School Committee: June 28, 2021

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

1:05 castling can you hear me okay great

1:32 i like this one people see that one that was a good one too for building projects

2:30 all right i will call the meeting to order at 602. we have all committee members present and we are streaming live on youtube did you did you get it up on the website okay so we’re just gonna actually wait one moment while emily gets it onto the website all right great we are now also up on the school committee website streaming live so the first thing we have up on the agenda this evening is the committee organization and election of officers for the coming year first up is chairman

3:15 megan megan i would like to nominate sarah gold to be our chair once again i think this year has been a challenging year for everybody but she has worked tirelessly to shepherd this committee through it all with grace and compassion she’s obviously more than qualified to lead us again for another year so that’s my nomination sarah gold for chair of the school committee

3:43 second promotion second promotion all right um i appreciate the nomination um i will accept the nomination with slight trepidation um because i feel like this year was really a hard year um and um i think that some of the um dialogue within the community uh was a bit unfair at times um and so i guess i just would like to make clear i know there’s not many of us on this call tonight but just for the record that you know as chair i i take that responsibility incredibly um it’s incredibly important to me um i you know

4:30 never do anything knowingly illegal and am very careful about my actions as chair um and i work very hard to prioritize this position and i think that that has shown you know for people who know me to kind of bear out this year in my personal life and my professional life you know i’m i obviously live in this community my children are here they go to school here you know one of one of my kids has taken some flack this year for my role on the committee and um you know i just um i kind of just need to say that because um i do think it’s an important position

5:15 and i will um you know if elected gladly move forward with it but um i just kind of want to set the record straight that i would love for this year to move forward with a lot less drama and a lot just a lot more respect for the full work of the committee and every piece of it so so we’ve got a motion and seconded um megan taylor yes david harris yes emily barron yes sarah fox insane sarah gold yes

6:02 so that passes thank you guys for zero to one um vice chairman is next um i would like to nominate megan taylor as vice chair i think i was quoted in the paper the other day saying that i can’t imagine doing this work without her um so i would put forward that motion

6:28 anybody have any words i would like to just say this say the same i mean um it has been a challenging year but in pardon me let me just yeah i’m unmuted but you know just as you have as chair you know megan has been there um to step up on the finance uh subcommittee you know working closely with dr bucky michelle making herself available um being over here at widget road off hours throughout the year um stepping up and being involved in the in the reopening committee um has attended numerous building committee meetings when she hasn’t needed to just to stay up to speed with with what’s going on uh continues to have a very

7:13 strong interest and uh role with with cpac and everything that that’s going on and i think we’ve been very well represented by megan as vice chair so i look forward to having megan on board for a second here

7:30 thanks david i appreciate the nomination thank you all right i will take a roll call vote sarah gold yes david harris yes emily barron yes sarah fox ipsy and megan taylor yes all right that passes four to zero to one

8:00 um i would actually like to give someone else a try at that um i would like to nominate um emily barron

8:17 anybody have any words um one thing i would like to see added to this role i don’t know if this is the right place for it but now that we’ve got the website making sure that the website um gets updated i know emily’s doing that work already but maybe if we could tie that into the responsibilities of this role so um you know making sure that everything gets posted out there um and i know emily’s you know manually sending those updates to the anyone who signed up to so if we can kind of just roll that into official responsibilities i think that would be um the most effective way yeah i completely agree with that all right i will roll calls out sarah gold yes megan taylor yes david harris yes sarah fox no emily baron

9:02 emily baron emily baron yes that passes four to one all right that moves us onto commendations does anybody have any commendations

9:17 i do do so uh i wasn’t able to catch up with our um athletic director but i was able to attend both playoff games for baseball down at seaside and i think just besides the fact that it was baseball and it was at seaside it was just this renewed sense of um excitement um with the last game that they unfortunately had to bow out to danvers you know there were fans there for danvers that that filled up the bleachers there were fans from marblehead filling up the side of atlantic ave and there was just a lot of excitement and i think one of the things that’s always interesting about this time of year too is that the seniors have graduated

10:04 but there’s just this continued sense of commitment that they have to be part of a team and be with their teammates and everything else and the coaches and the players and school had even ended in the case of uh this last playoff game so you know and their commitment to that so it was really exciting to see them out there knowing that they missed the entire you know they missed the entire year last year and then um you know a shout out certainly goes to the to the boys lacrosse team that went undefeated unfortunately um you know didn’t make it too far in the playoffs i know that the girls softball team made it into the playoffs not too sure about the lacrosse team i forget but i you know can follow up on that and i know the tennis teams both

10:50 had you know an outstanding showing so it was great just the timing of it all and to have the teams out there so you know kudos to the coaches and to the athletes for their perseverance and sticking with it and being able to enjoy somewhat of a of a regular season for the end of the year absolutely i think i saw a shout out to the wrestling team i think i saw that they pulled things outside onto piper field last week as well i saw a little post on that on twitter so that was pretty cool yeah i did meet with mr siglovsky today and all of our teams have ended their seasons end of the seasons officially okay good for them all right um anybody else

11:36 okay that moves us on to public comment um we’ve got a couple people in the audience um does anybody would anybody like to make a public comment this evening okay cindy tower lowen i will just ask you to state your name and address for the record

12:00 cindy you can go ahead sorry i’ve been multitasking meetings um so most of you um know where i stand in terms of the school committee the work that you guys have done um so i am incredibly incredibly pleased that megan is back on no question about it um what i would like to see this year is some of the stuff that transpired in the in this past year not continue and when i say that i am not asking everybody to have the

12:46 same opinion i am not asking everybody to vote the same way i’m asking for constructive dialogue without pitting one against another without being divisive and without having noise in the community and i say that because this past year has been incredibly incredibly difficult and all i can say is sitting here so many of us have been blessed that we came through the pandemic whether it was good bad ugly we came through it and we’re still coming through it and so i doing the work that i do listening to what goes on in boston in the school

13:34 district marblehead is so much better off and i think we should take that and run with it and i think we should take it and actually um embrace it and say you know what we’ve come this far and yeah we have a lot of work to do there is no question about it we all know that there’s a lot of um work to do in terms of funding in terms of budget and i as part of um dr bucky’s um pfs and i’m sorry but i really don’t want to call it pfs um but in having that and being a part of that

14:20 i really hope that that is going to set the pace set the information in terms of how you guys move forward constructively and doing the best that you can for our students as well as encompassing our community which includes our medical families as well and that’s all i have to say i thank you for letting me extend beyond two minutes i believe

14:50 and congratulations megan and i look forward to being on a few zooms here and there but i certainly don’t want to be on them all the time i’d like to have some in-person stuff so there you go thank you and enjoy the summer when you’re no longer having any meetings thanks cindy thank you cindy all right i don’t see anybody else’s hands up so i will move us on to our next section and first up is a review of the policy ebcfa face coverings last meeting however long ago that was uh john had said that there was updated guidance from duffy um our previous vote on this policy was to allow jon to make changes

15:35 changes changes until we could officially vote them uh as long as his changes were in line with what does he was recommending um so he did that um and john i’m just gonna ask you you know you wrote us a memo but can you just you know fill in um what your recommendation is

15:59 yes i shared with the committee the um updated guidance from desi and written in our policy was the option to rescind it and so my recommendation is that given that desi is recommending but not requiring face mask for summer school and it looks like there won’t be any face masks required in the fall although they reserve the option to update their guidance again that rather than continuingly updating this that we rescind it until such time as you feel the need to put it back in place thank you john um so i’ll ask for a motion to rescind uh policy e b c f a face coverings david moved david moved second megan second

16:45 megan second megan second does anybody want to say anything about that before we vote sarah so i was confused too by some of the guidance came out um because when you read the you know the synopsis of the jesse it says you know that that in the fall um the some of they weren’t needed and in the fall to anticipate not needing them um regardless of distancing and um vaccinations and things like that but then the memo also references that we’d be following cdc and deci guidance and the cd in so the policy is in direct contradiction to the cdc guidance so the cdc guidance is very clear that for unvaccinated persons

17:32 unvaccinated persons unvaccinated persons it’s still six feet in mast so i just i that’s where i just was unclear that we say in one line we’re following cdc but in the next line we literally aren’t following cdc so i just i felt like we either need to not say we’re following it or um or follow it i would say that’s very astute sarah and the superintendent’s list serve exploded when this came out because they’re saying exactly what you’re saying that it’s contradictory information and we’re not citing the cdc we’re doing mass public health and deci and so my recommendation to rescind is based on those two

18:20 and have we had any pushback whatsoever from anyone um for not following the cdc whether it be parents students the union or other employees

18:39 i do hear regularly from the anti-mask group and they’re very passionate about no masks but i have not i think we all from the other side

18:50 yeah i think you know i think that this is a good idea i think it is it doesn’t make a lot of sense to continue to monitor and tweak a policy that isn’t necessary anymore um and that doesn’t really you know kids can wear them if they want to or their parents want them to um so you know and and again you know defi is reserving the right to to kind of weigh in again and change their guidance at which point you know we can go back and and look at at our at this policy and look at what then masc is obviously recommending at that point in time um but i think it makes sense at this point to me to move forward with dr bucky’s recommendation and um john did you touch base at all

19:36 with john coskett just to see if there’s any legal ramifications for not following cdc guidance because it’s guidance it’s not a mandate so i would think that there’s not but i just want to make sure that you’ve checked in with john basket okay

19:54 great uh anybody else all right uh so i will take a roll call vote sarah gold yes megan taylor yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes and david harris absolutely yes all right that passes five to zero and i think we’re all gonna cross our fingers that we don’t need to bring it back okay um are there any subcommittee or liaison updates i’m not sure that anybody has actually met since our last meeting no but do you have an idea when we’ll be doing the subcommittee reorganization i know last year it was decided that we’d go back to the practice um previously used to doing it at our retreat yeah so that that’s what we’ll do and then i think our retreat days uh to pick

20:40 them is uh in two agenda items so we’ll pick those which are that maybe that retreat day um and then that will definitely be on the agenda anybody else anybody else all right david do you have any building project updates uh just a few so i think um a lot of you were at the the tour last last thursday or no yeah last wednesday last wednesday at the tour so as you can see there’s um a ton of progress that’s taking place but um there’s a lot of work that’s that’s still to be done um the project is about at about 88 completion if you look at it from a construction standpoint and um so

21:26 you know it’s really really cool to see the rooms are coming together the mill work was in place the flooring uh the wooden doors are in all those functional items related to delivering the education and and by design the last couple of the last three spaces to be completed are the um cafetorium the gymnasium and the admin space as they work their way through the building and that doesn’t mean that work isn’t going on because i think for people who saw the cafetorium and uh what’s happening in the kitchen and as an example the floor is going down in the gym starting today so there’ll be a lot of progress there they painted the ceiling in the cafeteria uh

22:14 last week the final staircase uh is in in the center hallway which was by design it’s just it’s spectacular that took about and the speed that they go that took about three or four days right you when you started it was like one stage of it was done and then by friday you know both sets of the of that had been done uh the landscaping by exquisite has started playground equipment has arrived um so a lot of really really exciting um progress on the project that it’s all moving forward one of the things that’s just worth talking about at our building committee on thursday we did get an update to try and you know manage expectations about how things will look when the school opens

23:01 on september 1st and one one item that that sticks out is some of the lighting fixtures they continue to be um just due to the demand in the overall market right now and they are specialty lighting fixtures but um if things go as planned there is a plan for the lighting fixtures to come in in the second week in august and then the electrician will [Music] work seven days in a row for whatever it takes to get the lighting fixtures in but if not there’ll be a backup plan another example was the staircase will have uh terrazzo but if the toronto’s not available um you know pavilion flooring will put on what would be probably a suitable flooring for the next 20 years but

23:47 they’ll put on a temporary flooring so no one would really know the difference and then at such time when the terrazzo arrives uh that could be installed so and then we had a discussion a very i thought was a very productive discussion about um sod versus um you know seeding the lawns and the recreational areas and hydroseeding them and the additional benefits going back and forth with sod so we reached a partial solution on at least the athletic playing field and then we voted to have a subcommittee take a further look at um placement of sod in some of the areas in and around the school and how that might be maintained so that was one of the last major steps of uh

24:35 moving forward and um we’ll probably have another tour here um after july fourth week uh maybe the middle of july and everybody can start to see the progress and um i mean emily you were there dr bucky feel free if there’s anything i’m i’m missing um i would just say the pace we toured on wednesday and then had a building committee meeting on thursday and some of the slides that i think was trip presented showed work that we hadn’t seen on wednesday they had some of the locker walls built in and so things are moving really quickly yeah that’s a great point great point some of the extended learning spaces were finally visible that we didn’t even see on wednesday on wednesday but you know by

25:20 thursday night they were starting to put them in i had the same thought as what dr bucky said except from wednesday to now all those things you listed that they had done it’s amazing and this was amazing it was so fun to walk through everyone should go next time david do they anticipate us having our co and if so will we have it in time well obviously we’ll have it at some point but will we have it in time to open school yeah that that’s on track so it’s good question so the co certainly you know having lighting is would be a requirement yeah so that was my question there would need to be uh temporary lighting put in place that’s suitable to

26:06 to allow us to get get the co so that that contingency is there but um we’re remaining hopeful that what we’re hearing right now from the electrician is they’re ramping up they pretty much told their employees enjoy your vacation friday saturday sunday monday because the rest of the summer for the for the subs and contractors will be uh probably monday through saturday you know double time so so what is our first official day of school as the calendar sits now

26:46 what day do teachers come back august 30th and monday august 3rd august 30th do we anticipate them being able to to start in the new building david set up their classrooms and everything

27:03 that’s the pla that’s the plan right now okay and is there a time set up for them to kind of give us a final answer on that in case we need to tweak it a little

27:15 there will there will be in in the next i would say in the next three three to four weeks but one of the major pieces there certainly is the furniture and the furniture is on schedule for delivery and classroom setup and then um you know there’s extensive cleaning that takes place of rooms before the rooms get turned over and things like that so there’s actually a schedule of furniture delivery that sort of goes like the construction has been it starts upstairs goes down one hallway comes back the other hallway then goes downstairs so some of some of that work you know maybe um maybe freed up but i know the project is looking to work with both steve from a technology standpoint and

28:00 and and sean and his staff to try and facilitate that but you know we do need to have that that co before you know people can start being in the building okay yes i know angela had said from a furniture um standpoint her hard stop date was august 14th and so she anticipated it being in before august 14th which is good right

28:30 great very exciting next time i’m gonna really hope that i can make that tour one of these times all right great um so that leads us to summer retreat days um you know the past couple of summers have been a little wonky to say the least so we’ve had kind of you know a little bit more or more often meetings with it in the summer um i would love to propose that we go back to a day-long retreat if that works for people um you know i think there’s pluses and minuses to it um so i’m definitely open to the conversation of whether it’s one day long or two half days um but in my head i think it makes sense to go back to the one day long retreat um thoughts

29:16 do you know when you’re looking at roughly that’s the next question to find and that’s that’s part of my thinking with that is that i you know with everything returning to normal i think it’s going to be a little tougher to find two dates this summer um as opposed to one so but again we can we can have that conversation simultaneously to see if you know if maybe it maybe it ends up making more sense to do two half days as far as schedules go you’re muted sarah sarah you’re muted i definitely see the benefits of the full day retreat um i think you get more done once you kind of start going um i do ask that if i can’t zoom in that it be in somewhere like um the high school gym where there’s a lot of open

30:03 like very open space if you will and we can open doors and things like that because of my particular situation um and then i’m hoping that we’re looking at you know mid-july

30:22 i was thinking more august but we can absolutely look at mid-july what does the rest of the committee say um i’m going to be out of town the last week of july so i can’t do that uh and sarah yes we’ve i’ve already actually talked with john about spaces to be able to hold it in person that would work similar to last year um and the and the uh the field house was sort of where our heads are at right now okay why don’t we start there with what what dates are out so if that week’s out for you i don’t have any particular weeks that are out uh the second week of august is out for me yeah i can’t do that either i mean right the later you get in the year i think um august is going to be very very

31:08 tough for me for okay okay um so what if we looked at the week starting with the 19th i’m just thinking i need a little bit i’m going to be out of town this weekend so i need a little bit of time to just kind of get everything in order and if we want to have dorothy or um you know anybody else come i’d like to kind of give them enough heads up time definitely um the 21st i have um some medical commitments that are pretty much the entire morning okay um and then thursday is generally just because um some services one of my children receive is a little bit tougher for me but if i had a juggle that i put it just that that’s a little thursdays are a little bit tougher for me so what about tuesday the 20th

31:54 that would be um that would be absolutely fine with me if that works for everybody else and i appreciate you guys you know working with my constraints this year i don’t know because if i have if my son stays at camp longer that’s the day i have to pick him up but he doesn’t decide until later this week and i’m traveling two days from work this summer the 19th and the 20th i’ll be in greenville south carolina all right so could we do the twenty only two only two days that i have the first trip in 14 months so yeah what about friday the 23rd

32:35 would give us incentive to really keep ourselves on pace and wrap that a little bit early on a friday afternoon

32:46 no

32:51 i’m on vacation um did you say the week so i think emily and davidson know on the 23rd does the 16th or is that too soon was that not enough it’s about what little shy of three weeks either was just not good yeah friday what about that the last week in july that’s when i’m out of town oh right that’s okay well and actually actually you know what i could do what about the 15th i won’t be here you won’t be here okay sarah is there any way we could do the 22nd yeah i can probably juggle service her services that day if i need to um emily were you there then or had you

33:39 left yet we have a leadership on the 22nd no i can do the 22nd all right so john actually can’t do the 22nd leadership leadership by the way like we’re like if there’s any uh somebody looking to case some houses we’re like giving them all yeah megan how about you any harder i’m pretty flexible scouts yes you get out amongst yourselves uh emily what did you say about that week um like like the 15th or the 14th i won’t be here the 14th 15th or 16th that doesn’t give me much time no it doesn’t sarah the entire week of the entire month of august no good

34:26 early early well i can’t point exactly i think it’s okay pretty say unless i can attend by zoom it’s it’s um it’s going to be tough for a full day meeting for me for that i won’t be home on monday the 2nd what about thursday the 5th or wednesday the 4th sarah with the contingency of you zooming in um yeah i just i i can’t i can’t i’m having a baby i can’t like guarantee so yeah yeah

35:08 [Music] [Music] can we do the fourth yeah all right can we can we put that down august 4th and then sarah if you need to zoom in you zoom in that’s it that’s relatively easy yeah and i mean there is a chance i i will be there not at all okay um i’m i’m pretty i’ve been pretty resilient and bounced back within a day or two usually but we’ll see okay why is the monday or tuesday no not good for anyone i’m i’ll be back on the i believe on the second or late on the first i got you okay so i could do the third actually the third i’m sorry wednesdays are all out because i’m in the hospital no matter what the whole morning of

35:54 every of wednesdays but um the third did you say the third was an option david can you do the third i can do the third if it’s not i can do the third okay we’ll just all right force me to have everything done before i go on vacation which will be a good thing it’ll be off of my plate there aren’t any plan on that most likely being um some type of zoom situation okay all right sounds good well that’ll give us a little bit of time to work that out with steven so maybe we can like kind of have you on a larger screen all right all right um superintendents report that oh and i just wanted to say um for the retreat

36:39 lisa’s been working on a lot of minutes um so what we’re going to do is it is it is perfectly acceptable to start posting draft minutes before as long as they say the draft on it so we’re going to start to post the draft minutes and then there will be a whole bunch of minutes to approve at the summer retreat okay just wanted to put that out there all right um there for the retreat is there um is there an appetite for us all to kind of look at what the different offerings dorothy has because i know we usually do one or two um and kind of send in if there’s anything in particular we all are looking um that we think will be a real good value add yeah absolutely if you want to send me that or i can just reach out to

37:24 dorothy and and ask her for some options that she has yeah i think it’s great to ask her first i think she knows kind of has a good pulse of where we’re at with a lot of stuff so that might be good all right i’ll do that great all right so that now leads us on to john your report and we’ve got a couple of contracts to vote this evening this is the easiest superintendent’s update because all we have are the two um the clerks contract and the cafeteria contract which have both been ratified by both groups and they just need your final stamp of approval so does anybody have any questions on either of those i was able to sit on the cafeteria conversation

38:11 and the union rep who attended that for the cafeteria workers was speechless at points as to how easy the situation was he kind of didn’t know how to handle it um because it ended up just going so smoothly and was um was just kind of you know such a lovely process so um that’s always a good thing um all right well then i will ask for a motion to approve the clerk’s fy 22 compensation plan so moved so moved emily moved second sarah second all right i will roll call vote sarah gold yes emily barron yes david harris yes sarah fox yes and megan taylor yes

38:56 yes yes right that passes five to zero and then i will ask for a motion to approve the cafeteria workers contract

39:15 sorry second emily second all right sarah gold yes emily barron yes david harris yes sarah fox yes and megan taylor yes all right thank you everybody that passes five to zero and now next up will be michelle with um we’ll start off with the end of fy 21 update

39:41 thank you thank you actually let me screen share as well yup you have to enable that [Music] thank you

39:58 okay so the most recent financial report that is um in your packets today is as of june 18th which is just um a little over a week ago and at that point we had spent 38 million nine hundred thirty four thousand five hundred thirty seven dollars or ninety six percent of the operating budget um we still have two remaining payrolls to post and we are processing many invoices um just making sure we wrap up the year and capture all the invoices and costs that we’ve incurred this year as expected we’ll end the years the year with some areas that are over budget and some areas that are under budget as identified previously we have a surplus in system-wide substitutes of about roughly 120 000.

40:45 legal counsel we also have a surplus of almost 45 000 we do not have the june bills paid yet but it will be definitely a surplus and not in a deficit balance that we have been in the past year or so um in a couple areas that we do we are running a shortfall um unemployment expenses which we’ve talked about currently the deficit is um just under 28 000 and our custodian overtime is um almost 38 000 and both of those areas will have additional charges to finish out the year

41:18 the reason we’re able to absorb a lot of these costs is because a lot of our staffing positions were not filled throughout the year and it’s not for a lack of trying certainly we tried to fill these positions but at any time we had a handful of positions vacant such as the substitutes the paras the tutors even some teachers but we always made do and we also had the bus driver positions which were vacant the entire year and we are still desperately seeking bus drivers so anyone who wants to get their cdl license who wants to be a bus driver i would love to have a conversation with you

41:57 so and i also wanted to note that in the detailed report there are many salary lines and i know we’ve talked about this in a previous meeting that they’re they’re all over the place you’ll see highs in some accounts lows and other accounts and we had planned on cleaning all of those up this year unfortunately the time constraints we were just not able to do that so the next month or so i will be making lots of adjustment moving salaries around to where they’re actually need to be reported because when we submit our year end report to deci we need to make sure we’re reporting in the proper buckets so i will be doing some cleanup and we will also have that cleanup done before we start reporting on fy22 so it’s actually a really good opportunity to make this this final cleanup happen

42:44 and not in the middle of covid crisis so hopefully that worst is behind us there but speaking of covet i also have a coveted funding report um if i can get to that here

43:02 so we have our most recent covet funding that we have um finally received an initial award on we still need to do the official grant application which is going to be a little lengthy this time but basically we have been allotted a total of three million one hundred and seventy two thousand two hundred dollars for covet funds this is made up of seven buckets of funds as you can see in the bottom of this report one was our operating budget the second was a state coronavirus prevention fund the third was the coronavirus relief fund where the town had allocated a million dollars to us of their total share we then had the cvrf grant and we had three esser grants sr one two

43:49 and three so sr3 is the most recent one that we just received the amount of roughly about six weeks ago and that is in the amount of seven hundred ninety six thousand seventy five dollars so the most most of our funds we have spent so far we have paid one million eight hundred and fifty thousand we have encumbered another three hundred twenty thousand just waiting for the bills to come in and we have additional available of 997 000 which this is coming from part of the sr2 grant and all of the sr3 grant so really we need to spend some time and determine what we are going to spend these funds on there is a mandate that we spend at

44:35 least 20 percent of the sr-3 grant on mitigating learning loss so we are looking at programs to institute in our system and see how we can do that but it is it is a minimum of 20 but there’s no maximum we could spend the entire grant on that if we so choose so we’re going to spend some time this summer working with our leadership team and figuring out how to best allocate those remaining funds it should be noted that these two remaining grants do not expire until september 23 and september of 24 so we certainly have a little bit of time on our hands there’s no rush against the clock that we’re not going to lose these funds but we do want to make sure we’re spending them in the best manner possible um so that’s about it with covet you

45:21 know these things are starting to slow down our facilities needs are not as as frequent as dire as they were we had addressed a lot of issues and um addressed a lot of covet issues with these funds and we were very grateful that we had these funds in addition i should mention that this does not include the american recovery act that the town is receiving we would be in discussions with the town to see see how we can we can partner on some some projects but this does not include any of the american recovery funds and i think that’s about it for the financial report unless someone has any questions thank you michelle um sarah fox you have questions yes so

46:07 yes so yes so looking at your numbers it looks like from that last memo we had a roughly a hundred thousand dollar surplus but as you noted we are going to have some additional deficits pulling out of that um the custodial and things like that do you have a rough idea of what our surplus will will end at for this year so we can kind of talk about what our plans for that money are if you want to prepay tuitions which we know we can do um if we like what we want to do with that we are in um discussions i have eric basically put on on notice if we are able to prepay

46:52 tuitions then we will um right now i’m estimating our surplus to be just about roughly a hundred thousand and honestly that’s almost a tight number when you think about it because of the unexpected invoices that pop up from time to time so i would be a little hesitant to go ahead and prepay tuitions but we might so we’re constantly working these numbers every bill schedule that comes in where we’re retweeting so we may have an opportunity obviously time is not on our side as we have a few days left of the fiscal year um but we do have until the first week in july to prepay those tuitions and charge it back to june 30. so we have a few days um but but i’m not positive we’re gonna be able to

47:38 if we i mean i know what you’re saying that i mean a hundred thousand seems significant but with invoices that do come in it’s it’s really not a a giant cushion but at the same time if we can prepay some tuitions and give ourselves a little bit of that additional cushion going into next year i know we have that that covered money but we really don’t we don’t we can’t fully grasp what we’re going to be facing when we bring everybody back plus we have the additional um issue of i don’t get the sense um either in the school committee position or even as a parent of an incoming kindergartner that that kindergarten incoming kindergarten parents have had a rush to um sign up

48:24 and i think what we’ve been up against at times is the idea that you just don’t know until that last week of august what’s going to show up so if we can um if we can prepay and give ourselves a little bit of a buffer that’s what i would like to see us do and just be in a little bit safer fiscal position going into next year right absolutely agreed and one other thing i am you know constantly monitoring are the revolving accounts and i’m i’m trying to make sure we’re not depleting those balances completely either so we want to have a a significant rollover we don’t want to certainly um for a lack of a better term hoard these funds but we we know some of our programs um for example the special ed

49:10 tuitions we know we always use that funding so if we can you know manage to save an additional 200 that hundred 000 in that bucket then we certainly will so we’re keeping an eye on all of those accounts right now to make sure we’re in a good financial situation to start off the new year so do we have to the end of next week to decide about that prepayment yes and i like i said i have eric um already in touch with a school or two and um we have we are ready to pull that trigger if we have to or if we if we’re able to rather not have to okay and then with the close out of the school year and the end of iep meetings are there any more anticipated additions to that out of district or move-ins or anything like that or are we

49:55 still stable there um we’re still stable there was one significant change not not huge there was a settlement agreement that um it was approximately sixty thousand dollars that we are anticipating taking out of this operating budget so we will be paying that rather than pushing that settlement agreement into the next fiscal year so things like that that we can address we are so if we could prepay you know to that amount that would keep our operating budget relatively stable because we know that you know with that heat wave we lost some some facilities items that weren’t allocated for in that operating so it gets us a little bit closer to starting neutral versus at a deficit because right now we’re starting july 1 of the deficit

50:43 yep no we’re we’re in good shape we’re absolutely in good shape [Music] all right anybody

50:56 else custodial deficit couldn’t i assume a lot of that was related to cleaning and work related to covet so those grants can’t cover the deficit we have a portion of it yes we have i have not had the opportunity to go back and actually identify some of our overtime was charged to the copen but not all of it um there’s additional funds that i could charge back to that yes okay okay thanks so there’s a there’s a lot a lot of potential movement that can take place in the next couple of weeks all right where we won’t have a meeting necessarily before then can you just issue us a memo and let us know where we land absolutely okay i think that moves us on to our schedule of bills uh we had a schedule

51:43 in the dropbox and as well as michelle was on top of it and emailed it to us yesterday um so can i get a motion to approve the identified schedule bill totaling five hundred and eighty seven thousand eight hundred and thirty one dollars and seventy cents so moved sarah moved

52:00 megan second any questions on any of those yeah david we just approved a big schedule last thursday clearly that number’s not included in this because it would be a lot bigger um is it just the normal lag time on that or yes that schedule was put together over this weekend and have not been reviewed by sarah yet all right perfect thanks i just knew if it was included we were short a few million

52:29 all right a role called vote fair gold yes emily darren yes uh megan taylor yes david harris yes and sarah fox yes all right that motion passes five to zero okay so that leads us into our final part of the meeting which is an executive session so i will ask and uh this says it at the end of the motion but um just for the public we will have no intent of returning to public session after this is done um so can i get a motion to meet an executive session pursuant to massachusetts general laws chapter 30a section 21a for purpose two to conduct strategy sessions and preparations for negotiation with non-union personnel i.e the director of finance and the

53:15 superintendent or to conduct collective bargaining sessions and contract negotiations with non-union personnel i.e the director of finance and the superintendent again there will be no intention of returning to public session so sarah fox moved second megan second all right sarah gold yes emily baron yes sarah fox yes david harris yes and megan taylor yes all right so that moves us into executive session so i will ask everyone who is not the committee and dr bucky and michelle crust to please leave the meeting oh john foskett you’re able to stay too and bye chris