Acton Boxborough Regional School Committee Meeting 11/18/21

001all the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order uh this meeting is being recorded by actin tv and will be broadcast on their website and youtube channel uh so good evening everyone um as this is our last meeting prior to the thanksgiving holiday i wanted to take a moment to share some gratitude first thank you to the facilities and custodial staff that keep our schools and campuses looking their finest thanks to our transportation staff and crossing guards for getting our kids safely to school thanks to our school nurses psychologists counselors and social workers for attending to the physical and mental health of our students thank you to our food services staff for keeping our kids fed twice a day for free thanks to both our school and central office staff for the myriad of things that

002they do to keep our schools and districts running thank you to our school administrators for your leadership in these continued challenging times thank you to everyone who's working directly with our kids on a daily basis special educators assistants specialists and teachers you all continue to amaze me with your resilience and dedication to all of the over 1 000 employees of the acton-boxborough regional school district thank you for your hard work and dedication two weeks ago several of us attended the masc mass conference in hyannis we had the opportunity to attend two to three days of engaging in informative sessions i took away some very practical ideas like our new auto reply message for the school committee email also took away some longer term things to think about like how to put our students voices at

003the center of our work around equity also peter and tessa participated in a very well received session on the lessons learned from holding virtual public meetings uh both ginny tessa amy and myself were there so i want to give you guys the opportunity to share some of the things that you took away from that conference as well go ahead jenny thank you i'm excited to talk about it because going to that conference is definitely a highlight um and i encourage anyone who hasn't been to go uh it's very energizing and exciting to meet with people school committee members and superintendents from across the commonwealth and learn from them and um you know just be in a place where there's so many people who are so excited about education so i i attended a number of

004fantastic um panel discussions um i just want to mention two of them one very quickly project 351 if you don't know about that it's a leadership program where there's one eighth grader from every city in town in commonwealth massachusetts that comes together and and those kids are absolutely um fantastic and then the other one is something that um that was really exciting barnstable public schools has developed a center um in um a town facility the the youth facility they have a center for welcoming immigrant families and that center is a clearinghouse for everything immigrant families may need so instead of having to go to three schools if you have three kids of different ages you can just go to one place and they also engage you with interpreting services and all kinds of services that

005are available to assist in you know establishing a healthy relationships and getting the things that they need and one of the most exciting parts about it was it also um helps get those parents into the schools as volunteers so that you know while the um the school you know many school administrations and teacher workforces uh and other employees don't look like the kids that they're teaching um it gets those adults into the room um into the classrooms into the schools so that you know the kids see people who look like them who speak their language and who appreciate their cultural traditions so it was a really exciting partnership between the barnstable school district and the town that i thought was something that you know that we might want to think about it was really fantastic

006thank you the most impactful part for me was listening to the project 351 students who talked about elevating student voice and that was really a moving presentation they spoke to the it was in the general session room which means that they were speaking to all of the school committee members and superintendents um who were there and it's really astounding how eloquent these two young women were in talking about mental health and their social emotional needs and the importance of teachers really teachers and staff really taking the time to listen to what students need it was really impressive and then one of the other things that i attended was about district and high school accreditation and the process and how it's changing and evolving and there's a lot of talk of portrait of a graduate and

007the different ways in which districts have moved forward with that and what that looks like in terms of their presentations of the community and how they've sort of aligned their practices in order to it just it's a multi-year process and it actually wasn't the session that i thought i was sitting in on because it had a different title that really said i don't remember you were going to sit down and to adam and then something happened but um but it was really interesting and it was interesting to hear from that perspective and to hear from the other schools um and districts that are at different uh stages in that planning process amen yeah thanks i would just echo what jenny and tessa have said um it it is if if you have a chance to

008go next year please go it's it is it's really um amazing to see districts across the commonwealth dealing with the same kinds of struggles and concerns that we are here and the the incredibly innovative way different school districts are tackling different issues these these common issues that we're all kind of sharing um i will say i did attend um i attended one particular um one particular session that talked a lot about um ways to um ways to help underprivileged students students of color who have universally there's this there's a huge um math mathematics gap um and so some really innovative ways of kind of tackling that um so that's it thanks amy peter did you have anything that you wanted to share okay now we are at the public participation time of our meeting per

009our public participation policy bedh members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes for an item that is not on the agenda if you are interested in speaking please come up to the microphone and state your name and address please julia foxborough i'm speaking on behalf of the ab colonial mascot supporters especially those who have been silenced by abscess in their supporters and certain staff members as one of those who faced multiple negative messages on my social media calling me names such as racist white privilege white supremacist all things which my friends would tell you i am far from all because i posted a save the colonials petition most of them didn't even know me they just wanted me to take down my petition post but i didn't the day i

010posted my petition i became a target for bullying i feel as though the school committee and mr white the ones we trust to keep us safe failed us when they took sides now our whole school has become divided far from abu united just promised we would be at the beginning of this freshman year later i became part of the a b cheer team i found out that many of my teammates faced similar bullying over their efforts to save the colonial and from the same culprits that harassed me as the season began the athletic director told us to stop using colonial on the cheers strange to hear and we are still wearing uniforms that say colonial on them he threatened that there will be consequences if we cheer colonial again we feared he would not let

011us compete and we had worked too hard to risk it he broke our spirit silenced again soon after the boosters presented us with colonial t-shirts mr martin tried to keep us from getting them but the boosters fought for us to have them he caved in but told us that we couldn't wear them to school during our season i didn't feel this was right and neither did my parents i it wasn't in the student dress book handbook dress code my mom contacted mr white to tell him about this but he backed up mr martin our freedom of expression was taken away i still believe the mascot represents all of us here today i'm a proud american and my ancestors from italy were not as lucky to have the freedoms and privileges we have today it wasn't

012easy to leave their homeland but they came here to give us a better life they embraced and respected its land its people its history we were grateful to be here there may be different associations with the word colonial one minute as colonials were here in this very land from 1607 to 1776 but our colonial mascot was named for our three courageous acting colonials as well as a fighter from boxborough they were ordinary people a gunsmith a schoolmaster two musicians who lost their lives on april 19 1775 on a quest for independence from their oppressor i don't think we can find a name that suits us better a white male colonial might not represent my physical appearance either but when i looked at our mascot i didn't see color or a gender or a time period

013i saw our very own local fallen heroes i saw courage and sacrifice i saw hope and liberty i honor them for their role in starting up one of the greatest countries a place where my ancestors could come to and be free thank you for listening thank you julia hi corinne hogseth um seminole wrote an acton i have first a question for the chair if you don't mind i'm wondering if the state i'm talking about the statement that you read last week where you reiterated your insistence on not backing down on your decision to change the colonial mascot i'm wondering if your statement was your own if it was the statement of the white male at the head of the table or if you saw my more diverse opinions or input in that statement and if

014so from whom the statement was actually prepared by another member of the committee last year and so it was something that i pulled from the record to read again okay thank you all right i want to respond to julia's awesome statement in 1969 the supreme court ruled in the case tinker versus des moines that students do not shed their constitutional freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate these kids can wear any t-shirt they want no reasonable person can drive past isaac davis way down hayward road on the way to acton-boxborough high school and claim to be offended by the word colonial it's absurd this administration and the school committee has claimed for over a year that the decision to remove the colonial as abs mascot was grassroots student-driven you just heard from julia

015the first person to the best of my knowledge that's been brave enough the first student who's been brave enough to stand up in front of a microphone in front of a room full of people and speak you know say what she believed so i'm gonna go down a rabbit hole my daughters came home from school yesterday at lunch and she was all excited about this discussion they'd had in her psych class about this woman who has this exceptionally rare condition where she has a calcified amygdala which is the part of your brain that controls emotions it renders her absolutely fearless she's been held at gunpoint she's been held at knife point to which she responds go ahead cut me she's absolutely no sense of fear she has reason she has no fear you should not

016have to have a calcified amygdala to be able to stand up and say what you believe in any community including acting but too many kids in this district have we know there are a lot more kids like julia who had no say in the in the decision to get rid of the um the mascot they were told they had no say because they were white they were told it sucks to be you we know that the kids that that created the counter petition were afraid to give their names because they were afraid they would be they would be bullied and they were right we know that this committee and that members of this administration had biases we've seen the emails and the texts that have been released we've seen statements like we want you to

017know that ecares and the administration are in your corner in a draft of a text that was supposed to be emailed to be sent to the absence kids members of this administration people in this room referred to students as racists bullies and this was particularly applied to white male athletes you called students lazy for sending in last-minute subject line emails in support of the colonial yet you may have no problem with groups of teachers sending in emails in support of getting rid of it your hypocrites and your bullies thank you um hi steve ballard good evening i wanted to speak about something on the agenda that's later on the all-day kindergarten thing so i don't know if um if i may speak later or i'll be happy to wait or if it's on the agenda

018steve just wait until that point and then i'll recognize you thanks adam i appreciate it lucia marcella boxborough i am a mom of an ab student speaking about the mascot removal aftermath i think about how different things could have been if the mascot issue was approached in another manner the what-ifs come to my mind when abb said petitioned to change the mascot what if our superintendent didn't show that he favored removing our mascot but stayed neutral what if the families in our school district weren't excused weren't accused of being racist in an email could have we set a better example to teach our children not to be quick to judge others what if we addressed the bullying of our students after the petitions came out we all knew it was happening but the administration and

019school board chose to look the other way now the bullies are being rewarded by being involved in the mascot renaming process what if the school had offered educational discussions regarding the colonial mascot maybe even inviting a speaker to teach our town history it may have helped families understand that 60 years ago when our school mascot was named it wasn't about racism or colonization but about honoring our fallen heroes what if we didn't leave this vote up to the school committee what if there had been a town vote and all the voices could have been represented imagine if all the students and community were part of the process things could have been so different instead our mascot was just taken away during the early part of an anxiety-filled pandemic and we had no say we are

020proud of where we lived we were part of history but clearly the new residents moving to our town didn't know how important our history was to us maybe we failed to teach them ab said you may have won the school committee vote to remove our colonial mascot so now it's time to think about what you really gained division in your school division in the community and now divided from the ab alumni has removing the mascot created more happiness more friendships more acceptance in the school feeling a sense of inclusion doesn't come from taking a mascot away and it won't come with renaming your mascot either acceptance isn't gained through bullying others who disagree with you we need to respect everyone's fused you accused mascot supporters of being racist a very hurtful device meant to silence

021them it's not okay to make up false racial narratives for your own personal gain misuse of the word racism is very damaging especially to those who embraced all people of different backgrounds like my daughter you profiled mascot supporters as white privilege white athletes white males or girls they were packaged based on a race a gender or group this is so divisive we are individuals each with our own unique characteristics the colonials were also individuals and you labeled them as if they were a group all the same kind of people being a part of absence doesn't make you morally superior and in a place to judge others around you shaming of any race or gender should be against what absence stands for where is the equality and justice in this i too have zero tolerance for

022racism but remember that we can't fight racism with heat we can fight it with kindness just be kind and positive change will come let us come together let's respect everyone thank you for listening thank you christine marlowe boxborough mass on november 2nd a statement from the school committee about the mascot was read by chair adam klein i'm here to point out inconsistencies between that statement and what our community has experienced the statement said that the committee made the decision to retire the colonial mascot in october 2020 however the emails and texts received via records requests show that you were planning on getting rid of the mascot during the summer of 2020 the summer where you should have been focused on giving the seniors of 2020 some closure with an in-person graduation like all the towns

023around us did instead you chose to focus on dividing our town as the emails and texts showed where were your priorities did you care that the class of 2020 never returned to high school or never had a chance to say goodbye to friends they may never see again you also said the committee followed our open process which included listening seeking input researching again not entirely accurate as mentioned you worked on this decision over the summer of 2020 with only a select number of students the school board mr light mr shen mr martin and a few others you had a plan of action to retire the mascot and then in september of 2020 when families are still struggling with covid figuring out how to juggle hybrid schooling and their job you give the school three weeks

024to discuss whether we should keep the mascot but you had already made the decision to retire the mascot per your emails and texts your statement said you prioritized students needs and interest above all else and worked actively to create an anti-racist community earlier just one minute a young lady spoke of being bullied both by students and administration and how the administration's non-action encouraged even more bullying you and i both know she was not the only student to be bullied over this subject where are the leaders who champion diversity of thought and differing opinions where other leaders who are looking for inclusion and having thoughtful conversations to ensure that all feel part of the process true leadership knows when they have made an error and will call for a pause make course corrections and begin in

025a new and better direction i asked the school board to pause increase the number of people participating in this process learn from communities like shrewsbury who really care about all the residents and try and fix the mess that you have created thank you thank you christine uh scotsmeyers 382 central street just for i've been waiting for a night like this for a long time thank you very much for your comments and for the people who think the ship has sailed give it a rest the mascot decision has ended think about it this way the mascot is a symbol the decision to get rid of the mascot was an indication to the entire broad community that there's a lot more to the story but what i think it can be summed up in general is that

026what your ship what we're shifting in our culture here is stereotyping is okay right you're saying it's okay to put white people in one category black people in another category asian people in another category and assume that they need certain things and you're here to support them and we're just individuals and as you see more and more people are on to this and so as you make your decision about the mascot it should be a lot more deeper reflecting an analysis of what's going on in the school systems thanks thank you any more public comment all right i will read this again in regards to the matter of the school mascot that decision was made by this whole committee in last october to retire the colonial mascot as the school mascot and was made unanimously

027by the school committee as a matter under our purview this decision was made by the committee following our open process including listening seeking input researching weighing multiple perspectives carefully considering stakeholders with differing opinions and finally discussing and deciding as a committee to retire the mascot the school body can now begin their process of choosing their new mascot in making this decision we have followed our school committee operating protocols specifically working to support the educational welfare and well-being of all students in a positive district climate and culture prioritizing student needs and interests above all else and working actively to create an anti-racist community to respect the increasing diversity of our community on to the superintendent's update peter all right thank you um so last saturday um started with a real positive here eighty schools partnered with

028the town of acton including the health police and fire departments along with acting pharmacy uh to offer a vaccination clinic for children ages 5 to 11. the event was tremendously successful we provided nearly 600 children with their first coven vaccine we'll host a second clinic this saturday and have another 600 children registered for vaccination we're tremendously grateful to dr bentley and all of our nurses along with all of our partners from the town of acton acton pharmacy and our students and community volunteers who made this possible unfortunately we're unable to take walk-ins at the clinic so you know please we can't have people walking in um but we do still have some first dose appointments available for ab students we'll be sending out the link tomorrow to families they can also visit the massback site

029and we'll provide the link to families where they can also filter for vaccines ages 5 to 11 and find available appointments just some updates in terms of vaccination rates i'm extremely excited to be including our elementary schools in this this week um so after only about two weeks of vaccine availability for our youngest age group blanchard um has a vaccination rate of about 41 for first doses um conant is about 52 for first dose douglas is at 46 for first dose gates at 35 percent mccarthy town at 48 percent miriam at 54 those are all again first doses because they are elementary school kids uh and preschool there are actually a handful of our preschool students also eligible and we're at about 30 percent there so that's exciting in terms of high school and junior

030high now we're talking about fully vaccinated students right now at the high school for students we're at about 92 percent and at the junior high we're at 88 uh also over the last eight weeks we administered a total of 2 375 different cova tests uh to detect the presence of covid of those sixteen hundred and fifty were different pooled samples so each pool represents one test um and each pool has five to ten students in it seven hundred and twenty five students uh within those different tests we're also in our test and stay program um that have been able to keep unvaccinated close contact in school instead of having to go through that 10-day quarantine last weekend and the rest is somehow i copied and pasted something extra so we're excited i will say on

031pool testing in particular in the particularly the binax now the test and state program that has been tremendously successful in keeping kids in school i'm really really excited that the state opened that up option up for us this year on a different topic i think you know we've all been watching news lately and it's hard to read or watch the news without hearing some of the challenges that schools have been having lately in responding to issues of bullying and harassment we recognize that we're not immune to those behaviors as well this year we actually worked with our school attorneys to provide in-depth training to all of our school and district administrators to be able to better recognize investigate and respond to issues of bullying and harassment and a range of student behaviors in our school

032we require mandatory training for all school staff in those areas and additionally we're planning a training upcoming for all of our coaches to be able to increase awareness of different student behaviors and to help to make sure that we continue to create a positive and safe environment for our students we're also in the process of publishing a set of protocols for how our schools will respond to incidents of hate and bias we've sought feedback on our draft protocols from organizations including the anti-defamation league and the department of education we've also reviewed the recently released document from the governor's task force and have incorporated best practices shared by the attorney's general's office in another recent webinar we're in the process of seeking additional feedback from our dei family advisory committee and some of our student and

033faculty groups we intend to publish the document early in the new year and follow up with a presentation for families so that they can better understand what to expect from us as we respond to different incidents in our school we're also in the process of building out a website with even more information and resources on bullying harassment and bias inclement weather a fun topic um i want you know it's that time of year obviously in new england where we have to start thinking about snow ice and the possibility of school closings this year we are only using traditional school snow days so there is no remote learning involved in snow days this year want to be clear about that with all of our families we'll be sending out a notice tomorrow of all of the

034protocols that we have in the event that we have to cancel or delay school or in the rare event that we actually have to release early so we will be sending that out we do sometimes get questions about can we control whether or not we have remote snow days or not we have no control over that the state has not authorized any remote learning for those purposes so we are doing only in person professional learning update um we're going to send out some more detailed information and a link so parents can read more but i just wanted to give you a sampling of some of the different professional learning activities from november 2nd so this is just a sampling across the district we did school-based professional learning so um the full document that we'll have

035a link to that goes out to families tomorrow people can see kind of by school what our educators are focused on i'm just going to give you a few ideas um one idea we had we had staff in a couple of our schools engaged in a workshop by dr kim parker entitled centering the literacy lives by uh black indigenous people of color uh children and youth in our practices kim parker is actually an award-winning educator and literacy specialist who frequently delivers professional development for educators to expand their inclusion of diverse literature in their classrooms we also had a school using the national reform institute compass protocol to build community and have educators reflect on how they learn best and they actually also completed an independent quick study of the mtss model using udl strategies that

036offered a wide variety of resources to educators through that process we had another school focused on revising and revisiting project-based learning processes in the school and putting a particular equity lens to how they were approaching project-based learning we also had a school that had formed some working groups of staff to think about different aspects of the school improvement plan that included advisory was one working group thinking about differently about student supports in the school with another working group focused on diversity equity and inclusion and the fourth working group focused on school climate and culture and then we also at our high school had some work around participating in community building circles um and focusing on strategies for implementing universal design in secondary classrooms so as i said we'll provide more information in school specific topics

037in the link tomorrow that goes out to families but i wanted to just give you a little bit of a flavor for that in terms of covet i try to be consistent providing a public health update each meeting the massachusetts seven-day average of covet-19 cases rose slightly over the last week from about 960 in the previous two-week period to 1512. the 14-day average incidence rate as reported by the state is currently 8.1 from acton so that's just the tick higher than what we saw a couple weeks ago and 9.9 for boxborough which is actually back down keep in mind boxboro's subject to pretty large fluctuations because it's a relatively small population size in our schools over the last two weeks we actually have seen a total of 18 positive cases that's a larger number than

038what i've shared with you previously we have 70 cases total on the year it's a slight increase but none of the cases we're seeing have any pattern of being linked together and we have seen a slight uptick in douglas in particular but again we've looked at contract tracing for every one of those cases they are not related to each other we know the source of each one and those are independent um interestingly while we do see the slight uptick overall in our schools we continue to see our schools with extremely high vaccination rates the junior high and high school see very low incidence rates so that's important because now that vaccines are available for elementary kids it's time to start thinking differently about what we're doing with cova uh masks and covet protocols um as

039i just mentioned it's that time that we now need to start thinking differently our elementary students are eligible for vaccination uh the path that we're on um i think we're going to have a pretty large majority of our elementary students who will be fully vaccinated by the time we come back in the new year so we're thinking ahead to what that looks like and we want to start thinking about how we can start relaxing restrictions and returning to a more normal environment so we will be sharing more information in december but i just want to highlight a few tidbits of current planning that we'll be sharing with families right now we're tentatively targeting tuesday january 18th is the date to relax mask requirements in our secondary schools this allows us to get through the holiday

040travel season and any possible upticks that we see like for example we're seeing a little bit uptick now it's right after halloween we'll probably see something similar after thanksgiving and again after the new year but we want to give that a little bit of time to settle down so we're looking at the 18. um based on current state requirements only students or the staff who are fully vaccinated are able to remove masks we do not yet have a date to relax elementary mass requirements but we'll communicate more about that as our vaccination rate reaches that 80 percent threshold that's required by the state in order to be able to remove masks in any school we will have a decision to make at some point because our elementary schools do seem to be on a little

041bit different pace in terms of getting to that 80 threshold so you know more to come on that um i also know that right now the commissioner has extended the mass requirement in all schools through january 15th i don't know what's going to happen next with that if they're going to try and extend it again or not but if we reach the 80 threshold within a school combined students and staff we can now apply for the exemption so you know over the next few weeks i'll be applying for the exemption for the high school and junior high in preparation for being able to start making mass adoption hopkinton high school has been running a trial program i've spoken with the hopkins superintendent a couple of times about this it's going very well they said the

042first week that they were able to remove masks they still had about 60 of students and staff who were choosing to wear a mask and after about a week or two they got down to about 50 but it was still very much a choice the good news in that by offering that choice and having that type of a rate i think will be pretty similar in our community um it removes any stigma that might be associated with students or faculty who might have to still wear a mask for some reason because they're not vaccinated so we are also currently looking at amending our protocols to be able to start allowing volunteers back in our schools and classrooms and participating in school activities again so we'll be developing some protocols for that and communicate more when

043we have additional information and then as i said you know we want to start planning a more return to normal student activities including more field trips events as we progress into the spring so you know we don't have firm plans on those yet but certainly you know i want to make sure we're clear about the course that we're setting for the district that it's time to start now thinking differently about the pandemic i don't think covet cases are going away we'll continue to see covet cases we'll continue to see some breakthrough cases that's going to be a fact of life for us for a long period of time and we need to understand that it probably will be years we can't continue to operate the way we are now for years into the future it's

044not the right environment for everyone and it's not the right environment for kids what is very encouraging though even despite breakthrough cases for people who are vaccinated and have a breakthrough case there is an extraordinarily low incidence rate of any serious complications so we want to make sure we're focused on that that covid may exist and covet cases will continue to exist in schools but it doesn't mean that we're going to see the same level of complications from it we need to focus on understanding both aspects of that as we move into this next phase i do anticipate the next several months will uh be the next transition to our more normal return to school operations um and just you know want to make sure the community knows we're going to continue to monitor the

045situation we're going to continue to see cases fluctuate if we saw a wild change in the course of the virus we could certainly reconsider the direction we're going but i don't think we're going to reconsider the direction just because we're seeing some fluctuation right like you know there's going to be a tolerable level of fluctuation that we have to anticipate but you know wild changes like if there was a new variant and you know something happened that we just can't anticipate now certainly we may make a decision we can't anticipate now but i think we're on a path to be able to come through this at this point so that's the good news and then the last one um you know adam and i do continue to host community coffees we had about 20 parents

046who joined us last night with a wide range of topics um and it's really exciting just to be able to speak with parents share a little bit uh answer some questions our next community coffee is december 15th at 8 30 a.m we conduct those via zoom because a lot of our families are finding it more convenient to be able to do that and we send out the link about a day ahead of time and then we also send out a form that parents can submit questions so thank you very much i know that was a little longer on an update but i wanted to hit on some different topics than we typically get to happy to answer any questions or take comments thanks peter questions comments i guess if you give a long update you

047don't get any questions on it all right we will move on now to a presentation by marie altieri on our student enrollment and class size and while she's getting up i was the one i did say that you know there was a patriots game after this but um you know i know that was a long update but marie agreed to only say every third word um in all seriousness while she's getting going um all day kindergarten is a real goal of the district um you know i want to thank ginny because she has been doing a lot of advocacy at the legislative level with our legislative delegation we had earlier in the year met with representative cena and staff from representative gover's office as well representative cena's office filed an amendment an earmark unfortunately that

048was defeated we weren't able to move forward we just met with senator eldridge today and you know we're gonna he's gonna try that again you know we also talk to him about all the various communities that are struggling to get to all day k and this might be of greater interest for some more action um so we're going to continue that advocacy so jenny thank you very much for getting that set up for us thank you sure i just love that i'm supposed to be brief just saying okay go pat um so i have two presentations tonight the first is about enrollment and the second is about all-day kindergarten and in some ways they intersect a little bit there's a lot of information in the packet and so i would encourage you to kind of

049read it over time and get into kind of the junior high and high school reports maybe over time but i'm doing a brief summary i'm happy to answer questions and this stuff will all also be in your budget binder when we get to it later in the year so this is sort of the first kind of blush at what's happening with enrollment we do not have so the october 1st enrollment report is in the packet we do not have newly updated nasdaq production projections yet so the projections that are in here were done in may they're normally done in november every year and they were done last november and um they were kind of off so far that we went back to nasdaq and asked them to re-look at things and i'll explain that to

050you as we go so where they came out in may was very close to where we came out in october so i don't anticipate a lot of change in their projections but i will put them in your packet as an fyi when we get them so this first chart just shows you kindergarten did dip last year which we anticipated with covid so i'm going to try to point out what i think our covet affects here so you can kind of see the last four years we had 330 we had 306. last year we had 286 and this year we had 317 we do expect that some of those 317 really would have come last year if it weren't for covid i always emphasize kindergarten because kindergarten the number of kids we get in kindergarten is

051what drives it all the way through so and it's also the hardest to predict so it can be the most up and down elementary this year is flat the last two years had pretty big drops 71 kids 83 kids this may be a little confusing to read so if you just look at the elementary line in 2018 we had 2706 kids 2019 we had 2635 that was a drop of 71. the next year we had 2552 that was a drop of 83 from the prior year that was 26 2635 okay and then this year we had exactly the same number of kids as last year which is completely random but that's what happened junior high was relatively flat dropped six kids and the high school is in a drop period of time so they dropped

05248 kids so the last two years we had big drops 155 and 177 this year we're down 54 mostly at the high school some of that is minuteman which i'm going to talk about so i added a few slides to this since we sent it to you but i will talk about that and so the enrollment versus the projection again we had a projection done in october we had another projection done in may the over under the fall projection elementary was 32 under the fall projection but right on target so they were really on target based on the may projection but i'm going to show you kindergarten so their original projection and the reason i went back to them was that we were going to have 372 kindergarteners and i didn't believe it i didn't

053budget for it i budgeted for 325 and we came in at like 3 17. so when i went back to them and we kind of unpacked it in 2015 they were way off kind of in the other direction and we had had a lot of home sales and so they changed what they normally would use for a birth to kindergarten projection to make it higher and ever since then they've overestimated quite a bit so they changed it back again and it made much more sense and came in closer to where we are really in acton it had been more on target in boxborough so they did not change the box bro formula um but i'll show you kind of how it all unfolded but they had projected when after we met with them in may

054they redid it they projected 319 now in all fairness we had kindergarten registration we knew how many kids we had we could sort of project how many we were going to get over the summer and they it came in at 312. these numbers anything with projections are really just acton and boxborough kids they don't include sort of choice kids or staff kids so while we have 317 kindergartners total 312 of them are from acton or boxborough so it was pretty close to the new projection and specifically foxboro came in right on target with the fall and the spring projection we didn't change it they didn't change it we had 55 kids next year they're projecting 70 for boxborough i think that might be a high number and we'll see but acton they were way way

055off they had 318 as the projection when they updated it it was 265 and it came in at 257. so it was really all actin that was off last year and hopefully they've adjusted it well for the future years and this just shows you kindergarten volatility and it explains a little bit of what i just told you back in 2015 um the previous two years they had been way low so then they went high and then they were over projection by 44 kids in one year 55 the next 16 the next then it was the opposite um i'm saying it backwards we came in 55 higher than their projection 44 higher than their projection then they adjusted it they were closer 16 and then it went the other way kind of when housing sales slowed

056down a lot and so then their projection was over by 40 over by 50. this year it would have been over by 60 but we redid it and it was over by seven does that make sense and then you can see the acton and box bro history and and so this this down below i pay attention a lot of attention to this acton has been between you know 240 to 270-ish um their projection for this year was 372 like just um and and boxborough's been pretty consistently between you know 50 and 60ish so you know the last two years were 55 they're saying next year is going to be 70. i think that's probably high but i could be wrong we'll see this shows kindergarten enrollment over time and it shows what leads to the

057fact that we have had quite a bit of drop in enrollment so we had years where kindergarten came in close to 400 kids and we're down in the the low 300s now so that leads to a lot of drop in enrollment and this is the k-12 chart you can see you know we peaked a little over fifty eight hundred right now we're right around five thousand um anticipated to go down to forty seven hundred or so these are actin and box bro kids not including choice or staff elementary really has done all the dropping so they peaked close to 3 100 and this year we're at 2500 and we're going to be pretty flat for the next seven or eight years so along with enrollment drop we very intentionally improved our class sizes and so

058i took the opportunity to kind of show you at each level what has happened with class sizes so and these are average k six so k and one are always going to be smaller than these four five six might be higher than than the average um but we peaked with an average of 23 and a half and we've gone down now we're in the low 21s so our average is between 21 and 21 and a half which i think elementary is in a good place i don't think it's too high or too low and i put our class size guidelines for elementary in your packet and we we have been very consistently within those guidelines um the last three or four years and we'd like to stay that way it means starting kindergartens at 18

059or 19 so that by the time they get to fifth and sixth grade they're at 23 24 instead of higher junior high is only two grades so you sometimes see ups and downs there we had a couple years around 2017-18 where it jumped back up a little bit so the junior high really peaked at a thousand and it started to drop and got down to like 8.75 and then it jumped up again to 9.50 but now it's pretty consistently come down it's relatively flat around 800 400 per grade there are four teams on each grade so 100 kids per team so it's in a pretty good place it's going to go down it could go as low as 700 but just for a couple years so 800 right now is about where it is and

060then the junior high class sizes with some of what happened for those couple of years got pretty large again averaging 24 and we're down to a little below 21. the high school is only halfway through the enrollment drop and so this is one of the messages i want you to to see tonight so they peaked close to 2 000 kids this year they are right around 1700 and they're going to continue to drop as low as 1400 so all the drop that happened at elementary and we reduced a lot of sections over time there is now hitting the high school it takes that long for it to kind of get through the system we have not really dropped any sections at the high school so this last year was the first year through attrition we

061dropped one basically one fte in social studies and we're going to start looking at kind of every department and making sure that we get the right level of teachers for kids because on the next chart you'll see class size went from an average of 21 and a half 22 and if you go back further it was higher than that right now the average class size at the high school is below 19 and a half so it's between 19 19 and a half so we think there's some room there there's a lot of detail in your packet so do take some time to kind of look through that you'll see the ranges of classes you'll see the number of kids across each department and then this chart has the all three levels on one chart so

062it's a little harder to tell much because it's on such a big scale so a couple things we'll be talking about with the budget for next year so this is sort of the kickoff to information you'll need as we get through the budget so kindergarten the projection for next year is the same number of kids in acton so we would recommend the same number of classrooms but 70 kids in from boxborough now what we don't know is how many foxborough kids will attend school in acton how many acton siblings are already part of blanchard our hope is with the opening of the new school that douglas and gates will be attractive to boxborough families there's also a question as to whether or not 70 is a realistic number we could be closer to 60 if

063if i had to give an educated guess so i think what we're going to do is start with the possibility that we might need four classrooms at blanchard for kindergarten next year in terms of the budget but we will have registered our kids by the time you have to make a decision so we can back off of that if we have to so that's kind of where we are there we have to work on space there it's it's pretty full but we'll be talking about that as well junior high is going to stay relatively around 800 kids and in the high school there's possibly some room to reduce some sections through attrition and that might make room for some of the other things that we have committed to in our budget for the next few

064years minuteman is something that we want you to be aware of on several levels so they open their beautiful new building a couple of years ago and a lot more acting kids have chosen to enroll in minuteman which is a wonderful thing for those students and a real opportunity to get an education that meets their needs what it we have gone from in two years from 36 acton students to 59 to 78 so we really think we're increasing 20 to 25 kids at each grade and it's only happened for two years so there are two more years to go so we could be at 120 in two years ish the assessment is based on a four-year rolling average so it will take a couple more years than that for it to be fully felt the

065town of acton pays the minuteman assessment but because we have collaborative budgeting in both towns it there's still one pie that kind of everything has to come out of um boxborough is not a member of minuteman but still has four kids there and part of why i put this up here is we now have 82 students at minuteman that would otherwise or might otherwise have been at a b so if we have 20 to 25 more kids going to minuteman we have 20 to 25 fewer kids going to ninth grade here and we're seeing that in the numbers so we're seeing this has not historically been the case here when we go from eighth grade to ninth grade we're actually we have fewer kids not more kids even though there might be more move-ins we're

066losing about 20 to 25 kids per year that would otherwise have been in the freshman class so that's part of why enrollment is a little lower than it had been projected to be um dave will talk a lot more about this as part of the budget i'm definitely not the expert on this but i will just say that our enrollment impacts how much money we get from chapter 70 and whether or not we will ever get money from the student opportunity act and the reason for that is our enrollment is below the the threshold for us to get more chapter 78 or soa money and so we're in what's called hold harmless and what that means is we don't lose chapter 70 but we're only getting 30 per student year to year because we had

067so much enrollment drop the last couple of years remember the 180 170 numbers each year we're further and further below that threshold so we're actually four million dollars over what they would say we need so we have to increase 350 students from where we are now to be able to receive any soa money or any chapter 70 increases beyond old harmless so just something to keep aware of when we first talked about paying for all day kindergarten we thought soa money was three or four years out it's more than that now because we've gone the opposite direction if we keep going down it will keep taking longer does that make sense you will hear more about that and then this so these last two slides i added since the packet this is pretty phenomenal so

068we had our enrollment projections redone in may we're going to get them again in the next couple weeks but they show acton continuing to drop quite a bit boxborough is going up that has a dramatic impact on the assessments to the two towns so when we have our total budget and we divide up how much acton pays and how much box pro pays it's based on enrollment over a three year period it's a three year rolling enrollment so this goes from fy 17 to fy31 we're already you know five years into it but in those 14 years acton loses 886 kids which is 19 and boxborough gains 196 kids which is so we want you to know this it is a big shift in in who's paying what out of the budget and if the

069projections hold and it might be that actin doesn't go quite as low as this says and it might be that box fort doesn't go quite as high as this says but moving from paying 15 percent to paying 21 is huge right so every one percent of our budget is a million dollars um and it's over 14 years but it's a big shift that we want to make sure everybody's aware of and again dave will talk more about that when we get further into the budget process so that's the end of the budget i mean the enrollment presentation so maybe take questions about that and then we'll move on to kindergarten yeah thanks marie any questions about the enrollment information john thank you um first you know one simple question in terms of the state enrollment

070how much is the state changing over the next few years i assume numbers are continuing to go up you know that was so you sent me a bunch of questions that was one i didn't get to and i'm not sure i can see future projections for the state i haven't found that anywhere but we'll keep looking yeah i was interested in that just because obviously if we're in a smaller part of the pie then our ability to compete for state resources goes down um the um with respect to the discussion that you had showing how elementary enrollment had decreased you know ultimately you know with the consequence that class sizes went down about 10 percent um and that then brought class sizes into our guideline um so in you know a classic sort of john

071question then does that mean that if enrollment were to increase by 10 percent we would increase our number of sections by 10 and our budget by 10 in order to maintain that current class size at the elementary level yeah okay good question i will add a little bit to what you said so um enrollment dropped class size came down in line with our class size guidelines and we went from 136 classrooms to 121 classrooms so i think the answer is yes and both right so i think we will try to maintain class size guidelines within our policy but that is a school committee decision but we also will need to add some classrooms but we need to remember we reduced from 136 to 121. when you add one classroom it's you know 75 000 a

072year for that one classroom so over seven years that's half a million dollars so it's a big decision every one classroom but you know i think the committee can feel really good that you supported what it took to get into reasonable class size guidelines and i'll i'll say tessa was one of the biggest drum bangers about that having had experience as a teacher the other topic that i wanted to talk about was minuteman because you know you very correctly drew attention to the fact that while it's true that minuteman sends their bill to the town of course that then uses town resources that aren't available either for municipal services or uh to the district and so the question that i have about that is obviously we want our students to make good decisions about where

073to go to school whether that's a b minuteman or someplace else um so that i see as not so much you know what we can control what i do wonder about is does the school committee have the ability to send a message to minuteman that when they come to talk to us what we're interested in is their per pupil cost not how they multiply their per pupil cost by our number of students to get us our bill and then secondly related to that since i think we're not the only ones that are in this position where you know our educational resources are being consumed by this desirable but expensive thing you know is there any prospect of going to the state and having the state provide you know some more general support for vocational education

074so that what comes back to the communities is not quite so large a bill i can i can maybe jump in a little bit i think you know one thing that we're seeing around the state is that seats in career vocational technical schools are at or beyond capacity so minuteman is already well beyond the occupancy that it was designed for um and so you know the the challenge i think the state is seeing is in how to continue to provide those types of opportunities even though they know they can't just keep adding vocational schools it wouldn't surprise me at some point in the future to see the state maybe opening up more opportunities for public school districts to think about how to incorporate more programming into schools that provides maybe not identical pathways to what

075a minuteman or a you know neshoba would would provide but more hands-on experiences for kids that are more aligned with college and career pathways and so you know i think that's just something we're going to want to watch i think it's also you know something that we need to be thinking about about what is what is it in minuteman's program that's making it appealing for our students a shiny new building is great but it's not just the shiny new building that's attracting students it's also the level of hands-on experiences they get the real world application of those experiences in career-ready pathways and so i think there's actually an opportunity for us also as a school district to think about what our high school students get as they progress through our school so i think you

076know there may be some state resources i don't know if it will just be sent to vocational schools it could actually open up more seats for more traditional districts and i think we want to be thinking about the types of opportunities we offer um because you know it's great if a kid wants to go to minuteman for shiny new buildings or they want to go into something that we just can't offer because there's no economy of scale but if there is an economy of scale we can produce and provide opportunities for kids that would be great to have kids here too well peter sort of said what i was going to say anyway but i wonder if we've seen other losses at the high school sort of a loaded question because i know why my

077kid left but like if we've seen other losses like private schools or charter schools that have increased in addition to um just the vocational schools or minuteman so um our private and charter numbers are very low especially compared to other districts but we do that report in january so it'll be interesting to see if after covet if things are different if there has been an uptick so i would hold off and try to get back to you about that after we do this year's numbers and the second part of my question is um have we given any consideration to asking students that decide to leave for ninth grade why because my presumption is also that it's not just a shiny new building but you know the offerings that are available outside of our incredibly traditional

078high school program so if we thought about like surveying eighth graders that decide to leave you know as to that that's not something we've historically done um but it's certainly something we could consider yeah i mean because when i hear all those numbers what i think is okay so we're not providing something what is it that we're not providing and it's not just that we don't have like cosmetology here you know what i mean like they think that the biotechnology and the science programs and things that are being offered at some of the technical schools now are far and above what what we're offering in terms of really traditional science so i'd be really curious what kids reasons are for wanting to leave any other questions on enrollment go ahead norm i'm just looking at

079the um class size guidelines policy and i'm seeing that it's from 2014 and um i don't know if you know this off the top of your head marie but i'm just wondering those those class size ranges that we have how do those compare to other districts around in their class size ranges so a couple things it was done in 2014 but it was reaffirmed by the school committee i want to say 2018 or something like that i actually thought it changed a little bit at that time but so one interesting thing that's happened is we do every year pull the report from the state to see where we fall and for a really long time acton and acton-boxborough were the top in the top five highest class sizes in the state actually class sizes and

080student-teacher ratio but mostly student-teacher ratio we have come down to the middle so we are in the middle across the state we're still a little bit higher than some of the neighboring i'll call them wealthier communities but we are kind of in the middle of the state and to move from you know 370 from number two to number 150 is is takes a lot i actually just happened to pull that report the other day for a lot of the communities right around us were actually pretty favorable right now you know we might be slightly higher but we're within that same range of our surrounding communities right now which is good that you know um i think we're you know the class sizes are at a place right now hey i'm glad that coming back from

081the pandemic they're where they are because i think if the class sizes were three and four students more in every classroom it would make it not just three or four times harder but i also think that we're at a place now where moving forward kids can get kind of that individualized attention from teachers that we want them to have because i think as class size increases you know there's not a lot of great studies that can calculate the impact on performance that that's not it but there is a difference in terms of the individualized attention kids get and i think that that's an important thing to keep in mind okay we're going to move into the yeah then sorry go ahead to marie uh so in your opinion what is optimal number enrollment number for

082each grade the optimal optimal enrollment number in your mind what is the number so you say well we are seeing decrease of the enrollment right so what are the optimal number are we in the optimal number i don't know if i would say there's an optimal number obviously we want them to fit well into our buildings i think we'll have a little more capacity in when douglas and gates open um but we built it based on the enrollment projection so um i don't know if i have an optimal number do you no i don't actually think we could there's no way we can calculate to an optimal number because we actually have to provide the educational seats for any students that come so it's almost the backwards calculation that we have to kind of say

083what's the class size we want to target and then how do we best how many classes do we need per grade level to fit how whoever shows up on our doorstep in a given year can you put your mic on please thanks is uh how many i mean with a say class size this is a constraint and to meet that criteria then also considering the number of sections number of rooms we have how many students we can handle basically is this under capacity or it's uh it's a right oh it's uh i think i would want to i'd have to think about it a little bit um to be honest i understand i understand the question i need to give it some thought we regularly adjust the number of sections that we offer at any

084given grade level based on the number of students we're projecting for that grade level so um you know if we see a large swing in a year then like if we see that there's a trend where we're not going to have 20 students that would be in those seats this year we might actually reduce a class for the following year and if we see that we're going to have 15 or 20 more students next year at a grade level we're going to add a class to accommodate that so you know i think overall we tend to think in groups of you know 15 to 25 students as we think about where we're going to need sections so looking at all the elementary enrollment numbers out of 34 sections of fifth and sixth grade 22 of

085them are at the maximum of our maximum or above of our class size guidelines so personally 25 24 and 25 5th or 6th graders is way too many in in a classroom like and it's and it's astounding because they go from those fifth and sixth grades to the junior high where they have 20 kids in their class and so to me if we were going to target anything i think that the rest of our numbers look pretty good but grade 5 and grade 6 are way too big still i would really like to move us on so we're going to continue the conversation around at least part of the class sizing and and enrollment and we're going to start to talk about all-day kindergarten um as this gets set up i just want to to

086give the committee a little bit of an overview of why we're talking about this now you know some of the feedback that we had particularly last year around budgeting was that it's really hard to make a decision about a single programming programmatic item without knowing how that affects the rest of the budget and so some of the things that we're looking to do over the next few meetings is give you an overview of some of the big pieces of the puzzle around the budget as we get into planning for next year so really what we're going to look at tonight is some information and some options the idea isn't to make a decision tonight but to hold this with all of the other pieces of information that we're going to get over the next few

087meetings so that you're not making the decision about a single item in a vacuum without knowing the other items marie take it away again all right and peter gave the introduction that three or four years ago the committee made a real commitment to move towards really a multi-year plan to get us to tuition-free kindergarten and so i'm going to give you an update on what that plan was where it stands now and what options we might have going forward so first of all the number of students who enroll in all day kindergarten goes up and up and up and so we're at 86 percent i have some history on one of the slides coming up but we have 17 classrooms three at every school two at mccarthy town and of 317 students 272 of them

088are in all day and we only have 45 in half day we no longer have any dedicated half day classrooms so that was new this year so we are using a model called hybrid so a class of 18 or 19 students might have two or three or four or five half-day students in that class they go home in the middle of the day that impacts how we do curriculum because we're not going to teach new material we might have reinforcement we might have a lot of activities in the afternoons but we're not going to move the curriculum forward without some of the students there so for 45 half-day students we're imp impacting our curriculum but as long as people are paying for it you have to have half day as an option um so this

089is the history of it and um you know five or six years ago we had weightless in some cases long wait lists for families who wanted all-day kindergarten and couldn't get in because we had separate classrooms so most schools had two all day and one half day and and it depending on how many picked all day there might be one all day and two half days or one all day and one half day so um we you know this has been a long period of trying to really accommodate family needs and make it available for as many kids as wanted it and needed it so we went from 50 percent to six to two-thirds for a number of years and then in 2019-2020 we basically said we're going to go this hybrid model and we're

090going to make as many classrooms as people want available so every student who wants all-day kindergarten can have all-day kindergarten but they're still paying for it um so i'll talk about the tuition in a minute so that certainly went a long way toward meeting the need so that so now when we bring in new families we say anyone who wants all-day kindergarten can have all day kindergarten and so the next two slides i hope you had a chance to read them we spent a lot of time on this a couple years ago when we talked about it there are lots of reasons to do all day kindergarten we're one of very few districts not doing all day kindergarten i put several pages of material in there from a website called strategies for children they have

091spearheaded the work around early childhood and all-day kindergarten the map that's in there shows 38 towns that don't have all day kindergarten we are aware that some of those have have gotten it since that map was done i think that map was 2018-19 it might have been 20 19 20. but 38 towns many of which are part of regional school districts so it's it's more like 20 to 25 school districts but basically we did a lot of surveying our parents 80 percent of our parents have been choosing all-day kindergarten with tuition this year it was 86 percent 92 percent told us that they would select all-day kindergarten if it were free 90 of massachusetts districts have tuition free 96 percent of massachusetts students attend all-day kindergarten 96 percent of kids are in all day kindergarten

092and our teacher feedback showed that students have greater social skills and stamina when they reach first grade if they've been in all day equity is the number one reason i would like to see us get to tuition free all day kindergarten while we offer scholarships there are families that can't afford it or it really is a challenge for them and they may or may not qualify for any kind of scholarship and over time we have noticed that of the half-day students they're disproportionately el students or economically disadvantaged students what i was saying earlier about the curriculum as long as we have some students in half day k instruction of new material is limited to the portion of the day all students are attending moving to universal tuition free all day k would allow teachers to

093introduce more concepts throughout the day etc so in january of 2020 literally six weeks before covet happened at your budget saturday that year this was the proposal that we brought forward and talked to you about and it essentially said each year for four or five years we're going to add 180 000 to the budget to get to the million or so dollars we needed to pay for all-day kindergarten and we'll gradually decrease tuition by 750 a year so that was the the proposal and the plan that we set forward to do we did put a hundred and eighty thousand dollars um we got it we used it from end the first year and then put it in the budget the second year and we were able to move tuition from 4 500 to 3750 but

094schools closed down all day kindergarten stopped so we we stopped collecting tuition in the spring of 2020 because we didn't have all-day kindergarten and then last year we didn't have all-day kindergarten the whole year because we had kids in hybrid we had kids at home we did not have any all-day kindergarten so instead what happened is this year fy 22 was really the year that we implemented the three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollar tuition so we're already a year behind what we said we would do two years ago um so i'm bringing forward to you a couple of options that we want you to start to think about one of the issues we have is we're going to talk to our incoming kindergarten families january 18th and we may need to just do that

095and tell them we don't know what tuition is going to be um because again it'll be early in the budget process so making a decision about this hundred and eighty thousand dollars absent everything else is is something you may not want to do um but i move forward to what i'll call option a um so we're at fy 22 the tuition is three thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars which is estimated to bring in nine hundred and forty thousand dollars this year um and what we need is 935 000 so it's pretty on target um and this is really taking that plan we said we'd do and continuing it so in fy 23 we would add 180 000 to the budget we would move the tuition to 3 000 and that will cover those costs

096in fy 24. so next september tuition would be 3 000 the following september it would be two thousand two hundred and fifty you would commit another hundred and eighty thousand dollars to the budget um and a hundred and eighty thousand is roughly point two percent point one eight percent of your budget and then in fy 25 you'd go to 1500 and then in fy 26 you could go to zero so that would be um going back to the plan we talked about two years ago option b and we don't yet know if this is going to be feasible so we know that the two towns have committed some money to the school district out of their arpa grants and what we proposed to both towns would give us six hundred thousand dollars to put toward

097all day kindergarten over a three year period of time what we don't know is if it can just be used to lower the tuition across the board so there are rules and categories one of the categories being equity so we did have some conversation about we might only be able to use it really for economically disadvantaged families and we had a grant this year for economically disadvantaged families and really we only accessed about ten thousand dollars through that individual families had to apply had to qualify etc it was only half the year so um this we're continuing to work with both towns to see what we can and can't do with the money but if we could use six hundred thousand dollars over three years one model would be next september we again we put

098180 000 in every year so that we get to a place where we can fund it but next year we could make the tuition fifteen hundred dollars the following year fifteen hundred and then zero the two years after that and we would use two hundred thousand one year 150 and 250 so that would be the 600 000. so that is one possibility on the horizon and then the other good news is our the work that jenny's done with our legislators and they are working toward trying to find us money one way or another whether it's an earmark out of arpa so rep cena already gave it a try in the house and today we talked to senator eldridge and he is putting that in the list with everything he has from all of his towns

099and considering whether or not he can possibly get an earmark to help towards this in some amount and we also talked about the fact that they're down to 2025 towns that don't have it and maybe the department of ed and the state budget can just bite the bullet and provide a grant for those 20 to 25 towns so there are possibilities that there's going to be some additional funding one way or another um but we wanted to kind of put these two things forward what i didn't put on paper is if you can't um if we can't put the 180 000 in the budget it pushes everything out another year and it's very difficult to use grant money to help alleviate some of this and then leave the hole in the budget for three years

100from now and have to go back to three thousand four thousand dollar tuition so um that's kind of my overview um the yeah i think i covered all this so all right questions evelyn so i'm curious to know how when i look at the map the map that what's in our packet right i i get a little bit confused because we are a wealthy community i mean this is a community that i i i'm just at a loss that we can dig up some money to make this happen and so how how are these other communities funding all the kindergarten how how are they doing it and are there some lessons from that that we can draw from so there were grants a number of years ago that we did not go for [Music] i

101you know we our per pupil spending is state average and so we're not you know we don't spend on education what half the half the towns in the state spend its priorities over time it's you know um i don't have a good answer honestly but it would have been a million dollars at whatever point that um you know we had large class sizes that was there were multiple priorities but i hear you evelyn jenny yeah so so just to fill in a little more details there was a time when it was recognized that uh by it's been recognized by early childhood educators for a long time that you know there's that kindergarten should be all day and for whatever reason in this in this district at that time the local leadership did not take advantage

102of the state grants that were being offered to alleviate the budgetary double whammy that moving from halftake in the garden to a full day tuition free kindergarten um presented so a lot of those this you know most of the the um districts that didn't have all-day kindergarten universal holiday kindergarten at that time applied for and received the state grant so i've started advocating for this um in 2017 when i was first elected and i kept being told that there's no way this you know you missed the boat the state grants are gone there's no way there's no way there's no way but dan cena committed this year and to try to help and now that we have the state money coming in and we do know that it's possible to get because i think it's

103a town of weymouth their state senator got them 250 000 of arpamond funds to be earmarked so we know that it's possible to get some state assistance but we still as maurice said have to put the money into the budget because the budget is we get reimbursed for the kids that we had and if we don't if we don't add it with our own money into the budget then we'd have to do that in one fell swoop instead of a little every year so but it's very challenging obviously to find 180 000 in our budget dave did you have a comment to add evelyn's question was how do so many other communities do it how did they do it think of all of the centers of of people a lot of them gateway communities a

104lot of them cities that's where the bulk of the students are and they were the first ones that that went there i'm not going to get into the weeds but if you think back a while ago to what marie said about chapter 78 and hold harmless and how the impact of enrollment affects that this is not a what's called a foundation district we're a hold harmless district most cities are foundation districts meaning that if they're allowed to put all day all day students in their calculation that money comes back to them in the form of chapter 78 and so how were they able to do it the state funded it not through a one-time grant to induce you to to pick up the tab going forward but forever in in how the chapter 70 formula

105works the as far as i've gone back and looked at the district we weren't a foundation district in the force in the in the recent past certainly and now we're four million dollars what i'll say underwater and so it's not gonna it's that's not gonna be a source of funding this um for for acton-boxborough but the answer to your question is because of the way most districts are funded by chapter 70 they were able to do it and the state paid for it thanks dave tessa so back to marie's question of when will this glock may be ready to vote be ready to vote uh tuition i think it's completely and totally embarrassing that we are as far out from being able to do this as as pierce so my feeling is that if we

106are allowed to use arpa funds that there's not even a question that we should be doing that i mean to think that we would still be paying tuition and fy26 is nuts um considering the commitments we've made to equity and um i just think sorry it's like a strong opinion and i understand it's all budget related and i think that we move things around until you know it makes sense to do it because i don't see how we can move forward on our other initiatives when we still have half decay i'm just gonna a hundred percent agree with tessa that this is you know as far as i'm concerned this needs to happen immediately as soon as possible and how you know i know financially i know what it looks like but this is a

107big issue and it's it really we we should not be asking families to pay for kindergarten and you know i don't know what the process is that families who are looking for financial aid if it's like at this you have to go through the whole state level free and reduced lunch um but i i just i just this is just not it's not right john two things you know one is um this you know 180 180 180 329 structure is not appealing to me you know i you know cliff notes are fine cliff you know expenses not so much um so you know whatever you know we're going to move forward to i'd like to see it you know as a level progression um and say we're going to belly up to the bar and

108make each fiscal year equally challenging not you know punt it out to fy26 and then with respect to um uh doing all day k you know there's no question but that we you know can do this you know tuition free over this period of time it simply requires prioritizing this above other things that people are interested in doing and so if there are no higher priorities than this then this will be done but no one you know sitting in these chairs should think that our school budget is magically going to go up by an extra percentage because we need to do all day k the money simply is not there thanks john and i'll just add to that having seen our enrollment projections and the ratio of uh voxpro students that you know this could

109if we were to just choose to add an additional percent to the budget this would not just be an additional percent to the box borough assessment so i think it's something that needs to be considered sort of like i open this in the greater view of all of our budget priorities so i i think you know marie's asking when we'll vote i'm not inclined to take a vote on the tuition tonight because i think we have to see a lot more information but i'm hearing that there's a i wasn't suggesting that we need to know right so i think there's i think there's a great um preference by this committee to to continue along the line of getting day kindergarten to be tuition free nora i agree i think this was such a really good

110presentation i really appreciated how much information you shared and for me just looking at the percentage of students that are in the half day that are in the lower income or ell groups just speaks for itself and also the statistic that you had about the percentage of people who would choose it if it were free that also speaks for itself so i think it you know i agree i consider it a really high priority yeah um if anybody watching at home or or anybody's interested there's a organization called early education for all which advocates for early education for all kids and it's aptly named and they have a great through just three page um on their posting on their website that show that gets forth the benefits of full-day kindergarten you know based on social

111science studies and how it's been found to help close the achievement gap and it gives a little bit of the history of massachusetts grant programs et cetera so if anybody is interested in just learning a little bit more about that just go to early education for all.org and there's tons of information on that website on this issue thanks jenny steve can we check and make sure your mic's on switch pushed up yeah hi um so i have um a couple of comments about the stuff i thank you for the presentation and i think there should be an option c and if you look at the tuition revenue that we lose in fy 23 and 24 it's 345 the year 700 000 it's almost the six hundred thousand which is not enough for marpa which we're

112getting you can put that in there for two years and reduce that tuition from fifteen hundred down to zero uh which it should be um and that's assuming we don't get more money from our from other funds and we're doing a budget increase which we should be doing but this is it's not the cities it you know there was this program before long time ago and baker cut it out after some places got some money that was a long time ago that's not what's happened we've gone from 38 down to 20 and as someone's mentioned this strategy for children site has information there they can't even keep up if you look on your slides in your pages 5356 in the um packet you'll see first you'll see this you'll see this is if you zoom

113in you see the bad you know we're here like in the middle of the state where we people who charge and don't have all they can we don't have all the k we have a hybrid we don't have half decay or all they can which is what the guy in redding said who didn't succeed but this is what we were in 2018 uh 2019 you look at the next page in the packet you'll see if you just take that information i mean it's about the pandemic here but it says you know the districts are planning to have all you know no tuition all decay well if you just put that in there you can change the colors of this this should be a good kindergarten assignment to take to some kids to like whiten all

114the cities well i did that this is now and i checked some of these that weren't even on there for example some of you might know so all three of these towns right below us are in the neshoba regional district they charge them 2 000. now they charge zero so they're off stowe lancaster bolton and then above us littleton it's gone from a couple thousand to zero this year up here at kingsborough zero over here andover it's still red on the map but they famously went in january of 2021. these are not cities that um that get all this money from the foundation budget and don't have a whole harmless problem they're all harmless places and they're poor districts than we are 30 more seconds so and then you look down here there's westboro there's

115belmont i mean maybe we can do you know get out of the minutemen district and we'll have more money for this stuff but you know there's money we have it we're not doing it we're not using it the way you should have used it long time ago it's way past overdue it's 500 000 this year 400 000 the next year and zero parent tax that's the only way to do it this is is shameful we have groton thank you we have acton-boxborne harvard and westford that's it those are the bad guys everybody else has done this already thank you all right we are going to move on to our ongoing business thanks marie for sitting in the hot seat um first item under ongoing business is some updates to our fy22 calendar peter i think

116this one is on you there's a memo in our packet yup so there's a memo in the packet that describes the reasons but we're essentially proposing two changes to the fy 22 calendar i'll actually speak to juneteenth before i speak to anything else so juneteenth has been recognized as a federal holiday you remember that from the discussion last year this year juneteenth falls on a sunday so it because of state law that means that holidays federal holidays observed on a sunday need to be now observed on the monday following so we are not in school on june 20th however if we have more than two snow days we will be on school on june 21st um so you know we're proposing that that change needs to happen there's not really too much choice in that

117just to be clear um but we want to make sure that you understand the reason behind it the other one you know what we are seeing across the district i think you know we have at least one vacation coming up in december and we're seeing that an increase in people struggling to get travel plans who are planning to go away for vacations things like that but overall we're seeing just a really really high level of stress on educators staff but also our students as well we think that this is an easy way to just take a little bit of stress off everyone let people get out of town um early in december if they have travel plans um and then be able to come back in the new year refreshed it does not add a

118date of the school calendar it's just allowing people to release a half day on the day before a vacation thanks peter yes we do want them separate john is ready to say something yes move to approve the changes to the calendar adding juneteenth as a holiday and then making december 23rd and early release day so we want to take them as separate motions john as listed in the memo because they don't have to be but they don't have to be so if anybody wants to second second all right so we've got a motion in a second all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that is unanimous moving on just one quick comment i just want to thank all of the educators and staff in the district as well as the various leaders for all

119of the work that they're doing i think this will be much appreciated it it's not a lot but it certainly is something and hopefully it's also a recognition of all the work they're putting in so thank you indeed all right we're going to move to subcommittee and member reports first one is the policy subcommittee nora um we met to discuss the service animal and the comfort animal policies that we had here for first read last time we met together and we still have a little bit of work left to do on the service animal policy we're going to meet once again briefly after some discussion with the attorney i think we'll be ready to go with that for next time but i'm hoping that we can vote on the comfort animal policy tonight if everybody

120feels ready for that we didn't receive any other feedback on it yes sorry so i didn't send feedback but i don't really understand the order in which the non-comfort and non-service animal thing i think it says like are absolutely banned from our district and then it says acknowledging that a teacher or other staff member may wish to use them that's okay so like when i read it i was like you know it says well it is understood that non-service comfort animals can provide emotional support blah blah blah is not permitted on any school premises or any school activity in the abrsd that's the first pair that's the third paragraph but it comes above acknowledging that a teacher or other staff member may wish to use a non-service comfort animal as part of an educational program

121i mean that to me makes like no sense sorry so it says that we absolutely can't have them and then it says we can't it says it's not permitted on any school premises or at any school activity in the abrsd and then it says it is so paragraph three yeah i'm looking at it so there might be a word missing um for individual students um individual students staff members and community members cannot bring them but i see i see it doesn't read that way so um because it says they can provide support to individual students staff members and community members but the use of comfort animals is not permitted on any school program i mean it just doesn't read that way to me those two paragraphs so after abrsd we should add um by individual

122students i think that got lost perhaps or individual students needs i don't know it just it sounds like you can't do it and then it sounds like you can so the purpose of the policy is to say that individual students cannot bring a non-service comfort animal to school but then the next section says that as part of an educational program a teacher or a staff member can okay so then i think that just some words are missing to say that because i didn't read it that way at all that it was just like that the purpose of it was that individual students can't do that it's just maybe adding a couple words but i wouldn't want to vote on it unless does anybody else have feedback additionally we are planning to meet again on the

123service animal one so i can work on that paragraph and we can meet talk about both of them and bring it i just think it needs to be clear i just think it needs to be clear that's all but i didn't realize that it was really just for the purpose of prohibiting individual students from accessing comfort animals i mean originally the sample policies that we saw from a lot of other districts just flat out banned any non-service animal from schools and so our district i think really wanted to take a different approach allowing teachers or staff members when it's part of an educational program and it benefits the school i know there are some very fond programs that bring in service animals so that we we did change it to try to add in that

124it can be part but now i see what you're saying that that paragraph somehow we lost something there in one of our times editing it that i totally appreciate that i mean i don't want you to get rid of the comfort animals that are part of the educational programs at all i just i just that paragraph needs to be clear right in saying the intent of that is to say that individual students cannot sure have permission to bring their own comfort animals into the school building makes sense so i will look at that again and bring it back more clearly next time um nora i have one other piece of feedback that i got from a member of the the public sure under the sample procedures and knowing that the sample procedures are not really

125under our purview but there was just another question of clarity for the comfort animals item number two saying that the comfort animal would have to get permission by the school principal in consultation with the director of special education seems potentially in conflict to the fact that we're talking we're we're opening up those programs for students in general education have access to them so i think again as the as the committee and the administration are looking at those procedures maybe putting some more clarification in there about how when and why the director of special education would need to be brought in on a comfort animal being brought in for a general education program great thank you yep i think they often have been used in special education programming but yes it's your point okay so we'll

126talk about that further as well um does anybody else have feedback about it or questions about either one meeting next um not sure if we have an exact date yet we've been having a really hard time a very hard time with scheduling for policy subcommittee this year um do we know yet beth yes so maybe it would be helpful if you do have feedback maybe they can email um you and andrew shen yes that would be great please you know maybe by monday of next week that would be great great thank you all right thanks norah uh legislative left j i think we got most of that already jenny so we got all of it awesome thank you again for your work on that uh john do you have an update from the alg the

127acton leadership group met november 4th with kira and myself as the school committee representatives year-to-date revenue and expense are aligned with budget expectations for both the school and the town uh john mangiorotti reported on the select board decision to allocate arpa funds including two million dollars for abrsd the alg model is carrying an assumption of a three percent increase in the municipal budget and a three point two five percent increase in the school budget as projected the deficit remains about one million dollars in december the town will make its first formal budget presentation and the alg plan will be updated to reflect the town manager's actual budget request there was an extended discussion of property valuation and tax rates over the past year single family home valuations have risen dramatically with the consequence of the

128projected tax rates will go from about twenty dollars per thousand in twenty twenty two to nineteen dollars per thousand and twenty twenty three the valuation change does not change tax bills let me just repeat that the valuation change doesn't change the tax bill when the valuation goes up the rate goes down and multiplying valuation times rate gives exactly the same tax bill what can change bills is a change in the valuation of residential property relative to commercial property if residential valuations increase more than commercial valuations some of the tax burden shifts to residential property and residential tax bills will increase on the basis of the valuation shift alone based on the information dis discussed an increase in residential tax burden seems likely the select board will meet on december 6 for the tax classification hearing

129which will set up by 23 rates for each type of property historically residential and commercial property have been taxed at the same rate thanks john all right i'm going to take us a little bit out of order because we have some edits to the minutes and so i'm going to mention those first and we're going to vote on those separate than the consent agenda so the minutes from the 11 221 meeting which were in our addendum to the packet there was a change to page four on the third sentence of the paragraph under health insurance trust it refers to fy22 med-x rates and those are supposed to be calendar year cy22 medics rates that was the only change to that so noting that change is there a motion to approve as amended motion to approve

130as amended second i was moved and seconded all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions you don't have to abstain if you don't want to but you're also welcome to so what is your vote yes thank you she voted yes thank you all right uh uh next is consent agenda those items on the consent agenda don't usually require discussion and are approved with one vote unless any member would like to hold an item i'll read the name of each of those and if anybody would like them held please say hold request for approval of the new rj gray junior high school marvel club and request for approval of donations valued over one thousand dollars for the douglas pto hearing no holds all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions none thank you uh next item

131only oh did i just move right past that apologies motion to approve the consent agenda second all right now all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions i was doing really good without my chairs agenda tonight just want to say i didn't have the little red text i was so close all right so now we're going to move on to the statements of warrants and the recommendation to approve does anybody have that up and would like to read it this evening tessa i move that the school committee vote to approve payroll warrants as follows number p2209 dated 1021 2021 in the amount of 2 million 747 487 dollars and 15 cents number p 2210 dated 11 for 2021 in the amount of 2 million 780 one dollars and five cents payroll deduction warrant as follows

132number 22-009 pr dated 10 21 21 in the amount of 1 million 136 six dollars and twenty six cents number twenty two dash zero one zero p r dated eleven four twenty twenty one in the amount of five hundred fifty four thousand three hundred thirty two dollars and nineteen cents vendor warrants as follows number 22-008 dated 10 14 20 21 in the amount of 668 966 dollars and 69 cents number 22-009 dated 1028 2021 in the amount of hundred twenty 185 dollars and sixty three cents second second all right all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions that passes unanimously uh peter is there anything in the fyi that you would like to point out this evening i will just point out that school improvement plans were included in the fyi section of this packet

133but they were previously previously emailed to you if you have feedback i really need that by tomorrow because the principals are waiting on that so that they can finalize these school improvement plans before the year ends so if you have feedback please send it to me by tomorrow i will copy and paste it into an email for the principals tomorrow so they can consider it and then you know they'll they'll send any revisions to me and i will finalize plans this year we're going to publish them a little bit differently we're actually going to create one district page on the website under the district strategy page and all school improvement plans for each school for the year will be published in one place and then schools can link to it that way they don't have

134to figure out how they're getting posted and everything else we'll streamline this a little excellent can i say anything yes please i just want to um i just want to put on the record how impressed i am with our students and i just want to say we had a student here this evening and i'm sorry i didn't get to say this before she left but i think that it is it's a hard thing to walk into a room and give your opinion to a room that you perceive is hostile and i know that we're not but i know that she walked into a room thinking that she was talking to adults who didn't care about her opinion did not agree and that's a hard thing to do and we have students who continually speak to

135adults impressively and julia was impressive tonight and i just want to say i want to extend that empathy and say thank you to her for coming into speaking and to say to our our high school students that you are impressive your opinion matters this is hard work and you contributed to the conversation so thank you for coming and doing that thank you is there a motion to adjourn so moved second all right we're gonna give that to uh tessa and then john i think all in favor aye any opposed any abstentions thank you all have a wonderful evening