School Board Meeting - 03/19/2025

001[Music] All right. Good evening, everyone. My name is Brian Okonnell. I'm the superintendent of the Lichfield School District, and this is the one meeting of the year that I get to call to call to order here. Um, so I ask that everyone uh please stand for the pledge of allegiance. I alian 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. Should have had one of the kids lead. I'm going to remember that for next Oh, thank you for the gavvel. Here we go. I get to use it the one time. This is great. Um, so review and revision of the agenda. I do have a couple of things uh board that I've added since um since

002Friday that I just want to make you aware of. Um, and we'll go into this more detail when we get down to to my report. Um, but one, we've been working with the Lichfield Police Department on memorandum of understanding about uh our security cameras and we were able to finalize that um for both parties yesterday. So I I snuck it here um into the agenda just so that we can be u proactive on kind of discussing it. We included actual procedures. We just had the bullet there. There's a link now to the U proposed Amazon PO um procedures that are there. And then uh when we get down to new business, we added a hyperlink for our governing articles for facilities improvement committee. Um so those have been some revisions to the agenda since since

003Friday when we sent it out. Um, does the board have anything they want to adjust on the agenda this evening? Excellent. All right. So, our kind of first order of business is the school board reorganization. Uh, we kick this off by welcoming our new school board members. So, uh, Mr. Dan Dit, welcome to the Lichfield School Board. We're super happy to have you here joining us on the board. And can if everyone can give me a round of applause for Dan. Thank you. Uh, usually it's tradition that the new board members give about a 5 to 10 minute speech at this time. So, I don't know if you have any prepared words, anything that you want to say or anyone. Of course, I am kidding, but you're welcome to share it. It's uh it's new.

004It's interesting. I work in the corporate world in the private world. So, this is like a whole new life to me. Um, I have been working with the facilities improvement committee for the last 11 months, 9 months, something like that. um to try to help out. My daughter is in GMS, so it'll be uh it'll be interesting. I'm looking forward to a challenge. Yeah. Um and you know, as as new schoolboard member, we're here to help you. Um I know Dan, just for transparency sake, I reached out to you um earlier that I think actually maybe tail end of last week um to welcome you aboard. Um and just so people know, when we have a new school board member on uh we kind of go through a transition period with them. They come in

005and meet uh in the SAU and we set them up with their email account. um go over important policies that we use on a regular basis. Um just kind of the ins and out of kind of school operations, um how we go about setting the agenda and sending that out and everything kind of along those lines. Um so that's kind of part of the process when we have um a new school board member kind of come along. Um likewise, we we start off this particular meeting, this first one of kind of the new new year here in a way, um by uh by reelecting our our positions here on the school board. Um, so I'll do that in one moment, but just a couple other other things to include. Um, Dan, one of the links

006here is for New Hampshire School Board Association training. Um, as a new schoolboard member, um, you know, these are all trainings you can kind of participate. Any of our board members can participate in these training, but you guys are vets here at this point. Um, and if you need help signing up for any of that, Dan, we have um services through the New Hampshire School Board Association. Obviously, the district does. um any that you want uh just let us know and we're happy to kind of set that stuff out um for you. Um we'll also be going over committee assignments and we'll go over that with everyone here um shortly and talking about code of ethics and code of conduct. Um we're waiting for Mr. Shoemaker to arrive. I was kind of vamping a little

007bit here hoping that I could drive this along as I could. Uh but we we do have a meeting to kind of get to. So, uh, I am going to move forward and I will ask if there's, uh, any nominations for for school board chair. I'll make a motion to nominate Andrew Carter as school board chair. Second. All right. He's not here. So, um, yeah, he couldn't even be online today. He had a work training, so it was not obviously intentional. Um, but I think the last year, um, has gone really well. I think, um, there's a good rapport on the board with Andrew at the helm. I think we've made some strides with and maybe I'm can add lil enough to get Mr. Shoemaker here. There he is. There he is. I said that

008was coming. I told him. Um anyway, regardless, I think Mr. Cutter will be a great chair. He has been a great chair in another year with continuity, especially when there has been um some change over in positions and we have a change on the board. It would be good to have some continuity. Excellent. There's a first and a second for Andrew's chair. That's where we're at. Any other discussion? I'm like sitting in your lap. Um Mr. Carter did reach out because he knew he would be absent today to say that um if he was uh nominated for for chair or vice chair and that was the the will of the board and the how the vote went he would accept the the position. So um if there's no other um question if there's no other

009discussion this evening, I will call that to question. So I think we have to do roll call for this particular one. Um, so Peter, I'll just start with you because you're my left. I I I Excellent. carries 40. Oh, all right. Um, so Mr. Cutter will continue as the chair of the Lichfield School Board. Uh, in his absence, um, I will now, uh, accept nominations for vice chair. I'll nominate Heidi as vice chair. Second. All right. Uh, discussion. And Miss Ames, would you be willing to serve this role if if elected? I would. Happy to do it. Thank you. Yeah. Hearing no other discussion, I will call the question to a vote. And again, I'll start with you, Peter. I I I Excellent. This is so much better. Can you vote on yourself? So, the

010motion carries. So, we have a uh chair and a vice chair. Uh Mr. Carter will be our chair and then Miss Ames will be our vice chair. uh continuation of where we've been which uh selfishly if I can just say it's been a pleasure working with all of you but particularly you guys in those two roles and I'm happy to continue to work with um everyone and especially uh you guys in that role. I think we've done some great work here so far and I'm happy to continue and I am really really happy now Heidi to pass this back to you and get out of today running useless about that. I've never Okay, just for Okay, there we go. Um, I do have on here that we're going to get into the code of conduct

011and ethics and then committee assignments, but my thought would be if the board is okay with it that we go ahead and jump ahead in the agenda um so our little friends um can be heard and then maybe head out if they want to or stay if you want to. We always want you to stay if you want to stay all night with us. We have lots of fun. But um does the anyone on the board have an issue with that? No objection. Okay. All right. So, let's jump in and we will have um scrolling down to presentations. Middle school. Let's see. LMS wellness day presentation. Is that what our friends are here for? So, good evening everyone. Uh I have brought with me a crew here and uh at the helm of this crew

012is the tallest one on the end over there. For those of you that don't know who our tallest um crew mate here is, guys, slide in for a second. We're right up here. So, right up there you go. Perfect. Perfect. Perfect. Um Joselyn Bedriki, no um known as Miss B. Next year she will be transitioning to Mrs. Brook. So, luckily Miss B won't change. Um so, they won't have to get confused. Was the um steward of this idea. We did a professional development day for all staff with a wellness theme in January. And when we came back to school that following Monday, she said that was awesome for staff. Wouldn't it be awesome for kids? And she was a champ and arranged a pretty incredible day, which we're going to take a second to watch

013the video before our friends talk about what they experienced because I think it's it's awesome to see. So, if you haven't had a chance to watch the video, it's a brief little synopsis here. So, take a look at LMS wellness [Music] day. Heat. Heat. [Music] N. Heat. Heat. [Music] Where you know? [Music] Hey, [Music] hey, hey, hey. [Music] Hey, come on. [Music] Hey, hey, hey. [Music] One of our most popular sessions right there. [Music] Baby, baby, baby, baby. Baby, baby, [Music] baby. [Music] Right. And we're going to turn it back. Okay. Ready? Right. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Well, this day is the best day ever. Awesome. Very good. Lot of smiles. You can imagine that it was a very popular day. I'm just going to speak for 30 three seconds as a principal walking around

014and talking to kids. They were engaged. And there were zero behaviors that day. The kids were all interested and they're going to share a little bit about what they were interested in on that day, but it was, you know, we had to ask if it could be every Friday. I don't think we can do it every Friday, but we definitely will be bringing it back again next year. I'm going to start with Gabby as our eighth grade veteran here and she's got a little bit. She's going to start to say just make sure you speak nice and loud and clear and then we'll kind of just go down the row and then come across the front. Keep it keep it quick, guys. Okay. Ready? Um, what I liked was blackout poetry. What' you like about

015it? Um, I never got to try it before because I was too afraid to like cut up books. So, this was a nice experience. Uh, probably one of my favorite activities was bucket drumming. Uh, doing it again instead of just at a concert was actually more interesting. I probably like dodge dodgeball cuz I do band instead of gym and art. So, it's like hard for me to kind of like move and get myself out. So that was like a really fun experience. I like nail art because you learned a bunch of new techniques to work on nails. I like jewelry making because we could really make whatever jewelry we wanted. Um, I really like nail art because I always make a mess, but like theory you can make a mess. And I also like therapy

016dogs. I liked Friendship Bracelets cuz I learned how to make a bunch of new bracelets. I liked friendship bracelets because it was really fun and relaxing. I liked meditation cuz it was really calming. I liked science investigation because we made elephant toothpaste. Were you brushing elephant's teeth? No. What was it? It's like um it's like foam but like it explodes kind of. visually for the kids. Justin, do you want to share anything else? Um, so like you saw, we they had the kids had over 40 different workshops they could pick from. Um, they were also required to go to one personal health session. So those included friendship and social skills, stress and anxiety, outdoor survival, different um things to learn about themselves and help with new um coping mechanisms, different things. We know middle school

017can be a tough transition and anxiety is a part of so many real life experiences for so many of our students. Building in these natural ways to cope and adjust and find things that are choice. I think the voice and choice was the best part of the day that the kids got to pick where they were going to go throughout the day. And you know we can't always pick. We have to go to math. We have to go to language arts. We have to go to social studies. We have to go to science. Uh this was a great day to have um and keep your eye out because we may be asking for some schoolboard representation coming up on May 16th. We're going to be having a career day which has a similar vein to

018it. There's going to be choice for the kids to have. It's going to be um we're going to be inviting members of our community. So anybody around here that has a job that you think kids might like to hear about. We want to start to broaden their horizons and think about what their future might be because it might feel weird that it's really far away for fifth grade, but high school is just around the corner. So, giving them that opportunity to start to learn about what jobs are out there because when we ask them what they want to be when they grow up, we get a lot of I don't know. Sometimes we know, sometimes we don't. So, that's coming soon. You guys are getting that first scoop on that. So, any questions for kids

019or for Joselyn? Excellent job, guys. Good job. Thanks for Thanks for coming. [Applause] Um, we can either stay in presentations or we can go back up to our committees. What are your thoughts? I think we should stay present. That's my thought, too. Miss Grantham, are you ready to do middle school track coach? Are you with that with Tony? With Tony? Yeah. All right. We get to follow that up. It's always tough to follow up the kids. I know you're the best kids. This is also about wellness. Um, so I'm Tony Ramos. I am the district's athletic director for those of you who I have not met yet. Um, so we are requesting today a second assistant track position for LMS. Um, they have 56 athletes this year. So it is a safety concern that they

020have adult supervision, especially when they're using heavy implements like the Javelin and Shoput. Um, we plan to pay for it out of the Campbell High School supplies line. Okay. Are there any questions from the board? No. 56 kids for track. That seems like a a lot. Is that a record? Our our spring sports uh we had over 200 participants in spring sports last year. Um because now that we've added lacrosse, so you have boys and girls lacrosse, you have boys baseball, girls softball, and track and field. And if there are kids that don't make those FAB four, the first four, they absolutely are welcome to join the track. Um it's it's not a cut sport. So it just gives them an opportunity to compete against themselves. So it's just an opportunity again to do something

021to get that sense of belonging to come and be part of our school and part of our representing those links. We encourage as much participation as we can and I think the extra set of trained eyes and ears is helpful. There's always been wonderful parent volunteers which I I just want to second that that that's been we've been appreciative that they've been there. Um, but you know, we've had incidents where kids have been injured or hurt and because a way a track and field meet runs, they're all over they're spread out over a a large distance and it's hard for the coaches to get where that uh injury occurred or um it's just it's a good safety safety component. So, yeah, I'll echo that. We have coach uh Ireland here with us too, our head

022coach for the for the track program in the middle school. Yeah, my average was 36 kids the last two years. So, Um, and we really do want to help support the high school and grow this um, opportunity. We're actually only one of three schools in our division that has a track. So, being able to actually have home meets and utilize that and and do that. Um, a small part of what I was going to say about just like budget wise is we are having two home meets. So, that does take away from two bus um, expenditures. So, um I think that is also something to take into consideration as well. The statement is about $1,500 um for this. It's not a significant thing. And like, uh Tony mentioned, we we think we can have this

023out of the the CHS, uh supplies line because we're fair enough in the year where we've seen some other expenses that we didn't quite have as much on from the fall and winter seasons. um so we feel comfortable we can we can uh cover it and that it's important for the safety of our kids and um just the continued development of them as athletes, right? And I think a big thing if you've ever seen a middle school track meet, we hosted a big one in Bow at the high school that I know Lichfield has gone to and it's a pretty popular one. Um you need as many hands on deck as possible when you're dealing with these numbers. Um so so I think this is a recommendation for the rest of the board and we're

024asking you to to approve it um this evening. Do you guys have someone to fill it? Yes. Okay. I mean, I think it's a safety concern. We definitely need to fill a position. I think it's important. We Parent volunteers are amazing and great and I'm sure fill in a lot of holes, but when it comes to safety and actually proper use of certain equipment, I think you mentioned the really heavy balls and the the arrows that flying through the air. It seems like a good idea. Yeah. So, is that you making a motion? Yes. I'll make a motion to approve um the transfer from the CHS line to add a second assistant coach for middle school track. Second. Any other questions, comments? Seeing none, all in favor, please say I. I. I. Opposed. All right.

025That passes 400. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you guys. Thank you. [Music] And finally, we have Miss Crowley here, our [Music] uh Wait a second. We have to formally introduce her presses. That's right. Director of the year. Excuse me. All right. Crowley. So, and I brought samples. Oh, please tell me it's not shelf stable yogurt. Not this time. I still have that in my drawer. You never know when need. You never know when you're going to need it. These are an item we featured on National School Breakfast Week, which was not last week, the week prior, maybe. I could be lying to you. I have no idea what day it is anymore. These are a chicken biscuit sandwich that we featured. Very popular. Here we go. Oh, they're still warm. They are still warm. I have

026ketchup if anyone wants ketchup, honestly. Let's see. I forgot to bring you a banana. I got everybody. Okay, so these look really good. I'm so ridiculous. There I go. I've had these before. Say that was it. Just present the food. Yeah, Dan, you didn't know this. We feed you at these meetings. Like, I will take it. This has to go with my little presentation here. Um, you can look at it at your leisure, but you can doodle it along it. I don't like what you do with it, but it's important to my presentation. Here you go. Thank you. You're welcome. Thank you. Do you want the position paper? I'm just going to leave you out of everything. That's fine. It's a good snack. I usually don't eat so I lived it. I lived it. Okay.

027So, I'm here to present an update, which is my slideshow available. Yep, it's okay. Sorry. It's fine. Priorities are priorities. Um, so yeah, this the chicken biscuit sandwich was probably one of the biggest sellers of National School Breakfast Week. Um, just a quick update on that while Mr. Okonnell gets the wonderful presentation that I've done for you up. Um, we saw a real significant jump in breakfast participation that week by and I just pulled random weeks otherwise um by about between 50 and 100 breakfasts a day. Sorry, for the week for the week. So, um we're going to be doing more initiatives like that. Um but that's another that's another presentation. Um so I'm here tonight to present because as many of you may know or may not know um recently from March uh 8th

028through the 11th I was in Washington DC with the school nutrition association um New Hampshire chapter to participate in LAC or the legislative action conference of 2025. Um I'm going to start and this is just a thing. This is completely different and above and beyond what my actual day-to-day job is. Um, this is a completely voluntary organization. Uh, myself and the Marramac School District food service director, his name is Dave Ziki. I don't know how to pronounce his last name. He's wonderful. He is our public policy legislative chair uh for the school nutrition association of New Hampshire. Um, and we he goes every single year. He's like on a first-name basis with everybody and I just tagged along this time. So, uh, I'm going to put out a wonderful disclaimer just because I feel like

029with the way politics are and the political landscape of things, it's just important to just note that this is just based on my experience. I'm not pushing either side nor an agenda. Um but it's just going to reflect the core message that just is commit committed to school meals are and should remain a bipartisan priority. And um that was probably one of the themes of the whole thing. No matter what your vision of the future of America looks like, at the end of the day, you got to focus on the kids and feed the kids. I won't sing Whitney Houston. Sorry. And you're welcome, but um so even though I was told I could, but I'm not going to. So, just a quick overview of School Nutrition Association for those of you who may not

030know. Um, it is a membership-based nonprofit organization. Many directors um in the state of New Hampshire and across the board uh nationally are involved. The mission statement is to empower and support school nutrition professionals in advancing the accessibility, quality, and integrity of school nutrition programs. And there's national and state chapters. and we elect a board an executive board via voting like many other organizations and all expenses for this conference was paid through school nutrition association of New Hampshire. So this didn't come from the district. It didn't come from taxpayers. It came from SNA New Hampshire. Now on to the fun part. Um so this was my first time ever attending the LAC. There is 850 attendees and they cut it off at 850. 48 states were represented. That was pretty cool. Um and the whole

031purpose is to meet with our lawmakers um on our individual state levels and discuss talking points in the position paper which I did pass out to all of you um in order to protect school meals based on what is happening um on the bigger picture. And in regards to the school nutrition, the SNA national paper at the in the fall, every single um they send out a survey to every single member and basically it's like what are your concerns? Whether it's, you know, free meals, whether it's meal debt, whatever. And they take all of the information that comes back and compile it into like three or four talking points because obviously if you take every single one, we'd be here all night. So they take all of those and compile it all into the the

032main paper. and that's what they send to us. Then we meet with the lawmakers in this conference. Um so just quickly based on the talking points um which you can see in your paper and actually it was interesting because I flew down on a Saturday. So obviously Friday I pack up whatever on Sunday we had our first region meeting which is the northeast and there was already changes to the paper just because of what had been happening in Washington. So, um, that was exciting. So, the main talking points in the paper are raising reimbursement rate, 40 more cents for lunch and 15 more cents for breakfast. Um, we did have this previously and it was the year after free meals for all had ended. We had that little extra gap and then they cut that.

033Um, so that was one of the talking points that we had. And just to give a bit of perspective, with this added amount, our program would still receive under a dollar per paid kid. So even with the 40 extra cents for lunch, you're talking 91 cents we'd get back and 50 cents 56 cents back for breakfast. Um for paid families, the big big piece of the talking points was protecting the C and the BBCE, which I will explain. Um C is community eligibility provision. We don't necessarily deal with this in New Hampshire. There's only a couple schools, but basically what that states is at this point in time, if 25% of your district or like an individual schools population qualifies for SNAP, TANIF, any kind of like direct certified benefits, you can get write a

034waiver up and your school and or district can get free meals. There are some other catches to that. the district does have to fund some of the the opposite end of it. Um what's really important about protecting this is right now it's at 25%. They are proposing to raise it to 60%. So that would devastate like the entire state of West Virginia would be completely devastated cuz they're all on C. Again, New Hampshire, we don't really have a lot of communities involved and even the ones that we do have don't utilize it. um but cutting that and then the BBCE is the broad-based categorically eligible which is again the food stamps SNAP tannif um homeless they're proposing to cut that completely. So it was really a big push to protect those programs even on the

035the greater picture. Um which if these are cut or if it is raised we're talking 24,000 schools and about 12 million kids that this would affect nationwide. Um, so it's kind of a and it's we're talking about $3 billion in cuts over 10 years to the national school lunch program. So kind of a big deal. Um, and then the last part was addressing unpaid meal debt, which kind of all ties into anything. Anyway, you know, um, my counterpart was saying that we he has $24,000 in meal debt in his in Marramck. We have about $2,000. We're very lucky, but it's a big problem. At one point in the state of New Hampshire, we were over $5 million in meal debt across the state. So, it's kind of it's kind of crazy. Um, so it kind

036of based on these we met with our four people. Um, so we did meet with Chris Papus' office, Maggie Hassan's office, and Jean Shaheen's offices. Um, we couldn't get an appointment at Goodlander, but she's new and I'm sure it's kind of like overwhelming dealing with all of this, you know, as a new congress person. But we did provide information. Um, we did meet with uh we met him like we accosted him in the hallway like Chris like oh my god hey how's it going um and Shaheen actually came not Shaheen excuse me Maggie Hassan actually came and sat in our meetings with us and actually gave some really good talking points um but all four New Hampshire's great all four offices were on board with supporting school meals we didn't have an uphill battle to

037fight a lot of other states did have an uphill battle to fight um so that was very interesting to talk to other people to see about that all of our people were insanely insanely supportive. Um, and Hassan actually gave some really interesting insight into how the Senate is working um, with their votes. And she said, which was a very I was very happy to hear this, that it's more there's more bipartisan support for protecting these school meals than there's not in the Senate level, which I thought was a very good thing to hear that people want to make sure. And even I have a really good friend, she's from Kentucky at the 11th hour got a call from Rand Paul's office. So she and I was like, "You need to tell me. I need to

038know right now what happened." His assistance and staffer said, "He's gunning hard to keep protecting school meals and trying to get back to where we're federally funded." So that kind of provided a little bit of validation based on what Hassan had said to us in our meetings. Of course, we're all New Hampshire people. Everyone was super lovely. even, you know, we had the and I'm gonna say it because they are kids running DC, but they um we had people, they're like, "Oh, I'm from London. I'm from Hudson." So, it was kind of cool to see everyone in like a small world situation and just to move forward with um next year. So, obviously now I was like, at first I'm like, "Cool, free trip to DC. I'll do it. Go on." And now I'm like,

039"No, I have to go and I have to fight." Uh so really psyched to be partnering again with my colleague from Marramac and we will be bringing much more to DC to leave with our lawmakers whether we're looking into like photo books. We're looking into um one district said they did cards from the kids like what school lunch means to them just any kind of thing to make a connection instead of just bottom line facts. um but really really gunning hard to get back down there and really keep fighting to push these kind of in really important um positions even though like I said they may not necessarily affect New Hampshire but nationwide it's a big it's a big deal. So that was my trip to DC. Wow. If anyone has any questions I'm more

040than happy to uh answer them. questions for so I know not the like not the direct focus of this but did you happen to have any conversations with people from other states about self-funding and and what was the what were you gathering from that am I allowed to tell the story from the Arkansas lady a clean version okay so many states and like I said going back to the C a lot of them are funded via C um I know Massachusetts I think has it's different taxes that break down into it. And one of them was uh this little lady from Arkansas who got up and was very excited because her state is offering free breakfast to everybody while it's not fully there. And she said they are taxation off of a certain uh substance

041that is not federally legal, but also is kind of also semilal in other places around us. I'm sure you can. It starts with an M. It's great. Anyway, that was what they were funding their free breakfast off of. So I think it's just a matter of finding where the money can be diverted into. Um, again, C was a lot of it. Like I said, a lot of different taxation situations and a lot of them took the money that they got from COVID different states and just funneled it into the school nutrition programs and then now they're all self- sustaining, excuse me, because they um they're just making they're just selling a ton of food and you know these kids are eating every day. Is it going to be just me? You guys have questions? It's

042my first date. Got to ease him in. Uh, this is just a state. You can keep asking questions. I actually don't have any more questions. This is just a statement cuz I'm going to say it every time you come here. Okay. You go above and beyond and it's incredible and I really appreciate what you do. I mean, taking initiative like this and bringing it back to us is a huge benefit to our district. That's not something that's uh necessarily required of you. Um, but I very much appreciate what you do. Thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah. Thank you. director director of the year. Toss toss. I did I actually did hear from Doug Tottton. He said, "Everyone must address me as that for the next month." Oh, wow. And you must make everyone address it.

043I was like, "Right, got it." So, thank you. I do appreciate that. I appreciate the support across the board from the board. So, we do we do good stuff. Biscuit was great, by the way. Great. I'm glad you enjoyed it. Yeah, that was a very it's a very solid option. I do think we should make sure this is included in our minutes if we can because you know going to the self-funding when it's talking about literally in this position paper um virtually all meal program directors cited challenges with the cost of food and labor only 20.5% said that the federal reimbursement rate is sufficient to cover the cost of producing a lunch that means 80% I mean I can from that 80% of the nation is struggling to become self-funded because it's not enough there.

044Um it's too expensive with the cost of food because of the requirements you have in terms of um what they have to eat or what they can and cannot eat the ingredients that are required there. So um I just we should make sure I'm happy to hand my copy back. I can give you a digital copy as well if you need that. Digital copy would be great, but I I do think it should be included. Yeah. um in the minute so people at home can take a look at it. Yeah, absolutely. Welcome. Thank you for coming in. Thank you. Thanks for having me. Any other questions? Oh yeah, before I just like take off. No, not much. Everyone seems good. Thank you. Thank you. Director of the year. Thank you. Thank you. Director of the

045year out. There she is. Director of the year. Wonderful. Princess. All right. It looks like we have covered all of our presentations and recognitions today. I apologize for being on my phone. I somehow left my computer at the office, so I feel weird on my phone, but here we are. So, let's go back to schoolboard reorganization. Um, we had gotten to the point of review of code of ethics and code of conduct. Um, we typically have those documents. I think we made some changes to them last year, but they were all signed. My thought would be um this would be something that we could circulate for signatures when we have all of our board members present rather than you know doing it differently. I would say therefore in the next two weeks everyone should take

046a look make sure they're comfortable signing. Um we certainly want to make sure we can abide by these and as board members um uh Mr. Okonnell already mentioned the NHSBA training that's available for new and old board members. Um there's always new um programming out there. So definitely take advantage of that. And then we can get into committee assignments. Um what are the board's thoughts on doing these assignments tonight? Um happy to do it. Um we also could wait for a full board, so I could I could go in either direction. I I mean I'm fine either way. All right. Well, let's I mean, we'll just load Andrew up with anything. Yeah. So, just Andrew. And Andrew. Yeah. I I think Andrew should be I do have um I have one suggestion. I had mentioned

047this to um to Heidi. I I And Sarah, I think this probably most mostly impacts you. So, I should say this in in front of you. So, um, one thing that's becoming increasingly challenging for the board, I think, is is the daytime meetings. Um, not and I'm not about to ask you to do them at night, so don't worry. Um, but I mean, you guys are doing amazing work. Uh, I came to that last meeting. It's very interesting to hear what's going on. I, as a real estate lawyer, don't have a ton to contribute. I do, you know, I occasionally have questions or things like that. Um, but I'm wondering if it might make sense for some of these committees that are meeting in during the school day for us to maybe just have like

048a a board liaison as opposed to a board member who's sitting in the committees. Um, where we can maybe just do a quick check-in with you at whatever frequency you you think is appropriate because obviously the one thing that's different now is you're here with us at our board meetings as well. Y which is amaz. great to have you here and it's it's really I think it's really keeping some consistency on curriculum which is awesome. Um so you know it's really just it seems to me and and I haven't gone through maybe there's some a few others but um like I know emergency management is one of them that we do during the day but um for those I was wondering I was thinking that that might be more achievable for us because now I

049think all of us have Tina was the last hold out who had an education schedule. Yeah, that it makes sense to me and I'm more than happy to um because I usually do um committee updates anyway when we meet. I give information about what we met about and talked about and that kind of thing. So, I think it it does make sense. And if there's questions that I have, I then absolutely reach out to the person that would be the liaison for that committee. Yeah, I think it'd just be really good communication between the board member and you in terms of, hey, we're having this meeting and we think it's important to have, you know, that board parent representation there. Are you, you know, able to come to this one because we're getting into these

050details or looking over these survey results or, you know, whatever the question is. Whereas, um, something more nuanced and more detailed, you can you would share with the full board anyway during your update, right? So, I guess with that said, um I'll just put out there like what I what I what my interests are and if you guys want to shoot me down, by all means, shoot me down. Um obviously, I'm like deep in the trenches with facilities. I would love to be able to continue that particularly since I was doing that way back with uh you know, before I was actually on facilities. Um, I do actually really enjoy learning outcomes task force in terms of, you know, I'm very passionate about the figuring out what we're striving towards. Um, so I'd be happy

051to stay on um, with that as well. Um, I do thoroughly enjoy the negotiation stuff. Um, and I am able to, you know, my firm will give me time off for stuff like that. So, I could assist with that. That's not as consistent. U, what else was I on? Energy committee. I I love the energy committee. I struggle I struggle to see the the usefulness of us participating in that. Um particularly since our energy consumption is is segregated from the the town. Um they did the the primary driver for that committee was initially the um community power uh and they have that sort of power ironed out. So, I I don't know if I don't know how important it is that we continue on that. I don't want to sound like we're not willing to.

052Um I of course love seeing the town administrator at that. Always pleasant. But, um yeah. So, I mean, if I, you know, if you guys want me to continue on that, I'm fine to do that. Um trying to see I'm trying to see what else my name was next to. My name ended up next to a lot of things last year. I feel like uh that's what happens to the newest person. And I'm more than happy to continue, you know, with you with emergency management in either side on either side of that. So I just for me I wish that meeting was like a half hour earlier only because my I have a Thursday 9:30 meeting standing forever. We might be able to do that. I can reach out to the I can make I

053can make many more meetings if that's I think that's just our default time nine like for a long I think everybody gets the principles get the kids going for the day and if it's not I don't mind doing the primary on that and like if you because we sometimes are both at that. Yeah. Yeah. I mean and you guys get the agendas when you were speaking of liaison I think that's a good example. We do that during the day because we have to bring in everyone working right the officers and chiefs and stuff. Um but you know you guys have joined by Z uh Google as well in this people do that when they when they need to. Um we try to forward the agendas. I'm always late putting them out but you we put

054the agendas out. It seems to go that I mean that committee runs perfectly fine. or not. Um so yeah, that's uh and then I think looking at um looking at Andrew, I think last year we he was gracious enough to continue with budget uh which budget is a monumental uh undertaking. So I think that we had um kind of left that to be the only thing that he was really responsible for. And I think you had indicated that he was still willing to continue with Yeah, he did let me know that if it was the will of the board, he would continue on um for budget committee. Um and I'm happy to continue as a backup for budget committee as well. Does anyone have any objections to Andrew continuing on budget committee? I know Peter

055really was hoping to [Music] um so I think we can I guess my question I mean if I may, and I'm not meaning to put you on the spot, what are some of the committees you're interested in? Uh I'm facilities. facilities you want to stay. Okay. So, I would love to stay on the facilities committee. I've been there as I mean I got interested as a citizen and I would love to stay as a representative there. Okay. Um as I mentioned my email my focus will have to shift, right? I'm no longer representing myself and a citizen. I'm now representing the school board. Mhm. Um I I mean the the economic development kind of piques my interest and then the other one was emergency management, but I really don't have a hard hold to either

056one of those. Okay, that's good to know. Peter, how about Are you liking economic development? Um I like economic the economic development. Yeah, it's it's interesting. It's not a fastmoving thing. um just because there isn't a lot of place in town for economic development. Um well, I guess I I need to preface. What times are those meetings? Uh those meetings are typically around at 6:30, I think. Okay. E emergency management's like 9:00 a.m. Uh yeah. No, that that's not going to work. So yeah. So it's and I can make some it's and some for half those movies depending on what's going on in my little world. Um and I and I typically do them from Zoom, but I do try to participate in the emergency drills. Yeah. One of those days at the three schools.

057So for me, I think I'm still very obviously very interested in the facilities committee. I economic development is good and CIP is actually um also one that's sort of later in the day, but I've finally sort of got the rhythm of how that process works. Yeah. What was the second one that you said? CIP. No, you said one before that. You said facilities. Economic development. economic development. Gotcha. Yeah. The uh how does what's the difference between economic development and CIP? CIP kind of takes in all the things from the town and the school and kind of ranks them. Oh, right. Right. Right. By what the priority should be. Gotcha. So in this sort of two sections the town side and the school side. So, if I may sort of summarize a bit. Um, is I'm

058going to skip over facilities because I think the three of you all expressed interest in that. Um, budget committee, is everyone okay with that remaining? Andrew and myself as a backup. Emergency management, Matt. And then Peter, you two. You want to do it? What are your preferences on that? If you have a strong passion to be the primary on that, you can. Otherwise, I'm more than happy to. Um why don't we leave you the primary and I'll be the secondary and I'll jump on when I can just to sort of not get lost. Learning outcomes task force. Um Matt, you'll be a liazison for that and work with Sarah in terms of what meetings that you're looking for input from the board or presence from the board on continue to keep us connected. Um but

059maybe not necessarily attendance at every meeting. Um joint loss I'm happy to keep. It's my favorite. It's like 15 minutes. four times a year. I'm not going to lie. I That one wins as my favorite committee. If you want um since Don't touch that. You want curriculum? Oh, no. I was going to say you can't I'm not going to I'm going to take Yeah. You express your deep preference for that. I'm like, "Yeah, I'll take that." Yeah. No, I was going to say that because I'll be uh communicating with Sarah about the um learning outcomes, I could also communicate with her about curriculum review. So, I was going to say I'm actually happy to be on that committee for curriculum. Yeah, I've been backing up Tina on that. So, I've been on the communications. Um,

060I've let Tina take the lead on it for sure. So, to take an extra No, no, no. That one is Zoom or it's a meet sometimes. There's always a meet link. That one has a meet and a lot of times it's reviewing materials which you do on your own time. Yeah. Yeah. It's all Heidi. You got it. Um, let's see here. Website committee. I don't know if this exists anymore. I don't think I don't think it does any. So, I think why don't we put a pause on that one and we'll check in. I don't think to my recollection I I would honestly I think we got to be we really do need to start pairing some of these down because the time commitment for school board alone is a lot. Yeah. No, I get

061And I think, you know, honestly and truly, we built we we I think we had this come about because there were being so many complaints about the website, particularly when it was relating to the stuff that was going on with GMS. We have a whole new administration that's very capable of running a website, I think. So, unless someone brings an issue to our attention, in which case we could address it with the superintendent, I would love to see that deleted off of this. Yeah. Well, and then historically Andrew was on it before Tina because they were redoing the website and so making it more friendly for your phone and and whatnot. So I I not that there isn't always more work to do, but I think there is a form on there now that says

062that I'm having trouble with this. I would s or suggestion, you know, comment. Um I don't know that we need a committee on that. And if there was something that were to come together and you wanted board input on, presumably you could let us know. Y um so I agree with you. I think we should cut that. Um wellness is another one I think we can cut. Um I Oh, no. Nope. No, you have to have that one. Mhm. Okay. By law. Okay, never mind. Wellness we cannot cut. It's only been me and Lauren and it's okay. Yeah, it has to be annually. So Okay. Lauren and I will uh most a few there's a minimum number of times a year but yes you have to yes unless somebody else would like to have you

063know fun with Lauren I'm happy to keep that one once or twice a year okay um CIP Peter you're good to stay on that do you think you need a backup or you think um I think that used to do it and then I did it doesn't meet all that often it's really like once a month So, um, if if there's a meeting I can't make, I will let the board make the board aware. Yeah. And whoever is available. Is that a evening meeting? That's an evening meeting. So, want to be the backup. You can put me down as backup. Perfect. How often do we have to go? You're invited to all of them. Should we go? I'll um It's required by law. Maybe it is. We can both I will, as I recall, Doug

064used to go to them all. Okay. Yeah. Um and Jetty once in a while I think that I think when the school was presenting there I think we went in November we're going over school stuff. I think when we get to the whatever we're going to do for GMS Yeah. all the time. Be good for you to Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Sounds good. Um negotiations again for LEA this year. I love that. Yeah. Me too. So I'm happy to stick with that. Those are often afternoon Yeah. Yeah. I I know I have to take time off from work for that, but the lawyers on the board are able to Yeah. Handle that. Handle that. Yeah. My job makes it difficult that I can't even bring in personal computers. So like I can't join meetings from work

065even if they were during like I took my lunchtime early. Yeah. That one the negotiation stuff too is a lot of there's routine meetings and all that. So yeah, it's busy in the fall particularly. Um social media manager are we we really haven't had a presence. Um, we've just kind of let the schools be do their own social media and the board, you know, hasn't done it. We haven't seen anything that was that shouldn't be on the on Facebook or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. No, I mean, it's really Jen and Yeah. I I don't I think again, unless there's an issue with social media, I really don't think that we need to have a committee for it. Agree that we need to participate in. Well, and the other question is the board's social media page. I

066have no idea. We do. Um, Tina I believe has the access so we should ask we should get that back but or have it but I guess my question is there was a social media policy put into place for the town at one point. I don't know that that applied to us. Am I making this up? Do you recall that? I do recall there was a big hubbub about social media posting on the town side. you know all the as a resident like so when someone who's maintains a public position or elected position or an appointed position they have to often we have that too right if we comment on the on stuff about staff I know I think that's always sort of been precedent but I don't know that it's written down somewhere the

067uh I'm doing this from memory but I'm fairly certain the policy talks about staff and focuses on staff I don't think it includes schoolboard but I could I And the school board is a unit. You know, we are not permitted to act individually as part of being, you know, we are a group and we represent together. So, I think the goal with the as a resident is if you want to post about the fishing derby as a resident, go for it, you know, kind of thing. Um, or whatever it is. But for purposes of tonight for committee, I don't I think we're going to continue to leave that blank and or strike that alto together. Energy if we're going to keep energy, Dan, I don't that's an evening one that's not very frequent. I don't

068know if you Okay, sure. willing to take that one. I mean, it is it is nice to like show our faces at that. I think I I don't know that there's going to be I really it's been a very long time since I've been at that. So, I don't know what the Would they be discussing that Liberty gas? Um, they might be. So, that might be worthwhile, especially if we're thinking possibly utilizing that for GMS at some point. All right. So, we'll have Dan take the lead on that. Is that okay? If he's that volunteer, economic development, Peter, you're good to stay with that. And then policy, I've been on it. Yeah, I think it happy to have somebody else do it. I'm also happy to, you know, Renee, Brian, and I can bring we

069bring everything. It's a proof by the board anyway. It's no one acting unilaterally, but it's sort of putting the policies in order and on the agenda. So, I'll stick with that. Huh. There seems a lot of aims on that list, but um Pierce quite quite frequently as well. All right. So that leaves facilities improvement committee. Um what are the thoughts of the board on that or do we want to wait until we have a full board to make that decision with keeping in mind what the do we need to be also having the discussion of what the goals of the facilities improvement committee are for the year in light of the March. We can certainly um we can certainly yeah like re kind of rehash that. I think I do think that um whatever you

070know we're getting to a point where it's going to be a lot more board involvement coming up right I think in pretty short order. Yeah. Um I do think we need to tighten up the um the bylaws. Yeah. The governance I definitely think it could use an overhaul. Yep. So that that is I mean we our our focus was to bring that back in once we were we were really trying to hit the uh the deadline that we blew by as of yesterday. Thanks for that as of today by the way. As of today um but actually we are very very close to okay having something um so I do think that we will end up with a a lot more board you know full board involvement probably pretty short order as as it relates

071to GMS. And then the question becomes does facilities continue on with uh other facility considerations which I think would be beneficial. I think it needs would be beneficial, right? Um I know there was an initial, you know, sort of push towards like hey just focus on the the GMS stuff because obviously that's uh but you know there's been some good stuff that's come out of uh for the other schools. you know, Dan was Dan went through uh school dude. Um, you know, that was helpful. So, yeah, I mean, we've been just to jump in there like quietly because that's been the focus of that, but we did those on-site insight reports for all three schools with the idea of doing a capital improvement plan for all three schools. And we've been quietly putting that together

072like from our office. It would be great to get involvement from the FIC once kind of the GM stuff has got a direction to be like this is facilities here is what we're thinking long term 20 years out like based upon and then what are people's thoughts on this right like this is does this work not work so on and so forth it's what I do in my world right is is you know the next step that I was going to suggest if I stayed citizen right was going to be you know we got to start thinking long term we got to start thinking district as a whole as a holistic unit and go through that and otherwise you're always going to run into these situations and you'll never catch everything. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I

073mean, I do wish all three of us could still be there because it's been, you know, it's been useful, but obviously we can have a quorum. Yeah. I mean, you do have if if you it's your guys's decision. Um we don't have another facilities um committee meeting until April 10th and there is another board meeting until before that, right? We have on the agenda tonight um at least to begin discussions on those guiding articles, those kind of operating articles for the FIC. Well, we obviously are not going to finalize that tonight, but um up there for kind of review. So you do we have a little gap between that and next FIC meeting. So yeah, we can some information on this. Yeah. So we can table till the next meeting. Yeah, I think that makes

074sense and have a full board as well. Hopefully. Hopefully. Um I believe that was it for committees. Um I'm not going to get crushed. So moving on consent agenda. Were there any um committee reports or committee um actions that people would like to move off of the consent agenda and have a conversation about in old business? All right. Hearing none, I will go ahead and provide a summary of the non-public actions for March 5th, 2025. Miss Ames motion to approve the February 19th non-public meeting minutes. Mr. Shoemaker seconded the motion and the motion passed 5000. Miss Ames uh motion to approve the GMS teacher nominations for 2025. Mr. Pollinsky seconded the motion and the motion passed 500. Miss Ames motion to approve the LMS teacher nominations for FY2526. Mr. Pansky seconded the motion and the

075motion passed 500. Miss Ames was busy that night. Miss Ames motion to approve the CHS teacher nominations for FY202526. Mr. Pollinsky seconded the motion. I was busy too. Yes. Easy for the noteaker. Yes, exactly. Appreciate it. Miss Ames motion to approve the district teacher nominations for FY2526. Mr. Peny seconded the motion and the motion passed 500. Mr. Cutter motion to accept the resignation of Sandra McMullen, GMS set teacher. Miss Aim seconded the motion and the motion passed 5000. Mr. Cutter motioned to accept the resignation of Megan Connors, LMS grade 8 social studies teacher. Miss Ames seconded the motion and the motion passed 500. Mr. Cutter motion to accept the resignation of Laura Shaw, LMS music and chorus teacher. Miss Ames seconded the motion and the motion passed 500. Miss Ames motion to adjourn the public

076session at 8:12. Mr. Shoemaker seconded the motion which passed 500. I'd like to adjourn. What can I say? Well, there you go. Get her done. Um, ready to move on to our student representative report, which is all pulled up. Welcome, Nick. Tonight, you're flying solo. So, spring sports have started. Um, the open gyms have started and triyouts are until the end of the month. Campbell's math leads went to compete at the state contest at NHTI. Aaron Fikiti not only stood out as a key contributor, but also made history by being the only student in the entire state to achieve a perfect score. It's amazing. Wow. Mhm. The math team took home first place in the medium division and ranked seventh out of 43 teams statewide. Congratulations to them. Our youth and gov students participated in

077the pre-legislative session this past weekend at the state house in conquered. All of our students demonstrated leadership in civic engagement as they took on multiple roles in a mock n government with 120 other students from across the state. Uh, some of the kids from Youth and Gov that went or no all sorry all the kids from Youth and Gov that went were Caitlyn Brown, Sophia Adam, Zack Alwan, Rocco Deluchia, Bridget Halgo, Victor Philbrick, Kate Silver, Josh Steves, and Quinn Watt. Uh, we had the Campbell St. Patrick's Day lunchon for the Campbell staff in SAU. It was donated and served by Kathy and Sean Mcdana and the Campbell Leprechauns. Uh, we had international food night put on by the Spanish National Honor Society and the FBA overnight conference is tomorrow. Great. We have the district fusion

078night coming up on the 25th and we have the last day of quarter 3 coming up on the 3rd. Wow. How are we three quarters of the way through? Oh my god. Crazy hell. So, Spanish classes, Spanish one and two are focusing on life beyond high school, like what sentences can kids produce in the real world and how can you Spanish once you leave Campbell? Upper levels are focusing on comparing and contrasting NH communities with Latin and American uh Latin American Spanish communities. Um like the different types of stores, the different city layouts, the different architecture. Uh, Spanish is also doing a song March Madness. The students vote on their favorite songs in the bracket. And there's a joint field trip with the art department to the Currier Museum, a baseball glove drive to support

079kids in the Dominican Republic. We're gearing up for the AP test in May. And last but not least, there are still some spots left for the 2026 Spain trip. So, some highlights from the middle school. In social studies is seventh graders. We're doing their unit on Ror. doing the unit on Roman history and they ended with a battle in the gym versus administration. They made shields and worked together to protect one another from pool noodles and nerf belt from nerf sorry from pool noodles and nerf balls. In ELA, fifth graders are working on their poetry unit and are learning to write uh to learning to write poetry across different many styles. In math, sixth graders celebrated Pi Day on the 14th and worked in a comp in a competition to me to to memorize as

080many numbers of pi as possible. Congratulations to Evelyn L for memorizing 202 numbers in order. The eight winners were able to pie staff and administrators. I I cannot do that. My Alexa asked me if I could say going to say I used to know 100. Yeah. 102. I give you five. What's up? Sorry. Continue. In science, uh, students in seventh grade are working on vocabulary, including Latin roots. This important skill helps build towards understanding vocabulary across the curriculum. And in the unified arts, Bannon chorus had a wonderful performance at the district-wide concert last week. The visual artists also had some incredible artwork on display at CHS. And at Griffin kindergarten classes, students are exploring critical thinking, problem solving, computational thinking, teamwork, and technology. Enjoy the short video that highlights students working with Cubetto, a coding

081game. Three ducks, a tool for creative thinking, and problem solving. Popet keyboards for keyboard letter recognition and computers to learn basic digital literacies. [Music] We learn about Cubetta. three ducks and computers and it's fun. My favorite thing when Mrs. D comes in is that I like you better and I like that you can make him move. I like pretty ducks cuz I can bake um make iPads with it and computers and phones. I learned how to do my password and my username and then changes the first step. [Music] Super cute. Any questions? Any comments? Very cool. Great job. Yes. Thank you. I wish I had that in kindergarten. Right. All right. We're going to go ahead and move into community comment on agenda items. Um, seeing no community, I'm assuming there are no community comments,

082but I'm going to leave it open. All right. closed. Uh we will close community comment at this time. We thank everyone who provided us with input and we will have another community comment at the end of the agenda. Uh for correspondence, I did not get to it um this week. So I will have a month's worth of correspondence for our next meeting. I also wasn't sure if I was staying spice chair. So um now that we know that there's a month's worth now. Yes, there. That's what that was. Turn the table right there. Uh moving into the general business superintendent report. Yeah. Uh so we have enrollment report, monthly enrollment report. We uh have started kindergarten registrations. Um as of this morning at I think 11:00 when we last looked at the numbers, we're at

08350. Um it's been open for um about 2 weeks uh kindergarten registration. So we'll see where those numbers uh kind of continue. Um we were projecting, you know, uh high7s when we did our enrollment projections uh back in the fall. Um so to be at 50 all already is a good sign that we're going to be kind of um approaching the number that we thought we were going to have. So um we'll keep updating the board every meeting um as we go on those. Uh otherwise, we're um same overall number that we were um before. Uh one, one up, little two down, one up, you know, different schools, same thing. Amazing that it's the exact same as it was at the beginning. Usually there's some little difference. Yeah, it's been, you know, yeah, we we

084gain one, we lose one, you know, in and out and pretty pretty steady all year on this one. So, that's enrollment. Any questions? Great. Um, next thing is just voting results followup. Um, we had voting uh day last week. Um, mixed bag for the school district. Uh, very happy. um wrote about this in in uh my weekend message, so I won't rehash everything because I know uh many people read that there, but um very thankful that we passed the LSSA contract. That's excellent for our support staff. Um they're an incredible uh group of people, do a lot for our district and and I'm glad that that passed. Um I'm very uh happy some of those warrant articles passed, particularly um I'm going to summarize, but the repairs warrant article that allows us to put some

085money away on that. And again, that I think that shows kind of the long-term planning that we're trying to accomplish as a district and a board when we're looking at our facilities to make sure um we keep our facilities um in good shape. And then the special ed um one, and again, you don't have to look far for for issues in other districts um around special ed um if you're not protecting yourselves by having kind of money in reserve for that situation. And we've talked about how we might have to use that account this year. So um or that reserve fund this year. So, uh, thank you for those who came out to vote. Everyone who came out to vote, it's important. This is what we teach the kids to come out and have your

086voice heard, even if we don't always agree with, um, people's decisions. Um, it's important that that people come out and vote, and we welcome that every single time. Uh, the big one that kind of is a bummer is obviously the proposed budget uh, did not pass, so we'll be in a default budget next year. Um, so that's what that first bullet is. That's just the same document we had way back during the budget process that explains the default budget and how it is calculated. Um things such as contracts were committed to, for example, like a collective bargaining agreement with the teachers. Um that was agreed upon in 2024, March 2024, that this would be the um wage increases and other increases. Um so those go into the default budget. things that uh um you know

087are not are new to the budget would would go out of the budget for the default budget. It's approximately about $300,000 difference for us. Um that's not crazy. You again, you can look in the news, there are districts that are uh millions of dollars differences in in what they proposed and what they're ending up for budget seasons. And um you know Tony was here earlier and I don't know if you've been following over in the Conan school district, Jaffrey school district, they're they're cutting like all their athletic programs, multiple administrators, a lot multiple 20 teachers, you know, they got decimated on that. Um so we're not in that type of situation thankfully. Um there will be some things that we're going to kind of follow up with. Our plan here is we showed you the

088fault numbers. That's what we'll submit in our in our MS22 form to the state because that's how we calculate the fault budget. Um, but it's a bottom line budget and we can move some things around once the new fiscal year starts. So, at the April 2nd board meeting, we want to come to the board with some ideas of what some of that movement could look like. And I'll give you a tangible example, right? When we calculate the default budget, we're not required by law to provide transportation, bus transportation for high school students. So, that comes out when we calculate the default budget, right? I would imagine and we can discuss this more in depth uh in April when we come to you with with like a proposed default budget if that makes any sense that

089we would want to continue to provide transportation to our high school students. Right? Well, if we're going to cover that cost and something else can't be covered, right? Um, for example, just I'm and I'm not saying this is what we're going to do, but just in simplicity, we're talking transportation, continue the transportation conversation. We may not be able to have a late bus run anymore because the money that would be associated to that late bus run, we actually need to cover the cost of the high school transportation. So, those are some of the tough decisions we're going to have to kind of make as we look at a default budget. Uh, we'll do the best I can. We starting to crank through and getting some ideas and putting it down. Our intent is to um

090try our best not to reduce by any positions. I don't think we need to. Um we did in the proposed budget, if you remember, some reductions to positions already. Those reductions carry over into the default budget. The big one was 10 pair of professional positions, right? Um so I think we're in good shape from a personnel standpoint to absorb all of that with the default budget. Uh one of those reasons why we're good is because of the collective bargaining agreements we have in place. Um, if you're talking again comparison to other districts that are millions of dollars, they're obviously cutting positions, I don't think that would necessarily be um, true for us, but we need to be conscious of things as the spring kind of unfolds and hiring season kind of unfolds to be smart

091with decisions we make and stuff like that. Um, so at the at the April 2nd board meeting, we'll go over some kind of recommendations, look for feedback, maybe even look for a kind of a an approval to kind of move forward with our intents. Again, lots of can change between now and July 1st when this budget actually takes place. Um, so we wouldn't actually make any of those transfers till we're in the next fiscal year, but we want to give an idea of what what's coming down the pike when we get there. So, any questions on that? Yeah, I have one. Um, so I haven't been paying attention to other districts specific budgets. Yeah. Um, but you know, you're referencing that other districts have millions of dollars that were cut. Yeah. Would is it fair

092to say that those districts also had substantially larger budgets all around? No. Um I I you know I we're an SP2 district, right? Which means people have to go in the ballots box which gives us some level of protection with a default budget, right? Like that's that's the advantage, you know, of SP2. Um where a lot of these districts that are getting really hit hard, uh tend to be in that town meeting format where people are coming into the community and on the floor making significant reductions. That's that's what's happening in different places. That's not true. There are some SP2 school uh districts are also in uh lost in votes and their default was significantly less and they're in a challenging position for that. Um but Marramac Valley comes in the mind. They they cut

093a lot through their town meeting process and stuff like that. Um I think there was a lot of school districts this year who could kind of see like we saw that like it was going to be a tough year financially and they tried to come in um at a at a sound budget. I know in the two previous districts I worked at where I still have people that I talked to on a pretty regular basis. Um Bo came in with a with a slight increase when it was all said and done very small because they understood. They also had teacher contract they were putting forward and stuff. Um and in Timberlane they came in uh below their default budget as a way to kind of hopefully um show people that they were they understood what

094was going on in their district and stuff like that. And they they had some other things going on that that allowed them that luxury this year to do that. So, it was really a uh mixed bag out there of people uh in the voting, you know, of of proposed budgets going in as intended and stuff. So, a lot of districts are not and similar bills were asked where the proposed was not is not what they'll have next year. So, not a not a question, but just like I guess a follow-up statement. Um I appreciate how positive you guys are. you know, you're you're you came into this, you really came I mean, I I feel like during the budgeting process, you guys really tried hard to keep that budget down. Um, you know, if you

095actually have the time to watch all of the budgeting meetings, like you can start to understand really what goes into there's a lot of considerations. It's not like, you know, you're not coming to us with all like, wouldn't it be nice if we had, you know, Starbucks in the SAOU? Like, you know, people think that that would generate revenue. would maybe not be a bad idea. I was think a Dunkin Donuts in a high school, you would make so much money. You know, I I appreciate that you guys uh you guys do that. Uh I think it just is important for us to reiterate that while there are other districts that have lost millions of dollars from their budget, $300 $300,000 is not insubstantial. Yeah. Given what given how we budgeted, right? And it's going

096to create a lot of challenges. Um, and I just would like to, you know, remind people that unfortunately, I mean, for better or worse, we all love the fact that we don't have sales tax. We all love the fact that we don't have income tax, but unfortunately, all of these expenses fall on our backs as property owners. And so, the reality is it is becoming increasingly more difficult to fund education and to make it something where we're not raising a bunch of dopes because we're not putting money into education. So, uh, you know, I just want to like make sure that we're re reiterating that. I appreciate how positive you are about saying we're going to do our best because we are. We're going to we're going to find a way to get through it.

097But I don't want people to watch these things happen and say, "Well, see, they just don't, you know, they just don't need the money. It's just there's no consequence. What's the big deal?" Yeah. And like part of, you know, you're kind of sometimes in I appreciate that cuz sometimes we're in a tough position, right? Like we will make this work like the best that we can because that's why you hire us to do this, right? Um and we don't want to hurt students ultimately, right? So, we're going to look on the edges as much as possible and and look at a corner here and look at a corner here. But, I do think we're hitting kind of that wall where we might have to entertain some different different ways that we do business or some

098different like and that transportation is a very real one that and I bring that up because we did that in my previous district. We eliminated the after school the late bus runs, right? Because we needed to absorb costs somewhere and that was something we had to give up, right? Um, so that's something we're going to examine hard and we know we have kids who utilize that particularly at the middle school level, right? Um, where they're staying for a co-curricular after school to do that. But if the the the if you look at the wrership between that and then the amount of high school students we have that student still utilize bus transportation as to get to school, not just to participate in a co-curricular, those are the decisions we're going to have to weigh. You're

099probably going to start to hear me talk about pay for play a little bit, right? Because again, we talk about some of the edges of where we're going to make up that money. Some of the small places we put some additions in our budget was things such as uniforms for middle school sports, right? We had a big discussion about it. It was at a budget committee um to add some additional money cuz we want to make sure those things are up to date. That number has to revert back to what the previous number was. That is something that wasn't in the default budget, right? Because it wasn't in our budget this year. So, we don't have that money to do those uniforms next year. And we talked about this a lot in the budget process.

100We were most hurt by reduction in revenue. Now, that came from the state, right? That's not necessarily local revenue. That's state revenue, but we might need to look at ways to generate revenue. And that might be a discussion point, an idea of a payforplay for for athletics and that type of stuff. I'm not saying that's what we're going to do, but we're going to start exploring those ideas and might be coming to the board, but to get some feedback, not just from the board, from the community on some of those ideas to help offset that. There are other districts that do that. Bo does it? Yeah. Yeah, different models. Yep. Um it's not foreign. There's pros and cons to it. You know, if we get to that point to actually formally discuss it, like we'll

101go over all those pros and cons, but that's where I think you'll start seeing this year some of that stuff, right? So, thank you. Yep. I was going to say growing up, I I grew up in a district where they cut out transportation for every student within a two mile radius of the schools. Yeah. I think districts were re I there was a couple districts as we were coming out to COVID that were really close to doing it to getting rid of high school transportation and just biting the bullet, you know, and just saying like we're not doing it anymore because the wrership honestly at the high school age is is pretty low considering freshman. Yep. A lot of freshmen, you know, until they find, you know, someone to get a ride with. somebody's got

102their license early. Um yeah, you know, and you see that as the year kind of progresses on as as that writership goes and um no one has done it yet that I'm aware of in the state, you know, to really actually do it, but someone's going to be the first and then we'll see where it goes from there. So, yeah. So, that's the fault. We'll have a lot more next meeting. Uh this is follow from our last meeting, update, credit card update. Uh we said we're going to work on this. So, this is our first thing. Um, a lot of our credit card usage is buying from Amazon. So, we decided to tackle how we purchased things from Amazon. Uh, we don't need board approval for this. This is procedures. This is more to inform

103you. Um, so you know that we're continuing to work on um this issue. Um, so we're updating our Amazon POS uh PO process. Julie and uh Anna and Morardi in our SA unit uh SAU office have been working hard to kind of look at this. Essentially what we um researched and and worked out with Amazon and we've tried a couple tests and this is working really well is we can set up standing POS um with Amazon. So we don't have to use a credit card when we're purchasing through through Amazon. Um and this allows us to get a bill directly from Amazon through the invoice system, pay through the invoice system. We've tested it with a couple of small purchases from the high school um with Amanda in the front office to make sure it

104works. Um, we've been working with our administrative assistants in in all three schools in the SAU to get them up to speed because they will be our designated purchaser is what we're calling them. So, all the purchasing through Amazon will go through one person and then we have two separate in the SAU for one for student services and one for general um to do all the Amazon kind of purchases. So, this will help us reduce uh the need for credit card usage for some people. Uh, we're going to continue to progress and change some of our uh kind of procedures when it comes to line. This is just the first one we're we're kind of tackling um kind of tackling here. So, we're good. I do have one ask I I should say I don't

105need the procedure itself um approved, but I do have one thing that I do uh am going to ask the board. Is it okay if we buy a district Amazon Prime account so we can get free delivery? So much money. Yeah, it's $350 for a district like for a business for a district like us. Uh we can put up to 10 users. We'll have the five um uh you know point people here on this as our kind of people that are going to deliver. Uh but I just wanted to let you know that we were hoping to buy an Amazon Prime account for the districts um using district funds. So if you see that in a future manifest that's what that is. It's not someone buying a person. We said to try to like wrap

106up the you know Amazon tighten it up a little bit and you go get Yeah. Go get a private account. Yeah. Um it's not related to when we're playing the NCA tournament in the SEU office tomorrow. So don't don't worry about that. uh separate. I'm surprised you don't have one really. I mean that's we have in so there's people got individual things connected to different things. Again we're trying to streamline it to one prime account for the district and using and adding users to that account. So it's part of that streamline kind of process. So um and not just a personal prime account but a business prime account. Right. So sounds good. So there is that. Next thing is justformational. So um just company called art arcs ed um is the company and then lit

107litics I think is how you say that is kind of the product we're kind of exploring a little bit um so so this company does a lot of human resources uh related stuff the particular product we're interested in uh I've been fortunate to see two kind of presentations on it at this point is um human resources too help with negotiations um and what it does uh I think like 98 88% of the school districts in Massachusetts are now utilizing this. Um, don't quote me on that exact percentage, but it is a lot of them. This company originated in Massachusetts and it was founded by former school administrators who have been through a lot of negotiations. Um, and what it it does is they take all of the data related to those negotiations that you're going

108to have and streamline it into one manageable kind of system here for for districts to use. So, they're now selling this product because it's all public information. They do all the work of gathering everything for you, pulling your contracts. You have to work with them a little bit. Uh, and they you can do some really neat things in real-time comparisons as you're kind of going through a negotiation. Hey, what are other districts doing that in our cohort groups? What does the first year bachelors look like? What is the mast's 30, highest level look like? What does the average look like? What's the middle look like? All those type of things. So, I wanted to kind of inform the board that that we're looking at this and we may have a more formal um proposal to

109to go down this road and make a purchase connected to this. Um they're really trying to get their foot into New Hampshire right now. Why I've seen them twice is they did one for us personally. I've also seen it at a superintendent's um conference that we had cuz they're really selling it. The super so we got an initial quote for this which is a little high for my liking. Um but the superintendent's association is working with them to get a discount from for member schools which we would be a member school of and that's when I would like to pounce um on this. So um we would actually we would come to the board before we do that but I want I want to kind of educate you now on this and have you look

110at it at your leisure to see what it's kind of all about. I'm happy to set up if anyone is in is interested particularly you guys who will be in negotiations next year. um they're more than happy to do, you know, a quick it's about 20 minutes uh session with us and go over everything you can see specifically what it is um that they do and how it can be a really helpful tool for us um you know next year in future negotiations. So just this is moreformational at this point. So yeah, same having done two LEA negotiations and an LSSA negotiation, I think that information would be incredibly helpful to have it centralized. A good chunk of negotiations is exchanging that with the union in terms of what are you using for a cohort,

111what are you using and what are you getting for comp comparison purposes. We spend a lot of time on that and Holly making Holly go Holly spends a lot of time on that and so to be able to free her up so she's not having to put her hours doing that but can do it elsewhere. She's I'm sure got a long list of things to do. Yeah, I think it's a huge tool and like they say they use it in the middle in negotiations like project this up. All right, who are your cohort scores? Let's throw them up. Let's look at it together, right? Like this is what it is. We're going to all look at the information together. So, um, so that's moreformational right now than anything else more to come. Sounds good. Um,

112MLOU, like I mentioned at the beginning of the very beginning of meeting, this was a later ad um today actually because we've been working uh with the Lichfield Police Department. Uh, I believe I've me I know this has come up in emergency management meetings. I believe I've mentioned it at the board level previously, but if not, I'm mentioning it now. Uh we've been working with the Lichfield Police Department uh about a memory and understanding about uh remote access to our video surveillance um system at the school uh for the school district. Uh to summarize this, but feel free to read through it all. Um the police department would like to have access to our our security cameras when there are emergencies, right? And that makes sense. It's like if there was um a legitimate safety

113threat to the building or safety situation and they could in real time just log in without having to jump through the hoops of um getting into our system and doing this or whatever. It would help everybody out. So, um that's kind of the crux of where thisou comes from. Um otherwise, they wouldn't be able to access our system. Like they can't just right now randomly hop on our system and check out what's going on going on in our schools, right? there would have to be an actual reason um to do that. So, and then they have to kind of tell us when they're doing it. They have to ask permission if it's just for a training situation or anything like that. There's more details in there. Um so, we've been working with the LPD with

114Chief uh Jones to make sure there's a document here we're both happy with. It's been a very easy process uh for us. We're all on the same page on on why this is important. Um Chris Jamro, our director of technology, knows how to do this now. He's been researching that. So, this is a good time to kind of sign this and kind of get going. So, I wanted to bring it to the board for your review. Um, and uh if you had any questions before I signed it or any hesitation on me signing it if give you an opportunity to speak it. So, I think it's probably long overdue. Yeah. Y has legal reviewed it? Uh, we have not done it by legal yet, but I can certainly ask them. Yeah. I'm just curious if

115there's otherus similar to this out there. It's based on a very similar one. Is it? Okay. I would assume there was a template somewhere. Yeah, there is. And like we we did put a couple of small Lichfield things in it. The police um asked for a little flexibility and one thing that I had no issues with when it came to uh bringing in because you know good example Friday we had to have a a truck come down from uh two Fridays ago, two Fridays ago, whenever that was we had a little fun at the high school, a Manchester truck because of how busy everything was in town at the moment. Actually was one of the trucks that responded. So, a clause in here that allows the chief to allow like through him allow someone from

116like a different police department to to view the tape as well, right? They're not part of the Lichfield community and stuff in those real severe emergency situations and stuff like that. But yeah, it's pretty uh standard for for this type of stuff. Yeah, I don't have an issue with it. All right, if everyone's good. All good. Perfect. Uh last thing I actually might ask Heidi to help me with this a little bit. We have to technically bring this to the board for acceptance. Um, uh, so funny. What what's the group's name? I know it's London. The London Blue Lines. They are a 501c3 cheerleading organization in Londereerry and they include Lichfield students K through 8. Um, for the last two years, full disclosure, I'm on their board. Um, my daughter does cheer with them. Um,

117we have been fundraising, it's about $16,000 to get new cheer mats for our organization. Um, and with new chair mats comes the disposal of old chair mats. And where did they they still had some life in them. Um, and having had So do LMS cheer. I knew LMS did not have mats. They often go to the high school to use the high school mats. Um, and so the thought was if we're getting rid of these anyway, um, can we give them to a school that, um, can find a few more years of use out of them until they're ready to either purchase their own? It does sound like the LMS cheer team is is a lot bigger than it's been in the past few years. So, um the London Blue Lions was happy to do

118that. Uh they coordinated transportation and I think Yeah, mats have been delivered. Yep. So, we have them all stored and they're really big and heavy. So, I hope you accept this donation. They are. They're ginormous. They are. They're really big. Um I think they're 7 ft by 42 feet and we donated eight of them. Oh my god. Yeah. They're very large. But you need seven for a chair comp. Um so um they have eight so they have one to play with. If something happens to one you can throw one out. But and we want to thank thank you Heidi and thank you there for that. That was great. Um the Hudson uh Hudson Litfield Bears also thank you because they'll probably end up using them. They come in and use our facilities. AB absolutely as

119well. So they want to say thank you as well. Um and uh we're happy to accept those. So yeah. Awesome. And that's it for me. All right. Moving on to business operations BA reporting. All right. Um, everything has been updated in the financials and transfers. I don't have any transfers today over the limit to ask permission for. Um, with regard to I want to give a update on the um, Griffin plumbing issue. Um we did have an estimate from um Ham SEPtic who we've been working with for a very long time um to replace the pump um as well as four float switches which I think you may have mentioned Mr. Shoemaker the last meeting right um so we are going to go ahead we we are going to move forward with that um estimate

120as we have had a relationship with them and obviously we are we really want to get this work done um sooner rather than later. So, the items are on order, so it is going to be a little bit um of lag time there, but we um anticipate getting that work done fairly soon. Um Dave Ross has been amazing. I mean, he is still continuing to manually pump the system. I don't even want to know what that entails. Yeah, he's doing an amazing job going above and beyond to make sure that Griffin is functioning the way it needs to. So, we'll be happy when we can get that taken care of. Um, also wanted to do another update on the fire alarm monitoring monitoring. I was able to talk to Chief Nickel actually at emergency management

121meeting. Um, and he had mentioned that um, this was something as far as the um, the fee that they were talking about charging for us. Um, that I guess Kim Kleiner is actually working with the Hudson Town Administrator to see if that's something that they could work out that maybe we wouldn't have to pay those fees. So, we haven't received an invoice at this point. It's just the letter. Um the one thing that Chief Nickel was able to clarify for me which was helpful is that there's um three different fees at the bottom of the letter and we'd actually only be responsible for one of them. It's the digital dialer fee which is $150 per school. So that's certainly better than the $1,000 that we thought it was going to be if we end up

122having to pay. Um and then as far as the penchuk hydrants, um again we thought that we had four hydrants that we were responsible. Um, and talking to Kim Kleiner, um, she did, um, confirm with me that is just the one hydrant at Campbell. The other hydronet as well as the other two are covered under the town. Um, so we only would need to look for um, doing the testing um, and some of the maintenance for the one hydrant, which is helpful. Solar update. Um, we do have there was one um one more item that needed to get taken care of. They weren't able to come over and do that. Um, they need to be able to shut off the system to be able to test it. So, we obviously can't have students in the

123building at that time. So, they are coming this Saturday to do that work. 6 a.m. Who's KW Management? KW Management is the commissioning uh I'm sorry, the other company that Kay is working with. So dynamic grid and KW management are working together to get all the information collected to send off to ever source. Um so I just want to make sure that when we what that what was reported to you was that critical information from the commissioning agent wasn't received from KW management. Okay. So the commission I'm sorry the commissioning agent had to give the information to KW. KW management has been doing like the testing and that's why they weren't able to get they weren't able to do the testing when they were here earlier in the year because there was too much snow

124on the roof. They had to go up and do that. I just want to make sure that this was not the the transfer of information from the commissioning agent to KW management was not did not have to go through K did it? No, but K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K K needs to receive the information from KW management and the commissioning agent in in order to submit the report to Eversource. I'm just trying to make sure that we're not burying the lead on K dropping the ball on something else. So, yeah. No, I can understand that. Andrew is throwing stuff at the TV right now. Is he Is he watching? Oh, I don't know. I'm guessing. I mean, show of hands.

125Supposed to be in training. He's probably not watching, but when he does watch when he does, I was going to say if he's in an evening training like that, there's probably after hours that go with that training. All I can say is I hope by Saturday. I hope that by the next meeting you can say it's done so that you don't have to hear from him. So So did they put the new meter on or is that what they're going to do on Saturday? So no the meter doesn't come until they uh Eversource has received the the report. Okay. Approved it. They have to do their own testing. They have 10 days to put 10 days to get it. Yes. But that clock hasn't started yet because they don't have the information they need correct

126yet. Delay. Shocking. I feel like the sun's gonna burn out before the solar project's done. Anyways, sorry. Anything else? No, that is all I had. Wow. Any questions from the board uh for Miss Darling? Who is K? All right. I I opened up box. There's the worms. So, she owns Dynamic Grid. Um Okay. Yes. They are the company that is in charge of the solar project and that continue to tell us when it'll be ready and then continue to tell us why it's not ready. The source of my swear jar. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Uh curriculum uh instruction and assessment. Moving on to Miss Taylor. Dr. Taylor. Sorry, my bad. Okay. No, I want to get it right. I had director of the year and then right. Um so just a quick um update for tonight.

127Um we had the March 11th PD day and that was a building based day. Um unlike the January days where we did a lot of district things, they did some work in their buildings. um at GMS. I actually did a um you fly half day training for the new foundations literacy program um with all K through2 teachers, all special ed teachers and um Paris and that was um a wonderful kickoff to rolling out that new program. Um and then while we were doing that, grades three and four did some New Hampshire SAS um preparations cuz that is coming down the pike pretty soon. And then in the afternoon they did some vertical and grade level curriculum work which went really well. Um LMS did some vertical teamwork looking at assessments and critiquing for DK um

128which was great. And then in the afternoon, the whole team, the whole staff met going over tier 2 and tier three interventions and um looking at how to do different supports in those different tiered levels. And then um the high school, they did some collaboration in teams with case managers and support staff talking about roles and differentiations between who offers what kinds of supports. And then they did some um whole group and breakouts of AI and instruction and how AI comes into play cuz it's definitely a hot topic um right now. So the March 11th day went very very well for everyone and it was great time. We need more professional development time so we squeeze out everything we can for those. Um, and then the next thing I wanted to bring is just an

129update on vertical alignment. You know, that's part that's a major focus right now um that we've been working through. And um I've met with all of the um math, science, social studies, and um ELA groups. Tomorrow I meet with art and then UAS are starting to come. Bizette is next week and then I have music next month and then we'll do teched and all of those meeting with all of those UA groups uh as well. And as I'm meeting with UAS in those vertical days, I've now started going in my CIA meetings at GMS. I go to grade level meetings every month. We're starting to we picked a we had to pick a focus area for elementary because they're generalists. They teach all of the subjects. So, we're starting with math and then um I'll

130be working at LMS with each of the departments and then CHS also the PLC's in every content area. We're looking at continuing to break down standards. We're going to do priority standards. We're going to um revise competencies and then um our final step will be we'll do priority standards and then we'll do our um curriculum um templates which we showed you a version of a while ago. The curriculum template, it's the UBD template, but I adjusted it a little bit. Those will start to come out next year. This is going to be a very slow, systematic, but very methodical process in making sure that we have consistency in all subject areas and we establish that through line. Um, it's very exciting work. We have our foot on the gas, but we're not flooring it. We're

131gonna make sure that it is done in a way that makes everybody really fully understand exactly what students should know and be able to do by the end of each grade level and that we have that nice consistent we're building on students knowledge prek to grade 12. So, it's exciting work. It's a lot of work. I'm excited for it though. We're rolling. I really got to see at the last that the learning outcomes task force the what you're doing with vertical alignment like in practice and it's incredible. I mean the the amount of work you're doing is unbelievable. I I can't believe that you're able to get everything done that you get done. Um but more importantly you're getting great participation and great buyin. Uh you know it's not just people I mean th those

132rooms previously were not there was no one in them attending those meetings. Now there's people not only attending the meetings, but they are actively participating. They're engaged. Uh you're working towards and you're pushing them outside their comfort zone and they're they're responding positively to that. I mean, it's just fantastic. So yeah, thank you. Keep up the great work. Thank you. Yeah, I know. The learning outcomes house bars has like 22 members. The room was full and you said that that was not even like that was our least attended of because you know circumstances arise. But yeah, there we have a lot of really good participation in the work is really good. So, and a lot of really good candy. I do put out a lot of it. I I'm aware of the candies. I do.

133All the tables are full of candy cuz you need sugar. Excellent. But thank you for that. Yes. Any other questions? No. All right. I will entertain a motion regarding our March 5th uh public minutes. So moved. Is there a second? Second. Oh, Dan, it's your first second. Okay. And then he's going to abstain on the vote. Yeah. Well done. All right. All those in favor of approving the March 5th minutes, please say I. I. Opposed. Abstain. One. That passes 301. And then we will move into new business. um FIC operations discussion and then we have our governing articles. So new business that's like the oldest business. Seriously, I maybe this should not be No, it's not the oldest solar. I don't know. GMS has been brewing for 100 years. Um so we So it's kind

134of interesting because we're basically reporting to you Heidi cuz the rest of us were there. Um I haven't had a chance to watch this yet. This was last night's. Yeah, it was a doozy. It was uh it was lively discussion. Um I actually felt like we were getting somewhere. I personally, you know, people in the committee roll their eyes quite routinely uh at varying points. I personally feel like we are consistently making progress. Like I really truly do. I think since the new year, I feel like I think it's been more effective since the new year. And I think yesterday the conversation was a lang not a language barrier but a definition barrier. Yeah, it was semantic because there's a lot of I think they're saying the same exact thing. So, what we're kind of

135honing in on is uh we're honing in on the idea that we really we've we've done a lot of work to sort of identify what we think the remaining options are. Um we've done a lot of work to identify what we think the criteria some of the criteria should be. Um, you know, obviously we have the onset insight report which details like, hey, here's all the millions of messes that you have, but also we started to talk about education wise. Um, at the last meeting prior to that, we had Kyle Barker come. Um, and as I promised, it would be focused on just helping us understand a redistribution option. Um, one thing that came from that, which really doesn't just apply to redistribution, was the idea that it's really critical, um, that we, the district,

136provide the educational specs that we're looking for out of them. Um, because ultimately, if we don't provide clarity with that, they are going to have to try to guess at what we want and they're not going to be able to deliver well. and he said that that in looking back at what the process he's gone through with with our district, that was one of probably the biggest pitfalls was that it wasn't really it's more about the design or the functionality than right the educational piece. Yeah. So, and I think Yeah. So, from that and I was remote that day, but from that Kyle like really stressed this needs to be a lock step. This isn't here's what I want, go do it. this as you know a build upon what do you think you need

137and let let's further define what that needs to be. Okay. So we have great people I mean Dan being one of them. Dan has a really good background in this. Um we have people I mean Carrie Douglas has a construction background. She's on that committee. Um Joe has a a similar background. So we have a lot of people who really have a lot of knowledge. Um, but you know, we have to be careful as a town to not try to base all of our decisions on just a few people that have knowledge. Like we we have to know when the right time is to go seek out true paid professional knowledge. And I think that that's really where the committee is is coming to. We haven't we don't have a a formal recommendation right now

138uh because we ran out of time. But I think where what we're leaning towards is uh it's going to either be a recommendation to engage an engineer to help us do some exploration on here's you know here's our list which we would have to sit down as a board to discuss our list of priorities um and deliver that list of priorities being careful not to have them guiding solutions just we want you to kind of feed us potential solutions. Okay. Um, and the hope would be that they would be able to provide us with, you know, if we were to do everything for you, this is what it would look like. And then we would want them to break the sort of pieces of priorities down as well. So that way we could look at

139it and say if we as a board don't think that that's going to be palatable to the town, what could we either remove or maybe postpone or whatever, you know, for for tiered implementation. So, okay. So, yeah, it's uh it's it's getting somewhere. We're getting really close. And I think that that the next meeting we will be coming to the board with some sort of directive as to putting out an RFP. Well, the FIC doesn't meet until after our next meeting. I'm sorry. This board's next meeting. So, it'll be after second meeting in April. After the next FIC meeting is what I was, right, which is April 10th. Yeah. trying to get off of the schedule of having the same movie as school board. That's smart. Yeah, that's a lot of time away from home.

140Okay. So, yeah. Um, governing thoughts with the governing. Yeah. I mean, I'm going to be honest with you. We haven't really discussed this. Um, I think Dan Mitchell probably um passed these along because he's the one that compiled them all as we discussed them. We definitely have stuff that we need to button up with that. Um I don't know, maybe we'll make that part of the next um depending on I don't think we we're going to have a full I don't think we'll have a full discussion a full uh agenda's worth for the next FIC meeting. So I I know the FIC really was saying this probably should be a school board. And that that's what I was going to say is the last time that this was brought up was that the vast majority

141of the FIC came back with this is really should be a schoolboard thing to pass down which I I I understand that thought process because you know the uncommittee of the school board and so the directive on the one hand should come down but on the other hand I do really value the opinion of those on the FIC who have had these meetings, you know, consistently for almost a year, almost a year now. And so what's working and what isn't, what needs to be tweaked, I tweaked. I I mean maybe it wouldn't necessarily be complete recommendations or voted on recommendations, but I would put it out there to say that if there are changes that are recommended by members of the FIC, I don't know, maybe one of you guys could be the point person

142to solicit those or Yeah, I think it needs to be the meeting itself needs to be tightened up because it can get a little unwieldy. Yeah. And and I think, you know, we have a pretty good group of folks that are there consistently. I mean, when it started, I think there were 17 or 18 people that signed up. I think the other night we had maybe 12 or 15 with those folks that were from what I watch and what I can see for the most part, it seems to be between 10 and 12. Right. Right. And it's pretty a pretty consistent group. So, we may need to come up with a number and say, "Okay, these folks, you know, the this administration stuff, not that they don't count, but they don't count for the for

143the group and have a number." Um, and I don't know that at some point we shouldn't allow people to offer public input. Yeah. Public comment. You know what I mean? People who aren't part of the committee who may want who may watch and want to offer something up, that kind of thing. Almost like Yeah, we could absolutely a a real like almost like this board runs, but not quite as tight or as long. It's kind of like planning board is a subcommittee of the select board, right? Is that a its own It's not its own committee. people aren't elected to it, right? No, they're appointed to they're appointed so it's but they do public comment and they you know I do want to just you know quickly respond to like I agree that it does

144get a little and I think that's good I I for the most part it's good occasionally it becomes we do try we do try to rein it in I mean I say we but it won't be we anymore but um you know we do try to rein it in I I try to be very very careful about uh looking as though I don't want it to be perceived that I'm silencing people who have differing views, right? So, we try it which which is, you know, candidly does become difficult because there are, you know, people in the committee who have opposing views who get worn down. Um, we've, you know, come close to losing some members because they just feel like it's sometimes repetitive, but we're trying to balance that. So, yeah, we can always tighten

145that up. If I may regarding this, if this is okay with the board, I'm just thinking of timelines here and I know this is something that the committee wanted to look at. Maybe we can uh draft some some suggestions of changes here. You know, between myself and and Dan and Jen and Jake, we at some combination of all of us is always at these meetings, right? So maybe we can take an attempt to to make some updates to this this document, bring that to the next board meeting, which would be before the next FIC meeting, gather feedback from the board, bring that to the FIC committee uh as part of their agenda on the 10th, get feedback from them, come back to the board that next week, and maybe then kind of uh approve something,

146you know, final say on that works. Yeah, I think that's great. Awesome. and I'm happy to help, you know, jump on a call or meet you. Yeah. All right. Anything else from FIC? No. The only comment I would like to make is like I think we're I think we need one more meeting to to come together with a a majority recommendation to the school board. And you know, just be clear that recommendation is not going to be go do go build this, right? It's it's it's it's going to be look down this road. Right. Right. Go find Go find someone professional who can look down this road. Yeah. I I I really like we were almost there and then it was 7:30 and I was like, "All right, I've been like out of my house

147for 17 hours now. It's time to go home." Yep. So, anyways, that's that. Well, that's positive progress anyway. Making We're getting somewhere. All right. Um policy updates. There are none at this time. Um, no second reads, no first reads. Going back to old business, it appears there's none at this time. So, that brings us into school board comments for the evening. Thank you for being willing to continue to serve as vice chair. Thank you, Andrew, if you do watch when you do watch this for for continuing to serve as chair and for continuing on the budget committee because that's brutal. Um, just for like that 12week period. So, just like a quarter of the um I do feel like we've we continue to make incredible progress as a board and I'm proud of the work

148we're doing and I like really enjoy working alongside you guys and I'm excited to have Dan here. I think Dan's going to be a great addition. So, thank you. I agree here. We miss you in case you ever watch one of these. I think she's in Disney this week, but So, that's my only comment. Rough place to be. I know, right? Manifest was all set, right? Yeah. I had three on it. Um, any other school board comments? I'll open it up for our last community input for the night. I will close our last community input for the night. Um, and then we are prepared to go into non-public session. RSA 91- A 3. Um, I believe we are going in under um A, which is the dismissal, promotion or compensation of any public employee. Um

149the hiring of an employee and then perhaps C as well. Is that right? Matters. Yes. If discussed in public would likely adverse yes adversely affect the reputation of any person. Um make a motion non-public. Motion. Second. Second. Uh this is going to be a roll call vote. Peter I. Matt. I. Uh Dan I. And I'm an I as well. Um so thank you for attending. The next meeting you'll have Andrew back at the helm. Um, our next meeting is April 2nd. Does that sound right? I believe it's April 2nd. Yeah, that's correct. And thanks very much and everyone have a good night. Good night. Thanks. Have a good night. We're already there. I know, but