact is important. So, you know, taking that forward as we work with the challenges that we face with anti-semitism. I think we're going to continue to lead the way there and continue to teach people what to do when things are hard and how to call out things that are

028wrong. That's awesome. So, all right, with that, let's move on to our guests and presentations. So, we're going to start out with our uh goal number one and um inviting up uh we have a couple of principles with us and we have um Christine Nean, Allison Warren, and uh Gabby Abrams coming to join us. All right, they're first. Welcome. [music] Sorry. >> While Peter's pulling out the um presentation, I just want to remind him that uh as the superintendent, he's technically um answers to the school committee. And it was the superintendent who [music] chose to get some young soccer players to beat up on a couple members of the [laughter] school committee that night at the multilingual soccer night. So you might see some comments about that in the evaluation at the end of the

029year. [laughter] Awesome. Brand new. Yeah. >> But when you're So, while uh we're working on getting the presentation up, um let's flip to the end and do our subcommittee updates. So, we're going to save capital because we have the capital presentation. How about negotiations? uh we met yesterday with the ABA um and you know each sort of gave the initial presentations um I think that we you know it's still very early to kind of report anything out but I think that we're still working really well together. >> Awesome. >> And we're all up so we'll pause this. Well done. Good feller Liz. Good evening. Thank you, Peter. Um we're excited to come and present um talk to you a little bit about what's going on with tier one instruction. Um I think it's important for

030us to share if we can. Um we're going to be focusing in on the first goal and strategy 4 when looking at the tier one along with um using data to informed our practices. What we're going to share is what we are currently doing at Gates and McCarthy Town, but it's also important to note that this is going happening in all six schools. Um, so we kind of are speaking we're sharing Gates and McCarthy Town, but we also want to make sure that everyone recognizes that um our colleagues also are doing a lot of really great work um with this goal and um strategy as well. So at Gates Elementary, if everyone remembers that wall from after the I'll just go back. everyone enjoy that wall because that used to be the old building. It's

031if anyone went to Gates, you know, where um people always took their pictures with that wall. Um so here we have our the Gates school improvement plan. Um the goals one and three, we are focused on um equitable outcomes for our students and using data to make those decisions. As well as our sec our third goal is looking at our EL curriculum. um it is a new version of what we were doing. So there is quite a bit of professional learning that's having to take place this year that is definitely in support of our tier one um tier one instruction for the action steps that we are doing for um these two goals is that first one we're looking at is our data meetings. We have been working on data meetings for probably the past

032four years. We have had many versions. I feel like we are in a really good place now with our data meetings. Um, bless you. Um, and now the progress monitoring is what occurs in between the data meetings. Um, a lot of what we are now honing is what are the instructional decisions that we're making for our tier 2 groups and our tier three groups. Um, so this is really important, really important work that our grade level teachers are doing. Um, also something that we at Gates this year um decided not to have a small instructional leadership team. We decided to do this as a staff with our professional staff and we are looking at we started this um yesterday as staff meeting and we're going to continue with the professional learning day in a couple

033weeks. But um we are looking at all of our data together so that we can say what are the trends that potentially we see. Are there any gaps in our curriculum? Is there any gaps in alignment that we need to be looking at? Um, is there any adjustments to our instruction that need to be made? So, I'm really excited to see how this goes because I've never done this before. Um, but third, um, the the staff meeting was great, so I'm anticipating the professional learning date. It'll be great. Um this is our how we are structuring all conversations this year when thinking about our data meetings um when thinking about um our progress monitoring any any professional learning that's taking place the the deep dive that I'm doing with the staff is thinking of this

034triangle and how are we thinking about the instructional decisions that we're making and putting these the top three questions in mind when you're thinking about tier one instruction, tier 2 and tier three so that you're always having the student um as the focus for what are the next steps that you want that you want to do. This is um our measurement and monitoring. How do we know that we're doing what we need to be doing? Um we have many forms of measurement. Um these are the screeners that our teachers use. Um what is not on here but probably should be at the top in bold and you know 50 point font is it's really important that what the teachers are sharing on a daily basis. What does that cool down look like at the end

035of that math lesson? um what is it that the student what what do you observe in the student in addition to all the data that the that we're able to collect to make adjustments and then the monitoring the data meetings that occur along with the progress monitoring in between the data meetings and then um weekly MTSS meetings that occur with myself assistant principal um coaches who work closely with our specialists and I'll hand it to my colleague. >> Thank you everyone. And I'm Christine Neielen. Thank you for the opportunity to speak with you. I'm the principal of McCarthy Town. Um it's fun to sit next to Allison and hear her work that's happening at Gates and how hear think about the work happening at McCarthy Town and how they're similar and slightly have their own

036flavor. Um so our goal one of our school improvement plan is split into two parts. The first part is to look at high functioning teams and the characteristics of high functioning teams to help the grown-ups that are looking at the data in order to impact the instruction think about one of the important aspects of a high functioning team doing that work is accountability and opportunities for continuous growth. And so we wanted to hold those two pieces while we did some concrete work around consistent assessment practices. Um the list at the in the slide shows some of the steps within looking at the other part of our goal with which is the consistent assessment practices. Um, McCarthy Town has a long history of really looking at a student's growth against themselves and we wanted to spend

037some time really focusing on how do we assess to the grade level standards and how do we learn about the grade level standard for the grade level before and the standard for the grade level after and understand the boundaries around that work. Um, doing that assessment work helped us internalize the new programs that we have in EL as our ELA program and IM being our math program. Using that process to internalize those highquality instructional materials, um, we use our building based professional learning. Um, and we were given some of the district-wide professional learning time to put our teams into a vertical team structure. So instead of just the fifth grade team working with the fifth grade team, they're working with one fifth grade teacher, one third grade teacher, and one first grade teacher to look

038at the scope and sequence of individual skills and see how they're growing over time throughout the school. Um that gives teachers a deep sense of the curriculum and a deep sense of how to differentiate the curriculum to learners that might be in a specific grade level but might need some different kinds of instruction within that grade level span. Um, we also are looking at how we can make our scaffolding practices for EL learners and students with disabilities and all learners have consistent access to assessments and have consistent scoring while giving them an opportunity to feel success in those assessments. Um, we adjusted our coaching cycles this year to focus for the past two years they've been focused more on tier three and tier two which are small group. Our coaching cycles this year are more

039looking at that tier one instruction and looking at how to use those consistent assessment practices, the consistent scoring practices, and then what are the instructional shifts in the classroom. So, we took our coaches out of seven of our data meetings and put them into the classrooms doing coaching cycles with the teachers to really be able to look at those instructional decisions and that instructional practice in real time. Um, a super exciting piece that we just started yesterday with our fifth grade team is a learning lab structure where we're looking at the assessment ahead of time, looking at the planning of the unit and then being able to implement it with a team of teachers and then look at how that assessment impacted that instruction. And for me the exciting piece is um Jen Gustto, our

040assistant principal and I are getting to be learners in that process with the team including a special educator and an EL teacher. So that cross-disciplinary team being learners together to really implement this work is exciting. um similar measurement that Allison shared. Um and really it's an incredible exciting point of growth for McCarthy Town that we're using these measurements to impact our instruction um and not just focus on the growth of individual students and we really need both in schools. So it's exciting to see and as Allison said the picture of the principles represents that all of the staff and all of us are doing this work across all six schools. Those principles each also represent hundred staff members that are carrying the work of AB forward and everything else going on in the district while

041also looking at growth and looking at how to continue to learn and do right by kids. So we just wanted to recognize that. Thank you. >> Thank you. All right, questions. >> Adam, >> hi. Thank you both. Um Christie, I have a question for you about um you know your in your plan for goal one around consistent assessment practices. One of the things that you had in a bullet point there was reporting to caregivers and I'd love for you to sort of elaborate some more on what that looks like and what that means. >> Sure. Thank you for that cuz that was something I couldn't fit in. Um, so we in September like hit the ground running looking at we have been a school that historically doesn't have what people think of as a report

042card. Although it's kind of a misnomer because we have an endofthe-year document that looks a lot like a standardsbased report card. In fact, it has a lot of the same language. We just have historically wanted to give children a year's worth of time to find their own place to those end of the year standards. So in September, we hit the ground running looking at how we do report out to caregivers throughout the year, which is through conferences. And the history of the school has been really reliant on conferences. Um, but the staff and parents last year gave feedback about how are we making sure those conferences are consistent because they're such a critical piece. And it's really easy to have a report card be standardized and consistent for families, but it's much harder to have

043conferences be more standardized and consistent. So, what we did was um through restorative justice circles and making sure everyone had a voice in it, talked about what are the practices that we hold dear. And there was a lot of making sure we have a relationship with the parent, making sure the parent knows we have a relationship with their student, making sure the students needs are taken care of, and making sure we hit all of that um academic assessment to growth and assessment to standard. And we the teachers were like, we can't actually get all of that into 20 minutes. It's we're not that's why we're getting this inconsistency that the parents had given us feedback about. So we actually ended up working with the PL schedule and being able to give them 30 minutes for

044conferences and we wrote a guidelines document so that there is consistency and practices in those conferences. That was one of our that first steps. >> Yen, >> thank you. Um this question is actually regarding to MCCAST results. Um a few months ago when the MCAST results results came out a lot of people reached out to me and say why are there such a performance gap amongst our schools. Um this question is that I I see that in in grade three for McCarthy Town that the ELA is 40% meeting expectations. Do you see that with the new strategy that that number would be improving moving forward? I can start and then I'll throw it to Gabby because she can help with the districtwide. Um, one of the things that Gabby and I have talked about as

045far as McCarthy Town's specific um, data and as far as districtwide data is really looking at those writing standards and looking at specifically what is how does our new program and the way we rolled out our new program help students with the writing standards. That's part of that um those changing our data meetings to having the coaches in the classrooms, being able to help our teachers pace the new EL program to get to more of that writing instruction and skill development piece and being able to help them plan some of the flex block work that happens to meet those needs. I'll toss it over to Gabby if you want to add anything. >> Yeah. Well, thank you Christie did great. I think I think we're seeing a combination of a couple factors. one is an

046implementation dip which is well supported by research with brand new we're really in year two of a new comprehensive core curriculum resource adoption with EL education and so I think we're seeing I think we're seeing the the byproduct of a bit of an implementation dip and um we had we did have a chance to do an early literacy data dive specifically looking at the grade three data across the district just earlier this week is today only Thursday it was Tuesday um and the team we had about 25 educators K to3 come together to look at the data is specifically to say why this, why now? And um the teachers really did surface what Christy mentioned about um written expression being an area of need and um the acknowledgement that this year's literacy plan was adapted

047to respond to where we are with um restructuring and strategic planning. The plan was for us to do a full year all-in with um regrouping back on writing instruction. Now we're doing that on a voluntary basis as opposed to a more coordinated strategic basis based on all the things happening in the district. So we are seeing that and we're on we're we're very mindful of both um what the what the issues are and for whom are experiencing the greater issues. I just wanted to quickly say I appreciate all the work that you're doing and u when I was looking at the uh different forms of measurement and monitoring. This is a really quick question actually. Do you mind reminding me what the heing is? That's one I wasn't familiar with because I' I know my

048kids have taken I ready and done all the other things. >> Um yes, it's the sound when we are our kindergarteners and our first graders. It's it's learning how to play with sounds, recognize sounds, and manipulate sounds. Um, I just got to watch it in kindergarten with Miss Fehan the other day, and it was a lot of fun. I have a kindergarter, so I'm going to ask her about some of this. That's so cool. Thank you. >> Ask her how to manipulate sounds, putting a different different sound in front of the letter and stuff like that. Yeah. >> Thank you, Glenn. >> So, thank you for this. And I think you mentioned one of the there's side slide about something about like vertical team structure where like the first grader the first grade teachers and

049the third grade teachers and the fifth grade teachers are talking with each other. Um can you talk specifically about the benefits of that in particular cuz one concern I I have is like third grade literacy I think is that that's a very important point. Um, and I there are some scary statistics about like if you can't read by third grade, like high school outcomes are quite bad. Um, but so like if there can you just talk about the collaboration that happens between like, hey, this is what I see in third grade. This is what you might see in fifth grade down the road. Hope that's a bit of an open-ended question, but I was interested in your thoughts. >> Sure. Gabby actually used a similar model at that third grade data dive where we had

050kindergarten, first, second, and third grade teachers working together in vertical teams to look at what the third grade MCCAST test looks like and asks for as far as skill development. And the reason for doing that is that the skills are cumulative up to that point. And so if teachers get too much in silos, they may not understand what their part of the collective efficacy to get to the third grade standard mastery, what that is. And so doing some work in vertical teams, not all of the work, but some of it really helps teachers to understand the collective efficacy and the skill development that they need to get to each of those important data points. So, we heard a question earlier about um how staff and enrollment are related and certainly we have um we have

051reduced staff as enrollment has fallen and we've had to add staff back in to meet our students needs. And you know, as I look at this, I'm not sure if it's clear to all of us what exactly is necessary to be able to meet individual students needs by doing this level of assessment, this level of planning, this level of coaching, what you've all just articulated. So my question is, what if all this wasn't there? What if we didn't have MTSS? How would our schools and our education system be different? That's a really big question. So, um I I I think of all the structures that we currently have in place um would not be there. Um the we may have there could be a scenario where there may be a screener but not necessarily comprehensive

052where you're looking at comprehension and sound and um phonics and all the way up to sixth grade. What are the different and that's just ELA. You're looking at math. Um so just let's put assessments to the side. That probably wouldn't be there. We would not be able to have targeted instruction um in our tier 2 and tier three if we were not using data to inform those groups. um we likely would not have looked at having highquality um curriculum, tier one curriculum that is implemented across a building and all six schools um so that everyone is having a similar experience so that when they go to the junior high they can start relatively in the same place. um social emotional we would not have second step there would um the schools would not look like

053what they look like now. I can just add I started teaching in this district I think 23 years ago and there was not MTSS and so the 25 kids in front of me were primarily my responsibility and maybe the one or two students that had an IEP, there was a special educator. There was like maybe one for every three grade levels. And if a student had a unique need, I individually had to figure out kind of how to do my best to meet that need. Now the needs of our students it's are much more complex and we have better tools to be able to assess children academically and social emotionally and we have a team of support around that classroom teacher so that if there's a need that comes up there's people to collaborate with.

054There's people to take the child into small groups. There's people to help the teacher plan small groups that they can take. There's people to help teach students who are multil- language learners. There's there's that whole team of support around a classroom teacher. And so that increases our outcomes because individual students and groups of students are getting a faster target to getting their needs met. Whereas if it's just an individual teacher, they may have to wait on a five-day rotation of me doing small groups to get to them. With MTSS, they can go to a small group every day if they have that need or they can go to ML instruction every day if they have that need. If we reduce the amount of ML teachers, they may have to wait longer. If we reduce the

055amount of special educators, might have to wait longer. If we increase class size, they have to wait longer. So, that MTSS structure gets children more targeted approaches to what they need faster. >> Thank you. Um, I would encourage anybody who is wondering how education is different now than when it was a decade, multiple decades ago, ask an educator because um, I couldn't have I couldn't have guessed the things that you were just about to say and I found that really helpful. Thank you. >> We're probably going to come up with like 10 more things when [laughter] >> send them to me on email. I'd love to read them. >> Thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming in to talk to us. Hi everyone. You already I already had a little bit of a

056preview about tonight's presentation. It's so nice to be here with you always. Um tonight we're going to focus on our annual review of some spring academic assessment data. Um talking with you at a very high level, district level, looking at some summitative data focused on um goal one as you've already heard about which is to strengthen high-quality tier one instruction for all students including multilingual learners and students with disabilities. Um as highlighted by our previous principles. Um, I'm also focusing on our strengthening of data informed practices to empower teachers to adjust their tier one instructional strategies to better meet the needs of all of these students. And I've highlighted them here for you just like last time I had the opportunity to visit with you. This is a little bit of a run through of

057the highlights of today's presentation. We'll talk first about really why assessment. I love talking about these things because it's so so part of our everyday work. um different types and frequency. Um we're just looking at one type of assessment tonight again at a very high level, district level. I'm not going to drill into schoolbased data and so you might have some questions that I'm happy to follow up on following the meeting um or you know an email or request for additional information but this is a very high level look at data. also talking about some other assessment measures because even though we are only talking about summitive data tonight, there are other assessment measures that are used and um both Christine and Allison highlighted some of them. Some of the actions planned are underway in

058response and then an opportunity to ask questions. Um you've seen this quote from me before. I really like the work of John Hadtie, so I won't read um the quote to you, but I added tonight um this this resonated for me the the I I looked up the Latin root of assessment or to assess and I talked about this with the early literacy data dive team that um was here on Tuesday and it means to sit aside. To assess means to sit aside. Um, and it makes my heart sing a little bit to to know that something that feels so technical and so quantitative really has a very um kind of tender meaning to it. And so I just wanted to share that with you. Uh, you've also seen this before. This is um a

059data pyramid. People call this the Gabby pyramid. It's not a g it's not a Gabby pyramid. [laughter] Um but I think when I was a baby administrator, I took this incredible course um out of RBT right down the street um unleashing the power of collaborative inquiry which helped me to really understand that assessment is part of a system that each different type of assessment is part of a system that has um different different types of assessments for different purposes and different levels of frequency. What I said to the teachers um all the educators on Tuesday is that if you look on the very bottom of this triangle even though we're talking about the annual assessment and summit of assessment the most important most frequent assessment that we do is daily and it's formative and it's

060observational and it relies on the artisanship of our educators and the gifts of our educators to really in the moment see where a student is struggling and make an adjustment in that moment that is that is even more valid than anything else that we do. So um I just want to make sure that any piece of this assessment period that pyramid that's missing is going to have have an impact. And so that's why we talk about summit of assessment at the beginning of the year annually and then the more important stuff is the stuff that happens really more frequently and throughout the school year. Um spring 2025 MCCAST as you likely know um the state reports um our results for both accountability and for achievement and growth purposes. Uh, in terms of accountability, we are

061um there's a there's a bit there's a bit of a number system that's used. I won't go into too many details because it's pretty complicated. Um, but accountability um results in they take your student achievement, your growth, your chronic absenteeism, graduation rates, um lots of different data points, and it results in an accountability um number for each school and for the district. And um across the district we um have an we are rated at a 73 to 97% across all schools. So we're doing quite well. And in terms of um progress towards our targets, the nice part about um some of the accountability data is that one part is you're compared to other districts and another part is you're compared to yourself. And so the state sets um targets for you based on your performance

062for the next year. And if you reach those targets, then you um are are given high scores. So um ABRSD as a district um was deemed as meeting or exceeding our targets, not requiring assistance or support for 2025. That's a very high rating. Um really good progress across the district. We also look at both student achievement and student growth. Student achievement shows the percentage of students at each performance level. And student growth shows how a student or group's performance grow from year to year compared to the growth of other students across the whole state. It's a little complicated who scored in a similar achievement level. An SGP of 50 represents typical growth. So we'd like to see our numbers higher than 50, especially those um for our higher needs kiddos. If we have kiddos who

063are um behind grade level, we want to see them accelerating at a rate that's faster than some of their peers because otherwise they won't catch up. And so the hope is that we see growth greater than 50. And um Active Boxboro has a lot of points of pride around that. Next several charts look very much the same. So I'm just going to orient you to what you're looking at. At the very um you'll see that they're all labeled. Um what is they're all achievement and growth charts. Um, I'm providing you with information about grade 3 through 8 English language arts. So that's the aggregate of all grade 3 through 8. So these are all six of our elementary schools and the junior high combined. The state reports those numbers in the aggregate. So we'll look

064at that for English language arts. We'll look at that for math and we'll look at that for science. And then we'll do the same for the high school which is just grade 10 as you know English language arts, math and science. We have a new assessment this year that we're also looking at which is um a civics assessment that was given. We was reported out for the first time um for eighth grade. I think I have science in here or civics in here now. I'm not sure that I'm as I'm saying that out loud. At the very top you'll see there are three numbers. On the left top left hand side you'll see a percentage. That's the percentage of kiddos um for grade 3 through 8 English language arts who who scored meet or exceeding

065expectations. The middle number is the average scaled score and the right is that student growth percentile, that number that we want to see above 50 that I mentioned. So the higher the better. On the bottom left you'll see two line graphs. The green is the Act in Boxboro population and the gray is the state. I find it very fascinating that it's almost exactly the same shape. Um, and so when it's not the same shape or moving in the same direction, um, when we're moving up and the state's not moving up, I say, "Oh, we're exponentially improving." And when we're moving down and the state's not moving down, that's where I say, "What's happening here a little bit more?" Then on the right hand side, you'll see pretty much the same data, but in a bar

066graph. And it also includes information about students who did not meet expectations below that dotted line. And you you're seeing this data from 2021 through 2025. I just want to pause there because we're going to have a whole bunch of these charts that look exactly the same and I want to make sure that you're clear on what you're looking at before I kind of go through them quickly. Is that okay? Just a quick question. when you talk about those lines following each other. So for everyone watching and thinking about what you're saying, is that because we're thinking about maybe variables outside of our control but that would be broadly impacting all students across the same that would be contributing to those results. >> Yeah, I think it's a great question. One of the things educators

067are so keen on understanding opportunities strengths for their kiddos appro achievement and so I'm often asked isn't this happening elsewhere or isn't this happening across the state Gabby and so I will say well let's look at that so if it's happening similarly across the state and I say okay this is the nature of the test it's giving me a little bit more comfort in that this is the nature of and if it's not looking similar across the state it just gives us more to interrogate it's not often not good, bad, or otherwise. It's just a wondering. It's more to interrogate because sometimes it's hard to get to root cause. Um, but when we that just gives me pause to say what's happening here. Hope that's helpful. Okay. All right. Great. So, this is the same

068data chart for grade 3 to 8 mathematics. Again, you'll see those numbers at the top. 70% 512 and 63.6. Holy wow. It's very good. And again, similar similar data chart. Grades five and eight, science and technology. Those are the only two grades in the K in the K to8 span that assess in science and technology. Again, fairly stable. >> Yes, sir. >> Oh, great question. So, the reason what that's a really good question. I'm so glad you asked that. The reason why there's no student growth for um science and technology is because they only test in grades five and eight. And the goal of SGP is year-to-year growth. So, because there's that gap of six and seven, there's no way for them to really say, well, this is the impact of sixth grade or seventh

069grade. Perfect. Yep. Thanks for asking. Um, here's our grade 10 English language arts and our grade 10 mathematics. And I just realized that I did not include civics, but I do know off the top of my head because this is the kind of brain I have that 63% of our students met or exceeded expectations [laughter] on the very first grade 8 civics test. I don't know why I hold some of this information in my head this way. Um, and then the grade 10 biology assessment. This is one of those areas that we're we're looking to interrogate a little bit further. Um, I really appreciated the opportunity to also >> Can I shed light on that? I actually happen to be talking to um a Harvard staff member um who is the head of their policy

070institute that does the pandemic recovery scorecards um and she's also on the board of education and they actually she shared with me that what they were seeing on high school exams were write in answers that said why are we doing this anymore? Um, so they saw high school scores plummet across the state. Uh, that was a a trend because the high school students obviously learned earlier in that year that MCCAST was no longer a graduation requirement. So there was just a different approach to how high school students were thinking about that assessment statewide, which is why you see change across the board. In one of the following slides, um, we do note that right, we're one of the things we're interrogating at the high school is like if we can understand the extent to which

071to Peter's point, the November 5th, 2024 ballot question impacted the results. Um, so it is certainly something that we're looking at. And then, um, one of the questions the state is really asking is is how long is it going to take to return to what is referred to as prepandemic normal? I don't think anything is going to be has been considered normal after 2019 and 2020. I think it's I think it changed us. Um that is my personal opinion. I think we have to start with a new baseline. But when I do look at that to see where were we in terms of our outcomes before the pandemic and where are we now? This gave a a a really nice visual for us. So this is specifically English language arts grades 3 through 8 and

07210. So you'll see each bar is represented by a different color and you'll see exactly what you mentioned about grade three literacy earlier um that we've seen a really significant dip um in prepandemic performance especially compared with all the other grade levels that are indicated here. We're not seeing the same in um the same degree to which um there's been the dip. we're seeing a little bit more um more of a rapid recovery in mathematics. Um so just an interesting to look at that as well. Certainly something that we're paying attention to. And then science, the reason why there's only one little yellow dot there also is because that's the other piece that I wanted to mention at this time with the um science data. The science assessment actually changed as well. So there's very

073much the next generation science assessment was the last one to follow. um English language arts and math. So those assessments changed in 2021, 2022. Peter, is that about right? 2021, 2022, but the the biology assessment just changed. As we noted in our district improvement plan last year, so for 2425, we have identified um grade three English language arts and grade 8 math as two major kind of like pausing points for us to say, are we on track for and we were we had an opportunity to kind of look at that and this is what made us say, okay, let's let's get some lots of heads together to talk about this. So you'll notice that bar at the top um is all students and then all of our subgroup student performance um follows underneath underneath this

074bar for grade three English language arts. Again this is what we wanted to talk about um on Tuesday to be at 58% as a district. Again um Yang mentioned one particular school's performance. There is quite a range of outcomes across our six schools. Um but the average is 58% of our third graders and we really want to um stop that really you know really continue to increase that and look at the opportunities to to improve those outcomes for those kiddos and we haven't seen the same level of decline in grade 8 math. You see we actually are um pretty much at prepandemic performance. So, not an exhaustive list, but I just wanted to highlight some um facts here about returning to prepandemic performance. We were unclear about the impact of the November 5th ballot question.

075As I mentioned, subgroup gaps persist in many cases. I would say especially for our students with disabilities, and I also say our low-income students, kiddos with low socioeconomic status, we're seeing a heavier dip than what we would feel comfortable with. We really want to see those gaps close. we continue to outperform the state. Um so that's not a necessarily a level of concern across the district. Um and we want to return to where we believe um our students are most capable of performing. And as was mentioned by Christian Allison, writing is the greatest need of noted noted deficiency in grades 3, six, seven, and eight. Geometry is the most noted for improvement in grades 3 to five and seven. And then statistics and probability. The outer geometry is so challenging across all districts. Every district

076I talk with, I I it's we all have to huddle up about this a little bit more to better understand the the challenge because it is this is not unique to our community. I'm going to transition now to talking a little bit about our advanced placement and scholastic aptitude test results. And as Mr. Jarbo mentioned, this data was heavily leaned on for uh the 2026 niche ratings and also other ratings that we see coming across. Um this highlights our um participation of students taking the SAT, AP, and PSAT related assessments through last spring. So I was actually at the high school today for a leadership team meeting and um the the leadership team was all wondering why it wasn't higher for for PSAT because we had that um power day. I called it a power

077day where they had a I said, "Oh, that data is not actually going to be in this report. That's next year's report." So, they were relieved to know that they're actually going to see these numbers increase because of that open access opportunity that they provided to all of their students, which was great. Um, the number of exams with scores of three, fours, and five, again, just it's really humbling to look at these numbers. Um, we had 1672 exams taken and 1597 scored with a three, four, or five across all content areas. Um, this is SAT participation and performance. Um left is um evidence-based reading and writing and on the right is our mathematics. Again, significant high levels of performance here. And then just a few pieces of additional assessment information to bring you back to

078the Gabby pyramid, I guess, the data pyramid. [laughter] Um [clears throat] we also lean heavily on screeners and diagnostic assessments, formative assessments, and summitive assessments as part of this system. And some of those include um what you heard about earlier, foundations and Heggerty and Dibbles and USNS which is a number sense screener. Um we continue to enhance these data systems. It's and we're trying to bring humanity to it. As I mentioned earlier, even sitting with the with the K to3 early literacy team on Tuesday um trying to humanize that experience. I was able to do a reading for them that say children is children are not numbers. Um, but their numbers play a part in helping us to chart a path for students and knowing where their strengths are, where their assets are, and where

079their areas of opportunity lie. They illuminate a path for us, and we do need to look at those and take that seriously to help inform our practice. Um, you've heard so much about tier one instructional practice. We know that the foundation of MTSS is a solid tier one. That's the biggest part of that triangle that we need to make sure we emphasize. And we're working really hard to strengthen that collaborative planning time. It's hard with the structures that exist within schools. We do not have um structures known as professional learning communities or common planning time like so many elementary schools do. Um the junior high certainly does have more time together and the and this and this high school as well, but at the elementary level, this is a real gap for us. The opportunity

080for grade level educators to meet in teams um at least once a week. I mean, many communities, it's multiple times a week. We do not have that as part of our master schedule, and it's a it's a real barrier to um putting a lot of important heads together to solve problems for kids. And then we are enhancing our monitoring. Now that we're deeper into illustrative math and we're in our second full year of um EL education as a core resource for literacy instruction, it's important to us to really monitor um where we are with the pacing because the pacing means it's aligned the pacing is aligned to the standards. Um when we see an area of opportunity in data, there's three questions that I ask. Did we teach it? When did we teach it? And

081how did we teach it? And I never want that first question to be a no. Um, so the only way to know is to make sure we're monitoring pacing. So we're really paying greater attention to that with this second year. Um, and it's been a really um, helpful opportunity to do that by just really being in classrooms a lot, a lot a lot a lot. And it's been really joyful as well. I love a good quote. Um, so I found a new one for you tonight. Isn't this really good? Assessment is today's means of modifying tomorrow's instruction. So, I share that with you as a as a parting thought and offer an opportunity for any questions that you might have. >> Thank you, Gabby. Could you go back to the slide on the uh AP

082um scores, please? And I wonder if you could comment on what happened between 2022 and 2023 because it looks like uh a lot more people are taking APs and a lot more uh threes to fives being scored. Yeah, I don't remember the year that environmental became an AP option. It was either 23 or 24. I think that's a really good question. Do you remember, Peter, if the if it was 23 where we saw that big jump? >> It it was around about that time. I think one of the things that, you know, we didn't really talk about a lot along with course leveling probably to the extent we should have was that whole all that work actually entailed really looking at expanding opportunities for students to access higher level coursework. Um and so we we

083looked hard one in um science. They actually opened up a pathway for freshmen to start taking um advanced placement courses uh during grade nine and actually ended up with a large number of our freshman taking advanced place environmental science and as you can see performing extremely well. Um and that so that also then opened up more opportunities in biology and that's flowing into chemistry and physics as well. Um, [snorts] but we also looked really hard at our prerequisites that were in place and thought about whether prerequisites were supporting students to be successful or whether they were gatekeeping. Um, and tried to think of any practices that might be gatekeeping and keeping students away that would otherwise be successful and trying to find more ways to help students gain access. So, I think that's been a

084very intentional path for the high school. >> Thanks. >> Thank you. >> All right. I think I saw some hands. Glenn. >> So, thank you for the report and I want to reiterate that while we do have challenges, we are doing phenomenally well. Um, I know that anyone that can get a group of third graders to pay attention on anything. I salute. Um, so, and I think one of the reasons we're doing so well is that we're able to openly and openly and honestly acknowledge our challenges, strengths, and weaknesses in a transparent way. Um, and we're school committee members, so obviously we're like there's this thing, there's this thing, but we are doing great. >> Thank you. >> Yeah. So, I I I do want and if we are talking about this later in the

085session, I can just sort of zip it for now, but the the third grade literacy is something that I really am concerned with. Um it's one of those things I feel like the the longer that dip remains there each year come becomes more exponential levels of stress on the system. Are there any ideas or proposals or >> thoughts of things about possible interventions that we could implement sooner than later? >> Yeah, I'm happy to speak to that. Thank you for your question and care. I mean it's so important. So, we not only looked at this, but we also looked at our fall assessment data. And when we're looking at our fall assessment data, which is more of a screen screening data, so a different type of data. Um, we're seeing higher incidences of kindergarten students

086who haven't even been with us, right? So, we it's not it's not a practice that we've had in place. It's just the way they're showing up to school with higher needs. So, there were two specific um areas that raised my awareness that also were mirrored in the spring data. So, we've met I've met with both principles. we've kind of huddled up around like what can we do for interventions? We're offering some more opportunity for reading intervention for those two schools. We also had a meeting actually with DMG um with their breakthrough team. And a third piece that we've talked about is um and I'm trying not to overwhelm them with all my ideas, but the third piece that I've offered as well is that um there's um an opportunity for us to apply for a

087grant through Desi for high dosage tutoring. We knew that it was coming down the pike. it was just a it's a bit delayed than when we expected. So, we'll probably be submitting um an application. There's no guarantee that we would get that funding for that purpose, but there's high dosage tutoring. This specific focus is on first grade students. Um and it's tutoring up to additional tutoring of up to five hours in different kind of formats through different vendors. So, those are the so those are three of the options we've talked about, but I just wanted to I I wanted to acknowledge that that is weighing heavily on so many of us as well. Um, and so we have been having lots and lots of conversations about that. And the the tier one work that's happening

088is also going to help. And we want to make sure that we're layering on tier two and tier three where we can. >> Thank you for all the love and care you put into this. >> Of course, >> Adam, >> thank you, Gabby. Uh, I appreciate all the data. Uh the thing that sticks out to me um first is in all of the first rounds of charts that you showed us where we've got 68 70 over 70% of students meeting or exceeding um I I think what what's missing for me and it kind of gets illustrated in the later slides is where are those 30% of students who are partially meeting and not ex not meeting. Um and it it comes out when you start to disagregate the data um by different student groups. And

089my concern is that we continue to have a persistent achievement gap um for between all of our students and in particular those students who are low income with disabilities, high needs, all of those. Um and so I I continue to be worried that with with as much focus as we try to put on that with the increasing number of students who come with those needs into our district, we're not doing a great job of closing that gap. Um, so if I were to put a question in there, um, I guess my question would be, uh, what what can we do even more than what we're doing now to help close that gap? Um, and I the the followup to that is as we look at this, I think it might be helpful to connect that

090gap with the change in that student population. So this number here is, you know, our performance is going down, but what we don't see is the correlating increase in that student population. So being able to see those two things together, I think helpful. >> Yeah. No, I appreciate that. I did a little bit of like back of the napkin kind of work around that. And I was actually surprised. I was thinking that I was going to see higher numbers than I did in um specifically low income. I from 2021 to 2025, we've only increased at least this just this third grade cohort. I just wanted to do a little like I said back in the napkin only increased 10 students. Um and our Hispanic multi-racial population has only increased six students in that amount of

091time. Um just just just as a couple of examples. So it's it's it's not necessarily a higher incidence that and um yeah I don't it's it's complicated. I think it's really multifaceted the the meetings I've been having with the principles because there's they're also very small there because the schools are smaller it's very small numbers of students that we're seeing and so we you know we're talking about and I'm also looking at um how are we servicing and supporting those kiddos. remember how I was talking earlier about like how these kiddos are performing across the state. There's we have the ability it's public data to look at how are we supporting that subgroup of population compared with other districts who are also doing that. So you also can get like an achievement percentile there. And

092so I've been scanning that with the principles and saying like 98 98 97 we're really really serving these kiddos well compared to others across the state and there's 64 here or there's a 38 here. like let's find we've been talking about putting those let's let's name those kiddos. Let's get let's get in a room. Let's huddle up. So, we've been raising awareness about using this information more powerfully. Um and I think we're doing the right work. It's just going to take time. I don't know if if you have anything more um strategic to say to that, but we've been we're doing the right work. >> You know, [laughter] a couple of things. um one where we see that there are students with really high needs. Now what we're trying to do is use what what

093flexibility we can find in the current year to get extra services and supports into the the students that need it the most. Um so we're taking that step now in the the current moment. We're thinking, you know, one of the reasons I wanted to have Gabby do this data dive with our our early grades was because I anticipate that you're going to see some type of a budget proposal from us that really speaks to literacy. Um I don't know what that's going to look like yet. uh because this was just the initial step because when what I'm hoping to do with this is get our educators at all levels of the system activated thinking about literacy so that we can come up with solutions that you know start with our educators about what we can

094what we can try and do here. Um, and then you know the last thing I was thinking because I I was actually with a group of superintendents nationally today and you know we were talking about some of the work we're doing and I actually shared with them what the school committee wrote at a workshop last year around the work of AB forward um for the vision of what we wanted to do and you know I I'll won't say the whole thing but it really this question and answer made me think of this which is we're taking this on because we believe in our students and community. Our goal is to build something sustainable that will endure for decades, not just pass patchwork solutions for another budget cycle. Our everchanging world demands more from both our

095educators and our graduates. We're committed to ensuring every student has the opportunity to reach their full potential and that our educators have the resources they need to support that goal. At the same time, we recognize that our community must be able to afford our schools. It's not just about saving money. It's about being smart with the resources we have, right? um act and box has evolved and our students need new skills and our current system equipped is equipped to handle right the way we do it now. So I I just want to make sure we're keeping that in mind as we think about the goals of AB forward and what we're really talking about. We we didn't choose to just reorganize our schools. What we chose to do is develop a strategic plan in order

096to improve conditions for our students who need the conditions improved. And then we have to figure out how are we organizing ourselves in a way that gets the resources more directly to our educators so that they can help our kids, right? And so want to be really tie this presentation I think Adam what you're hitting at with the the core of your question >> to the big level work that we're trying to do as a system which is how can we improve our schools for our kids and you're seeing one data point of how we can do that. There are many more things that we want to improve for our kids and that the things that we value as a community that we want to sustain, but this is certainly at least one data point

097that supports why we're trying to do some of this work. >> That's right. >> Thank you for that. You wrote that. >> We wrote that. Thank you. I I think um Peter, I I I appreciate you tying that back together because I I think where I'm getting at with this in the question is a lot of people are saying to us, well, how are you going to measure the success of some of the AB forward work that you're doing? And I will tell you personally, one of the things that I'm going to look at is closing the achievement gap for all of our students. >> Thank you, Andrew. Thank you, Gabby. Um, I will say that when I saw the MCAST results, I was worried, but I don't I'm not worried anymore. Um, I really

098appreciate your leadership. Um, I feel like we don't say that often enough. >> I see [clears throat] you every day like you are just there. You're the educator. you care about the the students as well as educators. You're there to provide them help, support, and you are really eager to get them there despite all the other ugly things going on, the budget and all. Um, in a lot of other fields like for profit or competitive sports, the key is building a culture and I just want to let you know that you're building a great positive c culture for all of us. Thank you. >> Thank you. pick room. >> Yeah, I just want to say I'm just immensely impressed by the presentation, the amount of data and Gabby just absolutely stellar job knocking out of

099the park. Um, thank you. >> Um, and I think I think the fact that we have this much data and we get this granular gives us such enormous clarity as to what's happening at a very very granular level with all of our students. Like you're saying now, okay, now we have these few students, we actually put them all in a room. We know exactly who they are. we can address their needs really, really specifically. I mean, the fact that that we have all this data is a testament to how excellent our school district is. Thank you, Gabby. >> Thank you so much, Gabby. >> Thank you. >> All right, so we're going to transition to talking about capital. We have a capital plan. Um Sherry and Mark Hamill and Brendan Hearn coming to join us.

100And Ben tells me he's incredibly excited about the work you have all done on this and he's really sorry not to be here tonight. >> I I think the Ben the words Ben used were inspiring. >> So I you know that I think you should all anticipate an inspiring capital presentation coming up. >> Mark is certainly my inspiration. So that's great. >> I'm going to sit here and listen as all you will uh because Brandon has done a fantastic [clears throat] job on this. Um, so while Peter's pulling that up, I'm I'm Brendan Hearn. I'm the capital projects manager for the district, joined of course by uh Mark Hamill, our facilities coordinator. Um, in the interest of time, uh, I'm not going to spare you some of the background. I've already eliminated some of the

101slides. For those of you who saw this presentation last year, and this is our second time doing it. Um, there's some, uh, duplicate stuff, uh, that's that's captured in the presentation again this year. Um, but just to sort of uh Oh. not clicking. Thanks. Um just to to recap uh where we came from. So the the uh capital improvement program as we know it today originally began in FY20. Um it came out of the recommendations from the 2016 Dorian Whittier um district master plan study report. um they had [clears throat] identified a number of issues uh across our buildings um major needs that should be addressed and um so in 2020 the the capital improvement plan was launched uh initially funded primarily from a $7.5 million bond um that carried the first five years of

102those items um identified through that uh 2016 uh process. Um in uh fiscal 23 as as that first five years was coming to an end, the district contracted with an engineering firm uh to pro perform a facilities condition assessment across all of our buildings. Um looking at at all of our building stock across the district, proposing uh projects and and helping to set some priorities and costs associated with them. Um next slide if you don't mind. Thank you. Um the uh facilities condition assessment um identified lots of specific projects. Um I I'll spare you the whole list, but um the key takeaway points here were that one um the major building uh renovation and construction boom that happened in Actton and Boxboro to our schools between 95 and 2005 um all times out to be

103sort of synchronized with uh the 30-year mark starting this year in 2025. um building systems have a you know estimated usable lifespan ranging from 30 to 50 years. So that puts now 2025 as sort of the beginning of when we start to see those major uh needs come into play. Um the the facilities condition assessment also helped us assess energy needs um and and take a look at that um supported of course by the work of our uh energy manager Kate Crosby. Um it it reminded us that natural our buildings are still heavily reliant on natural gas for heat. Um and the limited amount of air conditioning that we have is in some cases older and inefficient. Um and just a quick reminder here that June 2024 this school committee um adopted the 2050 decarbonization

104roadmap. Um, as we think about building systems, especially um, HVAC, we're constantly thinking about moving towards um, more sustainable options, including airsource heat pump, geothermal, of course, in the case of Boardwalk and others. Next slide. [clears throat] Um, so what are we looking at for how do we fund this, especially as we look at the next 10 years? Um, the last uh, previous fis couple of fiscal years in in anticipated again in FY27, we've had a million dollar appropriation from general fund. That's where most of our work has been taking place. We're also leveraging incentive and grant programs um especially for decarbonization work um including mass save inflation reduction act where available EPA um as the case with our our um soon to arrive electric school buses green communities and others. We have opportunities um

105with some limitations for not only MSBA's core program for full building construction and renovation but also the accelerated repair program or ARP um that can help uh assist and defay costs for large scale um replacements like an entire roof or major mechanical electrical plumbing. Um we just rolled into the first year of uh MSBA's uh accelerated repair program for um rooftop units in HVAC. that's a new need especially when they have decarbonization built into those programs. Um finally uh an additional funding source that we can uh consider is what we had initially started in FY20 which was the concept of of a of another bond. Um keeping in mind that sometimes the paying the interest on the bond u may be more advantageous than um waiting and and deferring a project for further years and

106seeing the escalated costs due to inflation on that project. Next slide. >> [clears throat] >> Um so uh how do we identify what goes on the list especially as we are only looking sort of primarily one year out at this moment into FY27. So certainly our our list originated primarily from that facilities condition assessment. Um but it quickly uh gathered new projects based on input from our district principles and administrators uh the trade staff that work within the facilities department as well as contractors and consultants outside of that. There's over $150 million worth of work sort of as as generally priced as possible. Um, obviously escalation factors in terms of when we do a project factor into all of those costs. Um, uh, [clears throat] as we move through that list, we we um seek

107input from our district administrators again for setting specific priorities each year. Um, they tend to focus a little bit of a narrower lens on the building and and uh, school um, priorities, often operational, pedagogical. they're not necessarily uh recognizing that they have a rooftop unit that's near uh end of life. So, so that's one lens that we look at it through. We take that information, we we gather again um as the district facilities team with operations and and look again with a wider lens what what can we um accomplish source certainly taking into account the availability of funds which again uh the last uh last fiscal year anticipated is a fairly small pool when you consider the cost of these projects at only a million dollars. Um, finally we present those those plans and have

108discussion with the capital subcommittee before we uh bring them to to you all for final approval. We can move on. [clears throat] So um last year we presented our plan for FY26. I'm pleased to say that a little more than halfway or not quite halfway through the fiscal year, we've um accomplished quite a quite a bit. Um just to they're up on the screen. I won't go through the entire list. Um, but projects uh throughout the district, you may have already seen the tennis courts are certainly bright and vibrant, though not on this list because they were technically an FY25 project and funded uh through a separate funding source. Um, but uh less noticeable but impactful projects including new rooftop units over at the Parker Damon building um as well as asphalt patching in in

109major areas uh at three buildings. Also not on this list that you may have seen is the work going towards the the mini depot as we're referring to it, the small uh EV bus charging station at the high school. Um that work is continuing uh and we're likely to see that uh wrap up in in the month of January. Next slide. Still ongoing within FY26 are the uh additional classroom air conditioning at at the junior high in Blanchard. Um ongoing paging upgrades. Uh we're waiting for sort of a lapse in time over at Parker Damon. um uh ongoing work over at Blanchard uh to refurb the fire pump as well as the firewater system that's over there. Um and um a major project that we're we're stepping into now is the um replacement of 11

110um 1998 vintage rooftop units at the high school. They serve primarily the east end of the building. They predate the construction project uh because they were relatively new at the time. Um but they're overdue um beyond useful life and overdue for replacement. Um this is one of the projects I mentioned. We recently got news that we were awarded a grant through DOER's um green communities program of a half million dollars towards that project. At the moment the estimated overall project cost is approximately 4.4 million. Um but that's based on very early numbers from a fairly high level um life cycle cost analysis. Um it does indicate that the ROI on a um airsource heat pump solution is is um pretty quick especially with additional incentives uh from Massave um playing a role in that. Um

111so our goal actually after having been deferred from a year from FY26 excuse me from FY25 is in within this year in 26 to take on the engineering and design work related to that project. Unfortunately, two additional projects have hit the list for 26. Um, sort of uh came up a little bit later. One is that procurement law related to a project of this scale requires an owner's project manager be um brought in uh prior to uh the design uh the designer selection process. Um that's undergoing procurement as we as we speak. Um expect to have that wrapped up uh early the month of December. Um the uh also over at the high school, there's a wheelchair lift that serves a small area of the building that's uh unfortunately beyond repair and needs complete replacement.

112So those two projects came in late. They've they've upset our budget a little bit. As a result, three projects are are at least currently on hold. Um over at the Boardwalk campus, um we're we're holding on uh in investigating further ways to improve acoustics in the library, mostly because they were able to rearrange classes and and lower that that need. Um the the district-owned infrastructure that would potentially be attached to the cell tower that's uh planned to be constructed um is shaping up to look like it may actually roll into 27 if we move forward with the district-owned infrastructure. That would be again two-way radio infrastructure that we may want to put on that tower. Um so that's sort of coming out of 26 and potentially moving into 27. Um, and the standby generator for

113this building is still a high priority, but we're pausing on that till we have an opportunity to do a little value engineering based on that that initial cost. Um, if we can go to the next slide. Um, so what are we looking at for 27? Um, so so the entire project list as we intend as we expect to move forward is captured on this one slide. Um, the first three projects you you may notice in bold are are highest priorities. Um so the the construction related to the rooftop units our first phase we think approximately half two 2.2 million or so um would take place in FY27. Um obviously that's a priority project because we're already investing money towards making that happen. We have grants and likely rebates that will factor into that cost as

114well. Um over at the Blanchard School, uh the even though we've done quite a bit of patching, there's uh far more work that needs to happen, especially out behind the building in that sort of hybrid uh parking slashd driveway/play space. Um that needs a full depth resurfacing. Um and over at the high school, the uh bleachers in the Reagan gym are showing significant and and somewhat accelerated rates of disrepair. Um while we don't think there's a safety issue, um we want to do further evaluation to figure out what repair versus replacement options we have. At the moment, we're carrying a very high number, almost $300,000 full of for a full replacement. Um hopefully that's not the case, but we wanted to be uh cautious with that. Other projects, as you see listed below, include um

115uh engineering towards uh the development of a bus depot. This would be a single space big enough to house the entire bus fleet. You may know that half of our fleet is housed at Conan while half is on leased property um elsewhere in town. Um this would also give us opportunities for additional electrification. Um over at uh Blanchard, the the current grass or dirt field as you know it now um is in need of of some rehab and and fresh grass and and uh a makeover. Um additional fencing at both Boardwalk and Parker Damon. um significant repairs to one of the three elevators at the high school that's um currently not functional. Um additional though seems minor several locations add up um automated door operators for improving accessibility at both the junior high and high

116school. Um, finally, uh, camera improvements at Parker Damon, so they have better views, uh, for student safety within the building and upgrades to two-way radios across the district, including, um, replacing radios in our buses that are are nearing or exceeding, in some cases, 20 years. Next slide, if you would. This is the the more detailed breakdown on the projects. I won't read everything off here. Um, this is sort of what you saw on the previous slide, just broken down by estimated cost. Two notable pieces is the um majority of the list fits neatly in that uh estimated million dollar um general fund allocation. Um the construction phase one uh in as well as a credit towards the grant the do grant um is captured in that in the final column over there out of our

117revolving fund. Currently that revolving fund we expect that balance to be around 2.4 million. Um with the credit we can safely place the first phase of that project within that within that um aotment leaving about 700 behind um but the obvious question is what happens after that we have a second phase um and that's going to be a problem. So with that, if we can look at FY28 and beyond. Next slide. Um, so the the key points I want to hammer home here. So one, what we had mentioned at the beginning, we're coming up on EOL. Not only does that mean we have to expect projects, it means as the projects come up, they're often uh they sneak up on us. We we often only have the money to make a temporary fix. that ultimately

118costs us more because not only are we deferring and escalating the permanent repair, but we're investing time and energy in making those temporary fixes instead of uh you know fixing it uh fully the first time. Um the capital priorities that we set do evolve constantly as new health and safety related items tend to crowd out the the more planned especially the longer term planning. We already saw that by deferring the Jackson church project by a year. the engineering um the uh we're of course continuing to focus on decarbonization um but sometimes as those especially as those incentives incentives are available to do those projects they can take priority of over other projects. So that's just a factor in all this. The the end result is that the project costs we have greatly exceed the amount

119of money available. Um so while for 27 we expect to be in relatively good shape for 28 and beyond it may be time to seriously consider uh bonding or or other options for for bringing in additional income. With that, we can go to the final slide, which uh before we take questions, just a quick thank you to the 40 plus uh men and women of the facilities department who make uh our capo list smaller with the ongoing maintenance they do for us every day. From buses to floors to uh plumbing and heating and electrical, it's all part of what they do on a daily basis. Your questions. >> Thank you, Andrew. >> Thanks. Thank you for putting this together. It was um exceptional exhaustive and I'm sure exhausting to put together. Thanks for your time.

120I had a couple of questions and I know a lot of what you're talking about at the facilities and you're funding them, but two projects came up um that I I just think an update would be helpful with regarding the cell tower. The part that you're talking about being postponed is just uh schoolowned or district-owned radio transmitters that would allow us to be able to communicate, not impacting any other construction. Correct. >> Correct. So, so we um in the lease agreement have the provision to install district-owned infrastructure on the tower that the idea being that a 100 foot tower right in our backyard is an opportune uh location for our own district-wide communications. We carried um an amount in the 206 budget for the initial infrastructure that would have gone in, conduits in the ground

121and such during the tower construction. um it's not looking great for the tower to really be substantially underway within um 26. So that's why we're expecting that it may >> that was my question whether it was about uh construction or about our availability to gain that. Uh the other question I have isn't necessarily something you mentioned in here, but I know that over the last few weeks we've found that the board of health has not a provided a permit for the batteries at the boardwalk campus regarding the solar panels, but also the design of the parking lot is inclusive of open spaces and the parking concrete pads that are there currently covered by plywood. Is there a plan that you have inside of the and this is more facilities and capital planning knowing that this

122impacts how the entire process was supposed to work but also knowing we've got holes inside the parking lot. Is there I guess an adjustment being made for this or are we continuing forward? >> I I can jump in on this one. So, you know, I've been actually the person working with Shy uh Kate Crosby and Nexamp directly on this. Um so you know when the the board of health did not approve the original location of the battery they did offer some alternative locations. So Nex AMP actually has been very committed to trying to find a way to get this done. Um we are unsure of the path forward right now um because we do have concerns about the ability to price it at a way uh with the additional infrastructure that would need to be

123made um as well as you know some additional shifts in markets um also knowing that we're up against a really tight timeline because projects that don't go shovel in the dirt by July 1 now will no longer qualify for a lot of the federal incentives that have been previously available. So, um I think we are, you know, we're we're continuing to work with Nex Amp, but we do have concerns about whether we'll be able to achieve a net zero goal. Um because one of the the stipulations we've put out is we cannot pay more for electricity than we would be paying otherwise without a system there. So, we're just really watching that very closely. We hopefully will have more updates over the next couple of months for you. Uh, but it's something we are we

124are watching. And then that would be able to then determine what do we do with the plywood that's sitting in the parking lot at Parker Damon for two years. Not Parker Damon, Boardwalk. >> Thank you. Thank you again, >> Adam. Wonderful presentation. I really appreciate the um the uh kind words you provided. In all seriousness, I I really appreciated this. Uh, a couple things that definitely come to mind. We're we're nearing the end of useful life for a lot of our facilities. Um, you know, that's kind of where we were at 2016 as we started to look at what do we do with some of the buildings. And while some of the facilities are at at uh 15, 20, 30 years old, we still have schools that are 50 years old that have not been

125touched. So, I think it's really important that we stay on top of this. Um, and I think you touched on my my biggest question, which is we've got clearly a big list. Um, and we're we're getting grants for some things, particularly the rooftop units. So, incumbent upon us to take advantage of those. Um, I worry that we're going to start a $4.4 million project and we're going to end up being about, you know, a million and a half short of what we need to finish that project. So, you know, I I think the the request would be not just for the two of you, but for the capital subcommittee as well, that we start to engage with the finance committees in the town and looking at our list and coming up with a proposal about

126how we address the urgent needs and then also sort of what the long-term needs are. And then my last comment and and question is around um the the the projects that you have that relate to e accessibility um wheelchair lifts, elevators. Um I think this is the second year in a row where we've had unplanned elevator maintenance and I know that we carry annual service contracts with very bespoke and highly specialized and and you know non-inchangeable elevator manufacturers. And so I, you know, I I worry that um, you know, we're we're not as accessible or welcoming place for some of our students because they can't get from one part of the building to the other. And so there's not really a question here other than the fact that I think um, in addition to taking

127advantage of grants, making sure that our facilities are accessible for all of our students has got to be paramount for what we do. >> That's a a great statement. And one of the things we've been focusing on is increasing the accessibility um gradually uh without turning into large scale capital projects. Um we had two elevator inspections yesterday at the high school, both passed, just so you know. Um but not without their challenges there. One of the elevators in particular, there are no parts available for this elevator. When something breaks, we're going to have to go on eBay to shop around. So, this is one of those um I give our facilities team an incredible, our tradesmen especially, an incredible level of respect for how tenacious they are, how resourceful they are to to find something

128that doesn't exist in the new market. And um you you know, you've all heard the term about wrapping things up with duct tape and bubble gum. We've done it and and there are some things going uh but we are we're increasing that. You're going to see the wheelchair lifts as they fail. There are no parts. They're they're well over 23 24 years old and they need to be completely replaced. So, we'll keep them going as long as we can. We save parts when we have like like equipment and uh and we'll move forward from there. But, we are it it is part of our big picture from the door openers to the new ramps um that we've increased the other day to to adding uh guards and things of that nature to our new playground

129at Blanchard. So, things are in the works. >> Thank you. Adam, I think you meant Brendan, right? Who? Hi. Um, by the way, your presentation was 15 minutes. I timed it. [laughter] >> Wait till later. >> That's right. Um, I um Adam Tori and I went to the NASCA uh accreditation meeting and in that meeting they did ask about, you know, what do you guys think about your capital improvement facilities? And I I said it then and I just want to share here that you guys are so resourceful and creative and we're lucky to have you. Thank you. It is the team and between the support from Sher and Peter and this guy to my right makes it a lot easier. He's very good. Thank you so much and really appreciating the forward look and

130the uh nudge that Adam has just given us to make sure that we get you what you need to keep doing great work. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, invite Joe Castella to come up and let's talk about AB forward. Welcome, Joe. >> Thank you, Peter. Uh, good evening, everyone. It's great to be back with you. Um, our agenda for the next portion of time is to run through uh responses to all the super thoughtful questions that you all uh came up with or or uh received from all of your various constituents. So, very excited for the discussion that we'll have. um at a really high level. Sorry, just log into this real quick. Um three main buckets of questions that came through to me. Um questions related to cost. I know a

131lot of the information that we've put forward so far for AB forward um uses some higher level details related to cost for various options. So we want to uh share a little bit more information about detailed costs, what folks can expect um with our next round of information. Um, there are also some questions related to process and timeline. Admittedly, some of those questions are really more for for school committee members or or district officials. Um, so we can we can talk about who who the best people to answer those questions could be. Um, and then some additional questions related to programming and design, really what schools could look like, what programs could look like within buildings uh as we start exploring all these different kinds of options for reorganization. Um, so that's the general plan.

132uh any additional thoughts, questions, framing before we dive into some specific questions here. Okay, terrific. Um so the first question uh and really captures a large bucket of questions um was how much will each option cost and save? Um as I mentioned before, the preliminary cost information that we shared uh was really based on these more conservative estimates for how each reorganization option could uh potentially reduce duplicated positions. um also uh reduce uh operational costs by by closing facilities, things like that. Um and really options that allow for larger schools, so with more students of similar grade levels, um that really allows the district to be more efficient or sustainable with staffing. Um since staff can be shared within a building more efficiently and students can be organized into classrooms more efficiently, you can really

133take some of those additional specialists and interventionists and allow them to access more students, which really extends the reach of your staff. um the details that are not factored into the numbers that we have put out um are the ones related to the specific staffing levels for the number of classroom teachers and the number of some of those specific kinds of positions. Um there's a lot of strategy and wisdom that goes into how the district chooses to to uh furnish the staff of of each individual kind of school. So that's why we stayed away from that. Also, it's largely based on um the budget situation of the district. the the purpose of of these various options isn't to make super incisive cuts to the district. It's really to create opportunities for more flexible organizations of

134of schools and programs. Um so with that uh the preliminary information on the budget uh budget uh situation and really some of those preliminary preliminary ideas around staffing will be made available at the next um AB forward steering committee um now that the district has more information at its fingertips related to the the budget for uh this upcoming school year. I'll just add briefly, you know, one of the important steps in helping um us work with Joe and his team to have that for the steering committee meeting was the work you did around budget guidelines because what we've now done is taken the budget guidelines um as they've worked through their process and really used those to help drive how we worked through the the costs of of each AB forward option. So, uh we

135do anticipate having that out at the end of next week for the packet for the November 18th steering committee meeting. Great. >> Um, and actually the the follow-up question to that was exactly to Peter's point. How will each reorganization option specifically affect class sizes by grade and school both immediately and over time? And what safeguards or thresholds will be in place to prevent overcrowding or the loss of specialized instructional spaces, for example, for special education, multilingual learners, enrichment programs, etc. So the the the higher level answer there working within school committee guidelines to plan out those sections for next school year. So really using the guidelines that you all have established for class sizes across different grade levels for different kinds of programs uh etc. And then as uh we think about building the sections

136and building those programs out starting with those specialized programs to make sure that sufficient space sufficient staff is dedicated for those programs and then building out the sections of of home rooms etc beyond there. Um and then no school will exceed the number of sections that they're designed to hold. Um really working within the existing constraints of of buildings and and uh established guidelines. Peter uh what did I miss there? anything else you want to add? >> Yeah, I think um you know there one there have been a lot of changes over time to how classrooms get used, but one of the interesting things that I I was pulling together data on a 30-year enrollment history of our schools based on some of the requests we were hearing from steering committee members and members of

137the community. Um and we're actually at a 30-year low for enrollment um in our elementary schools. And over that same period of time, and I have not yet gotten the maps of Blanchard from John Fallon, but we're working on it to count when those classrooms were added because I think those were in the same period of time. But just between Parker Damon building and Boardwalk campus, we've actually added seven and 8 15 classrooms over that same period of time to the district. Um, and so, you know, I think it really thinking about how we use our spaces strategically is going to be important. Now, we have a lot of specialized needs that didn't exist in the district when a lot of their early buildings were constructed, but it is something that, you know, I think

138we're we're pretty confident at this point we can stay within school committee class size guidelines and fit all of our programs and services into the footprint of our district, even if we were to go down one physical plant. Right. Um the next question or comment was for some this round of options is too much too many options too many details. People may not understand the ramifications but they want to know how it fixes the cost challenge. Um there's a lot of nuance in this question or in this statement that I think is worth exploring. Um first is this idea of fixing a cost problem because we're not exactly fixing a cost problem. we're really creating a more flexible model for schools to really make sure that resources are going to serving students really well. So

139the the the fundamental premise with the work that we're doing is that the idea that the the the smaller the school unit is, the less flexibility the district has in terms of using its resources. So, if we have, for example, maybe two or three sections of a grade level in one school, we're stuck um because there's we're limited in how we can reorganize those classrooms, how those students can access some of those really important services that that Gabby and the elementary principles discussed earlier. Um but if we have more students with similar needs in a common building, we have much more flexibility to offer various programs uh various services to really uh support the the diverse learning needs of students. So back to the the work that we're doing, these options that we've presented don't

140really address the root cause issues for why costs have gone up related to increased cost of salaries. Benefits is a huge bucket that that I know this group has explored and other services, materials, capital expenses, all of that. So, it doesn't totally address all of those details, but it gives you all much more flexibility with how you can use your resources to support those uh those diverse learning needs of students. Um, related to that, uh, a a very important question that came up in many of our focus groups and in our various community meetings, um, was why did we include options that seem financially unsustainable and why don't school committee members seem to be advocating for specific options at this point? Um, and I think part of that is a question for you all, so

141I'll be curious to to flip it back to you all. Um, but a key piece for why we created the set of options that we did. Um, really we wanted to be as comprehensive as possible in our approach because we were sure with the the level of engagement in this community, if we weren't comprehensive, other people would wonder why we didn't put out the full spectrum of options to the community. Um, and so while sustainability is a key metric for the act and Boxboroough community when considering options for reorganization, it's not the only metric. And so we want to make sure for the full set of options, we were as comprehensive as possible so that community members could really see all those possible options um and make sure that really we were we were leaving

142no stone unturned um as we were exploring the path forward for for the district. Um, another key piece with this is that we're still in this input phase. We just gathered a significant amount of of community feedback in the second round of stakeholder engagement. I think we had uh over 230 individuals in focus groups. Uh over 575 folks uh who joined community meetings. Um the survey right now I think is about at at about a thousand respondents and we're expecting more over the next couple days before it closes on Sunday. Um, so we've had a tremendous opportunity to get community feedback on all of these different options. Um, which will then be used in our next, uh, steering committee meeting to winnow those options down to then present a a smaller set of options with

143more detail to you all as the school committee. Um, I don't want to speak for school committee members though, so let me pass it. Tori, let's start with you and see what else. >> Thanks Joe. Um Liz, >> so I had actually gotten uh this question as well and as a school committee when we went into this process, you know, we have had previous processes where you know outcomes um occur and the community has felt that they did not have adequate input you know before and while we were going through everything. So we really were extremely purposeful in making sure that this was a transparent process and that the community is getting information at the same time that the full committee is you know so all of these options were presented publicly the same time

144that I read them was the same time they were available to everyone else and we also have trying to been we've been trying to be really thoughtful where this is you know at this stage before the comm the steering committee you know winnows it down and gives just the two or three options that have really been vetted. We want to appear unbiased, you know, because if I'm a, you know, if I'm a member of the box bro uh community and I'm heavily advocating for, you know, one thing or another, it could be that I show a bias and then a member uh from the town of Actton is not going to give me their opinion because they think that my mind is already made up. So, you know, as a committee, we've really been careful

145to remain unbiased because we want the honest community feedback before we really go into the vetting and, you know, making of this decision. >> Yeah. And um I just want to add really quickly. Um going in when I first saw the options on October 24th I had what I thought would be best but as we go through the process I hear public feedback I hear our from our educators and it it changes like the option you would have like oh I like this but now these look fine much better so we are keeping an open mind just so that we are taking all the feedbacks we're still thinking about it and I don't know what I will choose at the moment Joe, back to you. >> Okay, great. Um, one one final thought with with

146the piece about the sustainability because it was an important part of that question in the survey in focus groups in community meetings. A significant portion of folks were standing up and saying, "Hey, why can't we just pass some kind of a tax override or something to fund our schools?" which is a a really important part of the conversation to bring people together around why some of these decisions are being made and and maybe talk a little bit about the history of of Actton and Boxboro related to other financial needs. But to the to the point or to the question around why did we include some of these less sustainable options, that's exactly why because we wanted to make sure there was space for that conversation. Um, great. Next question. Peter, this one's for you. uh

147can we lay out a timeline and action set of actions post January decision? What are the items that will be planned for and what will the timing look like for them related to enrollment policies, school personalities, etc. >> So, I was going to say thanks Joe, but thanks everyone. Um I don't know who asked the question. Um we've actually at least at the central office level, we've actually started thinking about developing really an implementation team for this. Um, you know, we don't know what your final decision is going to be. We don't know what your final timeline is that you give us guidance for. Um, but where we are seeing the draft budget guidelines come in and saying, you know, plan on incorporating these recommendations for FY27, that is the intent that we're moving forward

148with. Um, and so, you know, I think we've thought about different buckets of of work that needs to be done. I think what we're planning to do is try and finalize that over the next couple of weeks and then be able to start sharing that publicly, forming teams. Um, even while we're waiting for a decision, I think it would be worthwhile to start forming our teams and doing some pre-work because I I was sharing with one of our administrators earlier, we don't know, we know what the scope of the work is probably going to need to be. What we don't know is the breadth of the work um because we don't know what the final decision is. But as the decision gets closer and closer and we go from nine options to two or three

149and then we have to select one, we're going to be able to narrow the choices. Overall, the the way we're trying to approach this is centered around community wellness and the sense that there has to be a process of celebrating what we have now um in order to then help people move through that next stage of of kind of grief um in order to then be able to heal as quickly as possible. Um, you know, and you know, I think what what there is some some research around school reorganizations that takes place that talks about the students being incredibly resilient and students adjust, you know, usually within a year you actually see, you know, students have adjusted to whatever the new structure is. Um, adults, it's a harder transition. Um, and that includes educators, staff,

150and families. Um, so we're really thinking about that. want to adopt a community wellness approach to how we move through this process. Um, and I think, you know, the one thing I want to reassure people and and it's been a long-standing goal of our district. We will take care of our kids, we will take care of our educators, and we will take care of our families um through this process. It is a big change. Uh we recognize that and as we go through this, we want to make sure that we are a people- centered organization first. Recognizing that yes, we have to make a big strategic decision that is financially driven and strategically driven, but the people are at the core of this and that is the approach that we want to have as we

151think about transitioning. >> Great. Um, next question has a a blend of education policy and and very district specific policy uh implications. Um, how will equity be handled for Blanchard if it remains a separate K6 school with a smaller population? Will there be a decrease in efficiency in staffing or will specialized programs be removed? Could student outcomes be negatively affected by the need to have efficient staffing? So, I'm going to provide a little uh uh national and regional context to how uh similar districts approach this kind of a challenge and I can flip it over to district folks to talk a little bit more about specifics there. Um, typically districts with schools that have different levels of enrollment uh use a student need-based allocation model where you have uh rather than saying every school gets

152one of each of these kinds of positions, you think of a staffing ratio that's driven by the number of students and the the ratio of that of that position that should correspond with the students in those buildings. Um and there is a risk uh at where schools with lower enrollment. So this would be Blanchard in this case compared to in the the the versions where you have two much larger elementarymentaries um where it feels that those those smaller schools those those schools with less enrollment are getting less resourcing. It feels like they're getting less staffing because they don't enjoy those same economies of scale that exist at larger buildings. So, it is it is a risk that we see in in many districts out there. For those who follow along with um uh Boston public

153schools, that's one of the key issues in BPS right now where they have schools of very different sizes that have very different uh resourcing fields um because even though they are equitably staffed based on those ratios, it feels like some some schools have more staffing compared to others because they have those economies of scale. Um, so even with an equitable staffing model based on those common student and staff ratios, smaller schools sometimes feel like they get less. Now there is an art and a science to staffing schools. And this is where the the work of the district comes in to think about, you know, what is the right program placement, what is the right configuration and adjustment of some of those staffing levels to to balance things out. Um, but there is there is a

154challenge there and and honestly one of the benefits of the fully regionalized gradebanded model is that you you don't you don't have to worry about that quite as much because you can have uh staffing levels that correspond with the specific grade levels that are in each building. Um, Peter, I'll I'll pass it over to you though to to add any more about the district approach. Yeah, I think you know um and I think one of the reasons we're talking about this this year, we went through kind of an elementary budget task force process where we really talked heavily about a needs-based staffing model. Um and it's a move away from what the district has historically done to go there because we often say that, you know, if you're a school, you have a 1.0, to

155pick the name of the role that you want, music teacher, art teacher, counselor. Um, and there are fluctuations in school size at some levels. Some some might make an argument that well, if if a school needs a counselor and they need a dedicated counselor in the building, and there can be some fluctuation in student size, but there is a point in time where you have to actually consider a shift to a needs-based staffing model where you're actually assigning your staff based on where your student needs are. And so I think you know as we think about you know the potential and I worry about this because I also think the question may have an assumption that we're just moving to the big structures and that's not determined yet. Um but in a structure like that

156I I think we're going to have to really be thinking about a needs-based staffing model. It might not be that staff are traveling necessarily, but it might mean that you're you're working with kind of a 0.5 position here or a point four position. Um, and just having to think about filling positions differently. Yeah. Um, the next series of questions uh surround a similar theme uh related to flexibility and efficiency, sustainability, etc. Um, so you'll see some some similar answers here. um which reorganization options provide us the most flexibility for scenarios including but not limited to enrollment shifts expanding pro programming to include steam uh in district student profile shifting and needing a dramatic increase in special education or multilingual services etc. Um really similar answer to before. Uh the the larger the school that you

157can have in one or the larger the uh the more students you can have in a school. So the larger the school um the there's more flexibility for sharing resources within those distinct buildings. So that's really the theme of of all of these different answers. Um and it all gets back to this economies of scale idea. If you have more sections of a grade level in one building, you can serve those students much more flexibly, much more sustainably. Um, there's a question I'll get to later on for how you can still maintain the feeling of a small community. There's all sorts of programming that you can do and ways to design the school to allow for that, but really from a a resourcing standpoint, having more students in a school allows you to have a

158more efficient sort of approach. Um, the next question, we have budget issues that compound year-over-year. We know that reorging won't fix FY27, but do you have a sense of which options may narrow the compounding gap as time goes on? Um, so this goes back to the very first question around this as like a cost cutting exercise versus uh creating more flexibility. Um, so again, creating a more flexible model for for schools uh to make sure resources are going to serving students well is really the goal here. Um, and again, just wanted to hit on that point. these options don't address some of those root cause issues for why costs have gone up, but it gives the district much more flexibility to be able to respond to those needs uh the respond to the the the

159cost pressures while also making sure that uh your resources are going to serve students well. Um, anything you would add, Peter? Not to keep putting you on the spot here, but >> No, I I don't think so. I think you summed it up. I think you know what what's emerged and I think you know what we're talking about almost solely at this point is efficiencies >> right and and I think there's a reason we're talking about efficiencies uh because we're in this because there's you know we're we've done four years of budget reductions and we're looking at more right um and we also recognize there's going to be a set of community values from our families um and community that we have not heard yet that need to be intersected with this sense of how

160do we set priorities around efficiency versus community values and needs of families and students and things like that and then how do we make sense of that as we go through a decision-m process. I would say you know you're hearing a lot about efficiencies because people are asking those questions but it doesn't mean that there's not another whole set of data that's working on this at the same time to really unearth what our community sees as priorities. So that more to come on that. I just it's it's more of a caution than a comment specifically to what Joe was saying. >> Yeah. Um one final resourcing question uh before we move on to the like programming design uh other metrics for evaluating success. Um, what are the detailed staffing implications of each scenario, including projected

161changes in teacher and support staff FTEEs, potential layoffs or reassignments, and the district's plan to preserve program quality and employee stability throughout the transition. So, as we mentioned before, we will have more information related to these details um at the next steering committee meeting for each of those different options. However, there's still a lot of work to be done to make those specific decisions really based on what comes out of that next uh steering committee meeting. Um, and the district is, as as Peter mentioned, is is already starting the work of transition planning. Um, it's going to be a long a long process that will really uh get going in earnest once there's more direction from the steering committee and then those options are presented to the school committee. Okay. And Thank you for all

162that. Um, if you could you you to kind of follow what Peter said, could you talk a little bit about the methods and the research that you plan to go beyond the quantitative into the qualitative side of things because it's easy to to figure out how to get cheap ingredients, but you still want to have a good taste. And I think it's important for us to be able to make sure that we're not focusing so much on fiscal responsibility that we're kind of not paying any attention to cultural integrity and the qualitative value of that. And I'm just curious if you could talk a little bit about the plans for understanding the quality of the culture of the community. >> Absolutely. Um the the next question actually is in the spirit of what Adam brought

163up at the last committee meeting. What criteria will the district use to define and monitor irreversible harm to school culture, community trust, educational quality, and what accountability measures will ensure that if negative impacts emerge, they are identified early and addressed before becoming permanent, which is sort of connected, but yours is >> there's a piece of it that's that it's there's a piece of it that's that, but I think the one thing you've done really well is articulate the way the dollars equal the seats. >> Yeah. But I'm curious what you can do to have a better understanding of the people that are sitting in the seats because there's a great cost of emotion that'll go through it. Yeah, kids are resilient. Yeah, it'll take a year for them to get through, but there's a there's

164a a community that's built around each child inside each classroom and understanding the areas of these schools and understanding the qualitative nature of what they go through. There are methods of research around that and I'm curious to know as we get to the next phase of this getting past the kind of lowhanging fruit of we know a dollar needs to be saved or we need no flexibility needs to be moved. >> How do we ensure that the spaces that we will be kind of growing, recreating, managing are going to be nurturing in the right way for each of the children that are going through this each of our students and for the communities that are going to ultimately be around whatever we end up organizing around. Yeah, absolutely. >> Yeah. No, I um >> I

165was gonna actually maybe you can first talk to what have you done so far in terms of data collection because I remember all the work that went into focus groups. So that seems like it was about six years ago at this point. Um and and we really just ended it, but maybe you can talk about the level of engagement from all the focus groups, how you're gathering and synthesizing some of that feedback to be able to present to steering committee and school committee through the next steps of the process, but also like the how surveys factor into that as well as other forms of engagement. >> Yeah, absolutely. >> Sustainability and efficiency was was one part of it, but there's this larger idea of of the level of disruptiveness of different options. So that's a

166key part of of the the analysis that we're doing in terms of which students and which families and which educators would be impacted. Um but then through the focus uh through the focus groups and community meetings and uh in the survey um we gathered lots of information around the various trade-offs that uh all these different stakeholder groups are experiencing and what they prioritize. And I think what's really fascinating in doing this analysis is understanding these opposing viewpoints and then really understanding where there's common ground with some of those specific details. Um, so those uh that's part of the analysis that we're doing in our in our our qualitative review of of those focus groups to understand what should be prioritized in this next phase of work. um to to uh maintain core aspects of school

167communities and then actively rebuild uh some of the new communities as as schools come back together. So that's that's part of it. I think there's so there's this the this question about the the the work that the steering committee and frankly you all have to do to make a a really really difficult decision and we want to make sure that you have information at your fingertips that reflect the needs of the community so that you can make a truly informed decision. And then there's also this planning for implementation, right? Right. And like making sure that you have the the metrics or the the district and you all are tracking the right metrics to make sure that you're getting really strong results. And at that point, I think the operational performance, you've already kind of solved

168for that. Now, it's let's think about community wellness. Uh how how are we tracking student mental health? How are how are we tracking staff mental health? Um there are indicators for school culture and climate. Um there's a whole host of other wellness behavioral indicators to make sure that students, staff and uh family members are doing well. Then I think there's also this this point of uh uh maintaining your really detailed academic trackers around um you know not just summitative assessments but your formative assessments, diagnostic assessments, etc. and then digging into that data to really look to make sure that you're closing some of those achievement or opportunity gaps while also maintaining really high standards. Um, I think within to to get like really into the weeds of of your question, this idea of maintaining the

169this the the aspects of your schools that that really set you apart and are part of the reason your educators come here and and and families move here because your schools are so wonderful and have some distinct flavors. I think that really gets into this idea of how you're tracking school culture and climate and and setting goals within within that bucket so that as schools are coming back together and you're and you're planning for what that new school community can be, you're setting yourselves up to maintain a lot of the really wonderful things that have worked for so long while also um creating the opportunity for uh for new and innovative types of practices. So guys, we are halfway through this question list. We are not going to open it up to freeball questions right

170now. Let's let Joe get through this and then let's take a look at the time and decide what we want to do next. Okay, because we are twothirds of the way through our agenda and we still got to vote on a bunch of stuff. >> Okay, keep going. You're doing great. >> Um, next question. which options provide educators with the most flexibility in meeting individual student needs and what are some examples for how this might work? Um, talked about a lot of this larger schools. This gets back to the sustainability question. Um, don't need to go into too much more detail here. Basically the same same idea that we've been talking about previously. Um, what are some ways that we might preserve a small community feel inside of large school structures? Um what are some

171examples of what other districts or large schools have done in this regard? Um so there are many ways that schools and districts really preserve or build upon the feeling of small communities even if you do have larger schools. Um there are strategies to organize really within the school. So creating teams or houses or pods or strands of programs. So basically you group home rooms together and you can create small schools within schools. Um there are many many examples of of of schools pursuing those kinds of cohorts um where you can have different themes. I think there's an opportunity for Action Boxboro to preserve some key aspects of certain kinds of of programs within within some of those themes um while also maintaining the the the benefits that come with a larger school. So some of

172those efficiencies that we've talked about before. Um so while the larger school operates as one unit, students are a part of those those smaller learning communities um that again can have some specific themes or styles that that cater to some of those diverse approaches um in Act and Boxboro. Um and then outside of the organization of the school, there are many many opportunities for additional kinds of clubs or community groups. um really intentional spaces that bring students of similar needs or backgrounds or um or interests together. Uh so building up clubs, community groups, uh etc. And um yeah, and I think it can do it can be a really powerful setting to to create even more inclusive environments for students from from varying backgrounds. Um, next one. What are the possible implementation uh effects, benefits

173or cons of combining grade bands with looping? Um, and this is back to this idea of creating smaller schools or communities uh within schools. There is an opportunity to to maintain uh looping as a as a as a concept or elements of looping um within specific kinds of configurations of schools. Um uh I think a really important caveat is to think about how that fits into the broader approach of that school when you um have the the new configure of the school configuration of the school coming together. Making sure that that approach is consistent with the uh the broader schoolwide approach um for what uh grade level configuration should really look like. Um and there are of course pros and cons to this kind of approach especially if you think about some of the the

174stricter forms of grade bands. Um, a pro of maintaining uh looping, there's more consistency for students at a time of great change. Um, and there's an ability to maintain and strengthen uh student uh relationships with one another as well as uh relationships with educators, also parent relationship, parent and guardian relationships. Um, a potential downside is there's potentially less flexibility for a school if you're locking students into specific cohorts. Um, it's not a dealbreaker, but I think it's it is a consideration. um and it could potentially delay the integration of school communities. I think one of the the key details that comes out of um school re or district reorganization research is the idea of creating that new school community. And so you want to make sure that there's an opportunity for that to happen. Um

175if the idea is to extend looping between gradebanded schools altogether, especially with that fully district regionalized model, um that might require teachers moving between schools if if that's the way that looping was designed. So you may want to a narrow looping to um an individual building rather than across across uh school buildings. Um, and then last question related to to grade banding and looping. And this one's for you, Peter. My understanding is that gradebanding could be good for efficient deployment of staff and somehow combining looping with that could help make the already difficult transitions a bit less bumpy. >> Yeah, I think you know that's certainly something that we we can explore as we go. I think one of the challenges is as I think about this if if we're trying to do looping and

176and my understanding of this is was a pure grade banded model is that I don't know who I don't remember who asked that question. >> So I was the one that asked that question. It's I and I would find some clarification on per like the different ways grand bending could be set up cuz the more I hear about it, the more I think it could it sounds we've heard repeatedly that if you have more kids with the similar needs in one area, then that's a lot more efficient than if that grade is spread out across a bunch of buildings and then you have to move staff from one area or to the other. And if we're working with the hardest crunch we've dealt with, it seems like an optimization that I feel we can't look

177away from. And also, I've heard from members in the community that yes, that sounds great with grade with um with grade banding, but transitions themselves from one grade to another already inherently difficult, especially the one from like fifth to sixth grade. So, I'm sort of just talking at this point, but hopefully that provides some of the context of the I saw Tori's eyes and I knew I got to wrap it up. >> Yeah. I mean, I I think if you're talking within a building, looping can still could potentially be an option. Um, if we're talking across buildings, looping would be probably really challenging because it would require educators moving obviously every couple of years. Um, so I think that would we'd have to really think about that as as how it would play out. >>

178Yeah. >> Okay. Um, how might eighth graders be integrated into the high school footprint and what might that look like programmatically? Um, this is another one where the details of exactly how it would look uh are still being determined. Um, but the high level integration plan would be to really portion off a part of the high school to serve as a quasi eighth grade academy. Um, there is space to do that. Uh, I think there's still discussion around exactly where that would be. Um, but this approach would allow eighth graders to be largely separated from the rest of the high school, but programmatically it could offer some real advantages. Um, the district could transfer its eighth grade teachers and courses up to the high school. um and potentially build some stronger connections between high school

179course offerings to really make sure there's a super strong continuity or uh between between those various those various programs. Um for example, uh it could allow for a more seamless connection with upper level math classes. Um especially if you have eighth graders who are already taking some of those upper level math classes. Um and could potentially allow for more coordination with certain elective offerings, particularly the arts. Um, so there are some some programmatic benefits for exactly how that would look. Um, the details of which are still still being determined. Um, the next question, uh, the people I'm hearing from are thinking less about restructuring and more about big change, big problems, etc. Um, community members are anxious and scared about what's going on with the volatility, hostility, and uncertainty at the federal level, especially in

180how it relates to the schools. There's obvious a lot obviously a lot that we just don't know. Um how is the situation at the federal level impacting us right now? What does it mean for the schools in our kids and what can be done to help minimize the harm? So highlevel response to this we work with school like my my organization works with school districts all across the country that have varying levels of being shielded from federal policies based on their local and state funding frankly. Um, and all a district can really do is scenario plan based on those possible options or those possible outcomes at the state and federal level. Um, what I will say before I pass it over to uh, school committee or district leadership, pursuing a more flexible school configuration gives

181you more options in terms of what you can do and how you can respond to these changing funding scenarios uh, to be able to continue to provide really excellent services for students. Um, but Peter, Tori, anybody else want to chime in? >> I mean, I think there's there's different types of impact that we can talk about. I mean, there's I think for many of our families, there's an emotional toll of a lot of things going on at the federal level. Um, particularly around immigration um enforcement, I think, you know, has taken a a large toll on many members of our community from what I've heard. And I think, you know, there are families and students that at times are actually fearful of of going to public events, public places, things like that. So that that's

182one. Reorganization can't help that, right? Like that's that's beyond the scope of what we can control. Um there are other things we can do internally in any setting to try and mitigate how our families feel engaged with us. Um in terms of, you know, funding, that's a different level. And I think, you know, we we did some preliminary analysis. I don't remember the exact numbers, but I think it's quite honestly of the $17 million budget that we have, I think it was between$1 and $2 million come from federal funds. Um, outside of special education. Um, and I think what we've found and heard, you know, at the national level from some organizations that are are more in the know than we would be is that it would be highly unpalatable in across both parties to

183be touching special education funding. Um, there has been talk of where special education might sit if the Department of Education closes down, but I don't think I've heard any talk of reducing funding for special education services. So, um I don't think that, you know, quite honestly, I think, you know, right now, just the way the federal government is is formed, I think our, you know, you know, Republican senators have a lot more sway um in terms of kind of some of those funding decisions and same in the House. And I don't think there's any interest from from those parties to try and reduce funding at that level. So, you know, we're probably talking, you know, 1 to 2% of our budget is is tied up in federal funds that we would ever be worried about.

184and we continue to receive them as of now. But if we don't, then we would certainly let people know. >> Um, next question, which I think may have been addressed already. Student literacy is struggling. What do we know about why this is the case and what can be done? Any additional voice over? >> No, I think we beat that one up pretty well. >> Yeah. >> Uh, and then next one. Students mental health is getting worse. What do we know about why this is the case and what can be done? So I I and I because I was out of the office today, I didn't have a chance to fully pull the data, but I actually think in the last Metro West, not Metro West, the um yeah, the youth risk behavior survey, we're actually

185not seeing that at all. We're actually seeing a trend that it's improving. Um you know, we've taken a lot of steps toward that and we have a lot of mental health supports in place. Um but we are seeing some really positive trends and quite honestly some of the trends we saw in that were that we were our our pace of improvement was outpacing similar districts. So um some some good news on that front. That said, it is absolutely a consideration. We want to make sure that we have all the services and supports in place for students and families that they need um as well as our educators. Um, and as I said earlier, you know, really thinking that this is focused around a community wellness approach to transition is something that we want to keep

186forefront. >> Um, the next five questions we designated for school committee. So Tori, let me pass it back to you. >> Okay. So I'm going to take the three that are kind of the factual ones and there are two that I think are worth some discussion. So the first one was, didn't we pass the override to save Conan last year? Um, and you might remember the year of the override act and we had a huge operational shortfall. I want to say it was between like 8 and 10 million. Does that feel about right? >> Six. >> Right. >> The total short, >> right? Yeah, it was it was enormous. It was on the order of 80 staff, which is where I'm getting to Yeah. about that. It was huge if the if the override did

187not pass. Um, and in that context, looking at closing a school looked like it would save us about $1.3 million. It would be incredibly disruptive because remember the time we were having this conversation was January and February. So, think about if we were starting AB forward in January and February to implement next year. I mean, we we've heard a lot of feedback that this timeline is too short, but we're actually way ahead of where we could have been had we decided that year that we were going to try and close a building and move everything around. So, um, yes. And the challenge we had with the override, um, when that finally went through, it passed by 45 votes in Actton. So, very narrowly passed and it got us to about here. And here we are

188again. We had huge pressures that year. Um, in addition to health insurance, that was the year that blew up. We had special education out of district costs went way up. The transportation for special education went way up. And there's one more. What was it? There's a fourth thing. Anyway, this year it's really the health insurance piece that's blowing up that is that is making this really difficult. But, um, yes, we thought it would be enough. We hoped it would be enough and things have not come down. Adam, I see you waving. >> Yeah, I I just want to add context here because I think the the question actually provides a really interesting view into what our school community is thinking, which is we passed this to save a school. And the reality was there were

189equal challenges on the town side as well. And so the override was not just to support the schools, it was to support the town of Actton and all of the services that the town of Actton provides to its community members. Um, so you know, and I don't want to speak for the town of Actton as not being a resident, but I think one of the main conversation points we had was you can't just pass an override for one part of the community and not the other. And clearly it was a close enough override that there had to be um a perceived benefit for everybody. So yes, part of the reason we passed the override was to support the increase in costs on the school side, but there were equal challenges and needs on the town

190side that were also supported by the override. And this sounds like somebody who is thinking about overrides. Yeah. >> All right. Uh, so the next two questions are related. Who makes the final decision? And then will the ultimate decision be based on the popular vote or what the majority of the community wants? So, um, I think we all know we're signed up to make the final decision. That is state law that governs that, right? So, um, I I hear that that is a question out in the community, but that's our role as the people that you elected to be on the school committee. And if you're interested in doing this job, you could run for school committee. [laughter and gasps] Um, so that said, um, >> that that answers question 17. >> That answers question

19117. We aren't there yet. Um, [laughter] so, you know, we have to think about the needs of every student. We have to figure out how to ensure that they have the best opportunities within the resources of our community. And that's going to be a challenge. Um, we know that. And we also have to look at the long term. We're not just looking at next year. And so, you know, it's interesting to think about um you stand where you sit, right? If you currently have students in the elementary school, you're probably thinking about this from the perspective of of your own student in elementary [clears throat] school. If you've got kids now who are in the junior high or high school, you're seeing this differently because we all come together in the junior high and the

192high school. If you've got kids that are already out of school, if if you yourself were a graduate, like there are many different perspectives here and we have to take that all in. So think about what this would look like if it were a popular vote. Can you imagine the school communities lining up and fighting with each other? We are all one community that is going to end up together in junior high and high school. and we have to make sure that when we get there, we are all excited and looking forward to that happening. Um, so that takes us through those. The next one, um, as Adam mentioned, if the school committee does choose something that isn't popular, how will our feedback be used? Well, there we go. We are all elected. So, um,

193somebody else can run for this and get to take on these challenges. But, um, I think this is actually a really interesting question. Um because I think given what we've heard thus far, there isn't a choice out there that is popular. Somebody is upset about every single one of them, right? Um so how are how are you all thinking about this? What are we going to do with this feedback? How are we going to think about it? Anyone want to take a stab at that? >> Vicram. >> Okay, I'll I'll stab away. Uh I I think I'm sort of taking it as it comes. I'm sort of mulling over what the options are. I'm speaking to a lot of people in the communities. Um I have two children and a child in first grade and

194a child in fourth grade. Talked to a lot of parents, a lot of you know just people everywhere. Um and a lot of people have a lot of interesting things to say. So I'm taking all that information. I'm not going to say obviously because I don't want to bias anything, but uh but I think a lot of people are telling me things that are quite legitimate um and have very serious concerns. uh as do I which when I speak of again I will speak to them. >> Yenchin >> um I'm determined to keep things positive today. [laughter] Um, so I think what I like we've all read a lot of the emails, we've all hear a lot of conversation, we've receive a lot of feedbacks and as I said before there it's really sad to,

195you know, hear people sort of like they already feel like they lost something. Um, but the flip side of that is I get to see the schools that my children didn't get to go to. Like for example, I wasn't familiar with project- based learning, looping and or like you know people speak so highly of Conan and I finally got to see the building cuz my son took archery there after school. Um and and I find that we there is an opportunity that when if we decide to have everybody together or in more close proximity to each other um again I don't know what to choose yet but as Joe had mentioned that there are ways to still preserve culture to create pods and um what did you say Joe like was pods and teams? Yeah,

196teams, cohorts, different ways of grouping, >> right? To to preserve those things that we treasure. So, I'm gonna leave it that, >> Lisa. >> Okay. So, it helps me to go from one side to the other. Lisa, go. >> Just It's just my kids that It's just my kids that are sick. [laughter and gasps] Um, I think when I'm looking at this feedback, I'm really thinking about what people value. And one of the things I'm really thinking about and mulling over as people are telling us about their experiences and sharing what makes their child's experience so special is what makes a community. And if we had to think about, you know, with any option that we end up choosing, you know, anything that gets changed, how would we rebuild that? And to me, one one

197thing that I keep consistently hearing and thinking about is all of the ways that people are able to come together and be together and share moments together. And that's been pretty universal. But it's also been really um it's been really special to hear the unique things that people do and to think about all of that. Liz um I just want to like directly answer the question. Um the school committee is using the feedback to you know as a lens for looking at these options and vetting these options and then whatever option is ultimately selected it somebody is going to be upset with that and for some part of the community it won't be popular and what I think is really important about us getting this feedback ahead of time is not only are we using

198the feedback while we're considering but then when we do make a decision And we know who, you know, we know that it's going against this particular popular opinion. We have the language. We have the, you know, opportunity to explain. We understand. And here's why. You know, we can give a much more robust rationale for why that option wasn't selected. >> Glenn, I want to echo all of that. And yeah, this the whole point of community feedback is that we gather input that is helpful for us to view the the different lenses of how the community looks at this restructuring process. Like you're looking at this different if you're a senior versus if you with no kids in this district versus if you have a kid in elementary school or if you have a kid in

199middle school or high school. like there are so many different ways to look at this that we need to hear those perspectives so that we can make the most informed decision possible. That's one that's one out that's one lens with that. And then if you're upset about something, we need to know be and the whole point of being able to absorb this information, distill the emotions that go into this messy process and hopefully begin the process of unifying our community around decision and implementation which that the implementation is going to feel like it's we think we're going through it now. trying to implement this after the decisions made going to be this whole other process. So trying to get ahead of as much of these the sticky emotions and the varying lenses around how we

200view this mastrom of decisions. That's the whole point of community input. And I guess the way I'm thinking about it is I want to understand what the trade-offs are. I want to prevent and mitigate the things that really worry us. Um, to me that's a lot of the value of community feedback is is knowing what we should be looking at and figuring out what we can do about it ahead of time. And then finally, Yenshin, I'm with you. I want to bring our community together to bring something that takes the best of what we have and turn it into something even better. So, okay, here's the next one. What's the feedback we can provide at this time? Public comments, emails, a survey, etc. thinking specifically about what will be most helpful for the school committee

201to know. So the question that I come to here is I would love to know when people talk to us how their thinking has changed from when they first started this to where they are now. So that's my contribution. Anybody got anything else? Vicram Is there another mic? >> Um, I'm sorry, the question again. >> What is most helpful for you to know now in all the public comment? >> I think uh I I've really learned a broad spectrum of views about this and most of the people are really unhappy with it. Um, and nobody wants to have any change. Um, I think, uh, I don't know. I think a big thing is I think a lot of people feel the difference between our district and other districts is higher taxes and that those higher

202taxes are really for a better education system. And people are very afraid that we're going to take something that's stellar and spoil it, right? Uh I think there's another uh general sentiment that there are extremely highly educated people who live here who deal with vast swaths of data all the time and none of these uh have provided any detail as to why we have sort of a yellow and a green and and you know and a red approach and people are unhappy with that and so I hadn't really uh realized the the breadth of of sort of angst with with the way things are going. Nevertheless, things are where they are and the ball is rolling along. But I think we need to be cognizant of that. Many people are quite pissed off. >> Okay.

203So, the question we're answering is what do we want people to tell us now in the public comment? >> No, sorry. This this is the what do you want people to tell to tell you now? So, that was where I was saying I would love to hear how people's thoughts have changed over the process. Now, that's that's helpful. Okay, Andrew. I don't think any of us wanted to be in this position. I don't think anybody in the community wants to be in this position. Everybody has that emotion. And we've been using a lot of really big words and we've been very polite here, but there's a lot of emotion and that's good. That needs to be a part of this. We need people to reach out to us, not to say, you know, you're killing

204me, but to say, you know, this is how I think we can move however way forward. Um, talk about the things that matter to you. Talk about what value you have in the entirety of what your kids do here. that'll help us understand what we need to protect, what we need to adjust, how we need to build things together. Because as you know, Lisa was saying, as Jen is saying, there are things inside all of these schools that can bring everyone together. And while we have this really amazing community with people from dozens of cultures, we are not quite the melting pot we need to be. We've got a lot of silos. This may be a way for us to talk about the things that are our common spots where we can have one foot

205in everything we are and one foot in everything that we are. And I think that's the best I could say. Be a squeaky wheel. Send us emails to the whole community, the whole committee so we can hear. Come to the meeting and talk at the the front of the the discussion. Answer the the focus groups. Answer the surveys. Get involved in this. But don't get involved in this thinking that it's being done to you. It's not. It's something that we're doing together to deal with a really terrible situation that we've been put in. And you know what do I want to hear? I want to hear the things that inspire people about what it means to be here. Because understanding what you love helps us understand how we move forward. Adam, >> thank you. Kind

206of hard to follow that, but I I would say following on following on what Andrew said, I had I actually had someone um provide me some feedback from our finance committee. And surprisingly, the feedback from the Boxboro finance committee when I was there was not how much is this going to save me? It was what are the outcomes that we're expecting for our students out of this? Um, and so what I would love to hear from our families in addition to what they love about their school now is what are they hoping they can get better from this this activity? Um, because as much as we love every one of our schools and we think they're wonderful, there are still opportunities to for improvement. And so, you know, what I would love to hear is

207what do you love about your school and your program and what made you choose that school? And what could be better about that or anything else that we do? because I I I think that like a lot of people have said here, we recognize that there's going to be a communal loss, but there's also a really big opportunity for what's next. And so I would love to hear feedback that also focuses on that. And it helps keep us centered as well. Not just thinking about what is the financial implication, but what are we what are we hoping to get out of this? How do we apply vision of a graduate? How do we apply our strategic plan? All of those things are going to be the the energy that keep us moving forward through this.

208So, I think those were two pretty powerful statements. Are we okay to move on to public comment because we have another 15 minutes and then we got to go. I Are we okay with that? Okay, thank you. Okay, so we've got 15 minutes. Can I see a show of hands of who's interested in commenting on AB forward? Okay, so we've got two of you. So, we're going to set our timers for three minutes and um members of the public may speak up for a max up to a maximum of three minutes and the committee and presenter will typically not respond to comments or questions. Come on up and share. >> Greg Jarbo, 5 Cherokee Road. Um I probably didn't do you justice earlier this evening. I told you that um the schools got an A+.

209Uh they did. It turns out cost of living got a C++ on the niche ratings. And if this were a conversation with my kids and I'm an empty neester, so I'm I'm a different demographic than um uh normally may speak here or not. Don't know. It's it's a how do we keep the good grade but bring up the lower grade and that's that's a that's a constructive conversation. Uh we are looking for um something that deals with the cost of living, affordability, sustainability. It can go by different names in different places, but it's Yeah, we have a lot of people here who are um trying to make ends meet, and that's a hard conversation around a kitchen table. And yeah, one of the things that really makes this town worth living in is the schools.

210You do a great job. And gosh, h how do we keep doing that? maybe deal with the affordability issue or the sustainability issue or the cost of living issue, whatever you want to call it. So, it's it's um it's a common conversation that every parent has had at some point with their kids. You know, I want to congratulate you on the good grades and let's talk about the other ones and see what we can do to improve them. >> Thank you. Thank you. Um I'm David Martin. I'm on the actton select board. Um and I want to thank you all for dealing with this. It's all not easy. Um I've heard from a number of people who are discouraged that the AB forward process isn't going to solve all of our financial problems. I just

211want to let folks know that the uh impact of this restructuring should not be under estimated. Right now, the school district is estimating a 6 point something percent uh uh increases uh budget increases in the coming years. Selecting one of the more sustainable AB forward options takes that to 5 point something%. Might may not seem like it, but that's huge. It's it's the first step uh that addresses the most dire ramifications of the budget imbalance. No, it does not solve uh the whole problem, but no single step will address the whole problem. Thank you. >> Thank you. >> All right, we're only an hour and 20 minutes [laughter] behind. >> Thanks, Adam. [gasps] >> All right, so we are on the request to approve approval to explore the partnership with Actton TV. Peter, you want

212to tell us about that? Sure. So, uh, actually Mark Ducey from Actton TV is here in the audience and obviously thank you to Actton TV for all of the the work recording our meetings and broadcasting them. Um, Joe, thank you. >> Thank you, Joe. >> Um, [laughter] Joe is just going to run. Um, you know, I I had a conversation um with Mark and also with Mike Gowing, who is the the president of Actton TV earlier this year. It's actually been a two-part conversation at this point. Um really just exploring the possibility of ACT and TV coming back to the high school. Um it's been a long time since ACT and TV left. Um and you know I think you know from ACT and TV's lens this is you know kind of their version of

213AB forward where they're trying to think about how to create a sustainable you know model moving forward. And you know, as we were approached, what really struck me is now that we've developed this vision of a graduate, I think there's a real opportunity to think about how to think creatively about how we can, you know, improve programming for our students um at the high school, you know, work toward a a more fulfilling vision of a graduate even in tight financial times. And I think, you know, this idea of being able to to bring act and TV into the high school, do something that's good for the community and great for our kids is, you know, a really unique opportunity. There's lots of aspects of this to explore that before we could finalize a partnership. Um,

214but what I'm really looking to do tonight is just get your preliminary approval for me to continue to explore um that possibility. um if it does look like it's coming to fruition, obviously any kind of agreement that we have would come back to you for final approval. Um you know, right now preliminary estimates, and Mark, correct me if I'm wrong, but we're actually not thinking about the coming school year, but probably, you know, the July after that. So really July 27 um would be what we're targeting. Correct. >> Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah, Mark, you have to use a microphone in order for it to be broadcast. >> Yeah, you think I would know that. Um, so our lease is up um and it's kind of an unfortunate time. Uh, June 30th of 2027. So, just

215as the school year is wrapping up. So, if um if this were all to come to fruition and we were to move in here and need to do some construction, we'd want to do that in the summertime. Um so, ideally, it would be this summer that we would hope to try to do any kind of construction because we would need to be out of our current space by the end of June unless there's a way to do it during the school year, which I don't think there is. So we we've we've been talking essentially about, you know, thinking about programming options. There'd be renovations to kind of what is the television production suite um and media production suite. Um we've been in talks with George Arseno, who's the visual and performing arts coordinator, um about

216ways that he can think creatively about programming and we can expand opportunities for students at the high school. Um, we think this is a really really cost-effective way to increase opportunities for kids and a real service to the community at the same time. Um, and so we we would like your permission to just move forward with this. Um, there's no agreement to sign, just a vote to say yes, continue to proceed exploring this. Glenn, so this has my full support. One of the um I was the 2017 intern of the year at the lower local access cable station. So this has a near and dear thing to my heart. I that was one of the first things I did in community college. So two thumbs up for me. >> Do I hear a motion? >>

217So moved. >> Second. [laughter] >> So that was Glenn and I didn't catch the second. >> That's a good question. What is the motion? I to authorize the district to explore potential partnership opportunities with ACT and TV. >> Second help. >> Vicram [laughter] with a motion with a second. Thank you Adam for reading. >> Um all in favor. >> Any opposed? >> Any abstensions? There you go, Peter. >> Thanks. >> Carry on. Thanks. >> All right. We are now on to our second read of the middle school pathway exploration policy. Andrew. >> Yeah. So, just as a reminder, in our last meeting, I presented to you the draft of the middle school pathways policy. That's a requirement by DESIE uh for all school districts to ensure um appropriate exposure of our middle school age students

218to uh various um educational pathways that include vocational um and I think agricultural uh career uh and course work. Um the feedback that was received is just to please um not be as specific about mentioning um Minute Man Regional Technical School, not about them, but just knowing that if and when Boxboro does decide to partner with um a vocational regional school district that we'd have to come back and change it. So we just literally took any mention of Minute Man and just simply said um a regional school district a regional vocational school district to which Actton and or Boxboro are uh member communities. So if that satisfies I think the concerns then I would welcome a uh a motion to approve the policy. >> Make a motion to vote to approve it. Sorry. >> Second.

219So that was Vicram and Lisa. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. Thank you. All right. Um I think we have covered capital pretty effectively today. Liz already got us with negotiations. Anything policy? Any anything else besides that? No, you're not Paul. That's right. You're not anymore. Uh >> any anything else that we need to be tracking? >> I think that was pretty thorough. >> Okay, good. Let's keep going. Um Adam, let's talk about budget. >> So, budget subcommittee met this Monday. Um we took the feedback from the committee at our previous meeting to revamp our budget guidelines. A copy of them are in the agenda already. Um quite simply um we provided some quantitative direction to the district to try to target a budget increase this year between 3.75 and

2204.25%. That's our operating budget. Um and just as a a point of factual information that does mean that we will see a roughly $2.3 to$2 million reduction from a level services budget. Um and that's significant in that it is the highest reduction we've had over the past four years. So it is higher than any of the reductions over the past few years. So um that's some of the the um quantitative information that we gave the district. We also gave them some guidance to say be prepared for AB forward. We don't know really what it's going to have, but let's make sure that we're flexible in those goals. Um we also were very clear in saying we are going to have significant impact in these cuts and we want to have the district articulate um what

221those impact what that impact will be of those changes um so that we can explain those clearly to the community. And then our standard um making sure that we are um planning for capital projects uh and for our facilities, managing our obligations uh contractual obligations. Um and a reminder that we continue to re um ask the district and as ourselves uh only use uh reserve funds like our excess and deficiency fund for one-time costs, not for ongoing costs. So that's what we discussed. The draft guidelines are here are in the packet. Anybody has feedback, please send them uh to me. Um and we do have one more meeting as a budget subcommittee before we'll bring this for a vote at uh our meeting on the 20th. >> All right. So, we're going to do liaison

222reports by exception. Does anybody have anything hot that we need to cover now? >> Lisa, I just want to quickly say that joint PTSO met on Monday of this week. Um, uh, I'm really really proud of all of our PTO PTF members who were, um, bringing communities together, um, sharing information with their communities, getting the word out about AB Forward and making sure that they are ensuring community engagement and encouraging their community members to take the survey. And I'm really excited and pleased to announce that all the PTOs are working towards uh, creating a community building event with all of the schools together. and um be on the lookout for that in the spring. >> Awesome. Thank you. Um Adam, did I see your hand up? >> Yes. So, I I'll just follow on what

223Lisa said first and foremost and say I'm really appreciative to all the PTO's PTS's, PTFS um coming together. And I think as as we look at how we're going to begin to manage that transition at the end of the year, I think that it's something that maybe the district can also support. Uh and then I want to give a quick update from the Boxboro Finance Committee. I was uh lucky enough to join that meeting earlier this week. First and foremost, the free cash in Boxboro is at about three times their budget. Um their policy is to hold similar to us about 5% of their operating budget in free cash. It's significantly higher than that. And so they're looking at the reasons for that. Um it looks to be more of a a revenue side, particularly

224on taxes um coming in, than it is on on cost savings on the output side, but definitely something that they're looking at. Um and a really good we had two really good conversations. Um one was around them uh working on their budget model similar to what you have in the ALG plan. Um what I would say and I'd point out particularly for my neighbors in Actton um when we have enrollment swings regardless of which town goes up or down those swings significantly affect Boxboro because of the fewer number of students that we have. Um, and so one of the feedbacks that we got from the tri board meeting was they would like a more reliable budget forecast from us. And I looked at them like they had three heads and said, "Well, we have an

225operating model that shows you we have a budget model that says our operating budget is very consistent year-over-year." Um, and we actually came to a real good understanding of the fact that none of us have control over our enrollment numbers and those enrollment swings are really what are hurting Boxboro. So, um, we began to have conversations about what it might look like to help sort of, um, have a a a less fluctuating budget or I should say assessment to the town of Boxboro. Um, but also in conversations with with Sher, the fact that we know what our enrollment numbers are are now, that doesn't affect next year's assessment, it actually affects the FY28 assessment. So, we can give Boxboro at least a two-year look ahead of what their assessment may be because we do know

226those numbers. And then finally, we had a very good conversation about feedback from the the tri board meeting. And so I would encourage the the other um boards and committees to to get some feedback as well and and bring that back to us because there was actually a desire from Boxboro Fincom to continue those conversations, evolve them some more um and get some actionable items out of that. >> Okay. Andrew >> Health Insurance Trust met last week. We continue the run out with both Harvard Pilgrim and with Bluec Cross Blue Shield. Having concluded our runout with Harvard Pilgrim, it's now just Bluec Cross Blue Shield. This last month, we had 0 in claims. Uh some administrative stuff went through. We received a check for around 150,000 from them and they have about 497,000 in just

227escrow holding right now. We are asking again near the end of the year for another check from them and we're going to try to get as much back as we can. Um, and we'll just hold on to it until the end of our runout period. That's it. >> Awesome. Glenn, >> I'll be brief and I have more in-depth notes, but um, select board Matt DPW building is the biggest thing on their plate. Um, uh, proposal has been agreed upon by the building committee. Now, they're hoping to I think I don't want to open this can to worms the but we're hoping to get input from the finance committee. We'll have to talk about that later. Um they're also looking at more things regarding fire station developments, um HVAC projects, new staffing roles, and that was

228meant that was brought before the select board in the town manager's uh preliminary budget proposal. And the tribe board meeting was very much appreciated and uh it was it was expressed that perhaps this could be an annual thing um or smaller group meetings before then um but it was really useful. It was expressed that it was really useful to get people on the same page about the different challenges we're facing. >> Awesome. Thank you. All right. Um, school committee goal update. One thought here. Um, we are about to hit the next round of information dropping. Um, that would be November 14th. So, if you have not yet seen the forums or you didn't attend the forums, they are on the AB Forward website. Watch them. It's really helpful to just hear the questions people are

229asking, hear the comments, understand how thinking is evolving because we're going to have another information dump and thinking is going to start evolving again really fast. Um, but it is neat to see that it feels like we're at a bit of an inflection point where even though there's still a lot of processing and understanding what's going on, um, it's neat to see some of the some of the things people are starting to envision right now and I and I hope to see that keep continuing. Okay. Consent agenda. Items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like to hold an item for discussion in a separate vote. I will read each v each each item and if a member would like it held, please

230say hold. Members do not have to have attended a meeting to vote on the minutes. Uh item A, approval of the ABRSC meeting minutes from 10:22 and 102325. Item B, recommendation to approve a $20,000 check for the first installment from Dragonfly Theater to ABRSD. ABR PTSO $1,283.75 grant donation to RJ Grey Junior High School for student plan books. Item D, CAF cyber grants, $600 donation to R.J. Grey Junior High School general program support. Item E, donation to OTPT department at McCarthy Town School. Item F, PTSO 2000 donation for ABRHS community day. Item G, recommendation to approve budget transfer per policy DJB. And item H, approval of warrants as presented in the packet 11625. All right, seeing as nothing was held, is there a motion to approve the cons? >> Move to approve with gratitude for

231all the donations. That was Adam and I think Vicram. >> Yes. >> All righty. All in favor? >> I. >> Any opposed? Any abstensions? Great. That one carries. >> Anything else? >> Move to adjurnn. >> No. >> Second. >> Oh, that's non-debatable. [laughter] All right. Vicram and Adam are getting us out of here. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. No abstensions. Have a great night.