School Board Meeting - 04/03/2025

001So, good evening everyone and welcome to the April 2nd Lichfield School Board meeting. The time is now 5:30 and we'll call the meeting to order and begin with the pledge of allegiance. I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Uh oh. Uh before we get going tonight, I do want to just acknowledge and thank the board, right? I did have an opportunity to watch our last meeting. I was not in attendance for our last meeting, but I just wanted to take a moment and uh and say thank you to the board, right, for uh for putting your your trust in me again, and I'm very humbled and grateful for the nomination of

002chair. And I just wanted to publicly thank you for that. Um and uh glad to be in this chair and uh and and leading the board again. So thank you for that and congratulations to Miss Ames for vice chair again. Team work. Not it. I think because you weren't here, it was very easy to nominate you. You couldn't say no. So I drew the short star. Okay, perfect. All right. That's okay. That's all right. All good. Um we have review and revisions to tonight's agenda. Any board members would like to make changes to tonight's agenda? Welcome. Thanks. Yeah. Hearing none, uh, we have moving right along, we have final school board reorganization and I'll turn it over to the superintendent for a few updates. Yeah. Um, so with chair cutter out, uh, last meeting we

003decided to hold off on the code of ethics and code of conduct. So I have those copies here. Um, I'm hoping you guys got a chance to to check it out. Um, I think last year you guys made some changes to this. At least that's what it, you know, says in the records here of everything. Um, but I can send this kind of around. So, as the meeting kind of progresses, if you want to sign off on that, that would be great. Thank you. Um, and then the second part is just committee assignments. Um, these were off of our notes we took last week. Just want to double check that we make sure we got all the committee assignments correct and if you had any adjustments or changes you wanted to make to these assignments.

004We did um leave the facilities improvement committee empty at that time cuz you wanted to think it over some more um as a group. But if you just want to check those assignments that we have it correct um we believe we put everything down correctly, but in case we made a mistake um just let us know. So my budget again all right. You didn't give me anything else. All right. I think maybe it I mean obviously it's the will of the board. Maybe we can talk about facility improvement at the time that we have the conversation about. Yeah, that's later in the agenda today, right? New presentations obviously that we can get to. Okay, perfect. Um, moving into consent agenda. We have our items on consent. I did update, speaking of budget, I did attend

005last week's budget committee meeting. Uh, and I did make an update to the budget committee consent. So, if anybody uh would like a read, it's there. Uh, any other items on consent the board would like to move this evening? All right, we have our summary of non-public actions from March 19th, 2025. Mr. Plansky motion to approve the March 5th, 2025 meeting minutes. Mr. Shoemaker seconded that motion. That motion passed 301. Uh, Mr. Dit abstained. Mr. Shoemaker moved to accept the nomination of Courtney Mcun Wade as an LMS music teacher. Miss Ames seconded that motion which passed 400. Mr. Shoemaker motioned our messaging. It says endless mess. Yes, that's what it is. Yes. This is to accept the nomination. This one. Oh, you're good. It is all good. Ready to go. You're right. Yeah, you're good,

006Jen. Don't worry. Mr. Chair's going to storm the stage. Okay. Let the mid stand. Mr. Mr. Shoemaker move to adjourn the public session at 8:07 p.m. Miss Ames second with that motion. That carry 40. And tonight we have presentation and recognitions. And I'll turn it over to um our human resources director, Miss Holly Bzone. All right. We're going to talk about our safety plan. So in late February, early March, um I was here. We talked about having a Department of Labor audit where um the wonderful inspector there helped me work on our safety plan. We've had one ever since I've been here. And the last one I found was dated around 2007. I think that was the creation date, but you're supposed to look at them and update them every 2 years. So, um, the

007plan that you see up there today has been updated since the last plan we have. I've sent it to our inspector and they had kind of said things to add or take away from it. Um, this is basically the same exact thing as our prior safety plan, but it's a little bit more concise. the one um that we had before was many more pages. So basically the safety plan is where you're you know working together with management employees to keep um employees safe in the district. The joint loss management committee is in charge of updating the plan. Um we've met over the past couple of months to review the plan and make sure it looks good for everyone. The only thing that is new in this plan compared to an old plan was if you

008go to page 23 um in about during CO actually a law came out about having a student there we go student violence prevention management program. So this is again because this is safety for employees. This is talking about how we don't tolerate um violence or bullying of any kind and if there's any acts of violence towards employees that we will make sure that we will um you know f file staff will file a report and then we'll review the incident and just find ways to make sure to keep people safe. So, um, last week I sent this final report to the inspector. He said all was good on that. That basically all we need to do now is every two years our joint loss management committee needs to review and just we I made a

009little signoff page on the last page of this that we would just go through it every two years, look it over, see if there's things we want to change. Um, and that's it. and he said basically I'm looking tonight to see if the board wants to approve the plan or you have any questions. Has everyone had an opportunity to read the district safety program? I have. Yeah. Are there any questions about the program comments? No, just for board awareness. So I'm on joint loss. Um we did review it. Uh in addition to that, we had our Primax representative uh who was there that day and has reviewed the plan as well. Just so folks know, it also went through our carrier and they're the ones who provided some samples and yep, suggested language. So, it's

010definitely gone through a few different other groups and people to be seen. Um, and on joint loss, we have LEA representatives. I don't or LSSA representatives. So, I think it's again made its way through the different organizations and groups. Um, so I'm comfortable with it, but I certainly, you know, it's up to the board what to do. No, I've certainly reviewed it as well. It, um, definitely has had a lot of eyes on it to get it to where it is and appreciate all the hard work that's gone into it. Thank you. Um, so I'll entertain a motion to approve and then we can sign. Is that what you're looking for? Does it need signatures? The motion is fine and then I can just sign this little back page. That's so moved. We have a

011motion by Mr. Pansky, second by Mr. Shoemaker. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I opposed. Abstained. That carries. 500 Z. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Thank you. Thanks, Ollie. Thank you. All right. Next up on our agenda, we have Alice Table Talk Drills. And I'll welcome our SRO to the table. Mr. I think Miss Grantham's going to help with this. He's coming up. Don't worry, George is coming up. But everybody's coming. Everyone's coming up. Jen's going to start us off here. I'll start us off. Jeff is here cuz he's our safety director. Grab some chairs. Pull up. Um, and we'll just talk about a really successful endeavor that we had last week. It's really great. I'm going to reiterate how amazing it is to have a full almost full-time SRO in

012our building. Considering the middle school is so fabulous, it's great to just have his presence to have him be known. And Officer Fula getting to know her as well has been really excellent. So, thank you to Chief for making that a priority. Um, and for the school board for also making that a priority because it really truly makes a difference in every day for the kids. So, I'll start with that. As you all know, Alice is a scary concept. It's a concept that none of us like to have to talk about, but it's a reality every day that we face with our students that every day students and staff, some of them are walking in in fear and wondering what if the impossible happens, what if the unbelievable happens? And as a safety team, as

013we were talking about getting ready for launching the drills and launching what we had, George came forward with a great idea. That was the first time that we did this. Um, so at LMS, we broke into younger kids and older kids, so fifth and sixth graders and seventh and eighth graders into assemblies. So we brought the kids all together. And it wasn't Mr. Peterson and I presenting the information. It was our fine officers here who had just gone through a training um with Alice directly to be able to talk to the kids to kind of give them because sometimes in middle school you guys can nod and say you don't take things as seriously as you need to as you need to take things. Um but I think coming from the police perspective, it just

014gave a very different vibe to the table talk discussions. And I'll turn it over to Jeff a little bit more and then I'll turn it over to the officers to talk a little bit more about what the day was like. Sure. So we started in two groups. So fifth and sixth were with officer Fula in the cafeteria and seventh and eighth were with officer Ivis in the gym and they give gave kind of an overview of what Alice is and when it would be used set kind of the tone for the school and then we went back to our best classes which are all capped at like 15 kids so small groups and they had hypothetical scenarios to look at as a group and the officers uh went around through the school popping into the

015classrooms answering questions and there were a lot of questions especially like the younger kids for sure. Um they come up with all the possible things and all the hypotheticals and uh officers were excellent going around and popping into classrooms and speaking to the kids about those things. And Brian Morgan was also there. So, he was a third presence in the in the location walking around and and I will say we had a little um Can I say the surprise we had? Sure. We had a little surprise. So, um someone in the building accidentally called 911 during the drill. Um not intentional. It was, you know, that stupid iPhone where you push the two buttons, the side and the side, and it automatically default defaults to that. and 911 here is so active shooter in the

016building and they see the location and they're all in the building going there's no active shooter here but it was because the teachers were talking through the scenarios and so Brian comes into my office and goes 911 was just called I was like oh no let's figure out where this was and it was a very quick investigation and resolved immediately and the person who made the phone call just felt mortified that it was not a call Um but it was it was just really great to have that presence and to see that the way that our community reacts. Um even in a case of a 911 call or with an active shooter like they were they were there and instantly responding to us that there was no just to clarify at home there was no

017active shooter. It was just the conversations at the table talk as we're talking. Yeah. So, um, when we kind of were kicking around what we're going to do for, uh, the table talk exercises, um, I talked to Vice Principal Peterson, Principal Grantham about maybe an idea of, uh, getting everyone together in one big group and just going over, you know, how important it is to to learn these skills, not just for the school, but for life. Okay, these these incidents, these violent, criminal incidents can happen anywhere and anytime. Um, a matter of fact, uh, you know, when officer FU and I were had just were finishing up, uh, the training, um, there was an incident in at the Planet Fitness in London. And I think if you, if anyone happened to read the article or

018some of the articles about that, there they interviewed there was a girl um, who was there working out and she was stuck inside the uh, the dressing room, bad place to be during a active shooter incident. and she said, you know, through her training through Alice at Londary, um she learned to, you know, she hit herself into the uh a locker and, you know, so she felt as though she was prepared. Obviously, you never know how you're going to react in a in a bad situation during a vi violent critical incident. Um so we were just trying to empower the kids as best we could um to learn, you know, a few things and be able to become their own first responders. um you know if I'm in the school um or if there's another

019SRO at school or another officer in the school and something happens and I'm in the lunchroom and something happens in the fifth grade wing by the time an officer gets just to the fifth grade wing there could be a lot of bad things that happen. So and that's inside the school. So can you imagine the response time if um you know someone was outside the school or was you know I wasn't there or something like that or or another officer wasn't there. So through the Alice training stuff, we're we're taught that um you know, we we try to train the kids to become their own first responders and give them some, you know, tools to help them survive a violent critical incident. And um so then when you think about it though, you know, you're

020talking with some of these kids and the age disparity between fifth grade and in level of maturity between fifth grade and eighth grade is off the charts. So you get fifth graders there that are they're still like, you know, kids, they don't we're parents, stuff like that, you know, and then you get some of the eighth graders that, you know, taller than me. And um so it really has to, you know, it has to be a light touch. Um Officer Fula did the fifth and sixth graders. She did an outstanding job um you know, kind of bellowing the approach. And I kind of in the sixth and seventh grader, I kind of like this is what you need to do. This is what you look out for. and we went through the process. It was

021a quick process, so we had time to get into the table talk exercises, but uh it seemed to work out well. I guess we had some great feedback and this this afternoon we had our staff meeting and we kind of did a a debriefing with our staff as a whole of this was the first time we've ever done it in this process. And I think the staff breathes a sigh of relief as well because for them they're still learning. I mean they they are the experts in Alice as the adults to lead and they've gone through the trainings online but they still have questions like we even had questions that came up today about what if this and how do we hold the door and what do we do to make sure kids if it

022is going out the window how do we make sure kids know how to do be safe and they were asking questions about could we practice going out like we do for the bus drills where the kids jump down and know how to help each other out the out the back of the bus could we do that for a window I said you know that's something to consider But there were a lot of questions. But I think the overall feedback from our staff as a whole was they were thrilled to have had the opportunity to have two experts, police officers that were there to talk to the kids to kind of emphasize but not scare because I think sometimes for kids in middle school it can be scary to have these kind. We don't want anybody

023going home in anxiety that tomorrow there's going to be a school shooting in Lfield. That's not our goal. We want to kind of give them the tool belt to help build those skills and understanding so that it, you know, god forbid it ever did transpire, they know what to do. It's not a what if and I don't know. Anything else? Um, yeah. So, just I mean, as police officers, we always talk about how when we're in high stress situations or an active incident, we always fall to our lowest level of training. Um, it's just because of how our brains work, everyone's brain, right? Um, it's why when you're avoiding an accident, you generally put your hands back to 10 and two because that's how you are trained in driver's ed. It's just something you do.

024Um, so for us, we we like to train. I like to just do reps because what it does is it creates pathways in your brain so that when those things happen, you can breathe and do what you need to do. And that's we're hoping with Alice training, creating those pathways for kids to stop and actually think about, well, what would I do? Um, and the nice thing about Alice is it it does give you the choice. If you want to stay in your classroom and barricade, um, you can do that. If you have the opportunity to evacuate and you want to do that, then you can do that. Um Alice taught us that there's no wrong decision because the decision you make in the moment is the right one cuz that's you have all the

025information that you have and that's it. So, we uh our hope was to ease the kids' minds, but also empower them, give them confidence, and we're hoping to to, you know, continue with this so that we can make them even more confident so that someday if they're at Home Depot on a Saturday morning with mom and dad, you know, they hear shots ring out or they hear something that's concerning, they can they can fall back to that training that they received. Just like that girl at literally five hours after we left training. There was there was an officer involved shooting in London that started at Planet Fitness of all places. People are working out. They have their headphones in. They're not paying attention. And now they're hearing shots being fired. Um that was something that

026we also talked to the kids about situational awareness. I think nowadays with the technology it's easy to not be aware. I mean, I've pulled over people in town with their headphones on um driving their cars, you know, and that's something to talk to these kids about because they have all these things at their at their fingertips. But, um if the more aware you are, the faster you can react and all that. So, we're hoping to keep going and uh give these kids the confidence that they need to make good decisions in the moment. So, that leads to Historically, as a district, we've done an active drill. Stealing my thunder. Oh, sorry. Look, you're go you're rolling. I'm just going to sit back. Keep going. Uh, so the we will be as exactly what Officer Fel

027was talking about. Sorry, Brian. I guess I jumped the gun first. We will be continuing that process and hope hopefully have the the tools in the tool belt for the kids to understand what to do. Um the next drill that we have at some point in the near future um will be more of that. Okay, here's the scenario. This is still a drill. It's not real, but what are you going to really do? It's not talk about it. It's do it. It's show us if you're going to evacuate, show us how you evacuate. If you're going to lock down and barricade, show us how you're going to lock down and barricade. If you have to inform because you see or hear something, you're going to inform. And and I think that those are the things

028like even though we've gone through the training and we have the new phones of how to page from any phone in the build in the district any phone in the building teachers need those reminders of this is how you do it. This is if you have something to you're going to inform the whole building that's how you can go about it. So sorry. Yeah. So I was just going to piggyback on. So at this point all three schools have done Alice table talks uh in the past couple of months. Age appropriate for for their level. Uh obviously an elementary table talk around this is going to look different than a high school table talk around this. So we've been doing that at each of the schools um age appropriate for them. I'll be sending out

029a message to the community uh in the upcoming days because we are going to do an active drill very similar to the drill we did last year um in about the same time frame before April break uh where we have kind of that active situation at each of the schools. We'll have our whole team, the whole emergency uh team including the police and fire and other uh safety personnel go to each of the schools. We'll start um at one of the schools and then go each every hour to each of the three. Um we're not going to announce the date of that ahead of time other than it will be between now and April vacation. Um so we can have some real-time reaction uh for kids to kind of um in that type of situation,

030what would they do in it? Um so very similar to last year and as a credit to um you know the the police uh to our administration for getting the kids prepared for that. Um we don't it's unfortunate we have to do these drills but it's important that we do you know hopefully it's something we never actually have to um kind of follow through on but even in in non um violent critical situations you mentioned it's still good training for for different things. You know, for example, we had the evacuation at um CHS a couple weeks ago, and it was good to kind of fall back on some of the safety protocols that we learned, even though it's not necessarily an Alice situation, but some of the things that we learned through this process and

031applying it to other situations. So, I want to thank the support of the police department, particularly at Saro ISIS. He's been wonderful to us this year. Um just doing a great job in the school, so supportive everything that we're doing. Um and we're going to continue to kind of kind of work on this. So, open up to the board for any questions for these guys or for anything along those lines. My thought, what a difference a couple years makes. Oh my goodness. I mean, night and day. I'm hearing your presentation and I'm just thinking to myself, if we reflect back even a few years ago, two years ago when we didn't have an SRO, when we were talking about getting to this point, it's amazing. What you do officers is you bring relevance to the

032conversation and it's more than just a teacher talking about this. You bring the credibility to the kids, right? And they're listening and their understanding more than just a teacher who they're listening to every day. And I can't thank you enough for doing that. I mean, I'll I'll mirror that. I know when Chief Jones came in, like immediate conversations were around you need to beef this up. We need to do better at practicing and it needs to be more involved. And I mean, it's just amazing. You guys have implemented this like very quickly. And again, I just I mirror that. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. Can I jump in on that? Yes, Chief. So, when I started a year, two months, 24 and a half days ago, I had several minutes not everything has been

033uphill or going on. But, um, in all seriousness, I had a lot of goals rattling around in my head. And some of the goals started with having officers who stepped up and went above and beyond. And instead of me saying, "You do this, you do this," people coming to me and say, "I want this training. I want this task. I want this job." And these two and and the sergeant, really everybody in the department, people are just stepping up and saying, "I want this piece of the pie." And sometimes even these are the pie that we didn't even know we needed. This one we obviously knew, but um you know, George was thrust into the role and and I'm hearing fantastic things, which isn't a surprise. Rebecca is is came in and said, you know,

034I want this house training. I want to go and be part of the school. And then the other half is I want to build relationship with the community. Last night we had our first ever uh citizens police academy start. So that's fantastic. But ultimately I wanted a great relationship with the school. Any place I've ever worked that's always been the case. And this past year has just been amazing. I talked to Brian quite honestly way more than I want to. But but it's always very positive. It's always very positive. In all serious though, like all these goals that I said in my mind I thought were going to take years. Here we are a year, two months, 24 and a half days later and these officers who stepped up and did the right thing are

035now being recognized by the school board. So this there's nothing in my job that makes me happier than what's happening here tonight. So I just want to thank you as well as Jen for bringing it up and and the officers and the supervisors. So thank you. Appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Excellent. Anything else? Thank you very much. You're doing a great job. Thank you. Thank you for the presentation tonight. Thanks, guys. All right, shifting gears. Uh, we have our student representatives tonight. Hello, Nick and Danny. Welcome to the party, right? What's going on in our schools this week? Not much, to be honest. Not much. Okay. All right. Everyone gearing up for vacay. Spring sports kicked off for sure. Yes, our spring sports, most of them don't have actual games until like the next

036like twoish weeks, but they have had practices every day. We have our teams now and some I know baseball and girls lacrosse had scrimmages with Alurn. I don't know about the other sports, but I think that they did very well yesterday. Now lacrosse is going to like we're going to like a group scrimmage or it's going to have I think three teams I think maybe I think Timberlain's going and then two other ones. So that'll be good. So we had the St. Patrick's Day lunchon for Campbell staff and SAU. Food was served by Kathy and Shawn Mcdana and the Campbell Leprechauns. There was the FBA overnight conference and Campbell won the award for recruiting the most new members. Nice. Um, the robotics team called Potential Energy placed second at the NE District UVM event this

037past weekend. They also won the team spirit award and those are some pictures of them. The last day of quarter 3 is tomorrow and we have the sweetheart dance on the 5th. Um, some of the future activities that we have going on at Campbell was the first Lego expo. It's going to be in the calf, I'm pretty sure. And then on the 19th, student council is going to the Manchester Food Bank. We do this every single year. It's one of our like traditions. And then this year, Bridget and Anthony, um, as their legacy, as Donna is calling it, is our new family feud assembly on the 24th. What do you guys do with the food bank? Um, we go and we get there like before all the people get there and we pretty much take

038all the food off of the trucks. Um, and we get we all like wear gloves. It's very sanitary. And then we end up helping pass out the food because most times it's like you have to like ration it out to all the families. And then we also give flowers out to the people waiting in line. And then once that's over, we go and pack up leftover food and pretty much just like help out with anything that they need that day. Cool. Great. SAT prep is in full swing for the juniors. Uh, and the SAT is on the 17th. Um, at the middle school, the seventh grade science student went searching in the woods for hemlock woolly agalid, an invasive species. They marked an catalog trees to report back to scientists from the Gulf of Maine

039Research Institute. Music and macaroni on April 10th at 6:00 in the LMS cafeteria. You can come and join them for a fun evening of cabaret featuring students from the LMS band and chorus and enjoy an amazing spaghetti dinner. One book, one school, one book, one school started last week. All students received a copy of the Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper. literacy team has put together a Google classroom and a very constructive response from students put in earns them a raffle ticket for amazing prizes. Congrats to Lauren L who was the first winner of a $100 in bowling passes. And at Griffin last week, the students celebrated ReadAcross America with many great themed days such as Crazy Hats, Dress as an Animal, Wacky Wednesday, Dress for the Job You Want, and Pajama Day. Tomorrow,

040the Discovery Museum will be here for third grade, and fourth grade will soon be starting their squid dissection. Cool. That's when they get to write. [Laughter] Any questions? No, appreciate the update as always. All right, any questions for our student representatives from the board tonight? Busy times. Busy times. All right. Uh, next up on our agenda tonight is our first of two community comments on agenda items. All right, seeing nobody running up to the microphone, we'll close community comment and we'll shift gears into correspondence. All right, bear with me. We've got about a month's worth of correspondence here, but it's not too too bad. Um, I did start a new document as we're in the new year, so it'll keep track of that. Here we go. March 4th, 2025, Dan Dit emailed um the school

041board as a farewell and thank you to Miss Harrison for her advocacy and dedication throughout her nine years. On March 7th, Jan Sullivan emailed the board circulating draft March 5th, 2025 public and non-public minutes. On March 10th, teacher Carolyn Le emailed the board thanking the board for their continued support of the arts and music and inviting us to attend the concerts that week. On March 11th, Anna Marotti emailed the board circulating the payroll manifest, which is the 403b contributions. On March 11th, Michaela Deer emailed the board um from New Hampshire School Funding Fairness organization requesting that Lichfield School Board members sign a letter to the House Finance Committee regarding funding for public schools. On March 12th, Dan Dwit emailed the board and FIC uh circulating the uh February 25th, 2025 meeting minutes from the facilities

042meeting. March 12th, superintendent emailed the board forwarding correspondence sent to the school staff um with his description of the voting results. On March 14th, Ann in the Marotti circulated the accounts payable manifest. On March 14th, the superintendent emailed the board providing a confidential personnel update. On March 15th, Mr. Cutter emailed the board advising the board of a work conflict for the March 19th meeting. On March 15th, Mr. Cutter emailed the board um and specifically Mr. Dit welcome him to the school board. On March 17th, Renee Burgess emailed the school board circulating the draft March 19th agenda. On March 18th, an Anna Marad circulated the check manifest for Eversource in order to get ahead of the billing cycle and avoid late charges for that particular vendor. On March 20th, an Animorat emailed the board circulating the

043credit card manifest. On March 21st, principal Jake Hess emailed the board regarding a confidential personnel matter. On March 23rd, Jan Sullivan emailed the board circulating the March the draft March 19th public and non-public minutes. On March 26th, Anna Marotti emailed uh circulating the payroll manifest which are 403b contributions and the LEA LSSA dues. On March 28th, principal Jay Cess emailed the board again regarding a confidential personnel matter. On March 28th, the superintendent emailed the board regarding a confidential personnel matter. On March 28th, Annamarati emailed the board circulating the accounts payable manifest. On March 28th, Julie Darling emailed the board circulating the MS-22 um for review and requesting signatures as well as an update on an audit. On March 30th, the superintendent emailed the board circulating the draft agenda for tonight's meeting. On March 31st, Renee

044Burgess emailed the board circulating the draft agenda for tonight's meeting. On April 1st, the board received an email from a parent regarding a confidential student situation. And on April 1st, uh Sarah Puller, uh special services director, emailed the board regarding a confidential student situation. Nailed it. Caught up. Thank you very much. All right. All right. Uh thank you for that update as always. Uh turning it over to the superintendent for general business updates. And first up, enrollment. Yep. We're holding steady. We're holding steady. Nothing's changing. Uh we got a few more kindergarten registrations as of uh earlier today. Um but we did get one call late in the afternoon from North Carolina. So some family moving up that's looking to register kindergarten kids. So um assuming those numbers will continue to rise as the spring

045kind of unfolds. But otherwise kind of steady in our numbers. We're at 53 or 53 today as of this morning. Official fully registered through the system and we're thinking 75. Was that the number? That's was our prediction. And I think we had 78 or something like 77. Right on that cut line number is where we were like kind of floating around. So as it's been in the past couple years and that's enrollment. Thank you. Too big. Um so the next thing default budget discussion. So right there's a link to kind of um we have about $280,000 difference between proposed budget and for the default budget. So, we've been working on kind of uh what would be kind of proposed I guess reductions to kind of hit that number and how we could do it. So,

046this is just kind of what we looked at administratively as how we could end up being there. I think we were trying to accomplish a couple of important things um as kind of a administrative team as we're looking this one. We didn't want to hit one particular school or department too hard compared to other areas. So, we tried to kind of spread things out uh between districtwide uh between the three schools, between special ed, non-special ed, everything like that. Um it was very important that we kept all of our people. We have great people in our district and we want to keep our people. So, we were trying to do this um without cutting any personnel that was currently um on our staff, you know, and uh making sure we could maintain everyone that that

047we have. And we feel we were successful in that matter. and then just trying to be conscious of of where we're going, what we need and really really need and what we don't really need and kind of get into a number. So the idea is this is kind of the worksheet that we would work off of. nothing becomes uh well we have the official budget number but in terms of transferring and moving money around that's something we have to wait till July 1st to do to do those type of steps but we would even out lines um that have a little more money in it and ship them around and reducing these particular lines to kind of spread things out so we can hit all of our um points that we proposed in our budget.

048So you can kind of go through the list here and kind of see some of them. I'm going to highlight some of the more significant things. Some of these are small things just for for people um who are following along like slight reductions in general supply lines of different schools those type of things. Um but some of the bigger things and that I think you know the board should be aware of is one of the proposals in here for example I spoke on it last time is um to eliminate the late afternoon bus run that we have here for the district and you know with the default budget when it comes to transportation when you calculate that you have to remove high school transportation as part of that calculation because it's not mandated by law

049but I think we should transport do bus transportation for high school students to and from school so something has to give in that kind of area and that what might have to give on that and what we would recommend giving on that is eliminating kind of the late bus um as part of that that saves us about 28 $29,000 to do that. Um and which is almost it's not an exact replica but kind of is the cost little almost the exact cost of what high school transportation is to continue those kind of routes and stuff. Um a couple other significant reductions are around some of the repair um things that we want to work on at the different schools. Um, for example, at LMS, um, in the bathrooms, there's needs to be significant repairs and

050replacements to sinks, flooring, and other type of things in those type of areas. Um, that could be something that we could recommend coming back to the board and suggesting with uh any potential end of the year funds that we have um here and stuff like that at the end of this year. So, we can just still get that work accomplished um and get get stuff taken care of in a safe manner at our schools and everything. Um, other things to draw your attention is is I think we got to cut cut bait on the ropes course. Um, you know, that's something that in a default, you know, that is something that we've talked a little bit about here and there. Um, I would recommend us starting the process of of taking that all down this

051year using some of the funds we have in our in our current budget and then removing the funds associated with the ropes course that's in next year's next year's budget at this point. Um, I know we've kind of talked about with the town, what do we do? Who's going to take ownership? who can can we make this work but if we are in a situation where we got to give some stuff up that that's something I think you know we're not using it like it's just being honest we're not using it at school level so um I don't think it makes a ton of sense to to kind of maintain it in that kind of capacity is that something wreck would take over having conversation we talked about it the other day yeah I mean

052if they want to here we'll throw it to them if they want but if it's left to our devices I I think we would uh you know we've reached out to to a particular vendor who does this type of work and ask if if you know steps to do if we were to take this down and uh process to kind of go through that and stuff like that. Um but if the town I know the town was and the rec commission was talking about it if they want to great but I I think we have to move past it as a school district. So um remind me where it is like is it on school property? It's on school property. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. if they want to take if they want to take that on.

053We need to know like now, right? And we've had conversations by the end of the the June 30th. We've had conversations. We had during the budget cycle. We met over way back in the summers when we first talked about it. We talked about it in the fall. We did a tour with people from the recck department and stuff like that going through all the spaces and everything during the fall. And we were all just talking about I think one of the things we were trying to purs pursue was there any way to be a financial benefit for the district and there's just not. We've been kicking the tires on different things, talking to different people. Um, can we rent out the space and just we haven't been successful, frankly, in trying to get something concrete

054down to do that, you know. Um, and then coupled with the fact that we're in the fall, something's got to give. This feels like a natural thing that that we should give on. So, um, but we can certainly continue discussions with Wreck if that's something and and work on that kind of transition. If they if they want to take it on, we're happy to do that. um we're no r no rush to go up there and rip everything off. So um you know we can continue that that kind of discussion. Um the other thing is um sixth period classes. So um we reduce the line that has um extra money for uh for example in the high school if we have depending on enrollments a particular subject area or something if we need to teach

055have a teacher teach a sixth class because of because of a specialty or a particular class or something like that we have budgeted for that. Um, typically in our budgets, we have reduced that line for next year. So, we have limited the high school and the ability to for teachers to teach six classes next year. Um, again, that's not taking away anyone's job, which is an important thing for me. Those are extras. Um, but that's something that tangible we can kind of kind of control. And so, we've we've asked the high school as they've done their scheduling to make sure teachers are limited to their five required classes and stuff. So, and then the rest of this you can look through. They're small things uh relatively small in the big scheme of things. Everything's important.

056I don't want to don't want to go over the top, but um you know, things we can kind of live without. With the um restricting sixth period classes, what does that mean for students? Well, we actually it you know, luckily nothing too big this year. Like when we did the schedule, when they did enrollments and stuff like that, no one was like in a dire situation where we had to restrict and prevent offering a class just because of the fact that we're limiting to six classes. We did make a conscious effort this year collaboration with the high school to limit classes that don't have at least 10 kids in it. There are a couple specialty type classes that have maybe seven or eight kids in it. Um, for example, um, but otherwise we've asked them

057to limit the number of classes that have less than 10. So that coupled with this idea of coming limited, we're we're offering what we we intend to offer pretty much. um couple classes a little bit bigger than maybe people want to stomach closer to that over 20 kind of marking but not anything inappropriate you know where if we had the flexibility maybe we would divide that class up a little bit more um but it's not going to prevent any of the offerings we have at the high school do we know how many kids take the late bus not a lot relative speaking you know what I mean um it can it can it can change on any given day depending on the co-curricular offered. You know, sometimes um you know, they get in the double

058digits closer to you know, maybe 20-ish kids, but other days not that high, you know. Um so so we're talking less than a bus load. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I know this is something we we had to do this in my previous district, too. We got to the point where it just wasn't it was didn't make sense financially to continue to to offer that for what the cost was. So, does that do anything with our bus contract? No, because it it's like dependent on this like there's clauses in our contracts that depending on where you're I'm not phrasing it correctly, but depending on the funding mechanisms, you know what I mean? You can make adjustments to certain things that you're doing and stuff like that. So, I'm just surprised it's 28 grand or

05929 grand for like a single bus load of kids all year long, isn't it? Is it two buses? One does the north side, one does the south side. two buses and nurse between two and 25 kids on each bus. Yeah. And that's true even with spring sports starting this up this week at LMS with the volume of kids doing timing of when the bus comes and when the sports sports are it doesn't align usually. Okay. Now, like anything, you know, these are our our, you know, recommended reductions. The board obviously has final say on these type of matters. You'll see one thing is empty in the slot because we're working on the exact costs associated with ESY transportation, right? Sarah, uh, Miss Puller is working on that stuff right now. And while we are anticipating

060savings in that particular line, you know, we don't know the exact amount yet because it is dependent on the specific students we have in those programs over the summer. Um, not saying it's going to be $28,000, but we are going to have some savings we anticipate in that line. And again, as we kind of approach and see how things cost when we actually turn around and buy it, you know, for example, chairs and desks. I know these are little things. Usually vendors give you higher quotes than when it actually comes time to buy them. So, you know, a little bit here, a little bit there. Maybe we're in a situation next year where, you know, we can kind of come back to some of these things that are on this list and we can get

061them done. I mean, as a part of these discussions, right, and I know we had a a meeting last week, we always talk about what's what's kind of tagged for end of year, right, spending, and it kind of lends itself into the discussion about, well, what gez, what are we starting to project for endofear financials? So, do we have to start do we start to have kind of that perspective? I I started to kind of plan that. Um, a lot of it we have to adjust a lot of the incumbrances and we haven't really gotten to that point yet. Um, I I'm suspecting, you know, hopefully like by couple weeks into May we have a better idea. Um, I mean I think that we'll be judging from like the financials and how we're spending at

062this point. I think that we are going to be in a good position to have um you know a a decent amount an appropriate amount hopefully um of endofear spending but I don't have like a good enough gauge at this point. It's just too early in the year. So I will continue to work on that. I do think, you know, I remember sitting through I think it was a June meeting where you all discussed end of the year stuff last year and that whole process and knowing from from other places I've been you know I I think things that talk about um the physical structure of buildings and safety of buildings that is excellent use of endofear funds. So, some of the things that we're trying to wait until next year's budget to kind of

063um fix and repair and I think like the sinks and the bathrooms is a great example of this, right? Um that is an appropriate thing that you would try to accomplish with end of the year funds. You know, that type of stuff. It's not an extra set of Chromebooks or an extra set of this, right? It is physical plant things that you're trying to accomplish that sometimes are tough to anticipate in a budget process because of the wear and tear. We try to get it done last year. It's unfortunate we didn't have a quote and uh like I don't know how else to say that. Yeah. And like with the wear and tear of a year things that develop. I know one of the things that you know we're going to discuss this in the

064months ahead. But there's some physical cracking on the exterior at CHS that we should really take care now before it becomes a GMS level problem, right? Like which is uh you know a relatively minor expense in the big scheme of things when we're talking millions of dollars, but would be an excellent utilization of end of the year funds and stuff like that. So, um, there are certainly things on here that that would fall, I think, in that kind of category of safety and building facility that while we budgeted for next year, it does not hurt to move up the move up the timeline of it and utilize some of the funds we have now this year to do it. So, that will help a little bit with this as well. So, in terms of the

065default, are you looking for decisions? I'm looking kind of a a I guess I don't direction. I mean it's kind of direction. Yeah. Like maybe a blessing that this list looks pretty good as things may if anything major changes report back to the board but like the general idea of what is here. Um you're okay final June. It doesn't have to be final so later. Correct. Yeah. So I think the direction is is right. I don't know. Is there anything that's blatant on the list? Let me ask a question to the board. Is there anything blatant on the list the board does not agree with? Um, I noticed that the superintendent is not going to get an increase in his salary. Well, yeah, we didn't pass the budget. It's okay. I I disagree with that.

066So, I appreciate that, but but my keep I'm serious conversation. I understand. I'm just saying it's on here as on the chopping block and that is not something I agree with. Um, no. I think you guys did a really thorough job going through this. I mean, I guess the only question I would have is anything that's marked with endofear funds if that could be ranked in some way in terms of importance like it's more important to replace the sinks than it is for the volleyball net or you know whatever it is that um that how it's ranked is helpful for me in understanding from administration perspective and the district perspective you know how depending on what we have left over at the end of the year that if you could do a a sum for

067the things that you're marking as end of year. Yep. Yeah, I have a document started so um I can share that with everyone but I I do have a plan to um be able to rank that um so it can everyone can be on the same page. Right now everything that's on the list um we have a it's about $86,000. Um does it include things not on this particular list though? It does not. Oh, okay. I I do have a question about the HVAC. Sorry, it does it does have the turf tank HVAC maintenance and service at GMS and CHS. Yeah, we're we're hedging a little bit there. Like we've had a Well, when we wrote this, we've had, knock on wood, um, okay, with the HVAC systems at those two respective schools. So like

068the lines that the amount of money we have set aside for for GMS next year was $18,000 or we have currently in the budget is $18,000 which is what carries over into the fall and then for CHS uh $28,000 and we haven't quite had to use that for that purpose. Um yeah yet there's still a couple months you're tempting fate on this list. We are 100% tempting fate. we are like and I think that's part of what like and this is a fine line, right? Like we're in a default budget. We don't want to lose what we do and what we try to accomplish. We want to try to make the best of this. But like there's also like we proposed a budget for a reason, right? Like that's the number we needed. If we

069needed 280 thou if we thought we needed $280,000 less, we would have proposed a budget that $280,000 less, right? So, these are the things that we're going to have to kind of hold our breath a little bit on and and see how things go next year, right? There's a couple notes in here that says, "Yeah, we're okay, but thank goodness we have a repairs line reserve fund because if things get dicey, that's where we're going, which might mess up other plans, right?" Like, that's kind of the the like touch and go here, right? Like, so that's a perfect example of those lines. like we have had again, knock on wood, successful in our in our HVAC, relatively speaking, at GMS and CHS this year, but that's no guarantee that we'll have that same success next

070year for those units, you know. Yeah. So, I guess that was going to be my follow-up question. So, Matt, thank you for going down that road cuz I was going to ask it, too. Um, let's say if that happens and then something happens, do we have a contingency to cover like emergency repairs if needed? We always do in the sense that we can move money around, transfer money around, particularly in in emergencies, right? And lots of things can happen like we're can, you know, we're going to talk about hiring, right? And this is kind of a natural thing where you talk about attrition and hiring. Um, you know, we're going to hire someone potentially this evening who's going to be cheaper than the person they're replacing, right? So, there's some of that quote unquote contingency,

071right? So that's where some of that kind of funds can kind of be an emergency or when the time comes we're going to give something up, right? Like we won't we don't spend all our money on July 1st, right? So if we had something HVAC system go in the middle of the winter for something and need a significant repair. Well, we're going to have to save somewhere else and maybe we're not purchasing something else that we normally would in the spring and stuff. So yeah, it's it was more of, you know, boiler number three decides to pop a line and, you know, we shut down half the school. we have a method to get it back up online. Yeah, I mean that's the power and again when we talked about the voting um while obviously

072it would been lovely if everything had passed but some of the warrant articles that were passed were very critical for these emergency situations right like that reserve fund for building and repairs we can access the board can access that at when they need to right in case of an emergency and stuff like that so we would be covered sounds good still coming up to speed so thank you that's great these are good questions And and again, it's it is that balance like we we don't want people to think we can magically always come up with these numbers like when we go into a default. So, we're just always going to go into default. People need to understand that that that we're not going to have as much stuff as we thought we were going to

073have, right? We're going to have to limit some stuff next year. Maybe that's not evident in one year of a default budget, but if you get into a pattern of it, you're going to really start to affect it over time, you know? um and we can make it work for a year and we'll be conscious like we said throughout the whole budget process. Um we were working with a budget we didn't develop and now that we've been working in this budget this year when we come next year to the table with the budget we'll have a much stronger knowledge base of of the true intent of some of those numbers behind it, right? Um just because we will have that experience of being a full year behind us in the school district, right? Um and

074so I'm assuming the budget will look different next year period, right? Um but yeah, we're going to hit we get a little hits. We completely understood. It's like any other financial situation, right? Um but I do want to echo that I know I've told you on the side previously. I have been seeing that you guys are working to define the budget and bring um administrative practices that I normally don't see in a school budget system. So I I really appreciate the work that you guys are doing and it's I give all the credit to Brian, you and your team and the rest of the school systems to help define that. So it's really refreshing and it's really good for me to see as I went back a few years and watching budget committee meeting videos

075and coming to new it was uh even in your short time I'm seeing a significant difference. So I appreciate it. Yeah. But thank you. Uh it's a team effort. I will not take all the credit for it for for sure. So, okay. Well, as you kind of digest the list of um potential reductions, certainly over the next month or so, um 60 days or so, this will be a continued discussion as we hope to finalize the the end of the year. Sounds good. All right. Y uh hiring. So, I want to give positive more. Well, well, maybe maybe Um, so the first hiring update, uh, oh, we're the cough twins. Uh, Jake Jake has um our principal at CHS is moving on to a new opportunity. And, um, I won't spoil it quite so much

076yet. It's not my business to spoil that, but we are anticipating that he's moving on to a new opportunity. The way that that school hiring works, you know, sometimes we have to work for wait for other board meetings to finalize their stuff, but um, we we want to get going on our process. So, I'm going to miss Jake. I've known Jake for a few years now. I'm in a couple different capacities. I think he does a good job with what he does and I'm excited to see what he does in the future in his new with his new adventure here and I know we're going to continue to be in touch and everything because it's a small world education in the state and everything. So, um we'll miss him certainly at Campbell and stuff, but

077um with him leaving that means we need to hire a new principal or we're anticipating hiring a new I should keep saying anticipated. We are anticipating the need to hire a new principal um at Campbell High School. So, I want to kind of go over that process with the board. and what we're kind of envisioning for that search process. Um kind of taking different things, different processes that um certainly I've been a part of in different capacities and what's been tradition and here in the town and in the school district when you've done these sort of bigger hirings and make sure we're all on the same page and if we want to fine-tune anything and answer any questions that people have kind of get going on it. So, if you click on that link, it

078just kind of gives you um kind of an overview timeline what we're thinking about search committee interview um kind of steps and processes there. This is just a quick summary. It doesn't have all the details in it uh but enough to to kind of uh go over our discussion here. We did go ahead and post an anticipated job um last Friday on March 28th. Uh we already have three applicants in our pool, which is great considering the job's only been up for 3 days. So, that's that's really good. Um and they're strong candidates, too. they're legitimate good candidates. So, um, so I think we'll have a a good pool, you know, and that's the hope. You know, we're trying to build a culture here and a place where people want to be. Um, and I'm

079hoping that this is, you know, one of those positives of that and we see that kind of manifest here. Um, and what's important about getting that up last week is it can get us to an end date of April 11th. We don't need big um windows for these type of jobs, which I know maybe sounds backwards, but it's not. People are ready to jump when they're open. So, like we wanted two weeks in and out and let's get our candidates and get kind of going. Um, which would lead us to some sort of application uh review meeting um tenatively scheduled April 15th, have a search committee come in, review applicants, and start getting the pool of candidates that we want to come in and do um physical interviews with that we would do um that

080first round of interviews tentatively scheduled for April 22nd and 23rd. This is important why I think it's important and why we wanted to get that date that anticipated job posted is so we could get the first set of interviews done before April vacation so we can get going. You know, we get our candidates at this exact moment. I don't think we're competing against any other open high school jobs, but that means some have already been filled. So, we're kind of, you know, it's the cycle of it all. So, um so that allows us to do those first round of interviews that that first week before or that week before April vacation and then come back after April vacation. from that first week back and kind of do around two interviews with what I would call

081finalists at that point to kind of um have them come into the district for for a day, part of a day tour of the school. Uh meet with panel of staff, pan students, panel of uh parents, guardians, administration, so on and so forth. Um, one last final kind of interview interview I say check in with our kind of uh candidate at that point with me so we can make sure we have reference checks and in line and paperwork and everything else and we're kind of locked in so we can bring a nomination to the to you all the school board on on the second meeting in in May Wednesday the 21st um for that candidate that we kind of want to go forward with. So that's kind of the timeline we're looking at trying to

082do this responsibly but also quickly. We don't want to fall too far behind. We don't want to lose candidates if other jobs start to open up in this kind of nature. Uh like I said, we're the only one open right now and this is a efficient timeline. So I think we would be ahead of anything else that could potentially open um in the next couple weeks. Um so we're in good shape on that. Um search committee kind of just put down possible positions and ideas. I think there's 14 listed here. We don't have to stay with that. Open to any other suggestions as people come and go. We want a mix of people. some some people on our administrative team who who know what it's like to be an administrator. Um obviously teacher representatives, support

083staff representatives from uh from the high school uh one of you to join us during during this kind of first round. Um some parent guardians, couple parent guardians to be part of that and a couple of students to be part of that as well. Um so we have kind of diverse from a number of different stakeholders going to be part of that that initial interview um kind of search committee and then uh you know pretty straightforward standard first round type of interviews. You bring in, I would say, up to six candidates, but you kind of let the pool dictate that for you. Maybe you don't need six. Maybe you're really deciding between six and seven and you figure something out. I don't know. You let let the pool speak to you on that point. Um,

084you do your typical, you know, 10 questionish kind of initial interview. Tell us about yourself, background, and so on so forth. Give us your leadership style and some sort of written communication as part of that. Um, to see how people communicate. uh with the written word, usually a standard question, you're sending an email out to the community about alistrills, right? Something like that. See how they communicate and how they write. And then that round two interview, um we can talk about specifics on what that looks like. There's been different capacities. I know recently when I did this last year through the superintendent search, it was a full full day. You know, you spend a a long long time in district doing everything. I think you can be a little bit shorter on a principal. Uh,

085but I think you should bridge the school day in the afternoon so you can get them and see them um in the building when the building is active in session, but also have the opportunity uh for parents and guardians and and teachers and students outside of the school day to be able to sit on a panel and have some sort of question and answer with your candidate. Um, you know, you do that whole whole thing with two or three final candidates and then like I said, just a final kind of check in with the superintendent, which I guess is me. um making sure we have all our references fully completed. We have all of our kind of um start talking about salary and those type of things with with the candidate and stuff to make

086sure that's on the line before we bring it in front of the board. So, when we did the vice principal, we did it a little different, right? Didn't we do three groups and the vice principles went kind of room to room? Everyone does things differently. So, I'm open to any suggestions. This was just from uh my experiences honestly and and talking to a couple people. All searches can be I said this before I'm going to say it again. Right. This feels extensive. I mean everything for a superintendent you I get it. But for like a principle I mean there has to be an element of trust for the people that we've hired to make decisions. And this just seems a bit over the top. Like what what about it? What about it? Everything about it.

087like you're bringing it like if I'm the in if I'm the candidate my my reaction to this is like and maybe it's just normal in education and maybe this is just me looking at it from business perspective but this is like what the heck I think uh I think the gamut here yeah so I think depend I think for a principal a high school principal this is okay right but I will say when I was hired as a high school principal I had one interview and then I had a really bizarre conversation with the superintendent where I wasn't sure if you offered me the job or not, but that's a whole other story for another time. Uh, funny story, but just a whole other story. Um, and uh, so that was that. And I remember,

088you know, after the fact talking to people, I was like, "Man, that was crazy. You just did one interview and you moved on." They were like, "Well, we had all this other stuff planned, but we we felt good with you after the first interview." So, you can kind of pivot. You can always scale back if you have someone strong enough that everyone's just like, "Well, there's our person, right?" Like, you know, we don't need to waste time. we don't want to lose this person, whatever the case may be. Um, but I do think what you get with the second round, like I'm a big advocate of seeing how a person in this type of role interacts during the school day. Like what do they do? Who do they stop to talk to? How do they

089approach people? Like who do they look in the eye? Who do they don't? Do they talk to the kids? Right? Like seeing that kind of interaction that you can't get board meeting now. They know what to do. Well, but don't frankly homework. Well, and if that's true, then good. That's what they should be doing, right? Like you want people who are going to do that homework and do that research and pick up those things. Like um that's important stuff. I I do think sometimes we get we the collective and education get a little uh over the top and how we do some of these processes. But for a high school principal, I do think you need a couple rounds in a kind of a involved involved kind of process. So yeah, I gauntlet I know

090you I mean I know you just acknowledge that the for the superintendent, you know, that makes sense. Having gone through that process though, it is extensive and exhausting, but I will say that I think a lot of like positive came through that. There's a lot that throughout the process you kind of hash through and pick up on and it I think Brian is a great example of how that works because we ended up with a phenomenal candidate that checks off all the boxes of what we really need at this point. Your opinion still it's still TBD right now. Yeah. So, you know, honestly, I think, you know, particularly where culture is so incredibly important in a in a, you know, sector where there's not a shortage of jobs for people, for us to be able

091to retain talent, I think it's important for us to find the right people. So, I know there's other board member comments. My other my other comment definitely, and I'll I'll stop talking, is are we being nimble enough in timeline and reactive enough in timeline to make the right decision quickly? Like, I see this and we're a month and a half out and I'm hearing ah, you got to be quick. I don't see quick in anything about this. Yeah. I think we have to be conscious of how things unfold, right? Like we are check ed is the main site in in New Hampshire education that you check for these type of jobs, right? We are the only PR high school principal job open. So if you're targeting being a high school principal, we are the job

092right now. And I think we're seeing that I even again three days, three candidates and like very valid candidates, right? And very different, you know? So, I think we're going to attract people and people who want the job, not just are looking for a job, right? Like if I I'm looking at these candidate, I don't want to speak out of turn, right? Because I've seen them, but like I and maybe I'm totally wrong, but I think there are people who are applying for this job, not necessarily a job. I'm looking at at kind of their profile and stuff like that. Yeah. So, so multiple round interviews, panel interviews as you get higher in my world is normal. The only thing that it is how big are you expecting for the panel? Cuz like I I've

093gone into like interviewed for low-level jobs and all of a sudden I've got like VPs want to be in it. Is like I'm hiring an engineer one. I don't need a VP in the room with me. Yeah, I think that's a good question. Like we were talking about this uh with the SAU people earlier today, right? like um we were just in the office talking about what this would look like and one of the things we we don't want to do is to like open it up free flowing open the auditorium put everyone on stage and like do that that's probably a step too far for this particular position but having a panel of of parents right say there's a 10 to 12 you know whatever the number is that you can get people to

094come in represent diverse kids you may couple parents who don't have high schoolers yet that might might have high schoolers in a few years cuz hopefully We're hiring someone who's going to be here, you know, for for a number of years, current high school parents, a mix of of kind of community members there and like that kind of more controlled kind of setting like you're going to have some questions. You're going to meet your two or three finalists at that point and then you're going to kind of report back out and it's going to be not hours, it's going to be like you have them for like a half hour, right? Like something kind of shorter like that. So the the one experience that I have and again this is just from my world is

095your panel list should ask the same questions to each candidate. Yep. Exactly. And that's why when you get out of that goes off the rails kind of auditorium like kind of free fall freeall. You know you can kind of I was definitely in a setting once um for for a high school principal job where I definitely got a different set of questions than the other person and that was fine because of the dynamics. The school I had worked at previously and and the other person hadn't. So like I understood it on the same level but it's still weird right like you're getting a different set of questions like so yeah you want to kind of control it so it's the same type of environment for all your candidates. So are you saying you would have

09610 to 12 parents be part of this group up to you know maybe less. Now I say that because uh even without formally announcing the search committee yet I've already got people like reaching out and I want people involved. talk about the gauntlet, I guess, but think about a high school principal, right? Like you have to run a gauntlet at times, you know, like it is a job where you need to wear a lot of different hats and talk to a lot of different people and communicate effectively in a number of different ways, right? Um, and it it's different and I'm biased cuz I was a high school principal, but it it is different than say in an assistant principal position. like it's really really different and you need to see how kind of people

097handle those different stakeholders and maybe 10's too much you know and that's the feedback I'd like from the board here you know if you think a a smaller panel is probably more effective and efficient there like certainly we can adjust that um I want the community to feel involved in this decision you know so um and again based upon people already reaching out being like hey can I uh can I be a part of something here you know I want to make sure people feel heard and be be appreciated as part of the process I think as long as you ask the same questions. And a lot of times what we did was in past, I think we did it with Mr. Mitchell, we've done it, I think with Miss Grantham, send in your questions

098ahead of time, there's a Google form with a deadline, so they're submitted and asked and then they're vetted and and yeah, it it keeps it simple and people can observe, but they're not there to necessarily ask their own questions as much as they're there to just listen. Yeah. Usually in that type of setting, I've seen that you have like a facilitator for each of these panels, right? where they're the kind of the one asking the the initial question like anyone can jump in with like a relative follow-up question, you know, but like um like if you were like, "Well, do you like the Red Sox or Yankees?" And they said Yankees. And if someone else want to be like, "Defend that cuz they're using these stupid bats to hit a thousand, right?" Like, you know,

099like you need to know if you got to have a fallout then. But like, yeah, you want that set questions. You want your person to kind of kind of lead the charge there and that kind of stuff. And I'd love to just turn it over to our student represents. Let me put you guys on the spot for a minute. Right. Knowing that we're potentially going to be in the market for looking for a a high school principal, what's the one question that you'd want to ask a new high school principal coming in? Really putting him on the spot. No pressure. No pressure. Um, probably like ask like how involved like he would be like with the students and like obviously like with like he has to be like the like adult or he or she

100has to be the adult, but like getting involved like in like Springfest or in like dressing up in a Santa suit and going on stage during our treeing or things like that. And I feel like like really connecting with the students like how important that is to them and like how like personable they are in a way. Okay. All right. I would just ask them if they're going to make the students life easier. I don't know because I feel like I feel like you guys are really struggling. [Applause] Like if you're asking a student like I feel like they have to ask the question like what they're going to do for the student. So that's what I would ask. Okay. There you go. Appreciate that. Thank you. First two questions on the list right there.

101There we go. That's great. All right. Anything else on this one? No. In terms of board representation, I know Heidi, you had volunteered. I'm happy to do it. I did check these dates against my work calendar and blocked them just in case, but if anybody else wants it, it's all you. I'm out. So, by all means, Heidi. Okay. All you Heidi. All right. Thank you. On it. You did the short on this one. I did. I didn't get my finger up fast enough. That's why. We appreciate it. Thank you very much. I'm happy to do it. Yeah. All right. Uh, next up we have Spanish. So, I wanted to provide kind of an update on Spanish because, uh, historically, uh, Jen, jump in at any point. Um, we've had struggles hiring for Spanish positions, uh,

102both at the high school and the school. I would say we hired late both of those positions. um as I was coming in last year and uh that's not a unique Lichfield situation. Previous district I have spoken of, we really struggled to hire Spanish teachers there. I I just think it's it's uh hard to to hire world language teachers right now, period. We do have uh and I want to provide an updated board because this is the update. We have a candidate um that we're going to interview for Spanish. We have one candidate coming for the position. We've had it posted now three weeks, four weeks at this point, four weeks. And uh they're legitimate candidates. So, we're going to interview them and kind of see how that goes. But, we're also, I'm assuming, interviewing

103for every Spanish job that isn't manageable because there's a ton of jobs open, right? Because no one can find Spanish teachers. So, we're likely going to come to the board next meeting with one of two things. either a Spanish teacher nomination or a plan to do Spanish differently at the middle school because we can't get into the the cycle of just scrambling, not doing anything, not making any decisions, waiting till late August and then coming up with something, right? We need to be proactive because this is a legit, in my opinion, a legitimate problem in education. There just are not world language teachers. We have to start looking at these issues differently and approach it differently. Um, so I just want to prep the board for that. Like we're going to come either next meeting

104with a nomination or a different plan for for middle school Spanish. Um, you know, and we're going to if that different plan, we've talked about it. We've actually been talking about it dating back to last summer when there was a possibility that we weren't going to have um a Spanish teacher at the middle school. um you know last last summer when we we're getting close to the school year it would involve online education utilization of Vlax possibly some other things as well that can't replace an actual teacher we acknowledge that but the reality is it we may not have a teacher we may not have a candidate for this um I think when we last looked there was 14 openings of Spanish and middle school or high school in the state right now and again

105we have one candidate and I'm assuming that candidate is not solely applying for here probably applying at these other jobs as Well, so um we will move forward with that, but I want to prep the board that we'll probably have a serious discussion next meeting um about the state of Spanish at the middle school and stuff. So, any questions or things you want us to kind of think about before that next meeting? Um I got to think about that. I think you should right like I and um I you know engage in that conversation of what that is like there are pros and cons that there are definite cons there are pros but there are definite cons to um doing things in a different way. So one question I mean is when I went to

106middle school which was junior high at the time there was an introduction to world languages. So it wasn't language specific. It involved an introduction to Latin which is the language I ended up taking eight years of useless. Um and then French, Spanish, whatever. Is that something that would require a world language teacher or is that something because it's so more on the basic side of things that another teacher could do? It's a great question. In my I would have to do a little more research, but I've actually been part of groups that have looked at that and I know uh in my previous district when the middle school was having the same exact problem, we're facing a situation that maybe they weren't going to be able to find a language teacher. They talked about that

107language teacher idea and they were going to utilize a social studies teacher to do that instruction because it was more historical background of different cultures exploring culture, right? And it can fall under that kind of social studies umbrella and someone certified in that area because you're not speaking, you're not teaching the language per se, the grammar, the spelling and everything. You're talking about the culture and the influence and the historical knowledge of it and stuff like that. So it is that kind of introduction to different different cultures different and you can do some preliminary language stuff right um and it can be brought right you can spend some time on on French and France and stuff like that sign language I mean look we can have a whole other discussion I think sign language is

108is it's the way to go with world language period but that's another discussion for another time I agree um and uh yeah so there are different things you can kind of explore on but I I think and you know just kind I don't want to get too far down the rabbit hole because this person could come on board and then this whole conversation is is moot. Um, but you know, we we look at language education. Um, and we got to think about what what what the point of it is, right? Like, and just be honest with ourselves what it is. And I'm pro-w world language. I don't want that to be that I'm I'm anti-world language. I think it' be I would love to be able to speak Spanish fluently, but you know, I can't.

109I took my three years of Spanish because I had to take my three years of Spanish and like moved on, right? Like I don't know if if if that's you know I would, you know, perfect world have us introduce you know Spanish and kindergarten and teach it K through 12. That's not going to happen. I understand that. But um that that's awesome, right? So you know what are we trying to accomplish with our language program and and when is the appropriate time to kind of start that build and and what are most of our students utilizing that language for? You know, it used to be the rule of thumb and kind of has swayed a little bit that you need three years of language to get into college. That used to be kind of the

110unofficial kind of unofficial thing. That kind of went away a little bit. UNH was advising that wasn't as important if you were, you know, specializing in other classes, right? Like say engineering classes or something like that. But now the pendulum seems to be swinging back where they want you to take language, right? So it it's kind of like you want to make sure your kids are s have opportunity the appropriate opportunities and everything. So it's a complicated issue. I think you know thinking about it being ready to kind of dive into it potentially next meeting. I think we might have a lengthy discussion about it. So just just to chime in on what Brian is sharing is am I talking back here? I think that microphone's picking up. But um we have had in my

111four years we've had a year of no Spanish. We had a year of Spanish that was immersion Spanish. We had a year of a year a half year of Spanish and enough and having to come in on the pinch. And then this year was a last minute punt for Spanish. So it has not allowed us to have any continuity of program to be able to feed the high school. So I'm just concerned that we're going to be depending on the candidate. I have not met this person yet who was able to get an interview on the docket for Friday. So, um, hopefully we'll be better informed as of Friday, but I'm concerned with that continuity to be able to lead to the high school for them to be successful in the high school program as

112it's designed. That's my initial reaction and thank you for bringing that up, right? Is even if this is a great candidate, right? Is it the is it the right choice for us because of that continuity? It's it's one thing to fill a gap for a year, but if that person leaves after a year, what what are we really solving? Yes. Right. Yeah. And I think it's a hard discussion because I think people may assume you're not supportive of world language, but that's not what the discussion is. It's trying to have the reality based conversation that like it's just really hard in today's world to fill these positions, right? If you can honestly are fluent in in Spanish, you can get paid a lot more money to do a lot of other things, right? Like, and

113I think we're just not seeing people go into world language instruction, right? Like there's not a lot of young teachers who are getting into that side of teaching. We still see people getting into English education, elementary education, math education, but that world language education, it's hard to get get young teachers in there, right? And you almost have to accidentally fall into one who's it's not their intent to do it. and you know and just get lucky once in a while. And from a programmatic perspective and again to your point, it's a feeder into Camp and how can we keep the program sustainable and running into Campbell when it's inconsistent downstream? You can like in some ways if you and again we'll have a lengthier discussion possibly next time. If you were to cut bait in

114middle school, you might actually strengthen your high school program, right? You know, because you're going to have more consistent Spanish one education for all your students who are involved in the program, right? The downside is you're probably not getting to AP Spanish, right? Unless some kids are doing some things on the side. Again, we can talk more ne next meeting, but So, why is it that you can fill a high school Spanish one teacher and not a middle school teacher? Have you ever been a middle school? I think the model is very I'm just like that's a big one. I I think it's this I think it's the the focus and the serious you know getting down to the content. High school teachers in my experience are more about their subject matter, the passion for

115their subject matter and that's what they're all about. Whereas a middle school person is also passionate about their subject matter but also has to be into the quirky nature of the kids at middle school. Yeah. Takes a unique individual to work in a middle school. I'm going to say that. Yeah. And I think when you hire But it does I think two things. Um you you're barely able to hire high school world language teachers, right? Like it's like an incremental step above, right? Like we hired the high school Spanish teacher I think in August last year, too. Like we were facing a situation where we weren't going to have a high school that second high school Spanish teacher last year. Um and then one kind of we got really lucky simply just no other way

116to put it, right? And I do think some of the draw of teaching at the high school level versus the middle school level. At the middle school level, you're just doing that introductionary Spanish, right? So if you have a passion for the language, like you're never really going to do it, right? Like you're introducing the language, you're dealing with classroom behaviors, you're doing you're living the middle school life, which God bless you all who live the middle school life, but like um it's different than the high school life where you get to immerse yourself in a language and you're not going to exclusively teach Spanish one. you'll teach Spanish one, probably section of Spanish 3, maybe even a higher level Spanish class, right? So, you have that versatility and what you're teaching and everything. So,

117that's why I think you get a little incrementally higher chance of getting high school, but even then, it's it's it's a struggle to find find teachers. Thank you. All right. Anything else at the moment for LMS? Again, this is another one Spanish and LMS. Another one that I think we just have to kind of sit on and think through. Okay. Uh, schoolboard calendar. So, we brought this back um just to finalize the dates of the of the of the school board meetings. We put other tenative meetings on here just that we can adapt once we get final um final word. For example, the budget committee um meetings that we'll we'll attend in November, December and everything. But the blue school board meetings here are the schoolboard meetings. When we last talked about this, I believe

118it was two meetings ago. Um we talked about the need to whether to have two uh meetings in December. We did leave the second meeting on December for now just so we can reserve the space and and the schedule and everything. And if we need to rearrange that schedule as next year approaches, we can certainly do that. Um we have locked in the deliberative days here. We didn't necessarily lock in which of the days we'll do our deliberative uh next, but we make sure we want to book uh everything correctly. you know, make sure auditorium and gym are both available as the elementary books uh their their show next year that stay away from those weekends so everyone coordinates here. So, we blocked them off and nice and green so everyone knows the dates. Um

119and making sure Valentine Yeah. Seriously, that's love like Well, we can do it. We can do it on the 7th, right? Like we can talk about that. We'll we'll talk with the town with their thoughts. Uh I mean, we can we can set this stuff now if we so choose, right? Like and just use the Sabbath. I know we're going to talk to um talk to the town, you know, at some point and get this all squared away, but by statute, those are the two dates we can have. That's the window that we can have it. And you typically do it on a Saturday in this district. So, those are the two Saturdays. Um so, what we're looking for tonight is final approval of the school board meeting dates. That's all you have to approve

120on this calendar, even though we have other things listed on the calendar. It's the April vacation date, right? I feel like that's the next week. I feel like that's might be the next week now that you're saying that. Yeah, it is the next week. It is the next week. It goes into May. We have to adjust that. Sorry. Nope. That's okay. And that's not what we're voting on anyway, but I'm looking at it going, that's early. You're right. 100% right. Yep. Oops. You mean I would love it if it lined up with Massachusetts eventually. But how about Mass Lines with us? I I don't care which one because the later one's better the same week. The later one is better. Just for my two cents. Okay. Um, just on the schoolboard calendar, right, especially as

121we get into the later months of the year and thinking about all things budget, um, the budget committee is also going through their meeting calendar process right now. They are set to review that at their uh, in April at their at their April meeting later this month. Um, they have asked as we think about again the the the meetings I guess in yellow. Um yeah, the budget sessions they have asked that we try to um wrap up all the budget and warrant meetings prior to the end of the year. I don't know how reasonable they actually asked for November, didn't they? Well, I mean, essentially they they they want to go into January with the perspective of what all the warrant articles are, what the default budget is, right? So, they have more time, notably

122with default, um, to understand what it is and and be able to ask questions. They just felt new, right, first time going through, they just want more time to be able to go through it and and be prepared going into budget hearing. So, I don't know. I asked for their grace, right? because we may have a big ticket item and that requires a lot of planning. It requires bond, all that stuff. And we don't have any sense of what that process is going to be like quite yet. And that might take more time than we're thinking through here. Yep. So, I think we'd be able to get our our proposed budget, default budget, and nonGMS related warrant articles pretty squared away in an appropriate amount of time. We'll have a year under our belt, process

123under our belt. Um Julie spent uh part of when yesterday last week Monday Monday whatever they're all together um with the crew at Gofftown with Doug and and then Scott the the BA over at Cofftown to kind of talk about ways to to not do the default differently but in the system more conveniently so we can do that stuff quicker next fall and stuff like that. So we're already taking steps to be a little more proactive on those things on our part as well. So, we'll see how it goes towards the November, December time frame and what the budget committee comes up with for their calendar. Um, so we might see maybe some adjustments here. I'm not sure, but we'll go from there. Yeah, we were just guessing on the budget stuff and but the

124blue is what you need to approve, just the school board meeting dates. So, I'll make a motion to approve the school board calendar dates. Motion by Miss A. Second. Second by Mr. Dit. Any additional discussion? All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I opposed abstained that carries 5-0 and I will be sure to get these dates over to um Mr. Bal. Uh Renee, send you a corrected one so we have that school calendar. Okay. Correct. So you have just so we can get the the room locked in. Y there's no questions. And we'll turn it over for a business administration update tonight. Thank you. All right. Sure. Um, with regard to the financials, one thing I just wanted to um, point out for transparency, um, under the transfers, there was, um, there were

125two transfers over 5,000. Um, the reason that we didn't come to the board is because it was for the, um, school psychologists and when we had um, asked for that transfer for up to 60,000, we were going to do it as needed. Um, so those those were already um, a part of that total. So there were two transfers. Um there was one for 30 I'm sorry one for 29,372 and another for $5,04. Um and those were related to the psych services. Um the only other things I had um for uh we did receive our financial audit um for the fiscal year ending um for um 2024. Um I did attach that. It's also on our website. Um, just wanted to make sure everyone had access to that information. I also have hard copies if anybody

126would like one. Um, there were um a couple of minor u findings mainly with regard to um purchasing um untimely deposits and student activity accounts and all of those items have been addressed um with our administration. So hopefully we'll be in better shape next year. Um with regard to solar, I wanted to give an update on that. We did um hear from um Kay this morning that the electrical inspection has been um scheduled for tomorrow morning actually um at LMS. So um if we pass that inspection and everything moves forward um they are um dynamic grid is prepared to um deliver the report to Eversource which will start the clock for them to um give us the approval and then um await the new meter. So that's where we are with solar. I'm sorry. What

127was that date again? When are they coming? Yeah, tomorrow. Tomorrow. And then if I recall from the conversations that clock to get the new meter is 10 days. 10 days upon Yes. And then once the new meter is installed then it's an additional there's a little more testing that has to be done. Right. But I want to say it's a short window. It's another like maybe 10 days. Correct. It's Yes. It's it's not long. So maybe by the end of May now. Maybe. What was February is now May. I think it was originally May though a few years ago just 36 months late. All right. Thank you for the update. The budget committee was actually asking about an update as well. So I'll be sure to pass this on. Um the Yeah. Um Mr. Olsson,

128the new budget committee member is very interested in all things solar. So I'm sure this will be a good pick. Great. um curriculum instruction. Dr. Toad. All right. So, um just a quick um update. The curriculum review committee we met um last week and we are um we are still going through I not last week the week before. It's all blending. Um so we are going through um the new curriculum review cycle that we have instituted um which is more robust than previous um and we are currently mapping out what um subjects should go in what phase. We sent out a survey to um all of the different departments asking for their feedback after they reviewed the survey or the review the phases to see where they would place themselves. And now we're kind of

129going through that and seeing um knowing that everyone is kind of in an element of PE of phase one going through it with me as I go to each um department and meet with all the teachers to take them through the vertical curriculum alignment. Um, so everybody is kind of in a phase one and then also where else are they falling? So we're mapping that out right now which has been a very interesting um process and conversation to um hash out cuz like our UAS have not done a curriculum anything for like 10 years. Um so that's been a lot of conversation and it's been amazing. I started the vertical alignments with them a couple weeks ago. I've met with Art and now PE already and those meetings have been fabulous and they're very thankful

130to actually be getting some attention which they deserve attention. They're provide a great experience for our students and um so we've really been diving into that work. So that's been a good thing. And then where the drumsticks came into play earlier? I haven't done music. Oh, I will be doing party. Party is coming, right? Yes, party is coming. I will be bringing my drumsticks to the music. Caroline will be so happy. I could That was a missed opportunity. I could have brought it to PE last week. Next time. Um, so yeah, those have been going really well. Um, and then we also um implemented a new novel and supplemental text process. um because it was kind of a lengthy process having to bring it to the school board for approval and teachers are trying to

131be really responsive to their kids and their needs. So, um I drafted a form based on the old form that was there and then um brought it to the committee. We talked over a lot of things and um then we rolled it out to the staff. So they'll be if somebody wants to institute. So this came up where a high school English teacher wanted to do a book club and I was looking through I was like oh my goodness we have to wait to take it to the board for approval and she really wanted to like start her book clubs. So, um that's how that whole thing came about and we decided as a committee like we have school board representatives on the on the um committee. So, they're going to fill out the form.

132The form will go to the principal. The principal will review it and if the principal feels like it should go on, she'll they'll tell the teacher to pass it on to the committee representative and then the committee will review it and then give a final approval for um the novel or supplemental text that the teachers want to use. Um and it'll be the committee is awesome. All the members are very responsive. So it's a pretty quick turnaround. um so that the student and we still have the checks and balances making sure that appropriate materials are being um put into student hands but also in a more streamlined process. So that was some really good work that we just rolled out. Um any questions on that update? Uh I have feedback on something something else. Okay.

133If it's if you're ready for it. Uh, so I did I took advantage of the uh second round of parent teacher conferences which I really appreciated. I think it's really nice to be able to get in and have an idea of what the heck's going on. Um, and so I'm going to butcher this with the standardized testing that we did was the for elementary school was the SAT. Not yet. We haven't done it yet. What was the No, I Ready. Was it I Ready Diagnostic is I Ready Diagnostic. Okay. Sorry. I ready. Um, and one thing that you have implemented was encouraging the teachers to do something with the modular the modulars. The modulars. Okay. So, I'm getting this terminology. Okay. The modulars. Uh, I got some great feedback from my daughter's teacher um saying

134that one thing that they've taken from that or what what they were able to realize from that was uh where they're falling short. And so one thing they discovered for example was that the third graders at least when there's an answer that says all of the above, they're not understanding that. So the content they understood this was actually a a testing component. Um so excellent job because I think that these are things that we need to know and I and I'm glad to hear the teachers saying gee we were able to use this and figure this out. Yes. Yes. I'm glad. Thank you for that feedback because um those are there's so many components to that assessment not only in terms of knowledge and subject area but just using the interface and the types of

135questions that are asked. We don't necessarily ask questions in the same way and we need to vary our questioning um in instruction on our classroom assessments on a lot of different things so that students are familiarized with seeing that variety of questioning and how you respond to those things and taking them through all of those components is so vital. So, um, yeah, the modulars have been I've been like and we're going to have a a more system like a process for in implementing them sooner like in the fall to so that it's not just I don't want assessment and we talked about this last time when I was talking about data. I don't want assessment to become like it's this big huge thing that's happening cuz that just increases test anxiety like oh my you

136know it's like oh okay this is something that we've been doing we've been on this site we know what this looks like okay now it's time to just show what we know. Um so it's more normalized and um the students have a more like they're more at ease, they're more familiarized with the platform and also the types of questions and how do I what does all of the above mean? Because to a third grader they're like uh yes or if they even read that part they see they know that the first answer is right they're like oh right. Uh but I mean from my from my perspective it seems like with this we're able to not only evaluate where we're having issues with comprehension of how to take a test but also subject comprehension and

137also we're going to be able to better evaluate I ready as a you know diagnostic tool for us and what what it means and you were right when you say modulars that was this that is the SAS okay it's the state assessment system so I'm so excited that people are like using the modulars. We're gonna I can't speak to I don't know if everyone is. I can tell you that my daughter's teacher who is a rock star is. Yes, she is. Yes. And I know I look at the dashboard. There are people in pockets using them. Um I've had countless conversations with middle school um people that are using them. Um and there's there's a lot of benefits to using them because I keep telling people it's not teaching to the test. We teach according

138to the common core state standards. That is how we develop our curriculum. And this is a oneto-one assessment on those standards where we can see where are the students according to this standard. You want to know give them a modular and see where they're at. Um so that's there's so many key benefits to using those. Just wanted to say thank you. It's nice to see it in practice working. Thank you. Um, okay. So, the last thing, um, last week I went to an S conference. Um, cuz another facet of, you know, my job is grants. Fun facts. Um and the grants are there's a lot of changes that um are coming down um in a lot of different ways like fast and furiously and how you write your grant activities to get um access to

139the funds that are allocated to our district. Um, in title one, we have title one, title 2, and title 4 A. Um, and those are the there was a lot of information by the my brain was like by the end of it, but um, it's okay. We'll get through it. I'm waiting to do the consolidated application came out for next year. Um, but I'm we're all kind of on a pause right now cuz we're not quite sure where our title funds will be. um in the next year or so. So, where all the districts are talking like we're kind of waiting to do the extra work because it's a lot of stuff that you have to do that goes into it. Um until we figure out where the state where the landscape is in terms

140of title funding and what we'll get from that. But, um I still continue to write activities for the funds that we have allocated to us. Um, Title One really streamlining and tightening up processes there because Title One um was we had some dollars left on the table last year and I'm like, "No, no, we don't leave dollars on the table in grant funding. We used it all." And I was able to get a carryover like I think I reported on that earlier in the year. So, our Title One team is they're we're all laughing cuz I meet with them monthly and they are like, "We're having like we have can we do this? Can we do that?" I'm like, "Yes, let's do all these things cuz we're supposed to be helping these like our most

141neediest students and you know, you need all of those things to support them. So, it's been an exciting time of putting together shopping lists and things of um wait, we can do that. Yes, let's do that. So, that was um just a quick update on the the grants. Any questions? Thank you. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Any other questions? Nope. Oh, I wanted to say one more thing. I forgot. Um, so I was talking with Dan earlier, um, and he just wanted me to do a plug. Child find is coming next Monday, the 7th. So if any parents, um, feel like they need their, um, children who are not school age yet to be screened, they're going to be at GMS on Monday from 12 to 2. So bring them on over. All right.

142Thank you again. Yep. Next up on the agenda is our public minutes from March 19th, 2025. Has everyone had an opportunity to review the minutes? Yes, I will make a motion to approve. We have a motion by Mr. Shmaker, second by Mr. Pensky. Additional discussion. All right. All those in favor, please signify by saying I. I. Nope. I'm going to abstain. Sorry. Four of us. I abstain. That carries 401. Here we go. And now we have uh some new business tonight. We have the school psychologist restructure proposal. Yeah, I'm going to have uh Miss Puller come up, our director of student services. I almost called her Dr. Puller. Um but I did not. For not doing that. She gets it vicarious. I've often joke it's the easiest degree I got out of my degree. So

143I just had to show up. So I really That's fantastic. Um, so Sarah's going to uh has been working um on some different things and and looking how we can more efficiently uh deal with special ed services and this is the first uh kind of domino and that kind of effect. So I'll turn things over to her. Yeah, thank you. Um so I did um attach um kind of my outline um for all of you. Um so I'm obviously not going to read through it to you guys, but just kind of give you um some of an overview. Um so currently um we have a school psychologist position in the district. It is full year. Um so from July 1st through June 30th um my proposal um is to split that and to make it

144into two um school year positions. Um I think that for a multitude of reasons. Um so this position has been open since um our former school psychologist resigned in October of 2024. Um we've been very uh lucky to be able to contract with somebody. Um and they've helped us to be able to stay within all of the timelines that we need to for special ed thankfully. Um but as you know that's a you know contracting is costly. Um and we really would prefer obviously to hire somebody um in the district. Um so I I looked at at a lot of things. Um obviously keeping in mind also that we're going into a default budget. Um I I would like to restructure the position into two um school year positions meaning that they would work from

145August um to the end of the school year and not throughout um July and the beginning of August. Um I will say I spoke to u many of the other districts and other directors in the south central region um and the majority of their school psychologist positions are school year um so they're 10 month um with some additional days required e the beginning of the um beginning of the school year end of the school year just kind of depending on the district um and also just having witnessed um the case load um both as a teacher when I was at LMS last year and and now from this position as a director um it's a lot um and and it doesn't sound like it would be a lot there's only three schools, but you know,

146the amount of um time, which I kind of outlined, and again, I'm not going to read through how I kind of broke out the time. Um, so this person um primarily does all of our um evaluations for special ed. Um, so that's counting um the three-year reevaluations as long as well as referrals. Um so I did some digging. I I counted the amount of reevaluations we've have this year planned. Um and also reached out to get the number of referrals that we've had. Um so in a nutshell um in looking at the amount of school days per year um working at seven hours a day that's 1,246 hours in a school year that this person has um I broke out for the reevaluations and for the referrals the amount of time that that takes to

147from the beginning the end right so from the beginning meeting all the way through the conducting the evaluation scoring report writing coming to the meeting after um the consultation that's required with the staff members um and then through an other some miscellaneous responsibilities so Being able to consult with the special ed staff is really important. Um maybe not about a case that's in referral or a case that's in reevaluation, but you know, hey, I have this kid. I'm seeing these things in the classroom. What do you suggest that I do or what are your thoughts? Um being able to meet with myself and then also attend monthly SAU meetings. Um and those are just the ones that I could miscellaneous responsibilities I could think of and I'm sure there's others that come up as they

148arise. Um so adding all of that up, that comes to 1480 hours out of the school year. um which is um a 234 hour difference from the amount of time that's allotted. Um I do know at the elementary school um sometimes the school psychologist in the past has attended 504 or like student um CAT or SST meetings everyone calls it something different. So if it's the wrong school I apologize. Um consulting with the mental uh health staff travel um and any other consultation to the staff was required. Um so I kind of broke it down. um and explained you know the amount of students that we have currently they're identified among the three buildings along with students at St. Francis and the students we have out of district. Um my thought is to have the

149uh this the position split into an elementary school year um school psych so prek through 4 and then also secondary so 5 through 12. Um reason being is that elementary school is typically where you see the most referrals. Um that's hopefully where you're catching a lot of the concerns with reading, writing, math, any sort of um learning difficulties and hopefully it's not being addressed for the first time in high school. Um um they also have I split up the amount of case managers. There's eight case managers at the elementary school and then there's eight oh 10 case managers among fifth through 12th. Um but again the majority of your referrals um in needs and requirements are at the elementary school as it should be. Um so looking at the positions um they would be 198

150days. So the 186 teacher contract days plus 12 additional which again could be spent you know cleaning up things at the end of the year coming in a little bit earlier at the beginning of the year um doing file reviews um looking at the upcoming case loads for the year consulting with staff things like that. Um so it would balance out the workload but would also improve the collaboration um to ensure that special ed timelines are being met and nothing's falling through the cracks. Um, and then Holly so gracious he looked at the monetary part of it and I'll let you explain. Thank you. You're welcome. Um, also we'd like to say we had three amazing applicants that all definitely want the job. Yes. But their big questions knowing that it's a school psychologist job

151was asking about the summer and what's that like? because um we consulted with other districts and like Sarah said they're all it's all school year prior to making this position year round which we did because we didn't we couldn't our school psychologist we used to have one at each school back in the day and they as they were leaving we couldn't replace them. So this was a way to try to get all testing done um but as we saw it's really not sustainable. So then we took turned around and looked at okay so being in a default having a default budget how could we make this happen. So what I pulled here for you was salaries that are in the FY26 budget. So our school psychologist salary um the fullyear salary that we have in

152there. We currently have a speech language pathologist position that has been open for two school years that we are contracting services for. Um we have an anticipated opening for next year for a second speech pathologist which we don't believe where we've had one open for two years that we're going to fill both of them. So, we're looking if this proposal goes through to maybe do one pathologist and one which is called an assistant which we've posted as anticipated and have an applicant for an interview um and an interview. So, and Sarah spoke with the team and they figure that could work. We're trying to find different ways and saving money to make all these positions work cuz they haven't. Um, also our ELELLL teacher, a couple years ago we made that position full-time because the

153case number, you know, that exploded. Um, that teacher is able to complete the responsibilities of their job at uh percentage of 75%. We've spoke with her. She said that is good for next year. Um, the same way. However, in the budget, we have the position budgeted as full-time with benefits attached to it. So if we take um the one full year school psychologist, split it into two, take the savings from doing from taking the speech language pathologist and moving it to an SLPA and then taking the savings from what the ELLL teacher will make next year compared to what is budgeted. And we would need um some grant funds which we have this year so we should have them. We're hoping we have them next year. Um our total salaries would be 144653. We've looked

154at other districts to say like what's your starting salary for a school year psychologist. The psychologists um that have been interviewed are new to the field. So, we feel that $65 $65,000, sorry, would be fair. That gives us a total for salaries of $130,000. So, we would actually be saving some money out of the budget. Um, benefits don't have to come into play really at all here. So, the school psychologist position, the speech language that we're looking to restructure, and that ELELLL teacher, since they're all in the budget as full-time, they all have benefits attached to them already. So, we're just we were just trying to say, how do we take these psychologist, the one psychologist position, and these speech language pathologists that we cannot fill and find a way to make this work. So,

155that is Yeah. And like Yeah. Like Holly said, we've had three candidates. They're all actually I'd guess they're around the same age, and I'm not good at guessing ages, so don't ask me how old they are, but um you know, they're all they're all in their Yeah, they're all in their like ending their graduate programs right now, and they're all going to be done in June. Um they're from various parts of the country. Everyone is somehow coming to New Hampshire for some reason, which is fine for us. Um so, you know, they're all they're I don't want to say young, but they're young and they're eager and they're all ready to to jump into this position. And I would really hate to miss out on that. Um, you know, because of of kind of how

156our position is currently structured. Um, you know, July and beginning of August for school psychologists. Really, I'm not diminishing it, but it's really not much going on. You know, there's no kids in school, there's nobody to test, there's nobody to observe. Um, every now and then you get a referral over the summer. And at that case, you know, what I've done in a previous district is that we'd call in one of the school psyches in the district. they would come in get they get paid a you know pdeium or whatever to come in for the meetings um but those aren't frequent um they're kind of rare um so we would work on that but you know it's it's something I think that would work out it would make the workload a lot more manageable they'd

157be a lot more accessible to special ed staff rather than bouncing around you know from all the buildings saying I can't meet with you because I have to be here um I think it just would be more manageable I think it would make it more efficient um and I would really appreciate consideration of this. We want to bring someone or two people into the district like they're coming in new into this career, right? And we talk about co culture and climate and you don't want to bring someone in that's just going to get burnt out in the year and be like, "Wow, this is not going to work for me." We want someone that's going to come in and stay because these positions are so hard to fill. I was reading this and I'm I'm

158appreciative of the creativity behind it, especially the sensitivity going into a default and my initial reaction was is this a new position? So, I would say no because all we we've had school psychologists in the past that were school year plus the extra days. That's what I heard in your description and I'm appreciative of that cuz I'm like, well, I you know, I was really struggling with this even with the creativity. I'm like, h, are we going to get into debate about a new position or not? Right. Yep. So, that alleviates some of my concerns. So, thank you for that. You're welcome. Um, other I I mean, I can't express enough how much I appreciate how much work you've put into this. Like it's one thing to come to us like you know when you're

159doing it day in and day out you know what you're seeing and what you need to take the time to sit down and break down how much time there is a deficit for you know when you if you are related to an educator I was married to one you see firsthand how much imbalance there is there's not enough time in the day to get those things done but yet we just tell them get it done find a way um this really this illustrates that this shows us 23 34 hours and it is going to be impossible to retain people if we are expecting them to do an extra 234 hours of work that we're not allocating for them. So, thank you both for putting the work into this. I fully support this. Can you just

160explain to me how it's not two positions? I don't how it's not a new position. I'm sorry. Position. It's It's not to It's not a new position because it was a position. There were three positions already in the budget at one point in time and this is splitting it out because they haven't been filled. This is splitting it out and reestablishing a position that already existed. So, we went down. Yeah, I know. It just I've read it a couple times and I'm better with just a regular math problem than a word math problem. Contracted services because we weren't able to Okay. And then in terms of the district has had school year school psychologists before used that one at each building. Right now it's kind of reverting back to instead of being a fully year

161district level person you're reverting back to a more similar structure to that only instead of having three you're going to have two. You're going to have one K prek through four and then five through 12. I mean, we take three, but that's just not going to work voluntary wise. In simplest simplest terms of our current positions, like as like lay down a budget thing, you're trading one of these speech pathologists that we haven't been able to fill for a school psychologist. Okay. Thank you. I guess my other question though is with the speech. So, you're saying that you can get by with a speech pathologist and a assistant. Yeah. So, I spoke with um not particularly about this. That was kind of before we I kind of came to this idea. Um but just in

162thinking of next year, I right now we have a contracted um speech assistant. We talked about, you know, because the contractors are now coming to me like, oh, are we renewing these people for next year? So, I've, you know, been having conversations with different staff um and they said that, you know, having a speech assistant is helpful if they can get that second position filled with an SLP. So, and they've both said that if they could do that, then having an assistant would be perfectly fine. And I just want to take a moment to interrupt and just switch topic for a brief moment if I may. Um, we're approaching 7:30 and if the board sees any blue lights out in the parking lot, uh, today is World Autism Day. Yes. And I want to recognize

163that. And at 7:30 this evening, all the blue lights from the police cars and from everything are going to be turned on. So, if you get distracted by any lights that are blue, I want to make sure we recognize that because that that is being recognized tonight with the police department. That's awesome. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. So, we need a motion on this. Yes, please. Uh, were there any other questions? I want to make sure that my left side has an opportunity. No, I I mean I think this is the exact kind of creativity we need at this point in terms of having unfilled positions for so long but still having the need for the services and being able to uh move things around. And to me, you know, again, I understand the question

164about is it a new position or not. I agree it's not a new position. Um, but I think this speaks volumes to why you guys need to be able to get creative in terms of meeting needs with what you have. So, we don't have to deal with that. We don't have to cross that bridge because it isn't a new position. But I, you know, I again, I just want to commend you for um what you're doing um and and coming up with a creative solution to solve it that helps students. Thank you. provides you relief hopefully. Right. Yeah. Hopefully. I agree. It It's my purpose for running for school board is to look and find stuff like this, right? Is business is going to do it all the time. So, um this is the stuff

165that I love to see. I'm going to make a motion to uh approve the restructuring of the speech language pathologist position and the reduction school psychologist. Aren't you restructure position to SLPA? I guess. Yeah, that's fine. I'm doing a whole thing. We're doing a whole thing. Okay. No one can No one can challenge it. Sorry. Keep restructuring the uh school language pathologist position to the SLPA. The reduction of the ELLL teacher to one from 1.0 to 75% and the addition of two school year psych school psychologists. That was a long motion by Mr. Mr. Shoemaker, I think I covered it all right. Did I get it all? Yes. Is there any type? Uh, no. Second. Just a second. Just a second. So, motion by Mr. Shoemaker, second by Mr. Plansky. Additional discussion. All those in

166favor, please say I. I. I. Opposed? 5. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Next up, we have facilities discussion. Yes. Uh so there's two documents there. The first one uh is the current kind of uh guiding articles for facilities improvement committee. These were approved uh I think last last June, last June um by the school board and I think conjunction with the facilities improvement committee and the school board reooking at these articles in terms of uh appointing not appointing um term lengths like different aspects of it. You know we we've talked about relooking at it at the last Yeah. You guys are welcome to leave. Oh yeah, you guys do not have to stay. Yep. Hello. Thank you. Happy night, you guys. Happy night. Um, at the last facilities meeting, I said

167I would take a stab at uh at updating these articles, so I took a stab at updating these articles. They're just somewhere to launch off a discussion from. I I take no I think you killed it. Thanks. I appreciate it. Pretty good. But if there's anything you want to change, adjust, or you don't like, or or whatever, I not offended by any of it. Just we need to start somewhere. So the second one is kind of prop for post update. It is kind of the it's green on my document but the red line approach where I didn't want to delete anything so you could see the changes comparatively to the original set. So you can see changes. Um and what we're really trying to tackle is again that like question of whether or not the

168board's appointing people. How long are people going to be a part of it? How is it going to mirror? So this is an attempt and I think what we were thinking is we would bring it to the board this evening for you to kind of talk about go over. we bring it to the facilities improvement committee. Um next week we are meeting for them to kind of review and as kind of collectives we keep updating these as appropriate so everyone's happy with it. So I guess the only um I see that we've moved the school board rep to a non- voting member. So that would mean that the only voting members are the citizens, right? No. Well, I was trying to represent that like in the past, right? That's been the two of you. One

169of you has voted, one of you haven't, but you've both been president. Oh, I see. I'm sorry, I missed the the one above. Yeah. Okay. One one voting. Yeah, I got you. So, like just representing that in this document that there there'll be two schoolbar people there, but only one person's going to vote. So, I got you. The only other comment that I have, and I don't think that it's necessarily uh like impacted by this, but I do think that um with having people on the committee, having people that want to remain on the committee, it is it is useful to have some consistency. I know that it's also useful to be able to get new voices and stuff like that, but this is a committee that's really it's challenging because there's a lot of

170personal history. Well, that Well, I think there's a lot of knowledge, too. I think, and this may or may not be a dumb idea, the until we get a recommendation to the school board, I don't think we should make any add anybody or remove anybody from this committee or we're going to lose ground, right? Perhaps after we make some sort of recommendation to the school board, we can talk about appointing folks um to that meeting and maybe tightening up what the membership is. Yeah. So, a couple things just my thought process attending these meetings. Again, not married to any of this. It's it's at all. I came up with like probably nine. You want an odd number of citizen representatives. So, when you vote, you have an odd number. Um and nine seem to be

171kind of the consistency just thinking about attendance there. Um of who shows up. I'm not saying it has to be nine, but I just done the math, but there's no like we wouldn't have to cut someone, right? That's what I was trying to do. I was trying to do the math and I think nine covers everyone who's been pretty consistent about going. And then if you think about terms, again, I just used the school board as the model and we do not have to stick to three-year terms. You could appoint every other year, some other system, right? Is um you would want to kind of appoint people in kind of like a time frame where you had some consistency as overlapping, but you had ability to change up who was part of the committee depending

172on different um people interested in different projects. I mean, hopefully we we'll get a solution for GMS. And then the facility is gonna this committee is going to live on but we're gonna have new things that will need of attention like I could see way way down the road like talking about athletic fields right like and there might be a different set of people who are interested in that type of facility thing right so you want to have the flexibility to change up this committee to kind of meet those needs and everything so budget does like threeyear two-year one year or three year and one year terms I was trying to make that work too like different lengths for different people you know they actually they actually are intended to be threeyear terms terms and

173they just every Well, the problem is is when people resign early. Oh, okay. Right. And then they become the balance of the terms. Oh, right. Yeah. So, if we were to do like three-year terms, we would have to kind of randomly like take the consistent people and kind of like randomly assign them into a slot. You know what I mean? Like at this point, you're here till 2030, right? Exact like or something along those lines. Like I don't know. Like I just started fresh. I don't necessarily I mean I don't think it's a it's a super heavy lift to uh shift it to one-year terms. Yeah. You know, we just talk about the longevity of the facilities committee for a moment, right? Because I think that's important here. Like what is the facilities committee going

174to do post GMS and what is the citizens representatives going to look like post whatever the recommendation is GMS? Because I feel like the committee is great. They've done all of you have done tremendous work over the past year to get us to hopefully hopefully a decision soon, right? But is the committee and the the citizens on the committee still passionate about taking it forward post that or is because the charter originally was like get us to a decision, right? Yeah. And is it evolving beyond that now? I I think well it hasn't it's not evolving beyond that primarily because we have so much to do with GMS but uh you know with that said the way that I view this is we are going to consistently face facility issues that are going to be

175things that the public is going to have a real concern about because they're always going to be expensive. Um, and we're not in a position to it's going to be many, many years before we're in a position where we are putting away money sufficiently to actually cover stuff. If I mean, if in our lifetimes, quite honestly, because the it's our lifime. Well, I mean, I I be honest with you though, it's you're looking at $2.5 million for just the roof at CHS, right? Like, for us to be able to start getting adequate reserves, I I don't it's going to take forever. So that means that every time that we have to figure something out, it's going to likely be a bonded project. Um, and we know that when taxpayers bond projects, they get really concerned.

176I think that having this community input has at least the feedback that I'm seeing has been very positive that they people feel like there's at least enough voices involved that we're going to be proposing something that's not super biased. So I onsite insight, did that include tariffs or include what? terrorist. No, for the rubber lake underllayment. But I I think that's where like I I haven't shared this with anyone outside of like Julie yet, but like one of the things we're working on is like a long-term like spreadsheet master plan of capital improvements, right? This goes all the way out to 2050 or whatever it is. We have 20 20 25 years there using the on-site insight reports. Like I know the on-site insight reports people are focused on GMS but we did all three

177schools with the idea of developing this plan for all three schools. So what I see the facilities committee is is referring to this plan and helping us make decisions on sticking to it making adjustments where appropriate as different needs come approach. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. So when I joined as a citizen, it wasn't just for GMS because what I saw was a pervasive issue right across the district and for not pointing fingers, but me walking through all three buildings and looking at it and looking at the structure of the state and what has to go through bond and what's not planned for, right, is it it goes against everything that I do in my normal work. So to me, it's it's an issue. So, I join to solve the problem long-term, not the short-term decisions.

178Um, and exactly what Brian is doing is exactly what I do at work is a long-term 10. I look at 10 years. My window of opportunity is 5 years. So, I'm trying to budget five years out for stuff and looking at it that way. So, and and that's exactly right. It's you start with a long-term plan and you create a committee and a decision cycle and approvals around, you know, proper administration of, you know, what's the next things to go tackle. Yeah, I would agree. I think that the committee will stay just because there's so much to do over the next What do you got? 20 40 25 years. No, thank you for that clarity. Right. because I think the the spotlight is on it because GMS is such a big Yeah. a big task

179that we need to deal with. Yeah. But once that spotlight is addressed, there's going to be another spotlight. You know, there's always going to be another spotlight. Yeah. And and the point of the long-term capital plan, which is why I'm really glad that, you know, we approved the on-site insight reports is to uh let's turn a spotlight into a flood light, right? Let's look at all the issues and let's start coming up with a plan for addressing all of the issues and not play whack-a-ole as things come up. Okay. So, what's next? Where do we go? So, if if you're if you have any suggestions for this document, let me know. I can update, right? Um I I think the next step is to bring this to the FIC, you know, next week, have them

180also review it, give feedback on it, and then kind of come back to the board for you to kind of you have to eventually prove any any updates to these um guiding articles because it's a it's a school board um subcommittee there. So you have to be comfortable with anything and if you do, then we do and then that's the new updated stuff. So I think my only thing would be switching it to one year. I I think three years is a long commitment for people. I don't know that necessarily, you know, I would even be fine with two years, but I think three years is a long time. I would do it every year if they're that passionate about it. I know, right? I wouldn't in my head I picture it being a pretty

181quick agenda item every year. I don't think it's going to be a heavy lift on us. And I think given the fact that they're just community volunteers that are trying to do this, it's I think it makes sense to check in yearly and make sure that it's still I think the only other question I had and I don't have an answer for it and I don't know what anyone else thinks about it but is there a mechanism for removal of a member there was a conversation about someone who misses three meetings in a row loses their voting privileges for the next meeting but is there a school board can remove uh in at least the way this is drafted a school board can remove members for school board can but not facilities right like they

182don't the committee itself doesn't it's yeah it's school board appointed did. So, okay. Yeah. I took a stab at removal. I you know, you can look it over if and you gave reasons why. Yeah. Examples of reasons. Yeah. But, you know, but it's in our discretion. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And the whole attendance thing and then who's going to keep track of, okay, you missed three meetings, you can't vote this week. It should be in your mids. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and and so I know Dan Mitchell's been doing has been doing the attendance um and keeping that, but I think, you know, going forward, right, whoever's on the facilities needs to um and I'll take part ownership in this is bring a little bit more structure to it, right? Is someone needs to be appointed to

183take minutes, not just hope someone does it. Someone needs to be appointed to take attendance. Um and if that person isn't there for the meeting, then it needs to be delegated like first thing. Mhm. and kind of go through that ordinance as we go through. Um I've been trying to do timed agendas, but that does not work very well at all. Um and so it it's more structure around that. Um I think we do like the budget and do a roll call vote at the beginning. So it's Yeah. somebody's keeping track. Yeah. No, I and or at least on the recording and it can be and I think you know whoever puts out the meetings, whoever puts out the agendas, right? because that's one thing that I I think we should try to get a

184little bit better about with that is agendas need to be a little bit more timely and structured and get out um with links, right? So for links to the attendance so that way someone isn't fumbling through the drive to figure out where that goes and where that is because Google system still baffles me. Um so it that's it just some thoughts initially. Yeah. Yeah. I mean I I think that aside from changing the term I think that you everything you drafted is open to proposed are we feeling nine citizen reps is the right number to me my initial reaction was like these are all the committee that we have right now has been very like it's been a good mix I think you get a lot out of the um the people that are there

185so I I would keep it at that I think that's what we have right now I think that's a decent number and then you've got Brian you've Carrie, you've got other folks. Um, does Andrew have I think they were like 12 or 13 people total at the last one. Yeah. When you factor in like us administratively and other people, sorry, we were saying that we don't have access to the track changes. Yeah. So, oh, how come? I had requested edit access so I could comment. That might be why I have edit access. I usually don't use I don't usually don't use tracks so I don't Well, somehow I got them. I we just don't see the headline version. That's why like you guys are saying like terms and nine and 97 like I don't see

186any of that. That's uh let me see if I can fix that. I still saw seven. I'm like wow. Okay. There's a lot of missing but it's on my phone. For me it almost looks like the two are the same. I mean I I can just hit the button that says west edit. Yeah. Do that. So anyway, maybe you can just reshare that with I will reshare. Okay. So it sounds like this is going to the FIC. Did you click the bottom one though? Cuz there's one that says proposed. both and it comes up the same mine too. I think I'm adjusting it right now where you'll be okay. Just one quick piece on this in terms of minutes and I don't know what again we're in a default budget next year and we should

187think about it but Jan does an amazing job with our minutes for schoolboard meetings. FIC is Didn't we ask though? We we we did ask in the early early days and we did but you know what the person who sat in that chair kind of said no. Said no. Okay. Well, maybe somebody else is in the chair now and it could be worth having the neutral minutes and somebody who watches the meeting. Did we ask that of the last time? We did and it was going to be $650. It was short money and Okay. Well, I we absolutely it would be fantastic. We spend a lot of time arguing over tone in the minutes. Well, that's what I'm saying. Like having someone neutral who's just literally watching it and she does a great job with

188our minutes. Mhm. That would be that would be a huge help. I I She's probably watching like oh no I've watched those meetings budget committee right so maybe between the two of them I don't know I was trying to look into like the Google AI and like how much would it cost to do auto minutes and everything but there's issues with trying to do that so GPT I okay well just a thought to consider please ask I make a motion my only other my only other question here um is I know the board had a discussion probably about what a month ago anyways um on where committee member stood as an appointed member on the committee. Where does that stand now on his like stance of like is he actively participating where Oh yeah, he's

189there. Yeah. So do we need to appoint him to continue to stay on where is he standing? Well, I do we do we need to get this governance in front of the FIC and let the FIC approve this and then the school board approve it because then we have a governance or a policy to stand on. Well, then we'll be appointing everyone, right? But right now, you know, if you're making decisions and I don't know how quickly we are at decisions, right, but I I guess where I'm my view here is specifically because Mr. Oblenus was an appointed member, right? He no longer has voting rights on your committee. Period. Our board is now set. We have a new board, right? We were clear in saying we have a new board. The term for appointees

190resets. So I think we need to make a decision here on voting. So the the playing the FIC side a little bit, right, is our governing articles don't say that it's that there's terms to it. So what what the FIC agreed upon, what the school board approved at the time of when these governance articles were put in was there are no terms. It's just you're voting. The requirement for voting is you have to be attending. you get voting requirements or priv privileges on your sixth meeting, consecutive meeting in attendance. So I that's great for everybody else, but you're oblus that doesn't apply. He was an appointed member with voting rights, right? Kind of in a prior iteration of this committee, I think. So I'd be fine to make a motion to allow him to vote

191if that's I mean basically be reappointing him reappoint him until a recommendation is made and then IC reorganizes and puts more something like that for the interim period. Is that a motion? Sure. Well, what's the motion though? Well, that's what I'm asking. But well, I'm understanding that motion to be for him to be reappointed. Well, we Let's be clear on what the motion is. That what I'm trying to do right now. Okay. I'm understanding the motion to be that you were suggesting that he be reappointed until this uh governing document is finalized and approved by the school board at which point we would be reappointing everybody all of the members. Yeah, my my motion was going to be until the time that everybody else is up. But yeah, that's more eloquent. more lawyerly. I'm confused

192on what promotion is. It's like a uh I'm sure well because because I think that what I was basically saying is we'll reappoint him until we do the full round of appointments when this is approved. So So it's a stop gap. Yeah. I I guess in my layman's terms, right? Status quo remains until we finalize this and appoint new and we appoint the members. So he's a voting member now. you will stay until this document gets finalized and all new appointees are set. And should this document be finalized at the same time that the recommendation comes forward to the board? And yeah, I mean I I'll go with I hope so because is I mean my understanding was the thought you started with it should be the same people. There shouldn't be a change in

193the FIC until that recommendation comes forward because you'll lose ground. So that's what I mean I don't know how far away is that recommendation. I would hope to the next meeting. I I am Yeah. And if I am still involved I'm going to push for the next at the next meeting. Okay. So I I guess that answers my question. How long is the stop gap which is hopefully really hopefully one meeting. I think we're that close we're approved. Right. So so yeah. So so it it's going to be one meeting but then our next school board meeting we would approve this at which point we would be doing the appointment. resets. I would think I don't want to hedge our bets that we can cover both topics in the next FIC meeting of making the

194recommendation and reviewing this. So, I think we would be the next school board meeting after two FIC meetings. I think we can send this out to the members. I'm going to make a motion to Here's here's what we're going to do. I'm going to make a motion to appoint Mr. Oblenus or to reappoint Mr. Robinas up until the point where the uh the FIC reorganizes and the guiding articles come before the board to revote in which the new FIC committee members are reappointed. I'll second that because that's exactly what I said. [Laughter] This is a motion by myself and by Mr. Shoemaker. Additional discussion. No. All those in favor, please say I. I abain. you're a genius. Off the record the mic. So, in the vein of uh I don't know if this if this

195was going to be discussed here, but in the vein of like reassigning a school board member, I do I do think that unequivocally Dan has to be involved with that. I this has been a passion of mine and I've been involved with it for a long time. But Dan has the your background is by far the most useful one of the most useful on that committee. So we can't lose Dan on that committee. So I am you know I don't think we're losing Dan. Dan's on the board. Dan's not going anywhere. No. No. But I mean in terms of in terms of active participation in the in every FIC meeting like I he's he's critical to that. So I think you all served a vital role in the committee right you all you all did

196right um and I look at certainly the perspective you bring your background you bring is fantastic amazing right and that's guiding to the FIC and the direction of the FIC for long-term strategic planning which is amazing from your seat here at the board level. Right. Right. Um, and that steer is going to be critically important as we look forward. Right. I also think like Mr. Pansky, right? Like you were instrumental in helping kind of get the board, get the facilities committee to recognize the will of the voter, right, and bringing that lens and what what's real, right? And what do we think we is can really get has a shot at getting past. Yep. Right. Right. And and that lens is critically important in my mind too because like it's all for nothing otherwise like

197I I don't want to be sitting here in two years nothing. What the next part of what I was going to say is I am willing as much as it kills me. I am willing to step back uh from the FIC because I think that it's important. I mean I do I agree like we don't we sometimes don't agree on things sometimes. Um, I would say that, you know, Dan and I are probably much more aligned on like we we view it the same way more so than you and I do. And I think having the differing view is probably good to have if you want. Yep, I do. Okay. And I'm happy to serve as a backup if you guys ever can't make it. Yeah, I I think that would be important, right? So

198is if Peter if Peter and or I can't make it right is we have a backup that can step in as needed um and go from there. But no, I appreciate it. And I guess do we have to pick which one is going to be chair? Yes. For the FIC. Yep. Um I would be happy to be chair. Um, I'm going to make a motion to vote uh to I'm going to make a motion to to nominate Peter as chair and I can discuss that if I get a second. I'll second it for discussion. Thank you. So again, from that critical lens of the voter and representing the the voice of the citizens who are serving on that committee, I think he's going to bring that perspective of bringing the Lichfield voice in that seat.

199And I think your perspective is critical from the long-term steer and in the strategy behind it visionwise, right? No. And again, I'm I'm not offended, trust me. Right. Is so my I I guess my thing is anything that I would do as chair would be I'm talking to Peter before I say the school board says this type thing or you know and it would be a conference between Peter and I on any big decisions anyway. Um and I would hope it would be returned. I I do know that there's going to be um you know the next important step at the next FIC is electing the new citizen co-chair. So there's going to be um I expect uh debate and hot you know and I I'll say passionate discussions um with that. So I I

200I mean I am willing I before you before you continue I love you. I really like working with you. Dan has done an exceptional job as the citizen co-chair and I personally would like to see him continue on in a in the leadership role with that. Obviously, like he said, you know, we we just like Peter and I did, you know, there's there was always we we always voted together, but I do think that having had the pleasure or displeasure of uh running the FIC and knowing getting to see how Dan does that in the background, I think it would be helpful for some of that stability, especially with, you know, the change in regard with that. I mean, I I think it would help with the stability of the GMS recommendation, right? And and

201if it needs to change after that, then I I think I would I I don't see that being too big of an issue. But I think just from the stability standpoint of not trying to lose ground, not trying to see, you know, with the discussions that's going to come from that and having to realign the FIC as to who who's asking for what when. Um when I think we're kind of that close. Honestly, I really do hope next meeting. And if not, then I just may make a motion and just say it's it's coming next. I I I have I really have the same mind is that we're going to make a mo part of the meeting is going to be a motion for a recommendation. Yeah, it's it's coming next for sure. So I

202honestly I I doesn't matter to me. I mean I I would be happy to do it either way, right? The the idea behind the chair and in this in the committee is you're representing kind of the will of the board, right, in leading that. No matter who's in this seat, that's the spirit of that position. Yeah. And it's no different than me sitting on the budget committee, right? I don't necessarily represent my opinion. Well, that God knows that and that that was the intent of my email back in like early March or end of February, right? Is even if I am chair of the FIC, my perspective is changing, right? because it has to be in conference with the school board, not myself as a citizen anymore. Um, so e either way, and Peter, I

203I know you're been around that thought process as well. So, and bring in some realism to it. So, I mean, I I would hope no matter who the chair is that it's a conference between the two schoolboard representatives to come to what do we think the school board wants to move forward with and do it. So, so Andrew, I appre truly appreciate all the kind words. I think for continuity purposes, I would say that we have um Dan do it. Um I will certainly be able to say my piece. I do think I represent a different perspective in the community and I certainly be willing to I'm going to express that voice. So, I'll withdraw my motion. I'll make a motion to approve Dan. Do I need to make a motion as chair to represent

204the school board on for FIC? Yeah, go ahead. Just make them make him clean. Motion by Miss Ames, second by Mr. Shoemaker. All those in favor, please say I. Opposed? Abstain. All right. So, Dan will be primary. Peter will be secondary. Working collaboratively. Yes. Here we go. Wow. It's I feel like a weight has been lifted that I'm not responsible for bringing Andrew a recommendation at the next meeting. Thanks, Matt. Shannon's doing a happy dance right now. She's definitely She's definitely All right, the time is now 8:00. Um, just like that, we're going to open it up for our second round of community input this evening. Wow, we stayed on time. That almost never happens. I'm going to close our second round of community input this evening and we're going to get into policy updates.

205None. None. Want to do manifest real quick? Yeah. H Did you pass? Did you hand Did you circum that? We do that. Yeah, we've decided you time your like one minute late arrival to a signing. I sit in the park. I'm I I I realize that now. I was jumping ahead in my head. So, never mind. All right. Um in my own world, do we have any old We have no old business to connect with this evening. Okay. Uh schoolboard comments. Can I make one just by a couple times going through the manifest? Um, and I know you guys are already trying to redo how Amazon purchases and like emergency supplies are coming up. One of the things that I I'll say pinged and irked me a little bit going through the credit card manifest

206is there is like 67 lines of just that just says supplies with noting where it's going. like it is it 67 boxes of computer paper, right? Type thing and um kind of going down the path of what you've discussed of building relationships or possibly buying in bulk to get find savings which is some of the like that that's what I'm picking out as I go through this. So, if there is a possibility, doesn't have to be anytime soon, but in the future of trying to provide more fidelity to what those description lines are, um, just to make it a little bit easier to understand. Absolutely. Cuz I I would I would like to know if if the same person or group of people are buying number two pencils like in like every month. Yeah. To

207be fair, they need their middle school. I mean, depending on the meetings I'm in, I eat my pens and pencils, too. So, I get it. It's just it's just something that I pick out that that I run through with what I do with in my job. And Ann does a great job providing all that backup. Oh, absolutely. In the big design, right? The problem is is how do you scan all that? Yeah. In advance to see it in manifest, right? So, no, a better description. Yeah. and and I I don't need supplies catch all right miscellaneous stuff it's the first thing I look at in my budget line items at work is what are the catch all buckets and what is the catchall bucket being used for um so this goes with labor charging and

208charge codes as well as my my material budgets going from there so I I had to get on people of they just kept saying attrition material and I was like I don't know what that is that a $50 part or is that a half million dollar wages. Yeah, thank you. Good point. Um my comment under school board comments is I did have an opportunity to talk to uh Chief Jocks um about an upcoming Fisher Cats game. So, he is absolutely intending to uh speak to the school board with this week's uh Red Sox home opener and u some other activities he has got going on. He was not able to make it to tonight's board meeting, but he absolutely intends to. Um so just a quick plug um there's a lot of activity happening within

209the veterans group. Um certainly there's a there's an event in um July uh where they're looking to collaborate the veterans group looking to collaborate with the schools uh to what well cornh hall but that's separate right so um they're looking to collaborate with schools to uh get some ticket sales uh for Fisher Cats game during the summer. Um, so more to come on that, but definitely stay tuned. And, uh, good stuff happening with the veterans group. Yeah, we'll see. They're doing cornhole right now. It's underway. The competition starts next week and veterans have been in at the middle school playing cornhole at lunch. That started last week, too, right? Was that last week? Yes. Yeah, he was definitely. Fantastic. Got to get my daughter trained up. I got to make a new set for her

210and I to play. All right. Uh, final item tonight is our manifest. So, our manifest from March 19th, uh, we have our payroll of $352,78642. We have a voluntary 403b deductions, $8,25210. Uh, we have our accounts payable that was signed at $364,82189 as well as our accounts payable to Eversource of $15,767.87. Um, and with that with the board does have some actions tonight in non public under RSA 91A3 and specifically uh articles A and C. And with that, uh, Andrew, can I just interrupt one second? Sorry, I got an email from um, a teacher at GMS asking for a clarification on the child bind. um if anybody does want to go to Childline and does not have an appointment, please reach out to the school so that they can find appropriate time slots for people

211because she was like, "Ah." And I was like, "Oh, good point of clarification." So, I just wanted to thank you for that. If you would like to go, please contact the school and we'll help you out. Appreciate that. Thank you and thank you for the note in. Um so, now we'll entertain a motion to move into non-pop. This will be a roll call about motion by Mr. Showmaker. Okay. Sames and Immaker. Hi. I I am an ISi Mr. Dit. Hi.