ABRSD Committee Meeting 2/6/2020

001there are four values wellness equity and engagement and then we also on top of that talked about how that aligned with our strategy moving forward a focusing on engagement and equitable opportunities and outcomes inclusive practices and the social emotional well-being of students and in particularly this year we tried to emphasize through our kind of realignment with some of our special education programs equitable opportunities and outcomes and social emotional well-being Thirsty's just to recap again this is the budget Saturday slide but some of the priorities that we set in order to meet our guidelines that you set as a school committee with reallocation of existing resources in order to continue our strategic growth be fully understood is an administrative team and I know in distributed school community the impact and gratitude for the school community having

002supported the school building project and we wanted to make sure we recognize that we knew that our community's resources were finally and that we wanted to work with it we also wanted to make commitment to a multi-year fiscally responsible transition to tuition free all-day kindergarten and then we also need to think about how we could continue implementation of our capital improvement plan that we developed last year so in the recommended budget we had really five major categories and then an outcome we reallocated our resources to meet our budget guidelines so we maintained a level services that we had in FY 2008 support in special education and mental health supports as well as some other strategic additions in the general education program we deferred some capital growth at the district level in next year's budget where

003we're level funding capital at 1.2 million dollars the operating budget and we are still able to fully execute the FY 2010 capital inclusion if you recall and Dave is gonna talk about this in a few moments the first year of debt payment for it the bond for the capital improvement plan will actually happen during FY 21 so about $900,000 of that 1.2 million is dedicated to that dedicated we took the first step in reducing tuition for all-day kindergarten and we were able to reduce tuition by seven hundred and fifty dollars per family per year that is a flexible multi-year plan we as a group made a commitment to be able to go to tuition free all-day hey but what we didn't do a set of specific timeline recognition that circumstance has changed we don't yet

004know the following impacting the student Opportunity Act and we'd have to evaluate that on the basis we also are able to account for our fixed cost increases in salaries health insurance Middlesex retirement special education transportation and out of district tuitions and as you recall those were beat means and Parker's budget drivers for a point 21 and then finally in order to be able to balance that and minimize the impact on the community we do have just over a million dollars of DD that's scheduled for use in FY 21 and we are using about 3.3 million dollars of circuit breaker and those are both significant increases from prior fiscal years the overall impact of the budget was about a three million dollar increase for three point two nine percent and the assessment to happen is three

005point two six percent into Boxborough one point or two percent there were six key strategies in all of this which are to maintain our level education services ie a level service budget reallocate existing resources to address our needs and guidelines review and realign our special education services floor the book the capital funds reduce kindergarten tuitions and use additional reserves moderated by compound I said that before but I just want to reiterate that one for focus in this budget process I'm gonna turn this over to B because as we have talked about a budget Saturday the one remaining piece of the budget that had to be determined as a budget Saturday and was left intentionally vague was the impact of the new school debt on the operating as you recall in order to pay the first

006year of debt service by 21 for the new building project we actually had to have an allocation in the FY 21 budget for that david has been working on that diligently with his team that strategy subcommittee and as an additional information for you tonight and it is good news but I want to go over that for me my setting is good news thanks so so the the other good news is you suffered through a discussion led by me about OPEC so now we get to talk about bond financing and bond premiums and things like that so I'll try to be brief because you have some material and there were some additional handouts tonight the larger package that has a two-page memo on the front of it a wish that had gone out with the original

007package we hit we had a miscommunication locally and and just realized today that it had I apologize for that and the smaller two-pager front and back was material that was handed out at alg last night so I figured you should have you should know the information that's that's gone to that group as well so we're gonna talk about briefly about how much money needs to be in the district budget next year to pay the first year debt service on the new school debt and we're gonna start by saying when we last met this is what the projections were for the tax payer impact the first year tax payer impact for the average taxpayer enacted in Foxborough and look at the light blue numbers Acton four hundred fifty two dollars per average single family taxpayer box

008broke three hundred and fourteen those I call your attention to those because those are both a 30-year issue amounts and vast that was the consensus of the debt strategy subcommittee as well as administration as well as Margaret to mediate moderate the the impact to taxpayers on a long-term basis and frankly more closely aligned the life of the debt with the expected life of the building you can't legally can't go beyond thirty years that's the maximum allowed by Mass General walls so we put this little chart together the total project budget you may know by now one hundred and seventeen point three million we backed out contingencies for purposes of what should we borrow right now we won't need the money to pay for the contingencies right out of the gate and so when you back

009those out and reduce by the maximum MSBA grant we're trying to maximize we're trying to reasonably maximize how much we take out initially to take advantage of low interest rates we had we had talked about some numbers as low as 50 million dollars for the first for the first slug of money from from the bond and we said no that the interest rates are so low into our advantage we should take out as much as possible without over borrowing which has legal connotations in the eyes of foreign counsel so that's where we came up with a targeted number for the initial bond amount of 75 million dollars but we're not necessarily borrowing 75 million dollars bonds I gave an example in the handout material bonds have sold to bond buyers at an auction the bond

010buyers are financial institutions in the like and they have customers to whom they will sell individual units of the bonds themselves so out of 75 million dollar bond issue somebody here might go to their own financial advisor and be talked into buying a piece of an acton-boxborough Regional School District bond and and so there's a retail market for bond customers the but the bond bidders will select and it will this this is how confusing this is so let me start again the bonds themselves will carry a coupon break main meaning the the piece of paper that exhibits the bond will have a stated interest rate via five percent or three percent for example but the but the market place is not at five percent and so the numbers that they're telling us is we may

011be in the two and a half percent effective interest range well if you are going to receive the coupon rate which is five percent over thirty a period of time but the effective interest rate in the marketplace and it's an auction so they'll be bidders and you and it will seek the effective interest rate is two-and-a-half percent the bond buyer has to pay more money to receive that future cash flow at a higher than market interest rate so I'll just pause for a second and just let that sink in the effective interest rate is less than it is less than the amount that we're actually repaying and so as a result the district will receive a premium and that's the difference between the 75 million face or power amount of the bonds and what they

012actually have to pay us in order to receive their bond repayment plus the coupon rate of interest so far so good we have two options relative to that bond premium and it's in the six million dollar range this is not a small and insignificant amount of money we can retain the cash and fund future capital projects or even pay debt service as we go along or we could reduce the initial amount of borrowing and so I believe have an example here so option one we would we would collect the 75 million dollars that we need to finance the school project and an additional 5.6 million dollars and that 5.6 million dollars would be our money we could keep it we could use it for additional projects we defectively pay interest at the peda two and

013a half percent rate over 30 a period of time the first year debt payment would be about three point nine million dollars broken out as you see three point three to act and six hundred ten thousand for Foxboro and the impact of that additional amount of money that the district would have to pay on the actin and Boxborough taxpayers would be four hundred and thirty six and three hundred and nineteen of the ruse slightly less than the chart that we had up a couple of minutes ago the other alternative is we take that premium and instead of keeping it we use it to reduce the amount of the actual debt that we incur and as it happens here that premium would be 5.2 million dollars and it's not five point six because it's it's proportionate

014with the face amount of the bond so if the face amount is seventy million the premium is not five point six it's 5.2 million as a result of that the first year debt payment is not three million nine as was in option one but 3 million six twenty five and the proportion of chairs for acton-boxborough three million fifty-seven thousand and five hundred and sixty eight thousand with the impact accordingly less on the average single-family taxpayer of 405 for actin and 96 or Foxborough the treasurer is the is the one who was who has the authority to accept the low bid but but Margaret and I have been working very closely together and and Peter as well has sat in the last meeting we had with a financial adviser and Margaret is going to make the

015decision that be the best has the long-term interest of the district and the taxpayers in mind so I did a chart and again when I put this information together in presentation together it was a we good option want an option to and there are advantages to both there is an advantage to having a pot of five point six million dollars available to the district ultimately resulting in a smaller tax payment smaller first year tax payment to the average taxpayers of both towns and having that ability at very low cost financing to do other projects on the other hand and this was the persuading argument that came through loud and clear in the Deaf strategy subcommittee meeting was we were not mandated to go out and borrow 75 million toward the new school project and Oh

016see what else you can get and we can just put that in the aside and pay for other projects as we go along our mandate was borrow the money for the new school project and it's clear that reducing the initial amount of debt one results in lower interest cost over the life of the borrowing and - you can see it's a thirty one dollar a year difference on the average Acton taxpayer and a $23 a year difference for the average box pro taxpayer the difference between off - and so the consensus of administration being Peter Margaret and myself and the tech strategy subcommittee was to go with option two which is again reduce the initial amount of the debt I don't so this was a newer slide you see the timeline this is coming fairly

017quickly and there's an interplay here between us wanting to get the bonds on the street the term for bond offering and also the timing of both towns town meetings are Acton's Town Meeting in particular being the first and having to back up that the time from the Acton Town Meeting to your final vote which is required for terms of the regional agreement we need to put an amount in your appropriation vote for next year that may not be the exact number that's required these are estimated numbers based on a number of significant assumptions made by the financial advisor we are optimistic that that there is enough conservatism built in accepting for the unlikely event that interest rates will rise precipitously in the next month that when the bonds are actually sold the the actual amount

018that we'll need to repay in FY 21 and thereafter is actually a little bit less than this it's a much simpler means for the school committee to reduce an appropriation amount after it's taken a final vote increase it and so given given this timeline you would have the March 15th meeting to consider voting a budget reduction based on the difference between the actual bond sale which presumably will have taken place by then in the amount that we wrote that were recommended in the in emotion wording tonight it will also still avail Acton to print its town meeting warrant with the with the exact right number when I wrote the motion wording I believe you have three versions you have option one as we've talked about option two as we've talked about anyone with blanks in

019it because knowing that the committee can can have its own ideas about things but it could have gone in a different direction and so you have that looks familiar the meme here is that it's your move meaning that there are several options available to you but I think is this next and so you've seen versions of this slide before what we've done is we've taken and rolled forward from budget Saturday on January 25th the second column the next to last column is the impact of the option to debt service repayment that we that I just talked about a total amount of 3 million 625 Acton share 3 million 57 thoughts book share 568 thousand and the resulting final budget the total increase yes that does say seven point two seven percent increase from last year

020obviously four percent of it or there abouts is is from this Malone and the actin and Boxborough assessment amounts respectively so just to reiterate that you know for for everyone here and for the millions of people at home the operating budget has not changed since budget Saturday the operating budget is a three point two nine percent increase with an impact to action of 3.06 percent in an impact of Boxford one point two two but we felt it incredibly important to be transparent with our community about what the actual impact on their taxes was as we move forward and so we published this final recommended comma column because that's what we're going to be asking you to approve and that's where the seven point two seven percent P 0.05 and the six point one five come

021from it's really the impact of the building project and I just can't say that enough it's just like last year when we reiterate that the borrowing for the capital improvement things through the operator and one other thing of note here is that for what it's worth relative to alg the apt the revised acted in total of 66 million 163 5:14 Oracle yes 66 1 163 includes three million 57,000 relating to the new school debt the alg financial model has been carrying for quite some time three million four hundred and eleven thousand in that slot so this is a significant reduction from what the alg model this is language you have several different versions of emotion in your packet I think - based on what options you as a committee feel like you want to do

022with the bond however we are recommending the committee go with option two which is the least tax impact to the community and so that is the language that's before you on this motion we're happy to take any questions I was just gonna say so questions and things now and we're not going to give the motions of the voting right and so after just one but enough and I just can I just make one more thing one more statement as well the when we issue the bond and talked about the premium and try to try to give you a really high level understanding of that the district will receive seventy five million dollars in cash and that's the amount that's needed to pay our share of the total project cost less contingencies that slide that I

023first put up the choke how we arrived at seventy five million dollars we may need to borrow the remainder of the project funding at the end of the project that's how projects used to get funded used to short-term borrow short-term borrow and then when the project was all done substantially complete signed off moved in then you'd sell the sub bonds we're in a position where we're getting guidance from our financial professionals that this is historically low rates of interest two and a half percent I personally never never seen that in my career so borrow as much as you can now without incurring penalties for over borrowing so there may be another set of borrowing fairly an insignificant amount at that point and coincidentally in five years which is about the timeframe when that borrowing would

024take place the biggest piece of existing exempt the debt will have dropped off and so there's a there's a number of moving pieces here which which which meshed together really well so that so the two things we will receive 75 million dollars but the debt that will go on our books under these assumptions would be sixty nine point eight million dollars that's a pretty good deal I wanted to start by just commenting that the the dead subcommittee didn't have a chance to remove all of this with Dave in the process was exactly as he described that he talked about should be done yeah recommendation they brought it to that subcommittee and I think the most important part of this relates to the what should we do with the premium and there was consensus this is

025a very significant challenge for our communities and in that regard the only appropriate thing to do with the cleaning of this to use it to reduce the payments because the whole premium thing is a little complicated I'm gonna try to explain it a little differently David can tell me then this is the wrong way to think about it this isn't mechanically how it works but I think it's a little easier to understand so when we get the 75 million you could imagine that we would get 75 million plus we get another check for 5.2 million dollars and instead of taking that check for 5.2 million dollars and putting in our pocket we say give us back 5.2 million dollars worth of ice that's how I see the premium you can open that makes it easier

026don't understand what that me a minute so and then the last point that it should be emphasized is that these are fantastic interest rates and I think the you know the School Committee and the administration did a good job through this process of saying you know it initially it's not going to be higher than this and then it's not gonna be higher than this you know and I'm very hopeful that on March 1st 50 you know when we do that next budget you'll see that we made another see begin ratchet down to get to a final number which will still be a challenge but will represent really an excellent job by all hands slide number 13 and option number one just trying to understand the numbers between acting and box by others correct therefore acting

027in a different so it's the question relative to 436 versus 319 no it's the bolded number compared to the one in pregnancy it was higher for active I can't account for why there's a there's a disparity I can tell you one thing is all along the process we used a 8515 split for the for the shares the actual the actual split for next year is going to be 84 34 something like that which on a decent-sized number it's a small percentage but on a on a large number is a fairly significant amount that could account for that that's a great question and I honestly hadn't noticed that but so I don't have an answer I didn't reconcile her to the prior number I just didn't understand why it went in a different direction that's the

028only thing I think oh this is that it's because in the final analysis the Boxborough shift is higher than we had been estimating before as just a percentage of Islay present okay you're looking at either December 15 it's like cash I knew that it's like we're getting it so we're putting into like that mean ask for account sometimes I and will we earn usually that uses concept-wise rather ask for time there will be interest earning is that the case yeah so the set so the seventy five million dollars is is quite a substantial amount of money to be all of a sudden handed on on a day in the not-too-distant future and I've talked with Margaret and the default assumption is to deposit it with what's called mmvt mask Municipal Depository Trust which is the

029largest holder of government assets in the state and they pay a fixed interest rate they pay an interest rate which is the same for everybody and it's a it's based on short-term securities a portfolio that they have and maybe in the one and a half to two percent range now we recently got the act in health insurance trusts to take the money and invest it within mmvt it's safe it's well-managed it offers its liquid and it offers a competitive return Margaret can evaluate other options she may have an idea that based on the cash flow requirements of the project that you know I'm not gonna need this amount of money for another two years based on the projected cash flow so I may not put it all in mmvt but it's Margaret's call on that

030she's professionally trained as far as Investment Management and would would make a decision to maximize the interest there's a another caveat with that is you're not allowed to earn more money on depositing borrowed funds than you have than you will repay so if she were able to for example not that this is possible but if you were able to get a 4% return u-unless and it's too much of too detailed to go into unless you found some ways around it you would have to rebate the ill-gotten gains so to speak of the amount of money that you earned in excess of what you're paying back to the to the federal government the reason for that is these will be a tax exempt bonds so people who buy them won't be paying federal income tax on

031them as a result the federal government looks askance at the art of the ability of a government to go and borrow money tax-free money to the bondholders and going and make money it's called arbitrage and that simply is making money off borrowed money so that's a that's something too that has to be watched by everybody involved and the simple answer to your question would have been yes we're going to invest it but there is like everything else here there's a little more than just what's on the surface yes so for the interest that we earned is a plan for that I'll be putting you staff for there for the end of the project we don't have a plan for it as yet I think it's likely it would reduce what we would need to borrow

032later I have two questions are we driving these attacks written down in active luxury for the life of the loan or just the first year that's number one that's just both in any method okay and then I just wanted to make Peter to reiterate the weave level funded our capital improvement plan you know I work to address our so I'm actually surprised that that we've there are not like legal constraints on how you can use a premium that you know like a cash influx like that because it seems kind of disingenuous to borrow money for a specific reason and then you know you kind of have this cash cow and you can do anything with it so you don't have to answer that now I'm just surprised that there's not legal constraints on it having

033said that if we did do option a which I wouldn't support our team one is there something in the CIP that we could get done that we're not getting done now so the answer right now is no you know the only thing that we in all honesty had a conversation about internally is is that something you could bank and then use toward future payment forward like a conan project that certainly was a thought but we didn't pitch the building project as a douglas gates conan project and so we thought to try and shift in pivot at the last minute with the community just wouldn't feel transparent and it would be disingenuous so that's why we really think sticking with option two what I will say is similar to the impact on the building project with

034the debt which is a budgetary consideration a budgetary positive for us is that the capital plan we're also going to bond at the same time that will likely yield another $300,000 and interest savings based on the plan that we're looking at so even though we're level funding it for a year based on our original projections from FY 20 we're now 1.3 million dollars in interest payments under what we thought we'd have to do so we're really in a good position in terms of that so even though it's level funded now we're gonna still come out to the good and your first question was is this just the first year or what's going to happen so the two options for how to structure the debt one was make the same amount of principle payment each year

035in which case the first year is the highest and it goes down the one that we opted for was one akin to your home mortgage where the payments are relatively the same from year to year so this is for all intents and purposes the the amount that the impact for this building over the 30-year life of the bond so as I was reading through III you know it was nice to see that we have a the premium and I was thinking that you know option one the idea of putting it towards more capital the question I had was do we have the capacity if we were to to you know opt for option one would we have the internal capacity actually managed the vast number of capital projects that we that we'd have it became

036Paul as Peter has said and I said before a philosophical thing that this is not what we set out to do and and so it was just it was just the consensus that we not go there because I'm I'm I'm hearing that there's several questions about option one actually I want to tell everyone that you know in the data strategy meaning you know when we talk about the option one and then one the money you know used for supposed to used for this since new school building and then used for other purpose other than the new school building then may now be you know authorized by the tongue vote the vote we already had right so it's like we probably need a new vote so that's that call humility turned out so in that in

037that meeting [Music] I move we adjourn the budget hearing excuse before can I just interrupt before you adjourn is there anyone from the public that would like to comment all right seeing nobody all right so there's a motion to adjourn on the table in a second all in favor any opposed any abstentions great okay so we've now returned to the open business meeting so is there any more discussion amongst the committee about or is there discussion amongst the committee or do we are you ready to make a motion I'd like to make a motion all right you may make a motion I move that the total appropriation for the acton-boxborough Regional School District for the fiscal year of July 1st 2020 through June 30th 2021 be set at 97 million five hundred and ninety nine

038thousand seven hundred and seventy seven dollars and that the member towns be assessed in accordance with the education reform law in the terms of the regional agreement and amendments thereto as follows Acton 66 million one hundred and sixty three thousand five hundred and fourteen dollars consisting of a capital assessment of five million seven hundred and seventy one thousand four hundred and sixty three dollars in an operating assessment of sixty million three hundred ninety two thousand and fifty one dollars and Boxborough twelve billion two hundred and thirty thousand seven hundred twenty seven dollars consisting of a capital assessment of nine hundred and sixty one thousand six hundred and fifty five dollars in an operating assessment of eleven million two hundred and sixty nine thousand seventy-two dollars with the remainder to be accounted for by the following

039sources of funds anticipated chapter 78 in the amount of fifteen million three hundred and forty-five thousand eight hundred and eleven dollars anticipated chapter seventy-one section 16 C transportation aid of two million ninety seven thousand two hundred and twenty-five dollars anticipated charter school aid in the amount of $50,000 anticipated federal Medicaid reimbursement of two hundred fifty thousand dollars anticipated investment earnings of three hundred thousand dollars anticipated miscellaneous revenues of seventeen thousand five hundred dollars and a transfer from E&D reserves in the amount of 1 million one hundred and forty five thousand dollars is there any discussion all right all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions all right that passes unanimously thank you okay this okay so I'm gonna say that welcome to our general business meeting we're gonna do public participation and everything right

040now I just want to note to the committee that we are already 30 minutes behind our schedule and that we have a packed agenda with an executive session afterwards so just be thoughtful in your comments we certainly have plenty of things that we need to discuss tonight so I just want to make sure everyone's being a good listener and keeping their comments brief and necessary all right so per policy be EDH when members of the public may come up to speak for three minutes on items that are not included on this agenda is there anyone that would like to come up all right Mike [Music] is this on we go back to the budget for a second No so thank you good evening my name is Mike Beaulieu Lesko I'm the president of the Acton

041Boxborough Education Association or the ABA the district's teachers union I'm also in Acton resident I am also a Miriam school parent I want to begin by thanking you for giving me a forum to share my thoughts and speak on behalf of the ABA I'm grateful that the union and the school committee have a relationship that is honest open and collaborative that relationship speaks to the deep commitment that you all have to education here in Acton Boxborough I also should acknowledge that while I am technically addressing you all this evening my message is really intended for the community at large absent a literal Town Square to gather in tonight's meeting seemed like the most appropriate forum for what I'm about to say I come here tonight to address how some have chosen to respond to an

042incident that occurred on january 9th at marion school i do not want to comment on the specifics of that incident nor am i here to express anything less than full support for the independent investigation now taking place the educators have act in a box burrow care deeply about equity and fairness for people of all identities in our community we support a thorough review of any alleged incident of racism in our schools and we are always looking to learn new perspectives approaches and ways to improve and grow as professionals moreover I would be remiss if I did not name and own the lens of white privilege through which I view the January ninth incident at Miriam I will never be able to fully understand the trauma experienced by the family involved nor will I ever be

043able to fully appreciate the impact that the incident has had on our students and parents of color the narrative of how this incident has been felt across acton-boxborough does not belong to me instead I come here tonight to address a particular accusation made against one of our educators and association members on social media an accusation made without facts context or any ability for this member to defend herself I hope you will join me in condemning this kind of defamation and I hope everyone in this room and watching this broadcast will take to heart how painfully these kinds of attacks are felt by every educator in the district on the morning of January 29th the member of the community posted the following on a popular social media page visible to thousands of people across the region

044and I quote black lives matter black children matter if you believe they do then demand the following fire Carolyn Imperato Miriam school psychologist this post was made in connection to the incident on january 9th and the community member who posted it has a publicly publicly disclosed connection to the same incident it is also worth noting that two district administrators were named in this post and I want to acknowledge that their pain is just as raw and just as real as Carolyn's now I'm not here this evening to exonerate Carolyn and Parata or anyone else from wrongdoing Carolyn believes as do I that no educator is immune to bias and any accusation of racism in our schools needs to be investigated in a serious and transparent manner I do hope that this investigation will confirm what

045I know about Carolyn that she has dedicated her life to helping every child in her care and that she is a professional with the deepest empathy and respect for the dignity of all people but the social media post of January 29th had nothing to do with empathy or respect for anyone or anything instead this community member lashed out at Carolyn with a defamatory accusation designed and calculated to cause maximum collateral damage to Carolyn and those she loves this was not a heroic attempt to speak truth to power this was an act of cowardice designed to blindside Carolyn and destroy her career before any facts were known this attack was especially effective because Carolyn is not only a career acton-boxborough educator she is also an acting resident and parent her whole personal and professional life is

046here she has nowhere to run and nowhere to hide now that this community member and his digital enablers have branded her as a bigot Carolyn fears for the safety of her children and wonders what price they might have to pay because of the accusations made against their mother there are some who might say that in the age of social media activism this is simply the new reality for public figures and public officials if you want the spotlight you need to accept everything that goes with it but while celebrities and athletes endure the cost of instant accountability with infinity pools private jets and the adoration of millions educators enjoy no such luxuries I've never seen a teacher take a limousine to school and while Carolyn and parado might dress like a rock star she has no

047fan club to turn to for support when her name is dragged through the mud as educators we did not choose our profession because we want to be public figures but public figures we are and the only defense we have for our reputations is the hope and the trust that our students our parents and our communities will protect those reputations for us I speak here tonight for Carolyn knowing that the community member who attacked her will likely now come after me and when that attack comes as a teacher and resident and parent in the district I too will have nowhere to run and nowhere to hide from his screeds and the sanctimony that he inspires but I also know that bullies only respond to strength and I teach my eighth grade students that when you tolerate

048a bully in your midst when you choose to be a bystander and say silence you only encourage and empower the bully to hurt people again so I rise tonight to speak for Carolyn not because it is the easy thing to do but because it is the right and the just and the only thing to do the past week has brought to the forefront challenging and difficult discussions enacted in Boxborough I attended the community forum a week ago tonight and my heart breaks for my neighbors and my students who feel marginalized in ways that I can never understand we must continue to integrate empathy and cultural understanding into our community dialogue we must give voice to the trauma of our families of color and we must allow each other the dignity to be defined by more

049than a single story but none of that important work will be accomplished by defaming and attacking the professionals in our schools indeed if there is progress to be made here enacted in Boxborough our educators will be at the vanguard our educators will help do the healing our educators will get us there one student at a time one lesson at a time one act of kindness at a time and one act of selflessness at a time Modelling the empathy and the love and the critical thinking needed to create a truly inclusive community so my call to everyone in this room and watching this broadcast is to reject the false bravado of social media we will not get the community we want by gluing down our caps lock and spreading division in fact it is our response

050to that division that will help us move forward that response must be authentic and it must be resounding and it must come from all of us I hope you will join me in that response tonight thank you [Applause] thank you Mike is there anyone else from the community that wants to come up before we have our high school representative join us all right Michael you want to come up I'm actually not quite sure how to follow that although I do understand that there was some more conversations to be had I got an email I think the out an hour before I came and I think mr. light will probably touch on that at some point is presentation so I'll keep it brief with third quarter I get to senior slide the rest of the year

051I get to go to New Hampshire if I want to next week that's fun we're and down there there's some I guess there's three sort of events that happen in the past week for that sort of shed light shall be a light of like what the high school is like I guess one of them didn't happen so we had basically today we had a volunteer fair that the school organized it's probably seasonal twice a year and we they bring in organizations that would like would that would like some student support and the counseling department organizes that and that's just something that it's a bit of a tradition I guess we also had the schedule which you heard a lot about there was a bit of an uproar about this time last year about now they're

052asking for feedback on that there was a survey out the students at the staff and I'm not quite sure how mr. jory be using that but I trust that that they're making some changes in to how that works like the logistics I don't believe they're going back to what it was before there was something that the student council tried to organize for there was a dance that they were trying to do that failed due to low attendance which tells us a little bit tells me a little bit something about sort of the demeanor of this type of student their world the focus of our students and it may or may not be a good it was interesting to me and also there were many students who were a little annoyed at mr. light for not

053calling a snow day thank you Michael for that update all right Peter you wanna give yours first Michael thank you you can please pass on that if we lived in Florida you'd have had a snow day today I want to actually just start by congratulating a few of our student groups who have seen some success over the last few weeks first our Academic Decathlon team recently placed first in the Massachusetts regional tournament our quiz bowl team also saw great success in making it to the semi final round of their tournament and then the team did ultimately lose to Boston Latin but they had another strong showing across the state and then finally if you remember Steve Martin came before you last year talking about the development of an eSports team we had a nice little

054update this weekend they went down to Gillette Stadium for a statewide tournament and our eSports League of Legends team competed this past weekend at Patriot place in their first ever finals they eventually lost to nothing to an undefeated Shrewsbury team but the a B team went 16 and 2 over the season and represented us all well so we are proud of all of the accomplishments of all the various students across the district we obviously can't speak to all of them in one meeting but I thought I would just highlight a few of them so we wish all of our students a lot of success in the coming weeks as well I also want to just make an announcement that tomorrow morning Tessa and I are hosting our next community coffee with the superintendent and school

055committee chair that is and I apologize in the written version it's incorrect so we'll correct that for the morning but tomorrow it is 8 to 9:30 a.m. although I will have to actually end at 9:15 a.m. I have another commitment and then we have another upcoming coffee on March 10th we're also providing a link to our community members in case they want to submit a question ahead of time that requires some preparation that allows Tessa right to be able to come to the meeting with a little bit of information so that is in there as well I also wanted to just provide you a brief update on the dyslexia work that the district has been doing this year and our progress on the new literacy vision I just want to recognize Deb bukas and her

056entire curriculum team and a lot of the administrators around the district for coming together and really rethinking some of our early literacy work our students earlier this fall we did speak to you about one of our district-wide goals specifically around the development of the district-wide vision for literacy specifically our goal this year is to develop the pre-k through six literacy or reading vision and implement a plan an implementation plan that will provide equitable access to evidence-based instructional and assessment practices which improve literacy outcomes for all students this past weekend several of our staff had an opportunity and I was one of those staff where we're very thankful that our special education Parent Advisory Council held a listening session for families who had children with dyslexia to be able to share their experiences in our schools

057it was a powerful experience that provided us with valuable insight that we can use to shape our work moving forward an update about our progress in the important work was then distributed to our CPAC officers and I understand they're sharing that I did put a link into this newsletter so that that can go out to all of our families across the district as well I also want to say that in addition although I think though it's listed in the document but I'm going to call out we're very very excited to announce that we have been selected as the single largest beta pilot testing site to collaborate with Boston Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School is dr. nadine gaba and her research team at the innovation digital health accelerator entered the final stages of development in

058creating an early literacy screening app for the use in kindergarten which will eventually be extending to grade 1 and pre-kindergarten in the future the screening app has been in development across the country in numerous states reflecting various demographics we're hopeful that many or perhaps all of our kindergarten teachers will be able to take advantage of that opportunity during the beta test and be able to provide that feedback as we go through the process our early literacy coordinator had a great quote that I just wanted to share with you and she said that quote it is both inspiring and humbling to realize that Acton Boxborough Regional School District is on the cutting edge of the latest research associated with early markers of dyslexia from world-renowned institutions and award-winning cognitive neuroscientists including dr. Nadine gab at Boston

059Children's Hospital and Harvard Medical School dr. Joanna Christodoulou at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Massachusetts General Hospital and dr. John Gabrieli at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology so we're very excited to be able to provide those updates that it's certainly ongoing work and we'll be you know several years in the making but some really great progress in this initial year I also then want to just come back and this is leading into your discussion that we've provided some time for but our community conversation about race that we had last Thursday we obviously know that that was in response to the incident at Miriam on January 9th I did share some information at that point about the investigation and I want to share that now for other members of the community who may not have

060been able to attend that incidents at schools and I think I said this the other night but they're always complex and multifaceted for this reason it's important for us to conduct an in-depth analysis of what occurred during the incident and take any actions we can to improve the responses as a district I shared at the form that we've contracted with an independent fact-finder his name is Jeffrey Sankey to conduct a thorough review of the incident to determine if there are any actions taken by our staff based on race to review the adequacy of our policies and practices for students in crisis and to determine what if any improvements we should make and then finally to determine if we followed those policies and practices those are all three really big questions and that is the focus

061of attorney Sankey's work in the district he has not done work previously on behalf of the Acton Boxborough Regional School District and he has no established relationships with our leadership prior to this incident the focus of mr. Sankey's work his special education civil rights and juvenile justice and he primarily represents students and families I expect this investigation to take several weeks in order to conclude and we will certainly update our community as soon as mr. Sankey completes his work I also just want to thank the members of our community who came last Thursday to share their thoughts feelings and experiences with all of us about how students and families of color are experiencing our schools and in all honesty the broader community as well this was a powerful evening for me personally and for the

062members of our leadership team who were able to attend based on the stories that were shared we have a clear gap between the intentions that we as school educators have and some of the impact that that's having on our students and families each and every day and I think that's going to be a a really critical element of our work in the years going forward I do want to reassure everyone who was in attendance at that community forum and our broader community that regardless of what the independent fact-finder has to recommend coming out of his investigation this work will be a priority of our district we want to focus on inclusive schools we want to focus on equitable opportunities and outcomes for our students and we will be committed to that work you know since

063I first came to a bi I started with our faculty on the first day that I introduced myself to them and I said I had wanted four experiences for all of our students I wanted them to be loved I wanted them to feel valued I wanted them to feel challenged and I wanted them to feel supported our students do each and every day in our schools but clearly what we heard during that forum is there's a group of students and families who have not been feeling that same level of inclusiveness and that needs to be a focus for us I just want to end by saying you know these incidents have a tremendous toll on everyone our staff included what I've learned all of our staff during this process is just how passionate and caring

064our staff are for our children every day this has been tremendously difficult for everyone involved we want to keep the focus as we do every day on what we can do for kids and how we continue to improve our schools for kids and what's been remarkable in all the staff I've talked to that has 100% been the focus so I I want to thank them for be able to being able to continue to put kids first in a very challenging time but I know that they do that because it's what they love to do so thank you and I will turn this back over to Tessa so we've left space in the agenda I know that many of you were able to attend the forum the other night but we left space in the agenda

065just as a place for if anyone wanted to you know have a discussion at the table or just share their thoughts or whatever so anyone care to share Paul I was there and I was you know pleased with Peter coming to organize the the forum there was some tough issues that were brought up but I appreciate the way that Peter handled them I am Not sure the general public appreciates the the tension that Peter is under with respect to protecting privacy of you know people involved and sometimes I I know that that comes across as trying not to provide information but it it's a true desire to protect privacy and and from what I see how Peter handled that I think all of us can rest assured that if there's an issue that happens to

066us that our privacy will be protected as well I just wanted to comment it has been commented in some other context that you know the things that happen are in fact a reflection of us and one of my neighbors is african-american and so after the forum I went to him to ask him a question that I knew the answer to so my son you know is about five six you know he's sort of skinny and of course he's never been pulled over his son is about six six and he's ripped he's a very good-looking young man and his son has been pulled over so the reality is that this is something that exists in all of us and it's something that the community you know in addition to the school's needs to be working on

067and I'm I'm very pleased that you know one of the things that Diana and Peter did with respect to the school committee last year is to say we think it's important for you to take the time to go through the seed train to have a better understanding of this so that we could each individually whether we happen to be here or out in the community work towards being those better people who are in fact more inclusive I gotta give great movie credit for forc'd because she's the one who suggested it I took her up on it so thank you Marie very briefly I was at the community conversation I hope that that conversation is the beginning of the idea embodied in the aphorism that our assistant superintendent of diversity equity and inclusion dr. Don Bentley

068quoted in her August 12 2019 vlog do it afraid because there is no manual so as we step forward maybe we can all remember that so I was there as well and it's I at the end I was trying to talk to Peter and which I really appreciate that your hosts the the meeting it was really well organized and there's true transparency and true intention that we're trying to solve the issue and we acknowledge that so at the end I was trying to say I think there's really good intention and we're trying to focus on and we have that as satar's district oh and there's one thing in all races which there's one thing that's combining all races which is kindness so I think as still all of us here that as leader then we

069can start from here and when we look at each other we can look at each other in the eye we can give each other a smile and that start the inclusiveness and from each one of us here in the room thank you did you wanna come up Michael I meant to put this in my update but I don't I wasn't able to attend the meeting last week and I did I don't know if this came up there but I just wanted to make committee aware that an unspecified number of students are attempting to organize a walkout at 9:15 tomorrow thanks for the update Michael great I was able to attend attend the forum and my takeaway is that I hope that everyone that was able to attend the forum and those that I know were

070able to watch because I know that there were some people that had taped it and put it up on YouTube that these conversations start to happen at home too and that people are that we're not just having the conversations as adults as or as kids because I know the kids are having the conversations in the high school as well and maybe younger than that but that we start to have the conversations together as as parents and children and grown-ups of other children even tonight I had a conversation with some freshmen that were my house just sort of asking about them about their awareness if they knew why there was a walkout planned or you know what their thoughts were on that and what their experiences were so I think it's an important conversation to have

071and I hope that that that's one of the first takeaways from the beginnings of these conversations is that we will all have them together as a community all right so tonight moving on from that we welcome David Crane from McCarthy town for the first of our school improvement plan presentations so welcome David I understand that's not the easiest of transitions to make into a school improvement play and update but we very much appreciate you being here tonight look forward to it well thanks everybody it's a it's really it's a pleasure to be able to talk about our school a little bit and I'm also proud to be the inaugural principal in these new digs that you guys are now using to I noticed that they've left but I really wanted to acknowledge Mike's powerful statement

072and his acknowledgment of the the real the constant and true professionalism of all the educators in this district so I think that needs to be said - this is not gonna have a budget page to it and it's not going to have a slide from budget Saturday but there is when I was going through this there was one slide from budget Saturday that that Debbie Dixon presented which I'd like to recall later on in the presentation if I could so we're here to talk about our 2019-20 school improvement plan the interesting thing is we put the slides together and Peter forwarded to me some requests from Diane and from someone else about the co-teaching piece so I've revised the presentation and I've added a few more slides okay this by the way shows the perspective

073the different perspective taking that different children off are can see in a single vision the expert at anything was once the beginner I wanted to begin that today because we're doing things that we've never done before in our school and I think it's important to note that it is a beginning and we are not experts at yet but we are working towards that end so the district court we talked about as the leadership team the alignment and connections of the schools with wellness equity engagement we hope we're going to be reflected in the slides tonight and what we're doing at art school so in order to increase opportunities some of this I'm going to read directly from the plan for one-on-one interaction between students and teachers leading to stronger relationships we're going to we will

074successfully create a co-teaching model with one of the two sixth-grade teams in order to significantly reduce pullout services for most sixth grade students receiving supportive learning services in the McCarthy Town Learning Center I want to point out too before Don jumps in is that there is no specific co-teaching model there are many things that represent co-teaching and we're trying to do one of those one of those situations in McCarthy town right now so one of the important things and this is an opportunity to me for me to thank Diane because it actually allowed me to refine and I hope make a little clearer what are the some of the things that we're trying to do is the key elements and all the approaches to what is mostly called collaborative learning which i think is the

075better way to use it is collaboration and that has to be an understood activity that happens among and between all of the teachers the regular ed teachers and the special educators who would be working in the classroom communication because it's not only about planning but it's about taking a look and a close look at the learning that's going on in the classroom in order to adjust practice and time and I put that in uppercase letters because it is one of the most valuable commodities in a school and it's something that we don't have a whole lot of in terms of getting ready for how we think about instructional delivery systems at our school so there needs to be the sense and the comfort level that all the students are ours and not yours in mine

076and when you have a traditional teaching model of a single teacher sometimes another educator in the classroom can create a different kind of dynamic and it's something that the collaborative piece has to be able to overcome so this is the book this Diane set this title today it's too many interactions collaboration skills for school professionals and they talked about co-teaching as a specific instructional delivery option that's based on collaboration and the district has been using Benning hoff as a as the as the guide for what we're going to be exploring as a district and she's actually presented a couple of professional learning seminars with us and so that's the model that I've used when we've talked about this for the past year with our teachers and with our school and her purview and she talked

077calls it collaborative learning and it's a coordinated instructional practice in which two or more educators can simultaneously work with a heterogeneous group of students in a general education classroom it sounds wordy but it's also hard to do and it's something that personalities the need to be jiving perfectly and ideas about teaching and learning need to be jiving perfectly and sometimes that coordination is difficult to achieve you know I haven't happy that at this point in the year to be able to say that we're doing a pretty good job of it there's been bumps but it's really been terrific for the kids and to watch what happens in the classroom as two and sometimes three educators are working with a group of kids it's pretty remarkable so these are the specific approaches from both authors on

078both leaders in this understanding this field of collaborative learning in friends book there is the one teach one observe one teach one assist parallel teaching station teaching alternative teaching you can get the sense why Don believes very strongly that there is no single model although they call the models there's a duet model that Ann Benning Hoff uses and talks about lead and support speaking adds skill groups station models learning style models parallel teaching and complementary skills skills that complement the instruction skills that need to be supported supporting that instruction so I sort of drawn a connection between some of these things and both writers ideas about what works best and what you know works well there Anthony Hoff has many more ideas about how to do things but they end up being somewhat similar to

079the way that friend speaks about them in collaborative teaching and all of these things are possible with different kinds of mixes of educators and Benning Hoff talks about mixing special educators or Technology teachers or even physical ed teachers in a concept of co-teaching so there's a lot of stuff that could be explored with this wares we're using a more traditional way of beginning it by having a single special educator working with two Gen ed teachers in the at McCarthy town so with the bubble going into sixth grade we have two teams of two sections one does not have a special educator but they still rotate through the math science and ela social studies content areas the other teams comprised of the two general ed teachers and a special educator with the same shared rotations so

080our special educator works with ela and with math in both rotations and she has been able to bring special education teaching strategies into the classroom that benefit both regular ed kids and children who have learning differences or IEP s and I think that what we've done is do a lot of things which good good evidence-based teaching now is showing us is most effective with kids who are with generalized differences across the classroom and that small group work and we're doing a ton of small group work in sixth grade that's really been very effective the kids aren't leaving the classroom to have instruction in the learning center as much as they were before they are part of all of the things that go on in the classroom now there are the planning that can happen with

081the with the teachers is such that all kids could be included now in the things that are beginning they're happening in the classroom and that makes makes it way that it really is inclusive there have been bumps as I've said before but we're working on those things and we expected them it's been good so far and you know it's interesting too and I will remark that I did receive an email today and some of those were thoughtful questions and they were also the same kind of questions that we were asking ourselves at the beginning of this process too and among them are process questions like how do we assign kids how do we change IEP s how do we change things on the grid what are the other things that we need to think about

082as we move into this and so as we've been going on it we've been talking with families we've been talking with the special educators and thinking carefully about how we can do this differently next year but also how we can make the changes that we need to make right now so it's going to be just as effective for all the kids the curricula limits for success are a strong social curriculum and a philosophy about that understanding an application of Universal Design for Learning effective and purposeful differentiation for all the kids and time again in uppercase letters the district is also doing a lot of UDL work now professional learning all of the teachers have been involved in some piece of that so far this year for at least two of the Thursday sessions so there

083we're trying to mesh with what's going on with the district initiatives as well and we're finding that some of this is really effective for what we're trying to do and we're also finding some of the things that we need to dig a little deeper on the strong social curriculum is important to note because there may be kids who are have behavioral challenges within the classroom and so we're trying to build communities of all kids that can be in the classroom and stay in the classroom and it's one of the things that it's going to be that's always something that McCarthy Town has prided itself on is is developing strong communities using social curriculum and making sure that the philosophies that are the underpinning of that social curriculum are strong in the classrooms so looking ahead

084to next year we're going to have four sections of sixth grade we're going to have three sections of fifth grade we're going to have three sections of fourth grade four sections of third grade and three sections of grades K one and two and the reason I want to recall that a particular slide from budget Saturday that Debbie posted was one that showed McCarthy town with a tremendous do you remember that slide that showed the long list of kids in the learning center and now what we're going to be doing in resource rooms for sel for social-emotional learning it's we have some challenges in our school and how we meet those challenges are going to be the many different ways of looking at and I'm trying to avoid the use of the word model but when

085we talk about three sections of grade four those are kids who are coming up from our current grade three there are way more IEP s in that particular grade and three sections of grade four may in fact require two special educators to work with the gen ed team and how we proportion that out to make sense the best way for kids it's something that we're still thinking about and the same thing is true for the current grade three which will have four sections of grade three we want to make sure that all of those kids get their needs met equally - and the problem is that there are also a lot of chick kids coming up with some significant learning challenges in to grade three so how do we use the resources that we have

086in the school the special educators to best meet the needs of all those kids it may look different in grade 3 for so-called team teaching it may look different in grade four than it does in grade four and it may look different in grade six for the same thing and for the same reasons well what's interesting is that this was supposed to be a school improvement plan presentation and for me it's turned mostly into talking about what we do in terms of team teaching and bringing in special educators which is fine with me because this has really been my life for the last eight months anyway as we think about what we do so I'm going to move on to something else if it's everybody wants to talk about ask questions about this instead of

087waiting that's fine with me so if you go back to your slide that says McCarthy town equity goal I just had one question on that and it's it's about the wording and why you chose it so you your equity goal says it's a the reason why this exists is in order to reduce pull out services and I was I'm wondering number one why it wasn't like to encourage universal design to maximize differentiating instruction in the classroom to reach our learners or something like that and if you've been if if you think that this might be problematic because it it sounds a little bit and I know this wasn't the intention that you the school council might be usurping the role of like the team in terms of placement decision so was that did that come

088up in and when you crafted the wording of this so I think that when we did this wording we did it to really generalize what the intent of the new a teaching approach was going to be so yeah we wanted to make sure that we were gonna be using UDL and yes we wanted to be doing other things it wasn't an any tenth attempt to predetermine what was going to be happening as in the team meetings but I think that generally speaking when we looked at what was going on around the school and children who were resisting going out for pull outs because they didn't want to miss what was happening in the classroom that became a driver and perhaps I should have been more careful about the language but I think that the biggest

089driver for us was to make sure that the most kids we could include in the classroom activities that that was going to be starting to happen David I just have a quick question which maybe you can address at the end but it strikes me just as important for this so we've we flip flops back and forth how we have to school improvement presentations and we're halfway through the year this was your school improvement plan for this year correct like these are all goals you're currently working on so maybe at the end of the presentation I'm just curious like I'm sure in your school councils you've already started discussing what those things are going to look like for next year so I'm just curious you know I know that the the intent this year was to

090work with the sixth grade specifically so you could sort of you know discover the bumps and and see what worked and not that kind of thing so with the at the end or now or whatever I just would be curious what what the goal is for next year for next year yeah so basically that's one of the reasons that I listed all the goal all the to grade levels and what the challenges we're going to be facing as we think about what happens next year and in one of the slides later on I talked about placement and we talked about those kinds of conversations too quick question yeah um so you know I was just thinking about because I saw Amanda's email as well and I'm realizing oh yeah I mean we got we got

091ie peas that are kind of in place right now and you know trying to you know there's there's a lot of I imagine there's a lot of time in trying to you know mesh the what what the goal is with the reality of the individual ie peas do you have some kind of timeline I mean what well so what we're trying to do is new as new goals and new IEP s get written during reviews and annuals we're trying to make sure that there's an understanding with families that this is something that we aspire to do and we're trying to make sure that we explain the advantages but you know we've had in the past we've had parents and IEP simply because their children were so unhappy about being pulled and for services in the

092Learning Center or the resource room where to the point where before we had these additional services we created what we call work block which is a time when we know that appointments were going to be happening for the majority of kids so that there would be no new work that would be done in the classroom while these kids were we're getting services in the Learning Center so the idea has always been to include kids as much as possible in the gen ed class room and moving towards that and I think that next year in the years to come just to anticipate later on is that as we add special educators we're going to be able to be more fluid about how we think about presenting instruction to all of the kids in the school and

093placement is certainly going to be something that we have to spend more time on in fact we that our faculty meeting earlier this week we talked about what's going to be happening next year and it's a shift because we're starting to talk about placement now because we have to look and think about the kids that are gonna be going up and it gives us a little bit more time to shuffle the deck and we're good we know we're going to have an additional special educator next year and that's going to make a tremendous difference in how we think about service delivery not just to children on IEP s but to typically developing kids as well can we go to that slide talking about two teams and now the two teams that you present one team

094is yeah here so my question is that so those two teams are will will those two teams share the same resource like you have one team you have two general education teachers right and then another team you have two general education teachers as well plus one special educator so I'm just curious you know if you are saying that you know that the two general education teachers you know in two teams so one team doesn't have a special educator one team does the one team that has a special educator is strictly with that team so that that person there it's like a team of three yeah I'm yeah I know that it's about the things that what about those two general education teachers are - well well two teams share the same two teachers or like

095there are totally four key shorts difference okay so my next question is flop is about are you expecting that that your your teeth you're teaching teachers who will be doubled in the next you know a few years because you are right now you're trying to say hey one classroom has two teachers and then now I'm building like you know two different teams like kind of with like you know not only double its call tripled Michael no if you think about its the number of sections that it's the number of sections that they have yeah yeah well they're not adding teachers to do this they're taking the current resources they have that's the festivai question that I try to understand you know what what's your plan for them you know like for the budget for the

096right first for the fusing we're only using the teachers that the budget provides us so you are not expecting that and you you will you know need to probably double the teacher well no we've actually added this year we added a 1.0 and I think that was in budget in the budget presentation okay you know I think one of the things if to make a commitment to going to a real co-teaching model across the district requires additional special education teachers to be able to do it you can't say that you want a co-teaching model and provide this level of equity for all students and not make sure that you have special education teachers in your classrooms it it can be efficient when students get pulled out of the content instruction to go to a Learning

097Center to learn it because you can cost our students together and so there is it can sometimes be more efficient from a teacher perspective to do that but what's happening is you're actually depriving the students who desperately need to experience that type of content instruction from the opportunity to stay in a classroom and experience it and so they're actually missing out on whole pieces of education because they're going for supplemental services somewhere else when you try to push in to the classroom in a co-teaching model you do have to make sure that you have enough special educators to be able to adequately support your classes that's one of the things that you know we talked at budget Saturday that we started to do this year by looking at the number of resources we have in

098other areas and starting to shift to be able to add some of our special education teachers and that's likely a pattern that will continue for us so we look to you know areas in our schools where okay we say look if this is historically over resourced compared to similar districts that's an opportunity that we have to think about as we have attrition in that area that we might be able to look there to be able to then add some special education teachers along the way so that we can gradually move to this model it's not something that we could ever just dive right into and say we could do in every classroom in every district I don't think we would ever have enough money to have every team in every school be truly you know

099a co-taught team you just can't do that what I've seen successful in some schools is to be thoughtful both teams likely have students who might be supported with IEP s however some students will require very specific content instruction and support and modification of curriculum that can only be delivered with a special educator and then some students on another team might actually have some supports and supplemental services that actually could be provided with an assistant and so one of the things I talked about is on budget Saturday is making sure that we match the needs of the students with the role and qualifications and skills of the educator working with them so it's a complex issue but you know to be really clear yes this you do need additional resources to go to this model but

100we have opportunities within our existing staffing to be able to look for that one of the again to that question - I want to go back to this slide is that next year when we have three sections of grade four we're actually having conversations about putting two special educators with that team because of the needs of the kids so that would be the team that might even be a team of five educators for three sections because that's where the greatest need is and we're going to only use what we have because that's all we got that's but that's an example and that's one of the reasons I wanted to show this slide okay so our social/emotional girl and I also want to thank I don't know who sent the question but it allowed us when

101I looked at the slides that we had on the original deck I was able to add a couple of things that Matt and I talked more about how to talk about one of the things that's here specifically the question was it seems pretty similar to what was presented last year but I really want to emphasize that we this bubble we've added tons of kids and we've also added staff who haven't been trained in responsive classroom and even though we have been using the responsive classroom we've added also social thinking so that we can give the younger kids especially a very specific language around how to explain their emotions and their feelings or only especially when there is conflict and when they are in a place that isn't comfortable for them so Kari Tomlin our school

102counselor this is a picture of her working was one of the primary grades where she's giving them language to use wood to match their feelings so that we can begin to search for how to de-escalate and I think that that's really what we're talking about most of the time when we talk about conflict with kids with kids with they're with adults or with kids with kids then how to take it to an to a level that's going to still allow kids to be learners and still allow kids to be part of the community so to that end we added this slide and talks a little bit about the what we had done we've done to to make sure that the assistance both classroom and special education assistants are part of what's happening in there so

103that crisis teams don't have to be called when there's to intervene when kids are experiencing dysregulation and they can use training that the adults are you that the other adults in the building are using to deescalate things that prevent things from carrying to another place we also have full safety care training for the building level team which means the what we call the it's we don't crisis what are we calling it in response Student Response Team we're trying to take the word crisis out of it just to sort of deregulate ourselves dysregulated ourselves and the ongoing staff work this is really the the biggest piece on the development of our behavioral rubric you can see the zones of regulation here a couple of districts have used a rubric that helps kids to and teachers to

104understand where children are what's causing an incident or a an escalation or kids to start to spin out and how to really practically minimize what that's happening and just keep the kid in the classroom and keep the kid in a learning place so that everybody is is okay this is something that we're working on with the staff it's really been an interesting kind of an experience because the the districts that have had this we started with Sudbury because they're the ones that produce this first behavior rubric and that's what piqued our interest in it it's it's something that describes responses and the building is the building the teachers are all saying well this is not something that fits who we are this is something that may fit another district but for what we are as

105a building and who we are as a staff and who the kids are in our school we've got to make sure that we develop a rubric or a tool that's going to fit our particular school so that work is ongoing it's moving a little bit more slowly than I thought it would but that's public schools I think for the most part do you want to ask some questions about this particular piece well I just have a question so the zone is the zones of regulation what you're talking about specifically that yes you looked at so it doesn't plant reduce the zones regulation it's sort the zones certainly inform it I think for me as I think about it one of the other pieces of the social thinking language really that we use with children is

106the size of the problem and size of your reaction and so when we begin to think about a behavioural rubric we're looking both at the students but also at the faculty and this is responsive to our changing population the changing needs what we're trying to do programmatically so that teachers have a better guide to help them moderate their responses to potential Mis behaviors in the classroom and how to guide them and so certainly through the zones in there because all of us need to think about how we're regulating our emotions whether we use the term crisis or not no I was just curious if that was the specific like because the picture is there you're talking about a behavioral rubric I just I just was I just was unclear when you were talking about a

107behavioral rubric and then you were like well Sudbury uses it and I mean Blanchard has a zone so I just didn't but to me that looked like it was tied and I just wasn't sure okay I'm sorry sorry we don't have the rubric completed yet yeah you know the interesting thing is that this goes along with having teachers involved when the planning of the rubric it also gives them any insights into how their own behaviors as Matt talked about can be regulated and changed to you know it's a big change for regular ed teachers to understand that they're responsible for the teaching of all of the children in the classroom and it's it's something that I talked about before where when you begin co-teaching models whatever form they take it also means that the kids

108are going to be with with the teachers in the classroom and there's a greater understanding now that that the teachers own their kids and I think that that's something rather than there be a division of general education with typically developing children and special education for children who have needs we're trying to integrate these two communities in a way that builds one community rather than sort of halfway you go here at certain times for this instruction and you stay here for this kind for this kind of instruction too so it's it's really an effort to actually develop more community in keeping kids part of what happens in a regular classroom community the parent education forum it was last year we talked about this I briefly spoke about it because it had happened the night before our

109presentation on our school improvement plan and it was it it's so blew me away that we had over 350 families of parent people attend and we did a rotation through the workshop responsive camp classroom in the art integration last year that I'm reporting on it again because I didn't really report on it last year because it was this is part of our goal it was just such an exciting thing and we're still having people ask about it but we've we've decided not to do it each year but rather wait till we have significant shifts and new populations to a a kindergarten parent population moves up to say the second or third grade so there can be a greater understanding of it last year was particularly important to do because we did add almost 90 kids

110because when we added the bubble and they were many of them were new to the community and so it seemed like a like a perfect time to do something like that our engagement goal this year is is about the mathematical curriculum the mathematics curriculum we've completely switched over to for a k5 to investigations we wanted to improve the outcomes that were we're experiencing in the last few years we also have a different kind of population now and I think that investigations is something that is a little bit more respectful about kids who have different kinds of needs in the classroom and so we're doing investigations k5 this is this would be the first year for grades four and five kindergarten has been doing it consistently for a number of years now and of course in

111sixth grade we're using a luster of mathematics which is I think is wonderful the kids are really responding to it but I also have the kid the teachers are telling us that this is something that the kids are responding to at a very positive way too and I don't know if it's the contrast simply between the old curriculum that we use which was getting tired anyway but I think that we're finding that the way that this particular curriculum structures the introduction of content specific areas has really been changing for the for the teachers so for instance we to begin with multiplication in third grade was really a surprise that's very different than most people have known and so the teachers have had to shake up some of the things that they're doing and as you

112can imagine that also has a as a cascading effect to on other grades and what they're thinking about and how to change what they're doing with instruction so I think that this has been something that's been certainly engaging for teachers because they are really trying to learn something new and in in that learning that they're doing that professional learning and then they're at to their practice engages the kids too because it's also brand-new that's it the math curriculum is that is that Justin McCarthy town or is that happening district-wide with it's happening in a few other schools I know that's happening a barium they've done it for a couple of years before excuse me that we have but it's it's something that actually when I began teaching many years ago it was the innovator of

113constructivist curriculum and there were there were problems with it because there wasn't enough work on computation at least at the primary level so people began exploring other kinds of of curricula and they found that this one had so many important pieces that paid attention to individual learning styles individual learning abilities within a grade level that teachers were using parts of this and parts of that the parts of some other things and now they've pulled it together to produce a really coherent kind of a curriculum that makes sense for all the kids and it works so I find it to be terrific and I'm really glad that this is a something that really recognizes its importance but also took the time to revamp it over the years my second it's just my second it's not a

114question it's really a comment maybe a request so I saw those two slides and I was like it that was from last year and and I was well what's new and I was like okay I'll go when the I'll go on your website and I found like I'm it's like jumping on my chair with excitement I mean I could find the minutes from their school council meeting from February 8th 2019 and it really like thank you so much for adding those slides is it just it's like I really understand how that's that you're in trying to integrate these zones of regulation with the social with the social thinking and responsive class I mean there's three different very different process so it's incredibly innovative and and they do different things really well and so to try

115to weave them together but it's quite a challenge and I appreciate that I really it was very exciting for me to read that in the minutes I'm wondering if maybe the minutes could somehow be in the packet or something when as a companion to school I know you like some of them are posted it was the same thing for the parent forum the fact that 250 or so parents attended and and it's it's not like even the minutes say it's not feasible or practical to repeat every year but maybe we'll do it through k4 I mean it really kind of breathed life into into like what what's really that's what's going on and it really demonstrates really very powerfully to us how the how the leadership and the school council works together to to produce

116this this is a good time for me to give a shout out to the school council because I think that they're a remarkable group we have our meetings last too long and because everybody doesn't nobody wants to leave although we used to start at 7:00 a.m. now we start at 7:30 I could live with that but the thing is that we're doing good work and I think that each of the people both teachers and parents who were make up that group are invested in the school and they're invested in all kids not simply their own and they aren't there to protect the interests of their children they're there to protect the interests of all of our kids and of the school so I applaud them for their work it sounds like that year you're building

117very strong community connection and there's a lot of I see that there's a lot of special kid so do you see any trouble in when their transition the great because the relationships so strong at each grade is there any like overlapping so they can I think Matt has been terrific at leading some of the teachers through some of the most important parts of community building using those three pieces and do you want to talk I think David mentioned it briefly earlier the emplacement plays such a crucial role in that in that handoff in any of those transitions we've already begun those discussions for what the class cohorts might look like next year obviously it's multifaceted as we're thinking about what co-teaching is going to add to that and what it's going to look like at

118each grade but the receiving teachers at some point are also invited into that conversation along with counselor and psychologists and special educators everybody so those transitions really are not jarring or drastic for any of the kids particularly because we do have that sense of a vacay six community with shared expectations shared beliefs it makes it it's very similar feel and in the majority of the classrooms so the kids are able to experience the same kind of teacher expectations and use of language in the classroom and I think that that's really done a long way towards just as you would do a mathematic you would you know you want to have something that's continuity because the language of the mathematics is still the same it's still the same workshop and it's still the same with the

119social curriculum so that provides the kids are already are going to be able to transition well so actually is that I wanna you know look into this slides in this presentation one thing you know just impress me I just had one impression that you know we have three goals right so the way that we interpret the three goals probably pretty narrow for example acti right so we currently that you know one the school presenters is folks on the you know the the difference between general education and special education needs but you know the Act II also this is a broader than that right so we talked about in the in our I would recall that in our one night we you know we discuss out that you know that goes we want to reach our

120core values so one thing is that was that a diversity right it's also like you know that could he also cover that so the same thing as engagement it so may like you know focus on the students so I hope that you know you know we can I just feel that you know it's too narrow so thank you I thought this was really a great presentation and it's wonderful to learn about all of the different things that you're doing and I have a question about the co-teaching model that that I'm just trying to understand sort of the practical implementation of it I think and especially about that idea of rather than pulling students out offering more of the instruction in the classroom so what I'm wondering about that is you mentioned that you had tried

121a block schedule before in order to have a time period when there's not new material being introduced for kids who are pulled out will you still be doing that for students who need the individual instruction regardless of where young students will need something different yeah there's still going to be a need for pulling out for specific kinds of instructions especially you know it goes to the dyslexia conversation especially for Wilson reading which isn't practical to do inside the classroom so we still have some of that and we're still trying to work on some of the other things about when is it practical to do X and what is it practical to do Y well the teachers have experimented with their schedule within the sixth grade and they're they've changed it now and in a major

122way two times to be able to accommodate this new knowledge about having all of these adults in the classroom and how this works yeah it's it's going to be a work in progress and I don't think that we're ever going to come up with something that we can say is the system that works the best and do your other question and we do have work block we call it work block just because it's a chunk of time and we try to stagger that chunk of time across the majors the master schedule so that each of the grades can have the experience of the specific special educators who aren't attached to classroom specifically yet so it's also a major-league question of scheduling of which that is an absolute master in terms of how we use time

123in in the school day and you know it's interesting this the notion of going all day K and the hybrid models are we've been compelled now to put the all three of our K sections in the morning for specials to make sure that they're they each get their schedules their specials too so that has an impact on how we do everything else all of our schedules have to start someplace and everything has to wheel around it to go this way and it's really it's a difficult thing to do and then each of the teachers and will have to work out individual schedules with the special educators to make sure that all the service delivery stuff happens at an appropriate time and that's really what drove us to start to think more deeply about this other

124way of instruction and keeping kids in the classroom and keeping teachers in the classroom is a way to sort of avoid the schedule snafus that we that can happen all the time in terms of both service delivery and about meeting curricular needs for everybody thank you David I know it's really hard to go first and we had a lot of questions and I know you put a lot of extra effort into adding some slides to answer some of the questions ahead of time so I really appreciate the work that you put into it and it was very informative and I know in our community there's often questions like well what does it mean to go to McCarthy town what are the differences between the schools and that question is often answered by parents who haven't

125gone to the other five schools but I think that this is this is a really good place through these school improvement plans for for parents to get a taste of what actually goes on in McCarthy town I think this is very telling it shares a lot of what's important to you as a school and what happens in your community so thank you for being very thorough I appreciate that and thank you to all of you you know this is such an interesting experiment that we're doing and I would like to sort of as we begin to develop a sense of how what's been successful and what needs to be worked on and what I know already know what the challenges are I'd love to come and share maybe in the fall about more about what

126we're learning and what the configuration is end up ends up looking like in the fall too so if you're anything that would be a wonderful follow-up thank you okay thank you alright number eight we have two sets of draft minutes that were in the addendum so I'm looking for a motion to approve those minutes move to approve what you receive comments on two of them all right I'm not used to okay so for the draft minutes of budget Saturday January 25th on the second page in the middle of the page under audience questions the second bullet the last sentence of that it has been suggested that it read a member read the voted School Committee motion to remind the public instead of read the actual vote and then a second comment [Music] the same minutes

127page four under questions third bullet which is the last bullet instead of in any bond return plan it was suggested it read in any program involving a series of projects comma the accuracy of the plan is higher in the first years and that's all that I received okay move foolproof is amended all those in favor all right any opposed any abstentions great those passed unanimously okay we have a recommendation to authorize a superintendent to submit to the MSP a the statement of interest for the Blanchard Memorial School sorry my packets all like messed up now so included in the packet it was a late addition we had a little bit of plasma to confusion on our end but it is the statement of interest for the Blanchard school the major change from last year if

128you recall earlier in the year I updated you that MSBA was no longer accepting any window projects and if you applied for a window and door project they took you right out of the pipeline we've since removed the windows from the statement of interest and this is really a roof repair at this point first Blanchard so that's what we're looking to submit and the motion language is in your packet well while someone is looking for the the motion language you know I read through the statement of interest and you know in looking for exactly what Peter said something that had been clearly restricted to roof only so they're still in the text various references to Windows but in the key section where it says we're doing a roof so I'm assuming that that is now

129sufficiently corrected to be compliant with the roof only requirement of the MSBA yeah they make you they make you in the drop-down boxes actually comment on the mechanical systems the roofing systems I think just getting out the envelope in general but in the I don't know if you noticed but there's a drop-down box it says are you requesting this as part of the repair and there's a no for that yeah is this the one that begins with resolved resolved having convened in an open meeting on February 6 to 20 20 prior to the SLI submission closing date the Acton Boxborough Regional School Committee of acton-boxborough in accordance with its Charter bylaws and ordinances has voted to authorize the superintendent to submit to the Massachusetts School Building Authority the statement of interest form dated February 6

1302024 the Blanchard Memorial Elementary School located at 493 Massachusetts a box borough mass which describes and explains the following deficiencies and prior priority categories for which an application may be submitted to the Massachusetts School Building Authority in the future five future which is the replacement renovation or modernization of school facility systems such as roofs windows boilers heating and ventilation systems to increase energy and conservation and decrease energy related costs in the fuel in the school facility and hereby further specifically acknowledges that by submitting the statement of infer interest form the Massachusetts School Building Authority in no way guarantees the acceptance or the approval of an application the awarding of a grant or any other funding commitment from this Massachusetts School Building Authority or commits the city that the regional school district to filing an application

131for funding with the Massachusetts School Building Authority jinnie all those in favor all right any opposed any abstentions great that passes unanimously we have a recommendation to approve 5600 $11.13 gift from AV Friends of music for the ABR HS performing arch 2020 New York City band trip second all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions great that also passes unanimously we also have a recommendation to approve a 20 $100 gift from the Konan PTO to the Conant school for reading materials all those in favor any opposed any abstentions great that also passes unanimously okay Marie it says you are giving us a school committee building update I don't know your names on the agenda so yeah that's so Marie and I are in transition because one of the things that we'd been working on

132is we were heading toward the vote I was doing a lot of the external work Marie leads a lot of the programming work that takes place school building project is progressing JD is in the process of receiving RFPs for solar energy and we're very excited about that being able to move forward there's huge cost savings in terms of the operational life of the building that we'll be able to document we also are engaging in a series of programming meetings we are in the design development stage at this point the building committee is really digging into the details of what this building looks like so we just had a presentation at the last school building committee meeting this week last night or yeah around exterior look of the building actually a week ago excuse me it

133wasn't week ago around the exterior look of the building and digging into finishes look of brick things like that to make sure we have that nailed down during the schematic design phase excuse me design development phase we are now moving into doing a lot of the internal programming meetings over the next week or two to be able to button up interior finishes and we're going back out engaging our faculty and stakeholders and feedback during that process to be able to bring it back to the building committee so we are moving along on schedule great we have three second reading policies ready to be voted tonight Amy yeah so policy submit earlier this week the three policies that you already had a first read we're looking for a vote tonight there were some slight edits to

134residency and student enrollment which you can see in your packet and then the other two policies are unchanged so we're just looking for a vote tonight talking about the three policies separately yes right he asked if we were gonna vote the three policies separately yes okay so I'll move to approve I'm trying to get to it the oh yeah huh so I'll move to approve the education opportunities for children in foster care yes John I will be voting against this because once again you know if you run this through the readability checker it satisfies the statute and does not satisfy my requirements for readability any other commentary he said it's not readable enough for him so he'll be voting against it okay are we ready to vote Michael what are you doing okay that's a

135good are you ready to vote yeah okay nope the first one so we're voting educational opportunities for children in foster care filed j:f ABF all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions all right so that was all of us except for job but someone like to make a motion for the second one so I'll move to approve the residency and student enrollment policy any commentary job but the same for the same reason I will be voting no okay all those in favor aye any opposed any abstentions all right thank you and the third policy can I just interrupt for a second before you make a motion the title of that policy is changed in the changing of the policy so I think when you make your motion its policy imd is religious and cultural

136holidays is the new title of it thank you right just on the agenda it didn't have the new title um hang on I'm looking at the mark-up one I think there was a yeah I'll move to approve the religious and cultural holiday policy any commentary John you could on this one great okay all those in favor any opposed any abstentions great that one passes unanimously yeah sure I just I want to I want to make one comment about policy the readability factor is important if people don't understand the policy that's a problem but it's more complicated than that and I think it's important for everybody to understand that there are there there's legal language that sometimes must be included so it probably would behoove the policy subcommittee to have maybe a conversation about what goes

137into Paulist building policy and the importance when awaiting the different factors that go into it because we want policies and art going to kind of throw us into violations when they you know people come around to audit us they just took a second what Diane said obviously my concern is not readability per se it's you know is the policy reaching the intended audience and having the intended effect and so in order to to look at this you know you need to look at each of these policies and say who is my audience and if this is my audience you know how is that audience understanding the policy and and that really is very different you know for different kinds of policy so it is a long conversation thank you okay Diane did you want to

138have any additional updates on budget I know we talked sort of extensively about budget briefly so we meant Friday right after budget every mid Friday the 27th and we talked about just one of the things I wanted to just really highlight is the staffing report and are in our budget we're adding I just I can't like to emphasize this enough we're adding 8.2 FTEs about 16 or so people with a net cost of zero and I think you know we should really understand how how really aren't the word magical can I jump suit I don't know how like they did it but they you know they thank you to to the leadership for that we're able to meet our needs and do it at a net cost of zero for this budget so we did

139talk about that the other thing that we talked about was the and Peter alluded to this in the beginning that this budget right after the preliminary budget was floated to us we made five hundred twenty two thousand dollars in cuts and that that was proactive on our part and it buildind a fluidity and a collaborative kind of culture to this budget cycle that I have not set ever seen here I don't think as long as I've been on the committee so I want to ideally feel good about this motorcycle for the for those two reasons alone there are there are more reasons than that but but we talked about both of those things in budget sub and I wanted to just highlight them for you and just just really we should we should feel good

140about carrying this budget you know or to tell meeting thank you Amon did you want to update on ALG ALG met last night we had we heard a report from Minuteman Technical High School and I don't know if Peter you want to add and want to mention anything that came out of that but they really went over their budget to cryin explaining how they came up with the numbers they did I think the most significant update from Minuteman they did do a review of their budget scenario on the operating side they had about a six and a half percent increase I'm going to say is that pretty accurate Dave just over six percent was their actual operating budget increase however we also had additional students counted in the state enrollment calculation that goes into that

141and so the combination of the budget increase of around six and a half percent the additional student enrollment the new debt from the building project as well as one of the member districts has withdrawn and that is Belmont and so there was a redistribution of the total assessment across all of the remaining districts that's what led to the almost 20 percent increase in the Minuteman operating assessment this year that will likely be a trend over the next several years Minuteman is expanding their enrollment and because of that they are accepting additional students from all of the member districts our enrollment is looking like it will go from about 36 students this year - I believe it's they're projecting they will enroll 62 of our students next year that will carry with it an impact on

142the operating assessment as that moves forward so I think it's probably likely that we should anticipate operator and assessments between 15 and 20 percent increases over the next four years as their enrollment increases to its full potential I think that's just something we need to be aware of on the school side it great program it offers amazing opportunities for our kids but we need to be cognizant of that as we're budgeting because that assessment does come out of the total pool of resources and with act and against its levy we just need to be sensitive to that you know there are going to be limited funds and that's going to be one of our constraining factors so you know we were able to get through the FY 21 budget you know we've already started talking

143about FY 22 a little bit and doing some projections I think we have a couple tough budget years ahead of us in all honesty I think we've seen some of the easier years in our in our rearview mirror so just be thinking about that but it was a you know it was insightful to understand the enrollment projections especially as it could impact us in the future Dave Murray would you add anything to that I do I'm sorry I have one more thing so we did close the gap on the what do you call the Sheep the financial model the yeah okay yes thank you but I one thing that I promise to bring up to the full committee is that there was a great deal of concern that we chose this particular year to lower

144the to all-day K tuition and there it felt like this was really the wrong time to do it and I said that I would share those feelings I think Peter did a great job of explaining that this was an entire budget and this is our folk this was part of our entire budget plan and the the reaching the goals that are our core values supporting our core values and they really wanted especially from VIN calm for us to be aware of how much this impact is having on our townspeople so I just wanted to share that so I'm the liaison just in common and that is exactly what not all members but several members are very very strongly opposed to what we did so I we just have to be very clear about why we

145did that this is public education I know that there's only a cohort of kindergarteners but there's only a cohort of all grades so why kindergarten in public education gets funded the way it does I don't know the history of it but we we should be very aware of our reasons and then talk to people about those reasons because of they're not shared right now I could share the history of that with you sometime if you want yes John is there a big update John would you like to I just want to mention one thing with respect to future budgets one of the topics of discussion this morning was providing guidance to the entities earlier so that the assumption would be based on the people who in theory should know what's going on so in our

146June meeting we will attempt to develop guidance if we can't do it then we will do it in September so that early in the budget process you'll have a better understanding of where health insurance rates are likely to go thank you John I wasn't able to attend the BLT meeting but I know that Nora and Michael bolted so did you have any updates before that it said I want to follow up what John said so for the budget and I hope that this is why you know look into this you know the school-by-school their plan for the next year so you fou kid you know I hear that have those a presentation before the budget is set so that would be helpful for all the you know committee members to understand you know how you

147know how constructed you know the budget how that you know why you know we need you know probably one point F T in this school or maybe more so that'd be great I mean if we could have the presentation earlier so the school council presentations are not necessarily tied to the way we develop the budget like Peter is aware of what their school improvement plans are and all of those things those presentations we don't we don't have to approve their school improvement plans there those presentations are to help us better understand more the opposite way of how our budget impacts what they're doing in their schools and how budget asks that they've had before so what David presented tonight was what they've been doing all year when when his school improvement plan was it was

148accepted in June of shir we don't approve them but that's when Peter received it correct I think you know one of the challenges always on school improvement plan updates to do them early in the year is if the principal's only start the work in September if we try to bring them to you in November they haven't done anything yet you know professional development days you know are typically stretched out over a whole school year and so if we try to bring them in too early it you know there's not really much to tell I think what we sometimes see is budgeting is almost a year off of some of those school improvement plans so sometimes what you might see in a school improvement plan for this year you know that will come out in June

149you would see as some budget requests maybe the following year so just for the prf updated so we actually update the appeal of that you know we had preliminary vote on the school budget and also we tell them that it would have vote on this Thursday that already happened so in the carry that the phosphoryl think I'm sure updated prf West that strategy option that we would go with recommit and those who are all about school related business and the address of the meeting this you know they were discussing the town projects and the town budget we have warrants to sign tonight hopefully it made its way all the way around the table there nine words on the agenda bender words 20 - 0 1 5 in the amount of four million four hundred thirty

150three thousand six hundred seven dollars and ninety seven cents twenty - zero one five PR in the amount of 576 thousand five hundred seventy-six thousand thirty eight dollars and five cents twenty - zero one six in the amount of 480 thousand nine hundred forty dollars and ninety cents twenty - zero ones xpr in the amount of 1 million two hundred sixty seven thousand two hundred twelve dollars and fifty two cents student activity fund warrants 20 - 0 1 5 s H in the amount of 33 thousand two hundred twenty-eight dollars and 22 cents 22:01 6s H in the amount of twelve thousand five hundred forty-three dollars and ninety-six cents 20 - 0 1 6jh in the amount of thirteen thousand six hundred thirty one dollars and sixty seven cents and payroll warrants P 2 0

1511 5 in the amount of two million six hundred thirty six thousand six hundred twenty eight dollars and two cents and P two zero one six in the amount of two million six hundred fifty 1833 dollars and eighty six cents see we made it almost to the very end so item 14 is the fYI Peter is there are there any FYI ok great so we have the need for an executive session tonight pursuant to mg/l chapter 30 a section 21 a purpose 3 to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the acton-boxborough Education Association a B ei because an open meeting may have a detriment detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the committee is there right yeah right I said we needed better we need someone a second and now we have to

152do a rolecall okay so we're gonna do a roll call vote Michael can we start with you just say yes My yes yes yes all right excellent we will return to open meeting for the sole purpose of attorney you