Acton Boxborough Regional School Committee Meeting 8/27/2020

001of a quorum i call the acton-boxborough regional school committee to order this meeting is being conducted both in person and remotely via zoom webinar members evelyn abaya isa diane baum kira cook yemen wang and amy christian murthy are participating via zoom and the remaining five one two three four five five school committee members are in person um for our remote participation policy be dja public participation is possible via the zoom link or call-in phone number our school committee meetings are also live streamed on actin tv's youtube channel although public participation is not possible with that option the links and phone number are found on the posted agenda on the abschools.org calendar this meeting is also being recorded and will be posted on actin tv's website at actontv.org for our remote policy all votes will be

002done by roll call i will call each member's name and they will state how they vote thank you for joining us just a note about how we will conduct discussions i'll look around the room and note the members in the room that would wish to participate by asking questions or comments and then adam has kindly volunteered to help me manage the hands raised of our remote members and we will participate that way and then if there happened to be any um any um community members that would like to participate then they will be invited to after that so um welcome back everyone this would ordinarily be like our first meeting of the school year um it doesn't really feel like the school year ended as i think this might be the fifth meeting that i've

003chaired in this space at least so i just want to echo some of the sentiments that were expressed in the remarks at opening day those of you that were lucky enough to be able to watch as peter and some of our other administrators spoke to the teachers on their first day of professional learning um i just want to i just want to stress um patience you know over the last couple of weeks i've been attending two questions and things on on facebook and you know people calling me and friends wanting to know things and the truth is is that this is this is hard and this is um something that no one else has ever done no one that is on the school committee has ever done this none of the administration has ever done

004this none of our teachers have ever done this and the truth is that the ways in which we like to communicate in the past where we send everything out all at once and everyone gets the same information on the same day just isn't isn't able to happen now because things are constantly changing and so you know a good example is is chromebook pickup so the high school was informed of when they might pick up but elementary schools had not been informed yet so it's coming people be patient and i just also want to note that this is not something that any of us uh signed up for so um it was it was noted by someone on facebook when there was a complaint about something that i and others signed up for this by becoming

005school committee members so that's not true none of us signed up to do this although we are all willing and able to do it the conditions under which we're doing it are not really what we signed up for teachers signed up to teach of course but they didn't sign up to teach in the ways that they're being asked to teach now and administrators certainly get paid to do full-time jobs but none of them signed up to do this either and not for the amount of time that it's taking and not for the endless hours and weekends and time during vacation so i just wanted to stress that everyone here is willing and excited to get the school year started but it is not how any of us signed up for or expected and so i

006hope that everyone is willing to grant a little bit of patience and appreciation for the work that is being done so this is the part of our meeting where we have public participation please use the hand raise feature to participate in the meeting do not use the chat feature according to our policy bedh members of the public may speak up for up to three minutes on items not included on the agenda comments regarding items that are on the agenda should be made during that part of the meeting typically the committee and administration will not respond to comments during public participation is there anyone who would like to comment all right so item 3.1 is approval of the acton-boxborough regional school committee meeting minutes of 7 23 and 8-5 oh sorry 8-5 is the next meeting

007is that what that means sorry of 7 23. we have meetings um of our meeting of july 23rd to approve the minutes of august 5th will be done at the next meeting i will take a motion if there is one i move to approve the minutes of july 23rd second is there any discussion anybody raising their hand online nope all right we'll do a roll call vote adam yes john yes nora ginny yes kira yes amy yes evelyn yes diane yes yevin yes and me yes all right those are approved unanimously and now i will turn it over to peter for the school opening update all right well good evening everyone and um you know thank you tessa you know we're continuing to plan for you know the new school year and you know just

008to echo tessa's remarks one of the comments i made to our faculty is that you know time has seemingly become warped over the last six months and what seems like can change on a daily basis actually you know um is measured in months and and vice versa and you know the comment i made is you know we're so warped in our view of time right now that we're talking about hybrid and remote learning like they're actually just old friends of ours and they've been around for years and you know the bottom line is this is actually we're about to do something that has never been done in education before and so you know we know we have planned extensively for that return we know our educators have worked tirelessly to prepare themselves for that transition

009but when we welcome students back it's going to be the first time that we've ever done something like this and so you know we understand and i think the one thing that the word that comes to mind i think that that tessa was talking to was we want to all act with grace um through this period because regardless of what it looks like you know the one thing we can continue to do is think about how we interact with each other and that's just so important because everyone is working hard our teachers are working hard our staff is working hard to prepare buildings for them our leaders are working hard to make sure that everything is ready to go and coordinated our families are working incredibly hard right now and but what strikes me is

010we all tend to work in the bubble that we know and we sometimes don't appreciate fully everyone else's bubble because we don't see it we don't live it on a daily basis and so i think this idea of being graceful and acting with grace is just so important as we approach this because you know we all have a heightened level of anxiety right now about what the beginning of school looks like and it ranges from anxious to fearful to some people just outright terrified and we need to understand as we interact with each other that people come at it with different emotions and our goal that we've talked about as schools is to meet people where they're at and so i think that's just a good community message to be sending i do have a

011few updates for you and i'm going to share my screen and i apologize because i have to work off of a district computer and not my own so um it's sometimes not quite as smooth as i want and we will be sharing this update with families tomorrow but i just wanted to let you know of a few things i'm going to talk a little bit about some return to school and work flowcharts that our nurses have helped create based on deci and dph guidance some metrics for monitoring public health data to ensure [Music] that we're really thinking deeply about what community spread of the virus looks like in terms of our readiness to have schools open we're going to talk about just briefly the in-person and remote program enrollment update some timelines for releasing student

012schedules and class lists athletics some initial information and then welcoming educators back and what we've been doing so the first thing i want to share and i just have to thank our nurses our nurses have been incredible throughout the summer our school nurses are on typical school year contracts like all educators but all of our nurses have been meeting weekly throughout the entire summer just to make sure that they're prepared to support everyone else who comes back in the fall so i'm very grateful to don i'm very grateful to our nurse leaders and i'm very grateful to our nurses for doing that but they essentially went through all of the desi guidance and boiled it down into some flow charts for how we need to respond to various incidents of covet in our schools so

013this is all linked in our transition to school website now but what you can really see and actually i think i have them up already this is the general flow chart just talking about what happens um when there's a close contact with the confirmed case what happens um if you have like you know cold like or flu-like symptoms but you go to the doctor and you're actually diagnosed as having the flu when it's not covered what do you need to do symptoms and a positive test result symptoms in a negative test result and then symptoms but not tested for covid so someone never got a test what are the procedures so that's all on our website now and people can access that and then there are also detailed flowcharts for both students and staff for

014various cases so if i'm symptomatic but i've never had contact with a confirmed case i'm symptomatic and i've had close contact or i've had close contact but i don't have symptoms so these are on our website these are essentially the procedures that we'll be following as a school district as we come into next year and we just want to make sure that it's in an easily digestible format for our community the other piece that i want to show you is we have been working hard behind the scenes to develop some community health metrics to support our in-person instruction and this is something that we have done with very close collaboration with our local health departments and it was also based on some of the state guidance that came out so we've been working on this

015for several weeks behind the scenes but we needed to model it and pilot it and then work back and forth with our health departments to make sure that it was showing the right way and we had the right metrics so we're now ready to release this our health department here knows that it's going out and this is now posted on our website but we ran sample reports for august 20th and august 27th the process for this essentially is that the state releases its statewide report on what every wednesday by 4 o'clock p.m we will then take that information process it for acton and boxborough specifically and also for middlesex county pull those numbers out and then republish them as our district specific metrics and we will publish this report every week on thursday so that

016the community knows what we're looking at to give you a sample this was the most recent report so this was our report from today and this is based on information released by the state yesterday i will say last week there was a little um kerfuffle because the state published data and then within 24 hours they changed their data because they saw some errors so it is prone to errors every once in a while this is new for everyone including the state and so you know we we have to understand some things may shift a little but essentially we're going to look at two primary metrics we are looking at something called the average daily incidence rate per 100 000 residents and this is um an important indicator and it's the most basic indicator the state

017points to in terms of a community's readiness to open this took me a little bit of time to really dig into and make sure i understood correctly but when we talk about average daily incidents basically what they're doing is they're looking at all of the incidents in a community um and over a two-week period so it's a 14-day period and then they're doing an average daily rate but then it's based on a hundred thousand residents so just to put that in perspective um there's a maximum threshold the state has looked at at around eight um cases average daily cases per 100 000 residents that would mean that over a two-week period in acton we'd have somewhere between 22 and 23 cases in that two-week period um just to to give a little bit of perspective

018we are nowhere near that right now we have seen a little bit of an uptick in acton in the last week or so right now the average daily cases in actin are at 3.3 and in boxborough they've had multiple weeks now of zero cases so the that's clearly a very strong indicator for boxborough the other indicator that we looked at was out of johns hopkins university and it's the percent positivity and essentially by looking at percent positivity you can get a general sense of how many cases in a community aren't being caught through testing so obviously if you have you know low positivity like one percent or under there are generally also very few cases in your community um that are floating out there that haven't been caught but if you have a higher percent

019positivity then you have to start to become concerned that there are now many more cases within the community that are being picked up through testing so um johns hopkins and i believe it's the who have both agreed on a kind of a percent positivity rate of about five percent for um regions that should be considering opening things such as schools so we are looking for a percent positivity rate below five percent um right now in acton we're just barely over one percent and in boxborough it's zero percent because there are no cases um we have had some questions like what happens if you know is it automatic that if we go into the red so this actual data right here the where maximum threshold of less than eight cases per day what happens if we

020go into the red for a day and we exceed that threshold does that mean we're automatically closed the answer is nothing can be automatic in this era and when i was talking to a community member about this i gave an example that we may go and have an average daily rate of you know greater than eight but when we talk to the board of health we may learn that that's centered in a nursing home in the town and that you know the vast majority of cases in the community are in that cluster that cluster actually has no bearing on the safety of the schools and so we would look at that differently so you know there's no guarantee that that's the case and there's no 100 percent answer but this these are two good leading

021indicators that are widely agreed upon by most epidemiologists as uh ready to open school we will also look at middlesex county um in the larger perspective as we start to look at this um as we start to look at these metrics and we're looking for the same thresholds but you know middlesex county right now is three in terms of average daily cases per 100 000 residents and percent positivity is under one percent middlesex county so regionally the metrics are about as good as they get i did have a question today that came in from a parent saying i've seen other school districts who are saying they're starting remote or even starting remote and then phasing in in-person learning in general and you know why aren't we thinking about that my response was a everything i've

022heard in the public health sector has actually predicted that the metrics are actually will probably become less favorable as time goes on particularly as we approach winter and that the rates are so low right now in our communities and in the region that they probably won't get much better it's going to be really hard to beat what we're seeing right now in the foreseeable future and so if we aren't opening our schools now what would you point to that would say it now all of a sudden becomes safe to open so i think that's something that we've looked at and thought deeply about but we do have favorable numbers now we're in a good place but these will be published on our website each thursday so people know where to find them and they are

023the the last two weeks of data is there now and then we'll just continue to update it the next piece um this will be a quick update um enrollment updates i just wanted to give you some of the most recent numbers so since we originally asked families to pick one of the two programs we've had a number of families who have come to us and said look there's some changed circumstance within my household and i'd like to try and change so far we've been able to accommodate that and we've been able to make changes between in-person or remote programs for pretty much every family that's come to us over the last couple days that we actually had to pause that because our schools are now finalizing all of their schedules and class lists so we've

024put a pause on changing programs for right now once we release schedules we'll be able to start making some adjustments again to people's program selection but once that happens it has to be within reasonable class sizes we can't put 40 students in a remote learning class we can't put 35 students at a remote learning class because the class is no longer effective for them similarly we can't put you know 15 students in one of our cohorts of hybrid learning because it's just not safe so we are going to be constrained when we open up we're keeping kind of a wait list right now so we can keep track of who's requesting changes and we will do the best we can to meet as many of our families needs as possible that's always been our goal

025right all right along in terms of overall enrollment it has shifted a little bit i thought this would just be interesting to see and keep watch over but we have 1741 students planning to come back in person which is about 69 percent of our population and we are now at 783 students planning to be remote next year which is 31 percent of that population so the what's that in elementary school only at the junior high school level 641 students or 77 of the population is coming back in person and 23 or 191 students will be remote and then at the high school uh just over 1500 students in person and 260 students remote which is about an 85-15 split on those so you have a sense um tessa i know you talked earlier about you

026know some frustrations that um you know maybe the high school released its chromebook information um before the you know elementary schools did the good news is we'll be able to equally disappoint in the opposite direction uh with student schedules because we have a staggered schedule rollout so actually tomorrow the high school will actually be sharing student schedules for students who selected the remote only option the high school felt it very very important to preview student schedules with remote students because there are some courses that they just can't run in the remote environment and they wanted to make sure they that families knew about that and students knew about it so that if they wanted to make a change to in person they had an opportunity to do that before schedules for in-person learning were finalized

027so remote only high school students will see schedules tomorrow september 1st the junior high school team placements will be available in the powerschool portal on september 2nd elementary class placements will be available in power school and then september 3rd next friday high school schedules for students in the hybrid in-person program will also be available in the portal and just as a reminder to everyone our first day of school is the 14th of september we do just continue to remind everyone that the fastest way to have questions answered is by using that communication map that we have published on the transition website and our district website athletics so as you likely have heard through different media the state published some athletic guidelines over the course of two days august 17th and 18th on august 17th the

028governor's office released the state department of energy and environmental affairs guidance around athletics and that was the guidance that classified athletics into either low moderate or high risk activities and that's really based on the level of contact in each athletic program so football wrestling ice hockey those would all be in cheerleading are all considered high risk athletics that was followed one day later by deci and the department of public health which had a little bit more guidance and the second set of guidance focused on you know public health metrics for districts being able to participate in sports so for example if a district was a red district or had that really high incidence rate of cases within the community they are ineligible to have their kids play sports for the fall um so that's a

029really important factor uh the other but anyone who is in the yellow green or white categories are allowed to participate the other piece that came out in that guidance that i highlighted in the memo was that if the district were to start fully remote it would take a separate vote of the school committee to allow the high school to participate in athletics that really does not apply to us because we are planning an in-person return so there's no school committee vote required i just wanted to make sure that we were clear on that and i reread the guidance about seven times to make sure i didn't miss something there's still more to be determined on athletics though because the state asso athletic association really left a lot of how to work through this to the

030individual leagues that happen so we're a member of the dual county league tomorrow i have a meeting with all of the superintendents principals and athletic directors from everywhere in the dual county league and we really need to meet and look at the proposal from athletic directors of how they want to manage what a season might look like what the sports might look like and in all honesty we're also waiting for the state athletic association to release the rules of play because a lot of the rules of play for some of these moderate sports have to be modified significantly so for example soccer and i know this because my son's a soccer player they will not allow things like corner kicks because it make you know during a corner kick and soccer all the players are

031bunched up in the box grabbing pushing things like that they are not allowing headers you can't kick the ball into the box so there's just a lot of modifications that are going to happen for some of these sports so we haven't seen those yet so we really need to take a look on a sport by sport basis with our principals and athletic directors to make sure that we're all so comfortable with how things will be modified to make sure it is the safest possible environment for our students so we'll meet tomorrow we will push out more information to our families next week and i'll have more of an update about exactly what we're doing with athletics probably for next thursday's meeting and then finally you know we mentioned this before but we did welcome our

032educators back i think a lot of our educators felt very differently and had a lot of conflicting feelings about what the return to school looks like you know one of the things and i know all of our leadership talked about this but the thing we probably look forward to most every year is actually seeing people it's an opportunity to shake hands with people people give each other hugs things like that and you know if you try to do that now you know a you're not allowed to do it and b you'd hit your head on the computer screen so we just can't have that many people in a room together and so that's really it's just a very very different feel and i think that struck everybody differently we also know that as people come

033back some people are just ready to take on that challenge and feel comfortable in the environment and everything else and then other people are really scared about what it looks like and unsure of themselves so it's going to take some time and adjustment for everyone to get you know kind of those sea legs back and feel comfortable back in the environment just to give you a little bit of a preview we're going to come back next week and actually do a presentation for the committee on the teaching and learning side of what we've been focused on this summer you know i know so much has been operational we really haven't had an opportunity to talk about teaching and learning the improvements to remote learning that we're looking at the focus on social emotional learning um

034but we will be doing that next week so just kind of stay tuned for a little more and you know it will you know what the appetite of the community for one more week but the theme for our professional learning over the course of the week was creating caring connected classroom uh communities so you know the focus of our educators time large chunks of time are actually just spent making sure that teachers and staff feel comfortable and are prepared for the critical health and safety practices that we need to implement but then in addition we a lot of our focus from a professional learning standpoint has been around student and educator social emotional needs anti-bias anti-racism education and improving remote learning practices so those are the real real three big picture things that we're looking

035at over these few weeks leading up to school so with that said i'm happy to answer any questions but i will stop sharing my screen and you know we're all here to you know see what we can do to make sure everyone's comfortable with where we're at does anyone have a comment or a question for peter no okay great thank you and now you can talk about the handbook unless there's something so the handbook um you know for those of you who are new typically we approve the handbook you know around this time of year as we're heading into the school year the handbook is something that's developed by high school but voted on by the school committee this year the high school made minimal changes to the handbook and i'm also trying to manage

036participants at the same time because i believe maureen o'grady is here from the high school in the audience and so more and i'm going to go ahead and promote you to panelist and see if you have anything that you'd like to highlight for the high school handbook whoops thank you good evening everyone okay so that high school handbook we just made three changes we didn't think this was the year to um to make a lot of programmatic changes or policy changes in the handbook with so much going on as it is so our handbook changes the suggested changes um if you do have the document in front of you it's the first one regarding late transportation um basically i just reworded that um that statement that section initially it said if you are detained after

037school and have difficulty getting home you should contact the principal associate principal or a school secretary for assistance i replaced that with two late buses are available for students who may have been detained after school the buses will depart campus from the front circle at 4 45 and the reason being that not everybody is available or accessible after school if the students in the front lobby looking for a way home or is without a without a ride and need some assistance and the administrators one might be up at larry field or it would just be too complicated so at least thus the information is there where students can get um the late bus to get home the next um recommendation is to our physical education makeup procedures things changed last year with our pe department

038they used to allow students to make up missed pe classes during the school day students would arrange with any any of the pe teachers to make up a pe class if they had missed one to make up a class during a free period or during lunch they made the change um for a couple of reasons one it really didn't support our wellness policy in terms of encouraging students to take their lunch periods to socialize with friends that's going to look different this year um or to study or relax or what have you um and so encouraging students to fill that time with another class didn't feel right so we did make that change additionally other classes other content areas in the building if a student misses a class period because they're out sick or they're

039late to school for whatever reason the expectation has never been that they find a time within the next couple of days to make up that full period it's actually um we work with the student teachers work with students to make up anything that they may have missed if they've missed a quiz they can work with um the teacher to make up make up that quiz but the expectation has never been that they need to make up the entire period if they missed a class for being out sick so we just wanted the pe policy to um to reflect that and david james did a really nice job of kind of shifting that a bit and then lastly is the acceptable use policy um and this was written by amy biswiths and her committee regarding the

040one-to-one initiative this was a piece of it so they rewrote the acceptable use policy um now that all students will be receiving chromebooks and that they'll be filling out the acceptable use policy i believe that will be done electronically but we made the adjustments so that they would show in the current handbook and that's really all we have so if there are any questions i'm happy to can i answer them if i can just make one comment on that um you two things uh for you one is just with regard to the acceptable use policy you may think we there's a change to a policy isn't that a school committee level um piece that you need to take on the actual school committee level policy simply references that all parents will be required to sign

041off on the paul this acceptable use policy as it is in the high school in junior high school handbook so it really references just right back to the school handbook so when they say they're changing that policy that really is a school level policy to change the other element you will also notice that there's title ix language in later on the for a first read tonight that is not in the high school handbook right now because you have not voted the new title ix policy and so they can't really change their handbook before you vote the policy so once you vote that new policy that would just automatically go into the high school handbook and that's just more of an administrative process that we have to take on so just two quick notes for you

042thank you for clarifying that before i take questions i just want to note uh for those in the audience that we are not using the q a feature so if you have a question please uh use the raise hand feature and we will get to you so do any committee members have a question or comment i know john does does anyone else have a question before that no all right john it's all you um thank you very much the discussion that we had last year uh when we looked at the handbook uh said that what we are looking at tonight is what we've done for the last 20 years we've simply taken the handbook as it is we have made some minor changes and we have moved on you know i have to say that

043i don't think that the handbook really strikes the tone that we would like to strike as a district and when i read through the technology section you know i was tempted to say why don't we just subtitle the handbook crime and punishment because that's the way a lot of it reads and i don't think that's really the message that we want to send through the handbook i certainly understand why you know this did not rise to the top of the priority list this year but you know i i just can't look at this and think that we can't do better in the future so this is simply an appeal that you know when we look at what we have to do next year or perhaps the year after that coming back fundamentally to the handbook

044is something worth consideration thank you anyone else if there are no other questions then the proposed motion is found in the packet i move to approve the changes proposed for the fy 21 ebrhs student handbook a second is there any further discussion seeing none we will do a roll call vote adam yes john yes uh norah yes jenny yes kyra yes evelyn yes but i didn't want to note i don't know i didn't figure out how to raise my hand i think the beginning of the handbook said 2019 to 2020 so we need to um revise that absolutely and we'll make that adjustment once um once the handbook we can officially move it to 2020 2021 with the updates from last year thank you thanks evelyn diane yes i'm also um for some reason even

045though i use zoom a lot i'm struggling to find the raised hand feature and i just wanted to ask a quick quick question of peter there was some back and forth with the community member on email about disclosing to those who are going to be using their computers that there might be some capability of activating the camera or audio remotely so can you just speak to whether or not we're protected in that way sure yeah no our staff don't use any technology to be able to turn on any cameras or anything like that remotely there was a case and i remember this case because i was a high school administrator at the time and we we kind of joked in all honesty about the stupidity of the administrators for doing it but there was a

046case out of pennsylvania where i think the principal was concerned about like what students were using their chromebooks for and so they decided to turn on the cameras to find out um wildly inappropriate it doesn't happen um and you know that would be a huge violation for us if if people were to do that but our technology staff does not do that our administrative staff has no access to anything to be able to do it so you know i think we reassured the person that that that was not going to happen you know the other question that had risen at that point was around concerns about requiring students to turn on cameras i think you know the intent behind why we wanted to require it require it we heard a lot of feedback for t

047from teachers that it was really hard to know if you were reaching students in the remote environment if you can't see them because we had a good number of students last spring who would you know log into a class but all you saw was an initial on the screen or something and you really don't know what's going on beyond that and it's so different from a regular class environment after looking into some of the legal challenges of that though we really can't require a student to have their camera on so we're going to continue to strongly encourage it talk to families about the educational value and our students about the educational value of why but we also know that we're going to need to look beyond that to think of other ways that we can

048engage and make sure kids are with us during that process thank you so my vote is yes yevan yes amy yes and me yes um and to those of you that are out if those of you that are participating via zoom just if you raise your hand on the screen i can see you so adam's managing looking at the hand raised feature on the um on the participant list but if you just raise your hand i can see you so up next is dave's budget update thank you i'm working on it dave okay i have my own information going on in my computer i'm taking notes on my ipad and i'm managing the meeting on zoom so i'm a little a little frazzled on this one let's see well i miss i miss when you

049introduce me is about to give a riveting discussion about opeb and things like that but i'm sorry tonight we have dave who's going to give us a riveting update on our budget situation and then him uh dave wanted me to qualify that he said tonight's would not be riveting but just simply exciting okay why did i do that okay uh you have a memo that i sent which was um intended to be detailed it's the it's the preliminary closing memo for fy 20 finances it's preliminary because we have the audit is underway the end certification process hasn't yet begun but we're working on schedules so the so technically it's not the final version but it's probably going to be the final version we have a history of minimal and and zero material audit adjustments and

050so i think i think it's pretty safe to say that these are where we're going to end up for fy20 um thank you this is a this is a chart showing four years worth of budget variances so did we have more revenue than we budgeted did we have fewer expenditures than we budgeted the revenue variances in yellow the expenditure variance is in green and the grand total in blue and big picture it's a fairly consistent trend uh for these four years in total we're consistently generating over a million dollars a year in combined turnback i will say from the outset it's hard to foresee that uh in fy 21 happening given given what we know to this point and what we can possibly foresee happening this upcoming year so at least at least for fy20

051another year looks looks fairly similar to the last several i'm going to talk very briefly about revenues more details in the memo if we can advance a slide please it's a just a quick pie chart uh to show the source of the variances this is not the um this is not the total revenues for each of these components but the but the amount by which they varied from budget the biggest the biggest hit uh was transportation aid which as i said in the memo came in in june at almost 84 percent uh that was not expected but is but was most welcome and provided several hundred thousand dollars of of positive variance that would that had not been previously expected i think otherwise and and i had no it's on the next page sorry um

052fy uh i'm a little confused because i made an edit but not on these slides and it's in the next it's in the next slide um there's less conservative budgeting going on and so uh the revenue variances if you can go back one slide and look at the yellow bars the yellow bar for fy 20 absent that that sizeable chunk received at year-end and absent the the bond proceeds which were invested the revenue variance was going to be very very small and i had projected for you in q3 about a hundred thousand dollars maximum so the combination of economics getting tighter at the state level and aid not being as generous and especially transportation aid and the other components of revenue being budgeted a lot more tightly we i don't foresee generating significant revenue variances

053uh going forward certainly not this coming year and in the next slide after the pie chart uh yep there are an explanation just just bullet points for the major components of the revenue variances they're they're discussed in more detail in the memo uh as i said the biggest surprise was transportation aid and as you can see even with the big uptick at year end it pale it's about two-thirds of what the variance was in 2019 a couple of slides on expenditures for the budget the bars indicate where we thought we were going to be at the end of the year at the second quarter mark the third quarter mark and now and so going back a half a year's time we projected about a six hundred thousand dollar deficit in expenditures if you can remember

054that covet hit and by the time we reported the third quarter we had captured a number of the savings related to the shutdown and projected about a three hundred thousand dollar variance again i'm i'm going to admit to being somewhat conservative when i when at any point in an interim basis for financial projecting and as as the shutdown continued we ended up with about a third of a million dollar turn back on the expenditure side the end actually puts us more in line on a historical basis with where we typically end relative to budget but from 600 minus to 600 positive without the shutdown and its effects on uh some of the things on the next slide happening we would have been hard-pressed to we certainly wouldn't wouldn't have been that much in the black

055as far as expenditures those are the major components of variances in general special ed costs were higher we had higher than expected expected tuition costs um utilities instructional budget and especially personnel all were to the good as a result of the shutdown for for i believe obvious reasons so once we are done looking at revenues and expenses and we see that the net is a little over a million dollars that leads into end and what i've done is given you a six-year track record of e d reserve at the end of the year in gross dollars you can see in gross dollars it was a it was a very steep incline from full regionalization till about fy it's pretty much leveled off since then i will i will say though parenthetically that in fy 19

056that's net of a million dollar transfer to the newly formed capital stabilization fund so the percentages as you can see at the bottom the the school committee last year adopted a policy of having a target for end of between four and four and a half percent 3.7 doesn't hit that target admittedly i will say that and i think i say this in the memo were it not for the impact of next year's debt service both the cip program and the new school which collectively add over four million dollars to the budget there would have been a 2.2 change in this number the percentage of end as as a in relation to budget so without the new debt it would have been 3.9 that's not the that's not to try any sleight of hand but the

057fact is that the denominator of that calculation uh changed significantly with no impact uh no resulting impact on on the e d amount e d is one component of of total reserves i've shown you this slide before the trend continues to go upward in terms of real dollars and so it's it's in total over seven million dollars combined for these three major reserve sources capital stabilization in orange circuit breaker in yellow in the in blue and i think as a noteworthy observation the total as a percentage of the next year budget has remained flat at 7.7 percent again notwithstanding as i just said a minute ago the fact that the denominator went up significantly so you can see that even though the total reserves went up several hundred thousand dollars as a percentage it remained

058the same at seven point seven percent remember that this phenomenon that this healthy reserve position was one of the things that was recognized as contributing to our aaa bond rating when when the bonds were issued in march a little bit more focus on one of one of the other reserve components being circuit breaker you can see that the blue bar indicates that we have kept more at the end of the year so the total of the blue and the yellow is how much reimbursement we've received during that year and the blue is how much we have not spent in other words how much we've carried forward we have effectively the i couldn't erase the what appears like one dollar worth of uh additional money on the top of the fourth bar um but we've we

059have we did not spend any of our reimbursement in fy20 we'll carry that forward completely if into fy 21 and we must spend it all in fy 21. this is i believe an important uh best practice to to strive for to keep all of one year's circuit breaker in hand and spend it in the following year uh it's obviously the most prudent from a fiscal reserve standpoint it also offers budget certainty there's there's i absolutely know how much we're going to spend in fy 21 and and can project that going forward in setting the fy 22 budget but one other thing in finalizing the fy21 budget it's important to remember that we increased the projected use of fy21 circuit breaker to a very large by a very large amount to 3.6 million so even though

060we've got 2.8 on reserve what we're planning to spend in fy 21 exceeds that by 800 000 that's that's frankly a bigger spread it's it's a somewhat bigger spread than than we're accustomed to over the last several years of budgeting so transitioning to the other funds just briefly i've given you some detail and some summaries of the of the transaction history for fy20 this is how we end up at year end and it was important i think for me to show that excuse me again based on a presentation we made about mid-year when there were some dire predictions for some of these revolving accounts it turned out that all of them ended the year with a positive fund balance and that that's important for a couple of reasons one is the obvious that these programs

061did not run into a deficit but the second is had any of them run into deficit that's a direct uh reduction to end kind of you can say well it's kind of a non-sequitur but it's a it's a mandated break in the way the end is set um and and so would have reduced our end you can see that us if i put up this same pie chart a year earlier the grand total would have been 3.9 million and so in the aggregate there was a decrease of 1.2 million dollars and about a third a third a third between school lunch and all of the community ed programs and the pre-k and the all-day k program for in round numbers those are the ones that took the biggest hit from the inability to collect fee

062revenue during the shutdown and so that brings us to what to expect for fy21 the good news about chapter 70 is the state came out and said that we are they came out with a with a number for fy21 chapter 78 which is going to fund us at the fy 20 level the good news is it's not a one percent cut it's not a 10 cut it's not a cut the bad news is we lose our 30 30 per pupil minimum aid at least at this point there could be opportunities to for the state to receive more federal assistance at which point it might fund things like minimum aid for us districts that are over f they're over foundation and soa relief for the for the less economically well-off districts then they don't have any

063of that yet for other revenues i don't have any basis yet to determine any variances my statement from a few minutes ago stands that it's going to be hard to imagine any kind of significant revenue turned back for fy21 uh for cos this we've we've worked all summer and we're still trying to to quantify how significant the costs are for opening in this dual environment in a couple weeks we've hired remote staff there's a there's an incremental amount of staff that have been hired we've purchased technology for students and staff and we've acquired ppe to to for health and safety reasons on the flip side there's been significant uh federal funding acknowled allocated to date the esser esser fund which we've applied for and will defray some of the costs of the technology fema peter

064just signed today an application to get our first uh slug of fema money it's not a bank breaker but the good news is it's costs that were captured in fy 20 and so this will be an fy 21 revenue source it's a little over 50 000 but it's it's to the good uh the cares act which allocated funds to acton and boxpro that we've discussed and the covert relief fund which is available to the district we're going to be presenting at next week's meeting i believe a more i won't say final version but we'll get into the details and numbers behind these words that are on the slide at next week's meeting and and one one epilogue here is that massachusetts still has undistributed funds from the first from its first distribution of covet funds

065and so that they have if there's no more federal funding available that might come to us in some form in fy 22 so we were we were optimistic in july that the senate was nearing some why a senate in washington was nearing some completion on another round of funding as as you know that's that seems to have stalled but we'll keep uh we'll keep an eye on it and lastly right around the corner is the fy 22 budget there was an agenda item on this week's budget subcommittee meeting uh to discuss the fy 22 budget calendar and it's it's only august but it happens fast and knowing what we know now the only thing we can guarantee is that that process is going to be different and so with homage to john because i haven't

066put a meme up in in here for a while uh this this is what the new journey may look like is peter boy okay and it's do we do we take the yellow brick road or do we take the red brick road or is there is there something else so it's going to be challenging to say the least and interesting professionally but uh there's going to there's going to need to be a lot of work and communication to you as to where things appear to be headed so thank you for that that's my report thanks dave it was exciting as always riveting we're lucky to have you dave not all financial reports are quite as interesting as yours um does anyone have a question or comment for dave about any of that diane yeah just

067a comment and um i guess a question um first of all it was it was stunning and shocking to see those revolving fund balances fall the way they did and it's um i think it's it's really good it's great news that they're still in the positive i just want to give a shout out to kirsten nelson for all of the work she did over the summer to um kind of hold on to that revolving balance i know a lot of people bought food that she was able to make available to the community and just wanted to acknowledge her dave at one point you were estimating coping related costs for fy21 in the 2.1 2.2 million dollar range you know not to uh preempt next week but are is are you still are you still um

068confident that that's the number or not yeah i don't want to preempt next week because to be honest diane the numbers change rapidly and there's there's going to be some illustration of the additional costs but also the reduced costs from providing educational services in the manner that they're prescribed for next year there are some built-in savings that we're going to recognize and so the net will will explain the net additional cost of operating in two in two forms the there's an additional burden to the district from the decision to cancel all day kindergarten that tuition source is gone and those costs whatever costs are remaining will need to be borne by the operating budget and the only other thing and this goes back to your first observation about food service at this point we're not

069allowed to use the covert relief money for revenue replacement now i'm not saying that we would necessarily we're still looking at uh the need to balance everything in the operational budget in the operating budget next year but if there was ever an opportunity to restore the food service balance or the community ed balance legally with federal funds we would we would recommend that and i know colleagues whose programs were not as robust going into the shutdown and were underwater financially at the end of the year and had to be made up by the general fund we're fortunate not to be in that situation john thanks dave with respect to the point that you raised that the end was going to be below the policy limit of four percent we had some discussion of this in

070budget subcommittee and i was was comfortable that 3.7 isn't that far from four and that because part of the driver for that was the change in the denominator related to the debt service that that wasn't really worth agonizing over however you've also just stated that you expect to have no turn back this year and if that turns out to be true then we will really be you know outside the window prescribed by the policy which means that one of two things has to happen either one we need to wind up with a better financial picture than we think we're going to or two we need to revisit the policy yeah and just to be clear john that when i said no turnbacks i was specifically talking about revenues expenditures are there's absolutely no basis to

071say where we'll end up and the fact of the matter is if we happen to because of exigent circumstances about about covid go to a fully remote environment at any point that that's material for the for the remainder of the school year we've got experience on that we saved significant amount of money financially it wasn't a it wasn't to a good educational end but certainly when you when you don't go to the school and turn on the lights and turn on the heat and bust kids in there you save money and so if if i i've been telling colleagues here one of two things is going to happen or variations of them either we're going to go at some point pivot to all remote because of covid it won't be a good thing educationally but

072financially it should be it should be positive if past experience is applies or we don't and we stay in school and educationally that would be that would be a joy to to have to do the accounting for in my opinion great it doesn't look like we have any additional questions so that was a thorough presentation dave thank you so much all right um up next is the approval change of members of the other post-employment benefits trust fund or opeb um it says you on there but i have i have language to say it so all right so this item is an annual vote to update members of the opeb advisory board per our trust agreement the trust specifies that the members of the director of finance school committee chair and a representative from the act

073and finance committee and the box pro finance committee we appreciate that steve noon and gary kushner will continue as the fincom representatives please see the motion on the cover sheet if you would like to make it i would gladly move that the abrsc approved the following members of the oped trust fund board of advisors for fy21 dave verdolino steve noon gary kushner and tessa mckinley second is there any discussion or questions all right and we will do a roll call vote adam yes john yes nora yes jenny yes kyra yes evelyn yes diane yes yevan yes amy yes and me yes that passes unanimously thank you um next item is 3.3 we have subcommittee and member reports [Music] 3.3.1 is approval of fy21 edco board member advisory member and school committee leadership liaison roundtable representatives

074edco requires that member school committees vote their edco representatives there is another motion on the cover sheet adam i moved that the abrsc approved the following edco board member voting peter light edco advisory member non-voting tessa mckinley and edco school committee leadership liaison roundtable members norshine and angie so second is there any questions or discussion great we will do a roll call vote adam yes john yes norah yes jenny yes kyra yes evelyn yes diane yes evan yes amy yes and me yes all right you may peter all right um just with regard to edco just so you all know i'm also going to be on the executive finance committee for edco as well that doesn't require any school committee action but that's something that i felt was important given some of the financial challenges

075of edco thanks peter all right so our subcommittee member reports diane you are up next um with a policy update okay thank you policy sub had our first meeting on august 20th and we're bringing to you tonight a first read on two policies both reflect the work of the diversity equity and inclusion assistant superintendent don bentley the first is policy acad in your packet prohibition of harassment this is a required revision to our existing policy in order to align it with the new title ix federal regulations which took effect in early august the new rule directs how schools respond to sexual harassment and sexual violence every school district must now have policies and procedures in place as well as staff training to ensure compliance with the new federal regulations tesla should i just present both

076of these policies all at once or do you want to stop after each one um why don't we stop and we can discuss each one um is here and wants to add anything um please do so she is here she shook her head she has nothing to add at the moment you're good all right uh adam yeah i have a comment slash question uh as i've learned from some of my colleagues a clarifying question um which is with regards to the the prohibition of harassment policy as i as i began to read it and got tired reading very long policy i was curious if there are any parts of this that we can move into a procedure i think you know typically when when we reviewed policies we tried really hard to make them easily

077digestible so that the intent of the policy was covered in the policy and the for lack of a better phrase meat and potatoes of how it actually gets enacted um is put into the um procedure so i'm curious if that's a possibility or if this is um legislatively required to be in the policy so in conversation that's i asked our attorney that very same question earlier today which i've asked already and gotten clarification on i'm like are you sure about that because i really want to anyway he said the that yes he can certainly go back and separate the pieces out but it will not flow the way that it does currently and because this has to live in the junior high in the high school handbook it all has to go in together and

078so it makes some sense to keep it together that was that was the attorney's recommendation but certainly if you want us to go back and do that we're happy to do that yeah i i think the only concern i have is that at its current length it becomes untenable like i don't really know what we're trying to do that's that's my only concern i don't and and i know there's a maybe there's some phrasing that can be done up front that that says here's the intent here's what we're doing and following this is all the details so for those of us who can't bear reading through all of that at once there's some sort of summary at the front end john i wanted to um sort of second adam's sentiment that these policies which are

079not readable by anybody but a select audience serve only that select audience and so as a check box kind of item you know they're great as are we really helping people do a good job they're not great but i will know that i did take a look at this and i didn't see any prohibition against school committee members harassing the chair and i was pleased that the policy didn't prohibit that that's great john thanks um and you get to go after that cara aren't you lucky lordy um i i wanted to know if um how much of this is boilerplate um because i have a question about um there was a line that says that a that we can have or a person a complainant can have a advisor during the grievance process um and

080they are not required to be an attorney and i have questions as to whether or not we can we can add language to that um maybe advocating that that person be an attorney um because i just i see a potential power struggle there um but i i i guess i don't have a sense of whether or not this lawyerly language must be the way it is because of state law so that's a complex answer because actually the way that so this was a law that was written for colleges and for colleges to implement and colleges have many more levels of folks and people and processes that look more like this than k-12 does so we've been told that that this will be very difficult to implement in light of all of our other requirements under

081mandated reporting um ferpa some of the other pieces of work that we're required to do and that um it will be really interesting when we when and if we get our first complaint because we'll have to work through the process and figure out where everything bumps up against each other i get the impression from them that there's not a lot of wiggle room in the way that it is currently worded but certainly um as we think about implementing it here and we talk about sort of the forms that live behind the scene we can certainly work with our and we we're training all of our administrators but we can certainly work with them around the role of the advisor and what might make the most sense for that person in terms of how we ensure

082that they're supporting students in the way that they really need to be supported in a very educated way i think is what you're getting at right so yes i i'm just worried about those moments where we have where there can be um frankly a class issue where somebody somebody knows to walk into that room with an attorney and somebody else might walk into that room with um you know with a friend and and what that means and what that does to the process i just want to make sure that there's some sort of language somewhere um that you know there's there is some sort of advocacy that says this is what will be best for you um so that the the power circumstances um will be as equal as they can be uh which is

083i suppose the point um that i just think that should be expressed somewhere it's interesting too in the world of special education surrogate parents when they're appointed they have a there's a very strict process around what they have to go through in order to be able to represent at the iep table students who don't have parents or guardians and so that is i agree i actually found that to be lacking in this um so i'm certain i'm happy to go back and ask some more questions about that i would offer there's a flip side though i think to the intent behind this is that um some and again i think it was written primarily with colleges in mind but there are some situations where administrations might actually say to someone i'm sorry you know they're

084not an attorney you can't just bring someone that you want into this dialogue and it's meant i think actually to make sure that people aren't excluded from the process because they're not an attorney if that makes sense because some people simply do they don't want an attorney they just want someone that they trust to be kind of that extra set of years and it's meant to protect that right so we would just want to navigate that i i don't see any other hand so i just i'm going to comment real quickly but i think i i sort of agree with what everyone has said in that it's hard to parse out what the point like what the main idea of the policy is because i thought that it was you know the first couple paragraphs

085which would make sense but then it goes into a definition of harassment but then there's a whole other thing about sexual harassment and i understand the complications around but that's what i think makes it really really hard to read and understand is like what is the point of this policy because there's so many things in it there's the you know i can understand the point of how do you handle student complaints versus how do you handle staff complaints and i don't know it just seems that there it doesn't seems like more than one policy so a few years ago and i don't remember why we did this maybe you remember marie yeah so it's so interesting and and maybe we can take it back and see if we can sort of put two or three

086pieces on separate pages we used to have a harassment policy for students a harassment policy for employees a sexual harassment employee for students and for employees and the problem is when when something happens to someone they're not legal experts they're not policy experts they look for the word harassment and we were finding that people didn't necessarily find the right policy and they weren't all in the same place so a few a number of years ago we combined them all into a single policy now this title nine language added a lot of language to it so um maybe we can look at a way to sort of have roman numeral one two three have it i don't know we can look at try trying to make it more readable um i think it just looks like

087it goes back and forth between the different things do you know what i'm saying like and i i hear what you're saying 100 and then i can't believe i'm going to say this john but it does seem like some of the things are procedures underneath the policy like how do you you know what how do you go about the complaint and you know so i think that complicates it as well i do think legally the policy has to have the contact people in there and that kind of thing so let us look at it one more time and part of it is we did add the title ix stuff on top of what was already there so maybe it doesn't make chronological sense and i want to add to um kiera you make a good

088point what peter said is true and the thing is this policy encompasses all different kinds of complaints so some of them might be very minor you don't want the person to feel like they have to go hire an attorney in order to lodge a complaint and you do find a lot of the time people just want someone there to support them or they have someone in their lives that has more experience than they do so i certainly wouldn't want to limit it to attorneys or say that i will say when when it is a high risk a high stakes kind of situation we do often say you may want to get an attorney for this kira go ahead thank you i'm sorry um you know what actually i'm i'm gonna i'll leave this thought and

089maybe i'll i'll write something for sub policy just to keep this conversation going um thank you though okay does anyone else have a comment or question all right then i will let diane continue with the next policy thank you everyone for that feedback um i encourage you to put your thoughts in writing um and please email them to me by the end of the day on monday we will be likely meeting next week we have a placeholder meeting um to see if we can work through this um in particular um i'm i hear a lot about the discipline policy too in the handbook um that it we just it's just too much language and too much jargon and you know make it readable and make it accessible for the people who are reading it um

090so you know there's there's a couple of different ways we can go with this policy if you want just a broad statement like we do not tolerate harassment you know let me know if that's what you want um i know that the sexual harassment policy was kind of added the the the federal guidance was was kind of infused and added into the general harassment regulations um but it has to have definitely has to have certain components and what is it they they are offering this as a protection for people so what is it it's it and it's very specifically defined and to make sure that that people in the workplace know that it's illegal and who is in charge of handling that and what you do if you're harassed in terms of support whether it's

091legal support or or just a trusted person who can kind of go in with you and say this is happening so um please do put it in writing and and send it to me um and i'll pass this all on to the subcommittee and i i appreciate all the feedback on this a lot i i really do it's an important policy okay next policy is a new policy in your packet policy eb cfa on um mask or face coverings on masking and so i just want to say that even though our reopening plan is to be considered policy masc is recommending that school committees further develop and define and emphasize our beliefs and directives around math squaring during covid19 both of these policies were vetted by legal counsel um i'll take any comments that you

092have on on mask wearing as well at this point if that's okay with you tessa yeah absolutely um a comment actually that i received was around um accommodations with regards to like the following types of masks face covering coverings are not acceptable to wear at school masks with vents and particularly neck gaiters or the the plastic face shields without a fabric or surgical mask um i realize that it looks like this is sort of like the extra part of the pile it's separate from the policy right dash r it's the procedure so um i just was curious about um you know there's there is language about medical exemptions for not wearing masks but i wonder about accommodations for wearing a different kind of mask or something like that so the intent behind the procedure um

093in the the exemption process that parents would submit a request for by september 4th is that those would be that would be a process we would work through so after you know speaking with the family or on the concerns then thinking about what a neck getter and a face shield be an acceptable alternative for a student who couldn't tolerate a mask for example so those are all things that we would work through as part of that process great that's helpful all right does anyone else have comments or questions kyra didn't hear me kyra i noticed that there was a punitive language in this policy regarding uh the use of masks and not the use of mask and i was curious as to um and it was it was very brief and rather broad and i

094i want to know whether or not we we really feel as though that's um necessary given the circumstances should we be more specific about what that means um it feels um it feels counterproductive to me to have punitive language in this policy um but i'm curious to know um more details about that which language is punitive and the policy or the procedure yeah if students are in violation of this policy towards the bottom of it or it says i assume that's what she's talking about and it says if staff are in violation of the policy that well that in students i saw student language in there that's i said students first um so that is language right out of masc so i i don't know if somebody else has a comment i don't have a

095problem taking it out but i think there's a reason for it i don't i think um one of the overwhelming concerns that i think we've heard from families and and staff coming back to school is is a requirement to where masks going to be enforceable and you know so i think the intent of the masc policy was to make sure that there was an enforcement mechanism to it uh because that was such a high level of concern particularly where there was a lot of political debate going on about whether or not there was scientific evidence to back up masks particularly at the time and i think um you know in all honesty a lot of our schools very much use restorative practices with students when they are working on things and it's really a conversation

096that takes place but you know there could be a scenario where there's no medical reason why a student can't wear a mask and the school is in a position to have to do that and so i think this is just a language unfortunately that's meant to just give that clause to be able to enforce it can i speak to that briefly go ahead yeah so this is a new policy and so what's happening is a lot of first reads are happening this week and last week and next week and so we're you know we're starting to kind of see how school committees um are tweaking this policy and there are some that are talk they're articulating the expectations they have um that the teachers will offer direct instruction in the classroom and educate students on

097mask wearing and some school systems have even in their policy defined a five-step protocol or a multi-step protocol for educators on what to do that begins with more of a restorative justice type of approach where the student who is uncomfortable wearing a mask or is taking the mask off is first you know just spoken to and explained it in more detail why it's important and then you know kind of like maybe step four or five is that the principle gets involved so um if if you feel more comfortable with that language um it certainly does articulate more of the process of what might happen um curacao i mean i added am i allowed to speak i just want to say i think that that's great i i i would just love to see an a

098expansion of of ideas around this so that it's not subjective or there's any room for arbitrary enforcement um in this language that would be that would be helpful for me thank you so diane you had sent along some helpful language earlier and i did incorporate it in the procedure which i don't think is the same that landed in the packet because it was just updated and it does include supportive language around the instructional piece which we had always intended but wasn't that wasn't transparent in our existing procedure um it talks also about students who experience difficulty with mask wearing and starts with that restorative justice peace and the educational piece which a lot of our folks for sure do so there there are some progressive steps in there for individuals to follow which i i

099think actually will make the educators also feel more supported in this because that's a big question they have about you know how do i keep my the students safe and me safe nora um i was just gonna add that that's one of the things that we did talk about in policy sub is that that balance care that you're bringing up between wanting students to understand the importance of wearing a mask and be educated about how to wear it and the comfort level of the student who might need a mask break for a different reason with also the safety of the students and of the entire school community and so i think that language could definitely be added to to show that it's meant to be a learning process and not punitive in nature but that

100that there has to be some kind of bottom line i guess about the requirement of wearing a mask john the policy j-i-c-h alcohol tobacco and other drug use by students prohibited reads a student shall not regardless of the quantity user consume possess buy or sell or give away any beverage containing alcohol any tobacco product including vapor e-cigarettes marijuana steroids or any controlled substance the school committee prohibits the use for consumption by students of alcohol tobacco products or other drugs on school property or at any school function additionally any student who is under the influence of drugs or alcoholic beverages prior to or during attendance or participation in a school-sponsored activity will be barred from that activity and may be subject to disciplinary action and then there's a posting line that is the total sum of

101the drug prohibition policy the policy with respect to masks should be no longer than that if we think it is good policy for people to use face coverings our policy should say we should use face coverings the details of how that should be implemented what those face coverings should be when those face coverings should be removed are the subject of procedure it's a bad idea to frankenstein a whole bunch of procedure into policy and you know there's we could have a much longer discussion about this but um you know i think that to me this felt like well let's make a policy about hurricane laura it's like this is a nuts idea you don't make policy about this one-off event that's coming you make policy in the context of a general construct and to the

102point that was raised earlier with respect to um and the importance of mass spring mass brain exists as part of a spectrum of activity that we would like to see in our community that starts with minimizing unique context that continues with you know being sensitive to physical distance and looking at the ability to conduct certain activities outdoors some of those things you know we can enforce and we can encourage some of them we cannot but whether we are successful or not will actually depend on the sum of those things not a singular thing so you know i object to the policy you know because it's convoluted with procedure and you know i further object to the policy because it really doesn't address what is the subject of policy which is how can we minimize the

103spread of infectious disease which is the level at which our policy should read adam i'm going to respectfully disagree with john um mostly because i believe that we're in times that are different than when that alcohol and substance abuse policy was written and i think different times call for a different tenor in policy um and and so i actually i i do like this this policy as it stands i do appreciate care's comments um particularly around the the what i don't want to say vague but the seemingly punitive comment uh clauses at the end and i'm glad to hear that some changes have already been made with regards to the procedure for that and so i would encourage that the policy subcommittee revisit those two sentences and change the language in a way that points

104to a detailed procedure to john's point on on how not not even enforcement how encouragement will be provided to um to both staff and students to participate in the policy requirement thanks adam you said what i would have said which is i respectfully disagree and john and i have respectfully disagreed about this and with regards to many many policies but what i have shared with him in general is that i think yes we are in different times and i do think that there are things like masks where parents are looking for guidance and it is very helpful to see that well visitors are going to be expected to do this and what's going to happen if staff aren't in agreement with this and what will happen if you know a staff member has a student

105in their room who refuses i mean these are anxieties that i have heard expressed by teachers and anxieties expressed by parents and i just think that in our highly anxious environment that in these times and hopefully we're not going to have to have a masked face covering policy forever i mean that's really my hope so since my hope is that this is not going to be a permanent policy that we'll be looking at this in with regards to this year and what it covers right now and we'll revisit if and when we have to but i think the more information that our families and our staff members are provided with regards to this very important issue that is implicit in bringing us back to school that more information is important so i thank the sub

106the policy subcommittee members that put this together i echo what adam said about the language thank you kira for bringing that um bringing that up i think that it's it's a great note to work on is there anyone else that has an additional question or concern john if we do want to go down this road the one other change that i would like to see in the policy is that we explicitly sunset it so that it will expire on june 30th 2021 if we do not rescind it earlier we have no idea when it will end my hope is just that it will so all right anybody else good okay thanks diane was there anything else from policy or that was it thank you everyone um are there other members it's not in the agenda

107but i know that um nora was able to attend a finncon meeting are there other member reports that people would like to share besides nora nora okay hold on nora would you like to share um so i attended boxborough's fincom meeting on tuesday and there were i think two different things that came up that are relevant for the school committee one of them was that vidcom was discussing the voctech applications and kind of looking at numbers around students attending minuteman and and one point that was brought up was that when there is a a b student from voxpro who's on the minuteman waiting list fincom doesn't know who that is but they were hoping the information could be shared that they can still apply also for the other two tech schools assabet and nashoba and

108they weren't sure if students on the waiting list were aware of that and if they were sort of being encouraged to look beyond minuteman to other schools that have maybe shorter commutes but are also other options so that came up the other thing that came up was around the cares act and the school committee's sort of request for some funding from voxboro's cares act to possibly cover the chromebooks that we've discussed and the current standing as of tuesday was that voxpro fincom said they were not certain if chromebooks were eligible for reimburse reimbursement through cares and they had sent a request for further information but they weren't sure who would be answering that question from cares and they weren't sure a timeline on getting that response and so that was another topic of conversation that

109they did feel like they had adequate funding and that funding probably was set aside for the chromebooks kind of unofficially but that they are waiting for an answer from cares about whether or not they can use the funds in that way thanks norah sure adam yeah the budget subcommittee met this past tuesday we reviewed the presentation that dave gave earlier this evening we reorganized in that we confirmed who the voting members of the committee were and we will be changing our meeting time for the foreseeable future to mondays at 11 a.m and those are posted and we're meeting again next week right as the beginning yes the beat goes on is there anyone else that had something that they wanted to contribute diane so kira and i are both the liaisons to the actin board

110of selectmen and i think there are two things that um that the committee should know about if not they don't know already um one is the racial equity work that the acting board of selectmen is doing and the other one is special town meeting so i'll let kira jump in and just pick one um so i would say that the uh so the diversity equity and inclusion commission being created by the town um has moved up their deadline for applications and uh letters of interest so that deadline is now friday february friday september 4th not february i don't know where i went with that um and those uh members will be announced at the next selectmen's meeting after that which would be september the 14th okay the the other pieces and hopefully everyone knows this

111but action's having a special town meeting on tuesday the 8th of september at 6 p.m it's going to be an outside event an inside event for you know whatever that your preference is just like just like uh annual town meeting was so it will be outside like where the gym area is on that side where the senior parking lot is um there just can there's just nine articles on on there's nine warren articles um one is um a big one is on a lan a major land acquisition in south acton for conservation purposes um and they're also amending the town charter to change the name of board slackman to select board a couple other ones you might be interested in is um they're seeking a authority for authorization for a small business grant program for

112for the town to take free cash to fund that um there are about 43 eligible small businesses in actin that were impacted by kovid and they are eligible for cash um for grants of up to four thousand dollars each and they'd like to be able to um to move that forward there's a couple non-binding resolutions about client declaring a climate emergency and some zoning changes about speed limits and things so um i hope to see everybody there um and i'll just know that kiera and i are going to be running the joint ptso and i know that there have already been some emails and questions from some of our pto leaders and i am aware of them and we are working on putting together a virtual meeting to start the year off so if any

113of those members are watching then they can know that they'll get an email from us soon is there anyone else that had something anything to share nope kiera has another i i just want to note that the um dei advisory for the school district will meet for the first time in a long while on the on monday the 31st excellent and is there a school building committee update yeah i think um you know there's pages and pages of minutes in your packet um that will go through a lot of the meetings but you know at the most recent uh meeting which was last night we shared some really good news in terms of the gates readiness to be able to open i don't know if any of you had driven by gates over the last

114few weeks it was definitely giving me heart palpitations thinking about how we would bring students and faculty back on that campus but consigli has now finished paving all of the temporary bus loop as well as the faculty parking lot parent drop-off area uh creating the new parking lot at the back the modulars have been delivered and are installed on site and they're just finishing off the interiors now um and i have to tell you the the parking lot looks absolutely beautiful it's the best that that side of gates has ever looked um unfortunately it's actually just temporary um and it will have to come down but they really did a nice job i have to say consigli and the decision to hire consigli was absolutely fantastic they have been so responsive to everything that we've

115asked them to do to make sure that that school was ready they even went so far that when the gates teachers who were coming in to kind of clean out their stuff from classrooms to make sure that they were safe and appropriately distanced consigli actually sent some of their workers over to carry the boxes out for the gates teachers so that they didn't have to traits across the construction area back and forth from school i mean that's how responsive they've been it's been wonderful working with them and i'm just so pleased that the school has really come together to be ready to open so it's a strikingly different look if you go over there now and they're making good progress great all right uh per policy dda we have some gifts and donations uh that

116require acceptance by the school committee i don't know if you want to speak to those at all peter sorry yes the first one is um it is a united way grant um for community education for twenty five hundred dollars um and you know which is hugely generous we're so grateful for that and then there's another um gift for four thousand dollars to the acton-boxborough regional high school stem program and that is from the society for science and the public um and regenerating so very grateful for those two gifts the suggested motions in the packet yes adam move to approve with gratitude second all right adam hi john yes norah yes jenny yes kyra yes with gratitude diane yes evan yes amy yes evelyn yes i would gratitude and me with gratitude in honor of paul

117so i like to think about him every time we're accepting gifts thank you paul um the statement of warrants is in your packet i will read them i'll give adam a break you're welcome you were just going to throw to john that's all right i move that the school committee vote to approve payroll warrants as follows number p2103 dated seven thirty twenty in the amount of six hundred fifty two thousand five hundred twenty eight dollars and twenty four cents number p2104 dated eight thirteen twenty in the amount of five hundred seventy seven thousand dollar five hundred seventy seven thousand six hundred fifty nine dollars and eleven cents payroll deduction warrants as follows number two one dash zero zero three p r dated seven thirty twenty in the amount of three hundred twenty thousand one hundred

118thirty one dollars and twenty two cents number twenty one dash zero zero four p r dated eight thirteen twenty in the amount of one hundred forty two thousand seven hundred ninety five dollars and eighty nine cents vendor warrants as follows number 21-002 dated seven twenty three twenty in the amount of one million one hundred twenty nine thousand nine hundred twenty seven dollars and ninety three cents number twenty one dash zero zero three dated eight six twenty in the amount of one million eight hundred ninety six thousand four hundred sixteen dollars and twenty cents number twenty one dash zero zero four dated eight twenty twenty in the amount of one million seven hundred forty three thousand five hundred six dollars and ninety three cents and student activity reimbursement warrant as follows number 21-003 bl dated 8620

119in the amount of 1235.97 second adam yes john yes nora yes ginny yes uh kyra yes diane yes yevan yes amy yes evelyn yes myself yes those are that passes unanimously peter is there anything in the fyi i would just point everyone to the school calendar um that is the most recent voted school calendar uh that we've included and you know just you know one thought and you know we could certainly talk about this more at the next meeting but as we've started to think about snow days already we already know that we're going to be using a heat index where if it's too hot within some of our schools to safely wear masks or the heat would discourage the use of masks because it's so hot we would be calling a remote day for

120those schools i'm inclined to think similarly about snow days where we now have all of the technology and mechanism to be able to go remote and given that the school year is now kind of late because of the changes to the school calendar i'm much more inclined to treat snow days as remote learning days because we're already our educators are going to be prepared to pivot in that direction so um that's you know food for thought if you would like to discuss that more if you let tessa know we can certainly talk more about that um at the next meeting but i wanted to just put that on your radar that that's something i was considering and then um you know i would just end my my own fyi just by continuing to express a

121lot of gratitude for all of our educators as they've come back to school i know that everyone feels differently and it's not easy for a whole group of our educators but we're just so grateful that they've really continued to balance their ideas around you know fears that they may have about coming back and also yet simultaneously recognizing that our kids also have needs and some of those students need in-person instruction so we know our educators are giving a lot i just want to make sure we continue to express our gratitude thank you peter our next meeting is september 3rd which is next week and i just wanted to note because john was concerned that people weren't aware that we are meeting in person that our meetings from here on out unless health conditions warrant a

122change we will continue to meet in person and via zoom because we have some members who are more comfortable participating that way but unless something changes this is how we're going to continue to meet so the the public should know that teachers and um should know that that that's how we're continuing to meet so is there a motion so by that clock i'm only 30 seconds late by my phone i'm three minutes late move to adjourn second adam yes yes norah jenny yes kira yes diane yes yemen yes amy yes evelyn yes