School Committee: February 11, 2021

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

0:00 I will call us to order at 5.02. John, I will ask you first off for an update on the pool testing. Awesome. Thank you. I am pleased to have Amanda Rivers, who is going to be our pool testing coordinator. And I would just say she has been doing this for three days. So there may be things that she is not able to answer. But she has been, jumped in with both feet. And I am pleased to announce that since Tuesday, when the letter to the community went out, that there are three people in healthcare that are parents in the district who have reached out to say, I can’t be the coordinator, but I want to help this effort along. So if I can be of service and I pass that information right along to Amanda. Hang on. She is muted. And so without further ado, I will ask Amanda to take over and we’ll open it up to questions when she’s finished. So I’m Amanda. I’m going to try to share my screen. Can I just have the ability to share my screen? I made a presentation. I can’t take it. Okay. So I realized that earlier in the week, I was given about pool testing and what was going on.

1:38 So I started on Tuesday, getting kind of caught up to this. So I want to sort of give the school committee what we’ve done up to this far, what still needs to get done and kind of where we are with the process that you guys, I feel like sometimes some of the stuff behind the scenes isn’t necessarily known. And there has been a lot of headway, even if it doesn’t necessarily seem it, because it’s a lot of talking to the state and getting certain steps in place before we can get to the next one. So what I’m hoping to do tonight is kind of give you an introduction to like how we’re going to do it, what we’re going to be doing, kind of where, what, how, when, why, like all the questions that you probably have about how we’re going to try to plan on implementing it, what’s going to happen with a positive pool and sort of the next steps that I’m hopefully going to get done over break. So this is aside from the other day, but it kind of goes over what all this encompasses. Desi decided to support a six-week program for pool surveillance testing, and that ends the end of March. The group of students and staff organizing pools can be 10 to 25 people. This is also going to be dependent on what organization we get paired with, because some of the pool testing will only take 10 per pool, and one of the other companies can do upwards of 25. The pool testing is the PCR test. They’re all analyzed together, whether it’s the 10 or 25, and then if there’s a positive pool from there, we then do the antigen test to try to figure out who the actual positive pool is.

3:16 In most cases, if the antigen test is negative, these students or teachers can go back to school. If it’s positive, then they would go into sort of the quarantine that has been pretty standard for this year. So where we are right now, we have signed on with the state. We have our standing orders in place. We have received the Benax Now test, which is the antigen test. We have the consent forms that we’re going to need to get signed for people to get on board and have their children or themselves signed up ready. We’re developing a plan for how we’re going to implement it within each of the schools, and there’s probably going to be some differences with the lower and upper elementary versus vets and the high school. One of the biggest differences between vets and the high school and the elementary schools is that there’s the changing of classes and the schedules. So it’s a little more intricate, trying to figure out how we’re going to get the pools for there. We are now setting up to get matched with the secondary platform. I’m really, really hoping that we get matched with Project Beacon. A lot of the families within the district are familiar with Project Beacon. It’s where it’s a testing site in Lynn, and through that secondary platform, we’re going to be able to do all the consents. I would be able to notify the positive pools who needs to get retested, and it’s basically kind of like an aspen, but for the pool testing.

4:49 It just puts everything in one singular place to make the organization aspect of it a lot easier. The other thing we’re waiting for, as much as we have the antigen test in place, we’re still waiting for the pool testing supplies to come in, and that is a little dependent on who the state is matching us with. We submitted all that today to get that done. There’s a couple trainings that I’m also going to be required to do before they let us up and running, and I’m registered for them. I’m just waiting for them to happen. One of the big things I think that people don’t understand fully what the pool testing is. Pool testing is just asymptomatic testing. We’re not going for anyone that has any symptoms. What we’re going to do is, as you can see here, there’s a group of people together that we’re picking. Those are the ones that are going to get tested, and then there’s two results. Either the pool is negative and nothing happens. Everyone goes back to class. The pool is positive, and as you can see in number five on the bottom, we then individually test each person in that pool to find who the positive is. Then they would get quarantined, and everyone else would be able to go back to class. Why you would do pool testing over individual testing is it saves time. You get a bunch of people at one time being able to do it.

6:21 I work at Salem Hospital on the weekends, and when they do their testing, they’ll have a bunch of people at one time collecting samples, and you can have one person proctoring that. It also limits resources. We can get, for asymptomatic carriers, 20 people done at one time, and then see if we need to test further with the Bitimax test, which will also help save some money. It’s also going to help, in the future, maximize in-person learning, because we’re going to know a rough estimate of what the positives are within the population, which will help the school committee and administration make informed decisions. We dialed back from six feet to three feet, and all of a sudden now we went from a 2% positive rate within the schools to now we have a 4-6% positive rate, and then adjust as needed. It gives us an idea of what’s going on with the changes we make to make more informed decisions on how we’re going to try to get the kids back in school. As far as who’s in a pool, for the most part, from K-6, as long as the people, the consents are formed, I’m probably going to keep it based on cohorts and classes.

7:51 It’s the easiest way to do it organizationally. When it comes to the high school and veterans’ middle school, that’s going to be a little more interesting trying to figure out how to do that, because they switch classes all the time. So whether it’s going to be done alphabetically, or just randomly picking a couple classes to get an idea of the population, we’re still trying to figure out. Again, a pool can be anywhere between 5 to 20 people, depending on what distributor we get paired with. This right here, I just attached an article that goes over when it started and the idea of pool testing. This article and the link that’s here is a pooling of samples for asymptomatic people within a university and what they did and how they used it to figure out numbers, mitigate, and allow the students to stay in school. It’s nice to see that a test that you’re doing works in a different environment, or an environment that we’re going to do. The secondary platform, like I mentioned, I’m really pushing for Project Beacon, and I wrote a whole thing about why I want them to match us with Project Beacon. It’s a place where I can upload results. It’s going to be parents are going to have access to it at home. It can either go to your cell phone or it can go to an email, and I’ll be able to communicate with parents then, so they’ll know what their student’s in a positive pool and needs to get retested.

9:23 It’s also going to assist in managing rosters, creating pools, and it’s going to let me know who has opted into the program. So I don’t have to like bumble through Aspen and try to figure out who’s actually going to do it and who’s not going to do it or be part of this program. To give you an idea of how the pooled process is going to work, once a week they’re going to be sample selected from students and staff. Then we’re going to use a secondary courier service, which is going to bring it to a lab where they’ll do the PCR test. Ultimately, it’s probably going to be like a 48-hour turnaround time. I’m going to get back the result of, hey, all your pools are negative or, okay, one and four are positive. So once I find out what pools are positive, I’m going to have to notify those individuals. Depending on where the positive is, one of the things I was thinking to just kind of, again, make sure these people don’t have to potentially quarantine is I can go, once I get the positive of the pool, I can go to that school in the morning about 30 minutes before and prep so that these students that were identified in a positive pool can come and get tested. So hopefully right there and then we’re going to be able to figure out who the positive is and let everyone else who’s not positive and does not need to quarantine to go back to class. So the FinEx Now test are an antigen test and it’s a test that takes like 15 minutes.

10:55 It’s kind of on the same idea as like a home pregnancy test except you do the nasal swab, you mix it with an antigen, you’re going to put it on and wait 15 minutes and then like two lines mean you have COVID, one line means you don’t. So like I said, once we identify the positive, we’re able to then quarantine that one and send everyone back to class. If we don’t find a positive, there’s two options that the school committee and the administration can choose to take. We can wait two days and retest everyone again and see if we can then find the positive, like the viral load has reached a high enough threshold that it might have been able to be detected on PCR but not necessarily on the antigen and now hopefully it’s high enough on the antigen or we could say like these students need to go and get a PCR test somewhere else, like whether they go to Project Beacon and sign up to get a separate PCR test to figure out who is positive. And then there is a slight chance that even with these other tests, we’re not going to be able to identify who the positive was. So whether that was a false positive pool or whether the person no longer has a viral load, we won’t know. So I guess like that would be one of the limitations. So what we’re hoping for is ideally, if we get all the materials, I’d like to get started on March 1st to start doing the first pools.

12:31 There currently is a push more for preference to do the high school and the middle school just due to the number of cases that are a lot higher in those schools than we’re finding in the elementary schools. So to kind of get an idea of pulling different classes and the different grade levels and figuring out what the incidence of positives are will help us maybe figure out what we can do to make it safer, make the staff feel safer, and things that hopefully we can make changes when to allow more students to be there. You know, the lower grades, also kindergarten and first grade, because those are the first ones that we want to bring back, we can do there. The idea is that we’re testing a randomized sample to better understand the population as a whole. So we want to do it, like I said, it’s going to be random picking up students. Sorry. And then the biggest, I guess, hurdle for me then would be, once we do the testing, we’re going to get the results back and doing the follow-up results and the back-end paperwork. So any of the positive pools we then have to enter into Maven, anyone who’s identified as a positive, I would then turn that over to their school nurse and they would follow up with the quarantining and that type of stuff. So we have this month of March where the state’s giving us and they’re paying for everything,

14:03 and it’s really going to be there where we decide, like, how we want to utilize this, is there a certain percentage of the population that we’re going to test every month to get an idea, to get an idea what the cost-benefit analysis is? Because if we do this and we’re not finding that the numbers are doing anything to change what we’re doing, it might not make sense for us to ask for the budget to continue this on for the rest of the year. If the data that we’re getting is really good or if it’s just a surveillance thing where we’re, again, knocking the six feet down to three feet, and we want to just make sure that by taking away some of the social distancing precautions that we’re not getting an increase in positive rates within the school. But, I mean, back in January, Salem did a test and they allowed staff members, students, and family members to get tested. I think they had about 1,800 people opt in to get that testing, and of that, their total percentage of positive was 1.7, and at that time, the state average for positive tests was 8.6. So even in a more densely populated city, we’re not seeing the positives in the schools that we’re necessarily seeing in the community. So the next steps to plan on taking, or what I’m working on right now, is, again, just waiting for the state to match us with that platform, getting all the materials in,

15:35 getting the platform figured out, sent to the parents, so that they can sign the consents and opt into the program, and then a couple of the trainings that I have to do based on the state, and then just implement it. And honestly, even within the elementary school, I don’t necessarily think it’s going to take away from class time, per se, because we do screenings within the school every year, and this year we’re actually not doing it, where students are leaving the classroom for anywhere from like two to five minutes to get a vision screening or a hearing screening done and going back to class. Going into the elementary schools, I could set up in the hallway, have the kids come out one by one, that are obviously signed off, get the testing done, and I could get a whole school done within a day, probably, especially with like say Coffin and Evella together, lover. So as long as we have the materials and the lab can handle that, I really think that we can get a decent amount of pools in every week to get a good idea of what’s going on. So one of the things I did want to say, just because I think every district is doing it a little bit differently, but I did kind of want to put out there for parents, like what pool testing is not.

17:07 So for one of the big things with travel, and we have the rear vacation next week, we have April vacation. We have so much snow, so skiing, is that we’re not using this as a way for people to travel. It’s a state mandate that you need the PCR test, so if people are going away, pool testing is not going to, if your child is one pool that gets pulled, you can’t use that to travel and say, oh good, I can go to like New Hampshire for the weekend. I already got my kid got a COVID test. It is not a way to rule out COVID. We are not testing symptomatic individuals. So if you’re doing that checklist every morning, and if your kid is positive for any of those symptoms that might be COVID, you’re holding them home and getting them tested in a different manner. We’re not doing spot testing there. And this is also not a way to test out of quarantine. So if your child was a close contact and exposed, we’re not going to be doing the test to get them out of quarantine. That’s still going to be the family’s responsibility. And the lastly, the pools are going to be selected at random. So there’s no way to pre-determine when a pool, and if a pool is going to get selected. So I can’t, like if a parent emails me, I can’t say, oh well your son’s pool is going to get picked on, he’s going to get picked on Tuesday next week or anything like that. The idea is a random sampling. So to get a better idea, and it is going to be random and just based on cohorts and who I have there

18:39 and who’s the positive, who has signed up for the program. So I know that parents can’t answer or ask questions at this point. So I did put my email there if anyone has any questions about anything I said. But is anyone on the school committee? Sarah? Thank you, Amanda. This is great. You’ve clearly worked incredibly hard on this over the past few days. So I think just so that I can see this will be great, perfect. That’s exactly what I was going to ask you to do. And then I know Sarah’s got her hand up. So Sarah, go ahead. Amanda, I just want to commend you. I mean, this was an amazing presentation, very in-depth, very informative. I’m going to assume that you’re not often thrown into a Zoom presenting to 60 people, but you did amazing. Congratulations. It was very impressive. And you gave a lot of information. So thank you for the work you’ve done on that. And I just wanted to clarify, you said if your pool’s positive, that doesn’t kick the quarantine in. It’s when that second swab happens that kicks the quarantine in. So with the exception of if we can’t find the positive, then we have to make a decision. So as far as this goes, there’s conflict. So right now, if someone’s getting tested, they’re quarantined. And that’s kind of the policy within the school. So Desi doesn’t necessarily recommend that while the pool,

20:14 even if it’s a positive pool to be excluded from the class at the time, because everyone is wearing masks or social distancing. So right now, as far as Marblehead’s concerned, we’re going to have to make a decision whether or not we are going to hold those kids to the current policy where they would be excluded. But the other thing is, too, once I get the positive pool, I can also go to that school that day before the school opens, and I can test them. Because like I said, it’s a point-of-care test. It’s a 15-minute test. So we can notify those parents the night before. Can you drop your kids off like a half an hour early? I’ll test them all. If someone is positive, then we’ll deal with it then. Okay. And if, for instance, that family decides to go get testing and sends in the paperwork the next day, that’s helpful, too. Well, okay. So much information. This is wonderful. And just, you know, when I heard you say Project Beacon, I think that that’s a place that’s really familiar to a lot of people in town. I mean, when I went, it was bumper sticker after bumper sticker that had the lighthouse on it. So I want to say we’re keeping them in business here. So it’s something we’re familiar with. We’re all familiar how to use their website, so that’s good. I did want to offer, and again, this would take, John would have to be okay with this. But if you want, you know, a colleague that’s done this and wants some reference,

21:49 my sister’s in RN has been running this at her school. I’m sure she would be happy to, because when I talked to her, she said, you know, it’s a couple of weeks of figuring out what’s the best clerical system. And if he’s okay with it, if there’s, if you want to save yourself some legwork, I’m sure I could put you two in touch and she could help, you know, give you what’s working at least for them as far as the tracking and the input. That would be amazing. And again, that’s for John to decide, but I just wanted to offer it. And again, thank you so, so much. Megan, you’ve got your hand up. Yeah, thanks, sir. Amanda, thank you so much. There’s a lot of work that you’ve done, obviously, and I’m not sure I’m going to get all my questions asked right now because I think I do need to think about it a little bit so I can back to you. But just the things that kind of stuck out to me just for clarification, if you don’t mind. I’m just going to go kind of an order of my notes, nothing specific. So with the consent forms, when are those going to go out? And do parents just need to sign the consent one time for the whole program? So ideally, I’m going to start harassing the state tomorrow to get it matched with the program because I gave them all the paperwork and I’m going to do what I can to try to push it forward, be like the squeaky wheel. Ideally, sometime, hopefully being in next week, I’m going to get access to Project Begin.

23:21 There, we can upload all the consent forms. The parents, we can send out a link so that anyone that wants to opt in, because I know some families are for it, some families are not, will be able to use that link to create an account for their child or children and sign the consents there. And they can sign it online and they just have to sign it the one time. Yes. Okay. All right. So, John, on his birthday, one of the things we talked about, I think, on Tuesday was just having the principals do another push out, especially now that we’ve got more information from Amanda, to see if there are any other families that might be interested. So just another push to get participation would be great. Amanda, wasn’t the start date this week? So if we haven’t gotten the supplies, yes. So here’s the program itself starts this week for everyone that’s ready. So part of it was some of the people had signed up for the BIMAX testing and were doing spot testing in their school. So those are the ones that are starting this week. The majority of people, like when you go off to sign for it, to sign up for it, they say a lot of people, the options are pilot the week after break starting March 1st, you’re ready to implement it ASAP, like where your school district is.

24:53 So there are a couple that are starting, but I mean, I think Salem is our closest district right now, and they’re hiring people, so they’re not starting until after break either. Okay, so would we plan to start on the 22nd and use that first week to kind of get up to speed and then full rollout? A lot of it depends on when I get the materials in and when I get the access. And unfortunately, I have submitted all the paperwork for that yesterday and today, it’s just a matter of when they’re going to get me my sign-on information and that type of stuff. So I’m in a holding pattern right now, waiting for the state to meet us. And again, it’s a state-run program, so it might be a little bit. Okay, all right, Steel, let us know. Yeah. Okay, what else did I have on here? So can you just clarify also on the pools? I’m still not clear. I think I just have a mental block against it. So you’re going to create, maybe I’ll just let you give me some more. For the pools, so believe me, I’ve been like wrapping my head around this too, just because it’s, like my biggest thing is I want to get as many pools as possible. I’m one person, and I don’t want to disrupt school that much and I don’t want these students to like miss out on learning time. Because I’m also, I have a kindergartner and an eighth grader, so I also understand the drive of wanting to keep the kids in class as much and not take them away from that learning time.

26:26 So if, like I’m doing elementary school, the more I kept looking over it, I think it just makes the most sense to keep it in the cohorts. So like my daughter is at Evelace, most of the Evelace classes have like nine and ten kids in the cohort, and that’s like a perfect number. So I would have like, heck A and heck B, two different cohorts. I’d have Herandine A and Herandine B, B, another two cohorts. And then I would go on to like first grade, so I’d have Drummond A, Drummond B. The biggest problem would then come to veterans and the high school, and what I was thinking to do there, because again, we’re trying to get a random sample, is I would pick maybe like randomly pick eight classes that are going on that day, check the rosters of those classes, the kids that have signed up for it, and then use those individual classes as like a cohort. So as much as like upper elementary and village and below would have like an assigned cohort, veterans and the high school, the cohorts would have some differentiation in it, because it would just be me randomly picking a group of people, going into that class, taking five minutes to get the sample, and like letting them go back to their previously scheduled education. Right, okay. So but if you have all those pools, are you testing all those pools each time? So the state recommends to do the whole district every week.

28:04 I don’t know the practicality of that. So with the elementary schools, like I know based on being a nurse, working in the district, and others, like I think the thing that made me think the most about what it would be like is like when there’s life, and I’m checking a class for life, and I have the kids coming out, and I’m just going through really quick to make sure there’s nothing in their hair. It’s going to be similar to that. Like I can set myself outside the classroom, and I can go down a hallway, and I can get that whole hallway done, and it’s probably going to take me an hour, and then I can go to the next hallway. So I’d be able to get, I’m assuming a school done pretty quickly. Again, veterans and the high school where the classes are mixing, and people, like the cohorts aren’t staying together, is where I then run into, not a problem, but it just gets a little bit different. So I think I was going to, or my idea right now was to pick a percentage of each grade and just randomly pick classes. Like I’m going to get like 10th grade English, 12th grade math, maybe a language for this grade, and do like a percentage there. So I’m not going to necessarily be doing the whole high school and the whole veterans, but I’m going to be getting hopefully a large enough of the population to kind of be able to extrapolate what the actual percentage in that population is. Okay. And I know you said you’re the pool testing expert here and running the program, which is great, but can we not utilize the school nurses in the other buildings?

29:37 You know, so again, because one of the things, the reason I’m asking is one of the things we talked about the previous Thursday was just having the kids kind of get the tests out of their way out the door rather than having to pull them out of a class, for example. So can we kind of utilize those resources too? I’m not entirely sure about… What the availability of the school nurses are because right now that a lot of them are doing a lot of paperwork as far as COVID On top of just being unlike their normal like a bunch of them are on different IEP meetings And just other stuff that’s going around so that’s gonna have to be kind of discussed with them I know that from talking to them already a few of them have opted Have already mentioned to me that like if I need help with data entry They’d be able to help me a little bit with that And as soon as a positive person is identified they’re gonna be the one that takes it over then and they’re gonna be Following like the quarantine from there. I’m just like entering it into me even though they’re positive and they’re taking over from there Okay, I Would like to strongly John do did you want to answer that too? No? No, I just wanted to through the chair recognize that Amanda has presented a lot of information and there are still questions to be answered and I Just want to move Like the agenda because each question I think good solicit or elicit additional question

31:13 All right, so I’ll just end with this. I would really like to see if there’s any way to To reduce any pullout time for our students So that is one thing, you know, if we could kind of rally You know get everyone to rally around that concept. I would I would appreciate it I do some other minor questions that I can follow up with Amanda Add another time that’s fine, but I did also just want to say thank you to the Community members who have offered to help out that’s much appreciated. Thank you, Amanda Only you’ve got your hand raised Hi, thanks for presenting That was great. Just really a quick question so I know a certain amount of people have opted in but I Read through desi that over time more people are going to want to opt in and just I want to make sure that the ease of doing that like if we can get it up on the district website That links to be able to make an account just to make sure that it’s very easy for people to opt into the program Amanda I don’t know if that’s honestly and That I believe I mean, I don’t know what design I’m pretty sure that would be really easy So it’s a it’s a link that we would send out to like in an email Anywhere so then we could then also direct them to like hey if you lost a link it’s gonna be right Yeah, so just so that link is always somewhere and then just that link will get them to be put in the program

32:45 I think that would be helpful So even shaking his head. Yes, he can do this All right Great. I think I most of the questions that I have were answered I can follow up on ones offline that that are just kind of a little bit more random and I think you know the one thing that I would like to say is that I would Encourage us to follow the desi program as far as that goes with Quarantining and the recommendations of keeping kids out of school and or not keeping kids out of school while we’re waiting for these tests I do think that that would be a huge hurdle to participation So that’s kind of that’s my one piece that if we can Meet next week to kind of rewrite that policy So as far as I know that’s a policy that’s that’s with the nurse with the lead nurse so But I can definitely you know, John and I’ve talked about it before so we can follow up offline for that as well Okay. All right, cuz I think I think you know You’d have supply to speak for myself. We’d have support. Yeah All right Anybody else that has any questions of did come up with you know kind of through the next couple of days I think you know, we can reach out to Amanda or you know reach out to John and he can he can get a Questions to Amanda. So Amanda. Thank you again You’ve done a lot of work and I really appreciate that you that you’ve extended your day and even longer and come to talk with us

34:20 This evening. So thanks. Thanks for having me Amanda, thank you All right, John that needs us up to our budget workshop so I’ve got student services first. Do we want to start with Eric? Just through the chair with your permission that we did have a request from the athletic director that he has a sports night at 530 for senior recognition and he might he didn’t want to be called on and not be present Yeah, we could put you on the part next to last our penultimate Presentation for the yes, we can we can you know get him down the list for whenever he whenever he gets here That’s perfectly fine. Great. Dr. Oxford. Take it away Thank you, sir. Thank you members of the school committee Excited to present he has some projections and budget requests through student services Before I get to what I’m going to speak about Because student services always tries to do a little bit more you get you get a little bit extra bang for your buck today I’m going to dish it to Emily Dean Who is currently her title is well, we joke It’s basically director of anything and a bunch of stuff because we throw everything at her But she is our district’s EL director. She’s her other official title of student services liaison. She works with Parents and families of our students outside of the district. She works with our fellowship program Works with with DCF and in our homeless population and a bunch of other things

35:52 So I’m gonna turn it to her and allow her to speak a little bit On our FY 22 projections really a Around this mortgage board, I guess that she covers so Emily all yours So I’ve been making my list of things to swing for to just kidding. I told Eric I would throw some dudes with that too As far as our L program goes for next year We’re not projecting any changes in that and we are appropriately staffed for our current LC population as well as we can to Accommodate an increase if we needed to and we did have some discussions around Consolidating staff as we planned open. I’m gonna call it the Lucretia B school As we will have three teachers who will land over there At this point we’ve decided to keep them. We would recommend that One of them is full-time to our part-time. So they do add up to a 2.4 FTE And while the school might be consolidating They do all have their own case load and we would not anticipate that the case load will decrease at all I mean if anything we would anticipate that our kids have not had exposure to English Through the course of the pandemic. They will have more increased needs heading into next year as well So everything will stay the same there You heard a little bit about our partnership with the end of cut fellows program on Tuesday night and this year We have four fellows who’ve been very impressed by working in moderate disabilities classrooms across the district Next year, we are looking to add a fifth fellow to that which would increase the budget line by about 25,000

37:22 But we are not anticipating an operating cost increase. We would fill that through the Special secretary position at that. I’m transferring that over is that positions unfilled And we have requested that we would have fellow applications in severe disabilities Reading specialists in early childhood So all of those would be folks who are working on their master’s degree But are licensed in those fields and able to really support our programming And then in terms of our out of district class over the last two years Eric and I have both been working very closely with families of students out of district And trying to really revamp how that process works and the experience that those families have By taking a much more collaborative approach And working with the families to really identify the most appropriate Placements and learning environments for their students and the least restrictive setting in which those kids can make effective progress And really emphasizing the team process in that which has been a change for some of our some of our families as well But it’s done quite well So when we walked into our offices and FY 20 the budget for that was 4.2 million and we’re just over 4.2 million Our FY 22 projection right now is 3.4 to 4 5 million just over so a nice decrease in that Represented by kids who will be served in appropriate learning environments We have tried to do as much projecting as possible in that recognizing it is early in the year still But it does at this point include students as well who are in the care custody of a state agency for whom we’ve been notified

38:58 We will likely have fiscal responsibility heading into next year That’s my good news Eric your turn. Dr. Oxford Thanks Emily I would like to just pause And certainly for Emily or myself around those topics before I get into to the rest. Are there any any questions at this point? Sure, Sarah I think we can just assume Sarah has a question at every So you talked about I think you by the way very much Emily first talking about where the funding would come Because that’s really helpful to know but who will cover the duties at that Special Education Secretary at Betts Yeah, so right now our village school special ed secretary to Lyco is able to do both positions Eric can speak a little bit more about that, but she’s done a lovely job in terms of splitting her schedule and kind of It’s nice to have a point of continuity is lost for families No, definitely. I just wanted to make sure that we had that position covered if we were dissolved We do Yeah, we Sue is outstanding Where she came to our district just just last year and came from a prior district where her current caseload and her workload really Between village and vets is very comparable to what she’s familiar with. She’s jumped right in We really have not missed a beat and I you know it was certainly scary initially to think about consolidating and adding two more grades to her caseload, but

40:29 She proactively, you know offered she appreciates the continuity and and again You know, I there’s so much value in and having someone who knows our system and the way we organized to kind of just jump In so it’s worked out really well and that’s our plan to continue. So a good question Thank you, Eric and I can I can attest she’s very efficient All right All right. Thank you Emily. Great job. I know you’re humble, but you do an amazing job. So thanks for you All right, so I just want to jump in before I do I just want to take an opportunity Just I know you all know this but our students with disabilities are And students have really had Such a great opportunity really dating back almost a year now since we we shifted into into remote last March. I Have been so impressed and proud by our entire district But certainly, you know our teachers that that have been open and willing to go way above and beyond to keep our highest needs learners in school five days a week and Really the data that we’ve collected in terms of you know monitoring their progress and things of that nature Again, I just I can’t say enough about the work that they’ve done So I just want to take a minute to recognize them and I know they have been but they deserve it and they deserve It tomorrow and the next day because they’ve done an outstanding job. So With that I do wanted to just get into to piggyback on what Emily had said about our out of district

42:02 Cost that is really good news. I want to look at the other side our tuition and revenues. This is just one piece I just want to speak about a little bit and to be completely transparent You know, I think that we as a district need to start Start thinking about Not having such a reliance on our tuition and revenues every single year This is a projection next year that is going to be a pretty big hit To our department into our budget the anticipated our revenue is is going to be at about $450,000 that’s coming off $700,000 this year. So it’s a substantial Decrease now as Emily mentioned and I will emphasize in the few minutes that I have tonight. It’s super early We have four pending referrals for tuition ends next year So if all of those come to fruition certainly that kind of closes the gap brings us back up to You know a higher number but Philosophically so many more districts are now doing what Marblehead has done for many years now in creating these specialized programs and Supports in their own district, which is certainly great fiscally for them But certainly for students as well as we know it’s best for for kids and it to remain in their home district and and those They’re doing a good job. So again, I do anticipate that that number will go up as we move throughout the spring here But um, but I just wanted to point that out. So that’s one big piece And I guess shift in a budget projection and then the other is

43:34 last year due to Just the ebbs and flows naturally of our students out of district We were actually in a good position coming into this year to prepay about two hundred thousand dollars in out of district tuition costs from our FY 20 operating costs and budget for FY 21 at this time Michelle and I you know, we collaborate a lot alongside with Emily We feel like we’re in a really good place overall for our budget in terms of our out of district costs But we at this time, I’m certainly not projecting, you know that high of a number to be able to prepay You know up to 200 upwards of 200,000 for next year So again, just in the grand scheme of things that is something we just cannot rely on Again for next year with that said again, we’re tracking we’re tracking Hopefully we’ll be in a good place and we’ll see what happened We’re always striving to bring kids back which again, I think is a win-win all the time So those are you know, I think really the two biggest They’re not requests, but I think unfortunately are going to impact our budget within student services the most for next year and then the really the only budget ask and request that that we have within our department is is targeted and focused on The two pre-k classrooms at the new school that we you know that are on paper to open and to expand our pre-k And I think with that and certainly I you know, I know I presented recently about the restructuring You know those two new classrooms need to be filled and if we’re going to maintain the model

45:07 That we currently have that Glover within pre-k that includes one teacher per classroom So two total teachers and then two paraprofessionals per classroom. So a total of four paraprofessionals So we’re looking at two, excuse me, six total positions To fill those two classrooms. So that’s really it in terms of budget requests as I mentioned on Tuesday I think within special education student services There’s always opportunity that term needs-based Is absolutely true in what we do every single year because we are as much as I promote we got to be proactive I think as a as a department we are reactive and that’s okay That’s a good thing because we’re really catering to the needs of each child and excuse me at each level What that what those that those students need and we’re able to be very flexible and moving staff around Year to year. So the last thing I just want to highlight just for what it’s worth This certainly does not really, you know directly impact our operating budget, but it’s just our grant funding I just wanted to highlight, you know The use of these grant funds that we have available to us every year we have through the IDEA Two grants every year one is our 240 grant which is serves all students with disabilities ages 3 to 22 And then we have our 262 grant which is for early childhood or you know That really serves our pre-k population ages 3 to 5. So again students with disabilities. So Every year that the number, you know kind of ebbs and flows But long term goes up a little bit this year. We were at about seven hundred eighteen thousand dollars for our

46:42 Our 240 grant and we use that money pretty quickly in terms of budgeting So there’s a lot of contracted services there from psychologists evaluations to orientation and mobility services for the visually impaired We have literacy consultant work executive functioning training subscriptions the list goes on but the biggest number, you know I think I wanted to highlight I remember I highlighted last year Is that for the past several years we’ve budgeted between three hundred and seventy five and four hundred and twenty five thousand dollars of that grant just for transportation costs, so You know, it’s certainly not an ask that I’m that we’re looking for for next year’s budget But I think in working with Michelle but also Todd blood good We’re always just trying to explore ways to be creative to decrease those costs I know we’ve talked a lot about trying to invest in leasing buses or vans, you know to just bring down that cost Fortunately just to give you an example because of the pandemic we had less actual costs in transportation Certainly in the spring and so through our budget we had a bit of carryover money We had just under a hundred thousand dollars in carryover money and which is great it’s but just using that we were able to Very quickly catch up on compensatory services Outstanding psychological evaluations which included over the summer we were able to really go above and beyond in those investments

48:13 we’re able this year because of that a little bit extra money invest in 12 elementary special education teachers going to a full-orn gillingham training, which is a prescriptive literacy based You know in diagnostic training for those teachers to really drill down Into that specialized instruction that I think we’ve been missing from year to year So, you know, I think just with that kind of quote-unquote short amount of money We’re able to do a lot and so big picture again. We’re just always trying to figure out ways to Offset the transportation to be able to then turn that into investing in ways, you know for our staff and things like that. So That’s it in a nutshell Certainly open to any questions

48:58 There are Like I see you too So I noticed you have the you two pre-k teachers, but I Believe we were adding the two pre-k in one TK So are you able to recoup those TK teachers from shifting staff from another? location Yes, so we currently have three pre-k classrooms at Glover The Next year planned model and I actually just checked with the list a Zimmy our pre-k coordinator before coming on here Which it looks as though the what we’re anticipating in terms of classroom numbers will be accurate will be two pre-k Classrooms at Glover to pre-k at the Brown Elementary and then one TK at each, right? So really in a nutshell you think about it’s actually six right big picture. Yeah But if you just think about pre-k versus TK In theory, I don’t know if this will work out perfectly but in theory two of those pre-k teachers at Glover currently would stay With us or actually let’s make it simpler those three stay at Glover Right that encapsulates the pre-k and TK and then we would need we’d have those two pre-k classrooms and then that one TK extra through Known kind of shifts right now already that we’ve been speaking with some staff about we fully anticipate that we’ll be able to take care of In house to shift to have one of our special educators take hold of that TK classroom At the new building so as well as Paris

50:30 Yes, so the model so for TK we’re going to have a model of Not to Paris just one para in that classroom And that there that’s for a couple of reasons one We anticipate that then the classroom size will not be as big as a typical pre-k size So we’re probably won’t get up to that 15 So just that student teacher ratio But secondly the kindergarten model right now is that there’s one support staff in that class and so just a model that again We’re trying to be as aligned as possible in gear. Yeah kids to become familiar. So with the carryover of What we’re looking at in the aggregate of total numbers of pairs within pre-k. I think to be honest, we may need a Total of one para, but again in the works in kind of knowing some Staff here and there that may not be necessary in different parts of our department. That would be all set as well Okay, so maybe need for five pairs instead of four, but it’s a big maybe you think you can do it with four. I feel 99.99% okay, we won’t okay And then as far as the tides and access and other programs which we had shown as duplicated both sites It sounds like from the budget you’re presenting that we will not be duplicating those programs at the new school So we’re gonna shift away I won’t get into my vision because I get super passionate and I know John doesn’t I talked to them right before this and I Told him I won’t speak too long. I promise but We’re gonna shift away a lot well, not a lot but from our mindset of

52:02 We have to have the exact same programs in each building and really putting that emphasis on programs and instead Really focus on specialization focus on strands if you will. So taking our therapeutic for example We hope in our message to not see kids as tides kids We hope to see students with social emotional disabilities or needs right and I think by taking away that placement name that program name We’re able to do that and I say that because The current staffing at Brown Elementary and really to be honest throughout the elementary and spanning up I think to k-6 It’s gonna allow a lot of our flexibility in terms of what our staffing is going to look like So at the Brown Elementary, we do plan to have a therapeutic specialist just as we have inclusion specialists We have language-based specialists To have one at the Brown Elementary to have one at the Glover Elementary. So to mirror that but there’s no need for an additional Staff ask because without getting into the weeds with all of kind of the changes and things like that We really just want to expand that flexibility in our mindset as to how and what our special educators are doing. So the only the only Program that we really are going to maintain and really see that as You know kind of it’s it’s not its own working program because we want to include, you know Promote inclusion as much as possible, but is our access program which will maintain will stay housed at Glover It’s grounded in ABA principles. We carved out an ABA coordinator last year

53:37 As part of our budget, that’s an admin level that you know, she focuses on that work And I think that’s appropriate and at the same time we have a large group of Current third graders within access that are that are going to be bumping up to village And the numbers right now within access that we’re projecting are actually relatively low comparative to a lot of years moving, you know in the past so so it’s it’s kind of that push-pull Sarah of Having our goal is alignment pre k to 3 pre k to 3 at both schools to the the greatest extent it really is and that’s our Vision that’s what we’re gonna roll with But we also need to be cognizant of the fact of maintaining a cohort of students that that can relate to each other that Can work together for academic but also social development. So so that’s our plan for now Okay, that and that that all thank you for that explanation that makes sense I just want to confirm we will not we will have school based Specialists we will not have any transient staff staff will not be traveling between buildings Your your staff will be based at your school because that was a big big Selling feature to this was that they would be able to gain rapport. They would be able to see their colleagues Between classes when what we were told was when they have those transient staff They don’t have that that off time in between to kind of connect with the teacher or this and that those organic conversations

55:09 So this this was something that the community was Kind of promised totally that’s it aligns with our vision. You know, we want to promote we want to promote collaboration You know co-teaching I think is seen typically, you know, traditionally as general education and special education We want that to be super collaborative We want our OTS and our SLP is to get in the classroom collaborate model things right and I agree The culture that can be built by having specialists within you know, each building respective buildings Absolutely feeds to that. I would say that the staff the current staffing numbers allows for that I Also want to and I mentioned this on Tuesday. I want to see how things play out with we have a right currently in external You know third-party program review going on right now with all of our service providers to look at How are we going to maximize our efficiency and effectiveness of what our best practices? That was my introduction to those consultants and saying that is our goal But let’s can you help us build on that? So, you know, I don’t want to give you every single, you know Confirm detail right now, but certainly You know that it at the end of the day. That’s that’s our goal. So, okay And we will have that that extra space at the new school That we had dedicated to some of those, you know Specifically based programs is there an opportunity to utilize that space to maybe increase our opportunities for tuition in and our revenue streams So I don’t know that it will be extra so, you know with

56:41 One example of that is that on paper if you look at you know blueprints from from last year Which I did and even up to this point. There’s one classroom on there that’s labeled as pace classroom Now that’s a program that hasn’t run in two years That was a philosophy that access and pace we’re going to be maintained as separate entities We don’t we don’t maintain that vision. I’ll be honest with you. We feel as though collaboratively It is appropriate to build a cohort within that access program and that it’s appropriate for that group and that cohort of teachers and students to be together With us so that classroom will we see that as a perfect opportunity to embed our transition K Classroom in there. It’s still a special education because we’re serving kids on IEPs, right? It’s still it’s a non compulsory classroom So that’s one art our tides classroom that’s labeled at the Brown elementary that will be the house of our therapeutic strand So it’s not a it’s not saying that we’re gonna you know, totally upend our Programs in the sense of like not having access and resources and and space for that magic to happen as it does But it’s simply just taking that kind of that label and that stigma off of kids So so I don’t really see that as as extra space or space that we can give up certainly But I think it’s just utilizing it in a better way if that makes sense. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense and the Transportation for to our tuition out students I didn’t see in the in the list of that list are different programs that we send kids to

58:15 I didn’t see a list of associated transportation costs We’re in the budget is that reflected My call on Michelle in a second. Sorry to put you on the spot. I I think next year we had projected as part of the budget two hundred and seventy five thousand to support our out of district transportation costs That is there’s no low isn’t it? Well, yeah, so so this year’s Well, it covers it because we’re funding a lot of it out of our grant. So this year. Oh, that’s the addition to the grant Okay, exactly. Exactly. So this year we had projected at the beginning of this year our total transportation costs to be about six hundred fifty thousand dollars So 275 came out of our operating budget. We covered the rest in our grant. So I’m proposing No, you know, no operating costs increase and that we again will still rely on our budget I selfishly certainly I’d love for all of that to find its way into the budget I don’t think we’re ready for that yet. I think there’s more work to be done on looking at can we invest in leasing? Vans or things of that nature Yeah, we started some good work on that last year with John Moretti. Yes, he did. Yeah, so it’s still there You know, I think that’s still part of the plan. I think with kovat transportation is like everywhere in terms of costs and availability everything So we got to let the dust settle a little bit and then I think we’ll pick that back up And do you feel our grants and other funding sources are stable? I know last year we had thought circuit breaker or whatever those formulas were that we were gonna get a little more than we’ve gotten

59:48 in years past and You know not for the first time we were let down by that. I think that’s just kind of the way that The chips fall with that one quite a bit Do we have a sense? Is it going to be where we need?

1:00:30 I think we have budgeted conservatively for that. So I feel confident about it. Again, you never know. The state does feel as though they’re pretty secure in terms of what they’re anticipating to provide back to us. And then certainly our other grant funding sources, as I mentioned, those are federally funded. We don’t really have much control there, but again, I’ve heard nothing that would say expect a decrease or anything like that. Okay, and last question. Is the delta net tuition in reflected somewhere in the budget, or are you feeling you can absorb it in your grants? Yeah, no, it should in terms of the tuition and revenue. Yeah, the reduction there. Yeah, it is. It should be reflected. Yeah, if you look at page three under the Student Services section, you’ll see an increase of, a net increase of $354,000 towards the top third of the page. And that actually is… Okay, I see it. 28%. It’s actually a larger figure because in addition to the $700,000 we brought in this year, we also counted on about $200,000 that we already had in that revolving account. So that is also a revenue source that’s not there for next year. So the… And which will need to be absorbed into the operating budget? Correct, yes. Okay. So when we talk bottom figures, we’re looking at an actual increase in funding for that line of about $600,000. Okay. Eric, I threw a lot of questions at you. I apologize, but thank you. You had an answer to every one of them. I tried. Thanks, Sarah. No problem.

1:02:01 Megan, I know you had. Yeah, just a few quick ones, you know, because I know Sarah got through a lot of them. But can we just talk about Circuit Breaker for a minute? And I don’t know if this is directed to Michelle or Eric, so I’m looking at everybody. But last year, we were hoping for 75%. I think we budgeted for 72% or 70%. What are we budgeting for this year? We went right around 70%. I think actually a little bit lower, to be honest, because of just making… Trying to really make sure. Years before this year, it had been funded at 75%. And that was something that we could… You know, it wasn’t guaranteed, but we were really looking to rely on. I remember speaking at length with Bill McCalliff last year about… She’s like, always go 70%, you’ll get the 75%. Okay. We didn’t even get the right… So, Michelle, I don’t know if you have anything else to add, but I feel comfortable with the number we had budgeted for this year. Yeah, when Eric worked on the projections, I was suggesting the 68% just to be conservative. So I know we’re right in that 68% to 70% figure. Last year, we did budget at the 70% figure, and then we also… We did not count the transportation reimbursement last year count on it, but we knew it was supposed to be coming, even though it was promised to us. They said, absolutely, we’re funding all transportation. Don’t worry about it. You’ll absolutely get your 75%. But we didn’t get either, because they delayed the Student Opportunity Act one more year.

1:03:33 So they’re saying that FY22 is the magic year, that the Student Opportunity Act is being funded, that we will get transportation reimbursement on circuit breaker expenditures. I’m not holding my breath. It will be a very nice, beneficial funding if we do get it. But the circuit breaker also does not just go away. You can carry it forward for one year. So if we do get more funds than we absolutely need, then we will have that in our SPED circuit breaker revolving fund to be able to use the following year. So, yeah, so we are conservating. We are conservatively budgeting for that figure, but I think we’re in good shape, and hopefully we will receive more money. But we won’t know that until next year. Michelle, did you just say more funds than we need? Well, more than we need plus the operating budget. Yes, we can always use more funds. Okay, so that transportation piece is not in this budget right now. Correct. Okay, good. And are you projecting, you might not be able to answer this right now, but just you made me think of it. Are we projecting any carry forward for this year, from this year? Not at this time, no. Okay. All right, so can we get in the budget book, I noticed we’re kind of focused on the operating budget, but can we get all the grants and additional sources of revenue added into this budget book? Absolutely. I was hoping to do a very similar summary to what I was able to do last year, but it just was not able to be done before the operating budget was rolled out.

1:05:05 So yes, I mean, it’s not like you’re not doing anything else. I know. But if we can get that in here, that would be great. Absolutely. Okay, thank you. All right, David. Michelle, I don’t know if this is the time to ask, but in your budget summary, there’s the out of district, OOD tuition private day number. Yes. That’s the increase we’re talking about where roughly we’re about $600,000, $615,000 short of what we need from the current budget. It’s really because of the last year we were able to prepay tuitions of exactly $200,000 out of last year’s budget, which reduced our requirement for the FY21 budget. And then we are roughly $400,000 difference in the tuition in program that funds our tuitions to pay for a portion of our tuitions out. Okay. Okay. Thank you both. Thank you. All right. Go ahead, John. I was just going to say, Mr. Sigelarsky has let me know that he is in the queue.

1:06:35 So if we follow down the agenda, he is next. Great. Hi, everybody. How are you? We’re up by 15 and a half times, if anybody’s curious. So thanks for having me here tonight. Just wanted to kind of quickly go over the budget and then, you know, take any questions you guys may have for me. So I’m sure like many other presentations you guys have heard, very different year this year. We didn’t really purchase many things that we thought we were going to this year, mostly because we had no idea if we’re going to be playing each season until about two weeks before we were scheduled to play. So that put off kind of uniform purchases, any other kind of major equipment purchases we were going to have. And then upcoming for next year, we do have a couple of major purchases coming up, looking at new hockey and potentially football uniforms, football helmets. There’s about a dozen or so that are no longer certifiable, which are very expensive. And I’m looking at some new basketball scoreboards as well for the field house. Those are as old as the high school itself, along with the clock that operates it. And it’s definitely on its last legs. So that would be a huge help.

1:08:06 Looking at the actual executive summary that Michelle put together, there are definitely three numbers that stick out as far as percent changes go. Custodial services was a big one for us. I’m looking at, I assume, a similar format next year with probably COVID regulations still in place, as I don’t foresee those going anywhere. So having the gym open longer, being here on Saturdays for spreading out games more, because we used to play freshman JV varsity all in a row. And now we’re spreading out where we just do JV, then varsity, and then fresh on a different day. And the same goes with our usage at Piper Field for soccer. And I would assume it’s going to be the same in the springtime. Having had the building open a lot more often and regular than we normally would will increase our overtime. I also don’t know as far as what the custodians are going to get for their budget line items for sanitizing. We use a lot of their materials after each game. After each practice year, we’re spraying down all the bleachers, all the chairs, all of the equipment, and rolling through almost two seasons. And we have two more to go. Another big one that we had, stop me if you have questions, by the way. I’ll just kind of go through what I was going to say and definitely stop me if you have a question. Another kind of big percentage jump was our medical supplies. Myself and our athletic trainer are looking into different touchless

1:09:38 water systems. We’ve gotten a couple of small kind of samples to use. For example, we have one that big five-gallon Gatorade Jug. There’s a company down in Texas that sells basically a new spigot that goes into the Gatorade Jug and has a bungee cord on it with a foot pedal. So you basically just take your water bottle, put it underneath the water jug and push on the pedal. You don’t have to touch anything, which is great. That alleviates any touching and any need to wipe things down. Another piece there is concussion testing, our impact testing. That was paid for through state grants until this year. So we’re kind of on our own for that, but we definitely value that and think that’s something that we need to have in place. And I think we actually have to, by law, have some sort of concussion protocol in place and concussion testing in place. And then also, obviously, extra sanitizer that he would normally carry around for each game and practice, our trainer, that is. And then third, for our contracted services, kind of relates to the first piece. Since we’re spreading out games more often, we’re going to have more buses and a higher need for rentals from outside companies since we have to be putting one team on a bus versus, you know, usually you could send two or sometimes even three smaller teams on one bus, but now we’re limited with capacities on the buses. So those are kind of the three points I wanted to touch on

1:11:09 and those are kind of the three big pieces where we jumped. And you guys are welcome to ask any questions. Brenda, how much of this is covered by the athletic fees? And this might need Michelle as well. And what, you know, given COVID and given busing and everything like that, we need to increase those fees in order to kind of meet some of these additional needs that, you know, to be honest, are due to athletics. Michelle could jump in on that, but I don’t think so. I think they’re in a pretty good spot right now. We’re kind of on the upper average of the league itself as it is now. Some leagues, or some schools in our league have different structures. Some pay by sport. Some pay just one flat fee. Some don’t pay at all. So it varies. Okay. Now, I just want to add that our coaching, 50% of our coaching fees, our coaching stipends are paid with the user fee. So right now we are anticipating paying 142,000 from user fees and then 142,000 from the operating budget. So we usually try to split that 50-50 as long as that user fee account is able to absorb that. And right now it is. Sarah, thank you, Paul. So the pay structure for the stipends, is it stipend per sport,

1:12:46 or is it if you’re a faculty member and you coach a sport, this is your stipend? No, it’s in the Unity contract. It’s just by sport. So there’s five different steps that you can earn each year. You go up a snap, you get a five. And then each sport was put into different categories well before my class. But I just want to confirm, like, the category are like soccer versus football. Not boy soccer is one category and girl soccer is another. Because when I look at these, Greg, it could be that people are in different steps. But the salaries are different depending on the gender of the sport, which I just want to make sure is not something we’re doing. No, it’s like a general soccer, a general hockey, a general basketball. They each have their own. It doesn’t matter. It’s just their own different steps. It just happened. The luck of the draw fell out this way. Okay. When I looked at the numbers, I started the feminists to make that a little nervous. Sorry, Greg. No problem. Any other questions for Greg? Thank you, Greg. Thank you, Greg. Thank you all. So next up is the technology presentation with Stephen Kwatek. Most anticipated one, Stephen. Absolutely. Welcome, Stephen.

1:14:20 Thank you, Dr. Bucky. I’ve been working with Michelle Krastow to change the current structure of the technology budget from one line into several different lines broken out into hardware, software, supplies, contracted services, and new lines for leasing equipment and leasing of capital equipment. My challenge is to create a balance across the district for each of the school’s technologies. There needs to be a tech equity between each of the buildings. We need a sustainable plan to replace the technology funded for COVID and going forward to plan for new school building replacement for the technology four years from now. And the new tech budget lines have broken down the costs for each of the systems we have in place, as well as adding new funding for each of the schools in Ohio to replace the outdated systems and the options to add new technologies. Based hard, besides the hardware systems, we need to reinstate the technology integration specialist positions. I’m requesting two additional staff positions. This position provides in-classroom, hands-on training, and support. This position is needed to integrate technology that we own and technology that we’ll be purchasing in the future into our curriculum. My largest request is for the capital improvement needs. Installing new fiber between all of our buildings to allow the schools to be connected with redundant connections, which will help us create a stable learning environment.

1:15:56 Upgrading switching and adding Wi-Fi into all of our classrooms, which will allow the staff and students the ability to be connected with full capabilities and confidence. None of our switching currently is redundant. And we need to have faster speeds from end to end. And finally, for safety and security, the phone systems especially is one of the issues that we face currently, where the high school, middle school, and the district office are in need of replacement. These systems will eventually fail, and when they do, we’ll have no options to repair these systems. I know there’s a lot that we need, and willing to find out if you have any questions. Sarah, go ahead. So, I have several for you. The first one may be a question. I don’t know what principles are on here. I’m just trying to for clarification that technology integrated or the integration technology specialist, is that just so I wrap my head around what position this is. Is this what like Ami Shapiro used to do? If anybody? Yes, exactly. Okay. I was like, Who was here when she was here? Alright, so that makes more sense to me. You know, that was a very utilized important role. I just, the names don’t always mean something to me as far as the role. And then I think that you’d be hard pressed to find anyone that says we don’t need to improve our technology overall, in all forms, especially given where we are right now.

1:17:40 And I think it’s really, really important that this is however we fund this, that this is something that stays in our budget and gets funded because technology is something that, you know, for many years did kind of, we kicked the can down the road. And who would have thought we were going to wind up where we are this year? Obviously, no one hit that on their radar, but this is obviously where the rubber met the road on this one. So, thank you for laying this out. Thank you for the memo that outlined it all, Stephen. What is the timeline for implementation? If we secure this funding, it does not become available to us until July 1. What is your timeline to be able to implement these fixes before the new school year? Is that realistic? So, obviously, I don’t want to make any promises for anything, but with the help of some of the COVID funding, we can move forward with some of the pieces of the project. And using the E-Rate, which is the federal kind of funding built for increasing technology in the classrooms and switching and Wi-Fi and internet. So, using that funding, we could save a lot of money as well using about 40% discount on each of those services. That discount we won’t be able to get until July 1 anyway. So, some of that equipment we would be waiting for a July 1 start as well.

1:19:18 And I have to assume other districts that this is a federal program are going to be waiting to kind of pull their trigger until the funding source kicks in on July 1 too. So then we’ll have lead times in a competitive program where, you know, other people want this stuff as well. Yeah, so I’ve already created several RFBs for switching, for firewalls, for the Wi-Fi. We’ve already set up with our E-Rate consultant to be able to put them out, and that will put us in a position to get quotes in, pick the right products, and then have things lined up for a July 1 start. Okay. All right. And does this all, like, get us through till next year or as we move into next year and start looking at more of our, you know, strategic plan has been developed and we’re going to start looking at our total overhaul. Do you see this as this will get us through what we need for next year because technology is so critical right now, but that if we really want to move forward and be current, there will be a bigger ask. Like, I’m just trying to get a capture sense of does this fix all of our technology problems moving forward and we aren’t going to see a bigger ask coming forward, or is this really meets our pandemic needs? Yeah. So the capital request is really changing all the things that are kind of the big picture items that will last for some of the years going down the road.

1:20:55 Things like the phone system isn’t something you upgrade every five years. It’s usually every 15 years. Our systems are over 20 years old that I’m requesting to really replace. The wireless is something that we don’t have wireless in every classroom right now. Most districts are built for a one-to-one classroom ratio at a minimum. Most kids, you know, these days have a phone, they have a tablet, they have a laptop. They’re connecting all three devices and so we really need to be proactive and get it so that we can have a three-to-one ratio with their devices to the access points that they’re connecting into. And we just don’t have that currently. We have issues when we go to do MCAS testing currently because we don’t have enough hardware in place in order for them to test everything at once. And doing all these upgrades will bring us up to where we need to be and will secure us for several years going down the future. And allow us time to then also put in kind of reoccurring leases for things like the Wi-Fi that we should be upgrading every five or six years. Okay, thank you. I’m really happy to see that this is being addressed in this budget. Last year, I brought up a lot of concerns about did we have proper funding for our technology to adequately bring us into remote learning this year.

1:22:28 And I’m really happy to see that this is being addressed right now. Also, just as a side note, Stephen, I think you’d be a huge asset to joining our facilities committee where these hardwiring things and things like the infrastructure, the tech piece would really be part of our facilities master plans moving forward. So I’ll be reaching out to you and kind of inviting you to join us on that if you don’t mind as well. Of course. Stephen, thank you. This is, you know, you, I just want to point out for anybody who doesn’t know that Stephen just joined the district in mid December. And so the amount of work that you’ve done and sort of gotten your head wrapped around all of this stuff is amazing. So, you know, I just I felt like before we move forward that that deserved kind of complimenting and pointing out. Megan, I see you’ve got your hand raised. Yeah, thanks. So thanks for the Stephen. We’ve obviously done a lot of work in your very short time in the district. So I appreciate it. Is it possible, I know, you know, Michelle kind of gave us a crash course on the rate program in our budget subcommittee meeting. But is it possible for one of you to just kind of do that real quickly for the rest of the committee just so they understand how that works because it isn’t something that we really took advantage of previously and I think it’s an important. Many years ago, the telephone companies kind of built a large funding source for back then telephone service.

1:24:07 We’ve kind of gotten away from it being used for telephone service. It’s been added now into a source of funding for Wi-Fi and internet in the classroom, getting that technology out there for all those schools. We haven’t used ours here in Marblehead for a few years now, it looks like. We have about $500,000 that’s available to us. And it’s really a system where it’s a use it or lose it sort of thing. So if we don’t spend this money, we’re going to end up losing the money. So right now, as I said, several different things that we’re looking to use the switching and wireless especially we will get a 40% discount off the top of the cost of the equipment. Thank you for that. And then, you know, we did make a pretty significant investment in technology over the summer with some of the money we got from the CARES Act so we’ve made a good, you know, I think it’s close. I don’t have the exact number in front of me but it’s in the ballpark of like half a million dollars. Most of that went towards teacher and student devices so that was huge. And as I said before, one of our kind of issues will be four or five years from now that influx of technology that we have from that funding source will have to have a plan in order to be able to replace it.

1:25:39 Yep, yep, agreed. We have another approximately 350 coming to us. Can, what is, you know, kind of what if you earmarked there for technology. So some of the things that we could use it for right away would be the fiber between the buildings, the fiber internal to the high school, the fiber at the high school is 20 year old fiber. It’s not really up to spec in order to be able to have, you know, literally not even the one gig that we’re trying to use it for right now. And we want to get to a 10 gig redundant connection between all the closets across the district. And so we need to replace the fiber internally as well. And firewall we could use that money for right away too because the firewall that we’re using is not really giving us the full protection that we need. And then, um, one of the things, and it might be in here and maybe you can just point me to where it is but I know we’ve kind of talked about leasing some of this, some of the work here and spreading it over x number of years, is that factored into the numbers here. So the leasing that I would be looking at would be for probably the switching the wireless and the phone systems where we could lease that out over several years and just be able to pay it off without having to have that full expense up front.

1:27:09 Okay, so is that can you just point me to where I would see that Michelle? Yeah, so the, um, initially the total request that Stephen made for those items was the capital lease line on page three of the IT budget for $541,500. Yeah, okay. That’s the total cost, but once you go to page nine of the IT budget, on the right side, the right bottom side, we have a note. The yearly lease payment would be $212,076. So we really built the $212,000 into the budget ask for next year, because that would only be the lease payment that is required for next year to be able to do all of those things in a finance manner. Okay, okay. So the cost is the $451,000, but for fiscal year 22, it’s the $212,000. Correct. $541,000, I believe. Yeah, $541,000. I don’t know what I said. Sorry. And that’s in your budget summary document. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So then we just have to make sure we carry, then we carry that forward for three years. Exactly. Okay. And once we get on a capital replacement schedule, it will be very beneficial to us. So we may not need a full 200 every year after, you know, that particular financing is paid off, but we do need to.

1:28:42 The wireless would be something that after that lease is over with, we would renew the wireless piece of it for the ongoing replacement costs of that. But the phones and the switching will last, you know, 10, 15, 20 years, you know. Okay. All right. Great. Thank you. Molly, you’ve got your hand off. I just, I’m really excited to see that you have upped the wireless for everyone for three to one, because I know that you never have enough wireless for everybody. So in the fact that we’re not even at one to one, it’s not great. But the fact that you brought it up to three to one, or I would say even go more because you can never have too much wireless. Would be my only suggestion unless you know that three to one is going to that is requesting for us to get us to a point where we can sustain a three to one. Okay. And I think that’s great. So thank you for doing that. So, Stephen suggested that I’m understanding completely. So on the There’s the memo in the show. At the bottom of that has the 942.5. So some of those are with the E-rate. So those two are switching to the wireless.

1:30:18 Sarah, when you turn your head away from the speaker, it doesn’t pick you up. Okay, thanks. So the 550,000 and the 140,000, those numbers are before the 40% discount that we are assured? Yes. Okay. Well, the money is there. We have the funding there. 99% of the time I’ll say, I’ll leave myself that 1%. But we have the money in our E-rate account, and it is for the wireless and for the switch in which we need. There’s really little doubt in my mind that we won’t get that 40% on those items. We cannot get it for the phone system. That’s why that’s fucked off of that. Gotcha. So, and then that should cover. So you said that it’s around the E-rate is around 500,000 in total. So that 500 comes off of that 942? So if you look at that first phone, that 942 is everything, including the fiber things that we would be paying out of the COVID funds. So those that the fiber, the internal fiber, the firewall, those aren’t part of that 541. So really that 541 is the switching, the wireless, the phone system. And those final figures that make up the 541 is with the cost savings of the 40% off of the switching and the wireless.

1:31:56 All right. I may just need to wrap back with you at a different time, just as I kind of dig back into this and take a second look and just so that I’m completely understanding it. But thank you. David, did you have a question before I go back to Sarah? I did. So Michelle, in your summary, there’s a net decrease on IT computer maintenance equipment of 285. That’s because they used to be one account for everything for the tech. And we’re trying to split it up so we can really see exactly where we’re spending all the money on. So we’re picking it up into the hardware, the software. So I guess the point is we had $285,000 in the budget. And that’s still there. It’s just separated out into those other areas now that we didn’t have previously. Yeah. No, that’s not. So the 285 is just going to be an account that’s no longer being used. And then we’re going to allocate it. And I believe the new budget request is roughly 345. So it’s a little bit higher when you add all those other broken down ones together. Right. So it’s not net. The net is a little bit less because we’re breaking that up into different numbers. And then I just you know, I know you talked about the multiple devices that students bring in, for example, to the high school. Have you looked into the fact that there’s no Verizon connection at the high school for people? The Verizon connection for the current internet or what?

1:33:28 Yeah, for people that have their own device, like when I’m there and I want to use the high school. Yeah. One of our main issues kind of coming into this year was that they, as with a lot of the equipment here, are off contract with some of their services. So for the Wi-Fi, we’re not under any kind of service contract right now. We don’t have a cloud-based system to manage all the Wi-Fi units that we used to have. Right. And that system, you know, if I walked in, we had that right away. I probably would have made a bunch of changes and set up open connections for, you know, visitors to be able to get an internet Wi-Fi connection, separate Wi-Fi passwords for every staff member to have individually so that we don’t have to have a single access password across the district. A lot of different changes and all of that will be addressed as part of this, you know, new upgrade and update. Right. But people that have their personal devices, there’s a lack of connectivity. And there won’t be once we do these upgrades. Okay. And I think there’ll be a public Wi-Fi that will be available that will be secured and separate from the schools network. Okay. Great.

1:34:58 All right. Sarah? Yeah, I just wanted. So one thing is the increase in what we had previously budgeted to where we’re moving now is a roughly 158% increase. So it’s a significant investment in our technology from where we were, which is a good thing. Now, as far as the fee rate goes, I just want to clarify that as well, because when you say it’s a use it or lose it, we haven’t been using it. It’s not that they’re cutting us a check for $500,000. It is a reduction in our investment of 40%. So it’s not that we’re taking $500,000 off the top of any asks. If we’re outputting $500,000 of applicable funding, they will rebate us $200,000 of that. So, or not rebate. I don’t know if it’s a rebate or a refund. Yeah. So this is kind of in a way works the same way as the MSA funding. Yes, it’s a use it or lose it. But if you don’t have the money to spend your portion, that’s money you can’t touch because without your own 60% investment, that 500% is or that 500,000 is untouchable. So I’m going to assume we were not touching it because we didn’t, we weren’t in a place where we could invest to utilize that funding.

1:36:31 If that makes sense. Yes. I think that’s a big part of it. I believe you’re absolutely correct. You need money to invest to utilize that. So it’s not that we were saying no to free money. We didn’t even have the bare minimum to invest to get the free money. So, and then my other question is to enter a lease, since it’s a lease agreement, doesn’t that take a separate funding mechanism or vote at town meeting because it is a commitment to a reoccurring year to year? I do not believe so. I believe the only leases that are required are the vehicle leases that require the meeting vote. And actually, I don’t think this was actually the lease purchase agreement. I think this would just be a financing agreement. I just wanted to make sure if we needed a specific article wording that we have that in there. When we say these leases, it’s a lease to own, like we’ll own everything at the end of the lease. Well, we do that with our bosses too. We lease to own, but it’s the commitment to the reoccurring funding structure that I didn’t know if we needed that to be okay. I will double check on that. Yeah. Really, the only thing that we really need to start moving on anything would be, you know, approval for, you know, spending the COVID funds on the fiber. Okay. Were we really running schools off of one gig? Well, we’re running schools, the internet’s about half a gig right this second, but the between the buildings, it’s probably less.

1:38:03 People’s home. Yeah. Some people are running their private home off of more than that. Yes. I have a gig right now. Yeah. Okay. It’s a little bit different from the home networks, but, you know, it is. It’s a distributed network, so it’s, yeah. Yeah. It’s inadequate though, but thank you, Steven, for identifying all this. Thank you so much for your work. Thank you very much, Steven. John? Yes. That held true. I figured that technology would be the most interesting presentation of the evening, and I do appreciate recognizing that we didn’t get to where we are overnight, and we’re not going to get to where we want to be overnight. But certainly Steven has hit the ground running and identified a lot of stuff that we can do. And the funding that is being made available to us will help, but we’re not going to resolve all of our technology issues. And it really came home for me yesterday when I was trying to call into the district. And the phone system at Whidler Road would not allow the superintendent to get into the system. So I appreciate all of what Steven’s doing to remedy some of our tech issues. The next couple of presentations, I promise will be quick food services, the assistant superintendent and facilities, and I will dish to Mr. Kelleher pun intended dish.

1:39:44 Actually, I just want to say 1 quick thing before Richard get started. This is actually a new section in your budget this year. You probably have never had a presentation on food services or you haven’t since I’ve been here anyways. And I just thought it was a really important while the food service department does not operate under the operating budget and the actual budget that you’re approving or requesting. In the bottom line is it does affect our operating budget as you have seen through operations when this fund, which is a substantial operation runs a shortfall. We’re not able to cover those costs. It does affect our bottom line because we have to make that fund whole. So I just thought it was really important. The food service department has a budget of roughly 800,000 dollars. So that’s why we included that this year. And that’s why Richard is coming to you and giving you a general overview of his operations. Thank you. Hello from sunny San Francisco. Again, this is an opportunity I haven’t had before. I’m excited only because of the duress under which we’ve been working since last March. Working with Michelle has been great, very positive. John and supportive. I can’t say enough good things. I would like to imagine my staff. They are flat out the best I’ve ever worked with in my 26 years of doing this. We’re projecting a modest, they call it excess revenue for lack of a better term. And that’s dependent on how we reopen. It’s dependent upon what the new administration does with the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act.

1:41:34 That gutted the program when they brought it in in 2010 in terms of our participation. We’ve been building it back. One of the things that’s helped has been the flavored milk, the reduction in the sodium requirements, and those sort of things. The administration, I’m not off to see how they go with enforcement or reinstatement of those rules, but those are a huge effect on how we do our business. So funding is, revenues I believe will be relatively flat. And again, this is depending on how we open. We can get our a la carte back if we can get those things back. So anybody has any questions? Here I am. First of all, Richard, I’m so happy we get to the chance to see you. I haven’t seen you in ages, but you’re a huge asset to our district. Some of the questions I have is I see on your line items here that you don’t have the new school listed. We have some at Coffin or Evelace, but we’re going to have a fully functioning kitchen at this beautiful new Brown school. And so I want to know if you foresee there being some new staffing requirements in order to staff that. Yeah, we did add a coop manager at 28,000. And there was an increase of, I want to say…

1:43:15 I believe it was 10 hours. Yeah, 10 hours for staff, which would equate to like $4,500 or $3,000 in additional labor. Hopefully, where the food is prepared there, we’ll end up seeing a better return on that investment that usually increases participation and with freshness and quality. Yeah. And then I know that we added a dish room to the new building because we were excited about the environmental impact of that and the ability to have dishes and wash dishes there. How are we looking on that for next year, Richard? That was in the plan. I’m a big advocate of leaving things where they were the last time we met. Okay. So I mean, we’re… And would that impact your staffing, the need for that? No. Okay. I mean, that’s why we’re already looking at the increase in hours. Okay. All right. Richard, thank you so much. Well, you’re very welcome, Sarah. Does anybody else have any questions? All right, Richard, thank you very much. Thank you. Thanks for all the hard work this year, too. Thank you. My pleasure. John? So I just want to repay the compliment to Richard because food insecurity is real and the pandemic has come to the forefront and the fact that we have provided meal service and he anticipates like the vacation week next week and getting information out to families about how…

1:44:59 And he’s running on a shoestring staff this year and still putting out high quality products and making sure that our families that rely on our food service program are well served. So I just want to credit Richard and his staff. We have Mrs. Murphy up next. And I would like to second that, Dr. Bucky, going back to when the pandemic first came out and Superintendent McCaldiff and made the right decision. I think that was clearly the right thing to do. And thank you, Richard, to your staff and how you pivoted to provide all those different food services during this time. It’s been very important. And I’m glad that we’ve been able to support that as a district. Well, it’s been a great pleasure. And again, my staff has worked through holidays, worked through vacations, and really put themselves out to make sure that the families have what they need. And it’s our pleasure. That’s what they’re all about. Thank you. And this is just a plug for that program because you’re not just saving people from food insecurity. You are saving the mental status of so many parents right now that are partaking in that lunch program. For anybody who has not looked into it, please look into it. It’s fully funded by the government. It’s free to anybody that wants to do it. It actually benefits our district financially if you do it.

1:46:31 And your kids go home with a lunch that you don’t have to make them. So it doesn’t get better than that. Mrs. Murphy, you’re muted. Somebody had to do it, right? Good evening, everyone. I’d like to start by saying thank you. I am so grateful to have been hired here in Marblehead. I am very happy with my position. I am so grateful to the people that I work with. The teachers are phenomenal and receptive and kind. And Dr. Bucky has been a great thought partner and friend in this work. The leadership team has been phenomenal. And I’ve been in a lot of different districts and have done this work for a while. And just very grateful to be here and working with such a dedicated group of educators and staff. So thank you for the opportunity. I’m truly enjoying myself. Well, I think you have the feelings mutual. So thank you. Thanks. So as you can see, I have grounded the work that I am bringing to the district in four different top priority areas that were kind of unveiled to me through a initial needs assessment by talking with staff, by talking with leaders. Those four areas, number one, aligning curriculum and materials assessments and instruction across grade levels and schools, strengthening instructional practices by providing instructional coaching and targeted professional development.

1:48:18 The third one developing a data culture in schools to ensure educators are examining data sources to measure student progress and develop targeted tiered interventions to address learning gaps. And finally, to resume the district’s pre-COVID math series adoption process to ensure a new math series is implemented in the fall of 2021. So from what I’m hearing from Michelle, the curriculum budget doesn’t look much different than it has in the past. The area of contracted services, I did reduced by 10,000 because I felt that in coordinating, having a more coordinated and focused approach in using our grant funds, our title funding, that I felt like I could give back to the district that 10,000. So the contracted services will be people coming to the district professional development folks who will be able to come to the district to elevate and strengthen our instructional practices, vendor support in providing teachers the professional development they need in implementing the new math series, bringing some culturally proficient learning to staff once things level out and they’re ready to absorb a different content, and training specific staff within our district to do targeted work within their position.

1:50:08 So I’ve worked with a lot of great people over the years that come into the district and they will help coach up people and help them develop finer skills so they’re more effective in either providing professional development within their schools or leading their grade level teams in professional learning communities. So that’s how that funding would be used. The next big ticket item is obviously the new math curriculum and bringing that to the district that that falls along in the priority of aligning materials and assessments, as well as bringing the new math series to fruition. It’s just good practice for school districts to review and assess curriculum every five to seven years. It very rarely do curriculum stay relevant longer than that. So either you’re reinvesting in an updated program, or you’re searching for a new program. So at this point we have a great committee established looking at programs have inviting vendors to the district to meet with us, we have two vendors that have supplied materials to the schools for teachers to look at and assess, and we’re hoping to have a decision by mid March, or end of March, as to what program we’re bringing on board.

1:51:40 And that program is specific to K eight instruction. And then the final two we have instructional supplies that are going to be allocated for the Office of Teaching and Learning to enhance instruction in the classroom so for example I I attended PD yesterday, and a teacher was talking about a great text she said that that really elevated a lot of the ways to teach phonics in her classroom and so all the other teachers were talking about it and wanting to know about it so I ordered it today for that grade level team so that that’s where that kind of money goes, it’s about, you know, taking on, making sure we have multicultural texts in the classroom, making sure that we have if we have a new teacher come on board that that person has a level library that that is equitable to veteran colleagues. And I think the instructional software that it’s hard for me at this point to get a sense of what is district allocated and what is principal responsibility so I know a lot across the district different principles support soft access to online tools, and so they have that in their budget,

1:53:16 and they do often get asked to supplement. So this money would be able to help support if there’s a new tool and principals don’t have the money this would be a way that I could help bring on an online tool that could maybe help enrich or remediate some instruction. Finally, I’ve got $10,000 allocated to professional development, and the plan for that really is to maybe do some work over the summer where I’d be able to pay some district experts, educators to collaborate to think about how we are going to approach whatever model we are going into in the fall, helping to plan out curriculum, looking at materials that might need to be supplemented for kids as we bring kids to new grade levels, and in preparation for that transition in, in, in achievement gaps, and be able to do some data analysis, you know, hopefully every year our data from MCAS comes back a little bit quicker and we’re hoping this year comes back. Relatively soon, so maybe we could have some data teams working over the summer to really identify what kids are going to need when they come back in the fall. And then I also am very lucky to be the one that gets to allocate the student opportunity act money.

1:54:47 I don’t know Michelle if you want to talk about how we end up with that or want to do that before after how I’m going to spend it. Yes, I just want to add a quick note that the student student opportunity act is it was a whole program under the legislature that was passed last year and it was delayed until fiscal 22 part of the student opportunity act requires that districts will receive a certain sum of money depending on their particular situation. And we must spend that within certain guidelines. So Nan and Eric have worked together to come up with those specific guidelines and how we’re going to spend them and Nan will go into that a little bit more. The tricky part is this now becomes part of our budget for the or for fiscal 22 because it’s being funded through an additional amount being added to our chapter 70 funds. And as you may know our chapter 70 funds really go to the town and accredited to the general fund. So when the state started talking about all these requirements and how they’re going to fund this program for us, we got all excited that we’re going to receive this $90,000 figure. And then we found out that it’s really being added to chapter 70 and it’s not coming directly to us. So I have briefly spoken with Jason Silver to give him a little bit of background and information expecting this additional ask in our budget this year because it’s going to be received.

1:56:21 And the town will credit it to the general fund as they’re required. However, we really are required to spend those funds on a specific program and we need to report that we spend those funds correctly. So now Nan will go into how we’re going to spend these funds, but it should be really an additional ask above and beyond our normal operating budget and I do not expect it to be there in future years. It’s kind of a one-time anomaly that we really need to account for. So the reference Michelle made to being used in a specific way, it needs to be used to reduce chronic achievement gaps. So I was required to go through some historic data here in Marblehead and identify areas that we were chronically underperforming in or could use some support in. And so I’ve identified as one of the areas that we do not have our math data in pockets is showing that it’s an area that we could be, has potential to grow in. So I have allocated some of the funds to a district math interventionist, somebody who would be able to join the Office of Teaching and Learning and serve in the role much like Rebecca Brand does for our ELA content area. She’s been, and it just, I can’t say enough about how phenomenal Rebecca Brand is and how well respected she is in the district. I’d like to bring somebody in that can work at that level with teachers around math instruction and how do we remediate math instruction,

1:58:08 how do we provide supports for students in the classroom and maybe do some modeling of that for teachers and also be an anchor in schools for the implementation of the new math program. Somebody who can really help facilitate and ensure that that is up and running in classrooms as effectively as possible. That’s going to be a lot of work in the fall. So having somebody to partner with would be greatly, the teachers would benefit from. Eric, Dr. Oxford and I’ve also co-created a summer literacy program to identify, we’re going to identify students who are still struggling with decoding and fluency using some of our data and provide just a real intensive summer experience and yet really joyful fun. We want it to be well balanced and yet really targeted at some of our early learners. And then finally, I have a nice sum of money set aside for, again, professional development, but this is very strategic. It’s referenced as multi-tiered systems of support professional development and that is the reference to how do we close gaps and what our teaching teacher moves and teach strategic thinking that we can bring to classrooms to move kids.

1:59:40 And it also is going to be an important reference for us, a resource for us in supporting our social emotional learners. We as educators are going to have to understand trauma-based trauma. We’re going to need promise-sensitive schools and classrooms. We’re going to need refreshing refreshers on that professional development many of us have had, but it’s been years. And we really need to know what kids are going to need and have somebody working with us to help develop those resources for the classroom. So the only addition outside of the SOA money that’s coming our way is the only ask I am presenting to you tonight is the for two positions and they both would be instructional support specialists. Teachers are doing so many fabulous things and they could really benefit for with some boots on the ground shoulder to shoulder partnership in the schools. Somebody whose area of expertise is providing professional development and guiding grade level teams through data-driven conversations and being able to look at data, sort data, and then have really good conversations with teachers about what to do about the data instructionally. So I’m proposing being able to bring those specialists on board. That’s all I got for you. If you’ve got any questions, I’m happy to answer them.

2:01:14 Thank you very much, Nan. Megan, I see your hand up. Thanks for this, Nan. This is a very detailed curriculum section, which I love to see in here. This is why we’re here, right? So it’s more, I think I just, maybe you can point me in the right direction between you and Michelle. Okay. I’m like I’m missing something. But on this first, or page three, I guess it is, we have here the new curriculum implementation math K-3 to 250,000. Yeah. But in the summary, the summary that you sent through Michelle, I see it listed as 100,000. The 250,000 is the high end. I believe we received quotes ranging from 100,000 to 250,000. And usually when we put in a high dollar ticket new curriculum, we have the option to finance it across two to three years. So we are anticipating that our FY22 cost will be no larger than $100,000. Okay. And then this 250 will nail down, like you said, Nan, come around close to April or March when you figure out the vendor. Okay. All right. So that’s good. I think maybe I’m just missing. Where would I see the staff additions in the budget book? Is it under curriculum? Is that where I see it? No, we didn’t actually include those on any budget, any sheet because really curriculum doesn’t have their staff per se.

2:02:50 So we just added it to the bottom of the budget summary that roll up. There are two positions listed under staffing requests. That’s the six page budget summary you received. Page six? Yep. Should be on the page six. The last page. Under staff. Okay. Okay. Central admin. It’s a curriculum. It’s about halfway through the site. There we go. Okay. Are those, you know, we talked about with in the principal when we did the principal deep dives, you know, that was one thing that we talked about with Mandy quite a bit. Was moving that curriculum ask or that, you know, curriculum support ask from village into the district budget. Is that one of these? No. So this was my, the budget I proposed. I didn’t know what was in Mandy’s budget. So this is, if, so that when, when, when, so no, this, this is in my mind when in the conversation I had with John and Michelle, this is what I brought forward. Okay. So we would need to add, there’d be another request that we’d have to add to the summary for that position. If Mandy did end up making the decision to change to a guidance counselor. I’m not sure how that, I mean, the, the person that I’m proposing would certainly be doing good work in the village, but it wouldn’t, the people wouldn’t necessarily be allocated to the village.

2:04:26 So I guess that would be a decision Mandy would need to make. We would need to clarify with Mandy. Mandy did request one additional position. Initially it was a curriculum individual and then she did change it to a guidance counselor. So right now it’s in there, I believe as a guidance counselor. So we would certainly have to circle back with Mandy, but, you know, Okay, if you guys could do that because the way I understood it and I could have misunderstood the conversation, but the way I understood it is she would, you know, change it to a guidance counselor, assuming that that, you know, there’d be some resource available within the central admin realm. Yeah, they would be available, it just will not specifically be for a village. Okay, so let’s just make sure that that meets her needs. Okay. Okay. And then one thing that we talked about, I don’t even remember, one school committee meeting when we were talking about that MCAS resolution. One of the things, Nan, you called out specifically is that needing to have more that consolidated mechanism for gathering data. So is that, is that, do we need to purchase or set money aside to have those tools in place? And where are those, where would those be in here? So we did talk about it, Megan, and it is something that our district needs to explore. Right now we have so many initiatives, strong initiatives coming into the district. More doesn’t necessarily mean better at this point.

2:06:01 We need to get the math implementation correct. Our K to five teachers are shifting a writing program. So they’re getting professional development on that. So I think if we brought in a new assessment tool that they had to have their time split in terms of how to learn, it’s a big learning curve when something like that comes in. So I just, I felt like we were going to be asking a lot of our teachers next year and to bring all of that at once just doesn’t make good sense in terms of working with teachers. And I just didn’t think it would get the attention and focus that it deserved because teachers will be preoccupied with some other big initiatives. Fair enough. That makes sense. Okay. That’s all I have for now. I can’t promise I won’t come back to you, but thank you. Sarah, I see your hand up. Yes. I’m looking at the curriculum, the new math curriculum. I’m concerned with that number. In the past, go math. Does that just go through six? Or does that go through eight? Currently. My belief is it goes through eight. There’s a… For some reason I thought it only went through six, but I think it’s called big ideas. Okay. But that program, if I recall correctly, was more than double this one. So in last year, just to get a one-year online add-on was 60,000.

2:07:39 So I have concerns that is 250 covering us. It just doesn’t… It makes me nervous. The number makes me nervous that it’s low. So that’s one… I guess we have to identify the program first, but that was one of my concerns. And then programs like Lizzie Hawkins and things like that are subscriptions to that. Where did those get embedded? I thought it was under curriculum, but maybe not. So this year, Sarah, I used a Title I money to bring more… to round out our Lizzie Hawkins instructional material. Oh, I said Lizzie Hawkins. Yeah. That’s okay. Yeah. So when I realized that we had pockets of that really quality instructional method, I used the Title money to bring in and fill in those gaps. Okay. And this one might be a Michelle question. Where we kind of banked on that Student Opportunities Act money last year. Do we feel confident that’s coming through this year or do we anticipate there’s a possible delay in that again? No, I’m pretty confident that that will come through this year. That’s what we’re told. And we just recently had to submit the program to the state. Just I believe it was January 15th or so. We just submitted it. So it’s definitely in the works. So I think… And that 90,000 was the same number I recall from last year. So that would be dependent on our 19 enrollments. I believe this is a competitive grant.

2:09:10 Will that number be reduced at all now that they’ve changed the funding structure to be reflective of our 20 enrollment? No. Once the dollar amounts were set, they are set. So it will not be explained. And then for the career… My understanding was the same as Megan’s. Just because this was an issue last year, that Mandy had requested that curriculum coach be dedicated to Village last year. And we unfortunately, it wasn’t something we could fund. The hope was we could fund that this year. So I want to make sure that the justification was that it’s a very unique… The curriculum alignment in that situation is unique because of the way that school is set up grade-wise. So I think that’s why she wanted the curriculum coach. And I just want to make sure we’re still honoring that. The district math interventionist was roughly $71,000, which would be coming out of the Student Opportunities Act. My concern with that, first of all, I’m happy to see it’s in there, but my concern is we’re getting back into the habit of funding what will be a recurring position out of a one-time revenue source. And so we just need to be aware that this is essentially a nonverbal commitment on the part of the school committee that we will find funding for this in the future. I mean, we can’t… It’s kind of like the BRITE program. We brought that in, and when it was successful, we were committed. We have to keep going.

2:10:44 So we just have to be ready to own that in our operating budget, even though it’s covered somewhere else. I do think that there’s sometimes a danger to funding reoccurring positions out of one-time revenues. So I just wanted to put that on the record. And then the instructional support will two more of those. My last point is, you know, one of John’s goals was having to do with being… I don’t remember the exact word, something to do with cultural awareness or properly representing… Or representing more about things. And we made a very important step last week in naming the school, but we also made a very important promise that it would not be a name only or virtue signaling. I worry that I don’t see funding sources to fund that goal that’s John’s, but also that goal that we’ve now taken out as a school committee. And I was hoping to maybe see it in curriculum for, you know, more initiatives having to do with multiracial representation or cultural awareness, whether it’s through the text set we’re providing, whether it’s through beefing up our libraries to have more prominent, you know, sections on various cultural awareness.

2:12:18 But I do think that if we’re really going to make this a true goal, that we have to fund more curriculum around this. So I can say that John and I had a meeting in January and we talked about this. And there is funding and we did talk about doing… bringing on a cultural proficiency text. And we were talking about which one might be the best one. There are various texts right now being read by staff across the district. So we don’t want to duplicate that effort. But there is money that has been… that’s in the budget now that we will be able to purchase some materials for once we develop what that focus is going to look like. So we’re already talking about it and the money exists in the budget right now that has not been spent because of COVID. So I had, for example, in our title grant, about $3,500 allocated to bringing somebody to the district to talk to us about tiered interventions and universal designed instruction. And because of COVID, we can’t bring them. So that money exists. So John and I were talking about how can we use that money to develop a working group around cultural proficiency. So that conversation is already happening with funds that exist. Okay. And then those funds exist for this year. But I’m saying hopefully we’ll be able to use those tier one supports next year.

2:13:52 Hopefully we have kids back in the building. Yes. And that money is in extra. I’d like to see a commitment from the school committee, you know, with some meat behind it towards increasing our racial equality curriculum. And I will say that I’ve been impressed because I, as a just former principal and somebody that’s kind of focused on these things, I have been impressed in my conversations. And I do when I visit schools, I will pop into their collective libraries and take a look at the text titles. And they have a nice variety. It’s not super rich beyond, you know, expectation, but it’s there. So building on that is the priority, but it’s not that we’re building from scratch, from absolute scratch. Yeah. And our educators are doing a lot too. Yeah. You know, I, I, I’d like to see in our libraries and things that, you know, for instance, at the elementary level, better representation. So, children of other races, you know, see themselves reflected in. Absolutely. Absolutely. 100%. I think we all agree to that. Absolutely. Emily, did you have any questions? Are you good? I think I’m good. I just want to make one comment.

2:15:28 The district is already doing a lot of stuff to bring diversity and bring cultural awareness. So, like Nan said, we’re not starting from scratch. So I just want to make that known that we did this one step and yes, we need to do a lot more and it’s not going to happen overnight. And I suggested to Dr. Bucky that we should get a group together to work on how we are going to do that and make an actual plan about that. So just just so everybody knows that there’s a lot of people who are doing stuff and want to do more and we are already doing stuff. So that’s it. Emily. Nan, the only thing that I say is I would just echo that sentiment of following up with Mandy just to make sure that what you’re proposing this evening meets the needs that she was looking for. Because I do think those are both really, you know, the two things that she put forward are both really important. So that’s all that I have. Yep. Great. We’ll do. Thank you, Nan. John. Thank you, Nan. Mr. Bloodgood and the facilities. Good evening, everybody. So we’re going to I’m going to start off with, you know, there’s been some questions about the utilities ongoing. Michelle and I have been working real hard on trying to consolidate and make sense of some of these accounts.

2:17:04 We did get an update from Jean Raymond and Associates about estimated costs for our new school. So that was added in as well. We are still going to incur, you know, costs for heating and electric and water. Not nearly as much when we close the Evelith and the and the coffin schools, but we need to keep them maintained. We need to keep them, you know, above freezing and make sure nothing is falling apart in there. We’re not planning on shutting those buildings down completely. That’s about the worst thing that can happen because then they start to degrade very, very quickly when there’s nothing going on in there. So that being said, you know, we’re going to the numbers that we have right now are going to adjust. We’re not going to need nearly as much in those two schools, but we will need the additional for the new school, whether it be from September or starting in December. So I’m going to go right into our, you know, we have many lines on this. The contracted services, we’re keeping that level as it is this year because of the fact that we are going to be not using two of the schools.

2:18:35 And we will be maintaining them, but we shouldn’t have much of anything to do at the new school. That’s all going to be on the builders and on the warranties for the first year of that. So we shouldn’t have anything there other than just typical custodial supplies and things like that. So what we’ve been doing is, the best of our abilities is we will work on anything and repair anything to the point where it’s beyond us, then we call somebody. So we’re trying to cut down on these contracted services prices. But that being said, you all know that there’s a lot of aging equipment in these schools and things that require repairs, roofs, other items, boilers, water heaters, things like that. So we’re trying to keep all those down. And we listed that as level. And I think that we can actually come in below that over the next year. But as a safety, we should just keep it level and onto our maintenance supplies line. That covers pretty much every little part that we might have to replace. But there’d be, as I listed out, any bulbs, ballasts, filters, snow blower, parts, repairs.

2:20:13 In the older buildings, they use steam traps, replacing fan motors for the rooftop exhaust fans, various HVAC parts, pump repairs. The issue with that is things have just been going up in price. So, again, with not utilizing fully the two schools, once the kids are out of there, we’ll be able to wear on those things less than we have been. But again, on average, it’s been 20 to 30 percent that we’ve seen increases in every part that we have to get since COVID started and since things have taken a lot longer to get here as well. On our custodial supplies, I added more for the new school than the, we won’t need hardly anything at the two schools, depending on what we’re going to use them for. We will still be supplied and have enough supplies to be able to utilize those schools if we need to. And again, those items just keep, they’ve gone up this year. So there was a slight increase in that one. Hopefully, we won’t need too much more than that. But we’ve been doing the disinfectants.

2:21:47 We have enough to carry us through to the, into June. So we don’t have to purchase any more of that this year. But that being said, depending on how next year goes, we’re always going to have the disinfectants. We are, we always have. We’ll keep using those. We’ve had very good luck with those. So the repair of the vehicles. Last year we increased it. We were at 35 initially. We went past the 35. We increased it to 50 this year. And I believe, Michelle, we’re probably going to be very close to that this year, the way it’s looking. So, but we are working on that as well with the town. We have a fairly large fleet and everything comes out of my budget for that. Any sort of inspection, certifications, repairs. That’s every vehicle we have. So it adds up quickly. We have, again, unfortunately an aging fleet. But we keep up on them as fast as we can and we keep them maintained so we can keep using them. The gas line and the diesel. We obviously we increased to one more diesel bus.

2:23:20 And we have one truck that runs that. So there’s just a little bit of an increase in that. And then the gas powered vehicles. That school bus that we got, which was ordered and delivered, I think two days after I actually started. That gets about three miles to the gallon on gasoline. It has a hundred gallon fuel tank on it. And that was part of the reason why we chose diesel this time around. You get much more mileage out of it. So it’s a nice bus. Don’t get me wrong, but it’s not very fuel efficient. Then we’ll get to the equipment replacement. That’s that, you know, we have a lot of aging equipment throughout the all the schools being the the buffers, the vacuums, the walk behind scrubbers. So we use that one as well as ladders. We need to replace a bunch of ladders. And we get our lifts get maintained and certified out of that line. The walk behind scrubbers and buffers and floor stripping equipment. Most of it is the age that the school was built. So at the high school, we have some that are pushing 20 years old.

2:24:50 Village, those are 15 same of that’s we’re getting up there. So we need to start replacing those. We replace the batteries as we go as they need them or the parts like the squeegees and things like that. But that’s the sort of thing that we really need to start thinking about increasing, not increasing, but replacing. One of the things that we Michelle and I did was the the security contracted services. That’s just the Alice training. We did not do that this year. We still had to pay for it. So unfortunately, we obviously will do it next year, hopefully. But because it’s contracted, we owed it. So we have to keep it in there. And then we changed another one for a staff safety training and licensure. And that covers some custodial training, asbestos awareness training, which we do every year. And then we have bus driver safety training, which is monthly items like that. We have electricians. We pay for their renewal. The bus drivers, we pay for their renewals.

2:26:22 So we figured we should just have one line that represents all those sort of things. What I’m requesting this year is with the new school being built and a general consensus that we need some serious work at the schools and no offense to the park and rec department. They do everything they can. You know, talking about a full time groundskeeper that spring, summer, fall, they’re outside winter. They come inside. They can help with maintenance of the buildings as well as snow removal plowing and things like that. After looking a thousand times at the plans of the new school, we’re going to need an extra custodian there to take care of that place if we’re going to do it properly. We will have four custodians to go there. And those are the ones that are coming from the Coffin School and the Evelith, which were all but one. They were at the Bell School, the upper and the lower. We’re not going to start off on this new school and not take care of it properly. It’s not going to happen. There’s a lot of items to take care of in that building that hang from the ceilings, the walls, the amount of glass, just everything.

2:27:52 We have to start it off properly or it looks bad very quickly. So that’s why I’m requesting that one. And then I have an administrative assistant right now that helps me eight hours a week. And I’m looking to have someone that’s full time for me. Between all the certifications, there’s a ton of paperwork, all the inspections and lining everything up and talking to all the different vendors and arranging for those deliveries and things like that. So that’s what I’m looking for to add would be 2.8 in the grand scheme for my staff. I know I went through that really quickly. So if you have any questions, please feel free. Are there any questions for Todd? Thank you, Todd. Megan? Thanks for this, Todd. Yeah, there’s definitely a lot here and a lot to keep track of. One question that just pops out to me is though, the custodian piece of the new school, how does that measure up to what we have at Glover? The new school is slightly larger. And it’s the way that Glover was designed. There’s not honestly as much area to take care of as the new school.

2:29:22 That being said, we’re in process of trying to get a full time custodian that we have an opening for right now. We’ve interviewed somebody and things like that that will be going to the Glover. The Glover was understaffed from day one. They should have had four people there, not three. So that person will be based out of there, but they will also have the ability to float to different schools for half a shift or even a full shift if we truly need it. But that certainly was… There’s formulas that you can use to figure out by square footage of the schools, and they’re just averages. They don’t account for all different types of surfaces and various areas and hanging things and amounts of glass. They’re just a very generic formula. So, okay. Okay. And these additional ads to staff, are they, Michelle, this might be a question for you. Are they ads to the operating budget or can we find, you know, are you hoping to fund some of these through your existing budget? No, they are ads to the operating budget. Okay. Thank you. Any other questions for Todd?

2:30:55 Come on, give me some more. All right. Maybe my hand didn’t go up. Oh, it didn’t go up. Yes. No, I’m here. So, one other thing we need to look at is when we, you know, took Avilus over to house those kindergarteners for the transition plan. We moved our program that housed the 18 to 21 year old students. And the goal for that program was for them always to have their own dedicated space. And I think that was one of the hardest things about the transition is that they kind of, that was taken away from them. I want to make sure that we are cognizant of that and that of the fact that those students should have their own space. They’ve graduated high school. It’s moving on to a new place. I don’t know if that’s at Avilus or if that’s at Coffin. That’s a decision for Eric and John to make about where it’s appropriate to be. But, you know, it was never the intention to keep them tucked in somewhere. We made it work, but they really need their own space and that program needs to go back to being housed somewhere. So I think that that idea of where they’re going to go is going to figure into the facilities piece because wherever they go will be getting more use. So I want to make sure that that’s addressed. And Eric and I have probably talked, spoken about that at least half a dozen times already.

2:32:28 Okay, so as long as it’s getting addressed, you can let us know later where they’re going, but I feel strongly that they need a space. And then there will be training for the new custodians before we go into the new school. I believe that’s what should fall under the funding for the new school. But it’s a high tech building. It’s a completely different beast to deal with the different systems. So there will definitely need to be some training there. The roof at the high school. Obviously that is a capital request, but it’s a problem. It’s the elephant in the room of facilities. It’s a giant problem. Do we feel that we have encompassed enough in our contractual services to kind of do what is going to need to get done until we fund that capital request to put a new roof on? Because I was on that roof last year, Todd. It was a scary, scary place. We have a contract with not only roofing services, but the maintenance staff now, since I’ve started, now knows how to patch that roof. So between the two of us, yes. So we’ll keep passing. And us. Okay. And then why did we not do Alice training this year?

2:33:59 I’m very troubled by the fact that we did not do Alice training this year. I understand we have a lot going on, but I would argue with mental health crisis we’re under, there’s a larger threat for some type of catastrophe like that to happen. And I want to, you know, if we haven’t done it, we’re only halfway through the year. Let’s do that. Well, to be honest with you, it’s in my budget, but I don’t coordinate. So I don’t know who initially, you know, coordinated that, but I can certainly reach out and see if they can. I would just imagine that due to COVID, that not having so many people together, because Alice is a lot about you have a large, large groups and packed into rooms. Totally get it. But we need to train these kids on how to do it in our current setting, because that risk of it happening didn’t really work. And so that’s what we do. But we can’t not do the training. Well, here’s the thing. I agree with you. We, you know, the unfortunately Alice training is in this absolute necessity. I do think that we need to be prepared. And I think that’s what we need to be prepared. I agree with you. We, you know, the unfortunately Alice training is in this absolute necessity. I don’t see how you can do it COVID safe. Just because of the, have you ever gone through it, Sarah?

2:35:32 Have you ever, I’ve had my kids come home in tears from going through it. Well, they shouldn’t be going, they shouldn’t be in tears from it. Well, no, I think the little kids realize more than we would have in our generation wise are doing it. And I think that’s, you know, we were oblivious. They’re not. Right. So I’m sure they’ve described it to you, but during the Alice training, there’s three different scenarios. You can huddle in a corner and hide, which they have to practice that. There’s, you can run if you feel you can. And then there’s fight back. So those are the only three things, but they have to practice each one because the whole basis of Alice is just, you need to be able to think for yourself, not so much just lock down. That being said, kindergartners, first graders, maybe even second, they need to follow the teacher. You know, it’s all on the teachers, but the older kids. So I mean, we can reach out to the company and see if they have some policies about COVID related training. I would think by this time, they must have something. If they don’t, maybe we can start an argument with them about the bill. We will definitely look into this. We’ll bring it up at leadership next week and we’ll contact the company to see what they’re doing in terms of the COVID environment.

2:37:06 Yeah. I mean, I don’t know. Maybe it’s that they give videos now. I have no idea. That’s not my real house. I am saying it needs to be done. Yeah. But I am sad to hear that your children get that upset by it. I really am. No, I think my kids just understand what it is. I mean, like I said, our generation was so foreign to these younger kids. It’s not foreign to them. So when they come home and they talk about it and then they realize that they’re not hiding from Iraq who what they’re hiding from, it’s startling. Yeah, exactly. All right. Any other questions? It doesn’t look like it at this point. Thank you, Todd. This is really thorough and we appreciate it. Well, you know, it’s my twin that were attached at the hip there, Michelle, you know, gets at least as much credit. Well, you guys make a very good team and I think our facilities are, you know, under good good management with the two of you. So that’s a very good thing and a good trajectory for the district. Thank you. Thank you. All right, John. All right. There are two directions that I want to go. I want to say to my colleagues, you have taken all of my time. And so there’s no central office time to present the budget or to say there are 20 pages

2:38:42 in my section and I’m going to go line by line with each section. I think I will skip to the overview and certainly everyone has had a chance to review the central office lines and there are changes up and down and I’m happy to address those. But I just want to talk about the two things that we are asking for. The first is a human resources position and this has much more history than I do. I had an opportunity before Bill left and then another opportunity to speak to him about the history of the human resources position here and why that was funded in the past and then wasn’t funded. And I think that Bill in coming in was presented with making up a deficit with the hope that there wouldn’t be any layoffs or reductions. And so with the turnover in central office and having some positions that had some redundancy in terms of a director of operations, a director of technology, a facilities director, human resources, the assistant superintendent and a lot of movement, he looked at not funding the human resources position as a way not to, i.e., take somebody that was currently employed and reduce that.

2:40:22 Bill’s experience as a superintendent enabled him, having been in districts that didn’t have a human resources director, to know what the functions of that job were and to be able to take maybe the director of finance and the assistant superintendent and to cover the human resources function in a way that I’m just not able to. And I think COVID has certainly exacerbated that in terms of leave questions that come up. And so I think that it is a critical thing for us to fund moving forward in order to keep me from having to ask Michelle to pick up things or Lisa to pick up things or if they fall into the special education realm or Dr. Oxford to pick up things or for us to have to pick up the phone for contractual services and reach out to people to answer questions that having someone internally, and I think Todd spoke to that in his budget that our internal capacity to do certain things is a function that I would like to see central office be able to pick up in terms of the human resources director. And then the community liaison, the community relations liaison position that was originally termed communications, I think there

2:41:52 is an every day reminder to me why this function is so critical. And I think that the community says they want open, transparent, frequent, efficient communications. And really, I see a community relations liaison as a person for the community. I think there has been history in the district and maybe several years back, and I’ll look to Sarah Fox for this, that there was a situation with some of the organic gardens where people were using mop buckets, perhaps, to water those. And there was some talk about hiring a public relations firm to work through that. I think there was a situation last year, actually right after I got hired where you had the carbon monoxide situation. And certainly people started reaching out to me saying, isn’t that your new district? And having someone to manage that, I think you do what you can with what you have. But closing the high school this year, you saw the quick media coverage that that picked up. And so it becomes a question of what do you want individuals, principals, or the central office focusing their time on? And it is a particular skill set.

2:43:29 There has been, Sarah raised tonight as an Emily diversity, equity and inclusion. Could a community relations liaison be part of that work and bring in some of that? And the funding that we have for that is very clear that that’s not coming in as a director level position, but as really a resource position. And it does have a level of expertise that individuals currently in the district as a principal or as a director of finance or a special education director or director of technology don’t have that particular skill set. I know Steven’s working on a new website platform. And so having consistency in what output from the district outreach to the district looks like that consistency will be important. And so those are the two asks that the central office has in addition to the changes in the various line items. And so I will keep that brief and open it up to questions. So I’ll just clarify for John, because I think it was me that had that I talked with you about the organic garden piece. With that one that went down that the committee at that point had a conversation around,

2:45:00 would it be beneficial and how beneficial it would be actually to have somebody help out with with these types of situations. And there just was absolutely no money in the budget at that point. And not your, you know, got even worse. So, you know, it does have history here, and history and the conversation and the need. So I just kind of put that out there. Any questions from anybody? John, do you see that community relations or communications, whichever we’re going to call it, you see that as a full time role? I don’t see it initially as a full time. And, you know, in all transparency, in talking with other superintendents that have moved through the budget process in different timelines than we have, communities are already talking about asking districts for reductions. And so the town, what they’re able to support in the district could be a deficit. And as much as all of these conversations that we’ve had across these two evenings have identified areas of need, I also want to be realistic as to what will be possible. And so funding this at half, and again, I reached out to Chris Horn, who does communications work for the Superintendents

2:46:36 Association. He actually has a communications agency that has worked from everyone from Harvard to DESI to the national superintendents and principals. And he thought that this was a laughable sum of money to ask for this particular position. But it’s a start in funding the work that just to be honest, I think this community is asking for.

2:47:13 Okay, so I will start with the human resources position. So, you know, two years ago, we had a human resource director and an assistant. Both were cut at one point, the assistant was put back. Then last year, Bill talked about how it was his professional opinion for a district this size. He had never seen or did not feel a director position was appropriate. I’m not saying I agree or disagree. I’m just giving you the history. So we had talked about that being one of the roles that potentially would be shared between the town, which I think is a wonderful idea. My question is, are you saying you want a director and an assistant again, or are you saying you’d like a director in lieu of an assistant? I’m saying I would like a director in lieu of an assistant. Okay, so we need to show the credit of downsizing that position of a human resource assistant, because I don’t see that credit in here. Correct? It’s there, but that when you talk about these positions, you’re talking about people at this point. And so I’m trying to… I totally get that, John, especially after what happened on Tuesday. So I understand that I just, from a number standpoint, maybe it’s that I have no idea the roles of these people or their resumes. Maybe it’s that our assistant is actually qualified to move into. I don’t know that’s your purview, not mine. My purview is the budget. And I want to make sure that I’m cognizant that when I

2:48:49 see this as an addition, it’s not a true addition, it’s a Delta addition. Michelle? It is, yes. If you look at the very bottom of the budget summary, there is $100,000 in staffing reductions unidentified at this time. Okay, so that’s the sheet we got this afternoon, right? Correct. Okay, perfect. And then as far as the communications go, right now we’re at a Delta from our estimated town number of 1,268,000. It is unlikely to announce the elephant in the room that in this year, we are going to get an increase from the town number of 1.6 or 268. So we’re going to need to start figuring out where our priorities are. And for me, it’s clear that our priorities are student facing. Anything that is not student facing has to be on the first thing to go. So that is a big concern to me. The other piece that’s a concern to me is when we put a profile out and the skills of the ideal candidate profile, communications was listed as one of the top, I think it was the second paragraph of what the skill set we were needing. And I do think you’re good at that. But I think that this is not the year that we’re going to add that position.

2:50:20 I think that let’s hope, you hope every year there’s not a crazy incident. But if there is, that we hire someone as appropriate to handle that single unavoidable incident, much like the town did with the anti-Semitic situation that the police department faced, they subbed that out for a specific incident to a much reduced price from what we’re looking at here. I just feel strongly that where it’s not student facing, and we have a long way to go to get this budget where it needs to get go, that I have some deep concerns about that. But I could see more data towards it. I know we had a survey that went out and about half the questions were about people’s feelings on communication. I think seeing those survey results would be very helpful for our committee in deciding the value and the appropriateness of this budget ask. So I would ask that you can forward those, that portion of those results to us so that we can properly determine budget allocations. That was part of my presentation at the February 4th school committee meeting. There was a slide with that information, so I’m happy. Oh, no, I saw that. I’d like more detail than that.

2:51:55 Can you specifically indicate the, if you want to buy remote learners or hybrid learners? Every question, so many people felt this was where there can be improvements, particularly the questions about content versus quality. Because I want to make sure that we’re not looking to hire a position for 42,000 so we can keep up a quantity when we may be putting undue burden on ourselves for the quantity, and we might be able to reach the quality more quickly. But for me, the main thing is that the piece that it was one of the drivers in that skill set, and it’s not student facing, and we just have a lot of hard decisions this year. And non-student facing things really, to me, that’s what goes first. Well, I think that that’s the value of these workshops for each principal and each director to present what is important and then for the school committee to weigh in on what they want to prioritize and value. And so I have put this forward, and if the school committee says we do not prioritize or value this, then that’s the feedback for Michelle

2:53:26 and I to take for that tracking sheet. And I want to be clear, I deeply value communication, but one of the main reasons you were hired was because of a skill set you had for communication. And I want to be careful that we utilize that. So I’m slightly confused because I feel like the past, like these two sessions have been about asking for a needs-based budget. So I appreciate that you’re letting us know in your time in the district where you’re seeing needs lie at this point. And so, yes, obviously, we’re now tasked with continuing to drill down. We’ve heard that all evening that these are the asks, that this is the kickoff point for everything that we’re working on and that we’re going to continue to drill down into these numbers, figure out what’s changing where, and eventually come to that bottom line as we continue to work with the town as well. So I appreciate the thought put into this and that this is where you kind of think that we’re at. To speak to that, I think that we’ll… Does anybody else have any questions? I’m going to answer what you said, and if you please let me. Well, hold on. I would like that everybody could have a chance to speak before we go back to other

2:54:57 members. I was just responding to the statement you made regarding what I said, Sarah. I understand. So I’m going to just ask if other members have anything that they want to ask, that they can do that, and we’ll circle back. Emily? I just want to say that I think the idea of having the community liaison is a great idea. I do understand that maybe, I don’t know, I think we asked everyone to come and say what they wanted and that we have to respect that, and then we can come back. And if we don’t see, we don’t think that’s the priority, then we can do it. But I think we need to let everyone have their swing at the bat that we’ve been saying the last two times and not keep anyone else down. So let’s just say yes, and then we can come back and work on it and see where we go from there. We’ll just make sure that they’re muted. All right. I don’t see any other hands up. So Sarah, you want to talk again? I just want to make clear that I’m not saying it’s not something that’s important. As everyone’s seen, I’ve asked everybody here for more data on some of their asks and where it’s coming from in the thought process. I’m asking for more data on this. Because right now,

2:56:31 I have a hard time when we’re telling the village school, or we’re trying to decipher from the village school if they need a guidance counselor or a curriculum coach. And both of those are extremely student-facing. And I think an argument was made for both, but both were not included in the budget. So my statement stands that I know that we’ve heard the presentation of the entire budget, which was very, very thoughtful and very well put together. And I’m very appreciative for that, that this is a piece of more data that I need. And then I feel like we move on from there, which is the natural progression I was making to the discussion of our budget priorities. And mine, I was stating, is student-facing. Can I just clarify, though? Because I don’t think we’re talking about either or. At least that’s not what I understand this conversation to be. So I just want to be 100% clear that it is not we are going to have a community relations person or a guidance counselor. That’s not the conversation I’m understanding. The conversation I’m understanding is here are the needs that our administrators are asking for, and then we’ll take the next step. But I’m clear on that, right? I must have been unclear because I understood it that we told me that Mandy put in either a guidance counselor or a curriculum coach. I don’t know how you understood it that way because I think Mandy was clear that she thought that Nan

2:58:06 was having this need met within Nan’s requests. And so she sort of changed her request. And then tonight we talked about let’s make sure that Mandy’s request is met within that because they are both very important positions and deserve to be looked at in full. So yeah, I agree with Megan that we’ve asked for needs. We’ve also talked about multiple times over the past two nights that there are history behind some of these pieces and deferred aspects of these. So I think all of us certainly are well aware that we’re not going to get everything that we want and need. We also put a placeholder on at the warrant the other night. So I’m just really not understanding why we’re sort of taking away at things tonight. Well, we have another meeting dedicated solely for working through the budget. I just I don’t see that in-depth conversation having time in one of our typical meetings. So I want to make sure that we have on the books a time for us really to get into the budget. A tremendous amount of work went into this, but ultimately the budget is our decision and we really need to make it. Absolutely. Megan, I’m going to let you answer that question. Yeah, I guess I would just say that when we presented the budget calendar, it was an

2:59:40 exact replica of what we did last year that Bill and Michelle had set up for us. So I think the first thing I’ll say is just like all the other subcommittees, we should let the subcommittee do some of that detailed working through with John and Michelle on the team and then we’ll present back to the full committee. We’re going to be probably in every single school committee meeting that we have from now through March. So we’ll absolutely come back to it. But I would say let the subcommittee do some of their work first to get to a point where it’s worth reviewing again. Okay. All right, John, do you have anything else that you wanted to add? I don’t. Great. All right. So that takes us to the end of our agenda. And John, if you are all set and you don’t need to make any closing remarks, I will call for adjournment.