School Committee: November 20, 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.

0:00 Seniors. Um, registration for winter Athletics is out now, too, so please go online. Um, get signed up, make sure physicals are, um, recent. Uh, sing free the fall, MHS acapella concerts Next Tuesday at 7:00 PM we’ll feature all 3M HS, uh, school acapella groups, slum essence, jewel tones, and grizzlies. We’d love to see you there. Uh, similarly today in just under an hour at seven, um, in the, uh, auditorium here is the MHS Cabaret Showcase. Um, you may have seen some flyers on your way and, uh, but it’ll feature many of our school’s vocalists, so it’s exciting. And that’s all I have. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks all. Okay, so that brings us to our superintendent update. Page two. Explained all your general or what’s going on.

0:48 Um, Al is out of town and he is gonna be joining the meeting at some point, but he was not able to be here in person. Um, and it’s gonna be delayed and logging in from.

1:03 Okay. Thank you. Thank you Madam Chairwoman. Um, good evening. We continue power four through the fall and a lot of exciting things are happening across the district, some of which will just mentioned. Uh, please make sure to follow our principal newsletters for school and grades, specific events and happenings. Also, remember to peruse our digital backpack that contains all sorts of great community information. I wanna share some information that has been collected and discussed with Gina Hart, Julia Ferreira, uh, Lisa Maria Polito, Christine Sikowski, Michelle Carlson, Matt Ban, and myself in regard to substance abuse education. Uh, thank you to Gina and Julia who collaborated on the narrative, um, that I’m gonna share now. Uh, I think this is, this is kind of a follow up to some of the earlier conversations we have and what we will report out with, you know, uh, some further information. But just kind of wanted to share some of the information at this point.

1:49 So, Marblehead Public Schools makes every effort to listen to students and understand the most effective ways to engage them in conversations about decision making and substance use. All of our substance use education is designed to match students’ developmental readiness and grade level. And we remain committed to providing trauma-informed student-centered learning experiences over the years. We have thoughtfully integrated programming that includes featured speakers, focus groups, curricular lessons in grades four through 12, data collection, and the diversion programming counselor meetings. The high school students had expressed a preference for learning and, sorry, and discussing substance use in small groups within their regular, within their regular classes, rather than in large assemblies to allow for more comfortable, meaningful discussions. Um, and I think that’s important to point out

2:35 ‘cause I know there’s a lot of conversations when we say, Hey, let’s bring speakers in, let’s get the kids in the auditorium, or, or whatever. And there’s been a lot of feedback that says the students really would rather not have that kind of presentation as more of an intimate, uh, intimate setting. So I just wanna make sure we share that and highlighted that we’re using student feedback and recent data to expand our current programming that is already in place. And we will regularly update the school committee about our problems. Um, so we’ll continue to have those conversations moving forward. Um, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting with a group of 16 in high school students yesterday, along with our METCO director, Katie Johnson was absolutely the best part of my week. We had a very candid discussion about how we can shift our school culture and ensure all students have a sense of belonging and students share their angst as well

3:20 as some great initial ideas. So, I look forward to continuing the discussion and how these discussions can dovetail with our anti-discrimination committee dialogue and with the Magic Coalition that students have established, so that there is actionable solutions fostered by student input and feedback. We clearly have work to do in elevating student voice, as I have indicated since walking into the Marvel Head is the most important way to affect positive culture shifts. Um, so I wanted to share that because it was really cool. Uh, very, very open and honest conversations and really great, great kickoff to some, some more in-depth conversations are gonna happen. Um, as promised from last time, I hear some shout outs that I’ve received from our admin team. I’m trying to do this regularly. Uh, from Scott Williams, principal of VI Village School. Sorry. I would like to recognize our incredible counselors at Village Kate

4:06 Doula, Kevin Marrigan and Jeff Newsom. They’re amazing with all of our village students. Problem solving, meaningful lunch groups, practicing team teamwork and collaboration skills. They go above and beyond every day at village. From arrival to lunch, to recess, to dismissal, and everything in between. They’re child-centered in their approach to student engagement, always putting child first when navigating a decision. They support our every, they support everyone at village, students, staff member, staff members, teachers, our nursing staff, and the village leadership team. They run grade level community meetings. Our awesome Peer Leaders program at Village and many of our village clubs. They’re an important integral members of our child study team. They welcome new students and families to village, providing tours of our school and acclimating new members of our community to village. We would be lost without Kate, Kevin, and Jeff at Village.

4:53 They are to be commended and celebrated for all that they do for everyone every day. Thank you, Jeff. Kevin, and Kate. Uh, from Mary Maxville, principal at Brown Elementary School. She wants to shout out to second grade brown school teacher Beth Johnson. For 15 plus years, Beth has coordinated a fall food drive this year, understanding the potential for increased increase in need. She has expanded the drive to collect over three weeks and is working with community folks to make sure families get what they need. Beth helps her second graders understand how everyone can do something to support our community and understand the greater good. So shout out to Beth. Uh, for Matt Lebane, our principal at Veterans Middle School. He says he would like to recognize the hard work and dedication of his whole English department, um, and the teachers, especially Dr. Ryan Judkins, Jim Schnick,

5:38 Raji Carnes, and Caroline Todd, who thoughtfully guided students through reading, discussing, and preparing insightful questions from the young adult novel when we flew away for the Alice Hoffman Assembly that M-V-A-M-S participated in on Tuesday. This assembly was in partnership with the Jewish Community Center, which we wholeheartedly appreciate their collaborative and partnership. Um, he also goes on to say, Marilyn Willard, Raphael Santana, Eva Tavares, Lauren Rodriguez Batista, and the entire custodial staff at MBMS have shown remarkable hard work and attention to detail. Their dedication helps keep veterans’ middle school clean, welcoming environment for students, families to enjoy their efforts, make a meaningful difference every day. Uh, have a few more. So, bear with me from Frank Kowalski, principal at Glover Elementary School.

6:24 He shouts out to nurse Jessica Chu. Jess joined my team at Glover last year. She literally hit the ground. Running was a huge asset to the team. Jessica’s an extremely talented and knowledgeable nurse. Uh, she’s amazing with our family. She’s empathetic, caring, and genuine. She loves all of our students and treats them with extreme kindness. Jess supports the schools opening each day and is always around to help with dismissal and buses. She goes above and beyond always asking how she can help. She’s someone I rely heavily on and who never disappoints. He also shouts out to Jim Rackey, um, who is our cus his custodian. Custodian Rackey has become a huge asset to his team. Jim comes to work each day and has really worked hard to ensure that Glover is clean and that all teachers have clean workspaces. Jim’s a huge help during lunch monitoring

7:09 his students and cleaning when needed. Jim is a lu, a short lunchtime turnaround, but he handles it himself and does not complain. I’m really thrilled that the effort he puts in each day on to ensure Glover is a safe place and a clean place for everyone. Uh, from Lisa Maria Polito, our assistant superintendent Student Services, I would like to shout out to our BBAs Kate Track. We messed that up. We, she professionally is known by kt and I can see why Kate and Mary Duke. K um, sorry for presenting deescalation strategies to the entire district of professionals during our PD day yesterday. The strategies support staff and safety care deescalation strategies using a three option approach with common language. And I just wanna share the language ‘cause this is important. We’ve talked about school safety and ways that we address safe

7:54 safety over the last couple years. Um, so the common language help prompt and wait. Help involves active listening and empathy. While prompt offers clear, simple instructions, weight is used when the person needs space time to deescalate often by removing external factors. These key general principles across these and other safety focused deescalation models include staying calm, respecting personal space, using non-threatening body language, focusing on the feelings behind the behavior. Victoria and I would like to recognize our BBC bays, not only for the work with staff and are on this common language and strategies, but for the work they do, uh, to support our staff and students every day. From Julia Ferrera, our assistant superintendent of Teaching and Learning in the Office of Teaching and Learning, would like to extend a note, note of gratitude to our amazing students. We just completed quarter one at middle

8:40 and high school levels and elementary trimester concludes in early December. For every day, every day, our students show up ready to work hard, learn new things, and push themselves to grow. We are incredibly proud of their accomplishments and grateful for the positivity and determination they bring to our school. I would like to specifically thank Gilberto Hernandez and also Todd and, uh, Bloodgood and Lisa Manning. Further assistance with my flat tire on Tuesday. They all jumped into action to help me get back on the road. Knowing that my two plus hour drive home on my spare was not a very safe choice. So I just wanna say thank you. Thank you, thank you. And lastly, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, I wanna thank our Marblehead community for providing me the opportunity to serve as superintendent for Marblehead Public Schools and for the ongoing support as we navigate operations and governance of the district together. I also wanna wish our community a happy,

9:26 healthy thanksgiving. Please travel safely, and as my wife has always told our children, remember who you are and make good choices. Thank you. It’s fine. Thank you, Jennifer. All right. Um, next is our consent, action and agenda items. And I am looking for a motion to approve the identified schedules of bills totaling $835,535 and 81 cents. Um, and the meeting minutes from November 6th, 2025. So moved. Motion by Henry

10:02 second, second by Melissa.

10:07 Any discussion in the minutes? Um, uh, just so you know, um, have, you might wanna take a look under the subcommittee updates. They’re referencing the Bell school process, so I don’t know. Um, just be school. So we might wanna just Oh, okay. I will, I will take A look at that. I’m not sure how that,

10:34 um, any other discussion. Okay. Um, the motion by Henry, seconded by Melissa to approve the identified schedule of bills and the meeting minutes. All in favor? Any opposed? All right. The motion carries four to zero. Okay. So next we have a number of school committee communication and discussion items tonight. The first two, um, are field trips that we need to approve, and I think John is gonna, Yeah. So, um, we had, we had two, um, the first one was the Met halfway programs trip to Maine. Um, uh, Colin here. Connor here. Sorry. Oh, sorry. But up to the thing, just in case we have questions, we wanna make sure. So I can’t see that far. Con I No, no.

11:20 I just said earlier, I gotta wear my other glasses. So, um, so, uh, you have the, you have the, the proposal in your packet, so to go to landing school and Aaron del May, maybe you wanna just kind of share a little bit with the committee about, you know, how we got to this. Um, and, Uh, I haven’t met I Ryan, uh, English teacher of high school. I’m also the program director of our, uh, ICP Innovation Career Pathways. We run a manufacturing, engineering technology, uh, pathway in the high school. Part of our aim is, uh, postgraduate opportunities. Uh, to that end end, we have a number of seniors who are interested in the marine industry. The Landing school is a one-up kind school in Arundel, Maine. They do a degree in marine systems of diesel technologies,

12:07 um, wooden boat building, composite boat building. And they are the only school country that offers a degree in yacht design, Pacific Injunction with York University in New Orleans. Uh, they have an open house on, forget the date, the third, I believe, um, I reached out representative came down and talked to us. Uh, it seems like a really cool opportunity. They also have gap year studies, and they have, um, first small scale workshops that might work as potentially internships over the summer, that sort of thing. Uh, so I reached out to our members. Uh, they were keen to attend. I procure the silver bullet at the parking lot. Dan is ready to go, so, and they’re

12:55 There. Questions or comments from members? I’m jealous. Sounds good. Me too.

13:05 It sounds awesome. Um, and I, and I worked in a college, I’m very, very excited to,

13:14 So I just, I just wanna say, you know, Carlos, this is first year program director. He is doing a great job. So I think thank you. And I, um, I’m always about experiential learning and getting, having the kids see things and touch things in and do things hands-on. And I, and that’s a great opportunity. So I, I’ll generally support any of these kind of, uh, field trips from my perspective. So I think they’re educational, they’re meaningful. It’s not something that is a typical field trip, which is really cool. And it’s a way that way for students to experience something that they may, you know, find internships with their employment Inc. Later. So I appreciate, uh, the effort on this. Okay. So is there a motion to approve this field trip? I’ll make a motion to approve the, the Pathway program trip to Maine.

14:01 I’ll second. Okay. So we have a motion to approve the field trip by Henry and a second by Melissa. Any further discussion? Right. All in favor? Any opposed? Right. Motion carries more to zero. Thank you all have a great time. I appreciate You. I’ll, uh, I’ll get in touch with Will back. Yeah. Okay, Great. Thanks.

14:26 Then the ne the next, um, the next field trip is a speech and debate club event. Michelle, you wanna come on up?

14:36 Yes, absolutely. Um, I’ll let Michelle introduce, but um, this is a little atypical, um, field request, but I thought it was really cool. Um, and it’s, you know, Michelle and, um, will, will explain kind of what they’re looking to do and, and seeking the school. I’ll just turn it over to you and you guys can share. Yeah. So, um, this is a born a new student to modified high school who just transferred from Alabama way off. Um, she is nationally ranked in speech and debate, and her high school there had a speech and debate club, which we did not have. She found two staff members who were willing to volunteer their time and serve as advisors for this to try to get the club off the ground and running.

15:21 And we have several students that are interested. None of the new students would be competing this year, but they’re learning all about it. But, um, she is going to, uh, ask to go to a competition out state, um, and submitted a proposed trip for that. And one of the advisors is going to accompany her to that. Wanna tell them a little bit about this? ‘cause you know much more than I, Okay. So, hi, my name’s, um, I’m a sophomore model head and, um, like to me here, um, I’m requesting to attend a tournament in Georgia at Emory University called Barclay Forum, which is a national circuit tournament, which just means that, um, states from all over the country will send kids

16:08 to this tournament to attend and, um, especially to debate, which is, it’s a public speaking at the curricular, which, um, I think I’ve been doing it since seventh grade and was really shape on the person that I am. And I think public speaking is something that everybody should learn how to do. Um, it’s a really important tournament to me because it was my first national circuit tournament, so it full sentiment for value. And last year I became the first freshman and the first student from my school to break my prelims. Um, so I really do want the opportunity to attend because I think that, um, you know, it’s important, it’s an important tournament. It’s more an opportunity, but also because I want to be able to explain this club so that next year, um,

16:53 I won’t be the only student from a attending. Um,

17:00 So yeah, I just think, you know, thank you so much for coming and explaining to the committee. It’s, it’s really, uh, neat. You know, I said, I talked to Dr. Carlson about it. She said that you guys sat and chatted, so, um, I appreciate you coming before practicing at public speaking. Right. That’s great. And I think as a way to kind of spearhead developing and growing this program, I, I can think a really better way to do it. And, um, you know, you should be very proud of yourself of being so young and so far along in the, in the speech and debate arena, I guess. Um, so I appreciate how you bringing that to the committee, and hopefully they’ll agree with me that, uh, it would be great opportunity for you, but also to showcase Marblehead and how awesome we are.

17:39 Any questions? Yeah. So thank you again for doing this. This is great. Um, so I’m trying to understand, so it’s the student Yvette and one and the chaperone. So two people, no other students, just, okay. So then there’s a cost per student here. So that’s, I guess your cost. So where is the cost for the chaperone? Is that, will we coming at It’s coming out of a high school budget. It’s going to be, um, supporting that. Okay. But, okay. That’s great. That’s very generous. Great. Um, okay, any other questions?

18:15 And so do we have a motion to approve speech and debate club trip to Emory? So moved. I, so we have a motion by Henry to approve the trip and the second by Melissa. Any further discussion? All in favor? Right? Motion carries forward to zero. Thank you. Good. You Good luck. Yeah, thanks so much.

18:44 All right. So next on our agenda tonight is the MHS roof contract. Um, and I believe we have some people who are gonna to present. Yes. So, and then we’ll move to some discussion amongst the committee. Um, hand it off to you. Yeah, I’m happy to, uh, introduce, we got Ryan fin here. You can come up. Uh, and we have Mark Leadman on online. Um, I, I also know we have a couple other members, uh, here online as well. I see, uh, g Raymond being along, and, uh, Ralph Wallace is here as well. Although we did select, uh, mark and Brian to present.

19:32 But if anybody on the who’s, who’s on the call has anything c or has popped up here. So, um, if anybody has anything,

19:43 I think I’ll start by sharing,

19:50 um, Mike, unless you wanna share it, I’m happy to. What do you want? What do you want? Oh, I think I, I have it on. Do you want the presentation? Have the present.

20:08 Send it different.

20:17 I’m ready to go if you want. Oh, really? Sure. Thanks. Because, uh, I every programmed on a little different.

20:31 Okay, thanks Michael. Um, this is a presentation that, um, Lena, who’s, who’s on this call, uh, together, and this was what we reviewed at our meeting on Tuesday the 18th. Um, and we’ve been meeting for several months now, looking at sort of the specs of the project and, um, the creating the bid documents and posting the big documents and, and working off of a timeline, um, which is here. Thank you, Mike. Um, the, where we are right now is sort of,

21:10 I don’t actually, it’s not, wait, what’s on here, but we have met and we have approved a bid. Um, we, the biggest, uh, decision that we had to make was whether we were going to go for the restore versus recover options. And that was more of a traditional roof versus a liquid applied roof. Um, we had some guests to the community like Ji, who brought us this idea. He joined, um, our most recent call in the call before that to discuss the pros and cons of the liquid applied roof. And, um, we had several meetings and, and communications where we were updating the bid documents. Um, but now, you know, the bids are in

21:56 and we have, uh, sort of a approved a contract. So these are the six bids that we got from general contractors. Just for clarification. Yes, I think you would’ve, this is a recommendation to us for us to, yes. So we have approved in the subcommittee to bring to this committee for approval, which we’ll then go to the select. So yes, thank you, judge. That’s, that’s where we are in the process right now. So the, we have approved in the subcommittee, the bid from Homer Contracting, um, which is, uh, 8,970,000. That includes the subcontractor bids for roofing,

22:43 electrical, plumbing, and, um, HIA cities.

22:49 Um, it, that bid came under budget, $2,120,000. And then the, the third column or the, the, the column all the way on the right there, which is the alternative number one pricing that is additional cost to do the liquid applied roof. So, um, and you can see sort of a breakdown here. We’ve got the budget for the, for the GC was 11,090,000 low bidder, not including the alternate, which were not including the liquid applied roof for homework contracting was 8,970,000, which was under budget, 2,120,000.

23:35 And just a little bit less than 20% under budgeting. Um, these are sort of the breakdowns with the, with the pre-quals here, with the mandatory requirements. Um, you can see the filed sub bids, which is the fourth column from the right. These are all, they’re all using the same subcontractors. So it’s Takeway Roofing, uh, for the roofing, the plumbings, Robert Irving, HVAC is a Monte, and the electric and the electrical is systems. And so all those prices were fixed across all the GC bids. Um, and so there’s, there’s really just the variation there. Was there low bid amount,

24:21 and then whether we wanted to use the liquid applied roofing. Um, the subcommittee voted unanimously not to use the liquid applied roofing. We didn’t really see justification in the additional cost. There were, there were some benefits, but, um, but we decided as a group that there weren’t over $2 million in benefits. And so that left us with, uh, we are required to accept the low bid, which was from Homer, um, Homer Contracting. And so that was the bid that we voted to bring to this committee for approval.

25:06 Um, You go back Yes. Check. The one was just there with the, all the, yeah. Oh, so one more. Oh, yeah,

25:40 Yeah. I have a bunch of questions. I don Oh, please. Yeah. What are we doing here? Yes, you can go, we can, we have, we can open this up to questions. And again, So if all those subs are the same price, then the difference is the, to the what goes in the gc. So that’s $2 million to the lowest bidder and avoids from there. Um, that’s what it’s just doing in the amount. So the subs are all like 6.9 million and then the difference is what the GC is marking out or a charge. Correct. I mean, GC does have some material. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it’s not all Yeah. But it’s labor materials. Um, so is there any explanation? So I believe, if I’m not mistaken, this goes genesis of this particular exercise goes back to town meeting when there was discu or before discussion around this liquid applied

26:29 roof was supposed to be a cost save, um, of 2 million. So we kind of had a swing of 4 million between a co well, up to numbers were being thrown around between 1,000,002 million. I know David Sandon had talked about that, um, in the school meeting meeting over summer. Um, so is there any explanation on what this pretty significant swing was? We paid $250,000 for? We asked the same question subcommittee for this, the response from left field in RDAs that they can’t legally reach out to the bidders at this time to find out why they bid certain ways until after the bidders awarded, I believe, and they were online, but I believe that’s what I heard. I may be paraphrasing it differently, but they couldn’t reach out to the bidders and say, why was the liquid applied so much more?

27:17 We had estimated that it would come in less than the rubber roof or the, uh, PDC membrane. Um, yes. So that’s correct. We, we can’t reach out to them and say, Hey, could you explain your bid? Can our cost estimator or our designer or our OPM Offer an explanation? The, the, we paid a lot of money. The explanation was is that apparently the contractors saw the liquid applied roof as an additional complication, not as a material savings. So they, they priced it based on,

27:56 you know, they would ra I think it appears that they would rather use the PVC of, and so, so the liquid apply was an upcharge. Okay. I, I’ve got some, I’ve got some thoughts on this. If, if that helps anybody, you should mark, I’d love to hear what you think. That’d Be great. Um, so I think, you know, uh, square foot pricing for a liquid applied restoration is traditionally less expensive than a new roof. Um, my guess is the reason why that didn’t reveal itself in this proposal is because this roof has already, already suffers so many material damages, uh, you know, in, in various locations. And they’re pretty extensive. So I think the amount of work that would be required to, um,

28:42 remove the old roof repair insulation and roof decking and all of the stuff that needs to be done, uh, then reroof it with PVC in those areas and then apply a liquid, uh, is just further complication. Whereas if you take a roof that is in, in, uh, good condition, but at the end of its lifespan and apply liquid to it before it fails in a significant way, it’s a tremendous savings. But here we just didn’t see that, that that’s, and again, nobody that’s not coming from these subs. That’s just my understanding of it, uh, having a construction background. Thank you. Um, is there anyone else on the, on the call with losing the subcommittee who would want to chime in and provide some more information about?

29:31 Uh, okay, but Ralph has raised some. Alright. And we’ll allow we talk. Do you want a break soon?

29:43 He should be able to talk now.

29:48 Can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you. Thank you. Uh, good evening. So yes, I, I would just, uh, concur that assessment, that description I think was very much on point. Um, because I think that these liquid applied roofing products work best when you have a, a, an older roof, as they described, nearing the end of its useful life. But the roof is in generally good condition. Uh, this roof has some problem areas, and so that makes the, um, uh, the attractiveness of the liquid applied roofing system, uh, uh, significantly reduced. I’d also observed that we got three bids, uh, from, uh, qualified, uh, roofing contractors, uh, all of whom do extensive amounts of, uh,

30:35 roofing installations on public school projects. Uh, and the bids for the alternates, uh, uh, varied widely, uh, Cape Way, which was the lowest bidder for the, um, uh, PVC membrane basically bid, uh, $2 million extra, uh, more than double about double its bid, uh, I’m sorry, $1.8 million extra, almost double its bid for the liquid applied, uh, roof. Um, the, uh, the next bidder was Greenwood, uh, and they bid, uh, the alternate, their, their base bid was $2.9 million, and their ad for the alternate was $983,000 or less than half of the alternate markup

31:21 that Cape Wade had proposed. And lastly, Gibson Roofing, uh, actually, um, uh, proposed a, uh, a credit of $157,000, uh, for, uh, the liquid applied roof. So the, uh, the range in values was, uh, was very broad and it’s pretty clear that the, uh, the market was fairly, um, uh, divided in terms of their, um, comfort with proceeding with a liquid applied product in this particular installation. And in any event, uh, Cape Ways, uh, bid for the base contract was lower than any of the, uh, other alternates. I mean, if you’d accepted the liquid Applied Roofing with $157,000 credit from Cape Way, uh, their bid would’ve still been, uh, $3.3 million.

32:14 Thank you, brother. And we can’t see those That wasn’t shared since Okay. Because the numbers Ralph was just talking about are must be embedded in these GC numbers. Uh, definitely there. So, yeah. Yes, Yes. Those are, those are the, the base bids. So as, as you point out, you got the math right, it’s about $6.9 million for the, uh, the GC bids. And I would point out the one thing, it’s, we’re we’re talking about the roof, but let’s understand that about 70% of the value of this, uh, of this contract is for the HVAC equipment. And 30%, roughly speaking, a third is for the roof.

32:57 Um, and I just, I I, I don’t mean to bore you, I’m sure you got other things to do than listen to me, but I’d observed that we got good, uh, bid participation. I, I think that left field and RDA did an excellent job in going out and, uh, um, uh, uh, you know, entertain, we have to pre-qualify contractors for this work. It’s a requirement because it’s worth over $10 million. But we got, um, uh, eight, uh, general contractors pre-qualified. We received bids from six, we got six roofing subcontractors pre-qualified. We got bids from three, we got nine plumbing contractors pre-qualified. We got bids from six for a very small scope. Uh, we got, uh, six, um, nine HVAC subcontractors pre-qualified. We got bids from six, uh, and they were very tight.

33:45 And we’re very fortunate in this instance, uh, that the, um, low bidder ante and suns, which is based in beautiful Highland Avenue in Salem, is an exceptionally good HVAC contractor. And then lastly, we got seven pre-qualified electrical subcontractors, and three of them gave us bids. Again, also, uh, highly qualified firms that do a lot of, uh, schoolwork and, uh, well below budget. So from a procurement standpoint, uh, given there was some concern, but the market, I think fortunately, is turning in the favor of owners. So this was a good time to take bids. Um, I’m particularly pleased with the HVAC results, but the roofing bids are also quite good. So in my way of thinking, this is a, this is a very good outcome, a very, you know, positive, uh,

34:31 success for the, for the, um, for the town. And I think that’s why the, the, the subcommittee, uh, recommended the award of the contract for the base contract scope.

34:44 Thank you. That’s helpful. Any other questions from the committee? So, um, there was some discussion about a couple of the, so one question is about the, you know, the continuation of the subcommittee. Um, I’m a little unfamiliar with a committee in this nature, ‘cause I’ve never worked with them before. But I’ve worked with many multiple building committees. Typically building committee, Ralph was the committee, and these are some MSBA regulations will continue through until, in fact, the Brown Smoke Committee, I think still exists, um, until, um, com completion of construction. So is is the plan for this committee to continue. Um, I know we have a couple folks who are subject matter experts who also have

35:31 generously offered their time to help, um, on the oversight of this, which I think would be clearly this process shows how valuable it is to have, um, community members here. And I would feel, um, I could sleep better at night knowing that we’ve got folks who’ve got eyes on this. Um, so I, I guess my question is committee is, is this committee gonna go on or would it just be sort of an ad hoc members, um, continuing to, you know, keep eyes on the project and either report back to, you know, obviously work Mike and John or report back to us or something, some way of knowing, because we’ve done half the job, which is to get the bid second half is we getting into. So thank you, Jen. So I, I, I am going to keep the committee active. I mean, I think when I asked

36:18 if anybody would be interested in continuing to participate after we’ve approved this bid, everybody was interested in continuing. So I think it would be a mistake to, to sort of turn down that community expertise. And so, yes, to answer your question, yes, we’re gonna continue at his job. Yeah, I think, uh, I just wanna say two things. One, I appreciate the, the subject matter experts in the community. It was definitely, I, I mean, I know I only jumped in a little bit here and there, and I did that purposefully. I’m glad, I was very impressed with conversations from Ralph Mark, everybody else own. So I’m really happy about that. I don’t wanna speak for Mark, but I know in, in the media day, he offered his services during the kind of boots on the ground in an ongoing way, uh, along with her p just to make sure

37:04 that there’s sets of eyes there. Um, I was just there for his offered as well. I mean, yeah, Definitely. Yep. So, um, so that’s great. And I think why wouldn’t we, why wouldn’t we, um, you know, take folks up on that off. I said, you know, it’s, it’s one thing you might see that someone else doesn’t see, or one thing Mark sees and someone, it’s, it’s always good to say, Hey, we’re, we’re on track. You know, not to micromanage the process, but to kind of help oversee it. So I would, I That’s great idea. The committees staying together and having some of these folks, uh, willing to kind of on the ground. So what, how many are on the committee? Well, we have, uh, five community members Total. How many are on the committee? Um, we have, so Okay. Five community members. There’s right, what me and Mike are the voting members,

37:50 and then Todd, and we’ve got Jean and Lena and Brian. Um, and So how many voting members? Seven. Seven Vote. Seven voting members. So four is four. So I just didn’t want, I don’t want, what I don’t wanna see happen is if it’s Brian and Mark, I know, I’m not sure Ralph, whatever, but what I don’t want is to be fitting bogged down with the form issues. If, you know, if two of you are up on the roof with Todd or the contractor, the GC to be getting into any issues around open Meeting. Yeah. Yeah. I, the designer, none of them are voting members, so you’d be fine with them. So as long as they’re on four committee members, As long as you don’t have four Yeah. Up there. And that way, you know, whatever’s discussed doesn’t, you know, doesn’t

38:37 American, I think everybody’s interest is kind of more like, I want to get up there and do my thing. So not to really drag along the whole peanut gallery, but sort of go essentially one bundle in comes of both. I think we’d all have different specialties too. I mean, I, I’m an hvac, um, that’s, I own a commercial HVAC company, so we do projects like this all the time. So that would be my focus. I’m not necessarily a roofing expert, but, um, I would be able to find everything I can for hvac for sure. Yeah. I’m just concerned about the idea of a quorum. ‘cause if there were a quorum of folks up there, and you’re all talking about Construc, we can’t, Yeah. Uh, we’ve been, they’re Gonna be eventually, you know, either presenting to us, so it doesn’t sound like

39:23 that. I don’t think you, It’s not an issue. But thank you know, I, I would, I will keep the, the committee sort of aware of that and, and people, we, I, I gave them all an introduction to when we, before we met for the first time. So, So one thing that might be helpful, and I’m not looking to give the committee more work, but but wasn’t necessarily has, we haven’t really made clear is sort of like, what is the, you know, there’s no definition of this committee. There’s no deliverable. So, and again, I’m not looking for more work, but, you know, maybe at some point we can come back and have you just kind of give us updates or whatever. ‘cause it, you know, we’ve gone from initial task of tonight recommendation to us and basically get this there, get this done. We

40:10 We can do that there. Office any updates too. I mean, it’s, but I think that that’s, we have that on every agenda, so I think want go updates there, we just build that. Sorry, I didn’t mean to Yeah, No, that, that would be very helpful and I think the timeline would be helpful just reporting back so we know. ‘cause it sounds like there’s a pretty, like, there’s like a 90 day window of construction. I think it sounds like it’s June to September or whatever it’s gonna be when the kids are out. Yes. The goal is to have this project completely done by the time the students are in the building for the one six months of school Might be, it won’t be fully done. I think October Is the October, yeah. Right. But our, the frames will be gone. The, you know, it’ll be buttoning up hopefully. And, and what’s really driving that timeline is the HVAC

40:59 The Lead for that. I think that’s great. I appreciate all the help. This is, this is why you, we have such a great community. Folks will step Up. Yes. Make difference. I would, I would love to call out, um, mark Lieman and Brian, Brian fin, um, we have Ralph Wallace who spoke earlier, but we also had em, Maloney and Sam Ro who were the community members on this committee? Hey, Mike. Uh, Mike. Mike Ji. I’d like to thank as well for joining. He wasn’t technically on the committee, but he did join two of our meetings in his expertise was invaluable. He answered a ton of questions. So, um, I will submit for official commendation. I just wanted to be sure that this was all but

41:45 before we started celebrating, but I think having us come in over $2 million under budget is, is worth accelerating. Great. Hey, hey guys. I’m sorry to interrupt, but I have to head into a planning board meeting in a couple minutes here. Do you mind if I jump in for a second?

42:03 Um, so I just, I just wanna continue on the idea of, um, having some oversight on the project from the subject matter experts, especially, uh, Brian with the HVAC and, and I’m happy to jump in on the roofing because that is, uh, an area of, of expertise. Um, I think the, that from the roofing perspective, um, depending on what phase of the project they’re at, it might even be a few times a week getting up there. Because a lot of the failures that occur on these types of projects, um, are both in the material themselves and more common in the application. Now, the material itself, you can’t tell typically at the time of, of application if there’s a defect. And it takes years for that to, uh, to show,

42:49 its to show itself. But you can very quickly detect if there’s any quality issues with the application or any deviation from, from, uh, you know, standard best practice for installation. So I, I’d be willing to do that and give as much time as required to make sure that the, the taxpayers get what they, um, are expecting to get. Uh, additionally, I think that after the project is completed, I will volunteer my time if it is something that you’ll allow me to do to work with whatever department it is within the, the school department, that, that is responsible for maintenance. Um, one of the reasons I think this is important is because a lot of the photographs that we were shown in this subcommittee,

43:34 which basically justified the need for replacing the hvac so prematurely really were excellent documentation of lack of general maintenance that is almost free. Something that town employees could do without contracting up, uh, for example, changing filters. And there are pictures showing, oh, the filters sucked into the unit. We need to replace the unit when in reality, uh, that should never be happening. So I would like to have a quarterly meeting with whoever’s responsible for maintenance and see what’s been done, see what’s on the horizon, and potentially do an inspection if there’s any reason to believe that, uh, that some more oversight is required from a, you know, roofing or HVAC expert rather than just a general

44:21 maintenance person who is employed by the town of Marblehead. And like I said, that’s something I’d be willing to do and happy to do because we should be pro protecting our investments instead of, uh, you know, seeking override money prematurely to replace them without any maintenance in between.

44:39 Yep. They, yeah. Um, and I’m gonna take that a step further. That really ought to be something we ought to take up from the facility. So committee I, yeah, I was gonna say The same and, and Mark, I talked to you about that offline, but I think, you know, contrary to what we’ve discussed earlier this year, this committee out voted me in terms of having expert, you know, community members and experts on the facility subcommittee, which is why we have traditionally had community members with subject matter expertise on our facility subcommittee. So, um, I think we should, you know, take mark up on his, again, generous offer, um, to help protect our taxpayers, um, and consider how we can formalize or operationalize this through facilities. Awesome. Well, any, anything I can do to be helpful and you all know how to reach me,

45:25 I’m gonna hop off right now, but I, uh, thank you to Henry for all the hard work and, uh, if there’s anything else I can do to be of service, please, uh, let me know. Thanks, Margaret. Thank you. Have a nice evening everyone. Joe, good meeting. Great. Any other questions? Thank you. From the committee. Um, so then we need to vote this. So I’m looking for a motion to award the contract as presented for the general contractor, the Marblehead High School roof HVAC project to Homer Contracting Inc. Of Arlington, Massachusetts in the amount of $8,970,000. So second and moved Jen second.

46:12 Any further discussion? The only question that I have, um, that’s come up from a community member is, um, and I don’t know whether you can get this micro or I can follow up with the townside, but, you know, has this full amount been borrowed, bonded? And how does that work when it comes to, I mean, we may have to wait until the project closes out, but if it’s already been bonded, what happens to that remain? Or, or is it, is it drawn down as as the project progresses and just won’t draw, draw down That to me, I, I did have a discussion with Alicia yesterday, um, Alicia Benjamin sound, um, I don’t fully understand her role in bonding and borrowing, you know, you bond it, but you may not borrow it right away. I believe the entire project may have been

46:58 bonded but not borrowed. I don’t believe we can borrow it until we at least need it. Um, or at least it’s under contract. So I don’t believe it’s been borrowed. Um, we just bounce a couple ideas of what that $2 million, how, how that gets back to the talent, how that gets messaged back to the community, things like that. So, um, stay tuned, I guess. Yeah, I think we, you know, I’ve brought it up. I think we need to get that answer. We need to get that out to community. Uh, ‘cause I’ve had a couple people ask me. It’s a, it’s a legitimate question. So the legally, by telling, telling me more, the, the money can’t be used for anything else. So that 2 million is gonna have to go, come off the tax, the, the they debt exclusion. So if, if the, if you, Well, in the past it has been used, so I’m, there’s been past cases where, you know,

47:45 it’s a fairly loosely written ballot question. So, you know, we have other Ws, we have other, like, there’s other ways, right? So I just think we don’t know the answer tonight, and I can also follow up with Alicia, but to, to understand how this flow works. So that, yeah, I think part, I think part of us way to make sure that it goes forward and stuff that we can actually do the due diligence of. But yeah. Stephanie, a question we need to have the answer to. Let’s move forward. Thanks. Other discussion on the committee? Great. So we will move on to vote the motion to award the contract made by Henry, seconded by Jen. All in favor? Any opposed? Right. The motion carries four to zero. Thank you everyone, especially to the members

48:31 of the subcommittee for all of the work that went into this. Thanks for coming. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks, Ralph. Where else is on?

48:39 And All right, so that brings us to FY 27 capital requests, which I believe Mike is gonna cover for us. Yeah. If it’s okay with share, I will again share my screen just to let the community see what, what’s going on here. Um, so annually we are asked by the town to submit our capital request. Last year being my first year of not knowing, um, we submit a list of capital que requests to the town and never went to the, the school committee. So this year we’re gonna do things right and we’re gonna put it to the school committee. Um, should I select the right file? We have, is this my memo? November 18th. Okay.

49:24 So, um, in our finance subcommittee the other day, we did present this as a list of our capital items that we would like to request from the town. Um, this is, we, we know that not all of this will be funded, especially next year with the financial situation of the town, but I believe it’s still important to list what our needs are so people can see that there are needs, even though they can’t be funded. Uh, the administration ranked these, um, by priority. And, um, I would ask that you provide your feedback and vote on this submission, uh, regarding priorities, especially if you think something needs to be moved up or down the priority list. Uh, and if you wanna put a one, a one B, one C

50:10 or something like that, I certainly that would help also, because I’m going to get in a meeting probably within the next two to three weeks, and I’ll be asked, you’re only gonna, like, you’re gonna get, only gonna get one thing. What is it that you want? And, and if I’d like to have a one A versus me sitting there saying, I have six ones, which one do, do I move forward? So I’d like this, the school committee to kind of guide me.

50:33 Sure.

50:45 Okay. Is that, is that a little better? So, um, these are in no particular order. I think they’re actually alphabetical by priority. So, um, some of the things that we’re looking for, bus cameras, uh, we have a bus camera system in our buses right now. It is a, uh, hard drive camera system that needs to be pulled every time we need to pull a a tape. We would like to upgrade that. Uh, the KK hard drives are failing on a regular basis, and it’s just not an efficient or, uh, state-of-the-art way to do things. The second thing on our list is the Glover playground. Uh, we did a lot of work there this year, thank you to the, to the town for allocating some money for the new surface over there and also to the PTO of Glover for donating a new piece of equipment, which has been a wild success, which is for the students. Over there is a climbing, uh,

51:31 rope climbing piece of equipment. One of the things superintendent and I noticed when we were over there is there was, there were a lot of jagged box, um, folders that were not removed when the building was built. This goes back to original construction. Just don’t really feel like it’s the most safe environment for our younger students. So we feel like we really need to get some of these bigger blocks moved out of their, uh, you know, they’re not the nice smooth rock. They’re little, little check. So we feel in, in the courts of safety that will probably give a high priority for us. Um, then the next three are all pertain to the, the Fieldhouse, the high school. This, this request primarily from, um, Mr. Wheeler. Um, it’s time to repaint and refresh our field notes, uh, in concluding, um,

52:19 the paint on the walls, padding on the, on the walls, the, the, um, safety cushions, padding, uh, and then also do some work on the flooring. He also wanted to get into the banner replacement and things like that. I said, Ken, do you know, I think really that’s something you need to work with your P-C-O-P-T-O on or your boosters groups to refresh the banners. Um, and, and they’re, I don’t, I don’t disagree. There’s all different shapes and sizes and colors of banners depending on the sport, and the year was awarded. So I think he’d like to get it all uniform, which would be great. I’ve seen that in other districts and, um, I just think that that’s something that we shouldn’t even ask the town for capital money, for banners, for, for whatnot. Well, it’s Also kind of cool to have the, what they were back then, not like Celtics updated

53:04 The retro. There you go. Okay. Mike, can I just ask the question? You good? Sure. So on the field, has no part of the conversation with the, uh, boards, the sound boards to this or, yeah, I think that’s part of the, um, the painting and the, okay, that’s, I believe it is Don. But yeah, the, um, there is acoustic paneling on the walls and, um, we’ve had issues with some of them not staying secured to low walls. So I would like to address that. Also. Uh, it doesn’t seem like they a widespread issue, but it’s something that we would, it, it, There’s also leaking in there, isn’t there? So that, that roof is, does the roof cover the field? Us? Excuse me. Can we move the new roof? The new roof will be down field on field, field field be done. New air, air handlers on,

53:50 I believe there’s two primary air handlers up there. Large container size. Yeah. Air handlers up there, that will be replaced, correct. Mike, Can I just ask a question? There’s three Fieldhouse items. Yeah. Uh, there’re similar descriptions or they Yeah, they’re, they’re on the other spreadsheet. I didn’t bring out One’s paint, one’s padding, one’s blown. Yes. Not the split. And I would do the padding is a 28,000. Mm-hmm. The paint is a 300,000 and the flooring is 200. Okay. Yeah. Thank you. Sorry, I should have caught that. Nope. Uh, moving on. We, I have two more priority ones that we’ve listed. One is the veterans middle school clock and Bell system. Um, in our schools, the clock, the bell and the PA system are all one system. They work tandem together. Um, that’s certainly in need of a new one.

54:36 It’s, it’s, to be honest, it’s useful life.

54:41 And our last one is, uh, at the village school around the Hopkins field. The fence there has taken quite a beating over the years. Uh, a lot of it’s chain link, a lot of dents, a lot of, um, maybe, uh, the, the talk rail piping has from on cave, disconnected, disconnected, uh, it needs some love. So, uh, that, that kind of rounds out our, our top one, tier one priorities. And then I’ll jump into tier two at our brown school. Uh, the playground is beautiful, great, beautiful playground. There is not a lick of shade in the, on that playground. Um, and it really, in the, in the late spring, early fall, it’d be a nice outdoor classroom space, uh, for, for teachers to bring their classroom for an hour

55:27 or so, just to have a different learning environment. It’s just not possible. The sun hitting, yeah, sun is getting on. So that’s been a request. Um, the Veterans Middle School, there were expansion joints throughout the school, especially on the first floor in the cafeteria, because that’s a big area. We notice it more. Those expansion joints were tiled over with linoleum type tile or decent teeth of tile. Um, and when those expansion joints move, like they’re supposed to, to provide, you know, cracking the floor cracks. So we have large, large separating cracks for very long span spans of, uh, of area. And maybe this is somewhere

56:13 where our subject matter experts can, can maybe advise us a little bit more. Then on the second floor, when they renovated the building, there were a couple of areas where they put down some plywood flooring. And when you walk on it, you know, you’re on plywood and you know you are on it. It, it’s not unsafe, but you can hear it echoing below you. So, um, no, just it’s, you know, feel like walking on the hardwood floor in your house. You might hear something down below though. Um, but those tiles are also starting to p crack and split. So we need to kind address those in the near future. Um, moving along, uh, the veterans, um, gymnasium. So that’s a large gym and a small gym to refresh the floor. I will say that every summer we do refresh the floors with a, a new coat of, um, polish in the polish.

57:00 But, um, finish, finish poly, um, I think they actually wanna take it down, redo all lines, sand it all down, put a new, a new fresh coat of everything on all. Not actually touch the hardwood other than to sand it down blush. Um, but that’s, that, that would be the like, and that’s the large gym in small gym respectively. And then you’ll see, um, you’ll see this from all veterans and I believe village later on, the gymnasium lighting is, uh, a little older. It’s not, uh, efficient by any means, and it’s not bright by most means. So they would like to read, read, read a lamp, may be the right phrase. Reamp those, those two gymnasiums.

57:45 So this one here is for veterans, and then the other one later on you’ll see is for village. Um, there is, um, at the veteran school, there’s coming off of the D Wing, I believe there’s a set of stairs that goes down and heading towards Pleasant Street, goes halfway down the hill and stops. It’s a concrete set of stairs. It’s the stairs to nowhere other than the students like to use those stairs to get to and from school if they’re coming from, I guess this side of town. Correct. Where, where we are here, um, we need to be careful. I’m not sure what we can do. Todd gave us a, an estimate of 75,000 to extend the stairs down. We don’t know if that will trigger a DA

58:31 ‘cause if it does, I’m gonna have to put a ramp in and that will fart 75,000. So we want to be careful what we do. We wanna obviously want be cautious that we’re not providing a route that, uh, somebody without disabilities can navigate with somebody with disabilities cannot. So we have to, we have to talk to some industry experts about what we can do and what, what would be allowed and what, what our rank. I’m not opposed to doing ramp, I just don’t know, $75,000.

58:58 Um, and then at the Performing Arts Center last year, we, um, had to scramble a little bit in June, but we were able to paint the entire performing arts center and reupholster all of the seats in the performing arts center, which been, it’s a beautiful move, um, through fresh area. The two things that we couldn’t do is we couldn’t redo some of the lighting on the walls, the, uh, wall sconces and the, they’re quite large and we could not, uh, replace the carpeting and the carpeting’s, not the entire, it’s, it’s the rows, um, between the rows. So, uh, we’ve got an estimate of to do that also. We only have a couple more things here. Uh, one more thing on, on item number two prior to number two is the village gymnasium Lighting has mentioned that radioing, that similar to veterans.

59:44 Um, starting priority number three, uh, seaside Park. This came from Kent also. This is where our baseball team plays and maybe a couple of other sports. This primarily, um, maintained by the Rec and Park Department, I believe. But there is some drainage issues there. And Park Rec has identified some funds, I believe, to do some work on the drainage over there. And they’ve asked us for some matching funds. Um, they, you know, Ken was looking for money outta the operating budget, but told was that probably wasn’t gonna happen. But we put it on the capital list. Did it happened in the revival fund? Um, I don’t believe the revolving fund could support that. Right now, talking about the athletics revolving fund. Yeah. I mean that’s, there was, or next year.

1:00:31 Well, I, I think, well, part of that’s gonna depend on what we do with user fees, because the cost of that, that fund primarily funds coaches salaries and official salaries and what officials and whatnot, mostly coaches. We do have some money in local budget for officials. Um, as you know, in the unit, a contract, the coaches salary are gonna go off by 3% next year. And if we don’t raise anything, if we keep the user fees at status quo, I’m not sure how you can pay people more and use the same amount, amount of revenue. Have you spoken to the Dug, though? I have not spoken to anybody. I’ve spoken to Ken. I think, um, I, I, I, I can, I mentioned that, that Ken, that there were some very generous donors when it came to the Piper field, and either them might with some other, or same, same or other who might be willing to do something

1:01:18 with this is I can reach out. It sounds, it sounds to me that, that the drainage stuff from, from my actually, is mostly regularly the infield of the Yeah, that’s why

1:01:31 helped sent my son from Grove, latest seaside six years ago. First day it seemed, I was absolutely so impressed when I pulled up all, I look at the grand stand, that amazing. I, I love that boat. So, um, Todd also, well, we can’t spell, I can’t spell, I guess, um, has asked for a new piece of snow removal equipment. It is a, um, it is not a plow truck. It is more a, almost like a snowblower, snow mover snow track system where it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s an impressive piece of machinery. It will help us do our jobs a lot easier to get, um, kind of look at the area in front of the high school where you might not be able to get a plow truck in between all the trees and everything. It, it can clear some areas like that. Uh, it does a lot of sidewalks, a lot of, um, pushing back

1:02:19 or, or clearing when the plows pushed into a pile, we may be able to move that pile even further forward. So he is asked for something. We did look at something last year, at the end of the school year, the end of the fiscal year when we had, uh, a little bit of surplus funds and we just, uh, couldn’t get it delivered by June 30th. So we had a scrap that, so I told Todd, maybe get us a quote in, in April, and I’ll upgrade to the committee and see if we can buy it in April when we know what our end year fiscal finance is written. And, and maybe at that time we may have some money left in his, uh, maintenance items. Um, so butch field structure, oh, the last request was, um, this was also from Todd. When we were talking about the fence at village, there was a, uh, a full of field houses, a, um,

1:03:06 the stands in the press box and underneath there’s some restrooms and some equipment rooms, uh, over a village. It, they could use a refresh. Um, probably mostly the bathrooms, the restrooms and, um, whatnot. I will say that those spaces are primarily not used by the public school. They’re primarily used by our youth organization. So it may be something that we need to work with them to raise funds together to, you know, spruce up those areas that primarily,

1:03:37 um, technology. I put this on here. We, we need to replace our wireless access points at some point. We, they’re on a five year wire from what I understand, their five year, uh, program. After five years, we still own the wireless access points, but the licensing that allows us to do a lot of the controlling of them is then falls off, uh, the contract or fall. The contract is terminated and therefore we lose some control. It doesn’t mean that our wireless access will stop working. It just means that we will not have control of maybe blocking some things or redirecting some things or whatnot. There’s, I’m not an expert on all things technology, so, uh, I do understand that we will lose support, control of these access points, but it doesn’t mean that we will lose our learnings now. So we could theoretically move on.

1:04:23 The other thing that we talked about last year’s budget preparation was in this, when we were building the FY 27 budget, which is we’re doing right now, talked about putting in, um, some money in a technology line and adding to that for three years in a row. So we could sustain three year leases and keep rolling those leases after three years, we would be self-sufficient and not have to add any more money to the budget. Uh, I think that part of the plan was to do that with this budget. And we also identified that we may not have funds in FY 27, the level of funded budget that we’ve been asked to put together to actually add anything to the budget. So that’s a concern. And um, you know, as Steven has said, we can probably get away with it for a little while with, you know, but we realize so much on our,

1:05:09 my list acknowledgement with our students and our devices, our smart boards, and everything we have in our, our lives. So it’s not something we really wanted chance too much with. Uh, and then rolling stock. We, we have two buses, uh, 2013, which is, uh, what, 12 years old now? Almost 13 years old. That’s a 14 passenger bus and a 2015. I think those numbers might have been flipped. I think priority and those might be flipped. 13 probably should be priority one and the 15 should be priority two. But, um, both of them are, um,

1:05:43 nearing the end of their life, their useful life. And 12 and, and 10 years old going on 13 and 11. Um, is is a good life for a school bus. We might be able to get another a year or two out of them, but, you know, some good plan for the C things. You can go to a lot when pickup got, especially in Marvel, we require all of our yellow buses to have ramps in them, handicap ramps, so all of our students can go on any bus at any time and be fully inclusive on field trips or athletic trips or whatever else. So, um, that is usually a custom thing. It takes a little bit of planning, ordering us to get the lift sold. Um, so just the total of our, our priority one totals was $935,000. Our priority two totals were $629,000. And our priority three totals were about $93,000.

1:06:30 We will say there were probably four or five items that were on the list that I asked Todd to pull off the list. They were mostly under $20,000. And I felt that we could support those within our local operating budget if we just, you know, tighten our belt a little bit. Even this year, we can do it this year within our local operating budget. Um, example was there, um, the lover school was built without a, it was wired and there’s a button to open handicapped door, handicapped accessible door inside the festival once you get inside the building. But it was the, the mechanism was never foot in and, uh, the button was actually never installed. So things like that. $7,000, totally. We need to find the money just to do that. This, and, and, and if it’s that important life safety, we should not be waiting for to approval on.

1:07:15 So a couple of items like that. Um, Julie had a few items that she asked for, uh, to be considered and we have to find business budget.

1:07:27 So I would take any recommendations if you think priorities are off anywhere and need to be, uh, adjusted up, down, or, um, especially in priority one, what might be a Navy or C Um, Can I just chime before? Uh, so bus camera systems, uh, the rocks and whatnot. A glover, the bell clock veterans, and in my opinion, the, the technology for all, um, one, but also one, uh, due to safety. So that I just asked the, um, committee, uh, can think about that as they’re, as they’re kind of looking and sober. Um, those are all safety issues that I think are, are very pressing. I think you is.

1:08:15 Does anyone have any questions, comments? I mean, the only thing is we discuss this in the budget subcommittee. Um, we always do have the option to go forward with the debt exclusion override. We wanted to fund this mm-hmm. Completely in one year, um, beyond what town meeting may be recommended. Um, if it won’t, certainly won’t be all of them. Um, I’m gonna suggest, I’ll make a motion to that. We approve this priority list. And then Mike, when you’re, when you communicate this, if you’re given some kind of a idea of what the amount may be that will be recommended by the finance director, maybe come back to us now, what the recommendation. ‘cause for us to, we have no idea whether it’s, you know, 50,000 or 500,000. So for us to prioritize one a, one B is hard to do

1:09:02 With my conversation with Isha yesterday. Yeah. And I’m not sure that, that they comfortable with how much money’s gonna go into that hole at this point. Right. So I think we can, I’m gonna suggest I’ll, we, we approve, we take a vote to approve this as it is. And then if we have to, you know, I’m sure pick, you know, which one it would priority. It would be based on a recommendation from you and if it’s your or. Right. I’ll make a motion to approve the priority of this to the capital FY 27 capital replies. Second, the motion to approve from Jen. And is it from Melissa? Any further discussion?

1:09:43 Great. So we move, move to vote. All in favor? Alright. Motion carries four to zero.

1:09:53 Thank you. Thanks, Mike. Thanks, mark. Okay, next on the agenda is, um, a donation from the Marblehead Female Humane Society. So I’m looking for a motion to accept a donation of $2,500 from the Marblehead Female Humane Society to the Marblehead METCO donation Fund. So, Second Motion from Jen, second from Henry. Any discussion? Right? We can move to a vote. Um, all in favor, any post motion carries four to zero.

1:10:36 Okay. Um, Jen, I think you were up next with any update. Yeah, so, um, I just wanted to give, I mean, since this isn’t sort of an official subcommittee, um, I didn’t put it under sub, you know, subcommittee updates, but I just wanted to give an update. So when we had met, uh, one of our meetings, I think it was the September 5th meeting, um, that took place, um, shortly after, uh, tragic, um, incident, uh, at a loss of student this summer. Um, I had come forward to the, to the committee. Um, and it indicated that I had reached out to, um, some of the leaders and some of our other elected boards in town that I thought had, uh, sort of con, you know, connections in to either students or children, um, and

1:11:23 or the health of our community. So that was the board of health rec park department, select board and us. So, um, we, we agreed that I would do that. So I’ve had actually a couple of opportunities to meet with some of the folks. So it’s, it’s not a, again, it’s not a, um, forum of a board or anything, it’s just, um, some conversation and, you know, we’ve shared some thoughts, um, and concerns particularly what each of, and, and, and, uh, folks that we’ve, I’ve met with, have met with Chris Kennedy from Rec Park to McMahon, who’s here tonight from Court of Health. Um, met with Erin, um, Nunan from Select Gordon, and then also then Alexa Singer. I think Alexa may be the one will continue to work, um, with us going forward. And, um, she met with us last night, so we just have really spoken about, you know, what are some things, you know, what are we hearing actually from folks in the community?

1:12:10 ‘cause I’ve been hearing from folks in the community, and I think some of the other leaders have, or I know they have, um, that are concerned, um, about our, our young people in our town and focused on their health and their safety and their welfare. Whether, whether it’s, you know, use and abuse of, of substances, um, as well as, you know, impaired driving, driving, et cetera. So, and it kind of encompasses, you know, all of us in our areas, in our lanes, if you will. Um, so we’ve had conversations around, um, you know, what the laws are in town, both state laws and in bylaws. Um, I think we have sort of a clear picture, but there’s some kind of, um, you know, I don’t know about confusion, but some uncertainty around

1:12:56 how exactly what those bylaws are. And I’ve, I’ve gotten some of those that I shared with me, um, the enforcement of those bylaws, um, how that’s worked. Um, we’ve talked a lot about education, which superintendent Robert and I have talked about and talked about tonight. So what role can the schools have? Um, and then the, you know, the health department through the Board of Health, um, certainly committed to, um, you know, wanting to, you know, address this. And also, you know, to, has talked about, um, you know, steps that, um, might be able to take around, um, counseling, um, and having resources available. Um, you know, for for students that way, or for, for, I shouldn’t say students, young people in our community. ‘cause this affects all young people, whether there are students or not. Um, so that’s, that’s really it.

1:13:42 So a couple things that we’ve, uh, since our last meeting. Um, one is we actually got some information. I did, uh, Tom actually was, did share what the bylaws are. We actually do have bylaws in the town around, um, serving minors, alcohol, um, minors, you know, having alcohol, um, and certainly driving while impaired. Um, there actually are fines, believe it or not, they’re like $25 fines for, interestingly, for serving a minor. I don’t think they’ve been updated. And what’s interesting to note from our, um, town clerk is that, um, there have, there were citations. The numbers she was giving us were back from 2009 to 2016. There were five citations given out for, um, house parties or, um, you know, um, a location of a, of a house or a on a boat that had underage serving minors.

1:14:31 Um, and there’ve been no citations since 2017. Interesting. Um, so that’s just information, um, that has been shared. Um, so I know, um, Alexa was gonna have some conversations around like, what exactly is, you know, what, what, you know, what are the bylaws? Um, we’ve talked with the superintendent on the education part. So I, I think that there are just some, you know, sort of ongoing. Um, we’re also, I’ve reached out, we had a conversation, I’ve reached out to the district attorney’s office and have made a connection there in terms of resources. ‘cause they actually have resources too. Um, one of the things we talked has been talked about, and I haven’t talked to John about this is up until I think COVID, um, we used to have an annual, um, kind of spring kickoff, or not kickoff,

1:15:18 but spring meeting for parents of seniors going into like the spring and, you know, events or whatever. Um, and it would be all about just what the events were and all that. But there would also be a section usually from, um, either the chief of police or the, even the DA’s office has this as a resource where they talk about some of these issues around keeping students safe. Um, you know, what we, you know, what, what, what the balls are, what the bylaws are. Um, and more just a, just a, you know, reminder around being, you know, trying to be vigilant and keep students safe. So that’s something we can, you know, talk about the education side. So that’s really sort of it, you know, we’ve got a few things, you know, we’re working on. Um, I, you know, I, I don’t have anything that we’re voting for or anything like that.

1:16:04 I just wanted to give a brief update. Um, I think this is a long range it, you know, sort of issue. Um, I, I feel, um, very appreciative and there’s a strong commitment from the other folks on these committees in their particular areas, um, as to what we can do. Um, and I, you know, they don’t speak to their boards. I certainly don’t speak to their boards, but I feel like, you know, there’s, there’s a commitment there. Um, so anyway, I just, I don’t know if anyone has any thoughts or concerns or questions or No, Jen, I think it’s great. I’ve, you know, I I’ve also talked to a number of community members and people on other boards, including Tom Zaro from, from the board of, um, I talked to, uh, I believe they actually talked to Mike Elkin, who, uh,

1:16:50 has, he’s in the, uh, leaf Rotary Club with Marblehead Harbor. Okay. He, he told me, he talked to me, but he has experience with, Oh, Mike, yes, yes, yes. Yeah. But Elkin, yes, yes, yes. Uh, has a lot of experience with a addiction and substance abuse counseling. And, and he has resources that if we might be interested in, in seeing if, if the schools council will be interested in learning some of these techniques. He’s a trainer. Yeah. These techniques. So, um, I, I’m, I’m proud of the work that’ve been doing, proud of the work that everyone’s been doing in town. Um, I think we’ve all come together around the true, and I hope to see some real challenge. John, do you have Anything?

1:17:36 Yeah, so I think, um, you know, we’ve had some conversation about it. I think, you know, I was kind of waiting to see how things kind of pan out conversations you’ve had. And, you know, I’ve had some connectivity with the, you know, board health com survey and some of that, some other conversations. So I think it’s good to fit for the collaboration. I think it’s good to have the conversations and see where we can, um, you know, kind of elevate the con the discussions. Right. Um, I alluded to some of the things in my, in my update. We’re gonna, we’re gonna come back and kind of really share some more of the things that we have in place around substance abuse, around healthy, you know, um, students, et cetera. Um, and some of the things we’re planning. So we’ll, we’ll share that information in kind of a, a more succinct and, uh, specific way, which I think will lend some more discussion.

1:18:22 I think, uh, there’s a lot of good things happening in the school, so we’re for identify areas so we can enhance. So in the infancy discussions of it, been a lot of discussions already. So I think that that’s good. I think, um, you know, the more we can talk about, the more we can get parents, um, to really think about how they can keep their, their children safe, um, is just gonna help the community. Uh, I think, you know, going into, uh, holiday season into spring, you know, it’s always the different seasons that kind of elevate the conversation. Um, I think the biggest thing is, we talked about earlier is we just, we need to have the conversations who are proactive, not reactive. Um, so I’m glad we’re keeping the conversations over. ‘cause you know, it’s really easy to say we had a very horrible tragedy. Everyone gets elevated and passionate and then kind of goes away and something else bad happens.

1:19:09 And it’s not, not unique to modeling that happens in every community. So, I’m glad, Jen, for the conversations you’re having and, and folks that are stepping up because, uh, we, we need to keep our conversational alive so we keep our kids alive, period. So. Well, and I think too, that, you know, this isn’t, this certainly did come about from the, um, tragedy from the summer, but, you know, I, I’m old and I’ve been here for a long time, and there’s been multiples in this, in the 45 to 50 plus years I’ve lived here in town. So, you know, you could speak to each generation and, you know, there has been a tragedy. So it’s not, um, you know, it isn’t just about what happened this summer, although it is. Um, but this is a long range, you know, commitment that I think that we need to make, uh, nothing we need make,

1:19:58 um, and the leaders of this town, you know, need to, need to do that and to work with our administrators in each of our areas to help where we, And I think, uh, to interrupt, but, you know, some of the, I’m just reflect on some of the conversations about community member, you know, I’ve met with ministerial association, so there’s, there’s the pastors and the rabbis and the priests and, um, that want to be, wanna have a voice in lending resources and help and support too. And I, you know, I think we need to look at, um, areas such as that, as, as a, as another way to, because they have, they have, um, different levels of conversation with students and families, right? Our co you know, more my counseling, you know, they, they have a lot of hours to happen. So I think the more we tap into those different areas, um, just to keep that conversation going and,

1:20:45 and making sure, you know, I mean, not necessarily like we’re gonna do this on this thing and this on this thing, but to have dialogue and to keep dialogue open is, is the biggest first step and step that has to be in. So, I, I, I love the work getting Mean. The other thing I’ll say that this is, that that has come up too, which I’ve heard from, you know, this group as well as parents, is this concern around, you know, are we, you know, are we also enforcing those carrot stick and are we enforcing the MIH rules? And we have some, you know, really strict rules around that. And I’ve touched John and John’s, you know, confident in his discussions with the athletic director, that that’s, you know, that’s, you know, we’re obligated to do that. And that is part of the reality as, as

1:21:30 Well. And, and again, you know, when, and just speaking to MIA, you know, a lot of times I did that, we have a proactive conversations. The coaches are supposed to have a conversation with the students. He has them with the coaches. And clearly when students make bad choices and things happen, we have to have, there’s consequences, right? And the good thing about MIA is it’s very specific, right? And as long as we’re following what MIA says we’re supposed to do, and it’s in alignment with our handbook, parents get upset, kids get upset, but there’s, there’s consequences for decisions. Um, how can we part our conversation general? How can we replicate that in different areas too? So if kids are in drama or music or whatever, whatever, whatever, are we holding them to the same standard? And that’s conversations that we have to have more. And that Might be policy. It could be, yeah. And I think, so those are, you know,

1:22:16 those are conversations and discussions that are starting to happen. I, I can’t speak that historically how they have or haven’t had happen, but, um, I’m passionate about it. I, I’ve seen too many students get killed. Um, and it’s a, so, Tom, did I miss anything? I think you got it all in. Thank you. I mean, I think that’s the best place to alive. Yeah. Jen said what I’ve always said that dollars stickers and all that stuff, but then the park has sold then that story the next, the next gener has going. So keeping those, keeping it alive. Thank you. Well, I Think we have an opportunity to invite people, like, particularly community members to come

1:23:02 and present to us here in this meeting. Um, or, uh, included in, in some of the communications we have from the communications subcommittee, you know, um, I think it, it, it would help to have to use our platform a little bit to make a above some more of a public announcement about that. I know a lot of people are interested in working on this as well. Thank you. Thanks for doing that. Thanks. Work on it. Thanks Alexa. Thanks Chris. Thanks Eric.

1:23:35 Okay, right. So next, um, we are onto our superintendent goals. Um, so as a recap of where things stand on this, John presented, um, these goals to the committee at a workshop on November 3rd. Um, he took our comments and feedback, revised the goals, and presented them again to the committee at our November 6th meeting. Um, and he has now made some additional edits to the goals based on that discussion. Um, and are back before us again tonight for further discussion and vote. Yeah, so I think, you know, we, we talked about this last time I made, I made what I thought were the, uh, the improvements in the edits that the committee was looking for. I highlighted them, I put ‘em in the Dropbox. You’ve had an opportunity. I don’t think it’s really necessary for me to go through the goals, but I’m happy to,

1:24:22 if there’s still some further tweak that folks want or, um, you know, or our discussions we need to have, I’m open to that. Um, hopefully we can move forward. I, I will say that goals is written, I think are pretty robust. I think that I’m gonna be doing updates in an, in an ongoing way with all of ‘em. And as those updates kind of unfold, you will see where I am with my goals, where I’m not with my goals, where I’m falling short, where I’m exceeding where. And I think that that’s, that’s important. We can, just because the goals are written doesn’t mean that we can’t say, oh, you know, we, we overshot on that. We undershot on that. We can always kind of just massage them. And you go just for the edification of the community. I, I, I created other goals as 18 months goals. So you gotta get around being a, a set schedule going forward. So, um, some of them will be done

1:25:07 before the 18 months, some, but the 18 months will say, I gonna extend, extend. So Is there discussion from the committee about goals that on I, yeah. Good updates.

1:25:24 Motion. Motion to approve the, um, superintendent goals. I’ll second, but who made it? Then we made the motion. Melissa, second.

1:25:39 Okay. Any further discussion before we get vote? All in favor, co Motion carries forward. Thanks, judge. Um, I will look to hopefully tomorrow to take the watermarks off and send it to Lisa Manning so she can work with Steam to get them posted in the proper spot. Great. Great. Replace Be done tomorrow. Great. Forward you update on Yes. Thanksgiving.

1:26:06 Um, so we have one more goal, um, component of our agenda and the pass papers around. Um, when we voted our committee goals last week, what’s the next extra audit message agenda? John and Julie? Um, the committee or at our last meeting, the committee included and voted on this goal to edu elevate educator voices, um, which had been the initial draft of it was presented, um, at our first discussion about, about goals, but it hadn’t really been refined further. And so I took a stab at doing that, um, ahead of tonight’s meeting, um, and was hoping the committee could revoke this goal so that it’s more in keeping with the substance that we have

1:26:53 around the other goals. Um, so it really just sort of flushes out the idea of working with the superintendent to make sure that if we hold any sessions with our educators that are productive, um, and forward looking. And then, um, to have, as we’re doing with the strategic planning piece of things, have a member or an ad hoc subcommittee appointed, um, to really look at how other school committees are increasing participation at their meetings. And to come back to the committee at the end of this school year, um, with a report or an update on, you know, what that showed, what the pros and cons are. So the committee can have further discussion

1:27:39 around whether this is something that would serve committee in our district. Well,

1:27:51 any questions, comments, discussion? I think this wasn’t in the right. We just got this. Yeah. So I’m not gonna be in I position to, But we didn’t have a chance to read it, but That’s okay. Hey guys. Set. I won’t interrupt. Um, my question on this, I, I don’t, I might may have stepped out when we had this conversation last saw. I might just blanked out. I’m not sure. Um, the second part, just explore adding additional non-voting representatives to many, um, can just kind of explain what that looks like. I, I, I totally missed that part of Conversation. So, no. So there had been, um, some discussion earlier in the year, I think in our workshop with Alicia Mellon around, you know, whether it be an option to, for example, have an educator sit as a non-voting member of the school committee, participate in discussions.

1:28:38 Um, and she shared that other districts have like, things like a CPA, representative, o meco representative, um, do that same, same type of activity. And then, you know, there’s obviously an option to increase the role that our student representative plays in, in a meeting. And so that’s really thank And I, I love the idea. Just have more perspective. I just, I just, I don’t know far the conversation. I think, um, school needs, it’s my understanding school has that it’s kind of look to have, you know, like, say educator. So it’s sitting in, it’s generally not Yeah. Um, union leadership sitting on there for, for a lot of reasons. Yeah. And I don’t, that’s not disparaging to Jonathan or s

1:29:25 or any of the other members. It’s just generally not that, just so that, um, it, it can be seen as someone pushing agenda. So I just, I just wanna share that. Um, ‘cause after that’s what I thought you were going through and I looked into it and I was like, I would say usually work, it’s usually an educator or someone that’s willing to, and it might be, it might be, you know, an elementary educator or something that’s coming for, you know, discussions that we are having as a committee or a secondary or, or whatever. It may not be the same person all time. Um, so I just, I just, I just want, those are The kind of questions that might hope would be the explore. Okay. You know, through this is places that do it, what does it look like and how up so that we can make an informed decision. Yeah. If I’m reading this correctly, you’re basically like, you wanna do the work and the research to figure out

1:30:12 what are the options versus moving forward definitively this that’s, yes. Yeah, that Was my question as well. Sounds like the, the goal is to focus on asking questions and coming up with some ideas of proposals to bring back to the committee. To, to, for further discussion. Exactly. Not necessarily to do, you know, we may end up coming back and saying, this wouldn’t be the right thing for our district, or, you know, another district does something in a different way that achieves this goal and we think that would better serve us. Um, so that’s long. So it sounds like if we were to,

1:30:55 the action that we would take to meet this goal is a appoint a member or create a sub. Mm-hmm. And, and then a after that it’s sort of right, like to incorporate those changes that Yes. Yes.

1:31:17 The only thing I would say is I’m not sure a school committee can have and have not acceptable can thought that was more of superintendent. Yeah. I don’t know. I, I, I, my understanding was right, something that came out of a conversation with Alicia, but I know if she was the one that kind of suggested that or not, but yeah, that’s something she, You can look at it. Um, you know, ad ho just means it wouldn’t continue beyond, you know, it’s formed for the purpose of this specific then Yeah. You know, does not continue to exist while done. Um, so I know Jen wasn’t prepared to vote on this or others interested in voting it tonight. Do we wanna I’m prepared to vote. I think the outcome of this goal is more information

1:32:05 and yeah, I’m happy to vote.

1:32:11 Make a motion. I’ll make a motion to accept the school goal or elevating educator voices. Second. So we have a motion from Henry, seconded by Melissa. Any further discussion? Okay. To vote. All in favor? Any opposed? One abstention. Motion carries three zero with one abstention. All is, and is this written differently? The one that was ordered before this? The same one. This is different than the one. So I’ll send it to you. It come place. Sure. You want me to send it just to you then? Uh, no. You can send it to actually if you send Lisa Manning. Yeah, I’ll try to run everything through her so it doesn’t

1:33:00 it cc me the one. Of course. Thank you. Okay. Um, so next we have our subcommittee and liaison updates. And I know that within that, maybe we’ll start with request to approve some more basic plan that I think is coming from Henry and Melissa. Maybe start. Yes. I couldn’t tell where it, like, It looks like weird on the under think it just sounds hard to under subcommittee and liaison updates, there’s then a sub that cuts off in a perfect PDF, uh, for some more basic plan. Yeah, I didn’t know what that was.

1:33:46 So I’m happy. I mean, if you want me to just jump right in. Okay. So Smore is the newsletter tool that the district uses. That’s correct. Julie, right. More newmore. So that’s the tool that they use for their newsletters. And um, I am hoping that, you know, we’ve talked before about developing our own email list so that we can reach people who maybe aren’t included in updates that the district sends out or that PTOs might send out. Mostly people who don’t have kids in the schools who I think are very invested in with schools. In order to do that, we need to have a vendor to, and we can’t manually, like, so, so this

1:34:34 more I looked into because of Julius’s recommendation and, and this will allow us,

1:34:44 this will allow us to send out newsletters basically. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Do you mind if I jump in? Sorry, one thing I jump into this, I’m gonna say like, I hundred percent do not think that we should be running our own listserv or our own database. This school elected board member should not have access to a database people. It should only be through, yeah, so I School district, I can address that. Okay. Because, and so, yeah, So the, the some more, um, basic plan approval, we actually need to be able to send out any of the community newsletters. There’s a maximum of three that you can do before you have to pay anything for the accounts. Like we sent out our first community newsletter update last Friday. Thank you very much for your help getting that out to Can

1:35:30 I just ask a question? What were we doing last year when we were sending newsletters out from smart? It was, I think Steven set up Brian with a account. Yeah, I think so, but I don’t, I need to double check on that. Yes. So maybe we could do that. ‘cause I created a smart account with my, um, school committee email. Yeah. So if I can like loop into the school account, maybe we don’t have to pay for it, but we, we Didn’t last year. I don’t like then maybe we Can, maybe we could solve it that think That’s, Yeah, I, I think that’s a fair, uh, point. I was thinking that in the, in the process of setting up this account that it would be, so we only really have one, one email account that’s, that represents the whole, that is continuous through

1:36:18 whatever school committee is appointed. It’s not a personal account. Right. I don’t think it’s really appropriate to send out, um, newsletters from the communication subcommittee on that email address, just because I think that’s representative the entire school committee. And it just seemed like maybe we, we would want to set up I disagree. Okay. Well I I I was thinking that maybe we would want to set up a new email account for this. The newsletter Should be from the school committee. Okay. I think, I think May maybe, maybe this is, this is a way to get to it, right? So I think what you’re saying is that you having this more attached to the school school committee at Marblehead and Schools isn’t

1:37:03 what the communication subcommittee is looking for potentially in this idea. You guys can banter about We do set of school committee at Mama High School do s’mores sc at, you know, we create a a, a specific, um, email address that speaks to the school committee s’mores. And we can attach it to that. I think that’s doable. It’s still can run by Steven. Um, so then it’s separate from the school committee email that you guys have, that you have access to. And it wouldn’t be specific to that. And it could be utilized, you know, whoever’s on the committee for can use that same thing. Or you might have to change every time That spot like semantically. That’s fine. But that’s Subcommittee isn’t speaking for the school. Like I think there’s a confus I’m confusion. No, no,

1:37:49 No, we’re not speaking, we’re not speaking for the, the school committee, but we are sharing out information that the committee has discussed. And I did talk to Alicia at MASC. She said your purview as this communication subcommittee, which we agreed on in one of our September meetings, is to share out that information. So we’re not, I wouldn’t say that we’re speaking on behalf of the school committee, it’s more of aggregating information based on the meetings that we’ve had and just sharing that. But I think we can do we have a, some more account? We were doing it last year. Just if it’s just setting up a different Yeah, I think maybe we just need to connect the dots there on that front. But I, but we do, like we, after sending out the newsletter last Friday, had a lot of really positive feedback from folks and positive feedback from folks that were not actually in school community who got the message forwarded to them for people

1:38:36 that were in school community that said, how do I subscribe to that? I want to kind of know what’s going, which we Should be able to do. I mean, I think there’s more if you can. So, So exactly. You can through some more. So like I, we don’t wanna manage the school list or anything, but we do wanna be able to build for people in the community that wanna get those updates somehow. Like you can create different lists. You can say you wanna send it to the school through them and then the community who has subscribed. So I think that if the subcommittee’s gonna take that along, which is I guess if you willing to do that, that’s great. So if people can opt in or they can sign up for Exactly. I guess. Yeah. Right. So that a school can school, it’s even be the communication subcommittee list. But what really is very important is that individual members don’t, like, in other words, don’t

1:39:21 Correct. And we’re not sharing opinions and we’re not yet. Right. And that when you leave or I leave or someone else leaves, whoever’s the future subcommittee is what has, who has access. They get access through the dis Yeah. Not through us. Like, we don’t Have any That’s Henry’s biggest concern. Correct. Like laying the foundation for future members to just get what’s been done and not Have to ry and, and not, I mean, because you know, the potential database that would be abused. So, I mean that’s why it’s gotta be handled. I I completely agree. The district handles it. I just think it’s a different, it’s a slightly different audience. I don’t want to come in and money their newsletter list with, you know, I don’t understand. Because if we have our own account, like say it’s the subcommittee, you know,

1:40:08 communication subcommittee, it’s going to all the currently in the district to get, and then whoever may opt in in the community, that’s who we go to. I think. I think we would have to ask the district to include a link to sign up for that link in their own newsletter. And then if yes, I don’t think that we can automatically add every bundle in dis to, to this newsletter. Aren, that newsletter should be going to everyone in the District. Well, we can do it as well. I just think, I want to be sure that folks would Be Don’t mean that, wouldn’t that be the first person? Yeah, I think that’s the first approval. But there’s, We have a means to be able to, like we can export their list, even can upload it and just some more. We can make sure we Have the, the full, you should have anything to do that.

1:40:55 Have a s smart, this is what we did last year, right? School committee email. So now it’s a subcommittee email. It’s just, I guess linking, Linking between, yeah, It’s getting no link. Meaning we had an account with s’mores, we’ve set it up and we sent the newsletter, so I’m not sure why, but it’s What email Was that client from? Like whose account was it attached to? Because A, it was a no reply. So Frank, It was Frank’s,

1:41:20 Uh, one you guys think about is, uh,

1:41:26 and if you guys have several database, let’s say somebody coming into the district database, one that we already take the mechanism of

1:41:41 updating your database, you have to talk about those things. Just Can I Make to use your database? We want simple as possible. So if folks have a better suggestion for how to do It, please can I suggest that meeting with Steven go through what the options are that we we can do that. You Don’t wanna go. Yeah, we don’t wanna have duplicate list Managing it any way. Right. Um, Julia, you had a suggestion. Okay. It Was really easy to assist. I’m happy to request any time, um, sorry for a little technical difficulty, but we can work through that. Um, if, is it possible to have two set like we send for everybody in the school district and the subcommittee then sends for anybody else that wants to opt in and then you, we just, you do that on your own

1:42:27 and we’ll take care of, we we’re happy to help if, if you guys want us to, it was No, no Problem. That’s sort of how I envisioned it is is that yeah, we kind of are, it’s kind of two. Uh, but I, I am trying to come up with a solution for reaching people who do contact us and say, how do I get this going? Inbox. Well we could always have a like a link on our, um, on our web page that if you wanna sign up for communications from Margaret school committee or the communications subcommittee. Yeah. And I think, Uh, to me, ‘cause the other thing to keep in mind is right now you’re pushing out newsletters, but there could be other things that people, I mean it opens up a whole, it’s been a bone of contention I’ve had, I mean,

1:43:13 I don’t have students in the district and I can’t get anything from the district and it’s very frustrating. You can Subscribe to our newsletter. Yes. But then there might be other things that go Yeah, like the superintendent might send something out to the committee that that subcommittee thinks should go to the greater community. It could be absolutely around the budget or, I mean, there’s lots of stuff that could go up. Um, I’m just very concerned that nobody on this committee is managing a database on context. I, yeah, I appreciate your concern that I agree with it. I don’t think that it would be appropriate for someone on this committee or any future committee to, to be doing that. It’s gotta go through sort of a district account and something that Yeah. Again, so I couldn’t agree on Lauren. Um,

1:44:01 I would suggest that maybe you the subcommittee with Steven the meeting and find out ‘cause he’s, Yeah, Five minutes could Explain. We have An a meeting scheduled For the Bethany. Maybe we invite him to See if he can go in that meeting. So, um, I’ll, I’ll break into that one sort of complication I wanted to mention, although it doesn’t sound like we’re voting on this student. So, um, the translation, Julia, that you suggested, one of the advantages, the translation services are not available. So the basic plan is $99 a year. The crow plan, which is the lowest plan that includes translations, is 1 79.

1:44:49 So okay, we have this my 15 million budget. I don’t Yeah. I just want it to be,

1:44:55 We can explore to the school districts. Yeah, I think let’s look into that and I will bring, or we will bring this, we’ll discuss this on a second and then bring this back to the next. You might just be say this is it, it makes it so much easier. I mean, my other thing is that separate database outside of our database to being maintained, I don’t know that that’s really students purview to manage a non non-district database. You, I, I wanna mindful of that, but you know, obviously our database of students and parents and stuff is, is part of our purpose. But I I’m gonna disagree with that Because it can’t be a I understand that. But what I’m saying, what I’m saying is, okay, just say for instance, we create this database of 300 people and it could be 3000.

1:45:42 Okay, it could be 3000 people. Then you’re asking our director of technology then determine who wants to stay on it, who needs to be added. I don’t think that’s is feasible. That’s a fair point. I’m hoping that that’s one of the advantages of signing up through or is the They have the opt in. They have the opt out, they no doubt. Yeah. Um, and it would, it would not be a process that hopefully he would have to participate in. Right. Just so, Just like right now, I mean, it goes to our operating system. So like if you’re a, a student and you have an email there, it pulls it. If you’re not, it doesn’t, and it, it kind of clear clears itself out in that way and our reporting. So, I mean, the town does it somehow and I got slip words. I, I think this would be more of a traditional

1:46:30 email list that is based on update and opt out. I, I wouldn’t had people automatically do this or ask that that happen. Uh, so we’ll talk to him. Well, I, I, I think you’re right. We don’t, the whole point is not to make a bunch of additional work, but I do want to develop the, the tool to reach out to the committee. I think this is, this is the best tool we have right now.

1:46:58 Okay. Um, any other subcommittee updates?

1:47:04 Um, the budget subcommittee net last week on this week, um, yeah, we met on Monday. We are meeting with, um, so we had initial discussion, uh, not initial. We had a second round of discussion around, uh, uh, analysis of our, um, existing, um, budget, our existing, um, uh, staffing in individual buildings, um, broken down to different categories. Mike, Mike did a great job on that. Um, now I guess the next step is, you know, Mike and John will be talking building administrators. Um, we come back to a joint finance committee subcommittee meeting our sub on December 1st. Um, and we’ll be getting some input from in terms

1:47:52 of what they’re looking for there. So we also have a calendar, which I didn’t share. Maybe we need to, we can get that out for the next meeting, um, that Mike and John presented to us, which shows, um, a series of presentations, um, culminating in votes, um, right. We into spring. That great communication is something we would share. Mm-hmm. Figure out your desk Database. Yeah. We talked about in our meeting, kind of taking the key points out of the calendar that we, that Mike put together and then we walk through in our meeting just sharing them more broadly so the community understands holistically. Like how do we work backwards from town meeting to all kind of the key milestones that have to have to have between all and that. So, but Mike, yeah, Mike did a great job putting together kind

1:48:38 of first pass the data.

1:48:42 Um, we had a policy subcommittee meeting this morning. Um, John and Julia presented us the first draft of the ancy determination policy. Um, we’re gonna have a second draft of that presented to us after Thanksgiving. And then we, we are work on the naming policy and taking a look at that. And we approved a number of policy revisions and new policies that’ll start coming before the committee, um, in our December days

1:49:23 At our second wellness committee meeting today. Uh, first one was just introductions. Uh, well as policy needs to be revised every three years. Uh, we started that with last time, get back today, get the input from every, everybody. And we were missing a couple members. Um, so the plan is to kind of, for me to take all the information, kind of revise the policy and bring it back to the, um, our next meeting and, and then and bring to the subcommittee just to kind of look through. Um, and also back to the, it’s, it’s something needs to be revised. It’s not really due to be revised.

1:49:59 We have some time, but it’s a, a decent amount of work. But, um, I want thank all committee I much for the diligence. Sounds good. And I, that discrimination committee meeting coming next starts good December. And then, um, our safety committee with the union, the administrators in the union that we, we need to have, uh, we to open a date for that. I wanna say this to 11th. Um, we present back to the community getting in the spring. So we’re gonna meet a couple times then bring back and then our other safety committee that, like with the town, we’ll do that quarterly now. So I have to work. Steven ran the last meeting for me, say I work to see what that next meeting when we decide that next meeting will be, but should be preparing soon, probably seven a January timeframe.

1:50:46 And that’s, that’s the means. So,

1:50:52 Great. That’s everything for updates. Um, I need a motion to meet an executive session pursuant to chapter 30 and 2 21, A three purpose three to discuss litigation Marblehead school committee and Marblehead Teachers Association. MUP dash 25 dash 1555 as an open meeting may have a detri detrimental effect on the litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to open session and to meet an executive session pursuant to chapter 30 a, section 2183, purpose three to discuss litigation boy Perry v Marma HU Public Schools at all. Docket number 1 24 dash CV dash zero

1:51:38 dash 0 6 0 6, it District of Massachusetts as an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the litigation litigating position of the school committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to session

1:51:56 Moved by Henry second by Jen. Any discussion? Right. We need a roll call vote on this one. Jen favor, Melissa. In favor, Henry in favor, A in favor. Motion carries for zero. We will now be meeting in executive session pursuant to chapter 30, sections 21 A three, purpose three to discuss Litigation Marblehead School Committee and Marblehead Teachers Association. MUP dash 25 dash 5 55 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 and meeting an executive session pursuant to chapter 30 a, section 2183, purpose three

1:52:41 to discuss litigation Boyd Perry versus Longwell Head Public Schools at all. Docket number 1 24 dash C meeting 1 0 6. Zero six it District of Massachusetts as an open meeting may have a detri mental effect on the living position School committee and the chair. So declares without intent to return to open position.