School Committee: January 21, 2021

Transcript captured from YouTube auto-captioning. No speaker labels; proper names and dollar figures occasionally misheard. Click any timecode to jump to that moment in the source video.

4:02 so i’m sure that you all can see i i just um reached out to sarah gold i just want to let everybody know they’re having some tech issues at the library i think it’s self-explanatory at this point um but the it’s it seems like it’s an issue with feedback and every time they turn the audio on there it’s that high-pitched noise we’re hearing so they’re working um to perfect to figure that out and to get it working and then um we appreciate everybody’s patience if our voices carry

5:15 yeah you have an echo but i can hear you that it’s not that um it’s not that shrieking noise anymore there is still an echo yes definitely okay sounds a little like we’re at fenway park

5:38 plus plus is it better now no you keep hearing that okay hold on can you hear me now yeah fairfax without an echo a little echo but i cannot understand what you’re saying okay it’s better than what it was okay oh yeah yeah it’s not that before it was a very um it was like the microphone feedback shriek okay the microphone treat comes a little bit when you come up and you seem more distant you guys are just gonna have to speak loud i wonder if moving forward using headsights sets might be helpful yeah we’re going to have to test it back out

6:24 because we tested that um sorry we had tested that out at the beginning and it had feedback but everything has feedback at this point and i know there’s a way to do this so we will carry on persevere yes all right all right i will call us the order at 7 10. does anybody have any commendations

6:56 do i have to unmute myself nope you do not have to unmute yourself to comment so i just want to give uh commendations on the mural project and the student art submissions that are part of that work uh particular shout out to mrs demour and mrs h for coordinating that there will be a wonderful slideshow of the student artwork um and their ideas for the mural project and the superintendent’s weekly update but uh the volume of work and the student art submissions i thought were worthy of accommodations tonight thank you to cindy kiefer also for sharing that now

7:37 i can’t wait to see it absolutely all right sarah fox did you have your hand um yes i want to give accommodation to some of the high school students there’s a group that are working i believe in smaller teams maybe two students to a team or more um to connect with those younger grades and provide some opportunities for after school programs um my one of my kids got involved in one today or thought she was getting involved in one got looped into another i didn’t even know there were this many options i’m just so pleased to see so many high school kids volunteering their time connecting with these younger kids really giving them a mentor and a connection piece in a time that you know they often feel lonely i just think it speaks to the

8:26 high level of a high caliber of you know integrity and everything else we see in our high school students so i wanted to to appreciate all the programs i think there’s multiple ones going on right now that are connecting those younger and older students and i wanted to mention it wonderful thanks for pointing that out um all right mandy i’m sorry i skipped over you i’m a little discombobulated right now um so i will now turn it over to you for accommodations from the village school thank you and no problem um thanks for having me here this evening it’s always a great opportunity to be able to speak about good things that are happening at village um you know my first shout out i want to throw out there is to our fabulous nurses they really are the heroes of this year

9:13 fielding constant questions from myself and teachers and parents and sometimes making really hard phone calls that people do do not want to hear while adhering to the rules and following things closely and making sure that we can continue with in-person learning so they’ve been a crucial um part of making us successful this year um as well as our front office staff we’ve been short staffed this week even and they come in with calm demeanors and smiles greeting and making everyone feel comfortable every day um and you know it’s no secret that they’re really the ones running the school here so they’ve been both of those partnerships are really great um this year and last year we’ve had the third grade here and i’ve gotten to know the third grade teachers quite a bit recently

9:59 and um working with them closer and they’re just an amazing group of educators they came from two different schools as we all know and they’ve come together as a strong team collaborating with each other and i’ve really seen them rise to the occasion with challenges recently and overcome those and provide fun and engaging learning experiences for the students so it’s been really excellent to work with them and we’re lucky to have them here with us so um shout out to the third grade teachers the whole team of third grade is pretty amazing in our fourth grade if you’re to come into the school right now we’re in the middle of a botanical garden display so the fourth grade teachers have been working in science class i popped into one classroom today and the students were working on presentations

10:45 and so i got to hear a little bit about what they were doing um and so it was great i think the students were a little nervous when i walked in and and then became really brave and told me all about their exciting projects so that was wonderful and yesterday i was actually in a fifth grade class because i was about to cover it and one of the students was giving a presentation there on the water cycle um and i i asked i said you know i’m speaking at school committee tomorrow night i’d love to share your project kind of sent her into a panic so i want to share that um but the fabulous work the voice um that this student had while she was reading her water cycle project as she was writing a dear diary entry and sharing all about the unit that they had just finished it was it was fantastic

11:30 sixth grade uh nan uh murphy and rebecca brand and myself have been working closely with the ela teachers as they continue to collaborate with each other and we’ve seen them come together as a strong team uh focused on student learning and coming together to look at rubrics and focus on what’s best for students so they have been doing an excellent job and working together to ensure all students are successful in their upcoming writing unit and social studies as well we all know we’re lacking in substitutes and this is not meant to be a negative comment so i i just want to preface that i actually ended up subbing in a fifth grade classroom last week for an ela teacher and my emails were ignored my phone calls and other crisis had to wait and it was honestly the best thing ever what i what

12:15 i loved about this is the students knew the plan they knew the routine they knew what was expected another teacher came in to help me set up the lesson because the fifth grade teachers have been working really closely collaborating to make sure that their pacing is on with each other and um it was just it was a really great day it just reminded me of why we’re all here so that was really pretty pretty great to ignore all the other stuff and focus on what’s really important and why we’re all here in these meetings and why we’re all here in the school um so i told the teacher i may steal her class from time to time because um we’ve got upcoming enrichment uh thanks to our awesome pto um so students in uh grades three four five and six next week are going to be learning about

13:03 internet safety at age appropriate presentations and so we’re excited about that with a parent night as well and you know village tomorrow’s friday we have been calling thursdays friday junior so we’re looking forward to another successful week next week and everyone’s really doing a fabulous job here at village so it’s always nice to be able to give a shout out to all of the grade levels and department areas here at village so thank you for allowing me the opportunity to speak about billy this evening thank you for joining us it’s always great to hear uh everything going on at that building level so we appreciate it all my kids call it friday junior now and they tell me that it’s allowed because miss murphy said so well i kind of like that term i just go

13:49 with it i’m like sure that means i’m not cooking today either [Laughter] did you have anything um oh sorry that i skipped over you

14:05 so we were sent an article that was in the newspaper and so i wanted to we can hear you emily okay

14:19 i just wanted to commend brian whalen denise moretto principal um matt fox and eric oxford the utam family and miles um i’m not sure if everyone saw the article but what they’re doing over at vets is uh pretty amazing and i think that they deserve some great recognition for that and it made me truly proud to be a part of this district and this committee that we are able to help um and work with this family because they have a special place in my heart so i it made me so happy so thank you to everybody could i really quickly add to something mandy said when she talked about you

15:05 know the teachers at village in that third grade team last week for on a friday they gave a lesson on bridges and i just want to say my all my kids for three hours that night spent the night building bridges you figure friday at the end of the week these kids would be done with school but this teachers made it so exciting that my kitchen table became overtaken and the older ones were teaching the younger ones and it really hit home the lesson and made it fun and i as parents appreciate that so much from that team great thanks for sharing that all right um dan howells are you with us this evening yes hello hello hey dan good evening

15:51 good evening good evening hello uh so tomorrow uh marks the last day of quarter two um at the high school it’s hard to believe that we’re um you know at least in terms of the schedule halfway through the year i’m not sure if it’s uh mathematically that way but um hard to believe um so this week after martin luther king day we would normally be having midterms but they were called off this year which i think is appreciated by you know students and uh staff uh from scheduling to um just kind of the fairness of having such big exams when we’re not in school as much as we normally are um just

16:36 just just i don’t think it would have worked out as well so i think it was a good choice to not have them this year the national green school society is hosting a clothing swap tomorrow students donated used clothing that will be sold in the mhs back courtyard for a dollar a piece uh and again that is so tomorrow january 22nd at the mhs back courtyard from three to five earlier just earlier this night there was an informational meeting for about senior projects

17:18 so both virtual and in-person internships uh will be supported by the high school which is very exciting um uh you know we’re all glad to have uh you know something so special and especially at the end of the year big wrap up we’re glad to have that also just a couple nights ago the juniors had their class seminar where they talked about the beginnings of the college application process which again hard to believe that it’s you know so soon but it’s here uh and finally uh urinetown the musical will be going up um february 5th and 6th at 7 pm um so

18:03 the way uh it’s working and the way tickets are being sold there’s a link and i you know maybe i’ll send it to ms golds and we can get it posted somewhere so you can buy a ticket and on those nights it will be made available it’ll be posted and you can watch it online so again it’s you know pre-recorded and we’ve done everything ahead of time so it will be uh certainly a different experience but i’m excited about it and i think it will be i think it will turn out uh really cool so that’s february 5th and 6th at 7 and we’ll get the um the ticket purchase link uh posted

18:49 great yeah we put that on multiple sites great that sounds great dan will mr bauer be presenting or or appearing in that again you know uh i think you’ll have to um i think you’ll have to watch

19:08 thank thank you thank you all right that leads us to public comment so

19:20 tonight uh if everyone who make public comments can use their raised hand function

19:52 all right um rhonda gilberg

19:59 hi can everyone hear me okay good evening everyone for those of you that don’t know me my name is rhonda gilberg i am a 25 year marblehead resident i am a proud member of this community i am a lawyer a professor and i’m the north shore advisory chair of the anti-defamation league but i come here today to speak just as a member of this community where i live where my children have grown up in they went to the high school they’ve had the most amazing teachers guidance counselors they went on to do good things and i attribute the education that they received um i also like this love this community because everyone is respectful and they’re tolerant of one another and i

20:46 think that is very important for them for the most part um integrity and respect are two of the most important things to me um that being said sometimes um things are said and maybe the intent of the words is not what comes out but the effect of the words is what hurts people

21:14 in terms of tolerance in this community i believe that you know race ethnicity um disability sexual orientation religion everyone is very respectful of that but the reason i’ve come here today is because i heard something that was said at the last school committee meeting about the calendar now we dealt about dealt with this calendar about three years ago um and the thing that was dealt with is whether do the jewish holidays should be on or off the calendar and we had clergy from all denominations come and speak with the um to the school committee and everyone including the school committee understood that to the jewish community community to have those days

22:01 off for hashem yom kippur at the beginning of the year as we have always had for years and years and years was very important at the last meeting it has come to my attention that that on the school committee it was mentioned that we have to look at the calendar again and um see what we can do with all the days off okay so really at the beginning of the school year the days off are really the days of the jewish holidays so um i think many people in the jewish community were offended by this although not the intent as i said probably was not attended but the effective words you know really makes a difference here

22:47 right and you really have to have to think about that whether you’re an email or whether you’re speaking you have to think about whether these words are actually going to offend some people so i’m here really as well to talk about that this issue has been decided already it has been talked about um as i said many clergy all the clergy in the area have actually supported it um and i just think that in general because i live in such a respectful and tolerant community that um and i have dealt with the school committee in the past couple of years that i hope that everyone in the community subscribes to that um

23:33 and thank you for allowing me to speak thank you rhonda thank you uh helene i think i saw you trying to raise your hand yes i thought if anybody else wanted to i’m on an ipad ipad maybe that’s why it’s a problem but if anybody else would like to speak before me on this topic uh that would be i would you can go ahead because i don’t have any other hands raised right now okay all right well i’m helene hazlett and i am the co-chair of the marblehead task force against discrimination which is appointed by um the board of selectmen but um and i was a founder of it uh over 30 years ago and we’ve been working very hard to have a wonderful welcoming community and we

24:20 continue to do that um i am speaking on my own behalf tonight because um our task force doesn’t meet until next uh next monday but uh the task force has come before this committee in the past both uh deacon whipple and reverend anne-marie hunter who both sit on the committee actually anne-marie is my co-chair and they have they would agree with everything that i say except i have not had a meeting to speak of this with them in public and we go through the um open meeting live since we’re we’re an arm of the board of selectmen so uh i would like to make a statement regarding the 2021 200 2022 school calendar because during this unstable climate of racism anti-semitism it is not the right

25:07 time to revisit any change to the school calendar regarding religious holidays regarding any religious holidays additionally as a former school committee member for three terms i strongly believe that the school committee should not determine how many days a family should observe their holiday for decades the marblehead schools have rightfully closed for both days of rosh hashanah the jewish new year and one day of yom kippur i totally agree with what was said at a previous school committee meeting and i paraphrase that the school committee cannot tell people how to practice their religion however this this is such as something that rhonda said this is in direct uh opposition or a contradiction to what has been stated at the last school committee regarding

25:53 getting as many days in at the beginning of the school year because that’s impossible as far as the jewish holidays go since the jewish holidays generally fall in september so finally to hold religious holidays to hold school and religious holidays would create many ramifications regarding substitute teachers testing homework assignments even if the teachers are told not to test not to allow you know assign homework it always seems that the students there’s a quiz or the students that are taking the day off find out that there’s been a homework assignment they missed or they’d have to make a quiz up and also the athletics uh

26:39 become problematic too even if the coaches tell the students that that they’re not um responsible that they can take the day off there’s a lot of stress that goes with that do they lose their position uh will will i be played at the next game and um for the mental health and the stress with the family members i think having school on those holidays but for uh people that do want to take it off it it creates a tremendous amount of stress and mental health on the families excuse my english but if it ain’t broke don’t fix it

27:21 thank you helene um kathy kendall hello um in regard to the question of religious holidays on the school calendar my family practices a religion that is not recognized on our school calendar my family does not have the luxury of having the schools close so that my children do not miss their education we have to make that choice we have to choose do we exercise our legal right to an excuse to absence or do we send our children to school and figure out a way to observe our

28:09 religion outside of school hours i as an adult i’m sorry as as a minister in my faith i was not questioned or asked my opinions were at the um at the last time this was raised seriously several years ago but i i’ve expressed my opinion on this several times public school should not reflect private religions we can practice our religions observe our faiths by law we have the right to do that but in order to be non-discriminatory and equal for everyone we need to

28:55 recognize every single religion in marblehead i do not believe that is feasible i do not believe it is practical and honestly i don’t think it’s the right thing to do we need to have school every day that is legally permissible five days in a row of full days of school is the right thing to do the option is as i say to recognize every religion that is what is equal that is what would be fair and i just don’t think that’s the right thing for our public schools to do thank you thank you kathy uh patrick noonan

29:43 i think i’d just like to speak quickly uh you know in support of what kazzy just said um i think a lot of districts have moved away from giving these days off they’ve adopted policies that allow them to be excused absences and have you know take certain steps to make sure that the students are able to you know exercise their religious obligations but without giving the entire district a day off um i just think that this continuously comes up i know there’s widespread support in the town for moving in this direction and i just wish the committee would finally step up and deal with this issue instead of continuously punting it down the road looking at the calendar next year if we keep the current schedule that students will have off monday tuesday and wednesday of labor day week

30:29 um it’s just it’s it’s untenable i’m sorry we’re also the only district i think in the state that gets the second day of rosh hashanah um so i would i would ask that this the the committee look to other towns that have adopted uh policies that that allow students to be in school on these days thank you patrick melissa kaplowicz thank you sarah i guess my comment would be that my children love going to marblehead public schools i love living here my husband has been raised here i value the education that my kids are getting here

31:16 getting here getting here until such time as my children can step into marblehead public schools and not have to be faced with swastikas being called names being put down because of their religion um then i can’t honestly say that all people are treated equally in this district to pick two days that correspond with the jewish holidays is not only hurtful but it is harmful because historically politically socially economically jews have not allowed to practice their religion freely and essentially saying that we should have a day of school is further exacerbating hate discrimination oppression

32:01 and it is painful to even hear suggestions of that in a community that is known to be in no place for hate and in a district where we we promote and teach our children to be tolerant of all people so i would i would strongly recommend that the committee not make the mistakes of the past where um there was a lot of hurt by members of the community and that the minority group was once again not represented and my children do go to school and have to speak up regularly about symbols of hate and we still have a lot of work to do in this community although we’ve done we’ve progressed but

32:48 hate is alive and well here and it may be a topic that is uncomfortable to talk about and it may be a topic that we don’t want to acknowledge here in marblehead but it is here thank you thank you melissa uh kate thompson um um so i am speaking on a different issue so i just wanted to pause and see if there was anybody else on that issue um i certainly don’t want to interrupt you can go ahead we can come back to that issue if anyone else wants to speak okay thanks sir so i’m here tonight to talk about pool testing and i’m gonna leave my

33:34 url up for just a second on screen bit dot lee marblehead pool testing for anyone who would like to go to that site to see the slide that i’m not going to reference

33:45 so research tells us that chains of transmission or virus getting passed from person to person are in large part driven by asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic cases so in other words people who are sick but never show symptoms or people who are sick and who will show symptoms but just haven’t yet so two cases one is a july 2020 study from the national academy of sciences which found that the majority of cases are attributable to silent transmission from a combination of pre-symptomatic and asymptomatic infections so that’s about 48 of cases are caused by either asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic people

34:30 and a second study out of duke in november highlighted the importance of widespread testing of asymptomatic people to prevent transmission in communities and it provides support for pooled testing approaches so the slide that i drove you to earlier is not intended in any way to show all the complexity of each step in the process what it is intended to do is show how we can break chains of transmission with pool testing so scenario one across the top is you know our normal status quo so what we do with our awesome safety protocols in schools when someone is symptomatic and we have a way to break that chain of transmission scenarios two and three show what happens when someone is asymptomatic

35:15 asymptomatic asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic either with or without pool testing and without going through all of that in detail what’s clearly evident is that community testing of seemingly not sick people is what breaks the chains of transmissions for everybody not just for our school children and staff because it catches those cases before they can create more problems so headlines so far catching cases early has a huge impact on spread so enter the deci pool testing program that we’ve heard about recently right so at a glance it’s billed as it’s free it’s starting soon it scratches the itch for community

36:00 testing and by itch i mean dire need but at second glance we see that it’s not that easy it might be kind of sort of glitchy it’s really difficult there are some hang-ups as far as execution disruption potentially to students and families minimal cost maybe to manage in the short term but significant cost later so all of that said i just have two requests of the school committee tonight number one um i would ask you to please recognize that pool testing is not just about protecting our school community it’s about protecting our entire community and it’s a mitigation strategy that hits at the root of the problem like we’re not talking about like cohort and cohort being whether they have balance time here we’re talking about actually managing the pandemic and getting us

36:46 closer to being back in school for real and life and business and all the stuff that we’re missing right now right so it’s a big big idea so just to kind of keep that in mind that like what seems like an idea about school is really a huge idea about community and the second request that i have of you tonight is to please just stay open to learning and innovating on this right so i know dr bucky has signed us up you know so we’d have a spot in the queue while we decide on this i know that the administration is researching i know that there are webinars being attended costs are being scoped lots of conversations being had and i appreciate all of that work on top of all the work they’re already doing um i don’t know where our school committee members stand on this but i’m i’m just asking that you please stay in

37:32 a place of openness and learning and don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater so if this particular deci program is not the one for us or if right now isn’t the time you know maybe that’s okay if it’s going to overly tax our awesome nursing staff who are already super strapped okay but let’s just stick with it and find something that does work and you know engage with the health department and pool your resources in your energy and let’s have this be one of the first examples of things that we do in this year where we don’t go into our corners and find reasons to hate each other’s ideas like let’s work together and figure this out because it has the potential for a gigantic impact on our community

38:17 and then lastly i’ll just say on slide two of the slides that i shared um is a link to a letter that was shared earlier this week it’s not my letter but it is related to this topic um so please check it out thank you everybody thank you kate

38:33 all right i’ve got uh kim kimberly plotvian

38:40 hi platavin um that’s good enough though just just to echo what what kate said um i sent a letter um to the school committee already and the board of health members um earlier this this evening in 24 hours we managed to get 90 signatures from the community um really encouraging you all to explore the idea of pool testing in a bit more greater depth i’ve done some research already about other schools that have implemented pool testing outside of the states program already and they’re overcoming these challenges that folks keep identifying they’ve used fundraising in their community they’ve drawn on volunteers to help facilitate the tests and i think you know if

39:26 marblecad can put on an auction at the yacht club you know every year and bring so many volunteers into classroom to put on events for our students and do all this good work we have resources in our community that we could tap into as well and so um as kate said i urge you to keep an open mind and explore this seriously particularly with this new strain of the virus coming in i worry that we could be facing more school shutdowns if we don’t take advantage of this opportunity and schools that have done it in salem have had success at identifying those asymptomatic cases early thank you thank you kimberly

40:10 all right uh that’s it for the hands that i have raised so i’m just going to put the main computer back where everybody can speak

40:23 and that will move us along to the minutes so um we actually only got one into the dropbox uh by today so it is the january 7th meeting uh the really really long one from last time so uh i think lisa’s close on the 17th and we’ll get there for the next meeting um did anybody have any additions for the one seven i didn’t get a chance to go through it also i am not prepared to vote on that one but i’m okay if you guys do and in as long as if there’s any um anything i find it i’ll run it by you guys and we can just you know amend it or tweak it okay um does that anybody else

41:09 feel that they need to punch it till next time

41:18 approve the minutes of uh january 7th 2021. all right so david moved second megan seconded all right sarah gold yes david harris yes emily baron yes sarah fox and megan taylor yes all right so one seven is four zero to one all right matt fox that brings us to you and a bench donation thank you um we were donated a bench anonymously um for a former student of ours who five years ago after transitioning to the high school um suffered a massive stroke and passed away uh jake moore was a

42:04 big part of our community even though he came in a little package he uh for those of us who ever saw marblehead youth tv and some of their news programs he was a staple with his movie reviews if you go outside of chet’s uh the former the former location of chets you can still see a dedication bench uh to jake um so five years ago his mother uh beth preston and i have been talking about a memorial and and somebody in community donated one so it’s actually sitting outside my office right now it works great right there um but uh there are a few places around campus where we’d like to explore putting it in more permanently you know it’s nice to be a little wooden bench i think i sent pictures of it to the school committee yeah he did it’s it’s

42:50 school committee yeah he did it’s very nice it’s it’s a it’s a nicer memory of a young man that you know i still think about miss

43:01 all right can i get a motion to accept the donation of the bench dedicated to jake moore at the veterans middle school megan moved seconded sarah second all right um i’m glad that we’re finally going to be able to do this for you matt very um very um it was very moving too you could it came across loud and clear how much you cared about this young man in your letter to us all right i will take the roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris yes emily baron sarah fox yes and megan taylor yes all right thank you very much that motion carries thank you thanks man

43:47 matt will you send us a picture of it once it’s in place we definitely will thank you all right that leads us up to the superintendent’s report and first up john i will just keep talking uh is it muffy paquette and she is here to talk with us about an electronic sign at the high school so muffy i’m going to um pull up that sign and share it as you start to talk okay great thanks well for those of you who don’t know me i’m muffy pacquiao and i’m the current president of the all sports boosters at marblehead high school and for actually probably two years dan bauer and the boosters committee and a few other people have talked about how nice it would be to have a tasteful but an electronic sign one of

44:33 those digital signs that usually has red letters coming across at the entrance to the school which would be the corner of the entrance to the school on the community center side angled in such a way that you could see it coming in any of the directions so if right so the pictures there ideally i think we are leaning towards one that looks like the picture represented here by danbury local schools something similar to that i i have told the board of selectmen who have approved this project i told the board of selectmen the same thing that i told the school committee which is that i’m going to have to come back to both

45:18 of you with an actual design but that’s what we’re going towards i thought i was further down the road than i now feel i am because i’m switching gears and i believe we’re going to be using a different vendor the vendor that was originally chosen is on the west coast which is very difficult to deal with i found somebody that i like better who has given me some new and interesting ideas and most importantly he’ll be easy to work with but secondly he will be a lot more cost effective from what i understand and unfortunately he couldn’t meet with me in person until tomorrow so tomorrow i’m going to know a lot more but he knows that that bottom right corner the danbury school one is what we’re gearing towards

46:03 and i say that because we want it to be something that will look nice with the school look nice with the community center and not being overwhelming i’m not looking to make this look like the vegas strip on humphrey street just something where we can say that mcas are cancelled or there’s a play tonight or there’s a football game or there’s a volleyball game or something interesting or a school’s closed happy snow day whatever it’s going to say it won’t be big flashing lights it won’t be scrolling photos it will just be text that goes across great um thank you muffy sarah fox and you’ve got your hand raised um so mafia the spot you’re talking about like right where people hold signs

46:50 during the various election days right there on that land there but not people hold signs usually on the sidewalk but yes yeah but like right where that grass area correct will it affect that area that dips down um the drain area it won’t affect the drain area where how however it’s going to be built it will be built on a slant because there isn’t a lot of flat ground in that area so that when you’re looking at it you’re not going to know it’s built on a slant but i think the contractors are going to have a challenge to get it done it won’t be down low in that hole so it won’t affect the drainage and we don’t have to go through water and sewer because of that drain pipe apparently not according jason silva has talked to all the necessary people and

47:35 that we’re good to go and we’ve been approved to use that plot of land and what i want to make sure before i actually write the check to somebody is that school committee and the border selectmen know exactly what’s going there as opposed to it may look something like the bottom right picture okay and there will be landscape you like you’ll landscape a little bit around it mm-hmm okay thank you yeah so i had something simple so that it’s not a high maintenance but um yes we’ll we’ll make sure that it looks nice so in spite of um not having the actual financials and so we can’t vote on that tonight i still wanted muffy to come and present this because she’s done a lot of hard work on this already and she’s really far along um and so i i

48:21 would love to ask for a motion to support the continued can i sarah can i have one more thing that’s important no i mean the school committee read the the proposal that i gave you but um a good chunk of this is donated by the class of 2020 and boosters will be paying the rest we just are a little unclear as to what the rest is committed to make this happen with the generous donation from the class of 2020. will there be the ability that somewhere on that to you know note their generous donation yeah i think we can put a little plaque on it okay that says you know donated by the class of 2020 and marblehead all schwartz boosters okay

49:07 this is exciting muffy thank you and i think i think it’ll be great and i know dan bauer’s looking forward to it and they’ll be able to control it remotely from inside the school and i think it will be great okay and it’s a great collaboration so thanks to the boosters and to um the class of 2020. yeah it’s exciting so just can i get a motion to support the work of the muffy and the boosters as well as the class of 2020 in procuring this sign knowing that she’ll be back in the future for us to officially accept the funds

49:42 sarah seconded all right sarah gold yes david harris yes emily barron yes sarah fox yes and megan taylor yes all right go forth muffy we got our support

50:05 john john i will let you take it away actually goes to the eric and the cpap representative okay so megan i will let you take it away well i’ll just i’ll just do a quick introduction so the next on our agenda is um our cpac um representative so the cpac for those of you who don’t know is the special education parent advisory council and um you know they are an integral part of our school community um so we’ve got marl shell here the co-chair of that advisory council to give us a little overview of what the committee’s been up to and some of the activities that are are on board for the rest of the year merle can i hand it over to you and eric

51:20 sarah do you have the ability to unmute her uh let me check it because i know sometimes during the like the first grade class like i think you can hear me now yeah you’re good i found it sorry guys i will thank you so much megan for the introduction and before i get into it i’ll try to be very brief i appreciate the time so much i want to thank megan for bringing us to you tonight and i want to thank everybody on the committee for including john and nan and eric of course for making this possible because it’s a great opportunity for cpac and i’m happy to represent us um in the spirit of inclusion working with eric has been a wonderful collaborative experience he’s tried to include us in everything that that is appropriate for example john you may not know this but

52:06 cpac was invited to participate on the committee that was looking for a superintendent so we were part of that search and then when you came on board you kindly gave us the opportunity to participate in all the re-entry committees as well um and that’s something that we seriously welcome because of course even though we represent um a certain group we’re really part of the entire community and we believe as we know you all do that inclusion and acceptance means hearing everybody’s perspective and everybody’s voice in fact before i get into it i’d like to reference back to something that sarah was talking about earlier a couple of months ago everything has a purpose and could be repurposed and when i served in the health and activities committee with muffy and sarah among many others i came

52:51 up with some ideas and one of them i thought might be useful in this day and age and i talked to eric about it and he suggested that i speak to nan which i did and she kindly sent me in the direction of dr jamie slavitt who was putting together a group called growing together and i’m very i came in a little late to the game but i’m part of that group and those are the young ladies who are mentoring the younger kids that you’re talking about and there will be many more um groups that come online because they’re getting approved one by one and they’re very exciting kids to work with so it so thank you to nan for that as well um so i hope sarah you’ll see many more groups coming on board soon merle please give those young ladies my regards they they did a fabulous job it was easter happening well i might not know the girls that you’re talking about we all we’ve

53:38 divided them up you know several of us have different pairs but i’ll let jamie know when he’ll talk all of them i’m sure thank you so i’m here tonight because the everybody knows what cpac is but you might not know some of the particulars about what we do and who we try to serve so i’d like to read you a letter i’m just going to read it but knowing myself i’ll probably take a couple of minutes for sides here and there but it’s a very short letter we’re going to be posting it on marblehead cpac’s website and it will go out through other forms of communications and emails in the coming days so i’d like to read you the letter so you get to know a little bit more about us okay hello marvel head public school families we want to take a minute to introduce the marblehead special education parent advisory council otherwise known as cpac

54:23 to those of you who might not be familiar with our work and how we might be of service to you we are a collective voice for families and students in the marblehead school district our main mission our duty is to help improve the education well-being and safety of marblehead students with disabilities we do this by working collaboratively with and acting as advisory council to marblehead public school district and school committee members on matters of special education but as a cpac we have our own bylaws and we also have other things that we strive to accomplish and there are four points number one to facilitate communication and between families and the district and school committee to to encourage understanding acceptance

55:10 and inclusion within the district for students of with disabilities three to offer opportunities to advance learning and awareness for families educators and professionals of best practices for the education and safety of students with disabilities and four to provide educational opportunities for the marblehead community at large on topics related to special education and the safety of students with disabilities and there’s a through line here that i think is important and i think is reflective of what we’re all trying to do now within marblehead and so i want to repeat a couple of words that come up in these aspirations of ours one is communication which means listening in conversation listening to each other because we gain

55:55 perspective that way and the next three words understanding acceptance and inclusion of everybody which is why the fourth point is to go to the community at large with some of our programs and ideas because as we all know kids with disabilities are not the only problems or issues and some of the things that we do we think and we hope are relevant to the community at large as well and we want to extend our reach so to continue the letter is almost over we’re a volunteer organization our members include parents and guardians of and individuals affiliated with a marblehead student with one or more disabilities our professions are wide-ranging including education the law music psychology nursing business and more in

56:42 other words we’re as diverse a group as our community is diverse and as our kids are diverse so to get to know us we welcome you and any community members to attend our programs to attend our meetings which are all open to the public everything is posted on our marblehead website either under our events calendar or well on the events calendar and so for more information you can just google marblehead cpac or go to the website which is mhdcpac.com if you would like to receive cpac updates and news uh we encourage you to join our email list by submitting your name and email address to marvelheadcpac gmail.com and if you have any questions if you want to get involved if you want to participate if you want to know what our

57:30 next initiatives are then contact me at m r s c h e l l shell dot marble mhdcpac gmail.com sincerely the board of marblehead cpac so that’s the letter that we’re going to post on our website um we’re going to be posting our events and i just want to give a couple of plugs and then i want to tell you about our next upcoming event which i’m very excited about and i’d like to share um we have meetings twice a month so we meet tuesdays the first tuesday of every month at noon and the second wednesday of every month at 7 00 pm anybody’s invited to come and we’ve stolen a leaf from the book of the school committee because we have now added public comment to our meetings as well so that we can hear public voice i mean we thank you for that um

58:16 so you’re all welcome anybody’s welcome to come we also put together events and i just want to take a a little bit of a minute to put something in context last year working with eric we decided to do a conference series about issues that were of concern or questions that we heard being raised in the community or just things that we felt were topical and relevant to our general community not just kids with special needs in their families and i remember that we put together a great program and a flyer and i along with many other board members ran around town putting up flyers wherever they would let us and a week later covet hit and we ran around town taking down all that the flyers and we had to cancel our conference but we’ve revived it for this year

59:02 and we just to putting it on zoom and we looked at it again and we took out some things and added others so very briefly we actually started in october and dr bucky was kind enough to give us a plug in his weekly message at one point uh dr jody carrington spoke to us first in october and her topic was really very interesting it was it was really about emotional um emotional regulation and she wasn’t just talking about kids in fact she was mostly talking about the adults and how we can keep ourselves in check how we can keep ourselves calm and it’s okay we shouldn’t feel guilty if we sometimes lose our cool or our patients and it was she was very strategic she gave us a lot of how-to’s she took away some of the guilt and she taught us how to be role models for our kids and it

59:47 wasn’t just instructional and informative it was also a lot of fun the next month in november dr eric oxford came to talk to us about ieps and as anybody knows who’s got a child and an iep or a 504 those first few days are very scary you don’t know what to expect you don’t know what a service delivery did grid means you don’t know who to talk to you’re not sure if your kid is going to get the accommodation that he or she needs and so eric conducted um a presentation that talked about the iep process and its purpose and how what the goal is for the community and for the district for the school district is really to do what is in the best interests of every child

1:00:33 any child not just kids on ieps or 504s and that was also very well attended we skipped december because it was the holidays and now here we are and next week we have a what what i think i’m very excited about this is going to be a very excited exciting panel discussion featuring sarah fox dr james slavitt um there’ll be a panel discussion with all marblehead clinicians uh gina hart who’s a social worker at the high school will also be on the panel dr alex from the village school rosenstein who’s a clinical psychologist here will be on the panel as will amanda lockaby who is um the school psychologist at glover and the topic is really very very current always for anybody not just kids but for adults

1:01:18 it’s about building relationships it’s a long title but it’s really it’s really very meaningful the title is building relationships in the school context for students throughout students development because what this panel is going to discuss are kids little ones preteens teens and how we can best reach them build relationships it will not just be here’s what to do it will be how to do it there’ll be a lot of strategy involved they’ll also be talking about covid and how we keep kids interested engaged participatory in relationships like the mentoring program kind of idea um as well and there’ll be a long q and a period after that so i hope a lot of people will come and check out what we’re doing and just really

1:02:04 quickly in march we’re going to have a visitor from boston university uh dr zach rossetti will be coming and talking about how to foster inclusive peer relationships and he comes to us through two marblehead cpac board members uh kim howard and scott salberg so their colleagues at bu together scott will be actually doing our next series in april april 6th and he’ll be talking about preparing our kids for the future future ready skills whether you’re going into a career or on to college preparing you for life we’re probably going to skip may and then in june what we’re going to try to do we’re hoping to do is what megan taylor said at our last district meeting was a very feel good experience which is

1:02:50 the unsung heroes that we didn’t do last year which has been very popular in marblehead for many years we’re not quite sure how we’re going to get it done um virtually uh we’re just beginning and we don’t have a date yet but all the information about all of our events are published on our website we roll out the events through social media you’ll see the one that dr slavic is going to moderate it’s going to be going out the door tomorrow so you’ll see it in social media and i can’t tell you how much i appreciate being here i want to thank you all from the other members of the board for allowing us to speak to you and letting you know a little bit of what we do to try to service not just kids with special needs and their families but the community at large and join the conversation of inclusion and acceptance

1:03:35 so thanks so much for having me here tonight thank you mara can i can i just add something um well thank you for that i’m glad you were able to uh to join us tonight um but i just want to encourage anyone who’s interested to reach out to the cpac you know i know um personally the cpac has been a huge source of support for myself both you know just trying to work through the process when i was new to it but also as a way to kind of build that community and to build my knowledge base so that i could be the best advocate that i could be for my child um so i think especially for families that may be new to the process um i do

1:04:20 just want to encourage reaching out and thank you merle well thank you for saying that megan um that’s what we’re here for we’re here to listen be a sounding board we we don’t make policy but we can definitely direct you to the right people and as megan said we can be a comfort to you too so thanks so much and i just want to give a little plug from earl i got to know merle um two years ago and i’ve been so impressed she you know hadn’t been too involved at that point in the marvel head schools and she’s like you know what i’ve got this skill set in this interest and she came in gangbusters and has been a tremendous asset and you’d be really hard-pressed to find someone easier to talk to or kinder um so if you are unsure and you’re starting the process i’m sure

1:05:06 there’s tons of people at cpac that can help you but um i would really encourage you not to just reach out to cpac but try to reach out to merle because she kind of just talking to her about the stuff brings a calm to it and i would really encourage parents going through this to reach out thank you so much sarah that’s really very kind and i’d be happy to talk to anybody anytime

1:05:31 and the cpac website is also linked on our school committee website as well for anybody who might have missed what merle was saying you can head over there and in our um resources and links section it should be there thank you sarah yes everything is probably we have an events calendar everything is published on it as well right and i appreciate the plug for our new school community website all right all right mr oxford dr oxford so sorry still getting used to that um would how about i let you i will let you be a co-host and then you can share your screen and then you can be in charge of going through the slides rather than me that’s perfect thank you and while we’re waiting just uh i’m really you’re the

1:06:16 best so that’s uh just how everyone knows we uh we have a lot of fun at our at our monthly meeting so i certainly want to reiterate that um everyone’s welcome you know everyone and anyone um talk everything from theory all the way down to specific you know nitty gritty things and you know everywhere in between and so it’s certainly been a pleasure to work with you merle and and mary as co-chairs and certainly the rest of the board so thank you all right you should be ready to share all right one second here

1:06:47 perfect all right can you see that yep it’s good all right all right well thank you uh great to see everyone thanks for the opportunity to speak with you um i’ll do my best to be brief but really i am here tonight um just to you know really for the purposes of um the annual um proposal for uh tuition for pre-k tuition um costs and and looking for approval you know voting and approval whether it’s tonight or next school committee meeting but um it’s a little bit different this year um rather than i think the last few years has been kind of a traditional two and a half percent increase in terms of our uh pre-k tuition uh but this uh fall we actually just wrapped up a uh really a full-scale uh pre-k program review uh

1:07:34 we had a third-party consultancy firm um come in seaside educational consultants um and really did uh completed a comprehensive program review to really take a look at our the current structures of our pre-k uh program and so i just wanted to walk you through that very briefly and then help to outline what our plans are our hopes are for kind of a bit of a restructure within our pre-k model and how that can then transfer and justify our our proposal for tuition costs all right so as i mentioned the pre-k program review it was comprised of observations interviews and document reviews so everywhere from looking at all of our whoops

1:08:21 all of our classrooms speaking with really everyone and anyone involved with pre-k from an administrative level um to our teachers to our support staff service providers everywhere in between um really to to hope to get a comprehensive view of the perceptions of what is pre-k you know what’s working really well and what isn’t working too well where are some areas of improvement document reviews included iap reviews and and things of that nature different documents and so the purpose of this pre-k program review um was really to take a look again at um at equity for all all of our students ages three to five um that participate in our integrated pre-k program um melissa zimmy our pre-k coordinator um and i alongside with all of our pre-k teachers and staff have you know throughout the last couple of

1:09:07 years at least you know identified some inequities in terms of you know one example is our students on ieps who participate in that program um they’re actually in school outside of a pandemic year they’re in school less time than our model students and that’s great for our model students um but for our kiddos that we’ve identified really need additional services um there’s some inequities there’s some questions so we wanted to unpack that a little bit certainly curriculum um you know it doesn’t have to be data all day every day at the pre-k level we certainly want to um enhance and maximize you know learning through play and making sure that those that social development is is key and a priority but we do need to to sit on data and be able to look at uh levels of progress quantitatively um so

1:09:53 looking at what does the curriculum um look like right now what are those structures and how can we improve um certainly the tuition as i mentioned and then we we saw um you know a really good opportunity with the new elementary school being planned to open hopefully fingers crossed for the fall and with two pre-k classrooms on the blueprints scheduled to be slated at the new elementary building was really to take a deep dive into what are those structures what can they look like what should they look like and things of that nature so that’s kind of in a nutshell in terms of the reasons the rationale for our pre-k program review

1:10:31 so i’m just gonna walk you through uh what um some of the kind of the highlights of what we are proposing for our restructure um and just a quick shout out certainly to alyssa zemi she wasn’t able to make it tonight um she had another commitment um but she really took the lead on this pre-k program review uh working with the consultancy firm and certainly with um again all of our staff included in the pre-k program and and definitely our three pre-k uh teachers right now they were an integral part um to this whole process so we’re proposing uh for the start of next year um in terms of classroom you know individual class structures uh pretty similar um approach across the board so having one lead teacher one pre-k teacher two support staff um so two paraprofessionals within each classroom

1:11:16 um and then service providers as needed um you know to to provide the necessary um services and um and supports for all of our students on ieps with that said i won’t get into this too much but we’re really trying to to shift our philosophy in terms of really having our service providers be inclusive active in the services and collaboration that they are providing for all students not just students on ieps i think there’s a pretty big generalization always that service providers so our speech language pathologists our occupational therapists physical therapists so on and so forth are all just special education and that’s not the case it doesn’t need to be the case so how can we really expand their approach their levels of expertise for all students especially at that at

1:12:01 that age where children are developing so quickly uh the building structure so this is as i mentioned um you know i’ve had to dig in a little bit uh coming into this role a little bit late in the game in terms of the whole new elementary school building project and structures and expectations you know i was not a direct part of the beginning stages of that but as i learned more about um the classroom designations and and what things are going to look like at the new elementary building through within student services and special education as i mentioned a few minutes ago there is there are plans for two additional pre-k classrooms um to be open to be slotted for the new building um so you know trying to wrap my head around you know what was the rationale for that and

1:12:47 just learning um it really you know i’ve learned a lot about that community aspect that equitable aspect in terms of you know both buildings both elementary schools having a pre-k to 3 model and so with that our hope is to really in the spirit of equity and in the spirit of really again having you know following through i guess on that uh marble headway if you will of of having those equitable opportunities our goal is to actually double if you will our number of pre-k classrooms and so i just want to walk through that um just briefly for a minute so currently at the glover school we have three pre-k classrooms so i’d walk through with that just a minute ago what that looks like

1:13:33 we’re proposing we’re hoping to move forward um with actually a total of what’s considered six pre-k classrooms but having two traditional pre-k or preschool classrooms at the glover school two of them at the new um elementary building and then at each building at glover and at the new elementary building one transitional kindergarten uh classroom so this is a bit of a progressive um approach um and proposal that we’re we’re gonna move forward uh we’re hoping to move forward with we there’s a lot of private preschools um that offer a transitional k or um or whatever you want to call it just right before kindergarten there’s different terms for them but basically you know that really attracts kiddos that may have august birthdays

1:14:18 right they’re just kind of on that cusp of you know they’d be really young to be a kindergarten child um or they just they’re just an additional year right parents or the team have identified hey this would be really beneficial if my child could have an additional year for development before getting into on the kindergarten structure so each year the last five years uh we did a little bit of digging and we had about six or seven requests each year uh from parents asking you know can my child stay back and do one more year of pre-k um in addition to that as i mentioned there are uh private pre-ks in marblehead around the north shore i have a current three-year-old right now we’re looking at pre-ks i’ve we’ve identified lots of private pre-k’s that have this transitional kindergarten approach and

1:15:03 so um that model would really start the year off um kind of the structure of a traditional pre-k classroom but throughout the year it gradually evolved to modeling what that you know more of a traditional kindergarten approach and and making sure that that teacher has consultation time common planning time with both the pre-k teachers and the kindergarten teachers really to bridge that gap for those students that we’ve identified so again that’s kind of it in a nutshell in terms of the transition k and pre-k i’m happy to expand upon that at the end if there’s any questions oops um so the classroom schedule this is a pretty significant shift um we are hoping um to maintain our

1:15:49 four day a week model so currently this is the structure where we have students receive pre-k services and participate in pre-k mondays tuesdays thursdays and fridays wednesdays are our our staff days if you will we really need that time our teachers need that time to conduct iep evaluations work with early intervention conduct iep meetings participate in professional development and really allow them to have their their appropriate prep time and planning time throughout the week that’s a pretty common approach you’ll see that you know throughout other districts that it’s it’s not necessarily a five day a week program um if some districts have five days a week that fifth day that extra day is usually a half day or a shortened day again to allow for those opportunities the current model right now we have an

1:16:36 am and pm uh model that is about a little over two and a half hours each setting there’s an opportunity for full day um as i mentioned that full day option actually currently is only really available for our model students not necessarily our iep students we’d like to shift that we’d like to ensure equity we’d like to also maximize the total hours per week for every child um who’s participating in our integrated pre-k model so we’re hoping that we’re looking for an 8 to 12 30 um kind of curriculum time if you will that that’s going to be kind of the meat of pre-k um you know working through those age developmentally appropriate tasks in curricula that would include a 12 to 12 30. uh lunch group lunch bunch um super uh important for social development social skills so we would you know be able to

1:17:23 have teachers and our support staff you know work and focus with our kids um and kind of target that work from a social standpoint um and then we would we would like to continue to offer an extended day and have that 12 30 to 2 o’clock extended day happen um alyssa presented this opportunity or thought to me and i loved it i ate it up um is really having that extended day focus on enrichment currently we do not have um our pre-k students participate in phys ed music art um you know kind of those allied arts that our k-3 students or arcata you know all the way up i have the opportunity to participate in um but there’s other opportunities from a social emotional standpoint from a mindfulness standpoint with yoga we could look at steam and project based learning and kind of integrating all of those opportunities

1:18:09 those opportunities those opportunities throughout the week so we’ve done a lot of work in in kind of some hypotheticals about what that could look like and how we could integrate that as part of the extended day all right and so this brings us to the the big piece the money piece um is tuition so our tuition proposals um so just to break this down um so we have again we have an offering of four days per week so monday tuesday thursday friday um eight to 12 30. again that expands our hours from about two and a half hours to four and a half hours per day um which would increase which would go um to about four thousand dollars per per year or four hundred dollars per month on average if we spend that across our 10-month academic schedule

1:18:55 our current am uh pm half day uh tuition is about about 22.50 so it’s about a 60 ish increase um but so i know that that seems substantial but if you kind of break this down and i will in the next slide my last slide break this down by hours um it actually evens out per hour to be about the same rate um it’s just again we we’re trying to maximize the time that students have to come in and participate in pre-k whether they’re on an iep or not our extended day um again would be that 12 30 to 2 o’clock and so if if parents chose to enroll their children and pay for the full eight to two o’clock for the four days it would be six thousand dollars a year or six hundred dollars a month um and then our

1:19:42 transitional kindergarten um again uh we really wanted to focus on modeling that or beginning to introduce children to that kindergarten feel um is to add that fifth day so that would be the big difference between between our pre-k and our transition k is to add that fifth day that wednesday um that that students can participate again because um we’re trying to expand the day increased stamina um and so offering that eight to 12 30 but also that extended day offering as well

1:20:12 um so again equity if you know me um and merle said it too you know that’s what i’m all about and i think that that’s going to continue to drive our work within student services for all students not just for students on ips but really equity you know how can we ensure that and again our curriculum how can we make sure that it’s equitable and provide those opportunities for students on ieps and our students that are considered model students that don’t require an iep to have the same hours per day hours per week with starting at age three four or five you know before they even hit kindergarten what we found as we as we learned and i learned this from our pre-k teachers is that right now with the am pm sessions and then the opportunity for that full day um is that the students that are

1:20:59 currently or pre-pandemic had currently been um in that full day model they just they be they became closer naturally right they’re with each other longer periods of day and those am pm kids that are in and out you know throughout the day it was a little bit harder for them to make connections and those were the kids that we’ve identified needed special education services for social development or communication those are the kids that we need to have those integrated opportunities those social opportunities as much as possible i just mentioned the hours change you know the rationale for that and then the classroom makeup so we’ve done a lot of research into this there’s a ton of evidence and research which actually surprised me a little bit um but to have heterogeneous classes of ages three four and five um my initial thought when i

1:21:44 heard that when alyssa brought that to me and the pre-k program review actually brought that this to me as well um is that wow there’s a huge difference between a three-year-old and a five-year-old right that’s a huge gap there’s a ton of research that says that there are so many more benefits um to that because just as we have our model students that we hope to be those models for our kiddos that you know may need some more developmental skills even within that those age differences there are true embedded natural role models kiddos that are a little bit older that can really model for those younger kids all right so finally there’s a breakdown so i wanted to ensure um that you are able to kind of see the financial aspect

1:22:30 in a bit of a comparative analysis across a few different districts we’ve we dug into a few more but um i just wanted to snapshot for you quickly um the pre-k programs that we were able to identify kind of sort of close to us most of them anyway um that had that currently offer a model that we are proposing right so for the most part a four or five day model i put a couple three days in there but they have extended hours a little bit more than we do um a lot of these districts and other districts that we’ve looked at and talked with um have the ampl model they have less hours per week but i just wanted to break down kind of what the total cost is tuition is currently for these other districts and then compare that to what we’re looking at in terms of a proposal for this tuition increase so

1:23:20 as i started to look into this i said geez these numbers are all over the place right from andover 4.95 per month to swampscott 336 manchester essex 500 salem 638 per month it’s like how do you even pinpoint where we should be um so what we did is we we broke that down a little bit more and we wanted to look at okay well how many hours are they providing per week in per month um and so that hourly rate um if you will is really the total uh per month cost by each district um broken down by hour by month if that makes sense per day per month so uh basically if you take um let’s take andover 4.95 per month um if you broke that down

1:24:07 by the the four days times five hours is 20 weeks um and then multiplied that by the four weeks in a month because our families pay monthly i wanted to give kind of a monthly snapshot that hourly rate is basically what you’re paying per day for the entire month i hope that that makes sense it’s a little bit complex so i’m happy to clarify that but at any rate regardless of how you break down the numbers um and divide this and multiply that the snapshot is is pretty evident it’s pretty evident to us that uh with this proposed increase in tuition um our rates our proposed rates on the right side and that pink um really align they’re right in line with the current rates of other districts right around us um so i’m not going to break down every single option i know i was able to send

1:24:53 this to you all um a few days before but and you have it on screen now but i’ll stop there um and certainly happy to answer you know any and all questions at this point but um just bringing it back i guess to the beginning is um i’m here tonight just to to propose this tuition um and really wanted to make sure that we talked about it now in january because our pre-k screening process registration is all going to start rolling uh really quickly alyssa is going to be getting our pre-k screening and registration information out tomorrow or monday at the latest and we need to do our screening we need to then potentially conduct a lottery if if needed and then start doing our groupings for next year so it’s it’s a month-long process to get ready for the fall and keeping our fingers crossed at one the

1:25:38 new building’s open and two that we’re back to normal um in terms of of what we can offer and provide we’re outside of this this pandemic schedule so thank you again thank you eric um so we asked eric to come here tonight to present this and then for our next meeting we’ll vote so um you know we’ve got to have the agenda but i don’t want to um not allow for any questions um but we can follow up with eric during the week so uh to kind of give us time to think about it and and sort of continue to ask questions of him uh sarah

1:26:17 um i did have a few i was taking notes one of my first ones was who who conducted was it an in-house program review but it sounds like it was a consultation firm um and did they did they give you you know suggested changes or suggested with i’m assuming this is where the hours came from um did they give you it like a bulleted list or or however of improvements would you say yes so um i actually um you know i guess in an ideal world i would have loved to have i guess push this presentation off another week but i didn’t from a timing perspective because again i want to make sure that um you know we were fully transparent with you know where where we were at and making sure that this was um this information was out there you know

1:27:02 to the public uh so that alyssa can post you know at least um that some changes are potentially going to come and it’s not a surprise but i just received our kind of quote unquote final um informal draft of the full pre-k program review it’s about 60 plus pages certainly it’s you know open game to anyone who wants to see it i’m happy to send that along i haven’t had a chance to read it word for word but i did have an opportunity um to meet with the two consultants that participated and really conducted this review they had a list of 16 recommendations um which is really great for us i i asked them to not hold back and i appreciate it you know um and it ranges everywhere from really ensuring that we as a community embrace pre-k you know within our culture you know within the schools

1:27:49 um within our community and um you know trying to shift that mindset that we’re not a k-12 school that we start in pre-k you know and that’s really important to really drive you know the the inclusion for all of our kids but certainly our staff as well all the way to different structures certainly tuition hours um you know building locations and all that stuff so um it’s very comprehensive again happy to send that along if you’d like i actually would love that if you could send that off eric that would be great then the building locations leads to my next question it said that you know for parity which is one of the things we we wanted to give the community with the new building we would have the two pre-k and then a transitional um room at the new school there’s no extra classroom for the transitional room i know those plans inside and out so

1:28:35 the only up for grabs room is our steam room and i i would fight that tooth into now so where where is that room going yup great question so as i see um pre-k um you know because we have to have pre-k through special education and student services um i i classify that under under special education under student services um as i’ve dug into the building plans and proposals you know again wasn’t a part of the initial planning i will tell you that right off the bat there is there is one classroom location that through special education it’s dedicated right now to a special education program that program now it actually no longer exists and we’ve kind of umbrella that program um and so there’s an opportunity to to shift this classroom um

1:29:21 we just have to be i have to be honest we have to be very careful we this was a battle with the msba what square footage they wouldn’t reimburse with what rooms titled for what reason and we actually don’t have the ability and the right to to change those prior to opening and if we do we forfeit msba money so we have to be really careful about this um that’s why i would love to see that report if so i’m looking forward to just giving that and then just looking at those numbers i think it was really helpful how you showed the per hour with the other public schools um i think it might be helpful to see a comparison with the private schools in town i’ve never advocated for comparing public to private but this preschool

1:30:08 program is a totally different dynamic um i’m i am in the thick of that as you are and i have been continually for many years um we’re always looking at preschools and and looking at what everybody’s offering um and i think so we have to be cognizant of what the private schools are charging and what they’re getting for the same you know for same or more or less because we don’t want to price ourselves out of having model students because as i understand the iep students don’t pay correct um and then that leads to my next question for the extended day will that be open to iep families if they choose or would they need to pay for that extra portion yeah great question so actually as it currently stands i don’t uh i haven’t seen any formal language in this

1:30:55 but i guess that the tradition has been that our iep students um kids on ieps in pre-k current currently as it stands we’re not eligible to participate in extended day unless it was driven through their iep that there was a need for a true extended day we want to get rid of that we want them to have that opportunity we would um we would encourage and propose that that is paid that portion is paid because again our stance is that when we drive through the iep those services we feel extremely confident we know that that 8 to 12 30 block will make sure that we can make sure that all those services are provided from a special education compliance standpoint if you will but that enrichment time we want that to be an open opportunity for all of our students as well so

1:31:42 the iep students would get charged for that period all right can we look at that a little more it see if it’s it’s necessary because i’d hate to really curtail and limit those students experience and not give them a parallel experience because of the financial barrier i’m happy to talk with you about that i don’t i don’t want to correlate always iep student i know you’re not saying this but iep students and financial barriers i think no i’m i’m thinking of my own child where you know i’m not at all no no i did not make that i am not i actually wasn’t even going down that path i just want i i think that they benefit in ways from those extracurricular activities um

1:32:27 i think all the things that we’re servicing i i you know have a lot of involvement in the early intervention community and have for about 10 years now and um it’s a lot of times through that play that organic play and those extra you know that they do get to experience the model pier so much and i just want to make sure that that they get that experience um as well that’s that was mainly my point um what i didn’t mention is that again if if and when kiddos you know on ieps and iep meetings we identify it or the team identifies that that’s an appropriate place for those who provide 100 but i just don’t always across the board um that that is necessary but yeah absolutely thank you okay and then what

1:33:14 i would recommend just from i hate to see marketing but for that extended day program if you know what what all the other preschools i think are doing what i my experience has been you know monday is your enrichment in art tuesday is your dance in richmond and i would offer it as a menu to families that i’m not going to sign up for monday i’m going to sign up for wednesday i think you’ll get a lot more buy-in because um that’s a long time for a three-year-old and they can’t do it every single day but families will buy in if they can buy in on like a menu program thank you that was part of our plan and i did not mention that i apologize but that is um really across the board right and not saying that every child model you know child needs to participate in those four days you know i just broke it down it’s kind of yeah

1:33:59 that we don’t have to have you know every child participate monday tuesday thursday friday as well so all right thank you so much eric this is very informative yeah eric i i really commend all the work that’s being done here i think as a parent where who both of my boys went through uh the pre-k um hi laura weiss good to see you um and um you know it was such a phenomenal program and the only thing that was was lacking in it was just the amount of time i would have you know even you know with one of my boys i was not a working parent with the other i was and for working parents i think this opens up so many more marblehead families that will be able to take advantage of this amazing program and it’s so important

1:34:45 because it really these teachers know the marblehead curriculum and then they tee these kids up perfectly into the kindergarten program in district and so it’s this is so important and i love the idea of extending those hours um i think i think this is a home run um two last questions is i want to ensure that by splitting this program there will be no itinerary and staff that was a promise we made this new building we would get rid of itinerant staff your staff would be housed in your building it’s so important to have that collaborate collaboration and community within your building i want to make sure that we’re not you know shifting staff between buildings um because that was a big promise we need and then also if we’re doubling the

1:35:30 program i hate to be the bearer band nudes we’re doubling the the preschool budget yes um i mean there’s no there’s no other way yes so there’s still some you know this will this is not a i guess a huge significant difference the the tk transition k um you know we gotta kinda this will be our first go around right if we do this if we implement this and i know it’s super popular again within the privates um we got to see what how many numbers we get and how many recommendations we get if those numbers are small within those we wouldn’t necessarily need an additional you know two paris for that so that’s again not significant but i think it will be popular eric that’s been i hope so

1:36:16 for all families i know that’s been the sticking point to going to the marblehead schools is we we go private because they get that tk year yeah that’s our hope and again that’s you know kudos to elissa to bring in that and allowing us to explore it the other um you know again is hopefully you know this getting into budget is that you know if now that we have five or six classrooms um the total numbers we had a wait list last year you know pre-pandemic of of 28 model students we had to turn away you know so again hopefully that brings in you know more revenue within our our for our pre-k program as well um you know i think the goal is always to kind of self-fund um i don’t think we’re it’s not a self-funded program though um and that’s i’ve asked every special education director around as who i could reach out to

1:37:02 zero of them said yeah we can sell fun it doesn’t it doesn’t it just does but that’s okay but um you know just breaking down to you know in different ways it’s certainly a good offset and i think again the expansion of this will allow um the ratio a little bit of our iep to model students to not necessarily have to be eight models to seven ieps it may be a little bit less kiddos on ieps just because of sheer numbers so maybe it’s 10 model students and that again it may not be significant but every dollar counts and that’s additional revenue on that can bring in based on those ratios so but last time but we’re planning for doubling our program in the fy 20 too but i i keep screwing this up i by 22. yeah okay i just everyone thinks new schools the numbers

1:37:49 are going down in the budget but i just want people to be realistic they’re not yeah so i think you know that’s part of again you know it’s that’s on me it’s our my responsibility and leading our department to figure out you know how we’re going to be able to to fund these and budget these you know i think coming with the new building if those two planned um you know we’re now really kind of three potentially new classrooms um you know that’s some internal work we got to do and it’s already you know lots of discussion about what that can look like so um i’m always optimistic i always feel like we can make it work but certainly you’re right you know i’m not gonna try to shy away from that at all thank you eric so much thank you yeah um eric thank you for this presentation um i know you’re not gonna vote on it tonight so i my statements are really just for you all to consider while

1:38:35 you’re thinking this through and before we vote because you know this program i don’t want to be too personal about it but it set my daughter up for success in her educational career she there’s no way she would be where she is if it wasn’t for a degraded preschool so this program is so vitally important for especially for the children who need it and i think what eric has done here really highlights his change in culture to inclusion so changing um you know looking at the model and trying to make more push in which therefore makes both the student who needs the services but also the model students now collaborating together and both of them you know all the students getting the

1:39:21 benefit from those services um and also the proposed schedule changes so that again that inclusion for the entire school day is equitable across the board um i think also as great as that program was for my daughter there also were some challenges and this plan addresses those challenges so for example the number of hours two and a half hours a day like okay maybe when she’s three but as she kind of went through that program she did need more and especially you know in her case we had to do that third year and it was really for her just repetitive and that’s not what she needed and it was still only the two and a half hours so for us you know we had to look for ways

1:40:06 to supplement that and it was incredibly disjointed for her and challenging for her so to also add that tk year is you know for me something that is long overdue and is incredibly beneficial again to the whole student base um i do think that the tuition you know eric thank you for providing that um analysis because if you look at those numbers we are what he’s suggesting is incredibly competitive for you know obviously for public schools but i mean incredibly competitive for you know sarah as you mentioned the private schools so i think you know yes there is an increase but if you look at the increase in what we’re providing it more

1:40:53 than is equitable for that um and the age range you know eric i appreciate you pointing out that piece because i think it does add value you know even if there’s older kids you know who are they can build the confidence within themselves um so i think that is an important piece to note about the program as well so eric thank you very much and just you know something to consider as you work through it thanks megan appreciate it that age range combination is more of a montessori about model right um yeah yes i mean i don’t want to put a label on i think it’s great i mean i’ve seen schools that do it in a fabulous way yes yeah no there’s a there is a lot of value again as i mentioned i my initial thought was well no way no

1:41:38 hell you know we got to be a little bit more homogeneous just from developmental standpoint but um but yeah there’s a lot of benefit um and you know within that you know naturally there will be you know not every five-year-old working with every three-year-old right there’s going to be homogeneity in that um in small group work and things like that but but yeah again the evidence i was proven wrong in my own you know thoughts um that which i appreciate always emily so my comments just really quick so last year you said you had a wait list of 28 students so i might be kind of like my kids are too old but um when i was looking at priesthood i didn’t know about the integrated preschool until my son was in kindergarten probably so

1:42:24 i mean it’s great to hear that there is a waitlist so maybe that’s changed that more people in the community know that we have this great program especially now within new changes but if there’s a way to advertise it or get it out there for young um not necessarily new parents and you know in looking for preschool as an option i just think some people just don’t even know that we have that because they’re not in the schools yet so do we have peer models this year because of kova did we limit pure models uh yeah everything’s limited um but we do we still do we were able to maintain our integrated model i was very proud of uh the the pre-k the teachers and alyssa throughout the state that was not across the board uh feasible for a lot

1:43:10 of districts they were actually run into a lot of issues that integrated was not an option so um yeah that’s a good job that’s great that we were able to because that’s so important all right well anyone can feel free to continue this conversation with eric offline and then uh eric we’ll have you back on next time around and we’ll vote this for you thank you all appreciate it thank you thanks eric all right john now i officially turn it over to you um under your section to talk to us about the calendar

1:43:45 all right as a public comment informed us calendar was a hot topic after uh last school committee uh meeting and i had started down the road in some conversations about the calendar that changed and that’s okay so things changed as a five o’clock tonight because i had two versions of the calendar but one was contingent on mea uh looking at some of the proposals and one of the proposals was accepted and another proposal wasn’t so that took version two of the calendar off and so what you have here

1:44:31 is the proposed calendar i reached out to superintendents in other districts and probably the most common advice is in your first year as a superintendent during a pandemic follow past practice and so i did reach out to rabbi meyer rabbi rogozin leaders in the religious community in town

1:45:00 other voices uh to ask questions to try and understand because my phone did start ringing after the last school committee meeting and so i wanted to make sure um that we were maintaining what we did understanding that there is a great deal of history here and that history comes with significant emotion and so what i put forward to you was approved by mea and it has us starting with the two professional development days in august we would have children the students uh in what is it k no 1 to 12 starting on the first

1:45:46 we would do a half day on that friday then we would have labor day the two days of rosh hashanah the 9th and the 10th would be school days the following week and the blue indicates open houses and so the ninth would be the open house at vets the following week uh we would have yom kippur on the 16th and again the blue highlights indicate open houses i think it’s the elementaries on the 14th um the no yeah yeah and then village on the 22nd and the high school on the 30th we have four approved professional development days and i have listed again for advice

1:46:32 what we have done in the past and that is to have that up against the indigenous people’s day in october when i talk about budget priorities we’re going to talk about a k-8 math adoption and so where professional development days would fall might be contingent on work that the selected vendor or program is available but i have put that there at the 12th i know sometimes schools will use election day as a professional development day because schools are polling places in some communities and that came up here this year and we did not make the school’s polling places because children were present but that could be an option we have

1:47:18 put in the parent conference day for the 9th the half days for the 23rd very children and families will be disappointed the holiday recess next year spoiler alert is really short probably the shortest it will be in a calendar um we have a professional development day in january and again those days are mirroring past calendars and there is some flexibility in how those are scheduled so fast forward you can see before you the the calendar this particular version this calendar that i’m asking you to approve would have the last official day on the 17th

1:48:06 uh and then the 185 day on the 24th and i tried to put month by month how many days in school you can see there are some months that are shorter than others uh the holidays in december february uh is a short month april vacation is a short month but i’m happy to answer questions but this is the proposed calendar for next year thanks john i know that you work really hard on it spent a lot of time over it and then rehashing over it and probably three four five times as well um so i really appreciate that um and i think you know i think it’s wide so you know my thoughts that if we’re gonna do

1:48:52 anything it needs to be through a community uh committee um so if we decide to take that up next year when hopefully covet is over and we have fewer committees functioning generally uh that you know that’s that would be great but um i think i think this is this looks great

1:49:19 yes yes um so i one one question i have where we look at this in where rosh hashanah falls is have did you look at a model that actually front loaded the professional development days taking that um indigenous the tuesday after indigenous people’s day and slid it to the front to front load those um because i think also we learned with this year that when we front load those days and we have continuous days of professional development it’s it’s very impactful and gives you a lot more ability to do things um and i wonder if it makes sense i think about this not just because of the way the holidays land this year but really also where we’re bringing this

1:50:05 new school online and there is a likely probability that the school will be ready to open in september and that shift between starting after those those three those the sixth seventh and eighth versus before realistically may make the difference of if we start those kids in one building and pay tens of thousands of dollars to move them two weeks later which is not just a financial decision it’s highly disruptive to small children it is anxiety provoking it is a lot um or if we want to check in with the design team and gilbane and see the likelihood of where we’re at with with that

1:50:52 september move-in um and and potentially look at like i said front loading those those days um because really if we front load them i believe that that shifts our calendar one and a half days um and i have to believe that it’s worth shifting us one and a half days later at the end of the year or potentially on another long weekend i can’t see in the bottom of the screen for some reason so i don’t know if there’s another professional development day embedded somewhere um but i i just want to make sure we’re looking at it if that keeps that giant transition from happening those were conversations that we had with mea about moving uh front loading those dates and that

1:51:39 was not approved do they understand teachers will be setting up a classroom and five to ten days later breaking it down and resetting it up because that may sway them

1:51:52 is that is that what we’re talking about i mean that isn’t something i’ve heard i’m saying if we shift us one and a half days later in our calendar and start us after the that for start us like on the ninth that that really shifting our calendar one and a half days would give the gilbane team a full extra week and potentially get us starting in the new building in the other direction as opposed to backwards just so i understand sarah you’re saying the first day of school would be thursday the 9th yes and that we would take october we would lose the first second and a half day on the third we would well we would take october 12th professional development day and front load that

1:52:38 on the first or however you fall it so instead of having two days in october or pd and one in october you have those three impactful days and then we really are making up one and a half days and we slide that later in the year we have two and a half days i couldn’t hear you i’m sorry sarah we have two and a half days that first week yeah but what i’m saying is if we take out the 12th of october and swap it for one of those days we’re only making up one day or one and a half days oh and checking that on to the end of the year yeah and it’s hugely impactful not to move our youngest learners i mean

1:53:23 anybody that’s gotten a kindergartner preschool or first grader in that first week of school to move them two weeks in is is really actually it’s gonna shake a lot of kids and it’s not easy for teachers to to set a classroom up to welcome students and break it down two weeks later over the weekend because we won’t have a break to do it so i think i understand what you’re saying sarah but i guess i’m not clear on is that like from a building committee perspective is that where we’re at like is there is there a date i don’t i didn’t unders i didn’t get the impression right now i mean we’re always our official date our official contractual date is december but in all

1:54:10 realisticness right now they’re ahead of schedule and correct me if i’m wrong david if they carry on the schedule they’re on right now it is highly realistic that we would be in the beginning of september right but right but okay i mean i’m not that’s that’s not for that is a possibility with what you’re saying sarah but i don’t think you know if there’s going we’ve heard we’ve heard at the building committee that gilbane rda and left field will reach a point when they will give us fair warning of when the school will open and it will be

1:54:56 a point in time that will be months in advance of i guess i’m asking are have we touched space with them to see when they’re ready to make that call if it’s in three weeks then should we deliver this we can i think it’s a reasonable question that you have that we can ask them and now that we vote if we vote a calendar tonight we need to make that calendar available to them and you know talk about september 1st and i so i do understand i understand perfectly what you’re saying you know what if the school’s not ready on september 1st what you know what’s plan b um with with students and what you’re saying is

1:55:44 we’d be required to open up schools and then pack up the classrooms after just two days or three days of classes if gilbane for some reason we needed another week to finish the school but um

1:56:00 a week in the construction world is a big time and what i’m saying is they’re saying beginning of september so i like if i i don’t know i i think that week pushing i think pulling that day and a half and making it up at the end of the year it makes a significant difference in us potentially getting kids in that building on day one i would just hate first i totally understand what you’re saying sarah i guess i don’t know that i’m comfortable making a decision to move it by one and a half or two and a half days whichever it is on the basis of the building project when we don’t have that date i mean it maybe it isn’t the 9th either maybe it’s the 11th right so i guess

1:56:45 i i take your point and if we need to come up with a plan b then then we can do that when we have more information because we just don’t have that information now but i think in the meantime we should aim for a start and end date for next year yeah i i and no one’s willing to bump it that day and a half later in june well we also bumping it the day and a half later in june also is going to bump it to if we use our snow days which granted we have not as of late but then we’re at this at the snow day date of the 28th and that starts to you know we’re well overdue for a bad winter um so that starts to make me really antsy as and again especially because

1:57:30 we don’t know again what happens if it doesn’t if it’s not open until the 16th then we’ve even then we’re we’ve kept kids in in a building even less time because we because we over planned and and kind of tried to foresee the future when you know i no one’s going to like to hear this but we did change the calendar this year and although it’s way less than ideal you know we we’ve got mea’s approval on this one so it does make sense for us to move forward with it and if it necessitates being looked at another time we can do that um it’s also one building and i know that it’s a large chunk of

1:58:16 our our young kids but it’s it’s one building and we’ve had issues at one building level before where we then have worked with the state to make up days at different places for those children um so i i would also just hesitate you know well it’s more than 15 of our student body population but you’re talking like if it’s a subset of our population as well so you know if you’ve got high schoolers now you’re talking about you know not getting out of school until the 22nd or 23rd because of kindergarteners that like i don’t know i i guess i just

1:59:11 in the back of my head he was from new hampshire and so snow days were life to him and so when he came to nantucket he started asking all these snow day questions which didn’t make good sense to any of us because we get like one every three years but he always cautioned using that last week in june as your buffer because if you do have a bad winter then you need to start looking at breaks and saturdays or vacations that because you can’t go past june 30th right so that isn’t a flexible date and certainly a day and a half you know we can look at that but that does put that 185 into the final week

1:59:58 i mean in years past we’ve given up good friday we could give up good friday two years ago we gave up good friday and i don’t recall it being an issue at all and i say that as a practicing catholic that’s great i remember that being a big issue yeah that was a huge issue last year but how i pulled my kids from school teachers were certain super respectful it was easy right but there were other families who didn’t feel that way and so when we talked about it last year this was a topic that we spent a considerable a considerable amount of time talking about because it is meaningful to some families so we have to be sensitive to that and i it’s very meaningful to my family i bring my children to stations to the cross it’s not meaningless

2:00:49 that that while we know that the calendar is an issue we need to address we also have a lot of things on our plate and this may not be the most appropriate time to try to address that

2:01:05 this is that my main concern i am deeply worried about moving these students a weekend if no one else shares that concern that’s fine i think there’s a way to be respectful of all share that we all share that concern but it’s a concern that we could we if we try to over analyze it right now you know nine months out we could move ourselves into an even bigger pickle of trying to you know we’re this is we’re analyzing we’re playing foreign’s almanac we’re analyzing the potential snow days right and so real life with experts telling us a realistic move-in date that we’re we’re not carrying didn’t bring it back of course we could yeah and i think that’s what we’re saying all right so i will

2:01:52 ask for a motion could we just i’m sorry interrupt no go ahead so the the reason you know we’re voting a calendar for planning purposes but it’s also there’s a it’s in the contract right that says the mea wants to know what the school calendar will be by a certain daily time so i think what we’re saying here is if there was something impactful i’m glass half full so i hate even speculating on this that impacted the opening of it in school and we knew in advance i would suggest that the teachers would work with us but that’s that’s just me i’m glass half full on this and i totally hear what you’re saying sarah and we can we can

2:02:39 bring this back now to the to the project team but the project team is um you know when you said early september we if we want to try we can tell them the first day of school is going to be wednesday the first now and we can ask them point blank you know how where do we stand but i think um you know the the pressure is on the the project is on schedule and um if things continue the way they have i like to think we won’t have any issues and we do have to remember there’s a little bit of flexibility i know teachers do have to pack up but they’re not taking much with them because it’s a brand new school you know we’re leaving all of our tables and desks

2:03:25 probably most of our technology behind um and there yes there will be things to move but you know you’re moving you’re moving into a new house that’s fully furnished so you don’t have to take your furniture with you and and a lot of the things that come along with it so i think we are speculating a little bit about it but i’m glass half full i think the school will be done in plenty of time but we just have to let this critical path of the project continue forward and i hear what you’re saying sarah the project had another week wouldn’t it be great if the project got another two weeks and they started school on the on the 13th um but i think that’s speculation and conjecture at this point if the project

2:04:12 even needs that time well i think i i think when i interviewed it was david who told me to stop talking or sarah because when i was in littleton we had a building project and it was a september move-in that became indigenous people’s day move in that became veterans day moving i think this is where david asked me to stop you didn’t have gilbane i recognized that you know things can take a turn not sure looking at the day and a half is going to give us the buffer if in fact there is a major delay in the building project or something that goes before and i mean again i think we’ve seen the the

2:04:57 the the we’ve we’ve changed our calendar this year and we changed our calendar last year when you know something catastrophic happened and we have to go back to the drawing board and so you know i don’t think that opening the new school the latest is would be considered catastrophic considering covid but um you know we can we can look at this again if there’s a major kind of shift we can look at this again and we and when we have the information that we can plan with we can plan appropriately and i think mba will be amenable to there was a major change yeah yeah because you know sarah’s right the teachers also have a vested interest in not moving too quickly within the new

2:05:42 year as well so yeah i mean because they yes they don’t have to move desks but these people put their heart and souls in getting these classrooms ready and welcoming our children and countless i mean they don’t go in one day before us i know that’s our two days that’s what the calendar says they’re in there most of the chunks of the summer getting these spaces ready for these kids to be cheerful and beautiful and you’re not going to tell me any of these teachers if you say well you’re going to move in the week you’re going to say i’m not going to do it this year they’re still going to put their heart and soul they’ll kill themselves to get it done that’s the type of people they are and i also think we’ve seen an incredible amount of flexibility on both the part of our teachers as well as our students and we certainly don’t want to tax them any further in that flexibility but you know

2:06:30 it’s it’s there in spades and so again whether it’s looking at the calendar again or you know having a different move-in date that that isn’t for seen right now i think you know we can we can bring this back up if needed so i will ask for a motion to approve the proposed calendar for 2021 2022 school year uh with the caveat that if we need to look at it again to make small changes we can emily moved second david second i think there’s been a lot of discussion so sarah gold yes david harris yes uh emily barron

2:07:15 megan taylor yes and sarah fox no and i want it noted for the record it’s because i’m in favor of a september 9th start so we can be respectful but also you know in my mind plan appropriately all right so that passes four to one all right john the budget calendar and priorities yes the next slide is

2:07:43 in terms of planning and timeline um taking into account that there is some flexibility to move dates up i put some things in gray that are just merely placeholders to mirror what they were last year for example in march the 29th the finance committee i’ve had no conversations with the finance committee that that is our date to present um most pressing we have a budget subcommittee meeting tomorrow morning another budget subcommittee meeting on the 28th the first meeting in february we’ll introduce the draft budget and that’ll be the budget notebook in the worksheets and things that you have seen before but will be for the fy 22.

2:08:30 then on the 9th and the 11th we’ll ask the leadership team to present their budgets so you’ll hear from each of the building principals and todd and michelle and nan and me and athletics and so those uh in talking to bill can be long meetings um so he recommended that you start earlier uh as opposed to going seven to ten um you have then some meetings after the february vacation into march and uh then april um and this was approved by the budget subcommittee as the draft calendar to bring to you yeah thank you for going through that i do

2:09:16 just want to highlight as with last year dates are obviously subject to change um john mentioned we are meeting with the town tomorrow so you know we’ll make sure that these dates line up with their plans as well um and you know i think we’re going to shoot for the 18th of the public hearing but i think as we go through the process we’ll know if you know that still makes sense okay one question i have about the fourth that looks like it’s in a regular school committee meeting and i’ve been hearing loud and clear from the community that they feel our our agendas are very heavy in and our meetings are running extremely late and i think we all feel the same way i wonder if that introduction which is such an important time if that doesn’t become its own

2:10:01 meeting if that gets embedded in our normal monthly meeting i i just think our agendas are getting really really long and i wonder if we’re getting to a period where we might need to for a period meet more often

2:10:20 um i mean you know there’s just a lot to be done i i absolutely hear what you’re saying um and and i knew going into i knew from the last meeting that this agenda would be rough um so i guess i would just say you know we we’re all asked to do our homework outside of meetings as well so if we can do our homework outside of meetings and kind of come to meetings prepared to listen to the presentation ask any lingering questions um and sort of you know start to clip through things um i mean i was looking at an agenda for another district that actually delineates the amount of time that is spent on different subjects uh which i think is a phenomenal idea um and and then they were running with a with an executive session an hour and a half long so i think you know there

2:11:07 there’s precedence for us to push through this um you know we’re elected to do a job so we you know doing our homework outside is not it’s is is a good thing so i agree but i think that the discussions and the questions are important to happen in the public eye yeah absolutely and i think that as long as we all come in knowing the basics that can happen can i also just add a comment there too is that if you um if you guys remember from last year this is exactly what we did last year and what we used that meeting for when the budget books were introduced i mean in the case of last year was the first time we’ve ever even seen a budget book so bill had to take the time to walk us through each section and kind of explain the purpose and the layout we don’t need

2:11:54 to do that this year because now we know i mean with the exception of emily who we can i’m sure get up to speed we know how it works so really what the intent of that um piece was for our agenda on the fourth is for john and michelle to hand out the books but also just highlight some of the key points so that we can start to consider that before we do our deep dives on the 9th and the 11th so my expectation on the 4th similar to last year is that we wouldn’t spend a lot of time on the book it’s more just to get it to us highlight the pieces we need to start looking at so that we can be prepared for those next sessions that make sense okay and they’ll you’ll have the books john and michelle you’ll have the books ready for pick up on the third okay um

2:12:39 and is there any room to buffer it bump that five five o’clock you know is it’s not realistic in my world at all um six o’clock i can make work asking my husband to to leave work two days early in one week at for a five o’clock dinner time meeting is is not realistic nor nor does it really include the community in my mind i mean i hear you sarah i mean obviously i’ve got kids at home too and a husband that works like insane hours the only thing i will say is that i think we also have to be considerate of the administrators who are going to be coming to these meetings who have already worked you know probably 10 to 12 hours at that point and we’re asking them to be on top of their game to walk us through these budgets for another two to three hours i just think it’s a big ask for them

2:13:26 that’s my personal opinion i’m open to changing it but that’s um i’m in theory open to changing it as well i think that that’s a really valid point though um and really considered it last year we walked in the door i i noted this because i remember it was my birthday we walked in the door at six and we walked out of the door at 7 25 because bill had made me that promise i’d i’d make my 7 30 um commitment and it was fine um right but our administrators start at 7am so now they’ve already you know that’s a 12 plus hour day for them twice in one week never mind the other extra meetings that they have to do for their jobs every day so again i’m not saying i’m not open to it i just have a hard time making that ask of them okay i guess we can just i won’t be

2:14:13 there at five let me just i cannot school committee meetings have never been at five it won’t happen so you guys decide that’s just you know my opinion it’s open 5 30 5 30 is that better

2:14:48 um i mean we don’t have to vote this this is you know the proposed uh calendar so um you know we’ve got we’ve got another meeting before this so why don’t we sort of tentatively say 5 30 and um just kind of feel out staff a little bit okay okay given you know given the the um zoom nature of it all it you know it might it may give them a chance i don’t know if they want to stay in their offices or if they want to go home you know to kind of particularly because we are breaking it up and i think it’s being broken up into like principles and then like other district officials um so maybe one of those nights the preference is to do a little later and the other night is to keep it at you

2:15:35 know 5 5 30. so all right so we’ll we’ll work offline to kind of cement that out

2:15:49 so again uh using last year as a template and the notes from school committee meetings and some of the conversations um certainly meeting contractual obligations and we’ll have an executive session tonight to be able to talk more about what that might mean but that takes into account the steps and the lanes and the differentials and course reimbursement and things that are included in the cba and i maybe should have put another bullet there i know there were some people in the system that went without raises last year that we would certainly want to make sure that might not fall under meeting contractual obligations but should be a consideration in the budget um

2:16:35 technology that should not surprise anyone given the amount of conversation that we have had about our woefully inadequate infrastructure that needs significant attention and kudos to stephen quiatek who saved the district money and was able to have a conversation with the audit firm and to share some of his findings which they said these would have been things that if officially submitted we would put forward and so um they had a good conversation and we’re not paying for an expensive audit uh in taking his findings number is very scary

2:17:21 um and so that’s why technology is a budget uh priority and he will talk to the committee about that and so i’m not keeping information from you but it is his to walk through because it is so detailed there’s a lot of intricacies that go to infrastructure hardware software licenses networking that are way beyond my skill sets but i know enough to put technology as a budget priority for the year i’m already terrified um curriculum um again i talked about the pre-k to eight math adoption a series nan is doing an

2:18:07 amazing job of leading a very inclusive process to vet math series programs vendors she has a committee of teachers representative across schools and grade levels so that worked she will probably come to you in march and uh talk more about that but that is a significant investment for the district in that i think nan will talk about some curriculum coaches to support that and i understand that even through the interview process here that curriculum coaches was something uh that the district was interested so that is a budget priority for us central office staffing um

2:18:53 i looked at bills and he said reorganization i think that’s a loaded word and causes people great anxiety so mine is reinstating uh the human resources director and i have had just superficial preliminary casual conversations with jason about is that a position that we might partner with town on in the absence of a human resources department director in town and so that has no flesh to it that has no number to it but it is uh you can imagine in covid with all of um the hr demands

2:19:38 that has fallen to a clerk to lisa to michelle who have done yeoman’s work in a field that isn’t their specialty and they have done a lot of work and so having the human resources director uh i think is worth a budget priority certainly communications um we have relied on a volunteer for the most part you all had access to the contract of what we paid we paid for about 200 hours at last the communication support we were getting was over 700 hours i think it is very clear that this is a community that

2:20:23 that that values communication values transparency values being up to speed and coming in we didn’t have an infrastructure we didn’t have a robust website and i don’t want to see that fall to other directors the way some of the human resources work has done and i think we have made a very strong case that a communications position i don’t think it will come in as a director you know i don’t see it as an administrator at first but in order to maintain what we have established it has to be a budgeted position uh facilities maintenance and i think that i don’t want to steal michelle

2:21:11 presta’s thunder um somebody did uh point out to me that the audit should probably not be a priority because you have already funded that and it is going to be approved hopefully tonight and then the findings of those um should be a priority for maybe a long-range plan and i know the facilities subcommittee has already engaged that conversation about how to take the facility’s audit and put that into a long-range plan for funding some of the capital needs um that we have across the district and then i clearly the new school and i think sarah fox said it tonight there will be budget implications i learned tonight that we promised that there would be service providers

2:21:56 for that school and so i was unaware of that as developing the budget so as things are promised i it will be important for me to know so as we’re developing a budget i’m not missing promises made during that process so i’m glad the new school is on there as a budget priority and we have some contingency plans almost to what the point sarah was making about a delayed opening if we are indeed in december that’s a huge budget implication because you have coffins still open and evil is still open but the new school that will have costs associated with it because it’s not no longer in the

2:22:43 construction phase so you’ll have utilities and things like that um and then if we’re still in covet what is the plan b if we are still at a three foot and i hope we are not and i have plans for us not to be there through the end of this year um but we don’t know and so i think budget wise it is important for us to plan for those contingencies and that falls under the new school so those are budget priorities and certainly they will be fleshed out during budget presentations

2:23:30 okay sarah okay sarah there were a few things that we had kind of talked about last year that we would have liked to make priorities or they were priorities but we had to pull them off the list um and i just wanted i want to put them out there and and see if we’re looking at this um one new one is i’d like to see a priority about um any planning for any potential loss of learning particularly with the tier one supports in providing more tier one supports we all know that that catches kids before they need to potentially go on an iep i think that um coming out of covid we’re going to need to really budget for more of those and i and i would would like to see that as a priority um

2:24:16 you want me to address that before you go to the next yes yes well we’re ahead of the game on that and eric and nan are going to use some of our student opportunity act money to do summer programming this summer for learning loss and remediation and so we will be making that an option it is not part of the budget it is part of that soa funding so i have made a note here sarah to make uh have a conversation with the leadership team about that okay and that wouldn’t just be the special education students that would be absolutely appropriate okay um and then we uh one thing that’s come up in different conversations is village is one of our is our second largest

2:25:05 school population wise um however when you look at you know the staffing there and particularly the guidance department we have two guidance counselors covering an astronomical number of children during what might be arguably like a really tough time for that guy like you know these are tweens and you know adolescents and and i i know there’s been a lot of talk that about a need for additional guidance at that level so i didn’t know if that was a topic or a second team chair at village we have one team chair handling over 700 students and then another one that comes up in that same field is an executive function coach we see a lot of kids that really

2:25:51 need that help we see the executive function piece coming um really with the rubber seems to meet the road particularly at that seven and eight grade level where you know they might have been holding it together but they’re not and i think looking at that might be or i think we need to look at those items well an executive function coach i think i would um i would circle back with like our with eric and our other curriculum supports because a lot of those skills are taught through curriculum support our learning specialists um you know again counselors can teach those types of skills um so that i completely agree with where sarah’s had that particularly for seventh and eighth because i think there’s massive ef pieces with that

2:26:37 deal with that in my own life yeah but um especially the coded and how it’s disrupted the the middle school but i also think that you know it’s not non-existent

2:26:50 i think it’s always good to be at a school committee meeting where you already have the answers and that was in meeting michelle and i met with each building principal and each director to talk about what are your priorities what do you want what do you need and how can you pay for it so if we are going to have a level funded budget and we don’t know right now but i think that’s a safe assumption given what we’re hearing across the state how if you have a priority what can you give to get for for example and so i know that we have met with each person and we’re very blessed and i meant to start my

2:27:37 comments to have eric oxford in special ed because he is always looking at what we have and making it better and so i know he is looking at current staffing in special ed and how we can use that staffing and what is already funded in better ways to attend to some of the needs in the district and really he deserves the shout out for the pre-k presentation because that’s exactly what you want administrators doing making data informed decisions he engaged a consultant he got a 60-page report he had the superintendent the assistant

2:28:24 superintendent classroom level teachers paraprofessionals all the voices in there got recommendations and then immediately set out to address those recommendations and so the entire administrative team that’s how we’re approaching budgeting this year is what is the need can you make a case for it what does the data in your building say and part of that is the math curriculum as a budget priority because that is something that the districts need the district needs to look at k-8 so what has come forward um in the budget priorities i think will foreshadow what you will hear

2:29:12 from building leaders and directors when they present their budgets to you because this is part of the conversation yeah and i think that’s a good point not to like stop this conversation but just in i think looking at the uh i think some of these points they’re valid but we’re probably worthwhile having when we’ve got the administrators and we can talk about you know those in more detail especially if some of them are you know building or grade specific so i think if if we can just kind of agree or if there’s anything to add from a district perspective that we’ve missed here you know i think that would be good feedback at this point but i think some of those detailed questions we should we should say for those for those conversations john as they present if you can ask them to kind of present also how any of these

2:29:57 changes really further the goal of more more inclusion because i think that’s our goal is to maximize inclusion and i i want to make sure that you know we’re we’re allocating funds to do that all right all right well we’ll look forward to getting our books um um thank you very much that’s a hard stop for me not to go to calendar number two

2:30:54 do you need to allow you to share your screen

2:31:35 all right what about can you do it now i made you a co-host

2:32:15 yeah i know the teachers do it for my daughter’s class and the kids click on i accept

2:32:34 oh there you go michelle here we go all right oh my gosh i couldn’t do anything okay okay um now how do i can i share a screen yeah you can share screen

2:33:11 okay okay so do you see the um financial report memo up right now no no yeah great

2:33:23 technical difficulties technical difficulties yeah i can see if i can zoom is starting to feel like an awkward party game oh my gosh yeah okay well i guess i will just give up on that one um so i know you guys don’t have yeah we’ve got it in our packet so yes i was hoping for the general audience but it will be posted eventually on the website it’s it’s out on the website already yeah oh it is awesome perfect okay so for the financials as of the month of december we had spent a total of 14 million 936 000 or just over 36 percent of the operating budget um there were not any significant changes during the month of december which is great we had a pretty quiet month knock on

2:34:08 wood um that will stay that way our current projected shortfall in the special education tuition area um that we monitor very closely the shortfall remains at 93 000 which was the estimate the previous month um one other thing that we’re continuing to watch is the substitute teacher line we are continuing to have the challenge with being able to secure substitute teachers um while this is actually um beneficial to the budget and we’ve only spent about 10 percent of our substitute budget as of the end of december this is very um difficult to manage in our schools and very hard to work around so as of the end of december we spent just over 24 000 in subs

2:34:53 subs subs that budget is 232 000 so we’ve spent just over ten percent um also in your packet i did the monthly update of the covet expenditure report um to date we have spent one million four hundred and forty seven thousand and we have encumbered another 378 thousand um we are anticipating additional costs in the ballpark of 87 000 and that will bring us to the 1.9 9 million or just over the 1.9 million that we’ve been projecting for the past few months that number has not changed so much the good news is we did have an extension of the cares act funding that we receive that we can

2:35:40 spend it into the new year the new calendar year now um so far we have not received any commitment to have additional funds but well we have received word that we will be receiving we haven’t received an actual commitment so we do not know um what the additional funding will be under the cares act or for covert relief but we are promised that we will get something but even even with that being said our our existing funds are now able to be spent in the new calendar year which is a great thing um so i so i i just updated the spreadsheet and all the areas that we’re spending um there’s nothing new there we are continuing right now our contracted cleaning

2:36:25 services um the remaining costs of that would be about 48 000 and our storage trailers of the items that we had to remove from the schools due to coved is about 4 500 um and that’s about it for the financial report if anyone has any questions on that

2:36:44 michelle i noticed in the monthly um line item that you gave us there’s roughly 425 000 that’s you know starred in and at first glance it looks like it’s unbudgeted but you are too good at this and i know it’s not on budgeted i just want to clarify are those those are items that might have been listed somewhere else and if you correlate that line item will kind of be at zero it all balances out correctly they were all there were things like um para salaries at specific schools or um an ell tutor yeah you will notice that all of those items are salary lines yes we are have we we continue to

2:37:29 not have the manpower we need to change the salary account numbers it’s it’s an extremely time consuming process due to the way that um we’ve been operating in the past and our financial software um this goes back to that bottom line that our financial software causes us triple the time it at a minimum that it should take us to do any simple change we’re looking at adapting a new program though right not in the near future eventually it has finally made it to the town’s capital plan um but not this year i do not believe so okay do not believe so that’s too bad so it’s just a time consuming process and i i do have spreadsheets so i i know we are good in

2:38:15 those areas okay i’m concerned with what you’re seeing on these reports um as long as those those discrepancies show up only in the salary lines i’m good um they all were salaries and that’s what my assumption was but where we make this public i just want to make sure that yeah you know it’s out there eventually we will get it fixed because it needs to be perfect going into the new budget year basically so we do have a little bit of time like i said i’m not concerned about it i do monitor that on and my own spreadsheets um but it’s it’s a super time consuming process to get it cleaned up and eventually you know once we get this budget passed and whatnot hopefully we will have the time to devote to cleaning well i mean there’s already been a tremendous amount of work and a lot of cleanup that has happened in these salary lines um so i

2:39:01 don’t want to take away from that but um for the subs this is a recurring problem it’s obviously a bigger problem in kovid but it’s been a problem for a while i really think we need to figure out as a district how we’re going to fix that because we can’t we can’t keep over taxing i mean it was beautiful to hear mandy talk about her getting to interact and to do what she did but we can’t keep self-covering in our schools the way that we are absolutely we we know it’s a challenge and hopefully we i mean i think every every district had this challenge prior to covet and kobe just made this challenge so much more difficult for all of us yeah yeah all right

2:39:47 all right all right uh thank you michelle we always appreciate the updates um so that leads us to the uh contract to award for the capital needs assessment yes so um last week i believe it was last week these weeks are all rain rolling together now um we solicited quotes for capital needs assessment that we have been talking about for months and months and probably over a year now um this capital needs assessment would include all school buildings and um at the request of the town we actually threw the police station in there as an alternate add-on as long as it didn’t make us go over our threshold for the bidding in this this method [Music]

2:40:33 so we added that on we did receive four responses i had sent out four requests to firms that i knew their background on i have either worked with before receiver proposals from them before um and asked around so four firms that we sent them out to we got responses from all four firms pretty quickly um so the four firms were on-site insight which bill had worked with previously habib and associates ebi consulting and drumny roseanne anderson the highest quote came in at 54 000 for all the school buildings plus the top plus the um police station and the low quote came in from ebi consulting of 38 170. so it’s a pretty substantial range for the assessment um

2:41:19 the proposal from ebi was great um we thoroughly checked their references we’re very happy with what we’ve found and at this point we would um i would recommend that we award a contract to ebi consulting of burlington in the amount of 38 170 and they will be able to basically start on this tomorrow as soon as we sign the contract and they should have a report a draft report to us within six weeks at the ma maximum and then that’s great now new that was the company that you were going to try to vet a little more correct in their quote in their proposal they had add-ons yeah they had wording in it and basically it was a template contra or template proposal

2:42:06 um that covered them for more in-depth architectural programs where um additional services might be required and i made it clear and i received it in writing that we would not be charged any additional fees um unless it’s something that we agreed to in terms of testing or further investigation so there will be no additional cost to this and it was the same scope as everybody else yes yep it was can i get a motion to enter into a one-time contract with ebi consultant burlington massachusetts and the total amount of 38 170 and to authorize the chair to sign the contract on behalf of the committee megan moved that comment uh i’ll give david a second

2:42:52 um all right any other questions all right sarah gold yes david harris yes emily baron megan taylor yes sarah fox yes all right great stop in bright and early tomorrow morning perfect i’ll have it printed for you um and then the last thing i believe that i’m speaking on this evening yes is um each year the school department needs to submit a letter to the board of selectmen um asking to renew our one revolving fund which falls under a certain category of mass general lodge chapter 44 section 53 e and a half um it’s just basically the general revolving statute within the within the law um

2:43:38 in this category we have our special education tuition fund we have to set an er rather town meeting needs to set an annual amount which we cannot exceed for the expenditures in that fund this year it was set at 900 000 i actually thought that was a little low last year because there’s no harm in setting it higher than you actually need um but there is a concern if it’s too low like literally if we met the the 900 000 threshold but yet we brought in a million dollars in revenue we would not be able to spend that million dollars so um i always recommend having the threshold higher than we need so next year i’m recommending that the limit on the this fund be set at 1.2 million dollars this year we’re going to be spending um just under 900 000 which

2:44:25 is our limit so um i do want to up that limit a little bit if you have any questions on that let me know but we will um otherwise be sending the letter to um the chairman of the board of selectmen tomorrow is that the only warrant article we’re putting in yes at this time when’s it the warrant closes though before our next meeting correct it closes tomorrow actually so um can i just address that piece so we have in our meetings discussed putting a placeholder like we’ve done previously sarah um and we may still do that i’ve you know we’ve spoken to jason and um you know he doesn’t need that from us by the 22nd which is the deadline for um which is the deadline for any other like community warrants

2:45:10 community warrants community warrants so you know he’s aware where we’re at we’re in constant communication with the town and we’ve got some buffer there so that if we do need to put a warrant article on and we need to vote on that that we have the information that we need from our budget discussions to make that a legit ask um so we can definitely there will be an opportunity if we need to add that what jason said to me today is that he’ll um you know we can kind of keep it on the on the books for now but we’re not going to vote it because we don’t have the information to vote it and like i said we can and it’s open for discussion we can put the placeholder in tomorrow i just i don’t know that it’s valid and we never end up you know the past two years we haven’t ended up using it it’s not to say we won’t this year i

2:45:55 just don’t think we have the information at our disposal to make that decision we also talked about the potential of putting in a placeholder um i we glanced over this i think two meetings ago um for giving the beacon street property back where we’ve desi it’s not buildable for our purposes a potentially putting a placeholder so we can talk about this in more depth of of putting that get giving that back to the town if they have a use for it i mean we can’t we’re not going to decide that tonight but i don’t know if that’s a placeholder we should be looking at yeah

2:46:37 i would think if if the town wants to do that they they could also add that article at a later date you know with with our request um like megan did say usually when they close the warrant it’s really for articles that are not town sponsored okay i just want to make sure because there’s been some talk about possible uses for that in the town side okay absolutely and i don’t know if the lekman can reopen the warrant at any time um up to a certain point michelle do you need us to vote this for you i do not i just wanted to make sure you guys were all aware of it and while your dollar amount up there but thank you and we don’t have to ask for a potential placeholder to refund or to to at to replenish the special ed reserve fund right even though we’re not planning on using it right now

2:47:23 um i don’t believe so i’ll double check with jason tomorrow um when i spoke to him earlier this week he said this was the only one needed so i’ll double check that okay i know we’re not planning on using that needing that this year but but if we need the article we’d rather have it there yeah okay thank you michelle thank you all right uh next up is the schedule of bills uh can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule of bills totaling 301 975.66

2:47:59 emily second emily second all right uh anybody have any questions on that all right sarah gold yes sarah fox i need to abstain and i’ll touch base with michelle tomorrow okay uh emily barron yes david harris yes and megan taylor all right four to zero to one okay now the most anticipated school naming discussion so the plan for this evening is that we all are given an opportunity to put a finalist name into the list and then we will solicit feedback throughout the coming two weeks and then at public comment at the next meeting on the

2:48:45 fourth i believe that is um and then we will vote uh one of these names on the fourth anybody want to start or do you want me to go for it sir all right so i’m gonna pull this and pass it around so that we’re not yelling quite as much so all right so i can honestly say that i have spent the last year mulling this name over um because it was on a road trip to dc over mlk weekend that i had my first big discussion about where my head was at that point so a lot has changed but in the past weekend i dug into a few different suggestions um i learned about some really amazing people in marblehead um i looked at the

2:49:31 heroics of chris piper and duncan slay learned a little bit more about wilmot red and her really grouchy attitude um the glover family there were three hannah’s in the one immediate family um um lydia pinkman she was high up on my list and finalist she was an inventor entrepreneur and marketing case whose products continue to be sold today and then i also learned that the dixon taekwondo pencil was originally made here in marblehead which was like the quintessence of my dorky high school years because if you found one of those in the hallways your day was made however after all of that research i came back to the name that i originally fell in love with last year um so i feel really strongly that

2:50:18 this new building needs to be a fresh start um yes it’s built on the side of the old bell school but that building is gone and the new building needs to have a name that that enables it to create a new culture um i think that the previous buildings that are that have the children going into it needs to be honored in different aspects of that school we’ll take that up a different day though um so the staff and children are no longer from belle or gary or coffin and they haven’t they need to be the new face of this school um and so i think this school needs to create its own story and that is why my recommendation is going to be for the joseph story school so i know that there is also a story school in the past and that it was the first modern school to be built in marblehead uh that building was turned into condos

2:51:05 over 40 years ago and is on the national uh register of historic places so although marblehead will inevitably build new schools again at some point in the hopefully very distant future this building is the final new one in the 20-year master plan and i like the concept of kind of that first school and last school with that with that thing um so most or more importantly in my opinion um joseph story is one of marblehead’s most amazing members of history and that’s saying a lot um story is often viewed as someone who aspired to be above politics which i think we can all appreciate at this point um he’s well known for his opinion in the amistad case and he’s worked closely with other historic marblehead and surrounding area

2:51:52 residents such as samuel sewell and the crown and shield family he remains the youngest person to ever have served on the supreme court and he started a very important time in our country’s history uh story was part of the marshall court and my lawyer husband actually teared up as he explained to me on that car trip just how important that port was and how it shaped what we currently still hold to know as the constitutional law and story wrote a large portion of the opinions issued by that court story believed in the creation of strong unions of states and our town is now creating a union between three previous school populations um so honestly it was first come to this name because i love our vet and his last

2:52:38 name is also story um but as i researched the actual justice story um i really became completely enamored with his legacy um so i truly believe this would be a great game um but if we go in a different direction i really enjoy learning more about history the public heard everything you said but the last few comments it goes out okay

2:53:18 meg you want to go next all right we can’t hear you at all i don’t have quite the statement that uh that you’ve had sarah but um i also have been thinking about this for a long time at this point and we’ve talked about it a number of times and um like you i think it was for me a great lesson in marblehead history and we are we are truly blessed in this town to have so many figures in our past um that have had a you know made a great impact um but and i also agree that i would like the school to really have the fresh start because we are kind of combining three schools that have their own

2:54:06 histories and traditions and cultures um so so i’d like to you know that was in the back of my mind as i was considering all the names and before i tell you what my the theme i’m putting forward is i also want to thank the community for being a part of this process and to continue being a part of this process because as i’ve said every time we’ve talked about this it’s a community building and it’s going to be here a lot longer than any one of us is going to be on this committee so you know i think it’s important that we absolutely do get the feedback from the community once we’ve you know gone through tonight but that said i have chosen the anchor school and i’ve chosen the anchor school um a4 it’s linked to our history being the birthplace of the navy

2:54:52 also as our link to our maritime community which is a very important part of marblehead life but also because an anchor the definition is to provide a firm basis or foundation and that’s really what i’d like this school to be i’d like it to provide that basis for that combined school community and be representative of the foundation on which this new school can build its new history its new traditions and its new culture so the anchor school is my suggestion all right it’s a great one

2:55:31 oh sorry you’re directly across from me sure

2:55:41 so i too have been um thinking about the name of the school for a long time since i’ve been on the building committee it’s always been an exciting topic to think about um but um i was able to research like megan and sarah and um you know this town is absolutely amazing and our history is so wonderful um so i used the list that we were given last at our last meeting as a starting point and two of the suggestions stuck out of me and the first was a woman’s name and that was just on the list and then also joseph brown

2:56:27 and as we all know marblehead has a rich history and i believe it’s important as a community to acknowledge all people and to teach our students all that all people deserve to be recognized in the full history of our amazing town taught our amazing town to be taught and cherished joseph brown lived in marblehead before during and after the american revolution he became a member of lover’s regiment and fought for our independence after the war joseph came back to marblehead and with the help of his wife lucretia operated a successful tavern in town where all walks of life mingled and lucretia created and perfected the famous recipe of the joe frogger cookie joseph was born a slave and is half wampanoag nation and half african-american

2:57:13 african-american african-american he was freed after the war and lucretia was born free in marblehead the written history of this respected couple is mostly based around joseph’s life and this shows the bias that has hidden away so many women’s contribution to history and lucretia is real rarely acknowledged in our town and i feel that the naming of the new school brings an opportunity to show the importance of women in history as well as creating learning opportunities for our students and to show that here in our community we respect all people so i propose the name of the new school to be the lucretia and joseph brown elementary school all right i thought this was going to maybe make it easier and that was harder

2:58:04 all right i don’t know that i really need to bring this much closer to you david no i will just um you know i i will hope to be as prepared and eloquent as the three of you have been next week after our next meeting after we hear the um public’s feedback which i really hope will will get this information out there and people will will chime in once again um i too being on the building committee we’ve we’ve been dying to get a name and an identity for the school and i think it will help if we can make this decision and when we did look for the name suggestions last year the the number one vote getter in town was

2:58:50 the gary school and um so my recommendation is going to be that we um stand by elbridge gary and carry on that tradition even though that building will remain in a different structure just like the story school is well done it’s over on elm street if you happen to be on elm street beautiful beautiful red brick school and um it still stands but i’m in favor of just because of you know the history of that and the legacy that he left as um you know being uh being the governor of massachusetts then being the vice president vice president i’ll be up for a short

2:59:37 term until he he unfortunately passed away but also being you know one of the signers of the declaration of independence and one thing when i was reviewing my history on him as well was

2:59:54 i think going to school represents you know perseverance and um you know you have to continue to try to do better if you don’t do well on something and um i never knew but gary ran for governor four times um i think that’s more than richard nixon ran for president right before before he won but he ran for governor four times in massachusetts and on the fifth time he was um finally elected governor of massachusetts so i think it also represents a little bit of uh perseverance there when it comes to his legacy so i’ll i’ll stay with um elbridge gary and leave it at that thank you

3:00:44 i think everyone has made wonderful exp suggestions um david when you want to lobby more for gary i’d have jim come and read his speech because he brought me near to tears when he uh read it at our meeting last spring he he really did a lot of research um as i was going through this i’ve been at different points at different times over the summer towards the end of the summer after losing judy jacoby i really felt strongly i wanted to suggest naming the school in honor of judy who loved this town donated so much of herself to this town um and i don’t think i ever saw a selectmen’s meeting where she didn’t reference her time as an educator and think about our students um

3:01:30 in their in teacher side of things and educator side of things and so i felt that would be a beautiful tribute um however then the community center went and they renamed the community center for judy which is very fitting because she spent so much time donating uh to the senior community but that that was originally my thought so i started to dig in um and the schools in this town are beloved treasures to the people of marblehead they’re not only house and protect our greatest assets our children but they become our neighborhoods we all know how important the gary and the coffin schools are to their neighborhood and we wouldn’t have it any other way that’s why we formalized at town meeting that the gary school would keep its facade its name and the beloved playground will

3:02:17 maintain its status as community space to be enjoyed as a meeting place for the neighborhood that’s a whole other thing i think we should come up with a way to redesign and redevelop and grow that outdoor space so that it livens up that that area and contributes to it but that’s another story however i feel strongly that the bell neighborhood is no less important it takes its neighborhood name from its school if we change the name of the school we erase the neighborhood’s namesake um but perhaps more important to me is the origin of the name and why it was chosen remember when my kids first went there i could not understand for the like me who malcolm bell was and why we chose that name as i’ve dug in and done more research

3:03:04 and read articles i found out that he held many town and state offices he was a product of public education and later went on to phillips andover academy malcolm bell was first elected to the school committee at the age of 24. when i read that i thought i am letting i want i want to know where dan howells is at 24 because he’s going to be our youngest school committee member um he served during some of our nations and town’s most trying time much like things we’re seeing today ironically he was a school committee member alongside samuel eveleth during the spanish flu pandemic he even enlisted in the u.s navy while continuing his duties as a school committee member evalus also enlisted in the armed service as well as school committee member

3:03:49 member member i read in one annual report that the students in marblehead during his tenure here chose to plant their own plant and maintain their own victory gardens at school which was not only inspiring but shows the roots of their garden program if they’ll go a bit deeper than any of us thought after serving nine years as a school committee member he moved on and served as town assessor um also on the sport of selectmen many years as chair and then ultimately as a state house representative what was so important to me is throughout his tenure in public service malcolm bell never forgot his roots as an advocate for the schools it is so important for us as school committee members to constantly

3:04:36 advocate for our schools for the needs of our schools our students and our teacher and he never forgot that as he moved through other levels of government the schools and education were always at the forefront of what he was fighting for so often we honor important members in our community by naming buildings for them i firmly believe we should continue to honor malcolm bell’s commitment to advocating to the betterment of our public schools by maintaining the name bell elementary shortening it to simply bell elementary our town is rich in generous philanthropic citizens malcolm bell was one who valued education dedicating much of his life to public service and advocating for our students i do have

3:05:21 trouble with he also donated um through the state some of the money that helped purchase the land from what i read and i have trouble with the idea of taking these donations and entering in relationships of sorts with individuals than forgetting the good deeds and generosity and leaving behind the fruit of those relationships for that i am nominating the name the bell elementary school

3:05:45 all right all right five very good names so chris i know you’re still on here we need help from the public at this point we need some guidance so do your thing but how do we ultimately vote what if we all voted for our own well i think someone is going to have to leave their name so i just so i understand um we’ve got our school committee email that people can email their thoughts to us and also we will have public comment at the beginning of our next meeting so those are the two ways that the public can provide their feedback on these five names yes okay and then i’m assuming then we have a robust conversation in our next meeting

3:06:32 and we’ll have to have to narrow it down to the one the beauty is in two weeks we will have a name for this we will yes whatever that name is that is such a beautiful thing all right thank you guys all right all of that well thought out preparation [Laughter] they’re good they’re great names emily i have to tell you there was some teachers that recommended last year at the joe frogger elementary because um they learned about in the kindergarten class the origin of the joe frogger name see perfect well they wanted it to be named after the cookie so then you can joe frogger the kids were really behind that

3:07:19 you can see it all right how do we all right let’s move this along um all right we’ve got some policies this is our second read they’re pretty basic um any questions let’s take them offline because there’s no massive changes so i don’t feel like this is a big piece emily those make it up onto the website yeah the policies onto the into the packet we can put them up for the packet and so if anybody from the public has any questions then they can do that does the memorials one negate what we voted tonight no okay no because there’s an addition in there about um at school committee discretion okay because i want to make sure that stays that was important right yeah no

3:08:04 we’re good so and then we’ll vote them at the next one okay okay all right subcommittee and liaison updates i mean i mean we’ve heard budget and yeah and see i’m good and policy is done um facilities i think we are supposed to be voting on the facilities recommendation the capital the capital yes did we did we do that at the last meeting no we did the fleet okay all right i thought we had covered it um so so i missed interpreted our days i thought we covered it at the last meeting um i apologize

3:08:50 michelle has that she’s still on michelle has that list yeah i have that right here um i apologize i thought it was not gonna be a vote i thought it was just gonna be informational um so i apologize as well yes so the facilities subcommittee took a vote at their meeting last week i believe to put five items forward to the town for consideration for the capital budget um the first was replace the fire fire alarm panel at the high school for twenty five thousand dollars um and this is in no particular order this is literally in the order that they are on my sheet um the second was install the card swipe system at the high school for roughly thirty thousand dollars um the

3:09:36 third thing was replace the fire alarm system at vets the complete fire alarm system for 105 thousand dollars um the next was intel install a card swipe system at vets in addition to the high school for another 30 000 and lastly it was the installation of hardwired um carbon monoxide detectors um this is the next step in ensuring that we are doing the absolute most we can in terms of the carbon monoxide detection and these these new detectors will be hardwired to all our alarm panels and will go to emergency services if we should have an alarm go off right now we do have the detectors in all our schools but this is the next step up that we really want to take and is being recommended and that total is

3:10:25 34 145 dollars so total being presented or hopefully being presented to the town for consideration would be a total of two hundred and twenty four thousand one hundred and forty five dollars in itself explanatory but all of these we prioritize life safety and security so last year and the year before we um made sure that we had these prioritized in case the town can’t cover every single one and then as a school committee we voted on them so we not doing that this year um well the information i had gotten was that the town was very confident at 200 000 and felt they could probably meet 250 so we felt good at 224 that we were really in that window of their goal

3:11:12 so if they if they tell us to trim it are you going to come back to us or do you want us to prioritize i think if they tell us to trim it hopefully we have our assessment by then um i didn’t get the sense they were going to ask us to trim it i mean michelle has the inside scoop now so maybe she knows no i i haven’t heard anything on that front but um we are also actually working with the um company who gave us the quote on the co detectors to see if we can handle a portion of the installation ourselves with our electrician um so that cost may come down as well so if it does need to come down you know ten thousand dollars or whatnot or fifteen thousand we may be able to swing that and actually um we are going to try to get the evilest

3:11:58 school done this year so that may be another five thousand dollars less on that cost so we can we can most likely make it work if we have to come down to the two two hundred thousand dollars and just so everyone’s clear and isn’t shocked at at some point when this comes out we need a new roof at the high school and that estimates two million dollars that is i don’t think we’re going to get that at a capital we’re going to have to at some point do a facilities override that’s a big ticket item we can’t keep kicking down the road so not to harp on us but just point of clarification so i’m clear also going forward normally what has happened is that the work gets done in the subcommittee and then it gets brought to the full committee for a vote at that point right and that’s not what happened here so i’m just trying to understand what the process should be because that’s how

3:12:43 it’s always worked in the past this is no we’re doing the same thing i was on the committee last year that did this we did this thing our school committee meeting you know i’m not disagreeing with that megan just finishing my sentence um and we’re just bringing it forward for us to vote or not vote for for approving the recommendation but the recommendation from the facilities committee is to bring forth these items there’s no reason why we can’t make emotions about it right yeah sometimes and i think as what happened last year i think we did have to pair some of our expenses back and we did some wheeling and dealing in different areas and we ultimately

3:13:30 took a vote as a committee and we did that two years before too so yeah i would expect that if um something changed and it came back at us i think yeah and i think just to speak to your what i think you’re saying is that all work done at the subcommittee level comes up to the committee level when any decisions need to be made with recommendations from that subcommittee exactly because the one thing that i do want to talk about and obviously safety is the number one thing like i get that but one thing we’ve talked about even with bill is when we’re talking about putting in something at an individual school really he recommended that we look try to look at it from a district-wide plan we talked about it technology we did talk about it with the fire alarm systems too but especially with these

3:14:17 hard swipe or the card swipe pieces at you know high school and best we’ve also got a new school coming online and so i would like to see what that plan is for all schools to have that functionality and make sure that we’re doing it in a systematic way that is as cost effective as possible so just so you know we talked about that megan and glover has it the new school it’s built into the budget and village has it so those two schools were identified because they’re the ones that don’t have it so and all of them will that’s the same system so we’re not yes the systems will talk to each other and john won’t need a different card to swipe into a different school okay okay wonderful

3:15:03 so can i get a motion to accept the list provided by the facility subcommittee as our [Music] capital request and why don’t we mention that the total amount of 224 145 dollars david

3:15:31 right i i recommend we we put through the full amount right now but if we have to finagle it then we will okay all right sarah gold yes sarah fox yes emily baron megan taylor yep and david harris yes all right passes five to zero please yes

3:15:57 i’m gonna let you can i let you share it my update is gonna be as fast as the construction is gone

3:16:14 we can’t hear you at all david yep so we’ll move it over just getting my screen can can people see the screen yet yes yes okay so these are um as i try to do with the update these photos were taken today so this is the um what would be the the main entry looking into the uh entryway where where the bus turn around would come in and you’re seeing um the the gymnasium and cafetorium and the white section that’s cordoned off is where the mural is going to rest and so that work is uh work is finishing up and moving right along um this this is the uh the great wall of marblehead

3:16:59 marblehead marblehead as it’s being called on the construction site but as you go up um behind the school to go up to the new recreational space and the um organic garden and everything that lives up behind the school we’ve been very fortunate due to the weather normally this work would have stopped probably a month ago but due to the the mild weather we’ve had lack of snow they are pressing on and ahead of schedule and i this picture just doesn’t do it justice it’s a it’s a beautiful stone wall and the stone is very representative of the ledge that’s all around the property and it just it it’s really beautiful and the way they’re they’re getting that

3:17:47 that wall constructed um this is looking out from the media center so just another view you can see going down through the cafeteria in the forefront the um multi-purpose stage that has passed through on both sides and on the far end um the the gymnasium as well as the staircases that were put in and the concrete was poured uh yesterday and as you can see lots of product that is on site laid down and ready to be installed so um we’re not incurring uh any delays at this point waiting on materials uh this is the this was pretty cool in the tour this is a model classroom and so

3:18:32 and so and so the um gilbane sets up a model classroom so all the different contractors and trades can um understand the materials that they’re working with um see what kind of installation is required for the various materials um maybe something might even need to be tweaked by the architect because of the installation um it has the air diffusers for the it for the air conditioning so they’re able to see and if you look on the far wall i guess we can call that um steve’s black box that’s that’s where the actual um flat screen touch screen projector will go so they’ve actually procured the the boxes where those will mount and this will continue to be developed

3:19:19 it was just they just started working on it um last week so that that was exciting to see and that’s actually on the second floor i think it’s a second grade classroom looking out towards dartmouth and then uh last but not least there’s our um vice chair ralph wallace and chief inspector checking out the uh the hundred plus windows that we have and um the the quality of the work that was done and this is looking once again down the the dartmouth side of the building and you can see the corridors and the connecting doors of the classrooms and um it’s just really amazing how much work has been done

3:20:04 and so i would like to also suggest that as a committee we find the time to get over there um the best time is 3 15 when construction stops so maybe as a committee we can come together and get over there and you know see the progress and sarah i think we need to do the same thing again with the building committee you know maybe we offer it up in groups of 10 um or we just put it out there and see how many people want to attend for the building committee because it’s just it’s just really amazing to see to see the work at this stage of the progress yeah and now sarah you just want to give a quick word about we voted the interior

3:20:52 finishes last week at our committee we had one of our shorter meetings which was a source of pride because they can go long um we had our interiors meeting where we presented our gene presented a slideshow um which we we should bring to a school committee meeting if we can to revive like a limited one um where we where we selected the interior finishes in color palettes um these are you know the tiles the linoleum the corkboard colors um the locker colors things like that we still have to select the ffne um which will be more the furniture the technology piece things like that um

3:21:39 it was unanimously applauded by the committee and i thought the presentation went really well we got a lot of really positive feedback um and i thought it was great i also had the opportunity to be at a school advisory council meeting at coffin and evoluth when they presented it to those teachers who will be the ones teaching in it and they were overjoyed their their feedback their comments it was it was amazing to hear so it’s really exciting um you know we had a few parents on there with their kids over their shoulders watching and and the kids were chiming in so it’s really exciting um the next stage obviously will be ffa and right now we’re also just dotting our eyes and crossing our tees to make sure we’re getting our lead points i

3:22:25 think john’s gonna talk about that a little bit too um these are these are things the architect identified early on that will um that will get us the points towards leed certification which increases our reimbursement rate from the state um things we were doing anyway in our district but they just you know they need documentation for each of these things and so we’re just going through those hoops of getting them that documentation so that’s where we’re at

3:23:08 so we’ve lost our entire committee um they all got kicked out i just got a text which means we are no longer quorum and we are no longer technically a meeting um

3:23:25 i also don’t know oh michelle you’re the host is michelle still on here going to guess the internet went down at the high school so um yes i’m the host now lovely yeah we should be recording this for town meeting when people say we don’t need that technology upgrade

3:23:43 chris i expect you to write about this of why we need our technology upgrade exactly happened you know you know i’m not gonna lie it’s kind of hilarious what happened in the middle of the school day at my at village today up sarah gold’s back she got her meeting back um sarah i did note that we were no longer in quorum and it technically was not a meeting anymore so

3:24:09 i think she’s frozen you know what i bet you she’s doing it from her phone

3:24:26 well i mean three and a half hours guys so [Laughter] in all seriousness though this is a great example of the the constraints our staff is like teaching through and how amazing they are can you imagine doing this with you know 20 first graders on your screen and they just they come back on the screen and they’re cheerful and they’re not stressed and they just power through and so this this is a good example of what kovitz what kovitz sir the eagle the eagle has landed i’m the only one that has connectivity emily emily’s there we lost connectivity on the wi-fi so it was just refreshing

3:25:12 sarah’s on sunscreen but she appears frozen so we’re trying to um bring that back up and i suppose we could um [Music] i think technically we need to be able to hear everybody before we can call ourselves back to order

3:25:40 i unofficially paused on steven i don’t know if i have that authority but yeah you can well i mean you what we’ve been doing is the the sound um comes from one microphone okay no we we could just read the executive session but but um we’ll give it a little while longer i said this was almost like too perfect to prove our budget goal of technology

3:26:43 i have to laugh that i was the left one left that i could probably the most least prepared to keep the meeting going

3:27:37 no no you turn you all right okay

3:27:43 and people hear me now yeah can you hear me now you kind of have the voice you gotta examine smiling so i’m gonna take that as a good sign

3:28:10 i don’t have it so we do want to just move it to do you want me to read it for you john i have it that would be great sir um okay do you want to give an intro to it or yes to be eligible for leed certification

3:28:41 katie martin has written a letter for me to sign the reason i brought it to the committee is the last paragraph talks about it might have budget implications and i think the ptos as the letter outlines pay for two coordinators but it does make reference to there is money there and we’re making a three-year commitment and it also said the bell school in it and i don’t know if that’s the garden itself is named for the bell school and since we had naming it was just something that i wanted the committee to hear the letter hear the budget implications and give me kind of the thumbs up i’m not sure if it has to be an official vote or not i’m fully in support of sending the letter but because the name

3:29:27 jumped out at me and potential budget implications i wanted the committee to hear the letter so and just to clarify john i think that budget is referencing that the building budget has has a chunk of it that was that was allocated to build the garden it’s not our operating budget it’s the budget to build a new school that’s why i wanted the school committee to weigh in yeah um angela could have enough lead consultant raymond design associates um dear angela as we work towards lead certification please find the following letter detailing the story history and future commitment to the bell school organic garden was established during the

3:30:14 2012-2013 academic year at the former bell school location the garden was a grassroots effort supported by parents teachers and school administration the construction the garden was privately funded through donations fundraisers and the school pto the garden provided outdoor experiential learning for all students at the former bell school grade level garden activities are tied to the massachusetts educational framework the garden program typically stipends two individuals a garden coordinator who oversees all all garden activities and a garden care coordinator the garden coordinator is also the liaison to the teachers and assists in scheduling time lesson planning and procuring any necessary items for planning or other garden based activities the second

3:31:01 stipended position is the garden care coordinator they oversee the garden’s day-to-day maintenance the school’s pto funds the two stipend positions under their cultural enrichment budgets before closing the bell school for reconstruction the school had 100 percent teacher participation and the garden was the school’s largest cultural enrichment program over the six years the garden was in use the activities evolved with the teachers needs food production this is the key piece to get the lead point we need to have food production food production composting science experimentation and journaling were everyday activities performed in the garden the garden was used as a performance space yoga studio as well as an outdoor classroom

3:31:47 during the new school’s design phase the garden was included as part of the scope teachers parents and administrators provided programming guidance to the design professionals so that the garden would be built to emulate the original garden’s design and would be able to be used by teachers and students in similar but expanded fashion the parents teachers and administrators also looked to the more extensive food production program at the new school as the new school has a large commercial kitchen the commercial kitchen will allow harvested food to be cleaned and consumed on site by the students all other food harvested will be donated to the uh summer care volunteers as the garden has done throughout its tenure as a superintendent for marblehead schools we will make at least a three-year commitment to the continuing

3:32:33 of the garden program that’s a stipulation that time period to get the lead point it’s required to commit to three years um significant funds are earmarked another requirement for getting the garden rebuilt and the district fully intends to support this ongoing program those earmarked funds are already embedded in the building project it’s not a school budget thing yeah because that was my concern is that i just do we need to state that um or is that it’s already paid for it’s already been voted i mean it’s it’s

3:33:14 yeah so yeah so okay yep okay and does it because the building project is called by the msba the elbridge gary school building project the use of bell is that is it is it kosher throughout i think the reason for the bell organic garden is the way the accounts were first set up they had their own accounts that self-funded these programs and there was connections to that i don’t think it’s in any way shape or form mandating that we’re calling it that and or mandating that we would even name the guard in that um i can’t see why we wouldn’t name the card in that but but

3:34:00 it’s not at all linking us to that it’s it’s meeting these lead points essentially and this doesn’t this isn’t um this doesn’t go to any like governing body in marblehead that names anything it’s it’s just the lead certification board all right all right any other questions on that thanks for sharing that john day like the dollar tree letter

3:34:39 all right okay as long as i think i think it answered that answered my questions on it so are you comfortable with it the only question that you had was about school or weekly updates says eldridge gary and i didn’t know if that would have any impact on the lead certification calling invited

3:35:06 i i mean i i suppose sarah can you hear me yeah a little in the first guns in the first paragraph at the beginning the letter for the history and the future commitment to

3:35:22 we could say to an organic garden at the new school because then the rest of the letter talks about the history so i suppose we could just make it future commitment to the organic garden at the new school yeah we could just say um a future commitment to the organic garden program yeah yeah all right i i would agree right edit that out john i think that’s fine okay and then that last i think as a superintendent for marblehead schools it should be i instead we make the easter three year commitment yeah garden program yeah you guys are comfortable with that put it on letterhead and send it out wonderful great all right great thank you john okay so

3:36:08 very briefly um i need a motion to meet an executive session pursuant to the massachusetts general laws chapter 38 section 21a for the following purpose purpose three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with massachusetts or sorry the marblehead education association unit a um i need one other correspond i think we should enter in that correspondence of the letter we received about the pool testing under correspondence okay which letter we received in our email that letter that was talked about during public comment regarding pool testing it was signed by i think 90 90 people okay sure

3:36:54 um um can i get a motion to meet an executive session pursuant to massachusetts general law chapter 38 section 21a for the following purpose purpose three to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining with the marblehead education association unit a megan moved

3:37:14 emily second emily second sarah gold yes david harris yes emily baron megan taylor sarah fox yes all right i will now ask everyone um but the school committee and the superintendent to leave the meeting thank you everyone um 10 41. is this quick or should we take a minute to use the restroom okay