001I'd like to call the Foster Gloucester Regional School Committee to order. Can I have roll call, please? Sure. Miss Cook here. Miss Joyce here. Mr. Mara here. Mr. Dupi here. Miss Keeling. Mr. Joyce. Miss Peza, Miss Ferrer, Mr. Rizzo, can we rise for the pledge of allegiance? I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Next we have student and staff recognition. So tonight we get to honor some pretty talented kids. The all state bands orchestra and choruses featured students from Panagansit Middle School in grades seven and 8 performed at the vets on Sunday, March 9th, 2025. The instrumentalists began the day at 10:30, followed by the choirs at 3:30. Students prepared for several
002months ahead of time and audition for a judge one Saturday in November. Students from all over the state auditioned and only those with the highest scores were selected. Panagans atit Middle School is proud of the following students for making this year's All State band and chorus. Okay. In band, Elelliana Chandler, Owen Terry, Owen, plays a clarinet. Yes. Shake everyone's hand. William Warren, trombone. [Applause] Mixed chorus. Gabriel Tvito. Aiden Mno, Sienna Pard and Will Thorne, treble chorus, [Applause] Anefecto. I should also say a unified player too. An awesome kid. She will be missed next year. Ava Nunees, Ariana Rekart, Avery Rube, Anastasia Seds, I don't see any of them here. And we also had five sixth grade students participate in elementary state chorus. They were selected via the teacher recommendation and performed their concert at Bets
003Auditorium on Saturday, March 28th. I'm sorry, March 8th. Ava Delphino, Megan Jeffrey, Audriana Georgie, Quinn Parnell, Lurel [Applause] Riley. And lastly, the All State guitar ensemble concert took place on Sunday, March 16th at Holy Apostles Church. and Ellie Arman participated in this group after being accepted via audition. Don't think I see her either. Switching you. Okay. Thank you. Congratulations, Panagans student. You made us very proud. [Applause] Next on the agenda, approval of meeting minutes. Madam Chair, I make a motion to approve the minutes of the open meeting on April 1st, 2025. Any dis any discussion? Eileen, that was any discussion. All in favor? I opposed abstensions. I make a motion to approve the minutes of executive session on April 1st, 2025. Second. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstensions 70. Monthly bills. I make
004a motion to approve the monthly bills dated April 1st, 2025 to April 30th, 2025 in the amount of $585,130.91. Any discussion? All in favor? I I opposed. Abstension 70. Finance update. Budget finance. We're at for revenue um just about 83% collected. And for expenses for the month of April or through the month of April, we're at about 72.89 um percent. uh for the budget update. We'll have that next month. We're just finalizing a few more numbers on that. And then you also have some budget adjustments. There's I think 40 something pages worth of adjustments and that's because of all the Yukoa adjustments that we've made um in this last quarter. So we have to adjust the expense and therefore the budget. So that's why we have so many. So do we need to vote on
005that or are we waiting because we're going to make some changes? on Oh, on the on the FY26 budget. Yeah. Yeah. We'll have the final one next month. Okay. So, there's nothing to vote on today. Nothing to vote on. Nothing to vote on for this. Okay. No. Uh, yes. So, letter C. Um, approval of the FY25 quarter 3 budget adjustments. Um, yes, you have that in your packet. It says budget journal entries. I make a motion to approve the fiscal year 25 quarter 3 budget adjustments. Any discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstensions facilities capital projects update. Sure. I'd like to make a motion to approve the LED lighting retrofit for PMS and PHS as presented in the packet. Second. Um any discussion? So the capital projects committee re reviewed uh with the administration the
006four bids that were received for the project and the one that you see in the packet was the one that was recommended uh for approval by that group. Any other discussion? All in favor? I opposed. Abstensions. 70. And now letter B. I'd like to make a motion to approve the electronic security system upgrades for PMS and PHS as presented in the packet. Second. Any discussion? Similar to uh the first, the uh capital project subcommittee reviewed this with the administration. I believe this was the only one that we we got uh but it was a qualified uh bid and it was recommended for approval by that group. Great. I I also have to say that um even working at our capital project subcommittee that this was the contractor that was reputable that we needed or that
007actually put forward the bid for it. Um so I would urge the passing of this motion. It's quite a thorough bid. Um, all in favor? Opposed? Abstensions. 70. Athletic director's update. He's slowing me down. How we doing? Wow, that's loud. So, real quickly, good news. Uh, we just did our signing of letter intents in the spring. I think, uh, Kyle sent that out to you. And uh we had 12 individuals that are going to be competing at the next level. Um two of them going IV. And so it was a big day not for the athletic department but for the coaches and the you know the parents and the kids who've worked really hard over the last couple years to achieve that. So it was nice to see. Um we had a good we had
008a lot of winter highlights. I know you're well aware of them because you gave out the awards already, but uh Panagans is starting to be known as the kings and queens of winter sports. So, we won a division one basketball tournament for the second time in four years and the wrestling team won the state tournament and New England tournament and so um everybody was um was very happy about that. Um the field conditions which we'll get into a minute, but the good news is Rad Sports has been out here um physically I think it was two or three times. I know for sure twice. Um so we're still waiting a little bit um for the schematics there. And then um lastly, it was made official uh just this past winter from last year that Mike
009Kunda was recognized by the Rhode Island Intercolastic League as the softball coach of the year and then DJ Glasber was recognized as the cross country coach of the year. So that was quite a award for them as well. They've been doing that for a very long time. Another bit of information I don't know if you're aware of but there's a rugby uh club now here at Pontaganset and Alex Mloud who's very excited about rugby. He's a guidance counselor. He started in W4 which is um an interest period where our kids get to go and um investigate an interest that they have and he's kind of like um taking over the ox gym with Mr. Karen on that and they're they're basically teaching the kids rugby and then they go through USA rugby not through Pontaganset
010High School where the kids get insured um and they have club coaches and those club coaches have to get their own certifications. So, it's a little bit disconnected from us um in terms of liability, which is good. Um but it's also connected in that a lot of the kids are from our particular uh interest group and our um staff is participating as coaches. So, they're going to have their first rugby tournament at Foster coming up here. So, if anyone wants to attend, I've been looking into rugby quite a bit and I know that the RAIL is pushing I just had a conversation with Tom Marcelo. They're pushing um flag football for women um which I'm in support of as well. One of the things I I really is appealing to me about uh women's rugby
011is that there are not a lot of women's rugby teams in the United States, let alone New England, but they do have quite a few um NCA women's programs. So there's four programs in the Ivy League alone. So, if panagans could become a feeder system for Dartmouth, I'd be pretty happy about that. So, I think it's something that would be worth us looking into. And I um give Alex a lot of credit for all the work that he's put in there. All right. The fields, the big one. Let me Can I just Sure. Come on. Just so you know, he wants to do unified rugby. scares the crap out of me how we're going to tackle and all that, but so we could have a third sport. I also just wanted to say I'm very
012proud that you know we're looking into rugby because I know even when I was up at college there was most it wasn't as an NCAA sport but it was actually a club sport both men's and women's rugby and they were actually invited to like beast of the east because they would play other colleges even though it wasn't an NCAA sport they were still playing like down here in Newport and other places like this with Roger Williams. So, I just want to say like thank you to Alex and thank you for um allowing our students to actually be able to do this in order to because rugby is coming up if you think about it across the country now. It's big out in the Europe but now it's coming up through here. So, I just want
013to say thank you for that for looking forward. Yeah. One of the one of the unique distinction distinctions about rugby, which is why I'm throwing out the idea of women's rugby first and foremost, is a lot of the universities that have club rugby, prefer to keep it under the club flag. Uh because you can do different things as a club in college because you're not having to operate under NCA restrictions um in terms of like raising money and bringing international students in to do club. But I just think that in our backyard, especially in our area or neck of the woods in New England, there's so many good universities that actually have all female teams. It' be something worth looking into because um there's definitely a need for for high school athletes to have or
014there's definitely an opportunity for high school athletes to be able to access that. All right, so we have uh if you remember, we played our Thanksgiving Day game and it was a very wet, messy affair. I remember wearing my white panagans uh pullover out there and I didn't go home unscathed. Uh but the field basically got kind of eviscerated right before it froze. Uh which is always bad uh when the spring thaw comes. And so when this the spring came um it took a uh I would say an extra amount of time for it to try to heal. So we tried to play on it early. Uh that didn't work out very well. Uh Steve had brought up some concerns. Parents had brought up some concerns. And I'm just letting you know if you haven't
015heard this already, coaches had brought up some safety concerns. Um and so what we did was we just kind of pivoted and we moved um girls lacrosse to Foster, which I want to thank Foster, Foster Wreck, Tammy Stein Camp was really instrumental in making that happen. Um, and so we went over there and we set up we set up for girls lacrosse and girls lacrosse worked out great. Um, the boys throw the ball at a little bit of a higher velocity. So I was very worried about any um, little kids running along the sideline and safety concerns I had. Those safety concerns were uh, reiterated by the coaches and some of the parents when I brought it up. So, we moved um boys lacrosse offsite. So, we've been utilizing Situate. They've been very kind to
016us. Smithfield and Johnston. Um so, it's a lot of moving things around and we do understand that the parents may perceive that as us not caring as much about lacrosse as uh they feel like we should, but it's a situation where we're making the best of the situation we that we can. And it's also like really calling attention to the fact that we need to do something with the field. Um whenever we get into the spring, I remember Brendan saying when the rain comes and it thaws, we're going to have an issue again. And we definitely do. It looks good pretty good right now because we haven't been playing on it. So it's had time to heal. I mean that's been past practice uh before we had lacrosse. But it it does become expensive um
017to have all of our games away. Um, one of the things that's kind of offset that expense was you guys or Renee and I think in conjunction with you had purchased two athletic vans and so we got those registered three weeks ago and they've already been used eight times. So at $500 a pop, we've saved $4,000 just utilizing those vans. One of the things that I would ask of you maybe as a future agenda item or we'll just check with the business office and HR is making a chauffeur's license mandatory for the application uh to be a coach. That's an additional expense for people to go to the DMV and secure a chauffeur's license. I know in the past uh the school committees advocated for paying for certification for the first time coaches get certified.
018I think it's like a $75 charge for the initial class that you have to take. I don't know how many coaches actually seek reimbursement, but if it's something that we want to mandate for our coaches or at least encourage for our coaches so that they could uh take the vans, I definitely think it's a huge cost savings. Um the busing goes up by $10 an hour every year. I think we're around 140,000 to 150,000 in transportation this year, which is just going to continue to go up. So, um, the track, I just talked to the track coach today, and I I check in every now and again. As you know, the track and the tennis courts both have pretty, I don't want to say large creasses with cracks in them. The tennis courts a little
019bit worse. Um, the track was, we looked at fixing the track last year by using filler that you can purchase, but we were anticipating going out for a bond. So, we didn't want to actually put a bunch of filler in and then make additional work for the people that were going to be resurfacing. Um, however, just so you know, the longer we go, the larger those cracks are going to get in both surfaces and um, the more of a safety issue it will become to you'll have to move you'll have to move those events off site as well. So, when you look at transportation costs, just like we're dealing with lacrosse, if we're having to move track and tennis and all these sports offsite because of the condition of our facilities, um, it's going to
020cost a ton more money. So my suggestion as the athletic director would be to we are looking at it with the schematics with RAD, but certainly the school committee should seriously consider uh doing an athletic bond at some point in the near future um to fix and remedy these problems because they get big fast. Does anybody have any questions for him? Go ahead. transportation only. No. So, depending upon the school district, which I shouldn't say out loud because I don't want to make them aware of this. Depending upon the school district, um, some of them charge us. So, it's based on availability. So, for instance, Smithfield charges $700 to use their facility. In addition to the $700, I usually have to pay for a trainer off-site or an EMT offsite, which is an additional $2
021to $400 per game. So, when you look at busing cost at $500 a trip in addition to a $700 charge in addition to a $400 charge, you're looking at quite a cost to have a game offsite. Wow. So, other schools charge other districts to use their facilities. Wow. $700. That's a lot. It is a lot. Makes me really think about our building use policy. So, from a foster standpoint, I think it's great that we're able to use that new field. Um, it's wonderful to see it getting some some some folks there, and it's nice to I think as a community to be able to contribute a little bit from a facility standpoint. Um, there are other fields in Foster. There's the Woody Lowden Center. It's a little bit further, and I I believe those fields
022are probably a little rough around the edges. Um, but just keep that in mind, too. If there's need that persists, I'm sure that the folks at the town hall will direct you to some of those if needed. As far as the transportation piece goes, that feels to me like I'm not sure about the rest of me that that can probably be handled administratively if that's something we want to look for in coaches like just put it as a suggestion. And if there needs to be some supplement, then maybe that's something we talk about if it's a finance thing. Um, but I would say that if that's what you need to do to satisfy your needs, personally, I'd say just go for it. Just tweak the application. um and it doesn't need to come before us.
023The track piece I I do think u to what Mr. Joyce was saying is that there are some items that we do need to start getting into this summer. No matter what we do with regards to an athletic facility upgrade, it will be several years before it's done and these things need to be addressed before there's a bigger issue. In addition to the immediate costs of transporting these kids out of district, I think as a committee we need to understand that we have a lot of youth within our community that are trying to use these and if they see that there's better facilities in our neighboring communities, especially as we're transporting them there anyhow, we do run the risk of losing some of our students to competing CTE programs when we would like to educate
024them here, keep them here with their peers, with our our teachers and our staff and our administrators here. Likewise, we heavily recruit from some of those neighboring districts to bring students in here um for our awesome CTE programs. One of the draws is our athletic programs. If they're seeing in their home districts, they have these brand spanking new facilities that are great and a lot of the other stuff is comparable, we lose some of that competitive edge. So, I think as we look ahead and we start planning, obviously it's not a today, next month plan. Um, we need to keep that in mind, too, that there's definitely an intangible cost that we we risk incurring the longer that we put this off. But I do think some of those repairs just really need to be
025done this summer. I mean, it's you probably can't do like track repairs while they're in season. Um, and it's it's almost over at this point, but summer seems like a great time to like, you know, do what needs to be done just to put some band-aids on it to get it to the finish line. Um, I had one more, but man, I was monologuing too long. So, I'll Hey, when it comes to you, let me know. As an English teacher, I appreciate the pun though, getting to the finish line. That was good. All right. Does anybody else that season? It depends on field conditions, but what happens is it's I I mean, ideally, you're supposed to airate I'm learning all of this. Um, if you looked at my grass at home, it doesn't uh show
026that I know much about it. But you're supposed to airate in early April. And so uh buildings and grounds did airate and seed in April, but after you airate and seed, you're supposed to stay off for a minimum of 3 to four weeks. And so if you go out there now, you'll see that the grass that they've planted is just starting to grow. And so the problem with um running sports in the spring and it's it's listen I want to run as many sports as we possibly can um just because it gives kids the opportunities that I believe they deserve and I agree with uh Mara that offering those opportunities are exactly why some of the children come here or at least it's a determining factor um or a consideration. So, I think the spring
027is the biggest hiccup because we we are one of the only districts that has still has a natural grass field, which by the way, for all the people out here in Foster and Glouester who love it, I love it too. Um, and I think that if we if we we there's a lot of different options which we're going to have RAD present to us, but for for the for our purposes, spring is the biggest the biggest issue. And so busting all of those teams off of campus, we can bring them back when the field is ready to play on, but we're only bringing them back this year for their senior night, which is unfortunate, but because we seated it, narrated it when we did. Uh we really have no other choice unless we we'll just
028run into the same thing where we wear wear it down, ruin it, and we run into the same problem next year. Sorry about that longwinded answer. Yes. When is that um rugby tournament I think it's this weekend. It's it's Saturday uh Saturday morning. I think 9 Saturday from 9 to 12. Yes. The the last one. Sorry, I remembered it if you don't mind. It was that at our capital projects meeting, we did ask our facilities director just to try and get a schedule from Rad Sports as they put together their proposal, which should help some inform some of our decisions and strategic planning as far as what their design and construction would look like for the for this project. So, we should have some information quite soon on that on that front. Perfect. Any other
029comments? All right, we're good. Thank you. Superintendent report. It's in your packet. If anyone has any Oh, we have some contract approvals. Thank you. It's in here. I know. All right. Um so, uh if you look at the superintendent report, we have um there are four appointments um which are new uh new people uh but not new positions. Uh Edward Martin, he is the controller. Um you approved his contract uh before we actually posted the position and that's Ann's previous position. Uh so now she's committed to the director of finance. Thank you, Ann. Um Chris Leblanc, he had a contract until the end of this school year. He's our middle school AP. Uh you met him at our last meeting. Um Brad Wilson is our current special ed director and Kyle Santos is our current
030assistant special ed director. Uh but with Foster Glouester Regional Schools becoming the fiscal agent for Northwest Special Ed, they become um you have to approve a contract for them. So we've taken the same salary, same terms, everything. It's just for you to approve the contract. And then we have retirements. Um Mike Kenda um did submit his retirement which is the position he was dean of students at the middle school. So Mr. Leblanc will take that. Um and we had two math teachers at the middle school, Joanne Baros and at Scoffield. Um and Morin Flowers at the middle school for retirement. So um lots going on at the middle school. Uh and then we have two teacher layoffs um for you to look at and approve and that has to do with the budget update that
031Ann and I will give you in June. Madam Madam Chair, I just want to say thank you to Mike Kenda, Joanne Barrows, Moren Flowers, and Annette Scoffield um for their hard work and dedication to this district. I know um Joanne Barrows and Michael Kinda even though I never had him had them while I was in middle school because I was on what was it at that time the purple uh yellow team instead of the gold team and then the blue team instead of the red team at the time. Again, this is dating me now. Um but again, I want to say thank you for all four of those individuals that sculpt that shaped our children and shaped our students to the children and to the students and to the adults they are today. So, I
032just want to say thank you to all four of them. Thank you, Aaron. I agree. Thank you, Renee. Just to confirm, um, we made an agreement with the situate for the special ed, right? Did they back out or are we on a special district? Okay. So, without getting into the specifics of people, will we be discussing the layoffs as part of the larger budget conversation next month? Is it? Yes. Yes. Any other questions? Can I have a motion for the contracts? Madam Chair, I make a motion to approve the contracts as presented in the packet. Any other discussion? All in favor? I opposed abstensions. 70. Rhode Island Student Assistant Service. Madam Chair, I make a motion to approve the Rhode Island student assistant services as presented in the packet. Any discussion? I actually um when
033it Sorry, just trying to get so many contracts in here. Um so I was also looking through here, Renee, and I'm just trying to make sure. Um I thought I saw something that we have to pay $38,000. Is that correct? Yes. And that's um yes and you've had a student assistance counselor since since before I came um and it's been the same agreement. So the district pays a portion and then there's a reduced cost that's associated with it and it's been in the budget. We never reduced that. And your current student assistance counselor works uh three days at the high school and two days at the middle school. If you remember Mr. Goule Lee Goule yeah he was he was your student just to give you a reference. Okay. And now this is Is this
034considered like a separate program or um Yes. I mean it's a program that that you've had. So our current student assistance count counselor assist students based on um the needs works very closely with your school counseling department with your school social worker and your school psychologist. Um a lot of education forward programs. So as you talk about vaping there was a um Miss Dillo worked closely with Miss Mari at the high school. they talked about bringing in a speaker. So, it's definitely an additional support and the fees have not increased. We have the same as um this current school year. Okay, perfect. Thank you. Any other discussion? All in favor? I Oh, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. Um, I just I I'm just looking at the sample parent letter at the end, exhibit A, this is
035an opt out as opposed to an opt-in for parents. So, this is an opt out as opposed to opt in. So, parents So, students automatically are enrolled in this unless the parent specifically opts out. Is that the That's what it seems to say. So, it's it's a meeting with the school counselor. So anytime there is a meeting with the school counselor, the parents would know. So it's an opt. That's what the letter says. Yeah. Letter says if you do not opt out, this will indicate that you consent to your child participating. Say that again. Which one are you on Greg? Exhibit A sample school parent letter. The second to the last paragraph. given the if you do not opt out then this will indicate that you consent to your child to your child participating in
036meetings with the student assistance counselor and to use and to the use of this data for quality improvement purposes. Yeah, we haven't we haven't given the parent letter. Um we don't typically give the parent letter but on the the sign off sheet at the beginning of the year the parents will check off with with every They're both say oh they're both saying no to me. Okay. We give the parent letter And what it is, if we're going to refer a student to Mr. We also called home and inform the parent after the meeting because sometimes parents are notified of things after everything's already happened. So I think Great question. So it's a combination of both because they haven't signed that. Has there been any issues with people not knowing like it's very clear with everything
037issues and actually works very closely with the parents of the students that she works with. So most of them will use her a lot of the time as the primary contact is I'm uncomfortable with these opt out as opposed to opt in for something involving behavioral health. I agree. So does it make sense to table it? We can revisit and see if we can change the wording. As I said, this is the first I've even learned that this is being done. I I Again, I've been I've been I've been here a long time. I was here a long time ago. You guys had a situation with an outside counselor who worked. He was not certified, had some issues, had a firearm. That was going back about 25 years. It was an ugly situation. I'm just
038very sensitive to this stuff. It was 25. So, we can put that on the agenda again. people read everything but not everyone does agency right no I'm not pointing the finger at anybody but I just have I think it you need a little bit more looking at this okay so then I resend my motion okay and Eileen so we're going to table number 11 and we'll move on to number 12, the learn 365 grant. So, the learn 365 grant came out of the work um with the governor and the commissioner. This year, it's focused on math matters. Um and so we had to submit it at the local level. We as a region couldn't submit it. So, we submitted at the local level, worked very closely with Mr. Dubis, and we were able to secure
039uh about $20,000. And so our students at the middle school will be involved in some type of math camp uh project based. They'll be building um they'll be just happy math students uh right at the end of school. So we're excited about that. That's just for your your information. Any questions? Okay. The ride CTE for all grant. So this one is another one. Uh really proud of this one. Uh the department of education again along with um what the governor is doing uh and the commissioner they had a pretty substantial amount of money uh for for a grant called CTE for all. And so our team wrote a new standard around green construction. uh then after creating the new standard applied for the grant and out of 16 schools who applied uh nine received the
040grants and we were the highest. Um we are set to receive about $472,000. Um and it will be for us to really focus on green construction careers. So Mr. Myers, Mr. Martin really excited about what we can do and we just need to partner with the town um building inspector to see what parameters we have to live within but this one is a you know pretty exciting move forward. That's awesome. Can as part of the money can they utilize the money for like projects or is it more to just support the learning of these concepts? So our hope is to create um a facility space that will support the integration of Okay. Thank you. Any other questions? No. Okay. Public comment. Okay. Do I have a motion to seek to public? I make a motion
041to convene to executive session to discuss andor vote on the following matters. Par Island General Law is 42-46-5A. Section 8, Privacy of Student Records, Homeschool. Perh Island General Law is 42-46-5A. Job performance. The job performance of an individual has been notified in writing of this. Perh island general law 42-46-5A. Grievance. The knee upon grievance number 2425-02. Emperor Island general laws 42-46-5A. Section 2 pending litigation/legal advice. The OMA25-09 Peza v First Foster Gloucester Regional School District OMA complaint the Santo versus Foster Gloucester School Committee and PR25-18 Raymond v Foster Gloucester School District second. All in favor? I opposed extensions.