School Committee: September 19, 2025

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.

0:04 I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic, which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty. I justice for all. Um, just before I start commendations, I wanna welcome Melissa to her first meeting. Congratulations. Um, good. All right. Are there any commendations?

0:40 I, Okay. We will move on to public comment. Are there any, any signatures?

0:59 Does anyone have their hand raised? Kt, host? Anyone? Okay.

1:06 Okay. Um, we’ll close the public comment. Uh, turn it over to you. Will, what do you have this, this meeting? Yeah. Alright. Yesterday the high school had an evacuation drill during master block, which went very smoothly. It was a very busy week for sports this week, both soccer teams as well as volleyball, uh, field hockey, golf, uh, each had three games. The boys soccer is currently five and two girls. Soccer is four with two ties, four wins, and two ties. Volleyball has five wins and one loss. Field. Hockey is three. Win has three, three wins, two losses, and one tie. Girls cross country is on a roll with three wins, boys cross country. It’s a tough start to the year with three losses, but the rest of the season is looking up and football is won their first two games

1:53 and they’re on their way to fri. Um, this Friday evening versus Shepherd Hill over by, uh, Rhode Island, the marching bands begun, has begun practicing and will perform at the next home football game. In other news, the junior class has opened up to donations for their class auction, which will take place later this year. Uh, school counselors have been conducting senior seminars with the senior class about the college application process, and several colleges have begun visiting MHS, which will happen throughout November. Uh, now through November. Col, senior college. Parent night was held yesterday evening, and the financial aid night is planned for October 28th. Thank you. Okay. Thank you all. Okay. Moving on to district updates. Mr. Superintendent. Mr. Chairman. Um, good evening.

2:38 First, we’d like to welcome new school committee member Melissa Lucas. Uh, she and I have met a couple times already and I’m confident she’ll be great in addition to the committee. So, welcome and look forward to working together, uh, schools in full swing fall sports underway. So, we just heard from Will, um, our open house has been taking place. Uh, this is an exciting part of the year when things, uh, start settling in and we begin to hit our stride as we move through the fall. I’ve attended all the P-T-O-P-C-O meetings with, uh, so far the exception of vets, which I believe I’m scheduled to attend in October now. Um, and was excited by the turnout. Um, and so many caregivers, they’re just really well attended, um, which is great. So thank you for all of your support you provide to our students. Um, Rashana begins Monday, September the 22nd at sundown. So I want wish, uh, take a moment. In which members?

3:25 Our Jewish community Happy Union, uh, uh, it’s also Hispanic Heritage Month, beginning September 15th, 20 through October 15th. So I just want acknowledge that, um, the district has been conducting Alice drills again as, um, will just mentioned, uh, each building. Uh, my directive in collaboration with our p our police and fire departments is to conduct a full evacuation drill at the beginning of the school year. Uh, a lockdown drill in the middle of school, uh, year, and then another full evacuation in the fall. Um, it’s a sad state of affairs that we need to do these drills, but I’ll always ensure that we are putting safety and security of our students and staff first. And, uh, doing the drills is one way to be as prepared as possible should a catastrophic, catastrophic event occur. Uh, Desi um, attendance accountability reports come out tomorrow, so we’ll be taking a look at that data to see how we fared

4:13 with last year’s attendance across the district. Uh, hazardous guess the numbers will not be, not be great given the, um, absolution for the makeup days. Um, but we should still be able to determine how we are trending. Uh, some more to come on that after the analysis, um, is completed. Um, I’ll be providing more focus updates on our anti-discrimination committee and on our enrollment in a few minutes. Our wellness committee is coming together. Um, I’m sending out a newsletter tomorrow. So, uh, in that newsletter will be, um, a listing some community, hopefully some community members, uh, to join the team. On October 9th, the high school will be participating in the MGHC, which is substance Use and Risk Related Factor Survey. The main survey is administered by MGH and there will also be supplemental questions via MHS Anonymous Google Form. These surveys ask questions about our students’ mental health and substance use behaviors.

5:00 Our surveys completed anonymously and confidentially, although students have the option to provide identifying information should they want to follow up with someone. The purpose of the survey is to collect data to give our community a sense of needs and strengths of our student populations. This data will inform the need for programming and the formal curriculum assembly, extra support offered community events. Um, and there’s about a hundred other districts in the state participating in the survey. Um, this is done during the Magic Block Advisors on a day four. This is all from all information that got sent out already, so I just kind of, um, pretty much slow that language. Paraphrase it a little bit. There are explicit directions regarding how parents can opt their students out the survey if they so choose. I’d like to thank Gina Hart for her hard work coordinating it’s important data collection tool, and she will share the results in the spring. And I think I mentioned this last time, it’s in the spring

5:46 because we have to wait for gm, uh, MGH to kind of tally, uh, the results of their section. Uh, the Board of Health worked with town leaders and community partners and developed a needs assessment and collaboration with UMass Dart, uh, UMass Boston, sorry, dart. I stopped my way, uh, entitled Calm, CAHM, which stands for creating a healthier marble head. Um, I was part of, uh, helping develop some of the questions, and I just wanted to share that. Uh, they, they’re, uh, finish up the flyer now, and once that’s, uh, finalized, we sent out from the town to everyone in town, 18 years of age and older, but we will also put it in our digital backpack. So I think it’s a good way to just kind of get that out to folks. Um, so I, and I want to share that’s another great way that we are collaborating with the town, um, which is, which is awesome. Um, I always try to be reflective

6:32 and strive to model that for our administrators and staff. So I wanted to share, uh, the body of an email that I sent out to staff that I think is pertinent during this time. Um, so if you’ll just indulge me for a second. Uh, that email I sent out was, just, was simple. It said, all I feel compelled to share that we be mindful of how and when we share our views regarding political and social commentary. We are all representatives of Marblehead Public Schools, and we should continue to strive to marvel, understanding, acceptance and belonging for each other, our students and community members. Sometimes this is difficult and sometimes we need to reflect on what and how we communicate. I appreciate being the educational leader of a district that is leading the way. Thank you for all that you do. Obviously with the times and things are happening, I thought it was, um, that was good to send out a message of that ilk.

7:17 Um, and then I try to end my updates with a positive note. Uh, so I get a little, little, little bit more stuff to share. But, um, I think it’s important. I’ve thought about ways to acknowledge and celebrate our staff. And I’m working on developing a process to nominate staff for, for going, you know, above and beyond in the work that they do. And until I craft that tool get into place, I ask the principals, administrators, um, to send me names of staff that they thought should get kind of an extra shout out. Um, and of course this is never easy for administrators to kind of hone down ‘cause there’s so much good work going on by so many great people. Um, but I wanna share out some of the kudos. Um, so I skipped the accommodations at the beginning ‘cause this is a little bit more, um, personalized and, and expansive. So from Scott Williams, village Principal, um, he says, I would like to acknowledge Zach Dixie, who is a building based substitute teacher at Village. Every day, Zach comes to work with a smile consistently going above

8:03 and beyond to meet the needs of our students and staff. He supports our general education population and works very closely with our special needs kiddos and our a BA program. Zach is truly committed to village, and we’re lucky to have him here every day. Thank you, Mr. Dixie. Um, from Dr. Carlson. Christine Chenowski consistently goes above and beyond her inner role, demonstrating outstanding dedication to students, staff, and families. She works tirelessly to ensure transcripts are accurately and ti and timely, are accurate and timely. A task that requires both precision and persistence. Christina has been an invaluable source of support for new staff, providing guidance and encouragement that help them feel welcome to and successful. She also brings the voice of equity to resolving issues, ensuring the decisions are thoughtful, fair, and centered on student needs. Her unwavering commitment to students and families reflects her deep care

8:49 and professionalism, making a lasting positive impact on the school community. She also shares that Mike Giardi has made a significant difference at MHS through his unw ranked supportive students both in and out of the classroom as a dedicated football, basketball, and baseball coach. He builds strong connections with student athletes and helps em grow as individuals and team members in his role as lead teacher in the math department, Mike Michael supports students learning needs and class during magic block and after school, always going an extra mile to ensure their success. He also serves as a mentor, providing guidance and encouragement that inspire students to reach their potential Michael’s leadership, commitment and care and body their very best of MHS. Um, and one more from Dr. Carlson. Danielle Moser, um, has and has made an outstanding impact on our school community. Through a dedication to improving and supporting school culture,

9:35 she has thoughtfully created signs and posters high in both staff and students, fostering a sense of pride and belonging throughout the building. Danielle works closely with new staff to ensure they feel supported offering guidance with grade books, magic Blocks, scheduling, and e Hall pass her efforts helping, uh, her efforts help colleagues feel confident and prepared while the creativity and positivity create a welcoming environment for everyone. Danielle’s commitment, collaboration, and school spirit shines through in all she does, making her an invaluable part of our community. Assistant superintendent, uh, Ferrera has shared that our instructional coaches, Rebecca Brand and Jean Graziano, Mary Leblanc, Emily Perez and Daniel Moja are working hard to, um, help ensure teachers instructional assistants and students have a successful launch in the school year. Thank you to our instructional coaching team for supporting the amazing teaching and learning happening in Marblehead schools.

10:23 Uh, Matt Laier, new principal at Vets Shares the J budda. Um, Jay has been a valuable resource when planning and executing safety protocol and b Ms. Jay has provided input and resources in helping to design procedures around orchestrating student movement during fire and safety drills. Uh, he also wanted accelerate Tawny Callahan, um, who has worked hard through the Sunshine Club to provide our colleagues with a tremendous level of support as we have transitioned in the new school year at MBMS. I thought that was pretty cool because he’s, he’s brand new and he’s just getting to know his staff and I’m glad that he was able to kind of, you know, um, highlight a few great folks there. Um, and then, uh, our, our assistant superintendent, Lisa Maria Polito, um, says that she would like to recognize our team chairs, Tanya Brusso, Ashley Lieman, Megan Ponte,

11:08 and Trina Chin Long, her organization efforts in working with staff and families to support students as we start the school year. She also says cheers to Victoria Ryan for helping to support Glover School at the beginning of school year. So, um, you know, they, other principles are, I’m sure of sending me stuff while, and I’ll share those, you know, probably at the next meeting. But I just wanna share that thought. That would be a great way to kind of end my updates on a positive note. So thank you very much. Awesome, Awesome. Yeah. I just wanna reiterate, Superintendent, that was, I particularly like the shout outs and, and you know, I would encourage it to continue. Yeah, I think, you know, I, I’ve been thinking about it for a while, you know, um, and just, I think it’s important to celebrate staff and mm-hmm. My idea is just to kind of come up with a, you know, a Google form that can do a link. Um, so like, you know, community members. Thanks will, um, community members and staff. Thanks. Will can celebrate each other.

11:54 Um, I think it’s a good, great way to just kind of, just, just to recognize folks. So yeah. It’s, it’s simple, but it’s also, I think powerful. So I appreciate that. Alright, you have our, our next item, uh, enrollment update. Oh, I do. Yes. Yes, I do. Um, actually, since there’s a couple iterations, uh, we printed out the newest one, just some make sure I’ll look at the same thing. Um, And all, I just sent you a request to share. Did it pop up? No, no. Um, it was the one Said number two Different went in. Yeah, that was a, I had to make a couple piece, so, um, Frank, that should be What I, I was gonna do it, but I Oh, okay. Just do you have it? Do you have it? I have it. I’ll go for it. I’ll share it with you because I can’t, I’m not able to share my screen

12:40 Right now. Yeah, I don’t see their request. Julie. I’m looking for it. Yeah. Okay. I just was ready, just In case. Yeah, yeah, Yeah. Alright. I just, I just allowed you, Julia Soft. Thank you. Okay, well, we’re good now. Okay. I think You good? Or do you want me to Okay, perfect. Thanks Al.

13:09 All right. Well that’s coming up. Um, here we talked a little bit about the enrollment, um, piece here in Marblehead schools. You know, clearly there’s been, um, a slight dip in enrollment, um, especially from last year coming into this year. So we, we started, um, kind of pulling apart some of the data and that’s what’s being shared tonight. Obviously, it’s ongoing discussion because we really need to, um, continue to dig deep into the, uh, into the data to say, you know, what kids at which grade level are going where and ending up where and why. So those are questions we’re gonna obviously be asking more deeply of, you know, the schools and parents and things like that. But this is just, this is just an overview at this point of, of where we are. So, um, you can go to the next slide please. So, the current enrollment overview, uh, total K to 12 enrollment, uh, it’s 2,513 students and the distribution across schools are, are outlined there.

13:54 So there’s 808 students at Marblehead High, um, 3 51 at Vets, 4 84 Village, 4 45 at Brown and three 18 and at Glover. And then, um, there’s other programming that accounts for, I think it’s 107 students. So 31 are homeschooled, 46 out district, and there’s 30 students in private placement. We have to count those. ‘cause I mean, they’re still our students. We have to, um, we have to make sure that if they’re receiving any kind of programming from the district that we count them. So potentially, you know, homeschool students, even though they’re homeschooled, they still can avail themselves of extracurricular activities and things, sports and things like that. If they, if they, um, maintain the things that they need to maintain. Um, similarly with private placements, they may be private placements, but we may provide special ed services.

14:40 Like, so for instance, maybe kiddo at Tower School that needs, you know, speech and language or something like that where we would still be, um, providing some of those services. It’s not frequent, but there are some. So that’s, sometimes the numbers look a little, um, a little off because of that. And can I ask you a question? Yeah. Do you look at this like, is total enrollment When you’re comparing your year change inclusive of the additional programs? ‘cause it feels like it could be a hair misleading for like, what the actual capacity is of people to schools versus outside of the schools. Is it just done on a, a net basis, including both of those things? The Second thing. Second, yes. Okay. And Dessi does it that way Too. Yeah. Dessi reports out that way. So we, we kind of have to, we kind of follow the way Dessi does it. Yep. And then we try to pull that apart, um, as best we can. And some of that we’ll talk about a little bit,

15:25 but like, some of this is the nsda projections are, are part of like how we kind of look at trend, you know, overall trends. But that’s, that’s really more in, in regards to, um, population stuff. So we look at birth rates, death rates, you know, you know, kindergarten age, all that stuff. So, um, so the next slide please, um, is enrollment. Distribution by school level. So we just broke it down. Elementary schools is pre-K to three. So again, brown school has 4 45, where the largest class is 104, um, in grade one. And grade two is 107 Glover school’s, 318 students. Um, no enrollment in grade three is 85 combined. Pre pre-K program equals 76 students. So we just kind of broke it down a little bit that way. Uh, middle, middle level, which is we, um, again, some of this is reporting the way that does.

16:11 So middle level encompasses village and vets. So village school 4 84, and you can see the breakdown there where fourth grade, 153 fifth grades 1 69, sixth grade 1 62. And then vets, it’s 3 51 students with 172 in grade 7, 1 1 7, 9 grade eight. And I should, I didn’t, I don’t think I said this at the beginning, but this is always a snapshot time. So even when we get the enrollment, um, reports on Mondays, or I think they come about Sunday, 18 to Monday, and they can change from Monday to Wednesday, Monday to Friday. So, you know, there’s, there’s always some, a little bit of wiggle. So sometimes the numbers, like when we looked at this originally, I think we had 25 14, and it’s really 25 13. So it’s somewhere. Yeah. Anyway, uh, high school is 8 0 8, like I said, grade nines two 10, grade tens, 2 0 1 grade elevens two 12, and grade 12 is 180 5.

16:57 I think we had a pretty large graduating class last year, which I think accounts for some of some of the dip at the high school level. Uh, and then the next, next slide, um, key enrollment changes. Notable enrollment changes at transitional grade level. So grade three, spring 25 to grade four, fall 25, we, uh, minus 15 students grade six, spring 25 to grade seven, fall 25. We’re down nine students in grade eight to grade nine or 15, uh, minus 15 students. So that, those transition years, three to four, six to seven, eight to nine are the worst ones. The worst of the biggest dips. Now the grade eight to nine, you know, clearly that’s, that’s students either go into, you know, um, private school or Essex tech, Essex tech. Um, so, you know, can I, can I just ask you a quick question? I’m

17:42 gonna interrupt here unless you wanna wait. No, no, go ahead. Um, did you do this for every grade or just these grades? ‘cause I haven’t had a chance to dig it all up, but, you know, we, we actually, as of this week, have an 8% decline. Um, we have over 200 students less today than we did in June. So it might be helpful to do this across all. Yeah, we, we, we highlighted the three, the three, um, the three largest areas for, for this discussion. But we can certainly continue to go into the, the deeper dive. Um, but I think, you know, when we look at eighth grade and ninth grade, there’s es six techs and they, they, they vary. Sometimes they take five kids, sometimes they take 15 kids. You know, it’s, it’s, it varies. And then the, um, the private school, uh, is also obviously where, where folks go. But you know, like I said, we’ll, we will, we’ll we will get into a little bit more, um, detail

18:30 as we move forward, because I wanna make sure that, um, we’re, we’re understanding why like, that that’s third grade or fourth grade transition is a weird year to have a a, a dip like that. To be honest with you. It’s like you expected an eighth to ninth a little bit. Um, those two other areas, that’s why I’m kind of highlighted. It’s kind of an odd place to kind of have that kind of a dip. Um, so then we look at the historical trends, right? The next, next one. Um, so this kind of goes through from, you know, 2019 to current. Um, and you can see that we’ve dipped a decent amount from, you know, 2000, the 1920 school year with 2,963 students to current, uh, 25, 13. So, you know, there’s a overall pretty good size, um, decrease there. And the key periods, again, we kind of highlighted the higher ones.

19:15 So 1920 to 2021 was a 8.7% decrease. 21 to 20 to 21, 22 is a 3.8, 23, 24, 24 25 was another two, and then another two going along sooner this year. So, you know, overall that’s, that’s a, that’s a, that’s a large decrease for sure over That period of time. I think it’s also important to note, historically, I think 20 seventeens graduating class was probably the peak of this sort of generation where we had almost 3,300 students in the district. So, I mean, this is, this is like, we’re not bearing the lead here. This is a, you know, a huge thing. And this seems to be a little bit higher this year, not as high as 2019, but we’re at close to 8%, 7.9%. Um, so Yeah. And it’s, it

20:01 is, it’s concerning for sure. And I think, you know, and I’m, I’m, we’re gonna call, you know what it is, because it’s, it’s, it’s, there’s nothing to hide here. This is, this is, there’s a dip in enrollment for sure. Um, there’s, it’s trending that way in a lot of public schools, most public schools. But, um, we we’re talking about, we, we have to look at more, we have to say, what can we do differently to keep kids, you know, maybe from going elsewhere other than to Marblehead High School, we have to look at, you know, are the private schools pulling kids at certain grades for certain reasons? Charter school, you know, um, you know, there’s a trend across the nation that charter schools are, are, are increasing their enrollment as well. So there’s a lot of factors. Um, but that’s why, you know, we’re looking at the, the overview of this, but we’re gonna, you know, Julie and I have already talked, um, in depth about how we’re gonna kind of just really drill down, um,

20:47 and try to start coming up with ways like, you know, we, we talked last year, um, with the administrators, we’ll do so again this year around the transitional grades. That’s always, you know, when you go from middle school to high school, um, village to middle school, what kinds of things can we do to make sure students understand what we have to offer? So there’s a lot of things that we can do, you know, um, take high school, you know, leads of programming, you know, sports and, um, drama and band and, excuse me, et cetera, and have them, you know, really focus on the seventh and eighth grade students so they know what, what to expect coming up. Um, a lot of that’s happening, but we have to just kind of really look at enhancing. That’s, that’s usually one big area that we can look at to kind of bolster, bolster that, uh, that, you know, or lessen that departure at that grade level. So we’ll continue to look at that. John, can I have a make a comment?

21:33 I find the grade specific numbers more helpful. Mm-hmm. Because otherwise, I think you have to find a way to strip out what Jen’s referencing of like, there are just fewer children than there were 10 years ago from, you know, we can’t solve for that problem. Mm-hmm. But we should be looking at and addressing if students, if families are choosing to send their children elsewhere, why? And what can we do about that? Mm-hmm. Well, I don’t know if we necessarily know that. So I’ve asked for a census, which is very easy to get. So I’ve asked for it just for my own ification from the town clerk, so we can get it by age, by by birthdate. So I think it, and I gotta go do the math or do the dates, but if we get, we get a census report of the, for like pre-K through 12, how many student, how many, uh,

22:21 children of that age live in this town? Mm-hmm. And then compare that to what our census is. Um, preschool jumped out at me last year. We graduated, um, 130, I think preschool, pre-K into, I guess to kindergarten. And this year we have 76 currently. So that was, that’s a big, you know, that’s a big loss. And I think, you know, there’s the whole list, you know, the universal issue that you have clearly declining enrollment. The question of why is important, right? ‘cause I would love to be able to educate every child that lives in this town. I think we can, and we should and be great, but in the meantime, we’re not. And so we have, you know, there are budget immigrations to that, and there’s, you know, there’s opportunities, right? We have declining enrollment. We have a budget that, you know,

23:07 the town meeting provides to us. Um, and we have opportunity to leverage that budget with defining a moment. Yeah. It, it all ties together. For sure, for sure. And I think, um, and everything that everyone’s saying is, yeah, that’s all things we need to continue to look at and, and, uh, find. So I think, I think, um, you know, the question about the census and how many kids, and this, like, we, you know, when you look at the numbers, like when you say we had 216, 2,617 students, 23, 24, 24 25, we have 25 64 students, right? So, you know, you could see that, you know, that that amount of students left. But like, to your point, the census will actually, yeah, it’ll tell us how many, how many school aged kids there are.

23:55 Um, so how many more are we missing? You know, which I would imagine it’s, you know, a lot more than that, that dip. But, you know, we have to, we have to fly. We have to make sure that we’re educating somehow, making sure that every kid that lives in district gets educated. Whether they’re educated marblehead schools, if they leave Marblehead schools, we have to, you know, they, wherever they’re going has to request records. So we know, like, we know, okay, they left, they moved out of town, they moved to a different state, they went to private school, they went to, you know, to charter school or went to whatever. Um, so that’s, that’s the data that we’ll look at more closely. Um, Do we do that? Yeah. It’s just, yeah. Do we report that? So it’s not, it’s not really report. I mean, it’s not really reportable other than through this, I mean, to the, to the state, you know, they asked for this data. This is, I mean, we could report, right?

24:40 X number of students went to private school, X number moved out of, it’s really, you either go to private school or you move out of town, or you homeschool much for all intents. And pretty much, yeah. That might be helpful to know. Yeah. And I think, um, yeah, and that’s, that’s what I’m talking about. We can do that. We’re gonna do that too. But that, because it’s, it’s easy, you know, if you, if you’re, if like there’s a grade level that year, you know, there’s been enrollment in two or three kids, like, okay, that’s not hugely concerning. I mean, this is in the overall picture, but when you look at like, the three grade levels that we talked about, there’s, there’s a preponderance of the, of the drop is in those three grades. And, and it’s curious to me, it’s why and why in six, you know, why are they leaving fourth, you fourth? It just seems odd to me. Um, so yeah, those are all, those are all things we’re, we’re already looking at and we’re gonna continue. Well, the other thing that’s clear is I think this year’s

25:26 senior’s class 185, but like in 2017, I think, again, I think that was the peak. And that class was like 265, I think. Mm-hmm. I think we’re like, what, two 40 last year? So two 40 last year was a big class. And then you look at 9 11, 9, 10 11 at the high school, they’re all over two. It’s not much, but it’s over 200. And then K through eight or pre-K through eight, there’s no class over 200. So it’s clearly whatever it is, either they don’t live here, they’re not, they aren’t born or they’re not whatever. They’re, we’re not seeing classes over 200. And that’s, And that’s where the next slides are about the nasdaq, which we lean on for that birth data. Right. Can I, sorry, can I ask one more question? Yeah. Do you guys look at enrollment trends excluding the additional programs? Because like, it’s down 51 students this year,

26:13 but 107 of the capacity we’re counting are people that are maybe just coming for like one program or not? Do we ever look at it? Yeah, we, we always, yeah. So, so a lot of, like, especially the out district students, right? Because that’s, those are kiddos that may be here today and then have a, have a team meeting tomorrow. And you know, in three weeks they’re out in district and now they’re in, they’re in that other category or vice versa, they’re coming back in. So the, the, the, the idea and the plan is to, is to continue to enhance our special education programming. We’re still, we’re going through some growing pains still. Um, but when we get to a point where I feel comfortable that we, that our programs are solid enough to start having those meaningful conversations with parents to say, Hey, this program is solid where we have kids in it. We’re bringing kids back. They’re getting

26:59 what they need to get them back in. ‘cause my whole philosophy is we need to educate our kids with their, like peers in district. It’s, and that’s, to me, that’s not a money thing. It ends up being a money, but that’s not the reason for me, it makes the most sense to do that. We’re not there yet. A hundred percent not there yet. Um, but we will be, I, I am a hundred percent confident that we will be in the next couple of years. It’s Gonna, I’m More wondering if these patterns and declines would look different if we stripped out that group of students. That’s An additional, we just wanted to add Something different. Be worse. Yeah, that’s what’s It could be worse. Yeah. And we look at the class size. I mean, that’s obviously something very important for us, right? To look at class sizes, so from different lenses, right? For teachers, for balance and equity in terms of students. Um, additionally for where we place our supports, right? Where we, you know, students need additional support. So we look at all that. Jen, can you tell me your pre-K number from last year though?

27:45 I thought I saw the, that we graduated. I thought it was like, was it 130 or 131? I’m, I’m pulling up that we had 33 at Brown School and 38, yeah. At GL school. So I go By, I’ll tell you what, I go, I double check. I get reports, unless the estimate reports for some reason are not accurate. June 2nd and June 2nd, which was the last report before the graduating seniors, once the seniors graduate, the reports are off because Yep. The seniors are gone. Yeah. Have to, we don’t have the new kindergartners. I know What it is. It’s the, it’s when we have our students in for the student services testing. So we had 18, I think fall under that Cate. Um, and then 42 came in for an assessment. So you’re reporting them as pre They all, You have to put, you have to categorize them when you’re, when you’re either providing some sort

28:30 of a service or an assessment. So they have to go somewhere. Alright, So let’s look, it’s week before. So if we just look at the bottom of just, um, brown school and Glover school, what I’m seeing here is under, um, so for example, brown school and then the bottom, um, 33, and then Glover 38. I just wanna make sure. Um, so that, that’s what’s that 71, let’s say 30. I mean, yeah. Okay. So then I don’t, then I don’t know where we’ve lost kids. I mean, you’re probably look at, well, it’s not pre-K if it’s too kindergarten is down too. Yes, Yes. And we’ll see that with what we know it’s going to be for This year’s kindergarten. Yes. And the next Year, this year’s. Yeah. And that’s, that’s solely, that’s mainly on, on birth. So, and the other thing too, like pre-K will ebb and flow a little bit too.

29:15 I think that’s why when you were saying a hundred something, that sounded really off to me. So thank you for Looking at that. Well, that’s not, and we ought to change that report because Well, yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s, We can look at that as well. It’s How, it’s how Aspen pulls it. That’s why, that’s why when you asked me the question request, and I need to look at this a little bit closer. ‘cause some of that, some of those numbers look a little wonky. Um, so anyway, so you know, kindergarten, you know, kindergarten lab flow based or preschool lab flow based upon like, oh, you know, if they’re gonna, if it’s, you know, they’re coming here or they’re going to a private preschool, so you might say they, they start here, but then they go somewhere else and then they come back to kindergarten. So those things happen too. So in the pre-K, pre-K and K, um, numbers, I mean, we want to see those higher because then, you know, obviously everything else goes higher. So, you know, when we look at, if we go to the future projections, um, the next one, please. Um, so this is, this is kind of where the NS EQ reporting comes in.

30:01 So they look at short, short term, long term, and then growth factors. So the short term, um, 26, 27, they’re projecting 2,521 students, which would be an increase to 2.1. And then the, the following year is a moderate increase of, um, to 25 37, which would be a 0.6. On the longer term, uh, it looks like, you know, within, they do like a 10 year projection. So within 10 years, it looks like we’ll be kind of back up to like the two seven, the 2017 ish, um, numbers now, well, 10 years from 2020. Mm-hmm. Right? Mm-hmm. So yeah, four years now. So 20. Yeah. So, right. I’m sorry. Yeah, the full, the full tenure projection. So I think, um, so that, that if the projections are, are fairly accurate, which Ns EQ generally is, that’s pretty, pretty close.

30:47 Um, I, I mean, I’ve, over the years, I mean within like 10, 12 kids, um, so that’s, that’s, that’s heartening to see that, you know, hopefully that that trend trends upward. And we have to, you know, we have to kind of look at that, um, to make sure that we’re, you know, everything that Jen just talked about, staffing everything. So, and then the growth factors, stable, birth rates projected, um, annual, uh, projected 1 60, 1 63 annually is a migration patterns and historical enrollment trends they look at, that’s what me looks at. So, um, it’s, they’re pretty scientific. They have a pretty intense matrix they look at. It just, it helps us to kind of plan out, you know what I mean, data year to year. And a lot of, um, they, they base, you know, dsi, when we look at the DSI numbers, that’s an, that’s usually an October SIM report. So a lot changed between October and s Yeah.

31:34 And then starting June and stuff. So, and then the last thing is just the, uh, NASDAQ projected percentages. You can see that, um, how, how they’re projecting just the chart form. Um, so all in all, yes, the meta message here is we’re down enrollment. Uh, we’re, we’re gonna continue to a deeper dive into the areas that are of the most concerns for us and look at and try to come up with some reasoning and ideas and thoughts. And then also work with the administrators and, and the teachers to say, what, what can we do differently to kind of, you know, keep people wanting to keep their kids here and, um, and, and stay in Marblehead and graduate. Um, and I think, you know, it, it’s an ongoing discussion. It sure, it surely is. Uh, and you know, that, that our district placement numbers, you know, they, they go up and down too. I think, you know, I think last year at one point we were at

32:20 like 57, I think on the district. We’re little bit down. I think we’re 40, 46 now. So that’s, that’s, that’s not a bad either. So, um, but happy to have any more conversation chat. I think you just said this, John, but what’s the 25, 26 projected per percentages

32:40 or what, that’s what we really want know, right? To compare this year’s enrollment. Yeah. So, um, just plus 2.1%, 2.1. So just Pretty steady, really. Um, we just wanna add in also, like, you know, with, with a focus on sharing the great work that’s happening in Marblehead public schools, we’ve been very intentional of that. I mean, our high school just scored 33 out of a hundred, um, for the weekly news. And we’ll be sharing more about that soon and, and all the things, and you’ve seen, we’ve had some really great local press. I do feel that we’re really trying to be, um, thoughtful and strategic in the communication, um, you know, newsletters and, and, and, you know, sharing broadly. So I just wanna, I appreciate the numbers, you know, for what they are of right now, but we are always gonna continue that conversation about sh showing the great work

33:25 that is happening in Marblehead public schools. And, and I think, I think that goes hand in hand with, you know, our collaboration with the community. I think, you know, it’s been, been one of my pushes since I’ve been here is to really like, how do we, how do we partner with, collaborate, discuss, um, you know, everything with community members too, because the more they hear and see that we’re actually, you know, listening and, and, and trying and to, to do things better, um, you know, and we’re finding ways to just really kind of hear student voice. We talk about that, uh, staff voice. How do we, how do we continue to get input and hear what the staff are saying? How do we address the concerns of the staff? Um, you know, there’s this things that are going super really well this year. There’s some areas that we are that we’re really focused on, and I don’t want to talk to school specific. There. There’s some areas that we’re struggling with. There’s some areas we really, really well.

34:11 So celebrate the positives. How do we, how do we focus on providing extra resources and support to those areas that are struggling? Um, and I think when we do that and people see that we’re not just going through whatever, um, that that’s a good thing and that, that that’s how we grow and, and, and build, um, sustainability. So You talk about socializing these enrollment changes, I think it’s really important to get some of that demographic data that Jen was talking about, those things that are beyond our control and things that improve. Yeah, That’s a good idea. And also is we’re having these important conversations about staffing and budgeting, you know, and taking into, into account the enrollment data. I think it’s really important that we balance

34:57 not overcorrecting, you know, I think these NASDAQ predictions have proven to be reliable, and they’re showing, you know, that enrollment will start to trend upwards. Not to where it used to be, but in that direction. And, and I think when we have, and we have conversations, you know, we’re gonna gonna be having budget conversations and all the, you know, this kind of will tie into that, right? So, but like if you look at, you know, say like a certain classroom has 17 kids in it and another one has 24 kids in it and another one has 18 kids in it, and they’re all the same grade level at the same school. You know, that like how you, there’s not really a way to consolidate those three classes, right? Without, you know, making it, you know, 29 kids over. Right? So you have to be mindful of that too. So there’s, there’s areas for sure that the numbers are low in certain classrooms. The other part of that discussion is why are they low?

35:45 Um, that it could be purposeful. So just say for instance, we have four, four first grade classrooms. One might be at 17, one might be at 22, 22 and 19, that’s 17. Could be purposeful. It could have kids that maybe have some greater needs in that classroom where provide an extra support less students. I mean, that’s, that’s generally a way to address some of the extra needs. Um, so those things happen too. And then you look at, you know, sometimes AP classes are lower because there’re one also, or sometimes special education classrooms need to be smaller. So when you just look at just the numbers without the discussion, it can be misleading as well. So I just preface that as we get, get into the budget conversation, that’s important to kind of keep in mind too, so Right. But quickly gonna turn back up. So we wanna be mindful of that, to your point. Absolutely. Overcorrect. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

36:33 Thank you Job. So, is there a couple of quick questions? So, you know, obviously you said you’re gonna do some more detailed analysis of the data. Do you know when that’ll be ready by? And you can kind of come back and provide a, you know, more detailed perspective on the data. I wanna see what Katie can pull too. Yeah. So it might just take a couple days to Just so we can, you know, yeah. Future agenda item for us to describe, Probably not for the 30th meeting, but shortly the first October meeting. I just wanna be my, I, I don’t want to rush it because you know, the, the, the issue is is, you know, we can look at our data manager to pull, pull certain things and that would be helpful. And we, we started doing that work. Um, but I wanna make sure that what we’re reporting is, you know, fully accurate.

37:19 So we wanna make sure we have the time to, to pull the data. I’m not trying to rush. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I just wanna know when it’s, when it’s reasonable for us to expect you to be able to come back and let us know. Yeah. And I can let you, you know, I mean, we have conversations all the time, so I can, you know, hey, we’re, yeah, we’re, we’re good. We’ll be good to go, you know, at this point. So the other question, we’ll pick the can down the road, The other question relates to making the data available so that everyone comes kind of close to the same answer. I don’t know, that’s a data mart or some kind of public form. So that, you know, I’m, you know, I asked Julia for, you know, what’s an enrollment number? And I get X and I ask Henry, and it’s x plus three. You know, I, so I think it’s important, right? Data is, can be very difficult to understand correctly, right? So I’m just curious, like, is there, are we trying to create

38:04 like a data mart that we could say, this is where we’re pulling data from and this is why we’re doing that. And so please use this data as you’re doing your, you know, if you wanna do your own self-analysis or something like That. Yeah, and I think the answer to that is it depends on what, what you’re looking at, right? So like, to Melissa’s point, you know, the greater number does include those, those, those other services. Um, do we pull those out and say, this is the actual kids that have, you know, bodies in seats. That’s one discussion. Why do we have these other kids in this other, that’s another discussion. But in totality, this is the, the number of students we are responsible for. So maybe, maybe, maybe enrollment’s not even the right number. And, uh, name, I mean, it’s, it’s who, how many students are we responsible for in Marblehead Public schools? It’s the 2,513 kids. Currently. How many kids have their rear ends and seats? It’s 107, less than that.

38:51 24 0 6. So I to the numbers. Um, so yeah, so there’s that, you know, so I think it depends on what the conversation is, but there’s different ways to pull the data for sure. And, you know, and you know, I, I found this, and this isn’t, this isn’t a, this isn’t a current thing or anything. I, I found that in general, media will look at the, the DSI numbers and make extrapolations from that. That’s really not a good way to do it because the numbers are never, they’re always in the rears. Um, so that’s important to know. I know he’s not looking this in occurrence here, but, um, that’s important to know. Uh, I would rather say someone say, here’s what I saw on the DSI numbers. If they’re looking at that, can you tell me like where we are currently? That’s a much better conversation to have and easier that, easier to get the actual numbers.

39:37 Do you know what I mean? So the enrollment discussion needs to be, you know, those questions have to be asked the right way to get the right answers. I guess If I could, to AL’S point, I think even outside of enrollment, there’s a broader conversation we can have around district data and you know, how it’s being publicized. Because for us to have these conversations around MCAS performance or enrollment or whatever the topic is, making sure that we’re all, we being like the community as a whole, starting from the same place mm-hmm. You know, will make those discussions, I think a lot more productive. No, yeah, I would agree. So I think having these discussions at, at this, this,

40:23 this level in terms of what we’re looking for is really helpful. Because it’s one thing just say, Hey, give me, you know, I want, we want the MCASS data. Well, okay, but there the stories to be told and, you know, and not to go down that rabbit hole, but this year’s MCAS present pages are look vastly different because now that it’s not a graduation requirement, I could tell you straight out that the numbers are gonna look much different than they have straight out. So, you know, those are things, those, that’s the part of the conversation we have to have. Okay. Alright. Um, Mike, you’re, you’re next up for an update, please. Mm-hmm. Thank you. Um, so I was asked to provide FY 25 fiscal update and I did put something in the packet. Uh, it, it has changed already, but I think we are getting much closer with the town

41:10 to finalizing the fiscal year 25 numbers. Uh, this afternoon I got some wait awaited news as, as I had mentioned in my memo, we were waiting for some transfers to come through and they had reclassed, some of our reclassified, some of our expenses that we had spent out of our local budget. The town had some APA money they needed to spend, so they looked at some of our expenses that they could, uh, justify using ARPA money for. So I’ll give you a little bit of the, the update. Um, it, it looks like, and I feel pretty confident with these numbers, much better than I did a week ago when I, when I wrote this report. Uh, it looks like we are going to, as a, as a school department return about $240,000, $240,819 to the town out of our LEA budget.

41:56 Uh, today they transferred or did a reclassification of another $213,122. So all total, it will look like the school department returned $454,000 to the town

42:12 Or fiscal year 25.

42:16 I can pause there for a moment ‘cause I know that’s the information you didn’t have coming into this evening.

42:23 Alright, good. Uh, so just the highlights from fiscal year 25. So our salaries were budgeted at $38.5 million, of which we expended approximately 36 million, leaving a surplus of about $2.5 million of unended salary funds. Uh, primarily this can be attributed to vacancies in our, um, positions early in the school year last year. I think if, if most of you recall, we had a lot of vacant positions when we first started last year, and, uh, we’re in a much better place this year. But those vacancies, uh, provided part of that. The other part of it is that we had some special education positions that we could not fill last year, and we had to, uh, fill them with contract service providers. And, uh, when we pay us a contract to service provider, I can’t take it out of a salary line. I have to take it out of a contracted services line.

43:10 We did not do budget transfers last year. That’ll be a, a goal of mine this year is that we do budget transfers throughout the year so that we can kind of align. Um, and, and I certainly don’t wanna shirk anything, but this wasn’t our budget last year. We were working with the previous administration’s budget. We had to rebuild the entire thing. It was probably rebuild it so we could understand it. Not, not that they did anything wrong, but we didn’t, we need to understand it in our own terms. So, um, it was probably late in the calendar year before we actually had, uh, a budget that was, uh, something that we could digest and understand. Uh, and then at that point we were into the new, the new budget cycle. And that was a whole new process for all of us that we, we spent a lot of time, uh, trying to communicate, be transparent, give the accurate numbers, um, make some great, uh, estimations

43:57 and I, I hope we did a great job, but we’ll know at the end of this year. Um, And so that’s kind of the salary lines when we get into contracted services. So if we were two and a half million dollars under budget, you can imagine we were somewhere over budget. And that’s primarily came in contracted services. Uh, we budgeted at 2.3 million and we came in at 3.3 million in expenses. And I, and I’ve broken that into four primary categories. First one was maintenance. Uh, I think later in the year when we realized we were gonna have some surplus funds, some unended funds, we focused on some things that we could do in the district to improve our facilities. One-time expenses, you know, you hire staff, those are long-term expenses, recurring expenses. If you do other things, there’s recurring expenses. It’s a onetime one time expenses.

44:43 We met with all of our principals and said, Hey, if you, if you had a few dollars, what would you like to do to spruce up your school? You know, we paint some flag poles, we did some brick work, um, we replaced some doors and windows, um, things like that. Uh, so we were over budget in, uh, maintenance by $388,000. We were also over budget in special education with our contracted service providers, uh, by $296,000. Again, when we couldn’t fill positions, we had to backfill it with contractor service providers. It’s kind of a, a, we draw a pretty clear line with those two, the salaries and the, uh, contractor service providers. Um, special education outta district transportation. Um, you know, Lisa, Maria and Victoria have done phenomenal work. They spent, I think the first six months last year trying to identify all of our kids that were outta district.

45:29 ‘cause I, I don’t think there was a really, um, documented list of those students. So we were over budget by a hundred and, uh, $39,000 in transportation for out of outta district students. Uh, and then finally, uh, you know, when, you know, I’ll know when we got to town meeting, there was a little change in our capital requests and we had already committed to, not committed at that point, but we had planned to do, we’d already put out to bid the painting of the pack and the reupholstery of the pack seats. And, um, we got cut back to doing one or the other. Uh, because we had already committed to doing the seats because we had ordered the material and the fabric. Um, we cut the pack painting out of our capital ask per request of the town. Uh, so we spent $138,000 of our budget money,

46:15 LEA local education agency budget, money last year, last year’s money to paint the pack. Um, we started it right before it was like the last week of June, so that we could cover as an expense in, in FY 25, even though some of it occurred in FY 26. So I had worked that all out with, uh, Alicia before we got to the end of the year and said, Hey, look, if I have money left over and I signed this contract, we’ll start it in June. It’s gonna carry into July. She says, so long as it starts in June, you’re good. So we made sure that that was gonna happen. So that was the, the majority of the contracted services. Um, another bucket we look at is supplies. We budgeted our supplies last year at about $1.3 million, and we expended about 1.24 million, um, one point, 1.24 million.

47:00 Uh, so we’re approximately 65,000 under, under budget. Supplies. And supplies are classroom supplies, office supplies, custodial supplies, um,

47:13 maintenance, custodial, those are probably the primary categories. There’s some other smaller supply lines. Um, but those are, those are the, the, the main ones outta that category. So we’re a little bit under budget there. Um, so back to Lisa Marie and Victoria. Um, our special education, as we said, we’re trying to find out where the students were and, and get a good documentation on it. We’ve got a, you know, we’ve got a great shared document right now that we are constantly updating. Um, but our special education tuitions last year were approximately 1.34 million over budget. Um, and again, it wasn’t our budget. We didn’t, we didn’t, we’re we’re gonna handle it, but it wasn’t our budget to, to defend. Um, if you consider that, we prepaid 900,000 in tuitions the year before for last year, and we took 1.1 million of last year’s budget

47:59 to prepaid this year. The net over budget really was about a million dollars, just slightly over a million dollars. Uh, and then, so that’s tuitions. The other items of note, um, legal expenses were $328,000 over budget. That is, uh, a contracted service. So you can take that out of the extra. The, the 1 million that we were over in contracted services, legal settlements were approximately 90,000 over budget. Natural gas was approximately 54,000 over budget. And on the flip side of that, electricity was 240,000 under budget. Um, I did not have these projections when I built the FY 26 budget. So working on basic, you know, rolling forward existing numbers, we will probably be over on electricity again this year

48:47 and probably be, I’m sorry, under, under budget on electricity and over budget on, um, natural gas. Hopefully we will not be nearly as far over budget and legal expenses. Uh, so that’s kind of the wrap up on FY 25. I gave you, um, a list of all of the line item expenses for the year. Um, those are gonna change a little bit because of the 213,000 I believe in, uh, reclassifications that happened today. Um, and I will, I can provide an update on those budget lines if anybody’s looking at those. So as we move into ffy 26, uh, we’ve just completed our first payroll, uh, for our 10 month staff. Uh, I have to say, um, that happened last, last Thursday the 11th or a week ago.

49:32 I, I have to give a huge shout out to our HR and payroll departments. Mm-hmm. Um, Lisa Deme, Gloria Sand have done a great job onboarding people, making sure that paperwork that needed to get completed got completed in a timely fashion. Uh, Carlene and Kristen Carlene’s, our payroll supervisor, and Kristen Payroll coordinator, and Kristen is our assistant business manager. Um, they meticulously went through every hire packet. Uh, and, and it wasn’t just a higher packet. We have to also have to give steps and quality increases to all employees. They scrubbed everything. They, they did an amazing job for, um, for the amount of work that needs to happen in that short period of time. Uh, and, and I have to compare it to last year, night and day difference. Just an amazing job. Um, and then also upstairs, Kathy Carey

50:20 and, uh, Amanda Elli, um, have worked with us tremendously. Made sure that everything was good. I’m not saying it went perfect. We have, we had a, um, probably less than a dozen, uh, probably of employees who questioned their payroll. We might have missed a, a coverage block. We might have missed, uh, an hour of overtime somewhere. Um, we might have missed a stipend. Everybody got their paycheck. They may not have been exactly what they were looking for. Uh, on the plus side, we spoke with every one of those employees. We made sure that it wasn’t a, a financial hardship for them. And, um, identified that we did not have to run a supplemental payroll last week. Um, and if anybody had, you know, they all said, we think it only two weeks had, had anybody said they couldn’t, we certainly would’ve taken care of them, uh, in,

51:07 in a timely fashion, including the, the town still on weekly payroll. So we could have thrown stuff on this week if we absolutely needed to. But, uh, it’s a lot of work for them to pull in our people into their payroll. So we said we asked, talked to ‘em all, and again, we did a great job. Amazing. Um, so as we’ve talked about the implementation of Munis, uh, there are several people in this district, in the town who have used Munis in other communities. Um, it is, I think we were all expecting it to go a lot smoother. ‘cause we’d all used it before. It hasn’t gone horribly, but there have been a lot of, you know, things that have delayed us. You know, AP paying bills, you know, vendors being set up ‘cause they didn’t get transferred over, right? There were a lot of little quirks that delayed some things. So we have some vendors who are not extremely pleased with us right now.

51:52 Um, we, we worked with the time this week to make sure that all outstanding invoices that were sent up could be paid in a very timely manner. ‘cause we, we do have some vendors who are, who would prefer that to get their money in, in less than 30 days. And, and we’re a little over 30 days with some of our vendors right now. It’s not months, not three, four months, but, you know, six weeks, seven weeks past due. So, um, you know, something that we’re not proud of, but we are working diligently to make sure that’s taken care of. Um, we are transitioning, so that was just ap, accounts payable, general ledger accounting. Uh, we are transitioning our payroll and our HR modules January 1st, 2026. So three more months. We’ve been working around, um, a a lot

52:38 of full day meetings once or twice a week with our HR and payroll departments. So they are very entrenched. And you put that on top of trying to open a school year. I’m telling you, they, they’ve really bent over backwards to make this happen. Um, so they’ve been in training and whatnot. So, uh, what I will say is, I have to caution, last year I started giving you budget reports in December or January. Um, what’s happening right now is all payroll’s going through soft, right? And all expenses are going through, uh, Eunice. It’s not really called Eunice. That’s their old name. It’s called ERP or something like that. Um, I need the town to take the payroll expenses through a crosswalk and have it hit as a journal adjustment into Muni.

53:24 And they haven’t, they’ve been, they’ve been focusing on getting fiscally a 25 closed. So they haven’t made those transfers yet. Uh, and, and I don’t know, once we start to do them, how smooth it’s going to be. And I, I don’t want to commit to something. I can probably do my own crosswalks for reporting purposes. It probably take me an extra day or two to pull out the reports for you. But, um, just caution that it may not be as smooth until we get to January or February. With, with the reporting. I, I will give you as transparent of information as I can. I will be as forward as I can. Um, just, just understand that it may not be what you, what you received last year. Um, so there we go on that. Just to, um, kind of go over what some of the things that we did this summer. Our custodial maintenance staff, uh, huge kudos to them. They were just amazing.

54:09 Uh, on, on, you know, when I arrived here last July, there were a lot of, a lot of things were up in the air. A lot of people didn’t know what they were doing, not what they were doing, what, what direction they were supposed to be going in. Who, who they were reporting to. You know, what, what they should be working on during the summer. So, um, you know, Todd and I created a list. We met with all the custodians. We met with the maintenance guys. We said, Hey, maintenance folks, um, hey, look, this is our expectation for the summer. And we set the expectation. They took it as a challenge and they far exceeded my expectations. But, so, uh, just to cover some of the schools at Glover, we did, uh, finalize the HVAC installation. And I, and I’ll caution that it’s only about 20% of the building, ‘cause that’s all that was designed for the Glover. So not every classroom has HVAC. Not every space has HVAC.

54:55 They have heat. They don’t, they have heat, they have ventilation. They don’t have the air conditioning. Um, so levers system, really, from what I understand, never really functioned properly from the start when it was built. Um, we had a, a call it MEP, professional, mechanical, electrical, plumbing professional on site the entire time, or on onsite, not the entire time throughout the project, uh, about one day a week. And, um, you know, it was critical to have him there. He, he really dialed in to this contract to make sure that they were doing everything that they needed to do. So, very pleased that the Glover HVAC is up, uh, special thanks to our PTO at Glover. They donated, uh, $50,000 for new piece of equipment. Uh, I’ve been over there once or twice now. The kids love it. It’s a little, little, uh, climbing structure with ropes.

55:43 And, um, uh, it’s very similar to the one that’s at Village. And I’m not sure if there’s one at Brown or not, but very similar to the one at Village. Um, the kids love it. They were planning on it. They, I didn’t know we could get so many kids on one field structure, but they, they did a great job. Uh, so thank you to the PTO. And then, uh, I dunno if you recall, but, um, the previous town meeting, not this past one, I believe the one before the town meeting, uh, they had approved some money for new surfacing of playgrounds. So we were able to use that. Em resurface the Glover playground, uh, that the, the rubberized surface, there was, um, oh, looked like a Massachusetts road. There were some pot, there were some potholes. Um, yeah, looked like the plaza just come through. Uh, also at Glover we did some painting whiteboards. Um, the whiteboard, the, the, I dunno if you know, the, the,

56:30 the, the walls in the hallway at Glover are actually a whiteboard paint, so you can use a whiteboard board marker on it. Um, over, over 10 or 11 years, they, they need to be refreshed. So, uh, our our own custodial and maintenance staff took care of that, so thank you. And they also painted, uh, the stairway. Uh, there’s a stairway that was just cement and it, it just looked, it was just cement. It was from the first floor to the second floor. It’s actually a seating area. I think it’s a little like staging area. Um, and they, they painted it green. It’s a, it’s a, it’s a pretty green. It’s a pretty green green. It green. Yeah, it’s green. It’s green. Um, but it looks a lot better than what it’s,

57:09 uh, and then also we rearranged the main office. If anybody goes under Glover, you’ll notice that Dawn’s desk is back where it was a few years ago. And, uh, flows a lot better in the main office there. That’s where we did most of our work. But can, Can I just add 1 1, 2 things that go up? Sure. Just, um, so also part of the, the playground, um, we did some really good stuff. The playground structure and re rising. Um, my, my hope is that we can continue to kind of upgrade that. I’d like to get small boulders out of there, maybe move them down and retain wall something. And we’re looking at how, uh, the wash are, because the way that it’s just designed poorly. So like, stuff gets washed out and there’s rocks and scrabble all over the place. So we’re gonna continue to look at that. And then the other ask was, uh, there’s, um, glass cases on the first and the second floor. And I was just talking to, I was over there

57:54 for the PTO meeting this morning, got brought up on just looking at it to see if that glass is, you know, shatterproof glass or not, just ‘cause it’s, you know, kids running. So that brought up in the facility. Yeah. So, okay. So, um, we’re, we’re looking at that. We, we have to try to determine if it’s, I’m assuming that it’s like, like the kind of glass that we spider, not shatter, um, ‘cause it’s a newer building. But Mike and I are, uh, we’re gonna explore that a little bit more to see if we can figure that out. So just wanna throw out there.

58:22 John and I were coming up for, with a test for it, but we don’t think it’s gonna fly.

58:27 Uh, so moving on to Brown school, uh, brown, you know, very new school. So not a whole lot to do there. But, um, we did install a bottle filling station. Uh, it’s a little shocking that, uh, a new school like that did not have water access for our students during lunch. So there is now a bo a bottle filling station in the brown school in the cafeteria. They had it down the hall. They could’ve gotten water. They just wasn’t in the cafeteria where the students were during lunch, all at breakfast. Um, there were some lines and some windows that needed some repairing motors and things like that. So those were repaired. Um, if anybody knew that in the cafeteria, there was a, there’s a trim that goes over the stage and a couple of pieces of the trim had become loose. Todd’s team went up and had taken them down immediately to make sure that nothing fell on anybody. And over the summer, they were able to reinstall them, secure them properly, the way they should have been, uh,

59:15 installed in the first place. So, uh, thank you to them for that. And, uh, thanks to our PTO at Brown, there is, I’m not sure that it’s up yet, but the posts are there. Uh, there’s gonna be a new netting system on the playground to keep the balls from going down the hill towards the tower school. So there’s, I think that PTO is said, either we keep buying more balls or we put up buy, buy a net. So I think they chose to buy the net. So thank you to the PTO at Brown,

59:41 uh, veterans. Uh, so as I mentioned earlier, we cut the, the pack painted, which was huge. We got the new upholstery in the pack, which is huge. It looks great. Um, we would like to, to do the runners, the carpet runners in there eventually. But, you know, we, we ran out of time and money, but, uh, the pack looks great and the new, the light fixtures on the wall need something cool. We need to work on that also. Um, we added, uh, mini split units to, um, one of the classrooms. It’s right above the computer lab, or it’s a computer lab. And the windows were not sufficient to keep it. The building, that area, that area kind of cooled with all the energy coming out of the computer system. So, uh, we had a mini split there, and I think we put a mini split in the it space in the gymnasium. We did get some wall padding. It’s been on plan for about six months. It finally happened.

1:00:28 So the new wall padding is up in the gymnasium at veterans. Um, this really wasn’t a summer project, but I had to put it on there. Uh, we painted the flagpole, uh, the main flagpole. Uh, somebody continually reminded me how bad it looked. Um, so, uh, that, that got done. So when I went over look at the flagpole to see how bad it was, I noticed that the front entrance, uh, all the brick work around the front entrance, which really isn’t the front entrance, it’s, it’s the old front entrance. Uh, it needed to be repointed, um, probably more than repointed. Some of the bricks need to be reset and whatnot. So, um, we got both those things. The flag pole was painted and the, the brick entryway was, um, spruced up so that everything looks like it was supposed to, uh, at village, you know, I, I gotta say villages at school, that huge shutout to that custodial staff, they, oh, well, all

1:01:15 of our custodial staff vets, custodial staff was down two of their, their, their, their primary lead guy and person in their, um, assistant lead. Uh, and just Marilyn over there rocked it this summer. Mm-hmm. She just, she just crushed it. Veterans. So with her team, you know, they, they, they worked really hard. Um, and Marilyn’s not a lead. She’s not an assistant lead. She just the next, the next man up. So she, uh, she, she took over. Um, but village, mm-hmm. When I went through village last summer, um, you know, they, they kind of joke with me and they, somebody left a pair of white gloves on my, on my desk when I was away on vacation one, one day or something. Um, I was going around all the overhangs over all the doors and windows and all the, um, projectors and the, and the smart boards. And, you know, the floors looked great.

1:02:02 The walls looked okay, but there were, there were areas that they weren’t hitting. Uh, and that when I went to that building, these guys caught on it quickly. And, um, when I went to the village this year is spotless. I’m telling you, I could not find a spec of duck dust. I was so proud. So, uh, thank you to them. But, uh, the only thing we really did over there this year, that was a primary project. There were a lot of little projects. Uh, the primary project was putting in the new skill board, which was a donation from, um, it was National Grand Bank and Youth sports. Yeah. Youth football. Youth football. So, um, so thank you to them. Uh, they, they used it last week. They said it worked fantastic. So that’s great. And, and you can control it from your phone. I could probably mess with their score right now, but, uh, it’s great. Uh, and then, um, we’ll just moving on to the high school. Um, during negotiations, we’re up and down stairs all the time.

1:02:47 And I noticed how bad our front stairs, our main stairway looked, uh, just chip paint and stuff. So, um, while they were painting, when they get done painting the pack, we, we told ‘em, Hey, can you go over and, and hit the stairs too? So they did that. It was, that was a, a contractor that we used. Um, we have made substantial progress in the fire doors. That’s been the never ending project. Uh, I think everything is tied in except for one connection that we need the, the sprinkler company to come in and tie in something so that the doors actually go down when the fire alarm is pulled. Right now, the doors go down. If the smoke detectors in that immediate area identify smoke in that area, they will go down. But if the whole building is set off, they don’t go down. So, um, there are fire doors. It’s, it’s, um, something we’re working on. Um, we can put ‘em down manually.

1:03:34 We can put ‘em down if, if that, if they’re detected right there at that location. We did put in new entrance doors. Unfortunately, they ordered the wrong size glass for the panes above the door. The, um, skylights, whatever you call ‘em. Um, sidelights. Huh? Transom. Transom, yes. Um, so on the first day of school, they weren’t in, but I understand by that Friday they did get installed. So they’re in, I’m pleased about that. But the new entrance doors are all done. That was a capital project from town meeting a couple years ago. Um, we did install mini splits in the athletic director’s office. The food service director’s office. Those are two offices that are used year round. Didn’t have any air conditioning. So in the summertime they got quite, um, quite warm in that area. So, uh, and I’m almost done here. Uh, food services, we installed new quick cooking equipment, warming equipment and prep materials in most of our schools.

1:04:21 Um, I, I believe Village is gonna get a whole new line before the end of the year. A whole new serving line on both sides of the village school. So that’s, that’s amazing. ‘cause I think their old one is, uh, a little dated, got some wood tops on it, things that we, we’d prefer to go to stainless steel. So John Constantino and his team are working on that. So thank you to John and them to make sure our food service areas are as, as good as we can get ‘em. Um, I already covered the custodians. Oh. So the final thing is transportation. Um, so currently we’re running four big buses. Last year we ran three big buses and two mini buses. This year we’re running four big buses, which is our spare. We, we no longer have a spare, which very causes me some angst. Um, you know, if something goes down on one of the four big buses, we, we don’t have a backup bus.

1:05:07 Uh, which means we may have to do double runs. Fortunately, it’s a small town, we can get around relatively quickly. Um, but we don’t have a spare bus right now. And so we’re running out four big buses. Those are, uh, those were students K to six who are outside of two miles, uh, are provided transportation at no charge per state law. And students inside of two miles are paid a ride. So, uh, maybe we were a little over ambitious on letting kids pay a ride. Families paid a ride and overbooked our buses a little bit. So that, that’s concern for me. Um, but I have to tell you there, it’s a, it’s a need in Marblehead. Parents call us consistently going, how can I get my child on the bus? I I have to be here by a certain time, or I can’t get, I have a little one at home. I can’t, you know, it’s, it’s hard for me to juggle. Um, and I, I feel for them. I understand that. Um, but we are at capacity right now.

1:05:53 So we’ve had to tell parents recently that we can’t, we can’t, um, support them at this time. But if, you know, if kids decide not to take the bus and we find out there’s extra seats available, we’ll certainly, I, I don’t believe in sending half empty buses into school and telling families that, that, sorry, we can’t support you. So we’ll, we’ll continue to work on that. Um, and and really great news is, uh, we purchased an electric bus. An electric van, not a bus, sorry, an electric van. It’s a 70 van. It’s a Ford Transit, E three 50. It holds approximately 10 or 12 passengers. We are primarily gonna use that for special education, transportation in the morning, in the afternoon, um, on the way in and outta school. Uh, but we’re also gonna be able to use that for, um, some of our special education groups that need to go

1:06:39 to the supermarket during the day or go to maybe some job coaching during the day or small field trips. Um, and then after school, some of our small athletic teams, maybe like the golf team, um, you know, teams that don’t have 30 or 40 players, uh, will be able to use that. And, uh, what a seven D vehicle is, is it’s, it’s a regular vehicle, but it’s got the flashing lights on it. It’s got this, you know, um, all the safety equipment’s on board, the fire extinguisher, everything that’s required to be on a bus, it has on it, but it’s a smaller vehicle. If we use it on a fixed route, meaning in the morning, in the afternoon, picking up and dropping off students at their homes, you’d be required to have a seven D license. Not hard to get, but not something that anybody has, unless they have a plan to drive a seven D vehicle. Um, outside of that normal schedule,

1:07:24 anybody can drive the van. So our athletic coaches, as long as they have a valid driver’s license, um, proof of insurance, they could drive the van if they choose to. I mean, we would never tell a coach they have to drive it. But if they said, Hey, we really need to get to this match earlier today, and only get six kids to go. And, you know, we can certainly, we say, Hey, here’s keys to the van. If you’re comfortable driving it, lemme see your license, let’s get a photo of it. But, um, everything will be, you know, on the up and up. But, um, on non routed trips, um, anybody can drive that van. So that is my recap of 25 and summer of 26. Okay. I gotta thank you, Mike, for you and the custodial and maintenance staff for all this work.

1:08:09 I get to hear this rundown in the facility subcommittee, but the kids, I, I think it makes such an impact on their school day. And when you talk to them about what would you change at your school, like, at least half the things are about the facilities, you know, we want a water fountain or something. So it, it really has a huge impact. And I, they did a great job and, and so thank you. This, this falls challenge’s gonna be leaves and you know, and I know we, we partner with Park and Rec, but when I walk into a building in December and I still, still see the leaves like that have, they were cleared away, but they blew back again. And I’m like, I, I’m a leave now, now my focus is gonna be on leaves, you know? So, um, you know, the foliage leaves not, yeah. Yeah.

1:08:51 Okay. Look, lookout leaves. Alright. Um, Mike, you also have the next item around. Yeah, I just had A couple comments. I guess. Whoop, I’m sorry. Go ahead, Jen. Any Comment about the budget? Apparently not. Um, so thank you for the update. Um, we, I, there will be a, I guess a budget subcommittee meeting at some point, but I am one person. I would like to see the current budget reported as similar. I don’t know whether how possible that is. We used to always get that mm-hmm. Monthly. If we, even if we get a quarterly, it would be my request, but budget, you know, budgeted spent, encumbered showing us, you know, on the major line items. Um, I think the other thing too is that we really do, I mean, we are legally responsible to vote the transfers. So I know we didn’t do it last year, but I think we need to make sure we do it this year.

1:09:38 Yeah. We’ve, we’ve already had that conversation about home. And do we, I don’t know if we voted the, or maybe we did vote the prepayment.

1:09:46 Yeah. And my memory’s a little foggy on that one. And then we talked about it, we talked about at least matching the prepayment from the year before of 900,000. Okay. Um, and we went to 1.1 million. Okay, well, let’s make sure this Year. So yeah, the 1.1 million, I don’t believe we voted the 1.1 million. Well, it’s not. So that’s important. But also, I think we have to vote the surplus that goes back, do we not? Or maybe I I, we used to do it. I don’t know if we have to. Do you think the town will take it if we Don’t? No, I think the town will take it. Um, but I do think that it’s, you know, required to do that. But yeah. And I think, I think, and I think it’s good to be transparent about it, to let everybody know that, you know, we were fiscally responsible. We, you know, I’m sure we could have found a way to spend another $400,000, but we thought it was, you know, we did a, we, we got our PAC taken care of, we got a lot

1:10:31 of projects taken care of, and we made sure that, you know, we were fiscally responsible and returned some money to, it’s on to Free cash. I mean, that goes right, flows right to free cash. That’s outside of my area. Yeah, that’s, that’s All good news for the, thank you. I did actually have a question. Um, we came in, you know, several million, couple million dollars under on the salary line last year. And I, to the best of my recollection, we’re now in a pattern of like, we’ve had a couple of years where we’ve had budget surpluses that have been attributed to unfilled positions. And I know you haven’t been here, and it’s not your, your budgets, but I would like to better understand those unfilled positions, you know, are, are they similar

1:11:18 or the same positions either sitting open or, you know, are returning employees through them? Um, just to better understand how this is happening year over year. I think the simple answers we always look at, you know, if, like last year there was a, a lot went un unfilled at the beginning. Just whatever we, we backfilled a good, good chunk of them. So that money didn’t, that doesn’t mean that we didn’t fill ‘em at all. It just means that it took a while to fill out. And then we always look at, um, you know, if there’s open positions, do we need to fill ‘em? And if not, that’s, that’s probably the attrition, right? So we, we look at that. Um, right now if we only have, we still only have a small three or four positions that are still open. Um mm-hmm. I just hired a special educator for the high school. So there’s one more there.

1:12:03 And then there’s one more that we had to, um,

1:12:08 that at, at Glover school. I think we’re also hiring a, a teacher there. So those are just the two, the two that I’m, that I believe we have open at this point. And I think it’s like one or two ias just because of student need. They, they kind of came in, um, you know, late in the game. So we had a couple move ins that require, you know, staff. So I feel, I feel better about that. We don’t have, you know, a lot, a lot of folks floating around that aren’t, that aren’t filled now. So I think that the actuals would be much easier to track, um, at this point saying like, this is what we had budgeted, this is what we had filled. And then we always look at where do we, where we gain some things from attrition. Um, and then, you know, obviously the retirements, we had I think a dozen last year, um, which is, which is a decent amount. So, uh, yeah. We’ll, we continue.

1:12:53 Yeah. And I, I’ll say within my budget, um, as we get into budget subcommittees and, and whatnot, you’ll, you’ll be able to see this more clearly. Uh, every person is, is listed with their step, their column, their salary. And that’s how we built the budget. There were only two lines in the budget that do not directly tie to a person. One is lane changes, um, step changes, lane changes, not so much step, but lane changes. These are people who, um, go from 15 credits to 30 credits, or 45 credits to 60 credits. We usually don’t know that exact number when we build the budget. So, uh, there’s a, there’s a line item in there for, for lane changes. And the other one is retirements. ‘cause we don’t always know retirements, but we know there’s gonna be a savings. So lane changes increases our budget. Um, that’s a, that’s an add to our budget. And retirements is a decrease on our budget. So there are two lines in the budget

1:13:39 that don’t directly tie to an individual. And, and those are the two lines. Uh, and they’re relatively small, I mean, within a couple hundred thousand dollars. So, uh, it’s not, it’s not a huge thing, but you’ll, you’ll see that as we we get through the budget process and, and, um, in the subject, Based on what you’re describing, then we should be shooting for more accuracy on the salaries line, probably moving forward. Right. Um, I think we are, I feel very comfortable Okay. With the accuracy. Now, when the budget was built for 25, I can’t, I did not build that budget and, and I rebuilt the best I could and, and I, and I found some pockets of money and I scratched my head and I said, you know, was that, was that for lane changes? Was that for retirements? Was that for, for something else? I, you know, I couldn’t tie it out and, um, you know, we needed to move forward there,

1:14:25 there was a lot going on last fall when I was trying to rebuild the budget there. Was there other things? Yeah, There’s, there’s gonna be some outlier years, right? But I, I, I think what Melissa was getting to is like, there probably is some pattern, right? Of retirements or some pattern of turnover. And do you take that into account in the forecasting, or do you just assume a hundred percent? So in the Budget position? In the budget, I don’t have, It’s hard, there’s hard to do patterns in retirements. Those are sort No, you can, you can say it’s, you know, it’s about as many, you know, some users a couple 4 15 15. Yeah. But It’s More just like missing in any direction by that amount of a number. Just like people. Well, It’s wonder why you ask for that much money if you don’t need it. I can talk About that offline. Okay. Um, I think there’s two things though that I will start in September,

1:15:11 and you’ll hear this till June or May. Well, yes. Our meeting staff accountability report, I’ve been asking for that for this is my seventh year. Um, to get, which would be to account for every single position that we’ve budgeted for, right? So, or I’m sorry, I take it back count for every position that’s in every building. Yeah. So what’s their case load? What’s their class loads accounting for every staff. And then the other thing is a zero based budget. So what we tend to do is we roll over every year. So, or we, what we’ve done in the past is this is what the village school budget was last year. This is what the village school budget will be this year, including contractual increase obligation, obligation increases. A zero based budget process is throw it away. And you say, okay, how many students do you have to village school? What do you, who do I, how many people do I need? And you build it. And that has also been an elusive project

1:15:59 since I’ve been on the committee, which it’s a lot of work. And I know that’s hard to do, but there might, it is, at least it is aspirational mm-hmm. To do something like that. ‘cause that would give you not only accuracy in what you’re, you know, in what you have, but accuracy in what you need. Yeah. So, uh, lane changes in this current year budget is budgeted at, uh, $235,000, and retirements are budgeted as a negative $181,000. So they almost balance each other off, uh, between retirements and lane changes. So everybody says, oh, you have, you have savings from retirement. Yeah, you do. But you also have people who are continuing their education and, and mm-hmm. Becoming more, uh, getting more professional development

1:16:44 and whatnot, that that costs us. And you only have, you only have, um, savings from retirements if you’re not, if you’re able to hire a lower, lower staff. I mean, there’s, you know, world language, you know, special ed, there’s some really difficult positions to fill mm-hmm. Where you don’t always gain, gain that, you know, um, there’s some that, you know, you have a top step second grade teacher, it’s, it’s probably a little bit easier to get a second grade teacher than it’s to get a, you know, um, highly trained special educator. Um, so those are the things you have to look at too. And I think, uh, yeah, what we, we always look at that. So we look at attrition, we look at, um, you know, how we, how we can manage the numbers. And, you know, realistically, um, I feel good where Mike is right now in his process from where we were when we both started.

1:17:31 I mean, I feel much better. Um, and I think, you know, when we have the budget conversations, zero based budget, um, or not, or whatever, I think even if you do not as zero based budget, it’s still a starting point. And then you can, then you adjust it from there. So those would be conversations we have, but, you know, I have to be comfortable with how Mike is comfortable building his budget as well. So, you know, I, I just, I just feel, I feel much better that Mike has a really good handle on where things are. He is been having a lot of conversations with student services, have a lot of conversations with John Constantino and the other, other directors around efficiencies and, um, and where we can, where we can look to kind of holding some stuff down. So, And I think we should note the lane changes are a good thing, right? Yes. Of course. You know, that we want, yeah, we want, we’d love to have everybody have a lane change. You know, it’s really a great thing for our students,

1:18:18 obviously for the, for our staff, but for our students. I think on the, on the comment of, um, the zero based budget, I think Munis is gonna help us. I don’t think we’re gonna get to a zero based budget, at least not this year. Um, but it’s gonna help us get to what a zero based budget looks like. Munis will allow us to, if you take the contracted services line for, to it, I’ll just give that an example. Within Munis, I’ll be able to put Dell computers or HP computers or whatever in an amount, so we know exactly every line of how much we’re spending with. Every on may not be with a vendor, but it may be for, um, you know, our Aspen, you know, there’s a cost to Aspen. Mm-hmm. We’ll be able to align everything out so that people will be able to see actually where we’re spending that it money, um, and things like that. So that’s, I’ve had that experience with

1:19:03 Tyler Technologies is the technic of the company that makes Muni. They have another product, very similar called, um, infinite Visions. And we did that in Infinite Visions. Uh, in my last district. We were every, every, every budget leader for their department. We’ll line item it out. Julia will sit here and go, okay, Mike, this is what we’re spending on math curriculum. This is what we’re spending on social studies curriculum, and this is what we’re spending on English curriculum. Or this is the PD I need and here are the PD that we’re gonna actually go for. So it’ll be a lot more transparent. Uh, you’ll be able to see where, where dollars are being spent. I don’t know if it’s zero based budgeting. I get it. You throw the whole budget out and you start all over again. And, and I’m not sure, you know, when you talk about principals, other than class sizes and, and staffing, the principals only have three budget lines.

1:19:48 They’ve got a supply line or two supply lines, one’s for their office, which is only a couple of thousand dollars. And one is for their students, their classrooms, their teachers, uh, and then they have a professional development line. Other than that, they, everything else is salary in the building level. So there’s not a lot to, you know, I mean, unless you want to, unless you wanna line out about crayons and in and pencils and, and I’m not being, you know, WI don’t, we could say every teacher gets $500 for their classroom supplies at, at grades one to three, and every teacher grades four to six get $400 whatev, whatever the number is. But we can, we can work in some, some variables and some, um, some calculations to bring some equity and make sure that, that it aligns with the enrollment in the schools.

1:20:30 Good. Look, I’m done.

1:20:34 Alright. Um, you’re almost done, Mike. Uh, disposition of audio meters.

1:20:43 Uh, yes. So, um, Megan Cran, who is our, sorry, lead nurse, I gotta bring up the, yeah, I gotta bring up the, the memo. Uh, our lead nurse, uh, identified that there are audiometers in our school buildings that were from the 1990s. They were replaced last year. She said, what do I do with them? I said, well, school committee has to declare ‘em surplus before we can do anything. Um, she did tell me that she found them on eBay for like 50 or $60, and if they’re still on eBay, then they’re probably not getting 50 or $60 for them. But once we declare ‘em surplus, I think we have to put ‘em on the state’s list that any, but any other agency in the state can get ‘em from us for free. I, I don’t think anybody wants them. Uh, and then we can, uh, either try and sell ‘em on eBay, which we might get for these eight of them.

1:21:29 If we got $400, I think I’d be shocked. Um, or we, we could send it to a, uh, electronics recycling company to just get ‘em, take ‘em off our hands. So they’re responsibly disposed of. Um, but there are eight of them. Uh, some schools have like two or three, and I think that’s probably because we’ve closed schools and, you know, things are just migrated into the, to the building. So, ended Up in the, There are eight of them. They would like them declared surplus so that they can dispose them. Okay. So this is a, a voting item. So we need a motion to declare these eight. I said it wrong, audiometers. I, I, I could have said As, as surplus. It’s been 40 years since I saw one. Seconded. Okay. Uh, any discussion? Do we want Mike to say it one more time? Um,

1:22:18 Jen just stepped out, so I don’t know if we Right. You can, I think, we’ll, I think we’ll be fine. Four? Yeah. Okay. Uh, who in favor or not in favor? In favor. Thank you. Start with a newbie in Yeah, I wasn’t, you should send, I wasn’t real nice. Was it? Uh, Henry in favor? Al in favor. The motion passes. Four zero.

1:22:42 Okay. Um, back to our superintendent, uh, update on anti-discrimination committee. Thank you. Um, thank you, Mr. Chairman. Uh, can you put up that another PowerPoint for me, Frank, please.

1:22:56 Guess he’s Getting Ms. Frank’s getting it up. Um, the committee has asked for me to do a, um, update on the anti-discrimination. Lost half the committee now, I think, I think I left the door locked. If not, you have to go downstairs. Um, I’ll, I’ll, I’m gonna start anyway. So, anti-discrimination committee update. Uh, we had a meeting on September 18th. That was our first meeting of the year. Um, I’m, I’m pretty happy with the way the meeting went. I think, uh, you know, I was rejuvenated by the conversation that the school committee had in regard to, um, you know, making sure that we have some deliverables, making sure that, you know, it’s kind of in the forefront of everything. And not that it wasn’t last year, it was just, you know, again, lots of stuff going on. I tried to get the committee going. Uh, we had members, we had excitement.

1:23:42 Um, it just, you know, the, the year just kind of, kind of, not spotted up, but kind of went along. And I don’t feel like we ended the school year with the committee where I wanted it to be anyway, so this is actually good. So we have this, uh, same members of the committee all all decided they wanted to come back and continue to work, which is great. Um, the first slide, can you on the next slide for me please? Um, is just, you know, kind of the agenda items. So it was very basic. I welcomed everybody back. Uh, we review meeting norms to make sure everyone kind of, you know, made sure that, uh, we’re all active listeners and, uh, that we respect everybody’s viewpoints. Um, which I find is very important to do, you know, even with adults without children, kids, but adults sometimes need that reminder. Um, then we started talking about how we can define some plans and deliverables for the school year, and then we ended with kind of reviewing some resources.

1:24:28 So that was the overall agenda. Uh, next slide, please, Frank. Um, so part of the conversation was, you know, where should we start? And this is always, this is always the trouble with these kind of committees. It’s like, you know, there’s members of the committees that are very passionate and, um, about certain things or areas that they want to see. Um, and I think the conversation is very lively and very, um, productive because, uh, we talked about, you know, what groups, uh, we’re looking at administrators, looking at educators, looking at students and, and caregivers, parents, community members. Um, how do we, how do we provide some, some, you know, uh, some speakers or some, you know, uh, conversations around anti-discrimination in general. And the focus a lot of times ends up, we end up talking a lot about anti-Semitism.

1:25:14 ‘cause that’s obviously, um, something we have to address, uh, here in Marblehead and also globally. So a lot of the conversation, um, kind of focus on, on that. Um, and we said that we are gonna kind of have that as, as one of our main foci, but also to make sure that we’re also talking about racism. We’re talking about, uh, xenophobia, we’re talking about L-G-B-T-Q LGBTQ plus, um, and making sure that those are all part of the discussion. So, um, I think there was some good balance discussion in the meeting around that. Um, we talked about, you know, antisemitism is number one issue and racism is number two. And then we said, well, we’re not gonna really put numbers on those things. We’re gonna, we’re gonna address all of ‘em. And, and, you know, whatever’s in the forefront, you know, we can dress differently or, or more, um, you know, more in a forward way. So it was good, good conversation.

1:26:00 So I thought that was great. Um, and then if you can put the next, the next slide up. So we determined on the, out of the, uh, out of the, out of the teams, where will we focus first? Um, so we decided, uh, meeting with the administrative team first. Um, uh, we had a presentation from Dr. Uh, MI for our halburn, um, to the school committee. It wasn’t, you know, the audio wasn’t great, so we didn’t hear like everything that she was saying, but she has, she had a pretty good message around, um, anti-discrimination, obviously. Um, there’s a lot of her, the tilt is towards antisemitism. Um, and that’s okay. And that’s fine. So I’m actually, I was supposed to meet with her, let’s say Thursday. I’m supposed to meet with her yesterday. She was on a plane, so we’re actually meeting tomorrow. So I, I put it here that we we’re meeting on Wednesday. We’re actually meeting tomorrow. So tomorrow morning I’m gonna do a zoom meeting with her. And the conversation is about how she can bring some

1:26:46 of her thoughts, ideas around, um, uh, how we can address, um, you know, hatred and discrimination in the school setting at the administrative level so that, that, you know, we can kind of push that down, um, out to the educators and students as an initial thought. Um, so I’m gonna have that conversation with her tomorrow, get a better handle on what she’ll bring to the mix, uh, what that will look like. Uh, my thought is likely we have, we, we meet as an all administrative team, um, monthly. So I possibly at our next meeting, if, if, if her schedule lines up and it makes sense, I’ll bring her into that forum. Um, and we’ll have, you know, an hour, hour and a half discussion around, um, some of the things that she thinks might be helpful to Marblehead.

1:27:31 Um, and again, not solely antisemitism, but that’d be, you know, a large part of that. Um, so that’s, that’s one, one deliverable that, that we’re working on. And then I think, um, uh, we also talked about other presentations, um, and discussions around, you know, what that would look like. We talked about utilizing some of the local resources and lab and foundation, a DL, et cetera, around, um, what kind of programming do they have? So when we get to like educators and students and, and parents, um, what makes sense? At what level does it make sense and what form? Is it a in school assembly for the students, you know, during the day? Is it an evening, you know, assembly or presentation for the parents? Would it be a zoom kind of thing? So those are the, those are the conversations we’re already having. So we can kind of meter out, um, administrators

1:28:18 and then likely, um, educator, students, parents maybe in that order. We’re still figuring that, that, that part out. But how do we, how do we leverage some of the, uh, some of the local resources? And part of that will also be, you know, what is other, what have other school districts done in the role of anti-discrimination? What’s been helpful? A lot of it is how do we vet, you know, um, presenters and what do they look like and what do they bring to the mix? Similarly, similarly, like when we’re talking about, um, bringing folks who talk about substance abuse, alcohol, you know, we, we had talked about that here at this committee. Um, you know, who do we bring in that’s gonna be impactful in a way that’s helpful? Mm-hmm. Um, knowing that in the realm of anti-discrimination, um, some people might be seen, seen or heard as being a little bit divisive.

1:29:03 And we talked a lot about that in the, in the meeting. Um, and I think the answer was that we have to live sometimes in our uncomfortability to be able to move forward and have those discussions in real, and, and let people speak their truth and hear the truth and, and, and accept and, and have conversations that might be hard. And, you know, that’s a great way to frame it, that that was framed by members of the group. And I think, um, when we move forward, yeah, whoever we bring in, there’s gonna be some people that say, I, I, I don’t agree with bringing that person or people in. Um, but we’re gonna look and do the best we can to make sure that whoever we’re bringing in speaks to the greater anti-discrimination piece. Um, and helping with strategies and ways we can really combat hate and hate speech

1:29:48 and everything. In addition to what we’re doing in, in the anti-discrimination committee, we’re having those ongoing discussions with administrators. We’re having those ongoing discussions through the administrators to the educators and, and how do we, how do we make sure that we have reporting mechanisms in place for, um, anything discrim, discrimination, harassment, bullying, and what do those, um, reporting mechanisms look like and how are they used? So we talked a little bit about that in the committee as well. And, and, um, Kaia Johnson, who sits on the committee, had some really good ideas about maybe, um, coming up with ways for, especially at the high school where, um, you know, QR codes where they can do some, uh, reporting of the, you know, harassment, discrimination, um, you know, I kind of hate speech and stuff so that we have, we can capture that and it can, you know, be anonymous, um,

1:30:36 to give us data, but it’s better when it’s not anonymous, we can actually address it. Um, so we talked about that. What does that look like? How would that, how would we collect the data? What would we do with the data? Um, who manages that data? Those are all conversations. So it’s great. We can all say, we have to do this, this, this, and this, but then it’s how do we actually get the, um, systems in place? So we have reporting mechanisms, you know, from the, you know, from the classroom teachers to the administrators to, and how do we track that? That’s great. But, um, I don’t think we have anything specific or, or we need to enhance what we have in regards to how do students actually self-report when things are going on, because I think that’s a big piece to this. So we, we had a long conversation about that. So I think I’m gonna look up. Okay. And then if you go to the next slide. Thank you. So, um, special commission on combating anti-Semitism,

1:31:22 I think, um, at least some of us, if not all of us. So we’re on that, we’re on that on call. And, um, we talked about this in the committee, and I think there was a lot, we didn’t get a, we didn’t get to get into a whole huge, um, deep, deep discussion, but we had, we had sat up the A DL, um, Julia, uh, Kate and I went, um, along with, uh, Michelle Carlson and Christine Kowski went, um, and, and heard from, uh, rep Armini about the special commission on combating antisemitism and what the K to 12 recommendations were from that committee to dsi. So there’s conversations happening at the state level, which is great, and then the local levels, which is even better. Um, and par of those conversations are the recommendations. And you guys, you guys all have the documentation, so you can go through it. Those recommendations are from, uh, the committee to Desi,

1:32:10 and we’re hoping that Desi’s gonna do something with them that will be more helpful to us. But we’re also not gonna wait for Desi’s stuff because we know how that goes. So I said this in the meeting, I said, sometimes Desi will take the information and say that’s a local decision, have at it. And sometimes they’ll create a mandate for us or mandates for us. And this wasn’t taken that well, but I said, and they end up being unfunded. Um, but that’s, that’s what Tesi does. And I, that’s been my experience the last 30 years. So, um, we’ll have to see how they fall, but in the meantime, we started kind of going through and we identified at least three areas that we thought were, um, maybe a way to focus in this committee work. Um, that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna look at all the other areas, but these are the, these are the highlighted ones that we started talking about.

1:32:56 So, um, there’s a bunch of different ones, but this one, uh, the first one was measures to increase awareness and understanding of antisemitism and broaden appreciation of Jewish American heritage. And specifically under that was d and I paraphrase this a little bit, anti-bias education for school committees and all K to 12 faculty and administrators. That includes antisemitism aligned with DSI developed framework. So again, DSI hasn’t developed the framework yet, but hopefully they will. But in the meantime, I think we need to look at ways to make sure that we’re having the anti-bias education, um, for everybody. So we, so we, so we can start moving on that one. Uh, next slide please. Um, the next area is also under the first one, which again, measures to increase awareness, understanding. Um, so we looked at e which was schools

1:33:42 and districts should work with community organizations to create and implement programming for Jewish American Heritage Month. Each may treat the JAHM in an equivalent fashion to other history, identity and heritage months. So I think that’s, I think that’s great. I think that’s, that’s a good way to kind of really integrate, um, the Jewish heritage, Amer Jewish American heritage into stuff that we’re already doing, uh, or what we’re doing and how do we enhance it so that everyone can have an understand. It’s similar to, you know, um, Hispanic heritage much, we, we do things and we start, so we started talking about the different heritage months in addition to this, and what does that look like, and what are we doing currently? What can we do better? What can we do more? Um, so those are in depth discussions that, you know, we’re not gonna solve in an hour, an hour and a half, um, committee meeting.

1:34:28 But the good conversation, have the people stay at the table, then bring them back, you know, um, the administrators at the table bring it back to the, to their folks. And we, we have those bigger discussions. And then the third one, uh, we talked about was, uh, it was under number two, which measures to improve safety and security for Jewish communities. Um, and specifically B, which is school counseling department should, um, first work to deepen their understanding of the effects of antisemitism on the mental health of Jewish young people. Uh, and apply trauma-informed interventions to incidents of antisemitism and expand access to mental health resources for Jewish students targeted by antisemitic harassment or bullying. So I think it’s great. It’s focused on the, on the, on the Jewish students and, and how, how we need to, um, address, um,

1:35:15 all these areas through school counseling. It’s similar to what, you know, we, we do, but we need to make sure that we ensure that we’re doing it for the Jewish students. Um, specifically when there’s, you know, obviously, um, things are on the antisemitism, but similarly we would do the same thing for, you know, when there’s, you know, racist, um, l lgbtq plus, et cetera. Um, we take the same approach. This is, you know, this is specific to the, uh, commission in combating antisemitism, but it’s a good model to make sure that we’re, um, that we’re following it for all forms of discrimination. So I just wanna, I just wanna make sure everyone understands we’re talking about, um, all those things. And then some of the other actions we talked about was, uh, we’re gonna meet with students. I, I have to set up the, uh, uh, magic block with, with Dr. Carlson so I can get in and talk to the kids.

1:36:00 I did that last year a couple times. It was phenomenal. They, they have great insight. Um, but I have to, I have to get that squared away. Uh, the po oh, we talked about the policy subcommittee reviewing the anti-discrimination policy at some point to, and recommend adding language specific to antisemitism. I think that’s, that’s a good place to start. ‘cause we have the bullying harassment policy that’s been updated and everything, and that’s really kind of a catchall for anything that’s bullying, harassment, discrimination. But we have an anti-discrimination policy that’s kind of a, a separate add-on to, and I think that’s a good place to start with maybe adding in some of that, some of that language. And then where do we go from there? So that, that was the initial conversation, which I thought was great. Um, and we talked about the speakers, presentations for educators and students and caregivers, um, in regard to anti-discrimination. We didn’t, we didn’t really talk about this too much in, in,

1:36:46 in this meeting, but just, I wanted to share, excuse me. I share, um, that we’re working with Dr. Darice Darice arm Jackson. Um, she runs, uh, it’s called Disruptive Education Equity Project. It’s called deep. Um, and we’re working with her and her company or her agency to do, uh, an equity audit of the district. And what, and we’ll talk more about that. When, uh, so we had all the initial conversations, then she decided to have a baby. So we have to wait for her, have her come back with maternity leave. Um, and then, and then we’ll, I’ll, I’ll get into, um, a deeper conversation about what that looks like. But I think it’ll give us some really good information about practices, our practices in district along like every area from hiring practices to counseling, to, you know, reporting to, you know, athletics, everything. We, we kind of, it’s gotta be a catchall.

1:37:32 So I think, um, those conversations and know in that deeper dive, deep, deeper dive, um, into that equity piece would be good. Because it’s gonna really give us some good ideas about how we are addressing, um, the discrimination and, and all things going on that, uh, and then we’re gonna continue to research area district presentations, workshops regarding it to discrimination, and again, partnering with community resources, A DL and JCC, et cetera. And there’s plenty of those. And, um, you know, as we look around, uh, you know, the community here has been like, wonderful. Like every, like, I get emails, I can’t even, I can’t, honestly can’t keep track of like, all the resources people are sending me are around a lot of this. Right. So I’m trying to sift through it. And, you know, not being from North Shores, I, it’s,

1:38:19 I’ve been here a year, but, um, a year of acronyms that I’m not, I still can’t keep answering. So I’m, I’m trying my best. Um, but it’s been great. This, it’s, it’s almost, it’s almost too much information. It’s hard to sift through, but I’d rather have more than not enough. So I feel good about where the committee is. I feel good the direction we’re going in, I feel good. Um, you know, how we’re moving forward. And after the meeting, you know, I asked one of the members who’s been been a little vocal, and I said, you know, how are you feeling? I’m still not all really happy. I wanna do things faster. And I said, that’s okay. You know what? We’re, we’re gonna go slow to go fast. And you, some of this, you know, some of this work has to, it takes some time and we’re having the conversations. We’re coming up with some, some specific deliverables. We’re gonna do timelines. We gotta do that. So I think, I think we’re in better end in a much better place than where we ended up last school now. So that’s my report.

1:39:05 I happen to answer any questions, thoughts, comments, ideas?

1:39:12 I have several. Um, just a couple questions. Um, one thing that was loud and clear from some of the folks that are on the task force, and you I think sort of touched on it, but it was this idea of really trying to strengthen our procedure for reporting. Mm-hmm. And the, and that process, because I’ve heard from multiple staff members that are, um, unclear on really what they’re supposed to do when they see this, hear it, whatever, with, you know, between students or between adults or whatever. So that I that’s, I think you touched on it, but I didn’t necessarily, I, I find that a little odd, but I mean, that’s, that’s fine. Uh, it’s either one of two things. Um, I’m not sure why it would be that unclear. I mean, we talk about, see something, say something. We talk about, here’s, here’s how we do it.

1:39:58 But we can certainly continue to make sure that, uh, the administrators in the buildings are, are being even more clear. We, we, we talked about this in our admin in our all admin meeting we talked about. We have our safety committee, uh, hopefully coming up. We’ll talk about it there again. Um, so yeah, the more we talk about it, the better. Um, so we can get clarity for sure. But I appreciate that feedback. I think, um, Um, that’s good. When will we have deliverables on these, like dates do you think, on these activities? Um, as soon as we schedule them. So I’m gonna meet with, uh, I’m going meet with Dr. Mi Halper tomorrow. Okay. And hopefully I’ll have a date when she’s coming. And then what we plan on doing is once we, once we had her come in and, and, uh, have the conversation to see do we utilize her in in other areas? Do we, do we have, um, other people come in?

1:40:44 Will she have ideas about other people coming in? So, um, that’s the best I can written. I don’t, I don’t know when she’s available, but that’s, that was the first, that was the first presenter that we decided on, um, discussing and, and bringing in specifically, Did you talk at all about curriculum review?

1:41:02 We didn’t get to curriculum review. Oh, Do, do you expect to or do you not? Um, it depends. I think we do, we do curriculum, we do curriculum review, we do curriculum oversight. Um, I think there’s been some conversation about curriculum. Um, what we talked about was when we do the review the curriculum, we make sure that we have an anti-biased lens doing the curriculum. So I think the conversations we had, we had conversations last year about like specifically, like, is there, are there areas that we’ve identified specifically or has anybody that we could look at? I think the conversations were very general. There wasn’t anything that was like in this, you know, whatever. Other than, other than, um, the one student who had identified some stuff at the high school that we, that we corrected right away when that was identified.

1:41:48 In addition to that, we, we’ve reviewed the curriculum, um, But that didn’t come up in the, because It’s going well. So because we’re embedding that, and not everybody, I think there’s one member of your committee that has gone through a curriculum review process recently. So I think that if it comes up, we’ll absolutely address it. But I think it’s going well because it’s an established part of our review process. Well, that may be, but my, in my conversations with cast member, task force members, the issues around having, you know, subject matter experts review it in the, in terms of, um, the curriculum. And that came up, right? Like you’re saying, we review our curriculum, but last year we actually had student who came forward with inaccurate curriculum that we had. So I think that was my understanding that this was something, I’m just asking if this is something this task force has talked about or not.

1:42:35 Uh, we haven’t this year yet. Okay. We’ve had one meeting, so. Okay. And then, um, at some point, would the task force come before the school committee? Um, we could, I mean, I’m, I’m giving updates to the committee. I mean, I’d, if that’s not to the committee’s liking, we can certainly have someone come in, make that committee Come in. I think it would be help. Like in the spirit of transparency, it would be nice to hear from the, that committee, um, at some point, maybe halfway through the year and just have them maybe talk about it so that the community can See. I think, I think, um, I mean obviously I’m open to whatever. I’m One person. The school committee may not agree with Me. Yeah. I’m open to whatever, whatever the committee wants. I mean, I think, you know, um, I’ve had one meeting this school year when I, after I have another, I’ll probably have some more information to share. And I, and I committed to bring back after every committee, um, and update.

1:43:21 So I’m continue to do that. And if it’s the committee’s, you know, will to have the other members come in, that’s fine. Um, I would say if that’s gonna happen, I’d like to have the preponderance, the committees come in. ‘cause I, I’d rather not have, I wanna make sure there’s a representation from the whole committee if we’re gonna do that. Yeah. Part of your presentation was educating a, the school committee. Right. So maybe we can combine something. I mean, I looked to, you know, to Jen’s point, I look to whatever you think is the best way to further this cause, right? And if it’s to bring the task force here, absolutely, let’s do it. Um, but, you know, I, I kind of, again, look to that task force to kind of help us understand what makes the most sense to help them be successful. And I think the, you know, and I, I, I don’t mean this isn’t, this isn’t a commentary. I’m, I’m calling it a committee. Task force has a really negative connotation to me.

1:44:08 So, uh, had the somatic committee, uh, anti-discrimination committee that’s working is like, I think again, we had a really good, my estimation and pretty much everyone I talked to from the committee, I had a really good feeling about how this meeting went and we’re moving in the right direction. And I think once I talked to Mary Halper, um, how a better idea of what she can bring to the mix. And then, you know, we’re gonna grow from there. That’s, that’s the plan. That’s what the committee talked about. So that’s, that’s the plan at this point. And I’ll, I’ll have dates for stuff when we schedule things, for sure. How frequently are you planning to meet? Meeting monthly? Right now. Monthly. Okay. So we should get an update sort of once a Month, sometime in October, if not before. I mean, obviously, you know, I, you know, I can certainly share out how the, how the meeting with Dr.

1:44:54 Mi, um, bar Hopper goes tomorrow. If that’s, you know, I, I’d have to just kind of do a recap of that. Send it up maybe. So, you know, so we’re not waiting another month and wonder. Um, so if I meet with her and she says, yes, I can come whenever and I can come over a date with her and, you know, there’s also cost involved with that. So I have to look at, look at that. Um, how we gonna fund, you know, I dunno how much it’s, so I, I wouldn’t be surprised if they are funding opportunities. I’m sure. So.

1:45:23 Okay. Alright. Uh, we’re going to move on to the consent action and agenda items on our agenda. Um, again, this is a portion where we can combine several motions into one motion. However, that doesn’t mean we can’t discuss any of the items right. That are being discussed. So, um, I will call for a motion in a second and then we can discuss items as people. So warrant. So under the consent agenda, I am looking for a motion to approve the following, the identified schedule of bills totaling $508,281 and 3 cents. The school committee. The school committee meeting, minutes of 9 4 25, September 4th, 2025.

1:46:11 Also policy updates. And I believe I need to read these, so please bear with me. Um, policy A DC, tobacco products on school premises prohibited Policy. BJ School Committee, legislative program Policy, CBD Superintendent’s, contract Policy, ce, administrative Councils, cabinets and Committees. Policy C, policy Implementation Policy, E-E-A-E-C, student Conduct on school Buses Policy, EBCD, emergency closings, policy EEC buildings and grounds management Policy, G-B-E-B-C, gifts to and solicitations by staff policy, GBEC, drug-free Workplace policy Policy,

1:46:58 GBJ Personnel Records. Policy GCJ, professional Teacher Status, policy, JICA, student Dress code policy Policy, JII, student complaints and grievances.

1:47:16 Policy, JJF, student activity accounts policy, JQ student fees, fines and charges. Policy JRD Student photographs and policy ke public complaints. I’m also looking for this motion to include an approval of the school committee operating protocols, the appointment of our superintendent to the North Shore Education Consortium Board. And so I’m looking for a motion and a second please. So moved, Seconded. Okay. Um, since the policy is a big component of this, I’d like to kind of ask the policy committee to kind of briefly explain, you know, the edits and why they’re part of the consent agenda, please. So, one Of the things we’re working on this year is going through

1:48:04 MSCs recommended policy changes. And these are all extremely minor. Um, the versions that were in the shared driver red line, so you can see exactly what they are. But things like punctuation, adding a legal citation or very minor language changes, such as changing parent to parent guardian. And they do not change the meaning or impact of the policy, which is why we’re handling it through the consent action agenda.

1:48:31 Okay. Thank you Kate. Um, the school committee operating protocols, we did talk about them at our retreat. Not sure if we voted on them or not, but, uh, Alicia from MASC had recommended that it is kind of a best business practice for school committees to approve them at the beginning of a school year. So that’s why it’s under consent agenda. Um, uh, superintendent, do you wanna talk a little bit about the consortium board, what that’s about? Uh, so I, I sit on the North Shore Educational Consortium Board. Um, the board is made up of solely of the superintendents of the, uh, districts that are a part of the consortium. And it’s an annual appointment that’s required by, uh, consortiums and, and our collaboratives to appoint, uh, the school committees to appoint their superintendents as board members. Um, so it’s just, it’s a, a dsi uh, regulation.

1:49:20 So it’s just, there’s really no other choice other than the superintendent to be on that board. Pretty straightforward, I wouldn’t admit. That’s all, I guess. Alright. Is there any further discussion on any of these items? Um, I just had a couple comments on the minutes. Um, uh, just a couple things. Um, one is, is it possible to pa to paginate them? Sure. Um, and then, uh, you should have the time of, we should have time of adjournment.

1:49:51 Got it. Um,

1:49:55 can we approve the draft with those changes? Yeah. Um, and also, um, we probably should have some either like the, the logo or our letterhead or something. Probably the Logo. I could take the letterhead off the, or The letterhead. Um, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know that letterheads necessarily prob, but something probably our logo, um, okay. Should be on there. ‘cause I mean, otherwise

1:50:22 Alright. I, I guess we have to amend the motion just to include those, uh, edited. Oh, no, I mean, yeah, I guess. Okay. I guess it’s under the assumption that Roger That. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you secretary. Uh, one more thing. Um, I do, are you posting these as drafts or on the website? Or do you wait until we approve them and then they’re gonna get and then they get posted? I’ve been waiting until we approve them, but I, I just, because I’m, I’m hoping that we’re going fast enough that, yeah. Okay. Because I think if we are posting at any point posting drafts, I think the watermark draft is better. ‘cause it’s really gotta be clear. It’s a draft, but I think if we’re not posting these on the website, this is fine. ‘cause it’s gonna go right up.

1:51:07 Henry, do you need the, do you need the logo jpeg of the logo? You got the new, the, the right m Sure. Yeah, I’ll reach out. Well, you probably should do, What I would do is create a PDF or a document, a blank document that you put it on with that on, and then you just copy and paste. That would Probably, yeah, that’s, I mean, the, I have a sort of template that I’ve been working off, so I’ll just add it to that. Yeah. So Julie, I’ll send that to you. So, Oh, and one final thing. Humphrey Street is spelled on That I can fix All. Okay. Um, we’ll vote on the motion. Um, all those in favor, I don’t think we have to do a roll call on this one. Uh, okay. The motion passes. Five over here.

1:51:52 5, 5 0.

1:51:57 Okay. Um, John, superintendent, I believe you and Julia are gonna, yeah. So, uh, Julia and I will, This next item on the appendix K ratification. Yeah. So, um, Julia, and I’ll go over this, um, uh, just as the background, uh, the JLMC met last year to, to talk about the appendix K. That was one of the two things they were initially charged with, but the appendix K, um, was discussed within that, within that, um, that group, so it’s four administrators or four members of the union. They talked about the changes that need to happen. Uh, it’s my understanding that union has votes ratify it, and the school committee has to vote to ratify it. And then we’ll get the signatures from morale, the chair and the members of the, um, union presidency, uh, to, to do that.

1:52:44 I had Slides, but You Oh yeah, no, no, go ahead. I’m sorry. Those are the slides. Oh, okay. That’s pretty much it. Um, I don’t know why it’s not. Is it going? Okay. So the, um, our objective, um, was outlined in the memorandum of agreement that the MEA and the school committee came to last November. Um, and so it outlined what the J LM C’S task was, um, who would be in the membership. And it gave us a pretty firm deadline of March 28th, um, to, um, make recommendations for Appendix K. It’s all about educator evaluation. Um, so as it says here, you know, if the union ratifies it, um, then it would go before the school committee. And, um, that’s where we’re at. So we had the JLMC. Um, so you can see we had equal representation from our Unit A members, um, as well as administrators.

1:53:30 And it was a very collaborative, it was a great group. We had very long meetings. A lot of great work happened, and I’m just really grateful for the collaborative effort there. Um, Katie Freegan, um, and I were the co-chairs and we worked collaboratively to lead the discussions through the, the entire 15 pages of Appendix K. So I just wanna highlight some key updates. Um, as you were just mentioning with policies, we did some of the, the updated language definitions, job titles and pronouns. Um, we also streamlined and reorganized sections to really help, um, make it clear between, we have, um, two groups within the unit A in terms of evaluation process. And it’s the teachers that, um, are within their first three years of employment in Marblehead public school. So they’re considered non-professional teacher status. And then those who have been here for

1:54:17 and had successful proficient, um, or above, uh, ratings for three years, their professional teacher status. So we try to make some delineations between those two groups. Um, no change in the non PTS, um, for evaluations and for, for teachers who have been here, um, it would shift from, uh, one observation every two years to one observation every year, um, for no less than 10 minutes. Other than that we aligned the dates. Um, it was really long overdue to do this. Um, and so we came together to do that. The MEA ratified this on August 25th. Um, so it is now our recommendation and I believe all 15 pages were for you. Um, and I’m happy to answer any questions, but, um, we’re hoping, um, for the ratification from the school committee

1:55:05 Okay. A motion as such a, uh, so moved. Okay. A motion to ratify appendix K, second. Second.

1:55:20 Excuse me. Any, any further discussion.

1:55:26 Okay. Um, all in favor? Alright. The motion passes. Five zero. Thank you. Thank you. Our next item is Al. I just wanna make sure I have you sign this before we Leave tonight. Mm-hmm. Sure. Tactically, if you need to just,

1:55:43 um, so, um, Kate is going to talk about the 25, 26 year long agenda. Thank you. Um, so this was in the shared drive for everyone to review. Um, just to recap, we discussed at a meeting in late August, developing a year long agenda to inform both the committee and the public of the direction of the committee’s work this year and the anticipated timing of certain items. Um, at that meeting, we looked at examples that we had pulled from some other districts and discussed formats that were preferable to committee members. Um, and Jen shared with me after that meeting a master planning calendar that has been used by the committee in the past. Um, and that informed, you know, some of what went into this agenda. Um, so we’re hoping to approve this tonight

1:56:31 and then, you know, put it on our website and whatnot. It is not meant to be an exhaustive list for a set of hard and fast deadlines, but just sort of a general plan, um, to guide our work this year. Okay. So I’ll make a motion to Approve. Can I, um, okay. I had a couple comments, But can we make the motion and then discuss? All right. So a motion to approve the 25 26 Marblehead school committee. Year long agenda. Seconded. Um, so a couple things. Mm-hmm. Um, I, um, set school committee goals for October. Um, I think we have a meeting on the 30th of September. Mm-hmm. Um, I don’t know whether it might be the will of the committee. I mean, we, this committee was formed June 10th and we’re setting our goals in October. It just seems like it’s,

1:57:18 I was gonna discuss that, Jim. That will be the primary focus of the September 30th meeting is us setting our goals. Um, the next thing is regarding the roof. I see we’re approving the roof project in Nov, uh, the, um, contract in November. Um, I think there’s gonna be a decision to be made in terms of the type of roof. Is that something we’re gonna, the school committee’s gonna have to decide? So, um, as I’ve been discussing with left field, RDA and Henry, um, they are going to have the bids, all the general contractor and the five trades. It’s five trades, um, compiled and ready for a subcommittee meeting, a roof subcommittee meeting on November 5th, I believe, or sixth, right in that timeframe.

1:58:05 In order for us to bring it to you, that, that week, that if it’s Wednesday, it’s Thursday night’s meeting. If it’s Thursday afternoon, it’s Thursday night’s meeting with a recommendation, uh, from the subcommittee as to which direction to go. Um, and then, and That’s in November. That’s the first week in November meeting, meeting in November, November 6th Is what we talked then is that the recommendation will be contemporaneous with the actual contract because Yes. So we’ll have the contract. No. Um, yes. We, at that meeting that night, we will, the subcommittee will present their findings of, or the recommendation on whether they should go a liquid applied or a new membrane In the form of the Contract. In the form of a contract. So you will approve a contract one way or another that night, and then we’ll go

1:58:51 to the select board at their next available meeting to get them to approve the contract. But they don’t, the select board does not vote on the type of roof. They vote on the form of the contract that the contract means. Well, Sounds like the same with us. We won’t vote on the type of the roof till we vote the contract, But you’re gonna decide which contract you wanna vote. Do you want to vote the contract that has the liquid applied roofing, or do you wanna vote the contract based upon the recommendation of the subcommittee? Based on the recommendation of the subcommittee. Okay. But that’s, I guess my point with select board does not get a, a say in the type of roof. They’re just that the contract meets the form of the attorney and that the funding needed to do the project has been appropriated by a town meeting and subsequent vote. So they’re just really, it’s just a, a, a, um, purpose formality for them. You guys, what is it both? Yeah. You guys actually have a, you guys have a decision.

1:59:37 Okay. The only reason I’m asking, I didn’t mean to get di dig here. I thought we had two. I thought we had two iterations. We only have one iteration. Okay. ‘cause I didn’t know if we had to give direction on the type of roof and then they come and then come back with the actual contract. But it’s all, No, I believe the contract will be, you’ll have you, you’ll have both drafts contracts in November, vote on one or the other. Okay. Is my Understanding. But we can Put That’s, that’s how I understood. Do you wanna suggest that we consider adding in January the warrant, any warrant articles that we may come forward with or must be voted in January? I don’t know if you wanna add that or not. That’s a, something to consider. Sure. That was, um, I thought those were on there, but maybe it’s a different, I don’t see Warren articles. I think they were on in December.

2:00:19 Yes. December. Yeah. The first item. The First item. December Warren articles I would suggest you. Well, okay, that’s fine. They usually, they’re due in January, right? She’s already, um, town you might wanna add town meeting to May. Mm-hmm. That’s up to you. Um, the, the, um, Q4 FY 26 report will be in June. That seems it still Is Q4. So this, you know, we’ve been doing, Mike’s been doing these monthly reports. I know. Mm-hmm. And then with the switching systems, he wasn’t sure what he’d be able to do. And so I set this up as sort of getting a detailed report a month after a quarter closed, Which would be July. That’s all I wasn’t sure. But We don’t necessarily meet in July. So I had just figured in June we’d get, So it would be a preliminary, like a preliminary, preliminary report.

2:01:04 My Intention is because these other ones will be actual Quarter, a weekly. A weekly, I’m sorry. No. Okay. A monthly, a monthly update. That’s what we started to do last year. Once we got into December and January. My intention would be to do weekly, a monthly also. Um, I just, I can’t, I’m, I’m very concerned about committing to something, right. Not having a single system that we’re working from. So maybe I can’t cover salaries right now. I mean, there’s a lot of things I can’t do until we get to January. Yeah. That, that, that’s all fine. I, I think maybe it should say preliminary because you are not going to have a Q4 report in June. So maybe a final One. Oh, I’m talking about June. Sorry. These other ones appear to me will be actual quarterly reports. They’re a month after the quarter ends, but that one should maybe just be preliminary. Maybe say preliminary. Yeah. Um, and then we need to vote transfers. I suggest we put vote transfers in June. That’s just, I’m one person. But before the fifth year I’d to get

2:01:50 To your point, I’d like to get to the point eventually when we’re doing transfers at every business. Yeah. At like the, I consider the first meeting of the month when I get my report. Mm-hmm. I would like to, if we have transfers to do that are critical that we get them done every month so that they’re not hitting Well, I, yes. And I would like world Peace, but I think if we can just put them down for June, she’d like world Peace to, um, for June so that it’s on there that we know we have to do that before the end of the fiscal year. Yeah. That’s All. I’m happy to add those things, um, recommended I get, like Kate said, it’s, it’s fluid too. We’ll have to shuffle some of this stuff, you know, from, And there’s certainly things we’re gonna need to do this year that aren’t on here ‘cause so, but I’m happy to make those changes

2:02:37 In additions. Okay. So I’ll, I’ll make a motion that we accept. We have a motion. There’s no motion. Motion. I’m sure there was a motion that we’re discussing it. I’m sorry. So, any further discussion.

2:02:50 Okay. Everybody in favor? Motion passes. Five zero. I like the raising hands. Thank You.

2:03:00 So I’m looking for a motion to accept a donation to the Marblehead Public Schools’ Glover Donation Fund. There’s a cash donation. You skipped the funds.

2:03:13 I had them out. The friends was first. I Don’t wanna trip you. No, no, no, you’re fine. Um, hold that thought. Uh, looking for a motion to accept a cash donation in, in the amount of $4,952 and 63 cents from the Friends of Marblehead. This donation will purchase training and supplies from the Great Book Books Foundation at Glover Brown School. We are partnering with the Council on Aging to train volunteers to come into the schools and work with some of our second and third graders during the, what I need block twice a week. The purpose of the program is to offer opportunities to empower our students with high quality literature and engaging discussions with a focus on inquiry.

2:03:57 Seconded, can I just ask for clarification? Is this the Friends of the Marblehead Public Schools? Yes. It’s okay. We should make that clear. It’s Friends of Marblehead Public Schools. Okay.

2:04:12 Any further discussion?

2:04:17 All those in favor? Alright. The motion passes five zero.

2:04:25 I am now looking for a motion to accept a donation to the Marble Marblehead Public School’s Glover Donation Fund. It is a cash donation in the amount of $50,000 from the Glover School, PTO for the Glover playground. So moved. Second.

2:04:43 Any discussion? All those in favor? Motion passes. Five zero.

2:04:54 Okay. Um, our last item under our school communication and discussion item section is, uh, discussing subcommittees, uh, members and their roles. So I’m gonna ask, uh, Kate, uh, to kick off this conversation please. Um, so again, another document that was in the drive for tonight’s meeting, um, with a largely new school committee, we thought it was important to make sure we had agreement across the committee as to the roles and responsibilities of our subcommittees. Um, and then of the chairs of those subcommittees. So the hope is that we can vote on this, um, and then include these more robust descriptions of the committees, um, in our materials. Um, so the document walks through each of our four standing subcommittees, um, as well as the roof advisory committee

2:05:40 and the various school committee liaison roles. Um, like I said, outlines what the responsibilities would be of the subcommittee chair. And then it, it includes some information he’s been using, um, some technology to create subcommittee minutes or to create our committee minutes. And so there’s some instructions in there on how to use that same technology to easily create a, an initial draft that does need human review, um, of subcommittee minutes.

2:06:10 Okay. So I’m happy to make a motion that we adopt this subcommittee rules and recomm commitments document. I second Any, any discussion on this?

2:06:25 Okay. All those in favor? And the motion passes. Five zero.

2:06:33 Um, so now we, we have all our members. We are fully staffed as a school committee. Um, I just wanna review where we are ‘cause uh, we’ve been kind of waiting to be at the state before we filled all the remaining positions. So under, uh, the communication subcommittee, uh, Henry was approved, uh, to be on that. And so there’s an opening there, and I’ll go through all of them first just so people have a, a good lay of the land and then we can discuss the specifics, um, on facilities. We had voted for Henry and Jen to participate on that subcommittee. Uh, likewise with policy. Uh, we voted Kate and Jen to be on that subcommittee, um, on the budget committee. Um, Jen expressed interest. I’m not sure we, we voted for that.

2:07:18 Um, so, um, I’ll ask Jen if in a minute if you still want interest there. Uh, so there will at least be one opening. Uh, and then we have an opening on our, one of our liaison positions for the health and wellness team.

2:07:37 So I guess I’ll first ask is Town ma? Yeah. And then the superintendent advisory is the,

2:07:48 I was on the master plan, but mm-hmm. We can change that. That’s the will of the committee.

2:07:55 And you didn’t have the SAC on there, which we have done in the past. Yeah. I didn’t put, I, I, yeah, I didn’t put the, uh, school advisory subcommittees, but we can, we can definitely discuss that. So, so Jen, you’re kind of, uh, you, you’re not interested in the town master or planning position? I am happy to do it, but if someone else wants to do it, I’m okay with that too. Okay. They have already sent stuff. I think they’ve got a meeting already. I forget when. I don’t know. I’ve been getting stuff on it, but I don’t, it, it’s certainly somebody else wants to do it. It’s fine. Okay. Um, and your interest in the budget, can we continue to work? Yeah, I’ll Do budget. Yeah. Okay. Is that, um, will that be your third committee? Are you okay with that, Jen, or, yeah,

2:08:42 As long as I’m not doing the master plan. Okay. Okay. Um, I, I guess we can just take these individual, I’d like to motion, I, I’ll make a motion, uh, to appoint Jen to the budget subcommittee. And do we have anybody else I’ll, I was gonna, I was gonna ask for nominations after that, but Oh, Okay. So you made them I’ll second. Okay. All in favor? Okay. That motion passes five to zero. Um, I’ll stick with that same committee. Do we have anybody who was interested to I’ll nominate Melissa.

2:09:25 I’ll second that. No. Okay. Uh, any discussion on that? Keep up here. Um, all in favor? Okay. That motion passes. Five zero.

2:09:39 Okay. Um, so in terms of our subcommittees, that leaves the communication position open, I believe is the last remaining one. Um, I’d love to do that. Okay. Um, I’m only hesitating because I’m on none of them, which I don’t, I don’t know if I should be ecstatic or feel that there’s an obligation that I should be on something. Mm-hmm. So that’s what I’m, that’s what I’m kind of going back and forth on. Um, I think it could be valuable to have someone straddling budget and communications. That’s probably what I was able to really communicate about whatever happens with the budget this year.

2:10:25 Um, and I don’t know what Jen’s feelings are. You know, you are on three Subcommittees. I’m happy to step off policy if you wanna join policy. The, the concern I have there is that Kate is the vice chair. Then I’ve kind of, you know, I, I have run into a quorum problem then if just Kate and I want to have discussions around designing the next meeting. So that’s why I’m not, you know, I wouldn’t, as much as I like policy, I’m not, I wouldn’t be interested because of that reason. I don’t think that would be an issue, but, okay.

2:10:58 Alright. So, um, I, I like the connection that you made, Kate. So I’ll make a motion that we have Melissa beyond the, our communication subcommittee. I’ll Second Team. Yeah. Okay. All in favor? Alright. The motion passes. Five zero. Um, Alright, so I, I guess we have, um, the health and wellness, the town master plan. And what was that? Uh, Henry you mentioned the superintendent. Oh, it was, I was just, the health and wellness was listed under superintendent advisory. Okay, thank you. So, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I’m happy to do the health and wellness. There is a policy Component to what they’re doing.

2:11:45 So to be Thank you Kate. I thought I was getting both of these. Alright, I’d like to make a motion for Kate to be our liaison on the health and wellness team. Second. Second. All in favor.

2:12:05 The town master planning position. Uh, can I entertain a nomination? Please Nominate Al Williams. Who, who wants you gonna do it? You

2:12:18 Alright? All nomination. I just gotta go on a technicality. I wasn’t seconded. Uh, all those in favor? All right, the motion passes. Five zero. Okay. So I think we have all our positions filled. Yeah. Before we move on, um, there’s been some confusion around the full membership of the facility subcommittee, which is becoming increasingly distracting and problematic. And in order to rectify that, I’d like to make a motion to limit membership of the facilities budget policy and communication subcommittees to the school committee members who have been voted onto those committees, um, at a meeting since on or since July 2nd, 2025.

2:13:05 And to not have members of the public serve as members of the facilities budget policy or communications subcommittees Seconded. So I know where this is going. This is clear. This is how you chose to address this. Um, the facility subcommittee has always had members of the public with subject matter expertise that have participated since the inception of the facility subcommittee. In fact, we dedicated our organic garden to a member of a longtime member of that committee who passed away. Um, so I understand the political aspect of this. I think there are other ways you could have addressed that. I think it’s a mistake that we don’t have subject matter experts from the community who have consistently, and we’ve had many over the years, um, involved

2:13:52 because arguably, well, I shouldn’t say there may be school committee members that have subject matter expertise. I don’t know necessarily that I know, I don’t, I don’t know about Henry and Mike himself even said, you know, like, is not a subject matter expert. So I think it’s a mistake. I think it is not good governance to do that. I think we’ve always, um, practiced that and it has helped us tremendously. Um, you know, Jeff St. George and Jeremy Poer were, um, were great members of that committee and helped the, that long term sort of master plan, I guess, for lack of a better word that we have is, but we would not have, but for those members. Um, so I will leave it at that, Jen. I don’t think it’s as

2:14:38 much about, about denying community members, but I think according to our own policies, the, the committee is meant to be school committee members. And I, We have subcommittees that have other members including your roof advisory committee, but that was formed building subcommittees. There are subcommittees that have had, and the facility subcommittees a perfect example. We’re not the only school district that does that. So I just, I’m, I understand what you’re trying to do, but I think it’s a mistake to, to do it this way because we’re setting a precedent that is going to limit us as far as our ability to really do what’s best for our facilities. But I will leave it at that.

2:15:23 I view, uh, Henry, I’m not sure this is where you’re going, but I I view it as, you know, as, as they’re written, as, as we’ve just, you know, voted on, is they’re high level, these are high level committees, right. They shouldn’t really be mired down in managing projects. And when that’s necessary, we form a another subcommittee and put the appropriate subject matter expertise and community members on that. And I think that’ll be something we need to continue to do as is appropriate. Yeah, but I’m gonna push back on that and say that, um, the facility subcommittee has never managed a project. What the facility subcommittee has done, which is listed here, is, you know, review the, the capital requests establish a long-term master plan,

2:16:08 which was done, um, that was done with input from subject matter experts. So again, I will leave it at that. So I think a master plan is a perfect example of a place where we could put together, you know, a task oriented committee, you know, specifically to develop one. You know, the one that we are currently working from Needs to be. So you would not have the facility subcommittee doing a master plan like that has been part of what the facility subcommittees job. Well, You’re, you’re administering the master plan that’s been created, you know, if we’re Creating, but the facilities ma subcommittee has traditionally been tasked with creating the master plan,

2:16:53 Right? And they could solicit input from others. I would think that we’re not prohibiting that from happening With the roof committee. We opened this up to members of the public to apply for their role on this committee. And we could certainly, and that’s what we’ve done in the past with the facility subcommittee. And we can certainly do that. Uh, but we haven’t,

2:17:14 We haven’t ‘cause we haven’t had to. And we had one person left, two, two people left in the past that had been involved in it. They were longtime members of the facility subcommittee from many years.

2:17:29 All right. Any further discussion? No. Okay. Um, all those in favor of the motion,

2:17:41 uh, all those against the motion passes four to one.

2:17:52 All right. Are any other items around subcommittees?

2:17:58 Okay. Um, just in closing, um, I mentioned this already, but we, um, you know, Jen, your, your, your point is valid. We do want to focus on our school committee goals. Uh, um, so, uh, that will be the predominant focus of the September 30th meeting and then the October meetings, a component of those will be the superintendent’s evaluation and goal setting. And, you know, we’ll see where we are around the district plan at that particular time. So that’s just to give an out, you know, kind of a idea of what we, what we’ll talk about at the future school committee meetings. Alright. Um, looking f

2:18:45 Okay, so under correspondence, um, yes. Uh, you skipped over correspondence. No, I Did No correspondence, please. Um, Is it possible to get a copy of the letter that was sent to the family of Savannah or if I could get a copy? I don’t know if the other committee members, Uh, sure. I I will. I mean, I didn’t draft one. I didn’t, so I know John sent one. We voted that I met, I met, we voted that at the October 20. I will draft one and get it over to you. Thank you. Any other correspondence items?

2:19:21 Okay. I am looking for a motion and vote to meet in executive session for the following reasons. Executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21, A three, purpose three to discuss litigation marble head school committee and marble head Teachers association, MUPL dash 24 dash 1 0 5 70 as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares Executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss threatened litigation by a former student services chairperson, Lawrence Skelton Lurd as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair.

2:20:07 So declares without an intent to return to open session executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss litigation Marvel head school committee and Mar head Teachers Association, WM a m dash 25 dash 1574 as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to open session. By the way, the first paragraph I should have also said without intent to, to return to open session executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss Litigation Marblehead School Committee and Marblehead Teachers Association. WMAM dash 25 dash 1575 is an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position

2:20:53 of the school committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to open session Executive session pursuant to Massachusetts General Laws chapter 38, section 21 A one for the following purpose to discuss complaints brought against a public officer, employee, staff member or individual. OMI complaint the MEA.

2:21:16 So moved, seconded. Okay. All in favor? Alright, the motion passes. Five zero. So, uh, chair statement. Um, the committee will now be meeting in the executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss the Litigation Marblehead School Committee and Marblehead Teachers Association. MUPL dash 24 dash five 70 as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares without an intent to return to open session, we will also be meeting an executive session pursuant to chapter 38, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss threatened litigation by former student services chairperson, Lauren Skelton Lurd as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the

2:22:02 litigating position of the school committee and the chair, so declares without intent to return to open session. We’ll also be meeting in executive session pursuant to chapter 30 a, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss litigation Marblehead School Committee and Marblehead Teachers Association. WMAM 25 dash 1574 as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair of declares without intent to return to open session. We’ll also be meeting an executive session pursuant to chapter 30 a, section 21 A three, purpose three to discuss litigation Marble Head School Committee and Marble Head Teachers Association WMAM 25 dash 1575 as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to open session.

2:22:51 We will also be meeting an executive session pursuant to Massachusetts General Law Chapters 30 a section 21 A one for the following purpose to discuss complaints brought against a public officer, employee and staff member or individual OMI complaint MEA. Okay, we are now in executive session.

2:23:14 We’ll, uh, we’ll go into this room right here.