School Committee Meeting 12/6/18

001it is 7 p.m. everyone so noting the time and the presence of a quorum I now called the Acton Boxborough Regional School Committee to order so we need to just get to a few standard items on the agenda a business before we address the three presentations that will happen the first being the school calendar I did want to welcome everyone especially the members to our new venue our new home for the next few hours so I will be asking you what you think but I'll let you kind of soak it in and see what you think and we'll talk about it at the next meeting but I'm liking it so far and I hope you are too so I also want to thank the public for coming out and making time in their busy schedules

002to be here item 3 is public participation so if there is anyone here who has something to share with us it's not on the agenda please state your name and your town and look please we're gonna limit you to two minutes my name is John Epling I'm a resident of Acton I have a transgender child in 11th grade and I want to thank all the committee members for the time they spend working on behalf of our children well I'm thankful for the committee voting on November 1st to show support for YES on three ballot questions to protective sections to keep protections for transgender people there were a few comments made by committee members that concern me one one community member said that she didn't want to discuss YES on 3 because it was political it

003was on the ballot and she'd be private thing to one convene member stated that she was concerned about the safety of women and girls in bathrooms who isn't 3 there was also a statement that committees didn't have time to study both sides of the issue also there were two sides of the issue and that we only hear one side as school committee members you need to be aware of national and local issues that concern our kids especially the most vulnerable and protecting transgender children should not be a difficult we all know the safety concerns they have specially harassment high suicide rates and high murder rates the committee members who could not get honest and valid reasons for why transgender protection law should be repealed and fell back on excuses and fear-mongering cannot be expected to

004the right thing to my child and other transgender children or any other vulnerable group when future issues come up concerning the welfare of these children and make no mistake it will come up again because the people who got this ballot the question on the ballot will try again to take away the rights of the LGBTQ community maybe not by the ballot by some other way sorry now apologize to my wife because out she she edited my stuff because she wanted me to turn it down now I'm gonna add something I conclude that these committee members statements show that you personally did not support YES on three no matter how much you state that you understand and support others btq rights I say you do not understand you do not support human rights and you're not

005well informed at best and at worst your very being very disingenuous I'm not here to have a civil discourse I know you guys have to work with each other that's fine I'm not here to try to change minds that would be futile I'm here to make a point and I ask were there two ballot sizes of civil rights debate where there are two ballot size to the Japanese internment there are no valid sides for taking away the basic human rights of group of people and we need to stop acting as if we need to hear both sides a resident stood up and said don't bring political things into school because that will pit parents against parents well if a parent is supporting picking basic rights away from my child and there's someone on the committee

006who can't stand up and for my child that not more than willing to take pick a side and I want to see who's on the other side thank you very much hi Steve Ballard hard to follow that from Boxborough and we're here again to hear some presentations and reports so we always do and you're going to hear that from your staff update regurgitate explicate and then you know you're going to validate it eventually that's what you do but you know you guys were vote you know we voted for you to deliberate not to validate other people's decisions you know decisions are made every year whether they're made in here or not and law even allows that to happen other people can make a decision for you and you can validate them in here but you

007know we elected you to make the decisions and to deliberate not to just validate decisions by a handful so you know you're gonna have your questions for administrators today like you always do you know the reports why that can you explain this how that but you know you could spend twenty minutes on these these reports that's what you should do you know not two hours know this mean these meetings are where things should really happen this is where the real work should be done you know it should be sort of like that you know a flipped classroom you know we're you know you take the home out of homework or a little bit late good seminar where you you know you've done all the reading and you come in and prepare to lead the class

008you know what you did that you maybe you have control of your own agenda and you know it would be you'd ask the administrators how they can help you with your agenda instead of doing the agenda of whoever is coming here do their reports so you know it's been half an hour and minutes you know warrants and reports and then the other two hours you could be deliberating you know and with this budget season coming on with budgets each number four you know four meetings come on you could have started in September like real school city you know school committees do and and you'd have six months you know from February I mean from September 8th into February you have 12 meetings if you you know so deliberate guys you know you know rubber stamp

009that you know tweaked 91 million dollar budget anyone else we now move on item for the student representative update I see Arnab Mara and audience thank you for coming tonight hi everyone I hope you all are doing very well so some quick updates from the high school first of all it's December time which means the January 1st called deadline is popping up which is for most people the last close deadline so that's good there some people who have deadlines in February so I feel bad for them and I think overall seniors seem to be looting myself seem to be a lot more calmer than we were in October in November because we've gotten used to the dis way of things and I think overall we're doing much better secondly I would like to talk about

010the powderpuff game so but basically powderpuff is it's a flag football game between girls of the junior classes and the senior classes but this year we also had a game between the sophomore classes in freshman classes and it was pretty good as very a lot of people enjoyed it there were some concerns that it was postponed because of some snow issues and the day they played it was very cold but definitely there was still a lot of school spirit there and the results sophomores beat the freshmen and in a massive surprise the juniors beat the seniors so I was quite surprised thirdly Speech and Debate had had the Princeton tournament in Princeton New Jersey and the Speech and Debate team did exceptionally well they got the championship in public forum and they did similarly very

011successfully in Congress and extent and finally I would like to talk about winter sports so since it's almost winter oh it's pretty much winter there are a lot of sports that are coming around special that are starting boys and girls basketball across sorry Nordic Ski and cross-country ski as well as to attract we're all starting so I'm rooting for all the teams go Colonials and that's all I can say thank you Thank You art up all right well good evening everyone right over more incentive reveal minutes okay we have five warrants on the agenda on the they're not being circulated to just please sign them when they come around three vendor warrants accounts payable one to accounts payable warrants 19-0 zero one 19-0 one one PR and 19-0 one to PR the total amount of

012those is two million nine hundred sixty three thousand one hundred fifty seven dollars and twenty four cents we have to payroll warrants P 1 9 1 1 and P 1 9 1 2 the total of those two are five million fifty nine thousand two hundred sixty two dollars and thirteen cents okay in your packet you'll find the minutes of November 1st and November 15 I hope everyone's had a chance to it was over do I hear a motion to approve any amendments excellent okay all in favor he opposed abstentions motion approved okay item six we retain an update all right so I first just want to recognize a student group the acton-boxborough Regional High School quiz show team congratulations and good luck they are one of sixteen teams that will be competing as finalists on

013the wgbh quiz show program that is set to air on February 2nd at 6:00 p.m. so you know watch for that it should be an exciting time but congratulations to all the members of that team second one High School Principal update I want to let you know that over the last five months I've gotten to know Larry Dory as he's been serving in the interim role as many of you are aware he's actually finishing just about 18 months of being the interim principal at acton-boxborough Regional High School throughout the first five months of my time in the district I've had an opportunity to observe him in a variety of settings we walked classrooms together we've been in multiple meetings together I've observed him some of the more challenging times that you know we face as

014a district I've also had an opportunity to really sit with him and understand where he wants to lead the high school over the next period of time and I think one thing that stood out to me is his student focused leadership in his integrity have really stood out his strengths for Larry I also throughout my time in the district so far I've been able to do a number of forums throughout the district that included high school students they included high school parents and they also included all of the high school faculty and I will say unsolicited because I was really talking about my entry plan and general strengths of the district unsolicited I heard people in every forum offering up their praise for what Larry has done over his time as a leader at acton-boxborough

015High School so based on that I am considering appointing him is the permanent principal of that but I do believe that there needs to be some process for all things and so what I want to do is become public with that and offer an opportunity for the community to be able to provide me feedback around that so I've scheduled forums for high school parents and also for the faculty to be able to come provide me feedback and those are on January 17th we're doing the high school parent forum at 6:30 p.m. high school and the high school faculty we email them the the forum time but it's the same date you know I'm looking forward to hearing that feedback specific to the context of considering mr. gory is the permanent principal for the high school

016so that is that second update the third update building project survey the district is conducting a survey to seek feedback regarding the site location of the building project and I want to be clear that right now what we're considering is the site location only this is not about any design of the building that actually comes later in the process but we want to hear from the community about that we have about 730 responses so far in about the first 48 hours that the survey has been open but we're looking for more responses the survey is open until Monday December 10th at noon so we're providing a link in the memo to all of our families and community members we want to continue to take that survey but for anyone watching who may not have that

017link it's right on the district's website the building committee is scheduled to make an important decision regarding the site for the project at its upcoming meeting on December 19th stakeholder feedback is a very significant factor in the committee's consideration as is also site suitability and the cost of construction we're encouraging everyone in the community to share their thoughts prior to December 10th via that survey I want to let people know we also have an upcoming building meeting on December 12th and at that time we'll be hearing the latest about you know site suitability reports from the architect we're also going to hear the cost estimates for the various site options and locations so the building committee has that opportunity to deliberate around that and that will be the most recent update and we'll also be

018able to take a hard look at that stakeholder feedback so that all of that information can inform the committee's decision we then have a week before the next building committee which is on December 19th at which time the building committee would vote we have a school committee meeting scheduled on the 13th of December so that will be an opportunity for you to hear the same information that the building he has heard the previous night so and then you'll obviously be able to deliberate on that offer your feedback at which the building committee can then take back and also use for consideration exciting time busy time lots to talk about and some really important decisions ahead regarding that so we're looking forward to everyone's feedback thank you Peter items item 7 on the agenda is the

019discussion of the school calendar so tonight is the first read we will discuss it and with the hope that we will vote next time we meet in which is in a week before we get started I want to recognize and thank the nine members of the subcommittee Marie Altieri she coordinated all the stakeholder input and pulled together the report in a expedited way and she did a much time to get it done and it was done and done spectacularly well actually I also want to thank Tess Amaya and Eileen they volunteered their time to work on this Mika's or BA and Lynn Newman Lindsay Rosenman from the high school brandy Shermer junior high school she's a science teacher and eight blue and Marga Ingham is a first-grade teacher of Blanchard all of those people gathered

020together worked very hard to collect the data that we really need today to base a good decision and have a good discussion about the calendar I also want to thank the public for emailing us and we got about 12 letters via email and for taking that and for you you all who emailed me for taking time out of your busy schedules to attend tonight especially given that it's the fourth night of Hanukkah so I appreciate you coming out so the the process will be are you gonna give the report itself okay and then we'll that will be followed by the school committee discussion and after that we will take public input Thank You Diane I'm gonna be brief there's an extensive amount of material in the packet which I know you all have gone through

021the survey we have about 1,500 parents and 500 staff members respond and some of the feedback was clear some of the feedback is kind of mixed so I'm going to talk about a couple different pieces the first being vacation so with the late end of school last year there was a lot of question and consideration about whether we should reconsider our vacation schedule we put six options in the survey for families and the preferred option for families and for staff was to keep the current schedule there were lots of reasons for that but the one of the biggest reasons which seems to make it unfeasible to make a change to the feed to the vacation schedule is that 31% of acton-boxborough teachers or about a hundred and five who responded to the survey have children

022who attend school in other districts so within comments in within the survey responses we had a lot of feedback that basically said that if we had a let's say a March vacation schedule or if we shortened February or April that that would provide a pretty difficult situation for our staff who have kids in other districts and our parents who teach in other districts who would still have the traditional December February and April vacation so while that was creative and an interesting thing to think about the recommendation of the subcommittee is that we not make a change to the vacation schedule until or unless either the region or the state makes more of a wholesale change that there are good reasons for it to be consistent with neighboring districts the start of school we have traditionally

023started school before Labor Day when Labor Day falls on September 4th or later and after Labor Day when Labor Day falls on September first second or third this coming September is the last year that it falls early if you will so we normally would have traditionally started after Labor Day the survey results are consistent with that as a preference however bigger than that the feedback was that getting out in late June is too much of a problem and the top priority when we listed a large number of priorities was getting out earlier in June so this subcommittee is recommending that even though Labor Day is September 2nd next year first or second that we consider starting before Labor Day if we do that we'd need to start with staff the Monday and Tuesday before Labor

024Day because there's language in the contract about we can't have staff start before August 25th so you could consider starting before Labor Day Monday Tuesday would be staff kids would start on Wednesday grades 8 10 11 and 12 would start on Thursday the one thing is that there is contractual language that says that the Friday before Labor Day be a no school day and so we would need to stick with that the survey data also preferred about half of families would like Friday before Labor Day to be a no school day but 77% of teachers would like the Friday before Labor Day to be a no school day now this is sort of next year's the last year that's an issue because the following year we can have teachers start for two days and then

025kids could start the Monday before Labor Day because Labor Day is much later the following year and you have sample calendars for the next two years in your packet so one thing for your consideration is the start of school then the religious holidays we really tried to pull together as much information as we could gather about it it's a committee decision the survey data shows how many staff and parents reported that they would take a day off for a particular religious or cultural holiday there was a request within the committee to try to sort of quantify each of the holidays we use three criteria one is the number of students who would be absent the second one is the holiday observed during the school day the whole day the morning the afternoon the evening and

026then the third one was the number of teachers who would need subs on those days so there is a chart there I have to say it's I'm not sure it's the best way to try to look at this but there was a request to try to quantify it so we did that for your consideration and that's pretty much what we have we showed you a bunch of area districts and one of the things that was interesting about those was that 10 out of 13 started before Labor Day this year so I do think it has become more traditional for districts to start before Labor Day every year and particularly with how late everybody got out last year I gave you data about the start and end of school for the last nine or ten years

027the number of snow days and the attendance the highest staff absence days the highest student absence days the last year is the only year that we've had more than five snow days in the last ten years so that was kind of interesting but once you hit around June 24th people start to have conflicts with other things but the there was there was a lot of discussion about Diwali Lunar New Year and there were ideas such as having a half-day professional day on one of those days Diwali Falls the same week as the election in alternate years when there isn't an election you could have the professional day on Diwali so those are some of the sort of creative ideas that are written into the report for your consideration so we'll happy to answer questions as

028you go along but it's it's your decision are there any questions for me I would say that I'm I'm really not in favor of starting this next year before Labor Day because it presents us again with the same challenge that we faced in the past where we go for two days so what would happen is that the elementary schools would go on Monday and then they only have a half damn I mean I'm sorry on Wednesday and they have a half a day on Thursday and then you know they have a three-day weekend and then school would start the following Monday the same thing the junior high in high school kids the 8th grade 10th 11th and 12th wouldn't go on a Wednesday and they would only go on Thursday so I I guess I

029understand it pushes we could gain a couple of days there I just I'm just not sure that's the best thing for the kids and I wanted to also say I really appreciate how much work has been done to include Diwali and Eid and Lunar New Year and I am definitely I'm not a fan of taking away religious holidays I think we just need to be more inclusive I am aware that with the calendar you only have so many days and things become difficult when you go late in June but I would say my I I would have to sit here and the cake for more inclusion of other communities anyone else so I've been thinking about this for a couple weeks now because I served on this calendar committee and I was sort of warned

030by many people as I took on this role of school committee member about touching the holidays and the calendar and I am a teacher by trade if anyone doesn't know me I also consider myself Jewish although not religiously more culturally more information than you need to know but I fully came into this thinking me to stop celebrating religious holidays all of them because we have such a diverse community I grew up here it is so much more diverse than it was when I grew up here it's completely different and after having wonderful discussions on the calendar committee I have come to a very different conclusion which is that I hope that we can frame our discussion around our our embrace of challenge success because in reading the letters that most people wrote what parents have

031asked for all year long the letters that came because of this discussion and letters that have come sort of throughout the year people are asking for a way to connect with their kids and a way for their kids to connect to their communities outside of school and they're asking for that PDF time that challenge success kind of really promotes as a good way for about to achieve balance the discussions we had within the calendar committee all really centered around that discussion and I'm really uncomfortable framing our conversation because the cut the holidays we have off now are the judeo-christian ones that we've always traditionally had off and we we received one really interesting letter from it from a teacher talking about you know this idea of the and wanting people to not feel like the

032other so all these things were swirling around in my head and I was thinking about it and I just really I hope that we can I want to get out earlier in June too but I also want us to set ourselves up to really talk about what it means to embrace challenge accepts and if that means that we have a significant number in our community no matter what their religious or cultural beliefs are and no matter which days those surround that that will really look at what do kids need do they need mental health days I think that one of the things that came up towards the end of our calendar discussion was that we don't really do a good enough job of this mentality around the homework policy or the test policy or what

033happens on these days or what doesn't happen on these days and yes it's the most pronounced when we're talking about actual religious observances but what about when kids need a mental health day and they have to miss school and that needs to be reflected in a policy in our all of our policies and our philosophy about how we're treating our kids or if a kid is out for sickness or injury my child missed a week of school last week you know I I think that well I don't want to go until the you know end of June beginning of July I want to say that I'm proud to be part of a community that really accepts and understands that people need days off for different reasons and so I think that I'm uncomfortable with its

034surrounding just this discussion of religious holidays because of course we have to have reasons other than religion to be taking the days off anyway since separation of church and state and all that but I just that's the kind of stuff that went through my head I don't I know that we got some people that said it's a false equivalency to say it's all or nothing because this is how we celebrate and this is what these other holidays entail and everything else but for me it is an all or nothing because it shouldn't matter if your if your holiday of choice if we want to call your observance of choice requires attendance at you know at a place of worship you know some families have family come from other countries and they stay here for these

035holidays and to me that's just as important and just as much a reason to give a break for these kids for our kids whatever but those are my thoughts around it Michael yeah thank you um I just I thought about this you know I have a I just did I cannot agree to quantifying the holidays like we have this a table for each holiday we violate with blue ones so to me I don't know how to interpret that because you know does it mean that one holiday is more important than another holiday I don't think so I think all the holidays are you co are equally important and so we should evaluate or compare the holidays we cannot compare one thought it was another holiday because you know well how they probably is more is

036it more important to whoever believing to it and not the holiday the same thing so we should not compare the holidays so regarding regarding taking the day off for the holidays I would say no school days for the holiday so I thought about this you know because you know one of our values is the equity so how to achieve that so probably this kind of challenge when we consider no school days or the holidays so I thought well this we can keep as a suggestion we can keep still three days no school days for holidays can we don't a the holidays in the waiting the next five years or ten years right like you know this year probably there's three holidays you know we'll have no school days but next year so we wrote a

037tune another three maybe or two whatsoever so and then we can rotate so that's my suggestion ho you know the school committee and AV community can consider right thank you I think that the community and the school committee we do we are required by policy to approve the calendar every year but I think it would make a lot of sense for everyone if we had a longer term solution and this was a recommendation in the in the committee's report the subcommittee's report a longer term solution about religious holidays will be in place at least I mean really at least for the next several years it is just it is not fair to wonder every time the calendar comes up is this going to be taken away is a good so I think you know I

038mean I'm not gonna insist on a policy but I think that there should be something in place for more than more than a year or two or three years it comes up every year we even I looked back in November 20th 2017 we had this conversation so it I mean we had it in 2000 I think the subcommittee and the surveys go out every few years but we have this conversation every every single year Adam yes so as I look at this I feel like we're constrained on many sides you know we're constrained by the requirement to have 180 days of school we're constrained by having a real diverse community that all wants to celebrate as they should their cultural traditions and we're constrained by decisions around what work actually agreed upon with our faculty

039and staff and so I you know what I think is we have an interesting opportunity coming up as we begin to renegotiate our contract with the with the with the teachers union to bring a number of people to the table so that we don't look at this through just the one tunnel of what's the contract say what's the community say what's the what's the state requirement if we can bring together a group that can empathetically look at every other side's story then maybe we can come to an understanding around what makes the most sense and I think you know we we talked about what some of the equity training provided earlier on around doing a root cause analysis what is it that really is our pain point on this calendar and and then begin to

040have people all discuss that you know I hear a lot of people saying well a lot of the challenges we feel like we get out too late or a lot of the challenges we start too early or whatever that that root causes then everybody can come together and make a compromise understanding all of the stakeholders sort of a few points on that it feels really hard to talk about the calendar now and talk about removing religious holidays and only sort of touching that side of that where a good deal of the community said you know what we're really concerned about is ending too late and then we say well we have this challenge of starting at the beginning of the year because we have these contractual requirements I think that we need to find some

041opportunity in the near term before we go into the next round of planning and an experiment negotiations where we bring everybody around the table and say here are all the things we're juggling let's come together with a couple of our areas where we can all sort of move a little bit so that everyone feels like there their needs are being met so I'm gonna add to that as well I think it's important for us in addition to a long term plan for for religious holidays whether it's none or all or something in between I think it's really really important to balance our our boundaries around what is possible given we only have 180 days to play with and cultural sensitivity so I mean we got out on the 27th there were a thousand kids absent

042a thousand that's the entire junior high school building or two Elementary School's empty the teacher absence data suggests that June is is it is a time of year when there are a lot of teacher absences getting out earlier in June I think is really something that we should strive for I don't think that the catastrophic weather events are gonna go away we had seven snow days and that was seemed like an outlier but I'm looking around and listening to the news and seeing some pretty scary stuff in terms of natural college disasters really and hopefully that wouldn't happen here but seven snow days I don't I don't think that's out of the question I wouldn't I wouldn't think of it as an outlier so I would ask also ask the committee to consider how we

043would work out embedding these holidays into the calendar given the constraints on the calendar and if we embed these in the calendar I would are we opening the door for additional requests in the future and how we wouldn't so when I say boundaries I really when I'm thinking of is where in the calendar could we do this that makes sense as like a policy for instance on professional development days we could move those and have them follow some of the some of the religious celebrations like Diwali and Lunar New Year and the last thing I'll point out is I just I literally just saw this earlier today and it was a the beacon on November 8th and the headlight is Diwali and and the the person who was interviewed was quoted as saying this is

044huge for the Indian Community Act and it's from the act of Diwali committee with Diwali on the school calendar it feels like an embrace and recognition of India a large ethnic group that is a big part of the community I love it I love that about this town it's it's meaning the diversity and how willing people are to embrace the diversity so when I read that I'm actually it did occur to me and I heard what you said Tessa and it's very selling this seems like a community that's really happy that that we mentioned and and acknowledged and recognized Diwali on the calendar Michael Chang our student representative said that the teachers were really really aware of it and didn't didn't didn't assign the homework so I'm also wondering if does everybody really need to

045have the same thing are we are we and are we looking at this from any equality like everybody gets the same or more of an equity perspective everyone gets what they need clearly restaurant in yom kippur and and for that matter the first and last days of ramadan require attendance in a mosque or synagogue so the downside of that is that is not a discussion that we really need to be having just because we don't that's not our charge that's not her job to talk about Jewish holidays and Wichita days merit what but I did want to mention that because I did wonder why it came up for the committee in terms of the survey when when the just mentioned event on the calendar seemed to be really well received by the community I wanted

046to just echo what Tessa said about the letter we got from mr. Lewis who's a teacher in our junior high school which was very moving and I wrote back to him to ask him a couple of questions because he was advocating for none of the above because there are always going to be communities that are either too small or not vocal enough or for whatever reason are getting overlooked so by validating the judeo-christian and nothing else and you know you could say we could do Diwali and then the Lunar New Year and then the next thing you know I mean there's just so many so I asked him two questions because I the thoughtfulness of his comments and one of them was which we did hear from other members of the community which i think

047is a huge concern and it's been on my mind isn't this like the worst time in the world to say you know either now or in five years or whatever that we're going to stop having the Jewish holidays off given the uptick in hate crimes and and intolerance just to even send that signal or appear to be sending that signal is is problematic and also the fact that you know our winter break is organized around Christmas and and I don't see that changing so how is you know we aren't you basically putting Christianity at the top of the heat and you know and his his thoughts were that and he expressed that he really wished that he could have been at this meeting that he thinks that you know we shouldn't have Christmas Eve off

048that's something that and I don't know if that's something that we always do or know I can't remember and and and you know in terms of the not doing it now he quoted the Talmud it is the Jewish tradition of you know it's never a good time to do a hard thing but it's always the right time to do the just thing so you know those were his thoughts at night and I I just wanted to share them because I I really appreciated them and I think that what I agree with what a lot of you decide about everybody getting what they need instead of trying to give everybody the same thing it's like your kids you know they don't not always exactly the same but you know you try to get make everyone have

049what they need so there may be a different way to think about this whole issue because we are so boxed in I attempted a coup meeting yesterday and there was spend a good 90 minutes talking about pleaser bath and the issue is because we have so many constraint right now and the because we had seven days of snow day so maybe in couple district has started implementing a couple district has kind of looking into this the process was we need to kind of looking bring this topic up on the table and maybe not at a school committee level yet but we need to kind of put somebody together and looking into this what to look at what's the possibility and because there are many many consideration we need to take into consideration especially the one-on-one

050tutoring the the PE and but at the same time and the quality of the the fact that the student is bringing and the technology that's provided there's many many things that we need to take into consideration so maybe it's a time that we should look into this topic and because the front Wakefield that's weeks felt that the school district has implemented the way they implemented is there is no school day every day is learn any everywhere day so that's how they implement it because they have a school district wide policy and the implementation system supporting that if there's any date of there's a learning anywhere that's how they implement it so I'm kind of looking into this if we should this is a time that we can take a look at looking into this subject

051more deeply and because it does takes about we need to bring up there with the community and with the committee with the school and everybody and to see if we ending June earlier is that ago that everybody wants you know we have to have like a consensus where we are heading to then we can maybe start from there thank you sorry I kind of missed what angie was is that kind of what you're talking about it's a virtual virtual school Marie did the committee have a recommendation on blizzard bags so I addressed this in the report so what angie was talking about is something called blizzard bags which the Department of Education has put forward a process by which districts can consider putting in a plan so that if there are an excessive number of

052snow days there could be a plan by each teacher to allow for students to learn at home for the time that they're missing school because of a snow day and then that day would not have to be added to the end of the year for the hundred and eighty Days the our leadership team spent some time working our way through it and the leadership team is not in favor of blizzard bags as an alternative to instruction so as much as getting up earlier in June is a top priority in the feedback of the survey instruction is the top priority of the district and we believe that reducing instruction by having these blizzard bags was not a good alternative and in our goals around reducing homework the way that it plays out and we looked at

053how several districts are doing it students would have a period of time a couple of weeks a month couple of months to make up the work that they would have had in school on a day that turned out to be a snow day and we felt as though it would look to the students like another six and a half or seven hours of homework on top of their homework in school so we thought that the discussion about blizzard back should start with the instructional leadership team who recommend not going forward with blizzard packs so I don't want to preempt anybody so those of you who have not spoken please just let me know when you want to speak no you want to speak right now okay I just want to say that my topmost concern

054as I engage in this discussion and thinking about it and sitting on the subcommittee is about wellness and what's best for students and and equity and I I see the inherent conflicts here and I have a point of view that is personal to me and I think also represents something like 10% of the student body but I also am hesitant to boldly advocate for that in a way that risks other people feeling excluded from the same privileges so I just want to acknowledge that I do think we have to think about everybody in the district and what is best for them in terms of their wellness and family time I'm gonna state I'm gonna state something harshly but I think at the root of the problem is the high school's inability to respect these days

055throughout the years and a lack of trust between families and kids around respecting time to celebrate holidays and we have ruined trust around taking a day off for mental health and I love Tessa how you broadened what it should mean to take a day off for me I don't think that I've quite extrapolated it to that extent I am constantly I feel like a voice obsessive district we must be more progressive like we have to think about students first and then whatever and then later what everybody else wants if we don't give many students the opportunity to be with families to celebrate and honor what is important to them then we are under serving our kids and I don't really care about what people want for getting out in June if it doesn't serve our

056kids maybe you could make the argument that getting out earlier in June is better for kids because it's less hot in the building or whatever but the fact of the matter is the hundred and eighty days start at one point and end at another point and we never really exceed those so the argument always kind of falls short for me because it's the same school year whether we start at this point in September or that point in September and end at this point in June or later in June I don't really get that it's just a week and we can pick summer camps that fit into another slot in the summer if we're saying that this is really important to us I don't see why we can't we have to continue to think about a

057specific June end time unless we're just talking about summer camps or maybe more family time but I I don't think that I've understood the argument for the later end time because if we're talking about kids attention then if it's still the same school year just starts a little bit later and ends a little bit later it's the same school year now if you say to me Maya we're actually talking about flow and all these speckled dates throughout the year around holidays disrupt the flow of learning then I think I would understand that argument a little bit more so like maybe it is disruptive to have rosh hashanah and yom kippur and then eat and wally off like maybe that's not great flow for learning but I don't really feel like we ever attain great flow

058I mean we never go to school for a robust month like we always have all this disruption whether it's voting or staff days or how these are you know it's always disrupted and again like what are we saying as a district are we saying that Student Wellness is the most important thing to us and family time and downtime and I'm promoting something that seems to have been lost in this day and age of among families which is the time to be centered and and focused on how to be a better person and how to connect with people and getting kids off screens well then it seems to me like addressing holidays matters I'm very conflicted about I agree with Michael about the rating or the numeric you know assignment to the to how you spend

059the day but at the same time like I do feel like you sort of have to look at yeah I mean I thought it was a reasonable thing to look at and to try to quantify um is this hard to quantify but I will say that inherently I don't think we would be fighting I don't think you would get you know the couple dozen people every year writing to you and coming to you if teachers respected no homework and no assessments around these holidays and again it's a difficult thing to implement but I think that we failed our families around that and so now we have to consider something that is way bigger and more inclusive but I'm happy to consider that I don't want anybody to feel as though judeo-christian holidays supersede theirs oh

060that's an important message that we can't possibly stand behind you know so I'm open to anything I let us out on that Wellness Committee and you know I'm as confused as ever as to what is right here for students but I think that students need to focus on you know this kind of thing so whatever we can do to support it is worth discussing and I am sympathetic to that to all the factors that go into it but so I'd like to if this is so complex for me in fact I didn't even understand what position name he was taking her Tessa was taking when they spoke but and I personally on both sides of the issue because when I hear in particular the Jewish community come forward and express their views I totally want

061to support that and I because I agree it's part of our challenge success it's part of our students mental health they need to be able to be with their families and be with their faith communities and and celebrate these days but then when I hear well okay but then we're not including everyone and we're being exclusive I don't want that either I honestly don't know what to do except for I hate what you said I kind of saw a light that if we could troupe truly respect these holidays and I think if there is a student who doesn't have a faith but needs that mental health day it shouldn't be so stressful to take a mental healthy I mean how many of us in order to take a week off of work you do two

062weeks worth of work the week before and it's not fun it's too stressful we can't have that that feeling so I think if we could find a way to truly let these students take these days with their families and their communities and not have a negative repercussion coming back into the school then I'd be comfortable having school on those days but if we can't do that then I think we need to hold the holidays at least for now I think we have enough discussed in our subcommittee meeting right I think I I don't know I I have to agree with everyone I think it's you know either at this point at that point where we were discussed discussing all those things in subcommittee meeting we know people won't Lane start maybe beginning in September oh

063they won't get you know early ending in June and everybody wants the holiday off and it's just like people wanting everything but they're not wrong so I think I I kind of really wanted to I called Tessa and he hates the point so you know based on that I think if consider because we discussed a lot already in subcommittee and I have something in my mind however so for that three things everybody we if we say we're gonna really include everyone in the community and I just have one idea I heard some parents mentioned that if we kind of get every holiday into the school calendar is 180 days of the federal federal school days you you have to obey that if we can end before - I mean early in June so the the

064only thing I see will be start earlier because everybody start their vacation in summertime that's probably a list of for everybody had one and a half months vacation already so get start a little bit early for the next school year will be really valuable point I can see included the rest of the other priorities so that's my opinion thank you and I agree with Mary it's it's it's complicated and it's a it's a big thing to be trying to get our arms around equitably but I I do I think I've always been in favor of keeping the holidays so I'm not changing my mind now I think it would be difficult for us to suddenly change it that's that's like pulling the rug out from under folks I do want to push back a little

065bit on what I hear from Amy is starting before Labor Day even if it's a you know a day or two to me that's a day for the kids to get used to who you know where they're sitting these teachers get used to the kids so that the next time on Monday they hit the ground running so I I think I really like hearing about mental health days and uh you know sadly last year we had five snow days which could act as mental health days but or seven whatever well and so that's my concern is that that becomes a concern that that's going to be the new norm and so we really need to be ready to deal with that so so I would be in favor of keeping the holidays and starting early

066I was real quick because I I guess I wasn't very clear I wasn't no that's fine I I would personally I would advocate for starting earlier even though I said I don't want to start before Labor Day but I would prefer to do that and keep the holidays rather than start after Labor Day and give them up I'm advocating for more inclusion I think that we have a diverse community and we need to we need to acknowledge that and honor that part of what we looked at on the calendar committee is that actually next year this next school year's calendar is totally the crappiest one and that after that it gets better well to be honest like really next year we have the most things boxing us in you know Labor days on that that's

067sort of well I guess it's it's really early next year but just because of the way the days fall and everything it's tough I mean some of the holidays we've talked about fall on Saturdays and Sundays next year and so it doesn't even affect the calendar but if you look at the other calendars that Murray included for 20 21 minutes like taking a breath of fresh air I think in September there's something like 25 school days or something crazy like that whereas in past years we've only had 18 or 19 so I think that it really behooves us to make decision based on how we feel philosophically and not really just on next year's calendar because next year's calendar is gonna kind of stink no matter what because of the way days fall and everything

068else and just that day and a half I think the last day next year with no snow days is like the 18th but it's a Thursday so that's already terrible so if we were to go to more if we were to gain two days even though one of them is a half day by going before Labor Day that puts the last day to Tuesday and even more chance that we wouldn't go in to the following week I'll take Angie and then I'm gonna make some closing remarks I agree that year we a 100% agree that because we're such a diversified community so I respect all the holidays but I want to bring the bellezza back back again because of the technology I don't know when was that looking to because of a technology improvement and

069from the meeting what I heard there there's some really creative ideas and so basically to learn any everywhere idea is the kids needs to learn in everywhere and however and that's an opportunity for them to to embrace that capability so I would like to see that we've we can bring that idea back to the table thank you thank you you know first I think obviously holidays in school calendars are a really difficult topic of conversation I think my take just offer a couple pieces of advice from me I I see the value in the cultural diversity of this community and I think if we want to maintain holidays we need to also really simultaneously respect the cultural diversity of the community and understand that everyone observes holidays differently and sometimes our own values around how

070we might observe one holiday may be different than how another culture might observe their holiday and if it looks different that doesn't mean that it's of different important today to that community so I would you know personally I'm in favor that if you want to do that then I think you need to to be considering the work around equity I've heard that from the committee but I just want to echo that sentiment I also I heard a lot of the comments and I respect where the comments are coming from kind of teachers and trusts and I need to put a little defense out of our teachers in the district though I've got an awful lot of teachers in this district and who have absolute concern and caring for our kids and I just worry that

071we come out of the meeting with the generalization of our faculty that they don't respect the holidays I think what I've actually heard from our students is that they are seeing that policy take place more and more we heard it from our student reps here at school committee I think it's actually a relatively new policy of the district around no homework days and I think to expect any large institution to have instant implementation across you know is just it's something that it's going to take several years to get to full implementation and and I think I just want to make sure that we have a statement to the community about just how much our teachers value the students here and really are in favor of a lot of the Wellness work I think when I

072hear around stress and anxiety I've heard a lot about that in competition and everything else since my entry process into the district and one thing that I've become keenly aware of is the school exists as a piece of the community but it's also a piece of the larger ecosystem in the community and this idea of stress and anxiety it becomes a chicken-and-egg argument because when I talk to teachers they're keenly aware of the academic expectations the community places on the schools and the value that the community has of high ranking schools and high performance and in making sure our students are doing well and I think that what we see is a conflict with teachers sometimes that they worry I think that if the performance starts to slip what's the reaction of the community and

073I think as I've heard that there's really such a high value placed on performance in this community that I think teachers are really respectful of that in trying to maintain that balance so I think change is slow in an institution like that and I think it's because teachers are trying to respect the new work of the district wellness but also simultaneously trying to respect the academic integrity of the school and I think that's a struggle to balance those two things at times so I I hear the concern I've heard that concern from families I've heard that concern from our faculty as well about needing to feel like there's more flexibility built in and I think they the number one thing I think our faculty wants is to know that our district administrators our school administrators

074and our school committee has their backs with the community to be able to allow them this type of flexibility so I think you know I don't want them to get the wrong message coming out of the meeting because I think it actually can be a very affirming message that this committee is really unified in its support for faculty to be able to have the flexibility so that's that's just the one sentiment I want to make and I just want to make sure that our teachers don't feel as though it's it's their fault that we're having the conversation about calendar because I think it is a balance for them and I do really hear a lot of compassion for our students and and just this issue as well so thank you okay so um let me

075float some some ideas I'm hearing that there's consensus consensus around starting earlier and ending earlier yes okay I'm hearing there is consensus around building the fours with the for holidays yeah for holidays oh no and good Friday so there's five right into the calendar so there's a rush on Yom Kippur Lunar New Year Diwali Good Friday is there consensus around building those into the calendar yet died a thing you didn't mention all the other holidays so just can you repeat that I'm I'm not ok I can repeat it okay let me repeat it I wanted to I want to have a sense of the committee in terms of do we want to build Diwali and Lunar New Year into the calendar do we what what what is how do we do this given the restraints

076of the key to the constraints of the calendar can we talk just for a few minutes about that I don't want to I don't want to kind of send us off with unrealistic expectations about what we're able to do and I will say that we can't give we are not allowed to give holidays off to honor holidays we can't we can that I'll just read the little research I did the 4th circuit federal courts in 1999 held that so long is there a significant secular reason for closing on any particular date a secular reason the fact that closing is also convenient for persons of a particular faith does not render the closing unconstitutional but it must be a secular reason so we need to look at attendance rates we need to look at the end

077of school our job is to protect the hundred eighty days so I'm wondering how like I don't want to send you off with it the impossible task of building every possible holiday into the school calendar and then not having enough days to do that Tessa so one of the things that the committee discussed without putting value on one holiday over another was that holidays such as Diwali or Lunar New Year that don't necessarily and Good Friday that don't necessarily require a attendance at whatever celebration house worship whatever it is the entire length of the day we could look at doing things like a half day or a half day professional day or whatever because a half day counts as a day of school and so it would be an acknowledgement but not a full day

078off it was just part of the discussion is there any are there any thoughts around there needs to be a half-day or a or a date off in order to honor these holidays to feel like like we're doing that in an appropriate way versus just listing them in the school calendar okay can I just note that in terms of feedback that we received that that I've seen was many people in favor of keeping the juice very strongly in favor of keeping the Jewish holidays mr. Lewis's approach which is it's not right it makes judeo-christian holidays the important ones and there's that makes other people feel marginalized we received nothing that I'm aware of in terms of keeping Good Friday a holiday I didn't see any request to have Diwali or Lunar New Year off either

079so and and I do think that you know we do we're not in the fourth circuit but I think we do need to you know to consider whether or not there are attendance or teacher absence reasons to do any of these other things but anyway so I wasn't I wasn't thinking the consensus was to add all five holidays and that wasn't what my rebut well if we have to keep the current three days no school days for holidays and I I I still stick with the you know rotate holidays in the next five or ten years thank you yeah I you know I'm curious we want and I'm staring at the sign when I first of all I want to say I think we're having a great conversation around wellness equity and engagement as it

080relates to this calendar and I'm I'm curious you know I think the way that well first of all are we like you said and we have we are we talking about these holidays as a way to recognize them and is that something that's within our purview to recognize these holidays or are we talking about them from a wellness and engagement perspective will we have enough students and staffing in school to handle that but then I wonder to equitably handle this do we talk to those communities and say what is the proper way for us to recognize Diwali in this school district and it sounds like there was some feedback already that just having that on the calendar was an equitable way to recognize that holiday so to get to the point of your question I

081don't feel that there's a consensus around what holidays we have as a no school day because I don't know what is an equitable way to recognize nor should we those on our calendar so I would go back to saying I would like to speak to those communities or have those communities reach out to us um to understand what is the most equitable way to recognize that and then balance that with whether or not we should be doing how do you all feel about that yeah I think we like it okay okay let me do yes just clarifying so recommendation is are we gonna do a vote today no okay no but I wanted to get a little further than just you know kind of a airing what is really important in terms of challenge success

082tech values and things like that Michael I where was what I didn't said but I have to have a person so we issue the survey right what what what was it a survey yes you know we have to redo a survey so look to me that you know I don't know so what about my first questions what it was that's all right that survey we already issued right and then so many parents you know participate it and then they fill out and then how do we want to come take that into the consideration right I already saw that in the in the numerical system how we interpret that in the points but idea square was you know comparing one holiday with another holiday so but um you know mentioned that person you know I I

083do it where was you on that I had to hear that it's a good suggestion good idea but it looked to me that there's a that's another survey right we're going to do right so I don't know so I just I'm confused by so many service we have Murray's our time constraint on when we have to get this calendar food I would say yes in terms of families planning so it's later we've normally done it in November if you move it to January then I don't know I mean it's it's really up to the committee but there are we've sometimes run into situations where people have made plans and for August based on what they thought the calendar was going to be but we can certainly bring some you know I tried to make it

084as comprehensive as I could but we could certainly bring something in writing about how each of the holidays are celebrated we wouldn't be doing another survey I don't think that was Adams requests yeah I think it would be a little ambitious to think that we could get anything done in a week either what either on this in terms of collecting more data from the communities Oh Tessa well that question was answered in part because actually a higher percentage of family said that they would parents would work well in her new year off as a day off of school then did any of the Jewish holidays or good friday for that matter so that question about I mean if you're requesting a day off you're requesting you're you're keeping your children out of school for whatever

085reason no matter how the holiday is celebrated and to me the fact that 10.5% of the respondents said that they would if we had school on the following holiday they would request that day offer keep their kids out of school that's an answer yes that's you know we we would we consider that important enough that it supersedes the need to go to school you know I mean I I think it's crazy to think that we would because it could be a slippery slope of adding holidays all along as our as our community changes and we don't want to continue doing that but I also think it goes back to what Maya said we don't want to start questioning why someone needs a day I mean I came to that broader conclusion because my child had

086surgery and had to miss a week of school you know her teachers have been absolutely fantastic about organizing you know work missed and setting up calendars and ways to make it up and everything else and she's had virtually no stress so if we could have that situation for anybody that needs a day off for whatever reason you know that would be the ideal right that that everybody in the in the district would respect those sort of needs but in terms of the days off for this I don't know I think we do have to have a clear policy I also think that Lunar New Year doesn't fall on a school day next year so okay I'm gonna take Arlene's question and then I don't want to hold the the community members who are here any

087longer and I'll open it up to public participation at that point I'm sorry he's being around discus I I really wanted to act Mary said Mary's are very short but I it really is even CSAT very short if we do all those holiday offs we do not want to mess up our kids schedule and the homework value and all those things I think you said that right no not that way okay anyway so that is one see I'm sorry I really want to you know talk about something you know when Peter says something I I love our teacher av teachers for many many years of being in this district for 12 and 1/2 year that's for sure I I always appreciate their work and everything but however I really have something to say Peter and

088the when the teachers doing some academic challenges with the kids they're not trying to do that something against the wildness Oh something else they're not upset with each other and they can be combined in very good way perfect way so you know so we I cannot I do not understand why we always talk about these two things in the separate it's like a counterpoint for those two things they can be very compact compatibly going together so a lot of kids can really study very very happily and so I really want to bring that here say you know we are looking for some house happy study with the great wellness together it's not like okay community have some academic requests they're gonna be really torture the kids or something that's really I hope you all understand

089me thank you okay who is here for public comment okay so how can have you line up at the microphone if you would we will limit your comments to two minutes please and please state your name and town hi Susan Cohn child from Afton and I want to express my support of continuing to provide the no school days for Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and Good Friday in the school calendar in addition I do support the inclusion of other holidays such as the Chinese New Year Diwali Eid if these are supported by members of their respective communities Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur the holiest days of the year in Judaism Jewish people traditionally observe these holidays by spending most of these days in synagogue services and in the evening holiday dinners with friends and community and

090family as a Jew these are days not only of prayer but a personal reflection and very much of family our students particularly those of the high school levels are far more stressed out than we would all like if school is in session on these days students who wish to observe their traditions will feel the pressure and conflict between observing their holidays being with their family and not wanting to fall behind in classes that are still in session I firmly believe in the importance of providing our students the opportunity to observe religious and cultural days with their families and communities by providing these no school days we show our students that our talk of the importance of wellness and a balance isn't just talk we show them that while school is important there are other parts

091of their lives that also have importance our actions show our commitment and speak far louder than words thank you for your debate good evening Barbara Greene live in Acton last time I was here two years ago I did not say who I was married to because I didn't think it was necessary but my husband heard about it the next day so I will reveal that my husband is a principal in this town so and he is Jewish and he celebrates Jewish holidays just put that out there and Thank You Diane for recognizing that tonight is the night of Hanukkah so I find it a little bit ironic that we're here tonight as a hope room full of Jews not celebrating Hanukkah with their families I won't repeat the comments that were well stated by Susan

092I will highlight though a couple of things that Michael is pointing to the values on the board as equity I understand that equity were talking about equity of holidays but that's not what the equity value of the School Board says equity value means that there's equitable access to the curriculum or to programs so that I would highlight what Maya said which is the Wellness value I think is the most critical value to look at when we're discussing the holidays so yes I - I'm Jewish I choose support the idea of keeping Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur I will state that two years ago when I was here Adams idea was raised actually by the board at that time to study if you will some of the holidays and how they were celebrated because I'm not sure

093I'm not an expert on all the holidays and I'm not sure if all these holidays need to be celebrated with the day off because they have to be in a church or a temple or a mosque or or anything else - the Jewish holidays obviously we are we will be in Temple we will we spend a whole day in Temple particularly on Yom Kippur so and I agree with Maya and the comments that were raised here a little bit early by Susan the problem is that even this year my eighth grade I have a twelfth burn a third my eighth grader one of his teachers to give him homework over Yom Kippur she realized it after the fact and she apologized and basically said something I thought could be extra credit but in this town

094the way this town is and the competitors and the value that we put on our education extra really means you really should do it so I think until we have exactly what Maya suggested the idea that a day of no school for certain groups to observe a holiday really means that they will absolutely not miss anything that's when we could decide whether to remove some of the holidays so thank you for your time hi I'm Christine Marlowe and I am up here to also ask you to continue to keep the High Holidays on the school calendar along with as everybody said you know whatever else needs to be included on the calendar for a diverse community um 20 years ago my husband and I moved to this community and one of the reasons one of

095the deciding factors was that the school at that time had had the High Holidays on the calendar so the High Holidays have been on this calendar for over 20 years 14 years ago my first child started in this school in the school system and this is the eighth time I am here asking you to keep the High Holidays on the school calendar in Foxboro they did get rid of the High Holidays and it was not as success as it was reported during the time that my children were still in the box borough school system and the High Holidays were no longer on this school system they gave homework they gave tests and they allow presentations on my culture as my children were at synagogue celebrating their High Holidays and that was just one school imagine

096what will happen with eight schools the other thing is in high school the stress level is high and I feel like this will not taking the high holidays off of the calendar will not be a good thing it it will be very disruptive for the children the students who were in high school and also as many of us know who have children in high school when a teacher does if if the teacher is sick many times the child gets a free class so now because there no substitute teachers and then that report it said that we're gonna have to have at least twenty substitute teachers on that day so now my child has now decided do I go to services and spend time with my family or do I go to school and maybe some

097of those classes will have teachers and some won't it's not a good picture for for children who are in and I can agree with Angie we should be looking at the working at home on the snow days it doesn't have to be the first one or the second one but maybe on the third one find out some way that we can have school time thank you I'm gonna start just I I have a bit of foggy brain I just was diagnosed with Lyme so I tend to lose your train of thought but I did write a few comments and I do appreciate a lot of the discussion that was here dance can you just say because not everybody knows is Deanna Sullivan I live in Acton I have four children in the district I was

098on school Queeny for six years and I think four of those six years we had this discussion the one thing that we were recommending or I was recommending each year was the school calendar the reason that the calendar is defined by town sorry is because it's a community based calendar so some towns have two days off for the Jewish holiday sometimes don't have any off it's based on your community the survey that we did showed just what Tessa had said you have but ten percent of your population that wants three holidays off the lunar calendar Rosh Hashanah yopo actually for Yom Kippur and Good Friday we have to represent our community we also have to follow the law in regards to what makes sense to have school just the half school and you're not learning

099anything for that day it makes no sense to have school just so that we say it's all equitable it's really it's very hard for the kids to go to school when they have a substitute teacher I did make all these notes not following any of my notes but I did want to bring up one thing I do think that starting early is very helpful it's that after being away from school for about a month and a half having one or two days to acclimate that your teachers get your schedule it's great then you get a few days off then you go back to four days so we start 2 then 4 because you have Monday off now you're kind of in a full week and then you're supposedly in full swing and yes you have

100the holidays but the month of September is intact Meishan month the month of June I don't care what anybody says we all have kids in the school district I don't know how many movies my kids watched last June it was ridiculous so honestly as a school system we need to figure that out because whether we end June 15 24 27 they're watching movies the whole month so it's not a learned month I have a senior this year who's consistently getting assessments I'll be done in a minute who's getting assessments for the biggest thing was again we're talking about wellness and the sorry they get the assessments during when applications are due their biggest assessment week was during the first round of applications so exactly what Maya had said in regards to their there isn't the

101trust factor which is why we end up with these arguments every single year I do think the teachers try the best that they can but there's there's a great deal of difficulty with following the rules and regulations and kids are getting assigned homework when they're not supposed to be assigned homework so sorry good evening my name is Mike Rothbaum I'm the rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim here in Acton around the corner just first a quick note about terminology I know judeo-christian is a term that's in the common vernacular I don't know any judeo-christians I know Christians and I know Jews and talking about the two groups that separate is important because right now the value of Jews and Jewish culture is one of the things that we're talking about in addition to the value of

102all the other cultures that are represented both in this community and thank God on this school committee I'll start big and I know they have two minutes what's the point of Education how long is it going to talk for I got to be quick some people think point of education is to prepare for the workforce or we want to get good grades we want to get good test scores we want to get good boards vibes on the AP test you guys have a great list here of your vision I see beautiful words like that touching my heart like community and cooperative and caring what's the if we have to ask this answer to the fourth circuit why do we want holidays off like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and Diwali and Lunar New Year is

103because we're missing some caring in the world and we're missing some cooperation in the world and we're being told increasingly that different groups of people have to stay separate and fight for their own individual needs and and and it's a zero-sum game and there's only a certain amount so many certain parts of the pie and if I get more you get less and I'm just gonna fight for my own and build up walls and sometimes those walls are literal your educational mission says that you think of education is bigger than that and that respecting people and caring about each other and building community is more important than just preparing for the workforce that's beautiful so go out into the world and say yeah we're gonna take off Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and Diwali and Lunar

104New Year and maybe eat even though there's only a certain percentage of the people who said that they want it because we believe that our educational mission is for human beings to come together and young people to come together with the grown-ups in their lives and say that no matter how small the group is or how much they might be demonized or treated badly we care about them that's part of our vision that's an incredible thing to take out into the world you might have you might face some blowback from that but you'll know that you did the right thing and that you stood for your vision of community caring community and while you'll be able to sleep well at night hi I'm Kara Leandro I live in Acton on alcott Street and I have

105written to this committee and to the superintendent whoever it is it seems to me that I've written at least four times maybe it's only three first of all I am so heartened by every single member of this school committee I feel like this discussion tonight is one of the most thoughtful discussions I've ever seen of this topic and I really have so much respect for all of you and even the diversity of perspectives on this and I feel like each one of you brings something wonderful to this community so thank you I'd like to echo everything everybody else before he said and especially the rabbi but I I do want to say that unfortunately you are in this horrible position of having to decide what is best and most equitable for all the students within

106these confines of 180 days and you do have to sort of look at what is the impact of holding school on certain holidays and giving it off I do think that at least if the last time this was discussed openly there were several people who talked about the way that they like to observe Diwali is they enjoy having their students go to school maybe wearing some traditional clothing and other people felt like the best way to celebrate Lunar New Year was to have you know sort of a special cross-cultural celebration I don't want to second guess what people want and I really appreciate the point that a number of you made about the importance of celebrating with family regardless of whether it involves going to a temple or not but I do think that you

107have to look at ultimately because you are charged with meeting the needs of all these students and providing education for them you do have to look at what the impact will be if you hold school on those days or don't school and you can also look at are there other ways to honor each of our diverse cultures maybe some would like the days off like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur and others would find it better to be in school and finding the way to share their culture and their diversity so I hope that you'll consider looking at all the different ways that you can do it I know this group will come up with a great solution because you are amazing people thank you so much hello and Mike bulla Lessig who I live on

108Maple Street here in act and I'm also a teacher at the junior high school and also the president of the Acton Boxborough Education Association and I'm not here to take a position tonight on whether or not we should have religious holidays off or not but I do want to echo what Peter said I would hate for anyone here tonight to get the impression that teachers in this district are not a hundred percent committed to and behind supporting the Wellness of our students obviously everyone has their own truth in their own stories to tell and their own experiences and I cannot speak for every single teacher in this district but having worked here for 14 years and I haven't gotten to know many of the committed educators here in this district I don't know anyone in

109our system who got into teaching because they really like giving homework they really like showing movies or they really like giving tests everyone I know who teaches here does so because they are deeply and passionately committed to helping students to the Wellness of students to supporting students and so I just hope that that message Peter I appreciate you saying that I hope that message is heard loud and clear that whatever the committee decides to do our teachers are committed to supporting students and being sensitive to a very diverse set of needs and and I really hope that the community will trust teachers to do that I know that Maya mentioned that individual experiences that have led to that trust being damaged but my truth of my experience is that the teachers here care tremendously about

110students and are deeply committed to making sure that students are supported and that students have a well-balanced life inside and outside of school thank you I just want to say in response to what Peter said and what Mike just said when I talked about the students being stressed to even take a day off I don't mean that coming from the teachers I think it comes from our entire community from the parents from other students and and so I think that we all need to support that I think what the district is doing around wellness is fabulous but it goes way outside of the district all right our parents and our other organizations that our students interact with me to be supporting the Wellness as well so the plan moving forward I need a little help

111repeat what I said earlier start start earlier and later I think that's that's just a no-brainer here are there any suggestions a point person or something around like the holidays what I might propose is that we can come back to you with a couple drafts of calendars that I think hopefully incorporate I've been taking what I hope are copious notes I have about five pages of notes on the various commentary but what I'd like to do is maybe come back with a couple calendars that propose starting earlier because it feels like there was consensus for that just sort of start before Labor Day but then also maybe a draft of I'm gonna actually propose that we give you two years worth of calendars so you can see that out over a couple years maybe one

112that had what if we took full days off for those and maybe one if we did half days on some of the holidays what that would look like you know I hear Adams comment and I heard some notic around maybe hearing a little bit more about how different holidays are celebrated in different cultures you know maybe we can see if there's someone who might be interested in coming in to the next meeting and talking a little bit about what that might look like giving us a five minute overview for each you know that that's certainly something but if we can get a couple proposals that reflect some of the dialogue and then we can take a cent of what that looks like on paper so we actually see see how that plays out over a

113year I'm just gonna ask if we could do maybe like four years worth of calendars I mean I know it's what's I'm sorry but I I mean once you kind of have the algorithm that you know you just plug in extra years just so we can kind of you know because I think after next year it gets better yes the only comment I will have is our next meeting is next Thursday you can't do that tonight probably won't be in a packet for tomorrow no no absolutely not absolutely I can certainly take a look at what that would look like yeah and if you can't I mean I don't want definitely no one to put more I want to push back on that a little bit because I I know that you know we cannot

114bind the decisions of future committee members or future committees and I'm wondering if that's starting to tread into that so mmm my thought process wasn't necessarily to adopt four years worth of calendars but simply be able to give you a foreshadow of what that might look like based on the decisions you're going to make for the next year maybe since this seems to be a larger issue that needs a lot of information and I'm sure there's as many ways to celebrate all these holidays as there are families who celebrate them that we could focus on next year's calendar minimizing changes but keep this as a you know item that we keep discussing and becoming more informed on so that you know it's not squished and she warned it too you know this time of year

115every year and we're under the gun to make a decision for the next year and you never really have the time to seek the feedback and information to make a you know fully informed decision yeah I would definitely second with Ginny saying you know a lot of my comments weren't necessarily for actions to be done prior to our next meeting when we would have to vote on this but more about looking at this from a long-term so I like Peters idea of maybe looking at some options looking at what that looks like in the next few years particularly as it gives us some information when we go through the rest of our planning around contract negotiations when we look at any other sort of contractual requirements that we have that don't happen inside this bubble

116of planning a calendar and so you know I I would reiterate my appreciation for the work that was done to get us to this calendar for next year but not necessarily say that we need to have all this work done prior to our voting um I think I'm echoing what was just said in terms of the following next year's calendar the only really difficult decision is the before after Labor Day decision if you will there's only of all the holidays that have been discussed this evening there's only one that's on a school day next year however to speak to going out three or four years the next year there are three the following year there are six so I do think it's worth all the information is in the report other than a better description

117I think of the holidays we do have draft calendars to draft calendars for next year one before Labor Day went after Labor Day they both maintain the holidays that have been discussed this evening as no school days and there's a reasonable end of school time so you know you asked what the timeline is there isn't a deadline if you did it in January I think that would be okay but I don't think there's a lot to decide for next year what I don't want to do is start this over next year and the year after in the year after Adam to your point of having a good committee with representation from the teachers union this is what this was so we had an ongoing discussion yes there are a couple questions around contractual language that

118we could continue to have and come back with some more information about but I think we had very in-depth and thorough and respectful conversations in the subcommittee with good representation so anyway I think you can go ahead and make a decision about next year hopefully next week and then and it sounds like we could just we could maintain what we have had and then I do think there's value in making a longer-term decision about whether you're adding other holidays or not going forward I just want to repeat it what the Adam suggested at which you know were than two it's better for us to understand each you know each holiday and then before we make the decision I just you know I personally thank you for those people talking about how they spend their holidays

119in the temple so this is a good thing to you know to know that they need a know they score at they have for their holidays but I do want to mention another two holidays Chinese New Year holidays in China nationally they they have one week off to ten days off nationally officially and then you can you can learn how important this you know in China for the to the those Chinese people and also the Diwali I know that it's the national holiday in India ah so it's also very important for them as well so I'm not sure about other holidays but other people can tell you know how they spend their holidays so I do want to suggest that we the School Committee understand how the you know each holiday how people spend with

120each holiday how they start where each holiday before make the decisions of all right thank you can I make a suggestion that we if it would be possible to continue the holiday set the calendar subcommittee so that we actually have some kind of a process in place to look at this so we don't have to start over again next year Marie would that be something that we could do yes I think that's exactly what we should do is continue the calendar subcommittee they're going to love me volunteering and come back maybe I don't know February March a poor something like that with more information about the other cultural religious celebrations and in terms of Paul's I appreciate his point that current committees can't bind future committees but this is really I think you can set

121the stage for what will be done in it's almost more of a policy point of view that can be done from the calendar subcommittee to go to you guys yeah I was thinking in terms of making decisions on future but if we're gathering in data I really like that idea and and then so we have it so that whatever committee in the future does need to make the decision that the data is on there I love that idea clarify what calendar you were bringing in the next meeting so I yes so next week I think because of the discussion tonight it makes sense to vote the calendar for next year next week having said that the calendar subcommittee will continue to remain an enemy entity it won't dissolve when we revote it will continue its

122work to formulate a long-term plan for things like including Jewish holidays and setting out some guidelines for some of the calendar work that causes a lot of problems in the community when it's on going like this it's really I think it's a policy it can you know we're not binding we're not voting multiple calendars weird that we can establish a policy around these policy best practices or yes so we will just a vote next year's calendar next week so the next week next meeting we'll have a couple options in terms of which one to vote the the subcommittee submitted options and my understanding is we will to from among those options we won't be receiving any any new calendars to consider so there are two options in the packet one is starting before Labor Day

123the other is starting after Labor Day they both have Rosh Hashanah Yom Kippur and Good Friday as no school days Diwali Lunar New Year and I are not on school days next year so I just I guess I want to get so what I'm hearing is we're going to come back with more information before you make any change of any kind to religious holidays on the calendar just so that folks and the audience aren't thinking they need to come back again next week and that there could be a change in this thinking am i right yes no changes to the current calendar yeah I thought we have a pretty good consensus of inclusive so I thought we're gonna add the ax to Diwali and the lunar year this year then we're not do you got

124there on the weekends oh they're on weekend thank you okay seeing no other discussion we will move on thank you so much everyone for coming out tonight for staying so long okay we move to item 8 the superintendent's preliminary budget and I thought everyone was here for the budget all right so we've almost managed to get about an hour off of our schedule but I'm still going on make sure I'm going through this slowly enough to be clear you know this is the preliminary budget presentation this is the first in a series of presentations that take place for your discussion and what we really look to do is be able to provide you with information progressively regarding the budget and solicit feedback from you along the way answer questions that you might have so that

125as we go from present presentation to presentation we're able to incorporate feedback that you provide along with guidance from the budget subcommittee and come back to you with continuous revisions this is an iterative iterative process where you will see multiple versions versions of a budget come out and as we get closer and closer to budget Saturday and the date that you'll adopt the budget each version will become progressively more detailed the goal tonight is to give you a big broad picture overview of the budget including revenue sources what we anticipate for revenues next year it's also an opportunity for us to talk to you about major program changes that we have and some additional staffing requests that we're proposing and this is again this is the preliminary budget proposal I want to first talk a

126little bit about the budget timeline and what those presentations will entail so tonight again in the preliminary presentation we're going to be talking about budget guidelines and the district goals that we're addressing through this budget we're going to talk through staffing requests key strategic requests that we're making of you preliminary revenues cost-saving strategies that we intend to implement and also the overall budgetary impact and preliminary assessments next week will be a continuation of this presentation simply for time constraints we're going to talk next week much more in depth about our capital project funding proposal that we have for you you're going to hear it little bit about it tonight but I'm going to try and defer some of those broader questions until next meeting when I can actually that more in-depth we felt it was

127a significant enough departure from previous strategies that are warranted its own discussion when we come back in January on the tenth I'll be presenting a line-item budget to you we'll talk about the capital project plan detail about how we're going to address the needs of the district we'll also be talking about school lunch program and athletic budgets on January 26th which is a Saturday that is budget Saturday we'll have a series of panel presentations for you regarding the budget and then we'll come back on February 7th and that will be my final budget recommendations to you public hearing on the proposed budget which is a requirement of the law and also school community we also booked February 13th if the committee feels like you need additional time for deliberation or modifications at the budget proposal

128we have one date built in prior to the deadline that we would need to be able to adopt these for Town Meeting so important dates to be considering I'm backing up because the town meeting dates really dictate the dates that we need to be considering for important ideas Acton town meeting begins on April 1st and Boxborough is begins on May 13th the budget vote deadlines need to be counted backwards from the earliest of these town meetings the final school committee vote then needs to be 45 days prior to the earliest of the town meetings so we are scheduling tentatively right now that 40 February 7th as the public hearing for the budget and when you vote the budget it is e 2/3 of the weighted votes of the full school committee the preliminary budget vote

129will take place on budget Saturday which is to continue to move that budget forward that is 25 days before the final budget deadline and the vote is a majority of members just to clarify that for you I'm going to talk about budget assumptions a little bit differently than the past years I want to talk about some general budget assumptions and then I also want to talk about budget assumptions that we have that are driven by the various goals of the district because I think that's really important to articulate so a few basic present presumed starting points for us enrollment projections are going to be updated and staffing requests will be consistent with district guidelines or on class size we do that every year it's just making sure that you understand that's a consideration for us

130when we play in staffing models all of our employee contract contractual obligations need to be met and just so you know this is the first excuse me this is the final year of the contract with a B ei which is a 1.8 percent cost-of-living increase we have the AFSCME and OSA will negotiate in this current year for adoption into next year in subsequent years budgets we are planning or at least proposing to level fund or open contributions and then this is actually really not a budget consideration but we just want to keep it on everyone's minds that we're going to continue to meet all of our MSB a date deadlines but it's not an operating budget consideration for next year so the assumptions that we have and our guidelines which are driven by goals we

131have three broad goals in the district our first goal is really around social emotional needs of students so some of the guidelines that were shared with budget subcommittee in previous meetings who are one to support our students social and emotional learning so we need to evaluate our staffing levels around that we're also going to review transportation needs so this was the follow-up to last year's bold one number when we proposed the goals we had some follow-up items and the follow-up for this year was to evaluate success and challenges of the first year of the new start times and the busing is a consideration for that so we wanted to review transportation needs and to assess the feasibility of potential budgetary impact of strategies that can give us increased flexibility around busing it's certainly something I

132heard a lot about in my entry process around transportation we all know that there have been issues around the schedule was just too tight to provide a lot of flexibility so we wanted to assess that for goal 2 which is around equity we wanted to continue implementation of our student-centered curriculum coaching model we also want to review the needs we had an increasing number of economically disadvantaged students and we wanted to make sure we were budgeting funds for some field trip waivers so that all students could access our curriculum we also wanted to make sure we're reviewing our elementary school budgets and play it for all elementary schools across the district to budget funds for school supplies so that families are not paying for those students school supplies and then we had another budget guideline

133that we believe addressed both of the first two goals which is that we want to evaluate all of our special education programs to make sure that we have necessary staffing and in particularly this year the focus was on behavioral support across the special education programs our final goal that we were trying to address within this budget was our third goal around capital planning and we wanted to make sure that this continued to be a priority both for a long-term short-term and kind of medium-term I don't know what else other maybe there's another term Gary you probably can give me that term but I called it medium-term and we want to come to you with a funding plan for these capital requests and also with the plan to articulate how we're getting these done over the

134next few years to cut right to the chase the overall budgetary impact what we're proposing to you in the preliminary budget is a 91 million just a little bit north of that 91 million one hundred and eleven thousand three hundred and six dollars to be specific that is a two point almost four million dollar increase from last year the overall percentage increase that we're proposing is two point six nine percent increase the you can see the rest of the slides but just a couple of highlights of that based on the enrollment shifts we are projecting Acton at a two point six eight percent assessment increase and for Foxborough the assessment increase would be two point two zero these are different numbers that were than were presented at the town meetings last year the original enrollment

135projections this is one of the first years or the first year where the enrollment projections really come strongly into play in the allocation of the assessments between the communities we anticipated enrollment and Boxborough going up and it actually decreased over the period of time so when we want to Boxborough Town Meeting last year for example I think it was actually over just over five percent increase that we were talking Boxborough to expect this year that's actually a two point two zero percent so just to kind of keep that in mind I wanted to make sure you understood why that number might be strikingly different the next portion of this presentation I want to talk about revenues I want to talk about cost savings and I also want to talk about some of the cost reduction

136strategies and efficiencies that we're looking for out of this budget to be able to accomplish some of our goals revenues were anticipating based on a $20 per student budget some years we've budgeted 25 this is not an election year there's not a lot at stake in the state to increase education funding so we're starting our budget by going conservative for chapter 78 increases and that's about one hundred and sixty four thousand dollars in transportation aid which is chapter seventy one if you remember the last this current year we're actually we used Enda money to pay for the additional busing the transportation formula is a reimbursement formula so next year the significant increase in transportation aid is largely due to the fact that we're being reimbursed for the increase in cost this year we budgeted one

137hundred and additional one hundred thousand dollars in investment income based on the historical performance that we're seeing over the last year or two that seemed to could have changed today based on the news but we're hoping that that's a consistent number and we believe that will continue to be accurate and then Medicaid revenues were anticipating an additional 50 thousand dollars in revenue so overall our revenues were anticipating increasing about eight hundred and eighty three thousand eight hundred and eighty four thousand dollars health insurance the health insurance trust actually met last week and voted to do a three percent decrease to the health insurance rate that ends up being I think about two hundred seventy thousand dollars and additionally we've been moving a significant number of our employees to HSA plans which I believe I wish

138Murray was here but I believe it's about a thousand dollars per family savings for every family that moves to HSA so we're anticipating about a five hundred thousand dollar decrease in health insurance costs should I say that again because no one has five hundred thousand dollar decreases in health insurance cost so something is really going right into management of that trust we're also undertaking you're going to hear about this a little bit more as I detail some of the budget proposals but some of the cost reduction strategies and efficiencies I want you to be aware of that we're taking we are proposing to hire a floating custodian to reduce the overtime pay that we're currently paying at time and a half so we actually believe that that's going to end up being a total cost

139savings we would like to propose hiring a project manager we currently have about the flattest facilities Department in terms of management that I can imagine we have one head of facilities and there is no one between the head of facilities and the people who actually have to carry out the work so as we embark on you know a sizeable building project which will break ground hopefully within the next year and a half to two years as well as a significant capital plan and continue to maintain the buildings we really need additional support if we don't hire within and have that support internally we're certainly going to be paying the cost for project management so this is we're counting this as an efficiency on our side we also are proposing to restructure some of our stipended

140positions taking place across the Acton elementary and secondary band physicians to propose a full-time band director this is only in the act in schools I want to point that out we're also proposing to shift two of our library assistants into full-time library media specialists which are certified positions that can now count for time on learning for all of our students and provide a higher level of service this will be part of hopefully a multi-year plan we also know that based on enrollment we're going to be reducing 1.0 FTE of kona at 6th grade sections we also continue the health plan redesign migrating migrating our employees over the new plan so those are the strategies we're going to see how those play out in terms of how we built the budget request in a few slides

141so that was our revenues cost-saving strategies the next section of this is going to be expenses and I want to talk about salaries and benefits generally and specific to new staffing positions I want to talk about these new staffing requests and why we're requesting them with you I also want to talk about our budget additions that are not related to staffing requests but there's significant changes and what we're proposing to the budget and then I'd also like to give you a very short overview of what we're going to be coming to you next week in terms of a capital in review so a couple key highlights we are in the third year of the ABA contract and as I said before our office support and custodial contracts are set to expire this year you're going

142to be negotiating those over the course of the spring so we just want you to be prepared for that and that's why some of this data table underneath is incomplete the total increase between Cola and step increases for teachers is roughly 3.8 percent custodians is to be determined but the step increase is 1% for office support staff again colas to be determined but it's a 1 percent increase two steps support staff is currently budgeted at 2.25 percent total increase bus drivers 43.5% total increase and a right now we're carrying 2.5 percent for our planned administrative increases and just so you know on the administrative side the cola for administrators is typically higher because there are no steps for administrators once you become an administrator the only raises you get are tied to the cost-of-living increase

143so additional staffing resources rather than just give you a long list of all of the requests that we have as a district what we wanted to do is provide you a framework for awhile requesting these so I want to go over this because this was really important to us in developing the budget the first category of staffing ain't requests that you're going to see are those that fall into things we call strategic additions which are really continuations of a multi-year plan that you already put in place through prior audits the second of these are additions which support the implementation of the capital plan I'll talk about that more third or the staff necessary to meet the increasing needs of some of our support students supported through I EPS specifically around the areas of social emotional

144learning and I'll talk about that more we also have additions to the budget to support staff we're already in place due to the loss of grant funding around nursing we just simply don't have that grant available to us the staff already exists we need to just carry the salaries in our budget now and then finally we also are achieving some of our additions the reallocation of existing resources and trying to think creatively about how we can be strategic and adding some positions without necessarily having simply cost increases that come before you the net cost of all of our requested additional staff is a three hundred and forty five thousand and this includes two hundred thousand that were planning to offset through our I would district a reduction in our auto district special education tuition line

145item and we'll be back filling that through circuit breaker funds to pay for the other district tuition students we have just over two million dollars it's about two point 1 million dollars in the circuit breaker reserve right now and what we're proposing is to use two hundred thousand to offset out of district tuitions in order to reduce that total allocation and you're going to see why we chose to do it in this manner it because those positions are largely to fund special education positions that will help keep more kids in district as opposed to going out of district in that first category strategic additions and again these are plans that should not be necessarily new to everyone on the committee because they've been talked about before and four before but one is 1.0 Elementary stem

146coach this will bring list as to stem coaches we will have equitable allocation of our coaching positions across all six elementary schools next year because we will have one stem coach will serve two of the school's the second stem coach will serve another two schools and then we're using our coordinating our coach coordinators to cover those the third schools and then next year we come to you with one more request for a stem coach and that will provide that level of equity that was a concern of budget subcommittee that we tried to address through that process and then the 1.0 elementary team chair that is in order to complete the process of having team chairs that allocated is basically 0.5 team chair to every elementary school the second is in support for the capital plan

147we are proposing adding a capital project manager and the total cost for that is about 92 thousand dollars the next one and I don't we I'm sorry we had to see Google slides and it actually had Roman numerals 123 I think in the translation it's all ones but the next area is we have a number of IEP related needs for students that have changed as we've even progressed through the school year and those of you who have been on the committee for a long period of time know that special education needs can change very quickly throughout the year based on either students coming into the district students who might return from out of district placements who it require additional support or in all honesty just changes that can occur in speedy need and we need

148to make sure that we continue to serve all of our students at the level that they need that was obviously an earlier discussion we had but that's very important to us we have a program right now over the Blanchard elementary school that really needs some additional behavioral BCBA support these are incredibly important positions the program is a very large and growing program and in order to continue to provide a level of support and make sure kids can stay in district we really need to add a point for BCBA this current fiscal year that really it just has to happen or else we're going to have some programmatic needs that pop up for us so we're proposing that but we also need to carry it forward in the budget into next year so that it's reflected

149because obviously it's a budget increase for both the school years the cost of this adding this year is already covered in other areas of the budget this year so it's not a budget increase it it's covered within the operating budget the second position that we are proposing adding would be for next fiscal year and that is a 1.0 BCBA and I apologize the point for BCBA position in your packet came out a couple of different ways as we were trying to pin the last budget numbers down this shifted on the day that we were sending out the packet and I know in a couple of places it came out point six so I apologize it really is a point four position that we're planning to add this year and then 1.0 next year we're also

150proposing to add school psychologist which will be 0.6 at the junior high school they've added some programs where some students require additional support in addition they have testing needs that are popping up throughout the school and an increase in testing needs that need to be addressed through this and what we're also proposing is to use point four of that position to continue to support our psychologists at the elementary level and provide some psychological specific coordination to our elementary psychologists psychologists and counselors have different needs psychologists typically have more coordination through the special education department because of testing needs that they have above and beyond what school counselors might need to do so but we want to make sure that the elementary counselors elementary psychologists are receiving that same level of support and then we also

151are proposing to add and again this is a current year current fiscal year ad that will carry forward we had a significant increase in the number of students in our class program and we really need to add a special educator in the current fiscal year to make sure that we have an appropriate student to teacher ratio right now we're above what's appropriate for that class so we want to make sure that that happens current fiscal year it has to be reflected in the budget as you can see a lot of these needs are very specific to students who are supported through IEP s and they really need to happen because of that that's why we're proposing the circuit breaker offset that you see so using offset money on a circuit breaker the net cost of

152all of these positions under special education in next year's budget would be a $60,000 increase the nursing position and again this is a staff member who's been with us for a number of years but has been great fun and we're losing the grant so we're just proposing adopting that into the operating budget for next year that's $50,000 cost increase there and then we have a number of positions that what we're proposing to do is shift how we can allocate resources across the district to achieve some growth so the total of all of this change here is about $9,000 - the difference to the budget one is to add a floating custodian that will end up being a cost savings to the district by the reduction over time the adding a full-time and junior high school

153and elementary school band director this is actually a position it sounds like it's junior high elementary it's actually needed in order to support a high school schedule change when the high school changes its scheduled and goes to a rotating schedule the high school band director can no longer consistently cover the junior high school band program so we really needed to address that need to support the high schools change so proposing doing is hiring a full-time band director but by doing that we can actually reduce all of the stipends that we're paying we can have a full-time director for elementary school in junior high school and in that cost of about eight thousand dollars to the different and that includes health insurance just to be clear we are proposing to reduce the 1.0 Coenen elementary teacher

154that is something that we would be proposing regardless this is simply we don't need the section at Coenen in order to move forward and what we'd like to do is use some of that cost savings to realize some additional support before the high school counseling department we currently have a point nine counselor at the high school who is not seeing a caseload of students instead they're certainly providing a lot of administrative support around MCATs which is the college planning portal and the wellness programs at the high school the thought process is that we can restructure how those platforms are supported by adding a 19-hour system to the high school and then that counselor will be able to actually take on a full-time load of students so they'll basically gain an additional counselor at the high

155school person is already in place it's just shifting areas of responsibility and back filling some of the support behind it and then finally what we're proposing to do is shift right now we have two of our library media assistants we would like to shift that resource to become two full-time library media specialists who are again certified teachers they teach the class it's not just me maintaining libraries this will be a significant benefit to our species over time and this is part of the multi-year plan it's about thirty thousand dollars per staff member so it's a total of sixty thousand dollars added to the budget so all set all of those with the circuit breaker I want to also talk about some of our budgetary additions specifically I chose to focus on those that support the

156work around equity because this is one of our values and it's certainly a goal that we've had I want I like that we are proposing to add to each schools budget a field trip assistance fund we've calculated the field trip assistance fund at $100 per student who qualifies for free and reduced lunch so the allocation will vary by school based on the actress student need of that school that totals fifty seven thousand it's actually one hundred dollars but it's kind of four in the line item all of our elementary student supplies will be included in school budgets starting next year four of the six elementary schools already do it the other two are just planning to include it in their operating budgets there's no increase to the budget in order to do that but we

157want to highlight it finally what we're proposing to do not finally but we're also proposing adding a wraparound services contract what we see and what we heard from our elementary principals is that our counselors are spending a lot of time working to connect families within the community to outside support services and it's absolutely one of the most significant things they can have in terms of providing benefit to students and Families because not all worker and social-emotional needs can take place in the school day and we need a whole variety of community services accessible to our families it takes a significant amount of time to do that work if we tried to bring this as a position in house it would probably take us one to two years to build the capacity and network for someone

158internal to be able to have the network to be able to communicate with all the different professional services around what we're proposing is to contact through a heisman Valley collaborative in order to provide this service and it's really a family Support Specialist so we would have and I want to explain this a little bit more so you have a sense of it Family Support Specialist is someone who we would have I believe it's 18 to 20 families who can be serviced through this family Support Specialist at any given time so that we need to be some prioritization based on the amount that we're able to do in the contract but we would coordinate families with the highest needs to be able to work with this and it's one family phased out of that program another

159family could be brought in so it's not just about 18 to 20 families over the course of a year it's actually about kind of floating back and forth but this is absolutely a critical critical critical to the budget I think and then finally this is something we've been working on since the beginning of the summer but we are working with the anti-defamation league and planning to bring in the world of difference program to the high school next year they're very very excited about undertaking that we just had a meeting with ADL and the high school administration and they were you know immediately on board with that so the $20,000 here is in the budget in order to support the stipends needed for program coordinators and also first year costs of providing training for the high

160school students the program coordinators and the faculty and they'll actually also do some community presentation as well that's around equity in terms of other additions we're proposing about three hundred and sixty-five thousand dollars in other additions to the budget the first one we right now I have one hundred and eighty thousand dollars reserved pending the results of a transportation assessment I chose to have done we contracted with GPI to assess our transportation system to provide us additional feedback if we could improve our bus route times to either 40 minutes or 35 minutes as the maximum ride time what would it take to do that we know based on our experience hiring bus drivers we we're not going to be able to hire and manage five additional bus drivers or six additional bus drivers but what

161we're budgeting for is to try and give us enough leeway that if we could hire under three additional bus drivers what are the improvements we could make I was hoping that I could have met with GPI prior to tonight's meeting to have a better number unfortunately that meeting takes place tomorrow which is not helpful tonight but we will certainly give you more information about the results of that assessment because we move forward but I wanted to highlight that we recognize the need within the community if you wanted to make sure we preserve funds finally we have a number of activity stipends that we're proposing as well the athletic assistant coaches which is about $27,000 is actually the continuation of a three-year plan this is the third in a three-year plan to add the assistant coaches

162to our varsity sports so this again is not a new item it's just a continuation we also want to hire a high school theater tech the current person who does the theater tech for everything that goes on at the high school is also the same person who does all of our technology infrastructure and set up all of our microphones for tonight unfortunately we're getting to a point with usage where we run the risk of burning staff out if we continue to try and have someone perform a full-time job and do all of the outside work so what we're proposing is having money so we can hire a second person to do the theater tech inside of the job and staff member with all these requests we also are proposing adding five thousand dollars to the

163budget to cover the cost of the junior high school musical director currently those costs are covered through show revenues but what's happening is it's really limiting the repertoire that the junior high school drama program can do they basically are constrained to doing a Disney musical every year just to bring it enough people into the show they'd like to expand their repertoire a little but unfortunately without you know having a position to cover it they're they're constrained just to thinking about how many seats can we sell for a show so this is to support that and then finally we have significant interest at the high school for a fencing program and while it will be largely funded through user fees there's probably about a $2,500 well twenty three hundred and fourteen dollar difference that we would

164need to add to the budget to support that it's a great reflection of the diversity of the community any different interests that our students are showing in programs so have included that here capital program I'm going to give you the very brief overview probably enough that you're going to want to ask more questions which I'm hoping to defer till next week the right now we're proposing is that the district allocate twenty million dollars over the next twelve years to capital funding the way we'd like to do that is and this number is still pending some of the work of the capital subcommittee but right now what we're approximating is to proposal about a 7.5 million dollar bond that will be funded within the districts operating budget this is not seeking additional definitely from either community

165it is funded within the school districts operating budget that will give us initial 7.5 million dollars that would also give us about 10 million dollars over the first two years of this 12-year plan in order to address our highest priority needs the way that that would be broken down we're also proposing to increase our next year operating budget by 250,000 in capital so instead of 1 million allocation it goes to a 1.25 million dollar allocation the following year FY 21 we're proposing an additional thousand increase the capital to bring it to 1.5 million and then in years 3 through 12 of this plan we're proposing to continue to increase capital by two and a half percent per year as a target and that would actually fund the standard I believe in the industry is to

166have about 1% of your building assets in capital every year for improvements currently our assessed value for buildings is about eighty two million dollars however we're about to bring a major elementary school on board that could easily double that for the assessed value at the end of this plan and the spreadsheet is actually already in your packet so you can see it will actually have just over 1% allocated capital so we'd have over 120 million dollars a year allocated to calculate if we can follow this plan religiously acceptable second or sorry so 10 million available in the first two years of the plan we would have an additional 8 million dollars available for capital projects and years 3 through 12 of the plans or averaging about $800,000 a year although that is an increasing sliding

167scale over those years and then we would also be paying about 2 million dollars in interest so we will present more details next Thursday we're coming to the homestretch here I want to talk a little bit about EE D and I want to talk about circuit breaker so for AMD we're proposing using four hundred and fifty thousand dollars out of B and D to supplement next year's budget 250 thousand dollars would be representative of the increase to capital that I just laid out and another two hundred thousand dollars would be to reduce the assessments to the member communities and that is it's been a standard practice in your budget for the last few years our current certified en D balance if you're keeping track is 4.1 million so actually at four point seven percent of

168the 5% cap on the in-game circuit breaker revenue I already talked about that would be an additional $200,000 to offset out of Duras district tuition high notes oh and I think I already said it but again our current circuit breaker reserve is 2.1 million and then just to come back to the overall slide this adds up it's a two point six nine percent increase overall to the operating budget two point six eight for the assessment to act in two point two oh two the assessment for box broke and again these are preliminary numbers and subject to change as we learn more you gather more information so what that's it I'm happy to take questions thank you for that presentation I was happy to see the professional librarian status for two of our library assistants so

169I I guess the increase of sick I think it was six DK is because they already have an existing salary that you would just that's allocated for two assistants I guess I had two questions one would you hire anew or propose that those assistants go to school and second how do you choose which schools to start with I'm just curious I think Murray's going to address that so yeah it's a little bit confusing in that we currently have full-time assistants as our library media staffing in each of our schools over the last few years we've lost three or four long time full-time library media assistants to other districts as they've gotten certified to be certified librarians so we want to move in this direction we're not being sort of quick or we haven't decided which

170schools so each of the principal's has just spoken to their current library media assistant some of them are in process of becoming certified others are thinking about it so we want to accomplish it over the next two or three years we want to start the funding source whether it will be the same people who are currently in there or not some we don't know it sort of depends on their career path and and that kind of thing so we want to start it we want to sort of put the seed out there and over the next two to three years so we've we've told them all that we want to move in this direction we absolutely think it's the best thing to do instructionally and for the students we are one of the only districts

171anywhere that does not have certified library media assistance in each elementary I'm sorry library media specialists sorry certified in each school so we'll see how the hiring process works out but we haven't decided which schools and so each of the principals have spoken to the current staffing and are having conversations about what their plans are over the next couple years that's where we are right now so I'm just delighted to hear about the health insurance but it seems too good to be true I just want you to just say it again just to make sure I'll I'll make sure that we're corroborating that can you he just wants to make sure that we're what we're saying about health insurance really is accurate what he didn't say is this is his first year but it's my

172second this makes two years in a row last year the reduction was 5% this year the perspective they've and they voted earlier this year than they did last year and the rate reduction is 3% if you remember last year the impact was about the same amount of dollars as this year so you say well how does 3% equate to the same amount of dollars there's some savings from I actually I think Peter did discuss this there's some savings built in this year from migration to the HSAs that that carries forward into the savings next year but this makes two years in a row the health insurance trust has been very well managed and has a very sizable reserve from which they're able to offer this rate relief and it's really unprecedented I just want to

173add I actually think as a member of the health insurance trust it's been actually managed to conservatively in the past and the rates at times went up too high because there is a great deal of fluctuation and in any year you could see if either a net profit of a million dollars or a net loss of a million dollars when it's a loss of a million dollars it's hard you get nervous so it's been very conservative we have too much money in the reserve and by the agreement of the trust we're actually required to take action because we were only supposed to have up to 30 percent so that's why we've taken action both these years and even with a 5% reduction because of the plan adjustments we're not going to lose that much this

174year so we were aggressive again with another 3% reduction so this is the first year that for me to participate in this budget process can you because in Los the school tool I cannot speak this way yet I we were in one of the class I don't even remember what class is it and I remember that but that I remember that was a high school class and he was very crowded and it was saying that the number is pretty high and but the teacher was very experienced so the teacher was able to handle because I am the question I'm asking is how we decided which areas that we're going to increase the staff and I noticed that because we're are kotas here is wellness I noticed there is thought like academic caught teachers added so

175but I remember the costs I think the math class that we when we at the school tour and the the classroom was pretty big so was there any needed for the academic area for their school for the high school sure so I actually I think the class we were in was a physics class it was an AP physics class and so at the high school level course requests can fluctuate from year to year and there's always kind of a breaking point that the high school will need to look at when creating a schedule and oftentimes they will make a determination so sometimes I think there were maybe 31 students in that physics class and they have the staffing but what happens is there's they are sometimes forced to choose between their having tens of fifteen

176students and having two sections and then maybe having other areas where it might go to 27 or they might combine some of those what we call oftentimes either singleton classes or doubles in a high school schedule they might combine those based on the need in a given year but it's something that when they look at the overall staffing increase that they couldn't just add a teacher to address that one need it just happens to come up so it's not really a clean process in a high school schedule I have a sense of that because I I built schedules for ten years as I as a high school administrator so there's always going to be some isolated sections within a high school that end up being large because there's a number of requests that you just

177can't justify having 12 to 15 students in a class and it's just not right so that's really the sense the high school felt that moving into next year they had adequate academic staffing but what they really needed was counseling support I want to say I think this is an excellent budget I was so excited when I saw this I think it addresses a lot of the needs that we've been hearing from principals and the requests that the school committee has been making to increase in certain areas I think it's really respectful of all of that and yet you did it with a less than three percent increase for both towns I think that's fabulous I also want to add that wraparound services contract so I do work I do research on mental health and substance

178abuse issues and for 28 years one of the consistent things I'm seeing is outcomes are better when people have someone to help them case manage when an individual or a family is in crisis and they need health care mental health care other social service needs to figure out how to navigate a complex and fragmented sis that's the wrong time and to have an expert who can do this I think it's a really great thing and a great addition to our budget one question I would ask is for the three bus drivers are there three more buses yes okay I thought there would be better yeah that's a great question the 180,000 were proposing would cover the cost of bus drivers related insurance licensing buses everything I just wanted to echo Mary's comment about I very

179much appreciate that we're getting the preliminary review now it kind of gives us the heads-up I also like that it is kind of shoring up those areas that we've been the needed support I like the idea of the librarian because what what I've heard from someone who works in another district there's wonderful work going on with with the librarians and and I was very excited to to see that so the other the other piece that I liked seeing in this budget what's the CBC BA and I think if you're in that search if you can find someone with speech and language pathology background as well that might be helpful to keep in the back of mine um this is another if I have the budget 101 but properly won't have this question but in the

180budgetary expense highlights table there is the 1.8 percent 2.0 percent on that table is it most defining is it all defined in the contract is there anyone anything out there that's not that's decided by the school the only thing that's non contractual obligation is the administrator salary increase and the cola excuse me no I'm sorry sorry um there's one top three rows are union contracts the bottom three rows are non union contracts so they are decided by the district thank you so then the final question is can you kind of elaborate how the number is decided the non-contractual numbers yeah so we kept 1.75 percent for most of our non-union employees there are steps involved in those contracts the bus drivers as you know we're doing everything we can to attract bus drivers so we

181made that number a little bit higher and then administrators have no steps at all so that was meant to stay competitive just follow it is that do you use like an inflation number or do you use any number two for the comparison or anything any data to to number together yep both when we're negotiating and in our annual budgets we're looking at comparing to other districts we're comparing salaries by position as well as inflation is used quite a bit in negotiations so yes and we also are looking for parity among employees okay thank you Peter they will move on to item 9 the school building project of abatement okay so Peter gave you some of our updates but we held two forums I can't remember the dates but the 27th and 29th of November thank

182you we had excellent attendance at them I'd say we had around 60 people at each one it was a very engaged audience they asked a lot of good questions and gave a lot of good feedback there was a strong sentiment for locating the new school building on the Gates property many of the people in the audience were parents of the Douglas school although there was some some people who preferred the Conant site there were traffic concerns expressed for both of the sites and definitely something we'll be looking at further the second night one of the teachers brought about ten of her students and they asked great questions but I have to share my favorite question one student asked if when the douglas school is relocated will the teachers get to move there too or will

183they lose their jobs I thought that was so beautiful because that like here the student is caring and there were some handwritten comments or some notes they were doing and one of the students a different student wrote I I want my teachers to come with me and so they were so it was just beautiful so we are currently doing a survey there's a flyer out there to do the survey we handed it out at acting special Town Meeting it's on our Facebook site our Twitter site it's on our website under the school building page as of this evening we had 732 responses I'm a very competitive person though so I'm going to try to beat the calendar survey and we can get up close to 2,000 and so we will be sharing those results out

184on the December 12th meeting with the school building committee and as Peter said we have meeting on the 12th and on the 19th and the goal is on the 19th for the school building committee to vote which site we want to be located on thank you and I just want to add that next week is our opportunity to weigh in on the school building site construction site options so the summer to December 19th it's a subcommittee boat or it's a school committee well we certainly do want the school committee members to weigh in at next week's meeting and certainly as parents you should fill out the survey um I think you have you know valid viewpoints as parents in the district as well so please do the survey it'll increase my numbers No seeing no

185other hands up we'll move on to item 10 we're looking for your focus evening on the student activities it counts Dave did you want to address the student activities yep thank you you have a memo in your packet from me about authorizing student activities at the high school the junior high school and Blanchard Elementary those are the three schools at which we have Student Activity funds the policy suggests that you should approve each of the activities in the that are held at those schools and so I've I've included in the memo suggested vote to accomplish that do I hear a motion I moved to approve the accompanied lists of proposed Student Activity funds for Blanchard Memorial School RJ gray junior high school and acton-boxborough Regional High School each as recommended by the respective building principals

186as the officially recognized clubs teams and other organized student activities for the 2018-2019 school year all in favor opposed abstentions thank you thank you item 11 we have a recommendation to approve a donation from Littleton electric light and water department to the Blanchard Memorial School move to approve with gratitude and I'll just say this is for 15 iPads it's in the amount of $5,000 all in favor opposed abstentions motion passes okay item 12 subcommittee member reports policy so policy was not able to meet the latinus last week but we are planning a meeting on December the 11th at 4:30 and hopefully we'll come back to our next meeting with something and then I'll do budget budget you saw we we talked basically about what Peter presented tonight so no new information there unit capital improvement

187committee met on the 29th of November and discussed the funding strategy that Peter alluded to this evening that we will share more detail in our next meeting Paul acting leadership group group we met twice since we've been at school committee I think since the last school committee meeting first first was to discuss an open meeting law complaint that was discussed and Town Manager was going to take the point on the spots the other Ald meeting was more recent and forgetting the date but we talk more about use of reserves in that kind of stuff okay that wraps it up for this evening I'll draw your attention to the fYI briefly of their basic rights and special education workshop Monday December 10th at 7:00 at the RJ grade library and an open meeting law training and

188I know it's not the first thing on everybody's mind but really really important to do Tuesday December 18th at 4:30 and again at 6:30 p.m. in Acton Town Hall room 204 Amy I have a one I forgot to say something the Act the fincon is there anyone that can go to the fin comm meeting on Tuesday it's the winter chorus concert and my son is in it so if there's anyone that can attend that meeting please let me know it's next Tuesday the 11th I think yep and you can you go to that or are you wondering okay so can someone get back to you right yeah okay all right and I just want to recover from being completely neglectful in thanking you know gave verdolino and Marie all Terry and helping to put this

189budget together as well as every other central office administrator and school principal this is hours and hours and hours of time that people spend putting this budget together a lot of really productive deliberations but in particular just huge thanks to Dave and really incredible thanks to Marie this was my first budget presentation here in the district and I certainly would not have been able to put that together without them so thank you and I apologize for not having done that first I made two and I knew I was going to forget something so sorry okay our next meeting is on December 13th its back at the junior high school library okay it's one everybody to be clear on that okay yeah I like the church to look do I hear a motion to adjourn I

190just want to add the aapko meeting a little bit because I attended after meeting and in there is this is this the blizzard bags yes okay so I mean I appreciate you wanting to share I think we've heard a lot about ed CO and the blizzard bags during the the president the previous presentation I'm only when the any one sentence which is a lot of districts are looking into this right now just won't that okay thank you do I hear a motion to adjourn okay all in favor okay good night everyone