School Committee: October 5, 2023

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

0:06 No pressure. No pressure. I know. Hi and admitted you. I see it. Are we, oh,

0:19 I’ll do a little research. Um,

0:24 so I am gonna call us order at 7:00 PM and ask for any commendations. I just wanna give a shout out for Happy World Teacher Day. Today’s World Teacher Day, national Teacher Days and things. Happy world teacher. Thank you. Sure. Um, I Would like to say thank you to The Marblehead Rotary Club who has, um, for the second year, um, gifted the Marblehead Public Schools, the program called Inner Explore. It’s an Evidence-based mindfulness program that we’re integrating into our classrooms. We’ll support the social emotional learning for our students. I’m grateful for the donation for Marblehead Rotary for that program. Thank you. That’s awesome. I’ve had an opportunity to try it out, and I need to say, it seems like a great program,

1:11 and I’m very grateful for the Rotary to give support.

1:16 Um, that brings us to public comment. Anybody here would like to do public comment folks. Um, and if anybody wants to raise their hand from the public online. All right. That brings us up to our street representative. We were going to skip over this evening. And, um, oh, okay. We’re gonna pause. Um,

1:46 Hey, Katt, no pressure, but we’re, you’re up. You’re up. So, a lot of pressure. Um, we wanna welcome Kat Piper, our student representative, and I am positive. Um, a great report. So, Kat to you. So, as the students complete the fourth week of school, things have generally fallen into a rhythm. Picture day was on October 3rd, this past Tuesday. The Club Fair took place last Thursday, September 28th. Tables were set up in the gym, and I saw many people filling out the signup sheets. Just good. The high school will be hosting the SS a t this Saturday, October 7th. Freshman class. Elections took place yesterday. And October 18th will be a day zero, where students will be assigned a variety of different activities.

2:33 Freshmen will have an annual day of service, sophomores and juniors will take the P S A T and seniors will work on college essays, or they’ll schedule schedule college visits. The senior class has been meeting this week to discuss the annual powder puff game in November. The fund, the field homecoming will take place on October 14th, and tickets have been on sale during lunch blocks. There’ll be a financial aid night on October 26th at 6:00 PM for grades nine through 11. And all athletic teams have been working hard this mid-season period with both cross country teams going undefeated so far. That’s great. And I just wanna make a commendation to Kat because you came in and like I put you right on the spot, if you did not disappoint, you jumped right in and didn’t even like skip a week. So I can tell you I’m impressed. Thank you. Thank you. Have a good day.

3:21 You too. Have a good day. Um, that brings us up to Michelle Cresta in our district. Yes. We just have a couple updates this week. Um, yesterday on October 4th, we had a successful walk right ride and roll day, um, to school in conjunction with the Safe Route to School program. Um, it was a success and it was safe. Thank goodness. Um, just to follow up on what Katt just said, October 18th is day zero, which would be the PS SATs for grades 10 and 11. Not too exciting, but for freshmen it’s their annual day of service, which they do annual, all sorts of community events throughout the entire town. And it’s, it’s pretty impressive what they do on that day. Um, it’s exciting to check out those activities. Um, just a reminder,

4:07 the school is closed on Monday, October 9th in observance of Indigenous People’s Day. And, um, at this time, I’d like to teach, turn it over to Julia Ferrera, our assistant superintendent for teaching and learning, and she will walk through our MCAST results. Thank you. I appreciate that. I, I’m just gonna take a moment to share my screen. Um, if you could help me, we’re not on it. I thought you said we were live streaming.

4:33 If it’s alright, recording. Hold on. Yeah, I saw that. Yeah, it’s, it. I thought we were, we will be now.

4:47 You may go. I’m sorry. And if I could have a screen share. Thanks.

4:54 Okay. Now it’s close. It did. That might have been,

5:05 sorry. Okay. Sorry. Oh, um, Frank, you were supposed to have the file sent to you to share. I, I’m gonna, I it up. I decided ‘cause I’m gonna try to go to here. So

5:21 Course not what the plan was. I am making you a thank you so much. This is live theater. Thank you. All right. You should be set. Excellent. Thank you so much.

5:40 Great. Thank you so much. So I have the privilege to, um, share the, um, story of Marblehead Public Schools and the m a results through the Office of Teaching and Learning. Um, I’m Julia, but I just have to say I’m grateful to Angie Graziano, who’s one of our amazing instructional coaches who helped support and, um, develop this presentation with me. Um, so thank you to Angie. Um, so part of the story, um, that we have to tell is going to start with looking back, um, to go forward. So there’s four parts of the story I’m gonna tell this evening. So looking at the parts that, uh, the years previous, that brought us to 2023 in the results. Um, focusing in on 2023, the data analysis and next steps. Also looking at some longitudinal data and next steps for the district.

6:25 As you can see, um, looking back to the 20 18, 20 19 year, this was, um, so I’ll speak to the bullet points as you’re looking at the data below. So, the M C A test, that was our, we were a second year of online testing. Um, and you can see the proficiency rates, um, with E L A and math. What’s in blue are, or the turquoise blue color that Marblehead schools results. Um, and then the black dash line represents the state average. Um, so that is where we were in 2019 into 2020 and 2021. Um, we had significant interruptions with our learning due to covid. Um, we had different learning, um, such as online, hybrid, and in-school learning. We had new change, um, in leadership. And we were also, um,

7:12 just starting to work, uh, with alignment in our curriculum. M a s that year was shortened. It was essentially half tests for students. Um, so a lot of times, um, it’s, it’s, it’s really not, can’t compare 2021, um, to other leaders because it was such a different test that year. I wanted to present that as part of the story.

7:35 Taking us through the results in, from spring of 2022, uh, we worked during that school year to increase time on learning, including an intervention block, which we called what I need, or when we in increased our instructional coaching team, grades K through six, we integrated a data system called I-Ready to help monitor and assess student learning, um, as part of our multi-tiered systems of support. Um, the, there were absences of course, that contributed during the school year due to COVID protocols. Um, but the more instructional time did allow for students to make gains in the post, uh, COVID period. Um, it allowed for 30 minute phonics block content, knowledge block and services, special education services to be fulfilled. Um,

8:21 so students were not missing content as well. This was also, um, a year of a new math curriculum. So looking at the data here, you will notice the fifth grade had a drop in the math scores that was identified as a whole for us. We, as soon as we developed or identified this, we changed our practice and, um, made significant dedication both in resources and time and staff, um, to fill that hole. So I’m sharing that with the hopes that, um, for the public to know when we do identify areas in need, that we are quick to fill them and use best practices and a credit to our teachers who dedicated themselves, um, looking at curriculum and using our math coach and interventionists to

9:07 meet our objectives of raising our student scores as highlighted in our most recent year, spring of 2023, um, you can see there’s definitely an increase from the previous year with the work that we put into place. 2023, we had new elementary principals. Our multi-tiered systems of support continued to be defined. We integrated a magic block that’s the intervention block at the high school and further developed that time to support our students’ needs. We also invested in professional learning communities, PLCs, as we call ‘em, help teachers understand data and determine tiers of instruction and what students need, and then apply that during those intervention times. Um, and we also continue to use our N T Ss SS as the framework for inclusive, academic, social, emotional and behavior practices district-wide, um,

9:56 and at the school level. So we are really proud sitting here today, um, that we have made such tremendous gains in a short amount of time. And here is our math data. Um, this is, I’m sorry, one second. There we go. Okay. So moving into more of a, uh, the data analysis and next step. So looking at our overall math performance in 2023, our growth exceeded average growth and overall average for the state. So in 2019, the average state results, um, proficiency were 50%. Um, and then for the state it was 42% in 2023. And we’re so proud that our proficiency, um, grew to 64%,

10:41 well exceeding the state average. There.

10:50 E l a English language arts, we share, we demonstrated a 7% growth in our English language Arts scores from 2022 overall proficiency levels, nearly at the pre covid levels, which we’re very proud at. We are demonstrating that we are rebounding at higher rates than other districts. The number of not meeting expectations has remained steady over the year. And this is an area we are going to examine what support is needed to take our students to the proficiency level.

11:18 I’d also like to highlight our high school, what was a really impressive result for 81% proficiency at the high school level there in science. So our students take science, uh, uh, science, technology and engineering in pass in the fifth, eighth, and ninth grades. Um, so these are the results there. We are having, um, we are working to continuously improve the scores, but we are, um, despite some financial challenges, we are still looking at ways to bring in more steam opportunities for our students. Um, and again, we are exceeding, uh, pre covid levels at all in the overall proficiency, um, level, and have passed our pre covid level from 61 to 64% of all proficiency as promised.

12:07 What we do best as educators and leaders, we look at the data and we decide what needs to happen next. Um, so over the next few slides, it’s gonna break down the data. It’s gonna show in the, um, for math e L a and then high needs subgroup. So the first bullet point will be our most recent results compared to, uh, 2019. And then, um, for math and e L a and then high needs. And I just wanna define, um, our department of elementary and secondary education. Desi, um, defines high needs as students designated as low income English language learner, or former English language learner, English language learner in the last four years, or students with disabilities. This is historically been an area, um, of gap for learning for students.

12:53 And we’re looking continuously to maximize achievement for all levels and their growth each year. And this is one subgroup that we do look at very carefully to ensure that we’re meeting all students’ expectations and, um, promoting them through to proficiency. So next steps. We are committed to equity and growth. We continue to look on, uh, implementing our illustrative mathematics curriculum, looking at data to determine where we can fill in gaps in learning. We’ve implemented wit and wisdom that’s, uh, e l a curriculum to ensure equitable access, uh, across all school and grade levels. And we continue to develop and grow that multi-tiered systems of support for all students with targeted interventions in place for students in need of support and acceleration. Can I ask a quick question? Absolutely.

13:41 Back on the pre the slide. That was 2018 to 2019 school year, those Mc c a scores are not matching because I pulled that one out, are not matching what’s in the analysis? Like in the comparison, when you say it was 47 and 2022 for third grade, the chart you gave is showing 59 for 2022. I’ll go back and check that. Which slide are you on? 2018. 2019. Yeah. It’s showing per 59% were proficient

14:15 in the third grade. And here in your slide it’s saying 47. Where it would make a difference is we’re showing a, it’s still showing that we’re under performing in 2000. I’m sure, I’m sure it’s here. Let, let me take a look. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to like, it’s okay. I’m just, I wanna make sure that what I’m Dr like I’m taking notes as we go along that I’m not screwing it up because that’s positive. Well, look, and that’s math 47% right in the chart. I have right here for 2019, 2000 or 2018. 2019 math and third grade was 59%.

14:52 You not looking at the right one. Oh, I’m, I’m looking at, I was going back to the wrong end. And what are you comparing? So like on this slide right here, it says we had growth ‘cause it was 47%. Oh. ‘cause you have 47% in 2020. No, it’s pre covid levels have said of 53, but pre covid levels were 59. So we went back through, we did identify a couple areas. So for example, um, on the, so the graphs that you see, the turquoise photographs Yeah. That comes from our, our data platform. And we noticed there are some rounding. So there was some rounding in that. So one or two percentages, but I can double check all of that. And I’m sure I can make the corrections. Yeah, because I don’t wanna leave thinking that from what I have here when I, when I do my little draft, that it looks like we’re actually underperforming in every single grade level

15:41 from 2019, with the exception of the sixth grade in E L a, or I’m sorry, in, in math. So I, I don’t wanna be screwing that up. I’ll follow up with you tomorrow. So just to clarify, this part was, um, when we worked on this, there are some numbers that are rounded by Yeah. The data platform that we use. Okay. So if there’s something like 67 or 68%, it was rounding thing. Okay. In the thing, if there’s a significant error, I will identify it and I’ll fix it. If that’s not okay. If you, I know put a tremendous amount of work into fact checking this and you even previewed this with me the other day and I didn’t notice this till just now. So I I could be, we’ll talk after. I could be comparing it to the wrong thing. Well, that’s important. Okay. So let’s, because it tells us different story.

16:28 All right. So let’s make sure that we have that correct. Um, I wanna continue into grades four through six is our village school. Um, we have time and re resources dedicated to the math particularly, and we’re really proud of the growth that’s being shown there. We also have an e l a, um, 7% growth. And our high needs, you can see the high needs. Um, we are using some of our, um, title grant funding, um, to specifically the Title one funds to support the work, um, at Village School to, um, support our student achievement, continue focus on equity and growth, and implementing, uh, as I mentioned our math EL l a curriculum and M T S S by using intervention

17:14 block to support our students with targeted interventions and need and for students in need of support and acceleration. Moving along to the middle school. Really proud of the work happening at the middle school. Um, you can see the numbers here. One thing I’d like to add is in our math category, we, uh, ranked first for, in the North Shore amongst middle schools for our math results. We’re very proud of that as well as a second in the North shore amongst middle schools for our e L A results. And we continue to look at the high needs subgroup for areas of support as well. And we are in middle school, we’re using Ready Math. So we are going to continue to look at the data to determine what students need there. And, um, we also implement i-Ready as well as we’re gonna continue to grow, um, our M T S S to support all students

18:03 and our high school. So we are, um, looking here at the data, we are very close to our pre covid performance, both in math E L A and making gains. And what we see is the trend of when students are in the district and, and, um, staying in the district, we’re able to make growth, um, especially as they reach the high school level. So, again, committed to developing and growing M T SS SS at the high school level. And we are doing that also through funding, um, through our title grants this year. We’ve dedicated funding for professional development and support of M T S ss. Um, we are also increasing curricular and assessment alignment and providing professional learning opportunities to support educator development. And that began this past summer.

18:48 As part of the story, I think it’s really important for us to look at is also the longitudinal growth. So that’s taking one group of students, one class and looking at how they’re growing over time. So if you look at the chart, you’re gonna see the meet and exceeded. Um, those are for our current juniors this year. And it tracks ‘em from their time of when they first took a test as standardized test in the third grade, um, to how they did last spring on the results. Um, so you see a steady performance, uh, steady growth over time. Um, and while the results do look exceptionally high in some areas early on in 2017 and 2018, we do think that there was some years of calibration, um, as in CAS was rolling out. So looking at our 2019 to 2023, again, we’ve shown growth there.

19:32 Moving to our e l a, the significant growth demonstrated, especially at the exceeded level. Um, again, if we look at once the MCM c a became more calibrated, look at the 2019. We’re at 68% to this year. Our juniors, our current juniors, um, last spring scored in the 81% proficiency.

19:53 So when we look at the work that we’re doing, examining data, our professional learning communities, our curriculum updates and our professional development, we believe that all of that is contributing to higher levels of student achievement. Especially as you can see in our, this is our science results there. And then, especially as you can see in our younger grades, so our, um, our current seventh graders have shown a great deal of progress. Um, again, 2021 results were the half test. 2022 was their first year of taking a full m a test. So that wanna note that. And then since then, we’re just so proud if you look at the chart on the right, the tremendous amount of growth, um, from there.

20:38 And that was for math. Here’s for e l a, again, we’re showing growth beyond the trend of past years.

20:48 So I had the privilege to share the results, but there was so much time and effort and dedication of our educators that went into for giving us to this point. Um, but we did indicate or demonstrate growth in English language arts, math, and science. Um, and we believe it’s connected to our district wide initiatives that we’ve been implementing and the dedication of our educators, staff and leaders to ensuring student success. So what do we do now? What’s next? We, we definitely need to celebrate our recent growth. We’re very proud of that and we want to recognize that we also are gonna take time to come together as a new leadership team. And we have expanded our instructional coaching team to the middle school, looking to have a successful integration, which is already off to a great start with our new E l A curriculum and it ex um, adopting foundations into grade three.

21:36 We also have teachers and leaders dedicated to expanding our T S Ss across the district. Increased professional development of teachers with a focus on using evidence and data to drive improvement to maximize our student growth and positive outcomes for our professional. Thank you so much. Thank you Julie. Um, questions from the committee? Yeah. Uh, so I gonna be an unpopular thing. I fully love that there has been improvement. I wanna make that clear for anybody that’s going to write anything about this later. This improvement is great and I love your plans for further improvement and I fully trust and believe in our amazing educators on that.

22:25 I wanna make sure that I’m reading this right for our littlest learners. If I look back at 2018 and 2019 third, fourth and fifth grade had, you know, four, uh, e l a had 68, 66, and 74%. This year we had 68, 50 and 61.

22:51 That’s super concerning for those learners. And that would those learners, so fourth and fifth grade now would’ve been first and second in the kind of remote year. Um, and it’s clear that we still have a huge deficit from like a learning loss there. Are there targeted or will there be targeted efforts for those littlest learners? And I think that, you know, the, the same pretty much goes for math. If I look for math fourth and fifth, we were 65 and 72. Fourth and fifth this year we were 59, 4 59 and 51. So it’s for fifth grade it’s almost a 20% drop still in proficiency. Proficiency. Um, so again,

23:39 not taking away from the overall, but we do need to recognize where we still have significant deficits, uh, and figure out what can be done to help increase with those little services. Arguably, you know, they were either remote and certainly every parent, myself included, did whatever we could to help, um, with everything from a learning loss perspective. But those are the ones that would’ve been learning basic math skills, reading skills, et cetera. Like my son lost half of kindergarten and all of first grade, I mean remote. So that, that just really, those jump out me the other, you know, when we get to the higher learners, we’re definitely so close in some cases beyond. And that’s amazing. And I think that’s a testament probably also to the timing of when that covid

24:27 loss happened. I think each age group we can all understand had different losses, um, and different effects from, from Covid. Um, you know, whether it’s learning or otherwise. And it’s all of this other part is great, but that is still really concerning to me. Right? So I don’t know what targeted, if there are target efforts or if you could talk a little bit more about those. ‘cause those are some significant decreases still. Thank you for sharing that. And I think one of the most important things is the systems are in place to ensure that that is gonna happen. So that’s sometimes the hardest part for, for a school district to actually implement systems that are gonna support that. And we have that in place. So that’s what’s really, um, I,

25:14 as I step into this role, I’m grateful that we have our PLCs, our professional learning communities that are developed and getting stronger. Just like with practice, right? They’re getting stronger every time they’re meeting, they’re looking at data. They’re, we have a system in place for, we, we have i-ready, we have M C A S, we have other formative assessments that they’re using, common assessments as well. So those systems are in place so that we can do that targeted, um, analysis. And that’s why we’re committed to that. We said the commitment to equity and growth, and that’s truly what we mean by that. So a credit to the systems of place that we’ve put into place so that we will continue to show growth and we’re rebounding at higher rates than the state. And I want, that is exciting for us that we can continue to question. It absolutely is. But as a parent with a child in one of those grades, it’s,

26:01 it’s, you can’t be a parent in that grade and not see that concern. And so I think it would, it will be important for this committee and, and obviously with your guidance to throughout the year have maybe touch points on that to talk about that. I just think as a community or as a parent in the parent community, it would be helpful for that to understand that. Does that make sense? That sounds great. So, and a hundred percent still continue. Amazing. Everything else, I don’t wanna discount that at all. Yeah. Continued communication. And I wanna go back to Sarah’s point. I really, I don’t want people to walk away that there’s wrong information in there. Is, was it a typo? I just wanna clarify. No, she just did the same math I did. Um, I didn’t take any percentages. I, I I didn’t, I just took this list from the 2 20 18 20 19 list and I compared it to

26:48 the 2324. And I may have been reading the narrative wrong. You may have been comparing it to the 21 scores and I was comparing it to the 19. ‘cause your chart I think only went back to 21. The chart started in 21. So maybe we weren’t comparing Apple steps. Okay. But to, to follow up on this point, first of all, does anybody else have Go ahead. I do. Okay, then you go ahead. So, um, just a couple, thank you for doing this. This is great. Um, and you know, it’s to Alice’s point for everyone, it’s going in the right direction. So that’s the most important thing. Um, are we where we wanna be? Yeah. So that, I think we’re all recognizing that one thing that, um, two things. One question, one thing that jumped out at me. First of all, in regards to grade 10. So for instance, math grade 10 77% were met or exceeded.

27:36 So that’s 23% did not pass the MCM a s math. Is that what that means? One second. Lemme get to your slide that you’re on the longitudinal. Sorry. That’s alright. It’s right here. Alright, so here’s the breakdown. As

27:59 longitudinal growth is, is important for us to look at to see how students are doing. So when we look at right here on top, um, when we look at our partially met and did not meet, that is the areas that we will be supporting through the programs that we have in place. So specifically at the high school Yeah. We have programs in place to help support our students to ensure that they will have the opportunity to continue show growth and retake that assessment. So they, so that’s what happens. So they retake this. So I mean, here’s just a blatant question. Do we have students that don’t pass M C A don’t graduate? Like, and if so, do we have I me like I’ve never heard. I don’t know. I don’t know if that’s something that deal with or not because if you don’t pass by, I guess by 12th grade right, you don’t graduate.

28:45 Right. So I can definitely get an answer to that question for you and get back to you. Um, so I think that’s an important question. I’ve not seen the role. No, I understand. Feel comfortable me asking Michelle. Oh my gosh, Michelle, that’ll teach you. I don’t, I don’t wanna put anybody on this spot. I’m Glad I’m prepared for This. Um, to answer your question, there are other s we can do. So there are retakes, there are appeal that there are portfolios that As well as an alternative. Does that give you a diploma? Yes. Okay. If the state, if the state approves it. Okay. Okay. Um, okay. So then the other thing, I mean, and that I just picked up math, but it’s e l a and just to for clarification at this point,

29:32 does it student in the state of Massachusetts have to pass the science as well to get to graduate? So it’s science e l a and math to graduate at this point. Not social studies. Right? Right. We don’t have social. Right. That’s that’s what I thought. I will say one, we do have an online program.

29:50 Yep. Edgenuity. Um, and they do have an M prep part of that as well. So keeps that.

30:03 Okay. Um, and then yeah. Um, ‘cause it would, yeah, I would, again, the systems are in place. That’s what that makes. Well, as long as he’s so happy. Right. It’s, that’s everybody graduates. I think that’s really excellent. Okay, good. Um, the other thing that sort of jumps out at me is, or everyone is prepared graduates ‘cause they’re prepared. That’s what I have to say. Um, the exceeded in all of these categories still, like we look at met and exceeded, but the exceeded in many cases are single digits. And you know, obviously I think that’s something that I would think our school district would aspire to having, um, a cohort of students that, a significant cohort of students that would be exceeding expectations. Thank you for sharing that because it’s also part of our next step.

30:50 So not only that the students are getting what they need for intervention, but also acceleration. I got to see it firsthand happening at Village school today. It was really exciting to see what was happening during the wind block for students who were ready to take onto the another challenge. And it was, it was wonderful. So I know what’s happening and we’re gonna continue to grow. Thank you Megan. Um, thanks. Thanks for presenting to us. There’s a lot of great information in here and I think just the data that you’ve shown, like you already said is a testament to all the amazing work that administration and staff have put into place over the past three or four years. Um, and really created that strong foundation to continue to grow, like you said. So thank you for everyone who’s, you know, been involved in that. Um, I guess one thing, and you and I touched on this very briefly the other day,

31:36 is it just from looking at your slides, there is a really big gap between kind of those overall scores and then the scores for our highest need learners. So those are students on IEPs and five oh fours, um, you know, is probably the percentage wise, largest group. But we’re talking about 20% of our students here that are, you know, that’s a significant 2030 in some cases, 40% gap. And so, and again, just looking briefly even going back to the data you had for 2019, similar gaps. So I guess for me that’s where I really hope our focus is on. And I’m sure some of these, um, systems that you have in place, we’ll start to see that. But I would like us to really say that,

32:21 that across the board, ‘cause it’s district wide, right? It’s across all grade levels and across all, all, um, it’s really statewide. That’s a statewide norm as well. Right. But I’m interested in what we’re doing here Yes. In Marblehead too. Right. And so because it’s such a large percentage of our student population too, too, just making sure that the curriculums that we’re implementing are accessible to all of our students. It actually might even be higher than that vein. ‘cause it’s, correct me if I’m wrong, it’s ips, um, I dunno if it’s five oh fours, but IPS five oh fours, e l l and isn’t isn’t so it actually, I mean I don’t know what the percentage is, but it isn’t just iv, right? So it’s, you know, it’s actually probably Right. And, and Desi named this group. We don’t call it high needs,

33:08 but Desi named it this and it named it four weeks. Yeah. Because it’s historically been a subgroup that we have to continue to look at. And, and it’s so important and the work that I get to do, um, to continue the systems that we have in place to ensure that our students, all students are meeting expectations and exceeding. That’s really important to me. So that’s why as part of our next steps, it’s, it’s always about supporting students, um, and what they need to in terms of enrichment and acceleration as well. Mm-hmm. And it seems, from my recollection, just going back to the beginning of that, there’s always been this gap between, because they called it something else, but high needs, high needs group. Yeah. And the cohort. So it’s important obviously to be shrinking that gap, but it also I think would be important to see the growth of that group

33:55 itself versus, I mean, ‘cause it’s broken out, right? Like I’m sure we can break it out. ‘cause that’s also probably part of the story and the narrative is are we seeing, um, a faster rate of improvement and try and that would help close that gap. Hopefully eliminate, that’s the point. You wanna shrink the gap. I think it’s, I would say it’s unrealistic to believe that the gap will not exist because

34:27 that is why they’re categorizing this group as high needs because they need more support. Um, and I think it’s really important to find ways to support that group to shrink that gap and to, in any group, quite honestly, to show their growth against, you know, like we do for individual students and individual classes. You wanna see growth in the subset. Um, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t, um, measure student age growth against student B’S growth because you wanna measure their growth against themselves. ‘cause otherwise it’s not, it’s not comparable data analysis. Correct. And they don’t. Correct. And that’s why we focus on data like the longitudinal data because that helps us compare the same students year after year. But you’re right,

35:14 we can even go to the more granular, granular detail level for the, um, high needs subgroup and get that information. Is it possible to break it out maybe not within the high needs group into the different categories because Yes. So there, there could be different, I mean E L L may have need certain resources. Obviously students on IEPs need to specifically defined resources. And then socioeconomic, there may be other resources that the school district can procure or help to correct to close the gap for each. And that will make us give us a direction to target not only the interventions, but to target our investments in staff in program and curriculum needs appropriately as we see what,

36:00 what subsets are are gaining at a, a different pace from others. Right. Um, Brian, Well I think the analysis there, I’m also concerned that as you raise the scores up, each point you raise, is that potentially more difficult to achieve? Know that’s historical. So the question is how far are we gonna be able to go without more interventions? You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. I’d say student didn’t master their e L A by the time they got out third grade when Covid hit. It’s, it’s potentially more difficult for them to catch up fourth, fifth, six. ‘cause they’re always behind getting further behind. So are we looking at any kind of extra tutoring or anything at the end of school day? Some kind of club that they can join to bring up their scores,

36:47 Not their skill, not just their school. Yes. Yeah. But, but the bring up their skill schools. We’re using the p l c time with the teachers to identify those areas. And if it’s more than one student, there’s the reteaching and the group work that’s hap the, the instruction that’s happening perhaps in small groups. Um, but we’re focused on during the school day right now with our teachers. So making sure that we’re, we have the, uh, more instructional time so we can use that time with our students. Um, whether it’s through the intervention block, whether it’s through the classroom time, um, or perhaps it is a, a time when they’re working one on one with, um, some of the instructional coaches and interventionists that we have in place as well. Those instructional coaches though, if those during the class they pull, They can during the intervention, they do not, students do not lose poor academic instruction time. We do not pull students during that time because we believe that it’s so

37:33 important for them to have equal access To. Yeah. They double they double dip when they’re pulled out to get extra help and they’re missing the core instruction. Yeah, we do not do that. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Mm-hmm. So check in a bit. Um, so this might glance at this, but we’re not gonna go down the whole rabbit hole because that’s another agenda item later in the agenda. This may be this ANA analysis may bring us to, uh, a solution that could be a good ARCO request. I know there’s still 700 plus thousand left. And what this data is showing me when I look at the, because really to me, I’m comparing the 2019 scores to the 23 scores because, you know, the scores in between, they were partial tests then we a new,

38:20 you know what I mean? Like for a data point, it, I, I see the 19 to the 23. And when I look at the 19 to the 23, we are still underperforming in almost every single grade level in subset. And I say that I, I know the work we’re doing is great, but this may require, and other, other districts are, are funding extensions of the school day and things like this. This may be a hurdle that’s bigger than what we can do inside our six hours or seven hours or whatever. Or it, it may include

38:58 more interventions during the day, tutoring after school. That’s, that’s for you guys to figure out. But what I’m saying is it is clear we have not come back to those 2019 scores. And once we can target what is working. ‘cause I think we’re seeing there are things working. We are making growth. I know for instance, you know, we added, I’m just gonna use one example at, at the village level, we added in intervention specialist. Sure. I said that wrong. And you can, you can see that growth. There are, we can track quantifiable results from the investments we are making. If we were able to make more investment in these interventions to,

39:46 to get more of them, um, in the hands of kids, whether that be after school or whatever. Would we be able to get back to our pre covid numbers sooner? I think it’s arguable, yes. Um, especially when I see that, you know, in the fifth grade math we’re down 21%. So we’re down 16%, 13% in E L a. I mean these are, these are still, these are, this is significant delta. So that we have not made up. Um, we had a, a gain last year. We need to do more. And where we are above the staking, that is great. That should be celebrated. But also from a data standpoint with our

40:32 makeup and our socioeconomic makeup, which is something Dessi does look at, we, we are, the expectation is that we will be performing above the state. There, there’s always been in certain districts, ‘cause it’s, you know, it’s 351 districts. There’s a state norm. We are not a at risk district. We are not labeled as a level whatever by Desi. The expectation is that we will always be one of the numbers above the state norm that helps to make that average. Um, so we have to make up for this, this delta. And so what I would ask as a next step is to identify the intervention that are working. If we had more funding, could they work? Um, could we see results compounded for our students?

41:20 And what does that look like as a funding request? Because there is still several hundred thousand dollars less. And I continue to argue that, um, learning loss and the effects on education from Covid were huge. And let’s, let’s ask for some of that money while it’s still left before everyone, that will be our later discussion. I am just saying that here are the numbers that are proving are students still need that. Um, thank you Julia. Thank you very much, much. This was great. There’s a lot of really good work. There’s a lot of really good data here and very well presented. Thank you. Very concise. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you very much. Um, that brings us to our schedule bills. Everybody had that in their packets.

42:07 I will ask for a motion to approve the identified schedule bills totaling to 440, up 4,440 3,297 and 61 cents. Absolutely. Second Allison and the tape still can’t, sorry. Know who’s saying why. Um, any discussion or questions? All right. All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries Five to zero. Um, that brings us to the approval of minutes 4 7 6 23 7 26 23 and 8 11 23. I will ask to for an approval of minutes. 7 6, 7 26 in King 11 20 23.

42:59 Sorry, can I just make question? Yes, yes. Um, so this was a little bit of a different format. We have someone new doing our minutes. Okay. Well, Lisa was still doing ‘em. Okay. She’s doing ‘em up, up roof. Okay. The only thing I wanted, and I don’t know if anyone else is, but there’s, there’s nothing that says Marvel Spoke committee. Okay. Know. So I just think we access to, and I actually had it. Um, the, the, the minutes are fine. It was just, I think there’s the title on the title, obviously public in there. We’ll meeting And that the ones for 7 26 23. Again, it was more of a, it looks like they just to, we just took the agenda and since the meeting was called to order, I read the statement from the attorney. And actually I, I’d like the entire statement from the attorney. Okay. I know it was only sentenced to be in it. And so it should just read,

43:48 call the order the chair, read the following statement, statement, adjournment all the other items. ‘cause they didn’t happen. When you read this, it’s not clear it didn’t happen. Mm-hmm. All of that should go. Okay. So I don’t know if we just, if we wanna approve it with the understanding of those changes or if we wanna

44:06 I think so. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Um, so all in favor? All opposed. Motion carries five to zero. We have an approval of an out-of-state field trip. Um, yes. Leaving Andrew, you wanna come on up? Tell us a little bit about who’s going, what’s going on. First of all, The, uh, teacher for performing arts for high school, also teaching, uh, M B M S course this year. And, uh, thank you for making time on your agenda to see you tonight for this presentation. Uh, we’re looking to take the high school performing arts department, New York City. Uh, we’re looking to continue a tradition of taking trips, um, which you know, helps with student camaraderie and, uh,

44:55 improvement and attention and just building those lifelong memories for kids, exposing ‘em to outstanding, uh, works of art. Um, last year we went to Disney and the kids are of course asking what we doing next year. So, uh, we would love to go to New York. Um, it’s open to all members of the music department that are active in an ensemble as well as students in the drama class and that are active in the drama club. Um, students who, you know, run lights and sound and act and, you know, direct right place something. Uh, so yeah. And uh, we’re looking to see two shows. Uh, it’s one one night, uh, in New York going to a couple museums.

45:42 Um, we used this company before, uh, when we went to New York and I thought they did an exceptional job. Um, I did get two other quotes and um, this one came in at the cheapest, uh, cost was definitely concern. I was trying to keep it down as much as possible. Um, the drama club really wanted to prioritize taking each other, um, last year because, uh, it was just music that went to Disney. Uh, so they worked hard on some fundraising and, um, hope did as well. So, um, between those, those two groups are gonna be able to subsidize the cost everyone’s trip and, um, take $150 off the total. So it’ll come down to about five nine per student. Excellent. Um,

46:30 any questions If a student wants to attend and is unable to financially participate as their remedy or, Yeah, we’ve always been able to make it, make it work for any student that has some sort of financial need. Um, we have money set aside, you know, with, and I worked Michelle as needed, but, um, yes, of Course. And they, they’re, they’re made aware of that or there’s some confidential way for

46:57 Thank you. It’s an ambitious trip. Two, I wanna know how you do this. Two shows museum one day. This is great. One night, two days. Oh yeah, two days. Um, does anybody have, yeah, just a quick question, just Yeah. Logistically. ‘cause you’re going in January. Yeah. What happens if the weather doesn’t let you go? Uh, well, um, I was talking about that. I mean, for one, they, you know, have take liability coverage and know they’ll work, blah, blah blah. But it is three day weekend. Um, you know, we’re going Saturday, Sunday, so, you know, uh, should there be some crazy snowstorm go later or something, you know, um, but, but I’m really confident in, you know, that the to up seems excellent. They, you know, uh, have, you know, good recommendations from all the colleagues of Lisa’s company and you know,

47:45 they’ll work with us to, you know, get any money back or, you know, reschedule. Okay. Postpone by. Yeah, that sounds like a great trip. Um, I’ll ask for a motion to approve the outstate field trip for the performing arts department on January 13th to January 14th, 2024 to New York City.

48:07 Second, Allison, Allison, secondly, all in favor opposed? Motion carries by. Have an amazing time. Very much have a great trip. There’s more than one chapter. I would not sign up.

48:26 A um, that brings us to our interim superintendent search discussion. We had two wonderful interviews on Monday. I’m very excited about having talked to both, gotten to hear a little bit more about both of those candidates. I think they were both great options. And then, you know, we all did some reference checks, which I’m gonna wanna hear a little bit about. Um, Jen and I had a chance to go to Watertown, um, do a little bit of, I wouldn’t call it a day in district. We, um, got half a day. Yeah. We, we were able to talk to several individuals, which we, I’ll let Jen go through. Um, when we, when we get to that part of the references. Um,

49:12 anybody wanna start off with, uh, I just wanna say like I haven’t, so we did the data district yesterday. I have placed calls and emails to the other assignees that I have and have not been able to connect. I have one scheduled for tomorrow and two, I have not heard back from one’s a mayor. So I’m see how that happens. But, um, I don’t know whether we, you know, do we want, I don’t feel like I fulfilled my responsibility and able to get through those, um, references and you know, should we talk about this tonight or should we maybe, I don’t know what other members will, you know, we should either. Um, I did my best if we had six folks to talk to. Yeah. Um,

49:58 and have not connected with all of them. So in the two days we had full, yeah. It was a quick turn off, right. We met Monday, right. I didn’t wanna be calling people at night, you know, people at families. Um, so I think my suggestion would be that we schedule a meeting for next week to have this deliberation and discussion that would, I am fine with that. Um, it’s a, it’s a very, very important topic. I don’t want anybody to look back and say, well, they were rushed in their decision or people didn’t have enough time to give feedback or, or anything like that. So if that is the will, I’m absolutely happy to do that. I also see some value in giving it, it’s all night. So Sure. This turned out to be a pretty heavy agenda. Right. Um,

50:47 so that we, we don’t feel like we’re rushing through to get to the, to the other pieces. Um, is there anybody, Brian and Megan, I haven’t heard from you guys. So do you, I mean I talked to all but one of the references that I agreed to chat to. So I’m fine to do either. I’m prepared to deliver a vote, but I’m also trying to hold off if other people need to hold off. I got through everybody except one I called a couple times, even sent emails and got no response. So I don’t think another week is gonna make a difference. I would’ve thought. And I said we’re trying to get this done by Thursday. If the person was interested in responding to me, I think we would’ve gotten a call back. So if we don’t hear from ‘em by next committee meeting,

51:33 then I would suggest we just keep going. Oh Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. And, and I’m fine to take whatever action you know, tonight that people are comfortable taking. I mean, do we wanna discuss it all or, well, I just am

51:53 uncomfortable, if that’s the right word. Talking like doing a partial deliberation tonight. I think that’s fair. I think it should be once night of deliberation. ‘cause we, we had a day staff day district spoken, some people have spoken to some references, but not all. So to talk about that and then not fair enough. I just, and I’m trying to be very cognizant of that. I put it on, I don’t want anybody to feel lighted that we put on the agenda, but I’m not hearing any pushback at all. So I will set us up for next week. Um, hopefully Thursday. We’ll shoot for Thursday at seven. Um, that being said, I have to check my home life calendar. My husband’s, I cannot. Do we wanna stick? You absolutely cannot do Thursday.

52:39 Do you want I was gonna suggest, I mean that’s a long wait for us to have the candidates. Tuesday. Um, I was gonna say Tuesday. Okay. I only said Thursday. ‘cause it’s also a lot, we’ve gotten a lot of frustration from people. We’re not having meetings on Thursday. So it’s a little bit of bu What about Wednesday’s? What the Difference we’re looking at Wednesday or Thursday? I’m sorry,

53:03 Thursday. Yeah. Monday’s a holiday. So that’s out. Um, was Tuesday available for people? Tuesday? I can do Tuesday.

53:17 Have time to post for Tuesday. It’s Monday’s a holiday. Oh no. So tomorrow’s Friday. Yeah. So we need Friday. Or the earliest I can do Friday or the earliest I can do is Wednesday.

53:30 Wednesday I can do Wednesday. I cannot change Wednesday. Sorry. Can you zoom in or we’re creative with our tonight. I’ve got, I’ve got another meeting from six. It’s definitely six to eight. I don’t know if it’s gonna go past that. Do you wanna do it earlier? Do you wanna do it at five? I five? Is it a physical meeting or you, you have to get somewhere like that’s No, it’s Zoom but I have to be on it. Yeah. Okay. Like can’t think it’ll take more than,

53:58 have you met this group? We’re actually pretty efficient. I’m just lightning. Do you have any flexibility? What was Thursday? If we do it a little earlier? Um, again, six to eight. Okay. You wanna meet an eight? We could do,

54:18 say we could do a day meeting. That’s what I was gonna say. Why don’t we meet during the day? We don’t have a choice. I’m just doing the hours in my head. So for the 48 hour notice, um, we can do, it’ll be anytime Wednesday, you know, Wednesday. So any time from nine 30 Wednesday. ‘cause usually the clerk like, I can’t accept the clerk to have it posted in the first 10 minutes. So no, I don’t have, I mean I work, I can’t, I can’t. I, the only daytime that I could do and that’s if like we decide right now and I block it would be Thursday morning.

54:57 I mean I could do any of the nights also. I could do 8:00 PM I will just zoom in so that my child doesn’t need to be up until 11. I can do eight. Which is fine. I mean I’m fine with that. I mean if it’s Megan’s you get up. Do you have a hard stop at eight o’clock? I mean right now it’s scheduled till till eight but it could go later.

55:19 What about Wednesday? What was Wednesday? Same thing. Both. Both. Both. I had the same thing Wednesday and Thursday. So saying eight 15 isn’t necessarily gonna mean you’re actually gonna be able to be there. We do

55:38 Wednesday. Does Wednesday work for people at four 30? Mm-hmm. Four 30. Is that okay? Um, I just have to find a location. ‘cause our buildings are somewhat in new still then. So it may have to be full Zoom. Um, let, let the record refract reflect you do with J Room. I did try really hard on, so Wednesday four 30 to have to have a seven, um, Wednesday at four 30. That gives us, basically it also gives us Tuesday, Wednesday bus, Wednesday, Friday, Tuesday, Wednesday business days to reach this record. Yeah. Can I work with you like or manage my place? Yes, absolutely. So can I just make a quick comment in so second that we’ve done this great,

56:24 you know, is great. Gives us some time. But I also would’ve, I would like to say that at any point if any of us wanna call any of these references, we should be able to or the candidates, there’s no reason why. Yeah. We can’t do that. You know, I mean you can. So I just wanna put that out there. You know, that if anyone wants to do that, um, we should and feel able to do that. That’s fine. Um, all your free time. Well, I, I understand that. But um, I think, I think it’s important, you know, and to include the candidates as well. So, so, um, that brings us to the next, the approval of contracts. Um, this is two contracts with Michelle. The first one is the addendum for the compensation for her covering this acting

57:12 period. Um, we appointed, made that vote for the appointment. I was given the authority to negotiate with Michelle. Um, so we have did our negotiations and we have that drafted up by Colby and brought forward, um, and then Michelle’s contract for her, um, assistant superintendent job is up this year. And per her contract, the way they’ve been set up is they get renewed no later than December of, um, the year prior. So it was after talking with Colby, the recommendation is, given the transition, we’re gonna be in that position. Uh, the school committee is the person that contracts serve positions is one of the positions the school contracts, um, that we take the vote to,

58:01 to approve both of these. Um, if anybody, so I’ll ask for a motion to approve the addendum to

58:11 Michelle Cresta contract to cover the period as, um, acting superintendent second Allison. Okay. Is approved by or moved by Jen. Seconded by Allison. Taylor. Discussion. Should we maybe give

58:32 what? Well, I think we should, we should. Okay. So I will, let me, we should, I think we should. So I, you want me to, I can just read it. Yeah. So it, I think on line too is enough. It might not be because it was, yeah, so lemme just, lemme keep the quick, um, the th 30,000 foot level. Um, so the addendum, which is July 1st, 2021 to June 3rd. This isn’t a typo, so it should be 2023. No, my initial, no, my initial contract was from 21 to 24. So that’s what I said. Okay. So it’s an addendum to the initial contract. Yep. Ending June 30th, 2024. Um, 0.1, Ms. Cresta agrees to be the acting superintendent for the school district up to December 31st, 23. Should the committee hire a new superintendent prior to December 31, Ms. Cresta agrees to provide transition support to the new superintendent.

59:19 For the term of this addendum, Ms. Cressler shall be paid a total of $20,000 in addition to the previously set annual salary of 1 57, 2 39, for the period August 3rd through December 31st. Ms. Cressa will be paid in two lumps, sum payments, $10,000 each, less any deductions required by law. The first payment shall be made on the next payroll cycle after the ratification of this agreement, and the second will be made in the first payroll of January 24. Ms. Cresta will also be granted an additional five vacation days for the 2223 fiscal year. Any of the five days not used prior to June 30, 24, 30th 24 will be forfeited. And then Ms. Cresta shall be paid an annual salary effective January 1st, 2024

1:00:09 of $167,239, prorated through June 30th, 2020. So that, so that’ll be, so that will, since we’ll be halfway through the year, it will be a $5,000 increase, um, starting January one, because the assumption is during this period, she’s going to need to go above and beyond to help with this transition. Um, so I know Sarah has a lot of numbers broken down, but I don’t questions. Yeah, I broke it down to increase per week. Can, I’m a numbers person. I don’t know if anybody’s not interested as I am. We trust that she has earned this.

1:00:51 Um, all right, so I’ll, all in favor. Is this the addend? The in favor? All opposed. Motion carries five to zero. Um, and then her full contract. Please tell me we’re not reading all 10 pages. You’re not gonna read all 10 pages. So the main changes in it are, um, we just get, as is typical in contracts, we started out with her rate, and then we outlined her raise would be 2% or not less than whatever the unit A goal is. Um, whatever, whatever number is greater. And, um, that she would work one day remotely from home, which is something she’d already worked out with Dr. Bucky previously. And,

1:01:36 and this is for the period July 1st, 24 through June 30th, 27th. Yes. Yeah, it’s standard three year contract. So I’ll ask for a motion to approve. Michelle c Krista’s contract is Assistant Superintendent of Finance and Operations from July 1st, 2024 to June 30th, 2027. So, second. Second. Awesome. So I’m giving this one to Brian ota, seconded by Allison Taylor. Questions All in favor? Opposed? Question carries. 5 2 0. We’re stuck with us. Now, back to that role. Oh, Arfa discussion. Alison, I understand you had a meeting.

1:02:25 If you wanna just kind of walk us through Yeah. Who, who the meeting was and any information you have to bring back. Um, not a lot of information. Well, not, I think what we, I don’t really know. I, I don’t really think, just to be fair, um, Michelle and I met with Erin and Thatcher and Elise and Alicia. Uh, it was out of respect, just wanting to have a meeting with them. Kind of talk through the process, talk through my, our thoughts on how the entire ARPA process went. Um, how decisions are made, um, who deliberates, who reviews how things bubble up. Um, at the end of the day, we,

1:03:12 I just don’t think we’re ever going to agree, um, on the transparency. Um, we, I shared with them the concerns, mom. She’s probably like, stop talking. Um, we shared with them our concerns on the lack of transparency. Um, they feel shared that they felt it was an excellent process, um, works really well. And at, at some point, you know, when you’re grownups sitting around a table, you just have to know when you can agree not to, you know, agree to disagree. There’s nothing wrong with that. Everybody is entitled to their own view and their thoughts on how things could, should, would’ve been done. Um, they, they do not feel that there should be any notes or minutes or output from the

1:04:02 advisory. Um, while I understand advisory committees don’t in general, um, have to or aren’t required by law to provide any of that information, I think given the brevity of what ARPA was, perhaps would’ve been a good idea. Um, uh, particularly with a community that thrives on transparency and accountability. I think understanding the details of what projects were proposed, that particular meeting, um, what deliberations were made, who felt what, and reporting on that, I, I don’t, um, I feel should have been done. They disagree. It’s their process. So, you know, um, that kind of was the end of the meeting. Um, well,

1:04:48 at the end of that portion of the meeting, we also then talked about the fact that it is noted in everything they report out. The school, um, received $1.065 million. Obviously, that differs tremendously from really doubles, um, from what we have been told previously from, um, Dr. Bucky. Obviously he was a part of all, all of those meetings and bringing forward our requests. Um, two pieces of that. Um, one piece was the capital projects budget. Um, 200, I think 280,000 it might be, um, is listed as being given to the school. It’s listed as a school request. It was, in fact, Michelle, correct me if I don’t say the right words.

1:05:37 Don’t be skewered in an email later. The, the capital project number that was provided at town meeting was incorrect. And in order to make up for that mistake, can I pause you? Yes. Whose, whose error was it? Was it ours? No, not, no, I’m gonna, yeah. Um, it was not a number that we put forth that was wrong. It was not a project that we put forward that went over budget. Um, just the wrong number written down. Um, mistakes happen. I have no problem with that. I have no problem with them using ARPA funds to backfill that. Even if I wanna be completely honest with transparent with you on my funds.

1:06:22 The concern and the problem is that it is delegated as a school request. Um, this is, and this was just another piece I think, and Michelle again chime in or correct me if I’m wrong, where I just think it was adults sitting around a table that are going to have to agree to disagree. They very, very, very, very, very, very strongly feel that that’s where it belongs. That they have to report out the ARPA in a certain way and that that’s what it is. So that’s what they should do. Um, can I ask a question? Yes. So this is for what system? This is for payroll system? Nope, we’re not even there yet. Oh. What is this? That’s another one. What was this for? Um, capital project. Capital project. There were a bunch of capital articles that we had submitted as part of our budget request last year. Um, literally, I believe it was about the day before town meeting, two days before town meeting. Um, in going through the articles,

1:07:11 I noticed that our approved or recommended articles did not match the amount that we had submitted. So I brought it to the town’s attention and like, oh, we have sorting error and some of the dollar amounts got mixed up. So our articles were not, and were not approved in the amounts that had been requested or needed. So it approved by, by who? By town meeting. So they, they did not change. So that was just after, right before town meeting. So we didn’t correct them before town meeting? No, they felt that they couldn’t because of that. Yeah, they figured their funding, their available funding based on the incorrect numbers. Okay. So they didn’t have, so they didn’t have the funds. So here’s my issue with this, and it may be completely off topic.

1:07:53 Town meeting our governing body was presented a list, I’m gonna really oversimplify here. Books that we were purchasing items A, B, and C for this press. And people voted yay or nay based on their feeling that this price was valid for items A, B, and C. But A, B and C didn’t cost this price, they cost $200,000 more. So the vote that was taken on A, B, and C on whether this was a valid number, the voters didn’t have the real information on what they were voting to approve.

1:08:32 I as a, from a fundamental standpoint, right there, separate from arpa, have a huge problem that you can’t ask our voters to vote on something that we know is not the value of it. Because say John Smith may have said, I’ll vote for a V and C for $200, but not A, B and C for $300. How can you vote and have a valid vote when the information presented was knowingly not accurate? I have a big problem and I I I’m not, I I would question if it was a valid vote, to be perfectly honest at that point. ‘cause you don’t have the information correct for what you’re voting. So that fundamentally to me is a problem.

1:09:19 If, if, if that number didn’t cover anything that should have been disclosed at John meeting, it was what was fair to voters. And it was quite frankly, what’s legal. Just to be clear, it was roughly 203,000 misspoke. But, but you know what I mean. Someone may know they don’t, may have changed their vote in thinking. I don’t think I understand that’s the value of that. I understand that’s not what, right. So it’s an ARPA issue now, but it’s to me a bigger issue than an ARPA issue. And I know I just got a little bit off track, but hearing this, I have, I have a significant problem with that piece. Do you know exactly what it was for? I do. There were three projects. One was the veteran school gymnasium padding. Um, we requested $50,700. Town meeting approved. 13,310 left an unfunded variance of 37,003 90.

1:10:09 Um, high school main entry doors. We requested 130,000 town meeting approved 60,375 left a variance of 69,625. And the Glover and Village playground resurfacing project, we requested 130,000 town meeting approved 34,125. That left an unfunded variance of 95,875. So the total unfunded variance was 202,890 total. So we had discussed this and um, it initially we had reassurance that it would go to the next town meeting for, um, funding request. But we felt that we could not move forward with any of those three projects

1:10:56 without funding in our hands. Because, well, because we’ve been burned, quite frankly. We’ve been burned with that. We went through one. So this was the solution that town came up with. I mean, if you did, I can’t contract for something. I don’t, don’t have a track. Because we did that. We were told fund this will pay us through our fund. For how much? No, no, no. Oh, the IT issue. Yeah. Roughly 200,000. I sat in meetings where the TOWNSIDE told us, buy this. Oh, take that outta your budget. We’ll pay that with arpa. So we took it out of our budget. That was a couple years ago. You, yes. You ordered the items. We contracted the bill came due. And they were like, oh, we won’t give you our proof for that. So I understand why you, you made, I was very hesitant. You made, because we’ve been, this has happened before.

1:11:43 So I I am, I’m happy that you did that.

1:11:48 Valid. Yep. Valid. So I’ll go back to your report. So that’s the 203,000 slightly valid tangential issue, correct? Not, don’t, I don’t deny that at all. That is not what we talked about in our meeting. Okay. To be fair. Okay. Um, I’m not suggesting that it is an important to talk about. Okay. I don’t know. Makes that decision. Um, the concern, again, to be clear, mistakes happen. I have zero problem with that. Um, the money, I, I mean, I even would cons, I did concede to them that using ARPA funds to backfill, that is fine. That is okay. That amount should not be attributed to the schools. I stand firmly on that.

1:12:35 I will continue to stand firmly and advocate for that. They disagree. Um, I think it should be under theirs because it was their mistake, to be fair. Um, they feel otherwise. Yeah. You know, again, agree to disagree. We’re grownups. That’s what happens sometimes when you have these. Yeah, of course. So, so what,

1:13:01 so if it’s, the money’s been allocated and spent, when we say it’s kind of listed under school versus town, what does that mean? It looks like it’s a school request. Okay. Like we requested it for something. So when there’s the, now the school has received this portion, this allocation, we didn’t actually, well, and therefore other requests will likely go not filled. I think, you know, I guess I suppose, and I, again, I’m okay if, if people at this table feel differently, I have no problem with that. Again, all grownups, we have different, just to add a little bit, I think part of the reporting really is what the town needs to do in terms of the artwork. They need to record what projects they spent the money on, what,

1:13:47 what department those projects represent. So therefore they do need to report it a school, if they’re considering a school cost, but they shouldn’t consider. But in Allison’s a school cost defense, she’s saying it, it’s not necessarily a request of ours. It’s, it’s filling a gap. Okay. But it’s also not a school cost. It’s their mistake that they made that they need to account. So. Right. Well it’s, but how much is left? So then what can I finish? Yes. Okay. You’re welcome to take this whole thing over if you want.

1:14:14 I’m just trying since I’ve been, you know, one in the hot seat. So for this, um, the other piece, uh, of that 1.065 million is, uh, 230,000 for our payroll system. Uh, it’s 50 50 split between us and the town. So it’s gonna be almost $500,000 for the implementation of a new payroll system. Financial system. Um, sorry, not just payroll. It’s a whole Yes, but payroll and financial. So it’s the implementation of it, which is one time, right. For the implementation. It’s not the yearly subscription. Um, historically this is not something that has ever been broken out for the schools, correct. Michelle? In the past? Correct. In the past,

1:15:00 historically. Yeah. Um, again, moving past that, because they said it’s a new administration, this is how we’re doing it now. Okay. Um, it’s also not necessarily a school request. I don’t like, while maybe to arpa they need to use specific top subjects or what have you. Although I feel like there’s, there’s other options in there. Um, I do think when reporting out to the public and to the community and to the parents here saying that we got 500 and something thousand dollars of ar, $600,000 of ARPA money versus 1.065 is a dramatically different number. Um, putting that under a school request doesn’t to the public here. Um, you know, again, agree to disagree and I’m fine with that.

1:15:49 But I think it needs to be clear because people will ask what happened to the 1.1, um, just about money and it wasn’t 1.1. Um, the second piece of that, and I, because again, I wanna make sure that I’m clear before we go on from that. So they, half of it, they took half of it and attributed it to the schools. Did the No, the to all the other departments did do well. Yeah. Did like the other department, ‘cause we, there’s multiple departments that own their own budgets and built their own, their own budgets, park and rec health department. Cemetery. Cemetery. Nope. Water and sewer. Water and sewer. Like all water. And Michelle brought all that water. Correct. Did, did each of, did they then further attribute those to those communities? So the only one that got charged if was was the schools. And we,

1:16:35 we verified this. She asked, I asked that, and she said the school was the largest department. And if we were actually going to be allocated that way, it would actually be more than 50%. Right. Then she said it, well then I should do 60. If it’s really gonna, if we’re really gonna do it that way, then I should give you, yes. If you wanna do it that way, then I’m gonna give it 60%. Um, which again, I wanna be clear. We need a new payroll and financial system asking for, for years. No, I’m not. It’s not, it’s not, it’s not about whether we need a new payroll system. It’s not about whether we need a new financial system. It’s something we have said. It takes Michelle 487 days to get a report that she should be able to press a button to get case closed on needing it case closed on using ARPA funds to do the implementation. My issue is all of a sudden now, and if the answer is,

1:17:22 which I guess it was Michelle, right? New its administration. This is how we’re doing it now, then that’s, I I just feel like that needs to be shared. We lose that point. And to me that is a big point that this isn’t, we didn’t ask for 1.065 and get 1.6, 1.065. We asked for 600,000. We got the 600,000. We also have other pieces being attributed to the schools for different reasons. And I think it is very, again, my opinion, very important to make those distinctions because it does make a difference. And yes, a good payroll system and financial system of course benefits our students, you know, as tangentially as it goes down. A hundred percent. I’m not discounting that. Um, and Alicia shouldn’t have to take 87 days to do a report either.

1:18:10 None of you should. Um, it’s just a really important distinction in my opinion to make right now. I believe there is. So they said, you know, if you guys have other things, you know, come to us, um, we questions some specific denials that were on the list that they shared. Um, some of them, you know, like a Covid nurse, um, that they had denied. They said that the request was brought to them too late. We unfortunately don’t have, their report does not have any dates on when things that date that something was requested. Um, you know, whether it was Quest requested two years ago or last March. Um, so we don’t know that. They also noted that if there were, if it was possible that there was another way for this item to be funded, then it would lose like priority on their list. Um,

1:18:59 and since they brought up a number of times that school’s got esser, um, which CARES act. Yeah. And the CARES Act, they brought that up as well. Um, so they thought these certain things could be paid for under that. At the end of the day, there’s I think $700,000 left. They said, if there are other things you wanna bring to us, then please do that. Um, Michelle and I chatted for a little bit, um, about that later. And we 100% want to look at what, again, one time costs, if they are attributed to learning loss, that bubbles them up even better. Um, that we, one-time costs that we could use. And whether these to Sarah’s point could be additional specific

1:19:47 interventions, additional, you know, tutors or after school things like you mentioned, Brian, that we could provide for our littlest learners that had those. Um, then we need to bring them to them. And I would like to do that as soon as possible. Um, their meetings, I don’t believe are in like any specific cadence, but I would like to, um, provide that to them by next week. Ask for, I suppose. Yes. Can I ask a question? Sure. I’m still not clear on something. We have three projects that were supposed to cost 200, 3000, but we didn’t do because we didn’t get the money. No, we didn’t resurfacing No resurfacing at Glover and the Village didn’t happen. We started it. We had, we started, but we’re paying for it with money. We didn’t have,

1:20:33 we didn’t get from the aons. Does that work? Well, from the capital projects? We, yeah, we didn’t get it from Capital Project. We ended up getting the rest of it from the aons. Oh, okay. Yes. Thank, So one question I have, um, with their ranking loss of revenue carried a certain weight, it was quite frankly close to the top. It was second or something like that. Um, we lost a lot of revenue with not having our, our full day kindergarten that year. Um, typically that earmark sits somewhere between three 15, 400,000 give or take each year. R So that was a significant amount of revenue to lose. My question to you is, did we, were we asked to identify that number?

1:21:18 I believe John did submit something for that. Well, we never got reimbursed That went into the general fund. It Well, no, it, it, it became part of this ARPA fund. It became some part of that $6 million ARPA award. I No, I know. But that to us go back into general fund. That’s, that’s actually how they’re funding this $200,000 article issue. So yes, what it did is it, it was part of the backfill for lost revenue. Correct. That totaled, I think their total number for lost revenue was five 80 something roughly. Mm-hmm. So a five 80 something, we were like 400 of it. So we drove the bus on getting, validating the lost revenue by, for, you know,

1:22:05 70% doing numbers in my head. So it might not be exact. So 70% of the lost revenue was on the school side, but we never got the check. ‘cause when that revol, when those tuitions are paid for kindergarten tuition, they go into a kindergarten tuition, um, revolving fund that then can only be expended on certain items for those kindergarten tuition. So the lost revenue was from a specific fund fund with specific provisions of what it can pay for staff salary. Yet they use that number to validate 70% of this 583,000. But it didn’t come back to fund didn’t come to that fund. You probably could, can, you can’t use it for future costs.

1:22:50 The town can allocate it towards any fund. So we, we were the number that was used know, but in other words, if the money were to have come back to the, say the kindergarten revolving fund, can you use it for future costs? Like other No, it couldn’t come back to the kindergarten revolving fund. Yeah. But it could have been allocated to schools. Right. At the end of the day though, it could been funds. Yes. Yeah. So, but at the end of the day, that’s my understanding from our meeting, Michelle, correct me if I’m wrong, they just do not see it that way. Well, that’s not, that’s not an, that’s not an opinion, that’s a fact. But it became No, I mean they, yeah, sorry. It became part of that whole $6 million bucket of money, of AR money. But that, I mean, so therefore they’re prioritizing all those requests and they do, they,

1:23:35 they spent a significant amount of time explaining to us that if another funding source was available for a request. Right. It made it down the list. It did not signifi significantly bumped down. And the fact that we had so many Esser funds and so many Caress Act funds at the time, which we spent, most of our cares act on infrastructure and it needs to keep our schools operating. Um, but we did have some eser funds that were still available. A lot of our requests made it down the list. Um, at this point, we still have a little bit of Esser funds, but those are extremely regulated on what we can spend. We can’t spend them on a wide variety of things. So, can I ask a couple questions? Just clarify on Esser, how much money do we have left in Esser and when do we have to spend it by? It’s by December, 2024. Um,

1:24:22 it’s less than 400,000. I don’t know the number off the top of my head. I haven’t been looking it much lately. I apologize. That’s okay. Do we have it earmarked for anything? It has to be spent on mental health issues and learning loss? We haven’t like earmarked it for specific. Not specifically, no. Okay. Because we have all of next year to Yes. No, half of next, yeah, half of next year. But we need to start next. Sorry, did you not say December, 2024? Yeah. Yes. Next half of next fiscal year. Year, yeah. Half of next fiscal year. Oh, fiscal year. Yeah. Sorry. Um, fiscal year. So I guess I, I appreciate you having a meeting and reporting back to us. I guess what I’m just not clear on is some of the stuff like we can’t go back and change. So like what, what, what’s the ask? Like, is there an action? That accurate recording, I think is,

1:25:08 is there an action that we want this committee to take? There isn’t an action E except for we need to meet with, or I mean, I intend to meet with Michelle to talk about what other potential things we could be asking for out of that 700,000 and would love Julia’s input for the littlest learners for that covid clear co I mean, very clear from the day that can’t dispute it. Covid learning loss for, you know, fourth and fifth in particular, third, fourth, fifth, that, you know, what are some additional for this year to be all we could do. And we see numbers across the board that are, are still, I mean, also for, for any of the high needs as well. If there are additional pieces, additional things that we could put in place,

1:25:53 additional tools that we could use in, in the next year as a one-time cost for that. So I do think that’s a, I mean, I guess if we’re gonna make another ask, that’s fine. But I mean, I honestly think it should come from the administration. And I don’t know what the process was before Michelle. Did it come to us and we approved or did the administration just make the ask? I’m not sure to be honest. I think, I think it was just made by, no, it was just made Well, I think maybe in this case, I mean, I, I’m getting the sense that we’re, but I think it’s a larger discussion. Ask. Yeah. I think maybe, perhaps that’s not the process we want to take. So I guess my recommendation would be if the administration makes a recommendation and then the school committee decides if we wanna make that ask. And then, I don’t know if you discussed any timelines in your meeting. No. Well,

1:26:39 I would also go a step further and say, ask or say I don’t, I don’t necessarily agree that we have to approve it. I mean, maybe we do. I’m not saying we want, or at at least maybe just make us aware of what the request is gonna be. But I’d like to also understand, you know, what the process is with this group. So one would be, you know, to assess in and, you know, have a recommendation on what to ask. Unless there is already still an ask out there. I have no idea if not that I’m aware of. Not that you’re aware. Okay. Secondly, maybe take proactive steps to ask for a working group meeting, or, I mean, in other words, I don’t know that we would say wait. Yeah, so another, um, just in looking how monies had been, uh, allocated to other departments, there was a $200,000 amount given,

1:27:25 um, for mental health to, to counseling the counseling center. Mm-hmm. Um, there was no specific plan on how they were going to use it. Instead they were provided with a 200,000. We specifically asked about this, um, they provided them the 200,000. And then the Board of Health determined how that would be spent on mental health. You know, covid mental health. Um, we, you know, we could do something even such as that. I feel like it would be similar to that ask where we say we have significant covid learning loss. We’d like $400,000 to purchase and invest in additional tools that will help us this year to help these littlest learners get up, you know, accelerate even faster or help, uh, you know, our,

1:28:11 our high needs students that are still significant loss will help them. You know, those, something like that. And then, you know, we are allowed to say, okay, the $400,000, we’re gonna spend it one time on this, one time on this. Just like the Board of Health did with or does with their 200,000. I’m not sure how much of that has been spent on. And in the spirit of transparency, I know that these meetings are not held in open meeting, upper working group. I don’t know whether you’re allowed a seat at the table. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just administration. I, I say No, those are, um, but I would ask, and I don’t wanna put chair in an uncomfortable position, but I would ask that you would come back and report to us as to what the discussion consisted of and what the, what the results were. Absolutely.

1:28:56 And if there’s, I mean, it’s a little bit of a clunky system, but if there’s, um, you know, concerns or whatever the reasons are that the group may not be looking to prioritize our requests, that we would, you know, discuss it and maybe go back and ask again. And I think that’s where the disconnect has been in the past. That yes, we, you were aware of the, the requests that were made. I don’t think there was follow up. Like this is why it didn’t become a priority or whatnot. And I’m not sure if that was done in those meetings or No, we don’t have, I wasn’t part of ‘em, but, and there are no minutes and there’s no, no, it’s an advisory group. I, I understand that certainly we have advisory groups. Um, it’s not a public meeting, but yes, from the advisory group,

1:29:45 Michelle Allison, it does end up getting, does it end up getting voted at the board of It has to go board. So many those pieces are, so it’s a recommendation that, but you don’t find all becomes five things. They decide to bubble up to the top and bring that you don’t know what wasn’t be funded and why rejected items don’t get a second bite of the apple at, at the select board. If ARPA working group says no, it dies there. And I think that’s the problem where it switches from, to me, that’s not an advisory group. That’s, that’s something else that’s a deliberative body. Because if they’re discussing whether there’s a merit of moving something onto the next body, by definition, that is a deliberative body. So that starts to get a little bit wonky. I mean, I,

1:30:35 I understand what everybody’s saying. I just feel like we’re, and I think if there’s another ask we wanna make, we should a hundred percent do that. Yeah. But this process has been in place for, I mean, this isn’t a new process. This process has been in place for a few years now. So I think trying to re-engineer it at this point isn’t, that’s not, isn’t really a viable option. I’m sure it’s, which isn’t what I, what I asked for at all. Um, the new allocation, we went from 600,000 to 1.065 in the last month. That is why in the last month this has become, um, this has been a vocal concern of mine since before I got on the committee two years ago. So this isn’t new for, for me to advocate for, but in the last month, two months, that has changed, that number has changed dramatically. So the last meeting we had with John,

1:31:22 it was 600,000, then all of a sudden they reported out 1.065 all of obviously that’s going to then raise more alarms and red flags for me. It’s okay. Again, it’s okay if it doesn’t for other people, but for me it does.

1:31:38 So the takeaway is we’re going to put together a an As. Um, I’m, I would say, you know, go forward. I don’t, you know, I, I don’t know. I want you to wait, wait for, for our next meeting. No, I would just report back and I would even strongly consider something such as, you know, with like $400,000 to help alleviate covid learning loss. And then you guys get to deter, just like they did with the mental health, you guys get to then determine, he said specifically, they don’t have to come back with to us with each specific ask. They get to decide. So then you guys would get to decide that as well because obviously you would, you know, you’ll, you’ll do the research to figure out what what will work best. Um, do you wanna sort of, you know, make this a one woman subcommittee or something?

1:32:24 Do you want it sort of just sort of I’m not trying to make this up. No, no. But I like just to put a little bit of, listen, this is me trying to advocate. No, no. I, I that was a dick. I, no, I think you meant it that way. Trying say like, just if you want, I’m happy with whomever doing it and I trust drive this, Julie and Michelle. Okay. Totally. I’m happy to help and be the loud voice, I guess the aggressive voice I’m told. That’s fine. I have no problem with that. I just think having you feel very strongly about it. I mean, I do too. But you’ve done a lot of work here. Just to maybe have you be sort of the point person working with Michelle and Julia to get this, I’m fine to do that this through. So what I will ask is, at our next regular monthly meeting, which is in two weeks, that you guys just update us on, if you have put together some masks.

1:33:11 And the answer may be no, we’re drinking from a fire hose. Didn’t get there. You know, I would encourage, I, I would encourage you, but I’m just saying, um, if it, if you’ve put, gotten some masks, what they are, you know, if you can share with us the documentation of how you documented them to everybody and, um, when you’re gonna be having that meeting just to keep us updated and then we’ll continue to keep this as an item till we know if it has been approved or denied. Take it to there. Um, so that brings us to the declaration of surplus goods. Everybody had a memo. This is something that comes up almost yearly, if not more often. So I will ask for a motion to declare the curriculum items listed as surplus goods. So moved by Allison Taylor,

1:33:58 seconded by Jenner. Any questions? Anybody? All in favor? Opposed? Motion carries five to zero.

1:34:10 This brings us to the school owned properties discussion. Um, there has been much discussion in the community, um, by various, you know, boards about the coffin property. Um, and so I wanted to put that on here.

1:34:33 I’m gonna open it up for discussion. Uh, just to give a brief bit of history, kind of what has precipitated this is there is a group for the housing production plan working group. This has been, um, it’s a, a group, I believe Erin Union chairs. Um, there’s representatives from the planning department and planning board on there. There’s a gentleman, um, whose specialty is, is this type of thing. Kurt James. Um, I’m not sure if there’s a, a neighbor on there. Actually don’t know. The neighbors are, are, are represented. But in, during, during this housing production plan, one of the pieces that they identified and had studied was the coffin property.

1:35:20 Um, so, you know, this is a topic for us to discuss. I wanna hear from you guys and then, you know, I’ll, I’ll share my thoughts. So you would start, like to start, um, on which part, um, your thoughts about the request that, so first of all, is there a formal request in front of us? We did receive an email from the chair of the select board. I am unclear on if that request is coming from the whole committee. If it was written as an individual. I am unaware of any vote by the committee. So I’m a little unclear of that. But we all did receive correspondence on this. I will say it is somewhat unorthodox for

1:36:07 a board who has the care in custody of a property to be approached and asked for it. Um, typically the process is that board retains care and custody of said property until that board comes to the decision that there is no longer a use for the purpose for in the schools, it would be, and that there’s no present or future educational use. And that’s a big piece of this no present or future educational use. So I just want everyone to be clear on what the process seems to be right now and what is, you know, the typical process. Just for clarification though, I mean it has worked that way in other things. So for example, the, um, the like park that we’ve got now, I mean,

1:36:52 they did come to us and say we’d like to use that and then we ended up turning it over to the town. Um, so that has happened in very recent history as well. So I think in Google either way. That said, I do think for any property that we’re taking care of now, it should absolutely be a discussion on in terms of do we have a need for that property? Mm-hmm. Uh, but just to clarify, so does anyone want to start off by speaking about a potential need for that property? I have my own thoughts that I wanna give. So I think, so a couple things. Um, so we have, we got a list. We’ve got what appears to be a whole, you know, looks like a whole bunch of properties. But there are multiple parcels in our different campuses, right? So we have five buildings and those campuses consist of various amounts of

1:37:38 open space as well as building. Um, we also have the Evolla school and that parcel, which is currently being used. Mm-hmm. And we have the coffin school and that property just not,

1:37:56 you know, the history of this going back to, you know, Marblehead Academy, I guess, um, however many, hundreds of years ago, you know, all, all these school properties have been given up, right? We’ve given up roads and story and um,

1:38:13 you know, o other properties, um, over time. And so, and we’re a small town, right? So you don’t get that back. You know, once you give up property, whether it’s school property or another type of municipal property, you’ve, um, or are not gonna be able to get it back. Um, we don’t know what the future needs are of our school district. We can’t predict it. We don’t have a crystal ball. We’ve seen declining enrollment as was predicted by the M S B A, but that doesn’t mean we won’t have increasing enrollment at any point. We don’t know. We, we absolutely don’t know that. And so it would seem to me that it would be irresponsible of, of the committee to consider giving up property with, uh,

1:39:01 you know, sort of our last set of, you know, of, of property. Um, what I also feel in, and I’m a bystander in all of this sort of, you know, stuff going on with the housing production plan. Fair housing can mean all of this. Um, but there is clearly a, a desire by the town to produce more housing. And in fact there’s a plan for that with the housing production plan. And it has a lot of moving parts and there’s zoning issues and there’s stuff going on that may come up with town meeting this year regarding, um, M B T overlay district zoning. But, but the purpose of all of it is to incent and increase housing in

1:39:49 marblehead the limited amount of land that we have. So that being said, in fact, I I, I think the M B T overlay district is we’re earmarked or our goal is to zone for up to, I think it’s 860 or 900 units. 900, 900 or something. Now that doesn’t mean that there, that’s gonna happen. Everyone keeps saying that. But the point of it is for that to happen is to incent that growth so that if that’s the case, and I don’t know how long that takes, we have hundreds of units potentially coming on board that’s potentially more students. Yeah. So I, it’s just, I just think there probably needs to be some greater, um, sort of planning discussion that goes on with the other parts of town

1:40:39 government, including town planner and probably select board or, and or I guess housing production, um, committee. ‘cause that’s sort of their, um, their area of responsibility. So to what does that mean, you know, like what, and so if that’s 10 years or 2015 or 20 years from now, um, we ought to be prepared for that and be stewards of Yeah. Yeah. Problem. Uh, I, it was clear last time, but I, I do not support giving coffin over. I do have a question on that. Um, the email that we received, I, what promise did we make to hand it over to? I I’m, okay. So I don’t know where the disconnect is there. Um,

1:41:27 I could just be not remembering, but I’d like to see the documentation of the promise where we said I I was on facilities last year and now Yeah, she voted unanimously and we correct, we voted unanimously to not to not. Um, and I would, and that was the whole, just, I wanna make a clear note that that was the whole committee. So it was Michelle Presta, Todd Lug. Good, Dr. Bucky, um, Allison, myself and Jeff and George are the members of the facilities committee. And there was a unanimous, all members a unanimous vote to recommend not turning coffin over. Was there any conversation during the building, like the building committee? Like was there a conversation at that point around potentially or the likelihood

1:42:12 of that? I’m just wondering maybe it, perhaps the discussions have been, and we’ll talk about and we’ll talk about and we’ll talk about, but it was never what a decision is because that there was an awareness that that governing body would not hold

1:42:28 everyone’s terms would expire before this would become, can’t make an option. So you can’t make a governing decision. One thing I’ll, I’ll follow up on Jen’s housing production plan is it was a little startling to me when you, when you look at the whole plan and there’s a tremendous amount of work that’s gone into this and you know, I I don’t wanna diminish that at all. Um, but it does seem strategically, it’s from a critical thinking and strategic planning perspective,

1:43:02 not a good idea. Yes. Not the most academic term, but not a good idea to say in the same breath. We wanna bring on, we want to change our zoning bylaws to bring 900 for potentially, but, but even if 25% percent of those folks, there’s no discussion of the potential in what will happen if the law states we can add up to 870 or 900. That is the law. Whether we are there in five years or 10 years, 20 years, our zoning bylaws are changed to say this is allowable. So whether that is realized is immaterial. We have to plan upon what is allowable by law. Period. It’s disagreeing. No, I know, but I’m just, you know, we’re not just here to talk to each other.

1:43:48 So if, if we’re changing our bylaws at the town level to allow up to 870 more units, how in that same breath do we not, are we looking to diminish our infrastructure to a point where we would not be able to educate all those people? I know that yes, the Brown School, according to M SS b A rules was built with plans for a possible future expansion. It would come out into the parking lot. We’d lose the playground surface there, the pre-k k section. Um, and the school would come right into the parking lot. So we understand that. But that was had four classrooms that that adds educating an additional 80 students, 80 students isn’t gonna cover 900 new units.

1:44:35 So just mathematically speaking, it doesn’t work. I think it is grossly irresponsible of this committee to talk about taking property offline when we don’t know the outcome of this vote at town meeting. And if we would be giving up the infrastructure needed to properly educate the, the students that would be come to us through that plan. Like how can we say we’re gonna bring 900 homes on board and give away the property our needs right now in every M S B A projection was projected on the lack, one of the factors is the ability for growth in your town. They use the lack of ability to growth with our zone current zoning

1:45:23 bylaws as a factor to make our projections. If we are now changing that to a delta of 900, that changes all of those projections. So I’m, I think it’s irresponsible. Can I ask a question though? So in the meantime, which I mean I think maybe I misheard Jen say that this could be like 10 years out. So in the meantime, what are we doing with that property? Because right now it’s a cost and it’s a massive liability for us. So what are we doing with it? Well that needs to be a further discussion about how do we handle that. We need, I I would want to hear public safety, um, feedback ‘cause they’ve been in, in, in evaluating those buildings. So they’re gonna be able to tell us from a public safety standpoint where we

1:46:09 stand. My guess is one thing, I’m not a subject matter expert in that I’m going to, I’m gonna guess if there’s certain problems, but I wanna hear the feedback on that. And then I would, my recommendation would be to charge the facilities subcommittee with coming back with a recommendation of how to properly deal with the facility on that property, whatever that may be, to, to the school with the recommendation to the school committee. Because again, this is the, this is where that lies. It’s with our facilities director, it’s with our, um, operation or director of operations, you know, it’s with the subject matter expert from the community who serves on there. Um,

1:46:56 so that’s where that recommendation should lie and then come back to us. But these, they’re tangential but separate. So, and I’m fine with that process, but I do think we need to like get a handle on this asap ‘cause it’s such a major liability. And in all honesty, I’ve been asking about this property for like two years now. Yes. So we have to have a plan for it. And we have to have a plan like well before we go to town meeting because just in case anything changes. And I also agree that we should be working collaboratively with the town. Like let’s have some joint meetings that are productive and you know, creating a partnership. But we need to make a decision on this because it’s sitting there and it’s just, we’re just waiting for something bad to happen. I mean, two years. I agree with you. That building is deteriorating.

1:47:43 Oh absolutely. I mean the Furnaces in it were broken when we were using the building. I, I can’t imagine that facility’s useful. As useful. No, I’d like to put no one suggesting what we’re gonna get of feedback. And the other thing I’d like to ask for too isn’t um, Michelle is an inventory on everything that’s in that building and we there surplus it or we find for it and no longer store anything in there. I is being stored in there. Nothing’s of valued as some desks and whatnot. Yeah. And our old boat smart panels that were were damaged. Oh, those all moved. Those haven’t been, let’s just get an inventory of everything like clear because it’s been used to run, um, drills public, um, oh, face safety. So they’ve been, uh, that the, I forget the A acronym starts N LAC has been using that, um,

1:48:31 a live and chief field land has been or organizing that. Mm-hmm. And it’s actually from that aspect, it’s done some really good, Todd’s been trying to get me into there recently. I just literally haven’t had a moment with my office. I know. And I think Chief Gil has requested to to show it to some of us. Yes. Um, we’ll be doing that soon. Yes. So facilities will be working on this. I think it’s reasonable before the December break. ‘cause we would need to do any, any potential warrant questions, you know, and when we come back to have that information, I know about six months ago, Dr. Bucky had asked, um, to work up a quote on the demo demolition of the building. I don’t, the hard piece of that is to that a funding mechanism. How do you put something out to, uh, to bid? This is not saying we are demolishing anything.

1:49:17 I know that was a concern by some people, but it’s, it’s, it’s giving, it’s giving us what a financial driver would be so that we can even know, you know, is this a, is this a discussion point? Is this, you know, it’s giving us information. So I’ve had some conversations with some local subject matter experts in this area. Um, local residents and business owners and who, what we’re going to, we’re just wondering if to come to a meeting or submit something ready. It might make sense to have these couple folks come to maybe a facility subcommittee. Yeah. And at least give some subject matter expertise around hard costs. Um, you know, issues around abatement and remediation issues around the building. I think it would be very helpful. Um, I, ‘cause it give you,

1:50:04 it will give you a context, the committee, the subcommittee, and then us actual, some probably some decent numbers that, that we can work with. Um, so I’m gonna suggest that if that sense Okay. If you can just make that connection for us. Yep. And then that, and then the subcommittee can, you know, obviously report back to us. And in regards to any funding, I mean that’s, that would be a next step, you know, that we would’ve to take. Yeah. Um, yeah. Um, all right. So do we wanna entertain, I’ve heard from three of us that we’re not looking to very clearly that we’re not looking

1:50:48 to transfer that to, to transfer or sponsor any warrant articles for the transfer of this property in, in at this Yourtown meeting. Right. Um, I think just for conjecture and the community right now, constant discussion. This is something we can put to bed. So I would like to ask for a motion

1:51:11 to, it’s kind of a weird motion to not have something. I’m gonna make the motion to do it and I, I can tell you I will be voting no on it. I don’t, I I I want, I wanna vote so that it’s put to bed. Do you don’t think it’s a little bit premature? No, I do not see a plan from the facilities committee. Like we have no plan on how we’re gonna use it, but yet we’re asking to maintain it both from a cost and a liability perspective. Yet we have no plan for using, but we aren’t, I don’t think to use it. So those are two different, they’re actually two different conversations. What I am saying is I think it’s irresponsible before knowing the outcome of the zoning bylaw changes being presented by the housing production plan that could put an additional 900 family homes or,

1:51:58 or homes online. It is irresponsible to let go of the property that would be needed to support the infrastructure for those homes. I think in the spirit of transparency, I know for sure there is no way I will think any other way until I know the outcome of that vote. And so I would like to put to bed the idea that we would be sponsoring a warrant article for this because

1:52:31 we need, we need the in information to know if we’re going to be looking at 900 units change in our zoning bylaw. So, and when does that, that happens at town meeting. So I’m not putting anything on a warrant. I’m not voting to support anything going on a warrant. I would like to put this to bed. So I mean you can make the motion, yeah. Make the motion and we can discuss this. I have a motion to declare coffin school as necessary for potential future educational purposes and not sponsor war article to turn it back to the Moved by Jen Schaffner Second. Second by Allison Taylor discussion. I find it also irresponsible for us to maintain a property that is,

1:53:18 has a cost and a liability for with zero plan on how we intend to have any use for it. I just think that that is also very irresponsible. Well I would say that I, I would, again, this is future committee, but the plan would be to use that as a school of north end of town in the event that we have an increase in enrollment, which could very well happen. We need to say that that wouldn’t happen with 900 homes coming online. But all these are conjecture. None of this is fact right now. There’s none, none of it. That is fact right now. Right. And we have expanded the, we’ve built brown. I mean this is everything I heard through, sitting through all those years of building committee meetings is that that school was built with future expansion in it and that the M SS B

1:54:07 A was not gonna fund building another school. No. That is categorically untrue. Categorically. But also the, and you’re right, you’re right about that. All this ‘cause I sat through to rate and the M S B A was very clear. Their ment projections were actually, they were quite active. Right. All based on, you know, going back to the statement of interest was 2014 I think, or 15. Um, this is an entirely new, like we’re looking at a major change in our zoning bylaws and that’s what ss this factor. I mean, it literally didn’t exist back then. Like you couldn’t have done that with the current zoning with, with the then zoning from that even exists today. Um, we won’t know that this change takes place until next. So if this fails and,

1:54:53 and there’s no zoning change, I mean we’re weary town of 20,000 residents, a 900 unit increase could change the size of our town to a mass of easily, you know, another couple thousand. Another couple thousand, which is 10%. That that is a significant increase in a relatively short period of time. That was not even an option when those pre enrollment projections were, were taken and into account. And by the way, this isn’t our area. Like this is to the point I think, I think Allison you said it, or maybe Mary Megan, you might, I think you said it, apologize that we should be conversing with other, you know,

1:55:40 the committees who are, um, the town planner, the PAT housing production committee and I guess potentially the planning board, but probably the town, the town planner. Yeah. I just, yeah, I agree. Yeah. And I think this vote is premature because we don’t have enough information. To your point, Jen, we haven’t talked to as a committee, had any interaction with those other departments and groups to get a feel for what that impact would be. And right now we don’t have enough information to make valid decisions either from our facility subcommittee or from whatever potential change there may be to our bylaws, if that is something that will happen. But, so we’re trying to make a decision with no information in front of us.

1:56:26 We do have information, ill push back on that. We know articles being sponsored. Yeah. Like, in other words, to change the zoning account planner isn’t gonna be able to tell us

1:56:35 anything other than what they’ve already decided. It’s what they’re working on. It’s what’s gonna come forward to town meeting. But there will be something at town meeting. And so, you know, so I, I’m just gonna say, I don’t, I don’t feel an obligation to give this one last big, I mean, I, it’s fair to say it’s on my side of town, but my kids already gone through the elementary, so we’ve already trekked to the other side of town every morning. But with or without the housing plan, with or without 900 more units, with or without more people, I still, um, don’t think, I still think there are other viable uses for that land, not the building on it. Clearly, it’s obviously deteriorated.

1:57:22 No one’s suggesting, I don’t think anybody suggesting, um, I’m just going from her email. Um, so I, you know, and I don’t, I don’t believe that the, the land is worth more with the building on it. The deteriorated building on it. Yeah. That’s, so I, I’m prepared to vote so that we don’t, we are gonna keep this back and forth going with the town up until the town warrant. If we don’t decide right now, we’re not gonna have enough information to know when the warrant has to be in by. And so if the warrant goes in, then it, it just, in my opinion, balloons from there. I’m not prepared to give this land over anyways. I, I just don’t think that that’s a wise choice, um,

1:58:08 for a myriad of reasons. So, yeah. I, I I’m gonna call for the vote. Okay. All in favor. Oh wait, wait a minute. Lemme re the motions. Declare Kauffman School as necessary for potential future educational purposes and to not sponsor a warrant article to turn it back over to town. Oh, so we can say yes. Yes. All in favor. Sorry. All opposed.

1:58:33 All right. Motion carries three to zero or no, it’s three to two. I’m so sorry about that. Um, okay. So new business school committee announcements and, and then subcommittee. Oh yes. Subcommittee and liaison updates. I, um, have, have, the only subcommittee I would have to report from was the screening committee. And I think we all know where we are with that. So

1:58:59 We had the superintendent safety committee advisory. It was really well done. Um, we went through all the safety protocols. We’re looking at changing a couple in the Red book, which is our crisis management tool. Um, we went through the schedules for all the mandatory drills for fire alarms and all of that. Uh, the only area I was a little concerned about is the extreme weather evacuation process process. When I was in the buildings, we had things set up when I asked around the table, quite a few of ‘em said, no, we haven’t done it yet. We haven’t done it for a while. And that’s concerning since we’ve had five or six tornadoes in Massachusetts this year alone. So we need to get the schools to start moving the safety drill as far as

1:59:48 extreme weather goes. Other than that, I think it went really well. You concur Michelle. Absolutely. It was a good start to the year. Kelly, I make a suggestion, uh, to both you and Michelle and Michelle. I mentioned this to you briefly the other day, and it’s not specifically a school issue, but we’ve had, we had another accident this week with a student who got, was on his way and got hit. Um, and we’ve had a number of near misses with crossing guards and students at major crossings for schools. So because that safety committee includes, you know, like the fire chief of police and some other key department heads and other community members, I just think this would be a really great topic because you’ve got all the people in the room to look at how we can address as a community.

2:00:35 ‘cause I really do think it’s a community issue, but it’s something we need to like, I think really look at very closely. They do. When I was there, they used to do that. Yeah, that’s something they talk about as well. Maybe there’s some one time we need like a, we need like a plan on how we’re gonna address it. How about we use, that’s what I just said. Well, how about some time, you know, ARPA costs that will provide more safety. I don’t, I don’t know what they could be, but like Megan said, having the right people in the room to figure out what those additional safety precautions could be. I just think like we’ve had too many near misses. We just need to have a plan for how we’re gonna address it. And like I said, it’s not as, it’s not any one group or person. It’s a community-wide issue. Alright,

2:01:22 thank you. Um, any other subcommittee meeting update? Um, I just have kind of a plug for metco. Um, I think we’ve all talked for a number of years, this committee, previous committees about the importance of METCO program and our participation in that. And we talked about it during the interviews as well. It, it came up so I, I get the sense that we’re all on board for making sure that that program is successful and hopefully continuing to grow it. So I guess I’m gonna make a suggestion or a recommendation to all of us on this, myself included, to start to engage a little bit more proactively with the METCO program in general. And one specific event that’s coming up is the METCO leadership retreat that Michelle sent this all a save the date for at the end of this month.

2:02:08 I know it’s a big commitment and not everyone will be able to make it, but if you can, I highly suggest you register to go. And also we’ve all been signed up to Millie’s, um, yeah. Mm-hmm. Millie’s newsletter and that always has so much good information, including regular METCO events that happen. So I just am gonna encourage all of us to at least try to attend one or two in the course of the school year so that we get more closely aligned with the metro organization and also start to network with other districts so that we can, you know, all learn from each other. ‘cause there are some districts that do a really great job and I think we can learn from as we continue to look at that program. So that’s just, I’d like to encourage everyone to do that. Um, the other, do you attend the p t O meetings or the parent? Um,

2:02:57 I only took this on the last spring, so I, as far as I know they haven’t had one, but, um, you knowm I would love to go. I’m sure I’d love to, you know, be invited. Um, so yeah, because that’s hearing from our parents. Yeah. Our parents. Yeah, absolutely. Um, the other thing to that note, Jen, is that we had, not last year, but the year before we’d actually held a school committee meeting at NACO headquarters. We tried to do it last year, but just scheduling didn’t work out. And I feel like we always tried to, well actually I think they asked us not to well, because we were getting so close to the end of the school year and we couldn’t find a date that worked for everybody. So what I’m gonna suggest to this committee is that, you know, if everyone’s on board for doing that, that we, you know, if everyone’s okay to commit to going into Boston for and having a school

2:03:43 committee meeting there, that we try to schedule at a time that’s not so crazy, like the end of the school year. So, and I’m happy to work with Kaia and Well, can I ask a question about that? I mean, I, I’m totally support of that, but, and I didn’t participate in the past. I don’t know what happened. But having a school committee meeting there is great. I we’re doing our business versus is there a desire to go in, we can post as meeting and actually meet with them. So that’s what we did last time. Oh, okay. Had So you weren’t doing school committee business? Well, we did both because then they could actually attend a school committee meeting, which a lot of, you know, it’s very challenging for them to actually attend school committee meetings. So we went there, we had a tour, we met with Millie and some, some of her staff and other families. So we had a dinner with them.

2:04:29 With our families. Yeah, yeah. With Boston. With our Boston families. Yeah. Um, and then they, you know, participated in our school committee meetings so that they could, that they could actually, but I would like to, I don’t know, I guess have maybe like more of a forum or something, you know, where we Yeah. And I do wanna just say that would be right too with Zoom. These are accessible everywhere, you know, so

2:04:51 we, it’s nice for us to go. I, I understand that, but I just wanna make sure, is there something we could be doing better to notify our Boston families of our school committee meetings and get them the zoom link? Is there, is there a better communication we could be doing to increase? Yes. That I can certainly chat to Keisha. Okay. Do they have her routine p c meeting? Um, they were for parent needs or whatever. Yeah. I mean, I don’t think they were monthly, you know, necessarily monthly wasn’t my understanding. But they do have a parent C Yep. Right. They, when I was the principal, Maryanne Perry had her entire principal staff going to Boston meet with all the families. That’s awesome. C w It was a very interesting meeting. I can tell you right now, the issues that came up were eye opening. Yeah. And, um,

2:05:40 I think you should look and see how that got arranged, Michelle. That would be a great idea. I, I feel okay with joining the administrators there. They asked a lot of great point of questions, reasons why they weren’t so interested in coming. You have to remember too, marveled is the end of life, right? We’re always gonna be fighting two hour commute. And that’s hard on parents. I, I think it would be great to have it be some type of forum or que where they, where there could be more of a discussion. Yeah, we can talk like, just talk in front of them. I’d rather have No, No. They had us on the stage. They just, yeah. Yeah. The first question They came, that would be great. I’ll tell you one of the first questions that came to us, how come there’s only one black person on this podium?

2:06:27 And that was Jeff sso. And they said, you know, why aren’t you hiring more black teacher? What, what’s the ratio? And we couldn’t answer that. ‘cause it’s very difficult to hire. So I think it’s worthwhile for us to go in there and not, maybe not all of us, but at least a couple of us go it, you show and arrange and have the principals go back in again, meet with them. We also did some kind of a convention two years ago, three years ago where it was held in someplace in Boston was all the medical programs the model had, had a big presence and a backpacks, laptops, all kinds of stuff to get the students excited, come to model. So those are some opportunities that’s available to go look out. I like it. Um, right. Anybody else? And

2:07:17 entice more people as a cop also. Right. I just think having, again, I just wanna say, I think making sure that we have it be interactive. We can certainly have a meeting, don’t have a seven page agenda and you know, allow them to watch that process. That’s important. You know, physically being at a meeting as much different field than watching from Zoom certainly. And providing that opportunity is important. But also making sure we provide enough opportunity for them to engage with us, with administrators, ask questions, just talk, just have that face-to-face side would agree. Yeah. Super. So I think these are all great ideas. I think, you know, maybe what I’ll do is chat with Kaia and let them decide what’s most effective and useful for them. And then we can go from there. Okay. Sounds good.

2:08:05 Absolutely. Um, I just wanna reiterate, I mean, it’s, it’s a fabulous program. Keisha’s doing an amazing job of Debbie. She’s just been here just over a year now. Um, really building up our program and it, it’s wonderful. So if you’re not really familiar with the program, you know, I urge you to learn about it. And that, that day down at Gillette Stadium at the end of the month, it’s a fabulous time. Um, there is actually a convention coming up, Ryan, that I, I’m hoping Marblehead will be part of, but it is, I I’m learning more every day about the program. It would be great to see the school committee support that as well. That’s great. For sure. Thank you. Um, new business school committee announcements and requests. So we’ve, um, one piece of correspondence that came in today was from the coordinator from the, uh, Massachusetts Safe Group’s program.

2:08:53 So this was someone at the state who reached out to us to follow up. Um, it had come to their attention that we had had this very scary accident, um, where one of our students was biking and, um, was struck by a park. And they, they were writing to say that in all of their recent and maybe all together, um, safe routes reports, there was always a section of it that stated that we needed to provide better walking and biking. Um, was that just to you opportunities? I thought it went to the whole committee. If it didn’t, I apologize. I will. Yes, it did go, it went to the whole committee. Okay. It did. Um, I, I thought it did. From who?

2:09:39 Here I can it up right there. Um, it went from Judy Crocker, who is, I don’t, a statewide coordinator and outreach supervisor at the Massachusetts Schools program. Um, I’ll just read the, the top part I don’t have. So it didn’t Can you to us? It didn’t. No. I’ll definitely send, oh, maybe I just went to you on Lisa and Paula Donnelly. There’s multiple people. Oh, Paula Donnelly. Sarah Ashford. Okay. So I’ll forward it to everybody. I’m sorry, I just assumed it got to everybody. Um, it is with a heavy heart that we learned of the student Viking incident in the Shorewood West Shore Road neighborhood, um, to the many arrival and dismissal reports completed by the Safes program.

2:10:27 Over the past few years, we have underscored the need for pedestrian and bike education as being part of the solution to improving student safety. Um, they go on to say, we respectfully suggest Marblehead Public Schools considering consider offering our DSI approved pedestrian and bike safety curriculum. They’ve included the different things here. So I, I do think that we need to take steps to, you know, make our students safer. Um, I know there’s been strong advocates in town for increasing our busing. I understand that there has been some sense of, I would say there’s widespread support on this committee to increase the busing. The issue continues to be the lack of funding that while

2:11:16 we can fund getting a bus and we can possibly fund getting another bus driver, and I say that possibly ‘cause that’s actually a, not a guarantee. Right now our rate for our bus drivers is significantly lower than surrounding areas. There is a shortage of bus drivers. They will go to the preferred, the lawyer have to raise the Yep. And that has to be part of the collective bargaining process because it will shift the entire structure, if you will. So it is definitely on our radar, um, to be a factor in, in our negotiations that this has to be addressed because ultimately we need to get kids to and from school safety or safely, that’s gonna involve,

2:12:02 you know, in increasingly education, increasing the access to safe roads and sidewalks to get there and that infrastructure and also giving more busing opportunities. Um, so all of these pieces need to happen. The hinge point is fixing the contracts so that we can appropriately compensate people to get them to drive here. Because we, we actually can’t even, correct me if I’m wrong, we’re not even fully staffed right now. Are we on our or what we um, we actually are we okay? Okay. Finally, finally. Good. Um, but it took, how long did it take us to get? I, so explain this to me. I know it’s nine 15, but explain it to me why we can’t pay a higher rate you contracts. So we, we have a cap on how much we can pay by contract. We can’t go above.

2:12:48 That has to be one of the steps that exist in the contract and the steps that determine by how many years of experience and other people that are already in that discount. And our step structure is so much lower than surrounding here. Yes. Because they don’t understand. So when N R T is offering $27 an hour, our pay scale, I don’t know it off the top of my head for our bus drivers might not even go up to $27 an hour. It might not, at might not high. So if we’re looking to increase, we wouldn’t be able to open negotiations to increase. We would have to reopen negotiations. Absolutely.

2:13:20 Not an appetite to do that. Certainly. Um, once you open negotiations, the, okay, how about if we do this future agenda?

2:13:34 Future agenda? It’s not a small, but there’s a solution. Just the one. Yeah. But we do need to address the busing issue. Um, and there’s multiple factors to that. And this all this comes up with the correspondence. We aren’t gonna fix roads from sidewalks that we can mix buses. Yes. All right. So without further ado, I will adjourn us at nine 13.