School Committee: December 3, 2020

Transcript machine-generated with Whisper speech recognition (the source video has no caption track). No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

0:00 We are streaming, and I think everyone can hear us. So I will call the meeting to order at 704. We’ll start right off with commendations, and I will turn the floor over to Principal Sean Satterfield. He is going to give us some good things that are going on at the Alvila and Cuffin schools. Welcome, Sean. Thank you, Sarah. Thanks, everyone, for the opportunity to speak tonight. I just want to go through quickly some wonderful things that have been happening at Cuffin and Evelyn through this kind of most challenging school year. As you know, we’ve been in our hybrid models since the third week in September. Though the first few weeks of our dust most definitely were a challenge, all of our staff and students have progressed pretty well through this fall. First, I would like to thank all of our teachers for their hard work in planning and implementing both in-person and remote lessons for all of our students. I’ve seen evidence of excellent collaboration between teachers, working to each other’s strengths in the classroom, and helping each other master the online skills and tools which are now necessary for the success in our classrooms. Our remote teachers have been great resources in this role. As I witnessed sitting in some of the online lessons, the things that the remote teachers are capable of doing remotely is nothing short of amazing. Nine months ago, none of us had any of these online skills. Now many of us do. And we’re teaching others. With our in-school hybrid program, our focus has been on intense language arts and mathematics instruction. And as a result, our teachers have been able to keep up with our curriculum timelines to a great extent.

1:35 Our special needs teachers have been able to continue a high rate of instruction. Often by seeing some of our students on a daily basis. We continue to refine our instruction to meet the curriculum and student challenges as they arise. Another one of our challenges this year has been to work out how to create a sense of shared culture across classrooms, grade levels, and buildings. In previous years, we used our PBIS program to create whole school community meetings and classroom morning meetings. However, this year, that posed a challenge. How do we continue to engage the whole school community, which has spread across classrooms, buildings, and homes throughout the town? Our specialist, Danielle McGrath, who teaches PE, Eileen DeMoor, who teaches music, and our school counselor, Allison Eaton, have developed a weekly virtual community meeting where students from home log in and the in-person classes view the meeting via the smart boards in their classrooms. Thus, everyone is in on and on at the same time. During these community meetings, Mrs. McGrath and Ms. DeMoor encouraged the students to virtually participate in musical and physical education movement activities. They’ve also included pre-recorded videos of students giving examples of being safe and responsible part of our PBIS themes. This turned into a wonderful community activity that includes both, as I said, hybrid and remote students. One of the bigger changes this year is the inability to run small group instruction, which was such a big part of our additional support services. This presented, of course, another challenge.

3:05 To counter this, we moved our reading and math tutors to remote only so that they could run these additional Zoom classes with small groups of students in order to offer this additional academic support. And they’ve come up large in doing that. Additionally, these tutors have been instrumental in the building and helping to substitute for teachers in the classrooms, whether they are out or they are in a meeting. And these tutors have worked as a team to meet building needs while at the same time working as a team to minimize lost online instructional time. Finally, a big thank you to Linda Mills and Joanne LeBlanc, who keep the schools both out of the looking coffin running on a day-to-day basis. There’s no way our schools could be successful on a daily basis without their support and hard work. They truly are the heart of coffin level at the schools. And thank you for the opportunity to speak today. Thank you, Sean. It’s great to hear what’s going on over there. All right, school committee, I will open it up to commendations. Does anybody have anything? I do not have anything at this point. Sarah, you forgot something? I do. First of all, I’ve seen firsthand a first grader in Sean’s building, per se. It’s remote. And they all, everyone’s come together as a team. It’s been wonderful and a very positive experience. But I also want to give a shout out to the special education department because I’ve gotten a chance to speak to kind of see them try things in new ways and, you know, do some things remotely that they hadn’t tried remotely prior.

4:38 And I got to see that firsthand as a parent. And I’ve just been really impressed with how they’ve been willing to think outside of the box and to try new things. And I think that our students will only benefit from that. And so I just wanted to applaud them for their efforts. Thanks, Sarah. I’ve got two. One, I want to just thank Rich Kelleher again. My boys have been taking advantage of his meals that he works, he and his staff work really hard on. And they’re always enjoyable and it’s a great program. So if anybody hasn’t checked it out, I would recommend that they do. And then I just want to take a quick shout out once again to the teachers because it’s parent-teacher conferences, I think last night as well as today. And they’ve just done an amazing job at kind of figuring out how to really connect with parents. And they clearly, in spite of all of the hurdles that they faced this year, really understand the kids just as well, if not better, honestly, than any other normal year that they’ve really taken the time to just figure out how each of them are ticking and what they need in all of these difficult experiences they’re having. So just one more. One more. Thanks, teachers. All right. Well, lead us. Oh, John? Just jump in with one.

6:09 I just want to give a shout out to Dr. Eric Oxford. Some of you know Mr. Eric Oxford, our special services director, but he successfully defended his dissertation on Tuesday and became Dr. Eric Oxford. So I want to give Eric a shout out for that major accomplishment. Absolutely. Congratulations, Dr. Oxford. Well done. That’s fantastic. Thanks, John. Thank you. All right. Dan Howells, that leads us up to you. Actually, two seconds, Dan, before you type in. I forgot to say, state who’s on our call tonight. So for the school committee, it’s Sarah Gold, Emily Barron, Sarah Fox, and David Harris that’s with us tonight. Megan is not here. All right. Dan Howells, are you with us? I think we may not have Dan with us tonight. So I will follow up with him and make sure we can get a report back on the 17th. So that brings us to public comment. If anybody has a public comment, they can go ahead and raise their hand. Otherwise, we will move along. All right. I don’t see anybody raising their hand. So that will bring us over to our minutes. Tonight, we have one set of minutes for September 17th, 2020. Those were in our Dropbox. Did anybody have any additions or concerns before I ask for a motion? All right. So can I have a motion to approve the minutes from September 17th, 2020? So moved.

7:43 David moved. Seconded. Sarah seconded. All right. All in favor, Sarah Gold, yes. Emily Barron, yes. Sarah Fox, yes. David Harris, yes. All right. That passes four to zero. Did John call everybody ahead? So like, you know, we don’t have to, we’re moving through this so quickly. Is that correct? Tonight we’re like, No, my Christmas tree fell over shortly before I left with his meeting. So I’m just kind of in an all business type mood. So I’m going to have to do a little bit of a quick review. I’m going to have to do a quick review. I’m going to have to do a quick review. I’m going to have to do a quick review. I’m going to have to move through. That’s fine. And then we’ll go through a little bit of a quick review of the business type mood. So. All right. So that moves us on to an acceptance of a bench donation. David. I know we had our memo. And David, I think you have a little bit more info to fill the committee in on. Right. I do. And I have. You know, personal memories of. I got involved with youth football and then with my son who actually played football with Ryan Dumay, which was his grandson. And so Dave reached out to me after he had passed away and fought till his father-in-law.

9:17 And then as we’ve seen, there are some locations around town, Crocker Park, some of the upper bleacher areas where there’s memorial benches. And so David said that the family would like to purchase and donate a bench to Marblehead High School for placement at Piper Field. He was a member of the Marblehead Gridiron Club since his formation, and he was a volunteer on the sideline. Chain gang, as it’s known for over 50 years supporting Marblehead High School football, Jared Northross and Parker Rest have agreed to help with the installation. So Bob was there, whether we needed people to handle the down markers for freshman games or junior varsity games or varsity games, you name it, he was here and on the sidelines. And if he wasn’t handling the chains, it was certainly a spectator. And Dan even commented that he knew Bob from his days when he was back at Beverly. So I think it’s certainly appropriate as well. Jared Dumay also played football. His other grandson played football here for four years and went on to UMass. So I think it would be a real appropriate memorial for their grandfather to have that bench placed at Piper Field. Great. Great. Thanks for that backstory, David. Can I get a motion to approve the acceptance of the donation of a bench in memory of Mr.

10:52 Bob Till from his family for placement at Piper Field? So moved. I’ll let David do the first on that. Sarah, you want the second? Sure. All right. All right. Well, thank you to the Dumay and the Till family for sure. That’s a fantastic piece of legacy. I have one quick question. I think this is a great thing and a great idea. I had heard at one point that there was a moratorium on things like the donated benches and stuff. It came up when I was on the Bell School Advisory and someone had wanted to donate something. I didn’t know if that was site specific or if there’s any type of policy things like we need to tweak moving forward. So we looked over the policy on this and it doesn’t seem like it precludes anything. Those policies are on our list to go over as well. So I think it didn’t make it on to the one for this coming Tuesday. But we’ll look at that one for sure in January and just make sure and tidy anything up so that nothing can stand in the way. And I think to your point, Sarah, with the new school, there might be an opportunity for placement of various things that could come forward in the next several months. Whether it’s, you know, some like some of the artworks that you see at the high school

12:24 that could be accepted as a donation, not necessarily as a memorial, but or as we know, there were some benches at the old Bell School that we tried to recoup. So yes, it’s worth looking at for sure. Yep. All right. Any other questions on that? Okay. I will call for a roll call. Sarah Gold, yes. Emily Barron, yes. Sarah Fox, yes. David Harris, yes. All right. That passes four to zero. Thanks everyone. That leads us to John’s updates. John, you’ve got a few updates for us. Excuse me. I do. I’ll just start because I’ve written the weekly update and then the weekly update I’ve said, as I said at school committee last night, so I want to make sure that I actually say the things that I said, I said at school committee. In any given year, December is a hard month. The holidays raise emotions and in a pandemic year or emotions are high, anxiety is high, fear is high, frustration is high. And for each person, that’s real. People that want more in-person instruction, their frustration is high because they’re listening to experts talk about in-school transmission rates and the governor’s push

13:56 for more in-person. People that are fearful of COVID and transmission are worried that we’re continuing with in-person instruction. And as I’ve said throughout this, everyone is right. It’s very real. In December is a hard month in a given year. And I would just ask that we all continue to lean into this work and realize that people are doing the best that they can and working harder than they’ve ever worked. I appreciate your shout out to the teachers. Sarah, I feel like we’re in a group. We’re working together. But we all need to do our part. And so when you travel out of state, you have to abide those quarantined and again, things change. But children coming to school and saying, I was away. And for years, parents have sent sick children to school. Kids will come in and I say out of the mouths of babes, you know, they’ll say, I grew up this morning, but mom told me to come to school anyway. Or I was running a fever, but dad gave me a couple of Tylenol and said, I have a meeting in Boston today, so you need to go to school. It’s different now. And we don’t, we have to play our part or take a role in this and work together.

15:27 And so it is really an awkward place for our educators to have a student in class say, I went to Vermont last weekend, or I went to DC to visit somebody and not abide those quarantines. And then teachers feeling like they have to report families and then families giving schools grief or enforcing things. I really just ask that we come together and recognize that this is tough for everyone. And we’re all working hard to do the right thing. So that’s kind of my philosophical update. I think it was Megan who had asked rather than when my goals were due, giving you a laundry list of things that have happened since September. So what I did was try to put a running progress indicator to date, and I sent that out to the committee for each of my goals. And I’ll just briefly go over it. The new superintendent induction program, I continue to go to the monthly meetings, the coach Chris McGrath comes to our leadership meetings and she does coaching sessions with me. I’ve done 25 plus entry meetings. I’m moving over to the town side of that and then doing the data collection and document review where I look at AP scores and SAT and ACT and MCAS and all of that. So that work continues in earnest and they’ll be going well.

16:57 Budget, I meet weekly with Michelle who is just absolutely phenomenal. I really value what Michelle brings to the district. Monthly meetings I list as with Jason Silva, but I don’t think that there’s a week goes by that Jason and I were not in contact. And I really value that relationship as well. I know that during the interview process, that was an important component that the town and the school relationship is for. And I really value the work that Jason has done to collaborate with me and to make that transition smooth. I’ve been meeting with Ben Berman, chair of the finance committee, which I find invaluable for historical perspective and in terms of the budget. Working on capital requests, I believe that information has been submitted and I know the facilities committee that Sarah led. They’re looking at a capital review. So that will be helpful as we budget plan. Michelle and I are going to meet with each principal and director to sit down and go over some historical information and to have them look at their buildings or their programs and see what they need to really make those run optimally. Put together a budget calendar, talk about collective bargaining. I don’t want to steal Jason’s thunder. He’s going to give you an update a little later on that. And then using data to inform the decision, looking back over trend data.

18:31 And so I did an enrollment for the last 10 years and I’m going to share that with the committee at our next meeting. I think you’ll find that very interesting, the demographic shift in the district and the enrollment shift over the last 10 years. The leadership team goal for professional practice. We had a retreat in July. We have weekly meetings. We’re doing a book study, lead like a pirate. Shelly Burgess, I thank Nan Murphy for helping us lead the leadership team through that. We’ve been working on some case studies together and we hired a new tech director, which will be coming later in my update. Lead like a pirate. The evaluation goal we launched TeachPoint, which has been super helpful. So Nan and I have a view of the district on who’s the evaluations that are being done, the goals being set. Administrators submitted their goals. So they’re modeling this work for educators. We’re working on a walkthrough calendar. I was at Vets today. It’s just so great to get out of Widget Road. Not that I don’t like Widget Road, but there’s so much great stuff happening in the buildings. And I got to spend some time with the seventh grade team today. So that was great seeing science and Spanish and Latin and math. So really good stuff. And then we’re doing some review of evaluation data and trying to come together as a leadership

20:08 team for what high quality instruction, excuse me, high quality instruction looks like. And coming to a consensus on that so that I’m not walking into a classroom and saying, oh, that’s wonderful. And then somebody else saying, no, I don’t think that. So we’re going to be doing some case studies around that. And then the final goal, the district improvement is equity. And Marblehead has really taken a lead. I’ve been part of an equity work group that has been meeting for the last couple of weeks. Tomorrow, METCO is running a equity retreat, which will go from eight to one. I’m actually presenting in one of the sessions. So we are going to be offering some pilot programs for METCO in January for educator PD and doing an equity audit across the district. So there’s some great stuff happening there. We just hired a bilingual BCBA today. So the commitment to our equity work, I feel really good about our progress today on that. So that’s kind of the superintendent’s goal update. I do want to introduce our new director of technology, Steven Kwiatik, who has been at Manchester Essex for the last 20 plus years. As their network administrator, he was able to spend a half day in the district yesterday with Kathy and the technology team. He’ll be back next Tuesday to do another half day or day in the district.

21:45 There’s genuine enthusiasm about Steven and everyone that has met him is really enthusiastic about the perspective that he’s bringing to the district. So I’ll just kind of dish to Steven for maybe a 30 second introduction, bio, and welcome to the district. Steven, take it away. Thank you, John. I’m very excited to join the Marblehead School District and look forward to becoming part of the community. As John said, I’ve been with Manchester Essex for a little over 20, almost 22 years now. I have enjoyed my time there, been able to help them grow with their technology. And I see a lot of great things from Marblehead and look forward to helping to bring Marblehead to the next level for their technology needs and working with each of the principals to get their individual schools where they need it to be and where they want it to be. Great. Well, welcome, Steven. And great. Two wonderful things that Steven is bringing. He’s been part of two building projects, which is very timely for us, David, for him coming on board where we’re at in the building project. And he is very familiar with Aspen, which is our student information management system. So we’re looking forward to Steven joining the leadership team officially on December

23:18 14. And so I want to thank everybody that was part of that search. And certainly this time of year, conducting an expedited search as we did, we’re very, very fortunate in the end result. So if I could, Steve, welcome, David Harris. And I’m on the building committee. So glad to have you on board. And if I didn’t see an email from yesterday where Dr. Barkey had sent out an introduction so that I can try and ramp you up with the project and put you in touch and it’s in perfect timing. You know, we’re starting to make even the decisions about whether we’re going to go with the whiteboard or the touch screens. And I understand you even put the time to participate in a recent meeting on that discussion. Not on buying the technology, but as you know, how we’re going to wire each classroom. So perfect timing. So I’ll be reaching out to you in the coming weeks and get you in touch with the people as we start moving forward and, you know, look for purchasing, looking up at any and everything that’s going on. And then the second piece is I understand you’re a family. So are you going to be able to provide any insight on how we might be able to beat Beverly in football? Can you be like an inside scout? Maybe. You know, Beverly has always had a hard time beating Marblehead. My son was supposed to be on the freshman team this year.

24:49 So we’re still hopeful that eventually they’ll be able to have a game. But you know, it’s already tough to beat you. So I don’t know if I can give you any insights. We’re getting very heavy on our Beverly administrators here. I was thinking that it’s like more than half, I think, are have been stolen somehow from Beverly. Welcome, Steven. It’s very, very nice to have you here. Would you pronounce your last name for me? I tend to butcher names. I apologize. It’s Quiet Tech. Okay. Perfect. And welcome. Thank you. Yes. Welcome, Steven. We’re very excited to have you. Thank you very much. And superintendent’s license, anytime the listserv is hot on a topic, I want to bring it to school committee and learn through the fall athletics conversations. Today the listserv was on fire with what districts are doing in terms of winter sports. And are they doing swimming? Are they doing basketball? Do they have ice hockey? Do they have? And it is a mixed bag. And I would just like to say that I want to commend A.D. Siglarski because he called together Mr. Bauer and I and Andrew Petty to talk about winter sports and how we could offer them, given the MIAA guidelines, and how we could entertain

26:20 the idea of having spectators, if that is something. So those conversations are ongoing. I don’t have anything to report out tonight, but we are moving forward with conversations about winter sports. Again, I think it is in line with kind of my philosophical overview to start. I know Swanscott is having their conversation tonight about winter sports. So it is all going to depend on what districts decide and what the league decides in terms of will there be enough to build a schedule and to have a season. But our decision at this point is moving forward with winter sports that we offer here and then working with the league to be able to build a schedule of games. Sports or practices are scheduled to start December 14th. Then interscholastic play would start when we return from the holiday break January 9th. John, did Greg give you any sense of what they are talking about at the league level? If there is going to be teams to play, if, you know, kind of where that discussion is going? He has not given me any update in terms of the league, but I do believe they have a meeting tomorrow, it might be. So I can update the committee in terms of an email if and when Greg gets me that information.

27:50 Great. Well, I think Greg did a great job with the coaches of keeping everyone very safe over the fall. So I have no doubt that he is working in the same direction. And that’s all. All right. Great. Thank you very much. If I could just for a minute go back to the goals. Okay. I just had one or two questions. So if you could just expand for a couple of minutes on how it’s been working with your coach, I know that was one of the, you know, the Massachusetts Association of NIS School Superintendents brings that to us as an opportunity. And I know we have an excellent coach that’s working with you. And, you know, has COVID like impacted your ability to work with the coach? Or how is that? Can you talk about that a little bit, John? It’s wonderful. Chris McGrath is in touch weekly. She is also the coach for the Linfield Superintendent, Kristen Bogle. And so we did a group meeting two weeks ago in Linfield. She comes to our leadership team meetings, and then she provides feedback. So my guess is she might even be on the call tonight. And then two hours after this meeting ends, I will get a narrative about what I said, how I did it, things to consider for moving forward.

29:22 It’s been really helpful. And then there are three new superintendent meetings every month. And those are on different topics like difficult conversations, budget, personnel, high-quality instruction, goals, vision, mission. So all new superintendents across the state get together three times a month for six hours. So two hours each session. That’s a great deal to do that. So a lot of peers, a lot of, have you found any people that, you know, you’re picking up the phone, obviously people that you knew coming into this job? There are three of us that were high school principals. And we were in the state association together, and we call ourselves the freshman class of 23. That’s when our contracts will expire. Our initial contacts will expire, and we are in regular contact. And I think that’s something that I find very comforting about these turbulent times, is we’re not alone. And the questions and the concerns and the problems that come up, I can reach out to the superintendent in the neighboring district or two neighboring districts or three neighboring districts and say, what are you guys doing? And so like, Gloucester has a new superintendent, and Linfield has a new superintendent. I think Peabody has a new superintendent.

30:54 So there’s really a camaraderie of people in this work, new to this work, navigating these really tough times. Yeah. So do you work with Ben and Kristin often, or is it just through these meetings? No, I can pick up the phone and Kristin and I, she came here about a month ago to spend the afternoon in the district, and then I went down to Linfield to spend time. And it’s just helpful to kind of bounce ideas and to have somebody that you’re connected with that you can kind of process things through. And I would say there’s probably a half dozen of those that I feel comfortable enough to drop an email or pick up the phone and send a text. Great. That’s wonderful. I had a question on your goals too that digging, I don’t know if it’s under your goals or a superintendent update in that area, but the math curriculum was due to be one of the things we looked at, but we kind of, with everything COVID and everything exploding that did, we didn’t get to have that working group up and running for the summer. Well, do you foresee us having that identified and at least having ballpark figures to go with that moving into budget season in the next month? Nan and I talk about that regularly. I see her smiling on the other end because I think today we were having that conversation that when we first came in in July, that was one of the first topics that people were

32:28 talking about was the work group for the new math curriculum. And it is not fallen off the radar. And I’m confident that Nan and working with the building leaders will be able to have some information on that, particularly as it pertains to the budget. Perfect. Very good. Great. All right. Anything else? Okay. Then I will move us along to our schedule of bills. We had a schedule with all of the invoices and everything in our dropbox. So can I get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling $2,394,070.10? So moved. So Sarah moved. Emily second. All right. Did anybody have any questions on that? I just want to put out there that David has mentioned this before. Once in a while we get like a big schedule of bills. It’s because the building committee stuff comes through us and it’s not that all of a sudden we went, you know, hog wild. That’s what it is. For anybody that pays attention to that, you know, monthly number or biweekly number. Yep. Thanks, Sarah. All right. Roll call votes. Sarah Gold. Yes. Emily Barron. Yes. Sarah Fox. Yes. And David Harris. Yes. All right. That passes four to zero. All right. So that brings us along to our discussion item.

34:00 So we have with us tonight, Jason Silva, and he is coming to talk with us about two things. The first will be the collective bargaining process. And then I asked him if you guys remember correctly a couple of weeks back. We’re a couple of meetings back, I guess. Mr. Gessner had sent us a letter and we had talked about different properties. And so I had mentioned at that point that Jason and I had had a conversation regarding different things going on in the town side and some interest. So Jason’s here to fill us in a little bit more in depth on that. So Jason, I will just ask you to unmute yourself and you can join our meeting. Hi. Can you hear me? Yes. Okay. Good. How’s everyone doing? Great. Thanks. How are you? Great. Welcome, Jason. I’m good. I’m sorry my video is not working. My computer is not cooperating. So before I start, I just want to give a proper Beverly Panther welcome to Mr. Biotek. Aren’t you? Biotek, Panther Pride, baby. So, no, thank you. Thank you very much for inviting me to the meeting tonight, Madam Chair, members of the committee. I have two quick things. I don’t want to take too much of your time. But I do want to take a quick moment to review. The first thing will be, I think, quicker than the second. So I’m here essentially to notify you that the committee that the board of

35:31 selectmen has authorized me to negotiate and collective bargaining activities on their behalf and to represent them. So, you know, we, as I think Dr. Bucky mentioned, but maybe not, we had a meeting together with our respective labor councils a couple weeks ago to kind of start the conversation and start the strategy. I look forward to working with the committee. And I’m not sure if the committee has appointed a subcommittee for that purpose yet, but I, okay. So I’m looking forward to working with all of you. As you all know, this year is a unique year. It will be a unique process, I suspect. But I’m looking forward to partnering with you on that. The second, if there’s any questions or comments or anything like that, just you can feel free to interrupt. The second topic up here to speak about is there are several planning efforts underway in town that always end up with discussions around and about school-owned properties. So given the number of efforts that are happening and the number of

37:02 projects that are being considered, and also the recent communication that we received from Mr. Gessner, I’m thankful that Chairman Gold invited me to speak to this. So there are really three major efforts that I’d say in some way, shape, or form have involved school-owned property. And I’m just going to breeze through them. I’ll start, though, with a separate item, which is the Gary School. So as you all remember, was it last town meeting? Time flies when you’re having fun. But the school committee declared that surplus and transferred the property, voted to transfer that property over to the town, and voted to select, and the town meeting voted on it. I thought that process was, I don’t know how closely you followed it, but the town formed a reuse committee with members with planning expertise, historic preservation expertise. We hired a consultant to help facilitate. I thought that process worked really well, and ultimately now we have a project for eight condo units that is in front of the old historic district committee. And there’s a hearing scheduled this month to review the proposal

38:35 and hopefully act on the proposal. In keeping with that process, there’s a few other things happening. So the first thing is the town last year, final, actually completed this year, a housing production plan. The housing production plan also had a committee of stakeholders and was facilitated with help from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. The plan includes kind of an assessment of current housing conditions, an inventory of our housing assets, and then makes a whole host, I think there’s 26 total, of recommendations that we can do to help with access and affordability of housing in town. And they’ve ranged as a broad spectrum of recommendations from regulatory changes to zoning bylaw, potential changes, programmatic, and also identifies potential development opportunities. So when you think about potential development opportunities, it won’t be surprising to you that some school properties were identified as being potential development opportunities. So places like the Coffin School, the Eveless School,

40:08 and I think even Beacon and Green Street were referenced in the plan. One of the recommendations in that plan was to form a housing production plan implementation committee so that it’s a plan that doesn’t sit on the shelf but actually is a document that is meaningful and those recommendations are acted upon. So the Board of Selectmen created the implementation committee and now we’re in communication with MAPC, again, to help with some technical expertise and facilitation. One of the sites that we’ve talked about doing a planning exercise, and really that’s all it is at this point, is at the Coffin site. To look at the Coffin site and see what could be potential development options, but with a focus on housing. This would be a housing production plan process with a focus on housing. This doesn’t bind us to anything. It would be, you know, it would be just a planning exercise so we could get a sense of that. I envision that process to be an inclusive one with school committee involvement, school department involvement to the extent that’s of interest and involvement from stakeholders and neighbors as well.

41:40 Similar to the process we undertook with the Gary schools. The next effort that’s underway, as you may know, the town received a gift of a little over $2 million that was from the Lars Anderson Trust. And the gift, one of the conditions was it was, there was an express preference for winter sports support to use that funding source for, to support winter sports. And so there’s a lot of people excited about that, especially youth hockey. But a lot of others, the park and rec and the board of selectmen are obviously, it’s of great interest to them as well. And so the selectmen with the Rec and Park Commission created an ice rink committee. That committee is also working with a consultant who has expertise in constructing and developing and designing ice rinks. And so we’ve been meeting over the last probably four to six months on first potential types of rinks. Do we want a fully enclosed rink? What kind of facility do we want? What kind of outdoor rink? And what sites in town could potentially support that use?

43:11 Once again, school properties have been identified as potential sites that could potentially support that kind of use. Mainly at Eveleth School and at Beacon and Green Street, although there are challenges there with site conditions and as probably many of you know, a good portion of that site is wet as well. So there are permitting challenges and issues with that too. But just from a size perspective, it could accommodate it. So that’s happening. That’s an ongoing process that’s still happening. There is planned, while it’s been an open and public process, there is planned proactive outreach with stakeholder group meetings, separate meetings, and that would include neighborhood discussions. The last project that I’ll talk about, sorry I’m going on longer than I thought, would be is the archive facility, which I think everyone is aware of. So the archive facility, there’s a committee that was formed prior to me starting, and they’ve identified the basement of the Mary Alley building as the most suitable location for a facility like that. They were lined up, from a timing perspective just so you know, they were lined up in thinking

44:43 that they would go to town meeting this year. But because everything has kind of been delayed a year, they’re pushed out. I think the library is planning to go this year to town meeting. And then the following year I believe the archive facility is going to attempt to do that. So while that’s not school property so to speak, it certainly has impacts on the school department and the school committee. And so you know, there was talk when Superintendent Paul Deaf was here, and about potentially using the out of the school for that, for administrative offices. But frankly I think that’s still a discussion that needs to be had between us. So those are the three major things that are happening right now. They involve school properties to an extent that I wanted to make sure that everyone was briefed on it. I intend to follow up with all of you with some backup materials so you have that they’re too long to go through right now. But at your leisure, I’ll send that information to you in an email. And you can look through it and if there’s any other follow up questions based on that material too. As always, I’m happy to talk.

46:15 So that’s it. Thank you. Great. Thank you, Jason. Anybody have any questions? Sarah? Of course. So do you have a rough idea of timeline in any of this? Because I think the earliest we would be ready to go to town meeting with either Coffin or Eveleth is town meeting of 22. So I don’t know if that’s too much of a cult on any of these projects. So Madam Chair, Miss Fox, I think that the timeline is very fluid, I would say, in a lot of this. I should have stressed before him, but I do want to stress that. I say all of what I went through with the full understanding that there’s likely a conversation and process that the school department and the school committee need to go through to measure their needs and wants and how you want to go about potentially looking at those properties. So I want to make that clear that we fully understand that that’s the priority in all of this. And if it so happens that these become available, there are planning exercises in the works that we could take advantage of. So, you know, especially Sarah for the ice rink project

47:52 and the housing project, I think that those timelines aren’t set in stone by a lot. So there’s this flexibility. And we have some time at Widget Road too, before we’re kind of edged a little bit out, just for our planning purposes of where we go and went. Yeah, you know, since the pandemic, we haven’t really, we haven’t met since that, and I think there were a few months even before that that we haven’t. But certainly because of the pandemic, the timelines have been affected. So I’d want to talk to that group before I gave a definitive answer on that. But I think right now they’re hoping, if all goes as planned, that the archive facility will be at town meeting in 22. And then the timeline will be determined following that. Okay. So I think it’s good. Thanks, Jason, for the update. But to get ahead of it, because even if you think about it, if you, let’s say a property became available in 22, then you would spend the next two years studying what to do with the property potentially. And now you’re that, so if you start now and try and consider what some of the options might be in advance,

49:24 then the town isn’t left with, you know, a shuttered property that they need to be concerned about either maintaining or the safety of the property and everything else. So, yeah, I think it’s always good timing. And I think as you know, the finance committee has always wanted to look at what assets the town owns and how they could be put to, you know, to better use. And certainly you’ve described two or three different options that are out there among many that, you know, green open space and park and recreation space is certainly another option. I think to be considered when it comes to how we want to use the properties. And yeah, it’s good to get out in front of it. Jason, isn’t there a, when we were doing the feasibility study, isn’t there a sliver of property that comes down behind the water tower towards the Green Street athletic field that is somehow deemed to be school property? I think, are you talking about the sliver between Tioga Way and Lincoln Ave? Correct, yeah. Yeah, there is. We actually looked at that for the, yeah, we looked at that property for the ice rink and it was just it didn’t work for that use. But there is a sliver that the school, schools own between Tioga and Lincoln Ave, yeah.

50:58 Right. It does some great issues and it’s not the best site, but yeah. Right. Yeah. I wonder if we shouldn’t look at that site or just have a discussion at some point about that site and Beacon Street, because from what we got out of the feasibility study, Beacon Street, for the purposes of the schools, what we would need is not buildable. It may be buildable for a smaller building or for another use or conservation land, but for our purposes, it doesn’t provide anything that we could use outside of unless we want to do some type of outdoor classroom project type of thing. But I think that if we have that conversation, that might be something that we put a placeholder on the warrant for this year because we already know we can’t build on those. Like I said, short of an outdoor classroom, those aren’t buildable for the schools. Yeah, I think our next step is probably forming some type of advisory committee type set up so that we can really get a better grip on where our needs are going, what properties are on the list and just kind of have a handle on that so that we can then start to work with the town on these types of things. Yeah. All right. I’d be interested in being on that if we move forward with that at some point. Okay. Thanks, Sarah.

52:29 All right, Jason. Thank you very much. Always good to have you here. We appreciate you joining us and giving us all this info. Well, thank you for having me, and I always appreciate the school committees and the superintendents and the school department’s partnership in support. So I look forward to working with you on this and many, many other things, hopefully. Thanks. Absolutely. We feel the same way. Thanks, Jason. All right. So that leads us to the subcommittee and liaisons updates. So I think we had a really full subcommittee update last time. And as I was talking to Lisa and planning this meeting, it seems as though all of our subcommittees are basically meeting the second week of the month. So that would put them sort of as we move forward, all kind of being updated at the same time. So we’ll just have to take a look at that and maybe hold back on some just so that we can have a really full conversation around things that are going on and not deal. You know, this meeting is going pretty quickly, but some of the others don’t. So just to make sure that there’s plenty of time, but I’ll work to get a better organizational handle on that. But I left it on here because I just was wondering if there was any liaison updates that anybody wanted to give. Anything? Metco? All right. All right. Then that will bring us along to the building project update. David, you had given me something to share.

53:59 I did. I did. Please, teleport. Let’s see if I can get it to… All right. There you go. Tell me when you want me to change the screen. Okay. So thanks for the opportunity. So just wanted to thank Brian Johnson from Left Field, who is our OPM representative that’s onsite every day for providing somebody photos so that I could give an update to everybody. These current as of Tuesday. So maybe a few things have changed, but it’s pretty much the layout as of Tuesday. So I’ll start right here. This is, you know, what you’d be looking at is if… Where the entryway, the main entryway would be to the school. To the right is the… Would be the entryway to the cafeteria and the gymnasium. So you can see the progress that’s going on there as they’re getting ready to lay the brick and window installation. We’ve had one truckload of windows that arrived on Monday. Another set of windows were scheduled to arrive today. So windows will be going in shortly. And, you know, we should start to see the progression there with the windows as well.

55:32 So… Okay. This is a second floor classroom looking out towards Jaffa Road. And one of the things that’s interesting about the classrooms that we learned on Wednesday, they will be doing a mock-up of an individual classroom, at least from the perspective of, you know, the layout for, you know, the wiring, the windows, the doors. And so they’ll have… So then as they move to each of the other rooms, the contractors will know exactly how they want it to be. And they’ll do a similar mock-up once they get to, you know, the interiors and F-F&E. So that’s a second floor classroom, which will either be second or third grade. This is the second floor hallway. And for those of you who were there, I think you were there, Dr. Bakke. And Emily, you were there, you know, the partitions weren’t up. And we could certainly see looking down and the placement of how that’s going to start looking. And, you know, how the corridors will start to come together. And it’s certainly, you know, not your… Not that we don’t love Marblehead High School, but it’s not your typical narrow hallway with lockers on each side of the hallway.

57:06 It’s going to be really open and bright and really inviting. So that’s exciting. Next slide. So this is standing from the second floor, looking down into the cafeteria. And so where most of those frames are, door and window frames are laid, that’s essentially the stage. And then beyond that is where the gymnasium would be. And to the left is where there would be another egress where students will be able to leave the cafeteria to go upstairs and go outside. And this is, besides being the elevator shaft on the back, this is the Emily Barron Lighthouse, as I like to call it. You can see it coming into play, the circular area at the bottom. And then when you see the boarded area at the top, they’re still finalizing the procurement of the glass that will be a, you know, simulated lighthouse with a look as you drive into the school. And then it will come down into the classroom and then you’ll be able to, you know, look up as well. And then this area, from this area, you’ll be able to see down into the first floor. There’ll be some open benches for students. And then on the opposite side of the elevator is where the media

58:38 technology and library will be. So that’s real exciting to see that coming together. And here we are, the west elevation. So that’s the area facing Dartmouth Road, where the school, where the brick has started to go in and moving right along with the brick, you know, ideally you want to have temperatures so you don’t incur any delays or extra cost or additional heating that is between roughly 40 and 50 degrees. And we’ve been pretty lucky tomorrow and this weekend might be a little bit of a struggle. But so far, so good on schedule. And everything’s looking good with Lighthouse, who’s doing the bricklaying. And you’ll see another picture here of brick. After it’s been washed. So, you know, after they lay the brick and do the mortar, you know, the brick gets washed and cleaned and then it’s prepped to receive the window frames, the doors, each of the first floor, as we know, the first floor classrooms all have exterior doors and the window frames. So that just gives you a little close up look of what that’s going to look like. This is up on the roof. And so, as described here, the skylight has, you know, temperature projection. They’ll have temporary heating in the winter

1:00:09 since the mechanicals will not be up and running. So, Jason Gilliland and Marvel Head Fire Department were on site earlier this week, reviewing the specifications of the temporary heat. And all the safety requirements have heat in there. So, as seen here, they put this over, you know, to allow for some additional heating benefits until the complete envelope and windows of the building are in. And they’re really getting ready to do some leak testing on the roof. So, that’s exciting too. So, that’s one of the things you want to get done so that they can start working with doors. And this is a pretty busy site. It’s hard to envision. But this is the playground. And multipurpose field, you know, where we’ll have the organic garden, which will be closest where they have some of the concrete prep work going on is where the outdoor organic garden will be located. And then along the building will be, you know, the basketball court and, you know, back where those crushed stones and piles are. But it’s, um, I don’t think the picture does injustice for those of us who’ve been there. It’ll be, you know, second to the veterans school, it’ll probably be one of

1:01:41 the biggest recreational play fields and outdoor educational spaces that we have in the district. And so, that’s pretty exciting, but it’s been very beneficial to have this as a lay down area, as you can see, for the ongoing construction work. Just to give you people a scope who are used to being at Bell and knowing what we had previously, if you look in the far back corner you can still see the swing set standing, that tiny, tiny, tiny little structure. And it, yeah, it was that little area around there that the kids had to play. And they did a blacktop area, but that basically was it. So, to give you an idea of scope, what we’re offering now versus what we had then, you can see what they had for, you know, the swings. That’s a great, great point. It’s a good point of reference that that swing set’s still there. Again. Alright, that’s the picture. Almost done. And then, you know, this is a perspective from the roof, looking back towards how the parking lot will be laid out. And, you know, just with the idea also that this school, I mean, we’ve talked about this and talked about this from a neighborhood perspective, taking cars off the street, having a place for visitors to park, having room for queuing, everything that’s gone into the design. Once again, we’re fortunate that this space,

1:03:13 and one of the reasons it was chosen, ultimately, is the final space. Second to the high school, there is no school that has, you know, a hundred off-street parking spaces and the ability to queue up traffic with, you know, an entry area and an egress area. And one of the things that’s nice about this is, so they did a, you know, what’s, you know, the temporary layer of asphalt, they took advantage of doing that in early fall. One, to make it convenient for the contractors to park there. And two, to just keep the site cleaner. It’s cleaner for the neighborhood. It doesn’t create dust, mud on the streets for trucks entering, coming and going. So, you know, it’s called the binder coat. So, when they put that binder coat down, it was part of Gilbane’s foresight to get that done. And as you can see along the back, that’s where all the brick, the brick is received and delivered. So, it’s really helped keep the site clean and neat and organized as well. So, that image that we just hit up there too makes me think of when we were out, you know, doing the tours to pitch the school and the information tours, if you will. Katie Martin and I always had this one line where we talked about how many parking spots there were on site versus what we had previously

1:04:47 and she used to joke and give the example of the mom carrying the kid and pushing a stroller and the cupcakes for the party and all this juggling walking two blocks away. That will be for probably a decade. But that parking lot, the fact that we can put everybody on site to get to that school is life changing for anybody picking up their kids, any faculty, people in that neighborhood that no longer will have you know, 80 moms parking in front of their driveway or dads parking in front of the driveway. So, that in and of itself is going to be life changing. Yeah, it’s exciting to see it all coming along. Thanks again to our OPM. So, the last little update is so we have a building committee meeting on Monday to affirm what’s called the GMP or what’s known as the Guaranteed Maximum Price. And at that point the project will pretty much send a submittal into the Massachusetts School Building Authority affirming the Guaranteed Maximum Price of the project. And as I sit here tonight we’ve pretty much bought out 85% of the project, the last major piece to buy out is landscaping. So, there will be some ongoing discussions there and landscaping will be listed as an allowance. A few other things like window dressings and some other things that typically come towards the end of the project.

1:06:21 And the project is, as we sit here tonight, it’s on schedule and on budget. So, we’re very excited. So, I had one piece to add. Gene Raymond, the architect, called me later this afternoon to let me know that they’ve moved into the next stage as far as FFNE goes. And I’m going to be sending out an email the next day or so to the people that were involved with looking at those interior pieces. But he’s going to be working up some image boards for us. He’ll do some stuff in SketchUp, but then he’ll get some image boards and sales boards with the actual pieces of things that we’ll be looking at. So, that will be exciting to see that piece get fleshed out and brought through the various levels of the committee. That’s very exciting. That’s good news. I’m glad he reached out to that. We were wondering when he might be able to get back to you on that. So, that’s good to hear he’s ready to move on that, to keep that moving forward. The woman from his office that’s handling the LEED certification also emailed me today. Had two more questions for me. And that seems to be moving along. One of them had to do with the organic garden so I put her in touch with Katie Martin. And the other one has to do with some signage. So, I’m going to touch base with Todd in the next few days. But that’s the LEED certification that’s moving right along too. Wonderful. Great stuff. Really good.

1:07:53 Now we just need to figure out as I’ll say again what we’re going to call the school. We can get to that after the New Year. The Policy Subcommittee is going to be looking at that policy at our meeting on Tuesday. And then it will make sure that that’s all tightened up and everything. And then we’ll be able to move forward after the New Year. We had a look at the deed and the circumstances in which the land was gifted too. Remember we were going to look at that? Yep. Writing that down. Probably for the third time. Alright. Alright. Thanks guys. Okay. So that leads us to closing business. New business. I will just take a second to note the MCAS resolution just with an oversight that it didn’t make it onto this agenda. So it will definitely be there on the 17th. So I apologize. I was a little glad when it didn’t end up because I didn’t have a chance to talk with Nan yet. So hopefully over the next two weeks it will be a little more calm and I can get in there to speak with her. I just wanted to note that. I had two items. One I talked briefly with John via I think email but it may have been phone. It’s been a long week. I apologize. And it was one of those things that’s been coming up and listservs he said on his end. But I’m wondering if, Sarah, if you want to reach out to

1:09:23 Dorothy and see kind of how school committees are handling the governor’s order about the travel policy and if districts are coming up with a policy and how they’re handling that. John really spoke to it perfectly. You know these kids come in and they do their weekend news and they tell you all about where they’ve been and spill their guts. And that kind of puts the schools in a really awkward position. When Johnny says he was this and that in these different places that we know require the quarantine or the test. Chris Stevens put a tweet up after our last meeting how I said in school in person education is a privilege and I got a lot of flack for that. And the point I was getting at is there is an order out from the governor. And none of us are above the rules. And so we have to make sure that we’re not putting our educators in a really precarious situation of feeling like they’re policing yet another thing here. So I’m just wondering what school committees are doing to, in the way of policy making, to kind of clean this up. So that was one question. And then I also was remiss when it came to accommodations not, I wasn’t paying attention to the timing of our next meeting. I want to give a commendation to Kathy Hennessy who is retiring. Especially this year with everything

1:10:55 that has happened with our reliance on technology. I’ve been amazed at the hours she’s put in at how she’s, you know, she’s still had a positive attitude whenever I’ve had to reach out with a question from one of my kids. I think she’s been working 10 and 12 hour days pretty much since COVID started. So if any, everyone deserves a break, but Kathy most certainly has earned her retirement. And I wish her well in that. And thank her for her service to the Marblehead Public Schools. And I just want to acknowledge her and thank her. Absolutely. Thank you, Sarah. I didn’t do my math on those dates either. So I appreciate that. Alright. Anybody else from any new business? Alright. I don’t think there was any correspondence that we’ve got for tonight. So I will adjourn us at 8.15. I think that’s a record. It is a record.