e e e e okay we're just about ready to start we have a quorum it's 7 o'clock what if I just I'll open the meeting as soon as Jenny sets foot in the room okay noting the hour in the presence of a quorum I call the act and boxb Regional school committee to order members of the public who wish to watch the meeting online may do so on acting TV's YouTube channel that's found at the top of our agenda as a reminder this meeting is is being recorded and will be posted to the ACT andv website at actant tv.org welcome everybody uh so public participation the first item on our agenda per school committee policy bedh members of the public are invited to speak for up to three minutes uh public participation will only take place at this time during our meeting uh speakers are welcome to speak about anything that is either on or off the agenda but at this time only um and as a reminder the committee does not typically respond to comments during public meeting during sorry during public participation and like I said we're going to hold public participation for three minutes per person Gary's already smiling at me so Gary would you like to be the first uh person up all right give me a second here is it on it's on now perfect uh Gary Kushner boxboro finance committee uh number one please change your guidelines um I'll leave it very short I took a look at the energy report and I thought it was very comprehensive but what I couldn't find in there and maybe I missed it was the difference is with the boardwalk campus energy proposed savings what that does for the for the region and if it was in there I missed it then but it'd be nice to understand if we get the full Sav savings that we're expecting from a net net zero energy facility does that you know what's the what's the savings orce propose savings so you know I'd like to see that in the future if possible thank you thanks Gary hello okay uh hi uh I'm Alex s I'm a junior at the high school uh and I'm a member of resour force um uh a few uh several months ago uh resour Force sent a resolution and I'm here to remind you again that we would very much like you to consider this resolution and pass it uh we want to emphasize the fact that this resolution is very high level it's just a commitment to do something and take action against climate change in the future and it's not a commitment to put in money right now and of course we understand with all the budget stuff that that's going it's going to be very difficult to do all of this but we just want to emphasize that this is a commitment for the future and that it's imperative that we take action against climate change immediately thanks Alex John Peterson six Jackson Drive um so I will stand up you know in support of Gary's uh request that you change the public participation policy um and as long as we're talking about policy I'll also remind everybody that uh the current Reserve level in the IND is not consistent with with your uh end policy and that should be something that the committee addresses thank you thanks John any other members of the public wish to make a comment okay thank you on to the superintendent's update Peter all right thanks Adam good evening everyone um you know first I want to just start with a a few congratulations um you know we just held our annual 20-year chair ceremony uh which is a really big deal um here at AB it goes back decades um but what what we try to do here is celebrate our staff at different levels during their career with us um so you know obviously when staff are hired that's really exciting we have an opportunity to introduce them um when they hit year four and they gain something called professional teacher status um which is the modernized version of what people might think of as tenure um they get a we have a pen cerem for them in front of the whole staff at 20 years they actually get a chair from us um and that's something that we partner with um the ABA on to do and it's just a really fun night because we go out and all their colleagues get a chance to talk about them um and you know their relationships with them over 20 years so that's great um and we're actually going to do something a little new we had done a retirement ceremony over the last you know number of of probably couple decades but over the last few years it's been windling in terms of the number of retirees who were choosing to attend um and so it's it's not proving to be cost effective for what we're doing um and so we're going to switch to something a little different and on June 6th we're actually going to host a reception here before the school committee meeting um and then invite our retirees to come to the school committee meeting and actually recognize them with you um as kind of a thank you um to the community so we will be sending out kind of a save the date to you if you haven't already received something from Julie but we'll do just a small reception out in the lobby um and then you know probably very first thing you know that we do in the meeting before even public participation hopefully is get our retirees in congratulate them thank them and then um they can be on their way for the night so a couple of updates there um we'll certainly be sending out lots of celebrations um lots of great things we had a student who won first place in you know a national singing competition we have had a teacher um Carrie cusk over at Blanchard who is now a finalist in the and literacy Fellowship so that's very exciting um Gates just celebrated their uh annual robotics Night Last Friday Night March 15 and then um we had a number of art students recognized Statewide for some of their work um along with Miss Knight over at Gates so we're very excited about that um also really really big day for our high school student athletes uh we just had national Signing Day um over at the high school um I feel badly this year I was in another meeting I couldn't avoid but um that's really exciting to get to see the kids go and commit to schools um and just kind of the that next journey in educational Athletics so we're really proud of all the kids um who were able to do that um we have about 12 kids so it was you might know some of these students Maddie Smith um was going to play softball in college uh Lucas D roza for football um Jackson Chandler for football Lyle uh sasoni for football as well um Colin Robinson um is going to be track and field actually here's there's a bunch of track and Fields people uh Christopher adamek Anthony Cronin um Kristoff aam and chai um AJ Raina Noah steerman um Kyle verer Ivan Yan Zachary parados and Elizabeth leam so that is a lot of track students is obviously a testament to the success of the track program over the years so congratulations everyone there um just as a reminder we continue to update our fy2 budget page so please steer people there if they have questions on the budget um the you know the most recent video that we have up there is a description of what's in the A and B budgets just so people have a good understanding of what is and isn't in each of those budgets um we will be sending home some safety information around the solar eclipse to families um we are not modifying our school schedule because of the solar eclipse um just like every other day of the year it's not safe to look at the Sun for long periods of time know that really is the message like you know and and people think it's a solar eclipse thing it's actually not it's a sun thing we should not look at the sun it's not good for our eyes um I think there's more Temptation during a solar eclipse because out of curiosity but I think we just want to make sure we're driving home the message just like every other day don't stare at the sun um we actually have for all of our elementary and middle school students we have have glasses um that we're giving them because it does take place at dismissal um and so a number of our schools have actually you know engaged parent volunteers to help create some you know fun kind of face coverings things that go with the glasses so they fit properly um but we're certainly going to be stressing that our steam coaches actually have done a great job at the elementary level they've actually uh prepared lessons for all of the elementary teachers to be able to teach about what a solar eclipse is and provide some of the safety information for our elementary school students so um just trying to be Pro active about that certainly it's exciting it's fun we want our kids to know about it and we want them to be safe um we have another cartwheel care webinar coming up um and that is going to be helping our teens and pre-teens Thrive parenting strategies for the Adolescent years that's coming up on April 3D we will send out information on the link um we also have a couple of leader searches going on right now uh we are in the finalist round for an athletic director position for our high school in junior high uh we had one of the finalist in for a full day yesterday we had both finalists in for kind of a community Forum last night um where they had an opportunity to answer some questions from the community and then our second finalist is actually spending the full day tomorrow so excited to draw that to a conclusion uh we've sent survey in survey feedback forms out to anyone who's participated in all the various rounds and you know looking forward to to completing that search successfully both candidates are experienced athletic directors um and bring you know just differing but really unique skill sets to what they're doing um the other leadership search is for assistant superintendent of schools that one's a little bit different because it ends with a recommendation of a candidate from the superintendent but the actual final appointment is a vote of the school committee um so we are we just finished the screening round yesterday we'll be announcing um finalists tomorrow afternoon um we'll be sending out the information to the community around our final ists and making those announcements we then have a series of focus groups um going over the course of next week to meet with each of the candidates and be able to provide more feedback on that and then I'm in the process now of checking all the references and hopefully making a decision you know by either late next week or possibly early the next week but you should anticipate that on April 4th in the school committee packet you'll see a resume cover letter and a recommendation for appointment of one of those candidates so just to to preview what's coming up there and then final announcement of the night tonight um if you are around on Saturday um Adam and I are going to be doing a Community Coffee over at KJ's Cafe in Acton um just as an opportunity to be out in the community and answer questions around the budget that is going to be at 9:00 a.m. on Saturday so please feel free to pass the word thanks Adam thanks Peter any questions for Peter on his update do I really have to get up for a 9:00 am meeting on it's all right I'll be there KJ's Cafe it's uh in act in on Great Road um next to the Trader Joe's okay thank you Peter um up next is uh Kate Crosby is gonna give us a um presentation on the boardwalk campus energy performance GNA get an update on that so Peter's getting the slides up welcome Kate before K jumps in I'll just give you a little background okay we'll let you get to your seat get your microphone on first thank you so I don't know how many of you know Kate Crosby um she is the district's energy manager we are fortunate in act in boxboro uh because not many school districts have a dedicated energy manager and this was you know foresight a long time ago uh by the school district to think of a position like this because she saves us hundreds and hundreds of thousands of dollars a year on utility bills electricity she is out in front of working with our student groups um around climate change action plans um advocacy um helping our students think through things she um has done a lot of work in trying to reduce the district's carbon footprint um she is as knowledgeable as a person you're going to get in this field and we're so fortunate to have her in the district she has been leading a lot of work over at Boardwalk campus and trying to get that building to perform in its first years is an all-encompassing job to the point where she's had to actually deprioritize some of the traditional roles she plays in The District just to be able to focus on that um but Kate has done an amazing job working with all of the contractors and architects involved in the project and I think what you're going to see is some of the fruits of that labor tonight in the energy performance so I'll turn it over to you Kate and thank you for everything you're doing I'll I'll try to live up to half of that thank you Peter for the introduction and I um I'm delighted to be here tonight and I'm even more delighted to be bringing you really lovely news about the new building um this was a a commitment that a choice that the building committee made in the summer of 2019 when they were choosing between a gas fired high efficiency gasf fired building or an all El electric geothermal building and at that time the geothermal was slightly more expensive to build but cheaper to operate and the they had an analyses in front of them that indicated that those was that difference would wash out over time and um with a little um uh encouragement from Advocates the building committee selected the all electric geothermal option and um we're been very proud that the building was built on time and on budget and um it is a it's it's it's a new it's it's was a new experience for almost everybody who worked on the building to put up a building like that so all the more reason to be thrilled that it was on time and on budget um and through the through the pandemic to boot the very happy news is that um the building is also performing well um and Performing to Target and and I I I'm I'm ecstatic as I said to John Peterson I've been worrying for two years how we were actually going to shake out in terms of energy because what happens with a building like this is that you model it and the quality of the energy model depends on a wide variety of factors and then you construct it and then you hope like heck that it's going to perform as it was modeled and in this case we we're very lucky it's actually performing slightly better than model so we're um I just I'm just so delighted to be able to talk with you about that so I think this slide is projecting you can see that on the screen and I'll just keep going so we one of the things that's happened is that energy s eversource has recognized this building with a design of the year new construction design of the year in 2023 for energy Excellence um and they're thrilled U and and um this is a a regionally and indeed nationally significant building it's an early building in a in a wave of geothermal construction that's coming which is going to be accelerated by the fact that the inflation reduction act prioritizes geothermal and provides a 30% tax credit for it and so this building has been very helpful for n a number of school districts who want to build a building like this now and have called visited um and and inquired about how to how to do this so we we will be when kids come for tours um of the building from the high school or um the green team at um Gates I asked them if they've ever been in a geothermal building before and they mostly have not Mo most of us have not um but in time many this will be a a much more common building type so I want to show you um let's see if I can make this move how can I there we go so the the yard stick that we use when we talk about energy performance is is eui energy use intensity it is KB which is a universal energy unit per square foot per year it is like a yard stick for buildings or a sticker it's like the sticker on your washing machine for from energy star that tells you how how the building is expected to perform per square foot and so all the energy used in the building divided by square foot uh uh per year so that's a score and um that 40.1 on the left column is the is a is what a building would be the score expected for a building built to code 40.1 eui energy use intensity this building was modeled at Boardwalk was modeled at 23.1 eui and the the tremendous drop big gains in efficiency through um heating cooling interior lighting and a number of other aspects that are listed there in the details um among the very important efficiency measures that were included in the design and construction of this building was an extremely tight building envelope and the team was really challenged the spec called for um a passive house standard of um of air infiltration meaning almost no leaks in the building and they they were told that they probably couldn't achieve this but they were able to do it and um we know that they achieved it because the building was tested so it was a blower door tested which is unusual for a building this size but they seal they closed up all the um openings on the building and brought in two blower door kits which is that bright red photo on the right and um then you turn on the fans and you drive air into the building and you um test how much air you're able to infiltrate into the building and the building did achieve the 0.06 score for Passive house standard so it was a a tremendous achievement really um something for the project team to be very proud of and it and it means that the building can Coast with no new energy inputs um for a long time and and hold its temperature um of course the geothermal system is tremendously efficient as well um it's a heat pump system goo also Geo is geothermal code also is also called Ground sour heat pump similar to air source heat pump which people are hearing about for residential um we have 65 Wells that are 600t deep the geothermal field is in that blue area that you see between the building and the brook and um this is my homegrown slide eversource tells me that they're going to make me a better diagram so forgive me I'm just trying to help people understand how the high efficiency system in this building works and so at the far left can you all see my cursor if I move it around um at the far left of the of the photo of the mechanical room is the um supply lines bringing in pre-warmed water from underground from the geothermal well field so that water we're sending out close to freezing it comes back at 55 degrees and we're getting that pre-warming for freeze sort of I mean we got to run the pumps but the Earth is warming it for us and then that water goes through this great big Bank of five heat exchangers um heat also called heat pumps also called chillers and it is lifted then with electricity to what's called Low temp hot water to 120 12 130 and we can do that very efficiency with effic efficiently with heat pumps um and and then we circulate that low temp water out to the building so a he a gas fired boiler would be running at 90% efficiency this system is running at 200 300 maybe 6% efficiency it's really extraordinary Engineers use the word magic so um it's it's really a remarkable system um that low temp hot water goes out to these radiant panels up in the ceiling you see them they're actually studed all the way through the building and they're sort of new new fangled new fangled radiators um the low Tampa water also goes to the roof and runs through these um uh rooftop units where we bring in fresh water I mean excuse me fresh air filter it warm it and then drive it down into the building um there's big energy recovery Wheels spinning inside those rooftop units so that the the old Air that's being removed we extract heat from it and use that to pre-warm the new fresh air that's coming in um and this is and in and in the summer it the whole thing reverses and we provide cooling for the building so it's like your air conditioning unit air conditioning units and refrigerators are heat pumps it's the same technology except it can run backwards in the winter and um this this cop6 down here at the bottom of the slide is that coefficient of performance so that's the efficiency levels of three four 500 600% that I'm talking about really an astonishing achievement I know there you go also the size of the building right I mean that's another I'm sorry also given the size of the building overall another component right I guess so I guess so I mean you could you could get these same efficiencies even in a smaller building one of the things that's great though is that we can move um if on the sunny side of the building we can take the warmth from that sunny side and move it over to the Shaded side so there are efficiencies being harvested even within the building so we're not generating electricity that's coming that's coming next that's coming next so this we have a ter terrific commissioning agent um on contract to the district this year eversource is paying for half of that contract he is providing invaluable services in and continuing to troubleshoot the building it is complex it does need to be tuned he's he's finding all kinds of good stuff to take care of so this blue um dash line up here where am I where's my cursor is um is a eui of 40 which is the G the code building the red dash line is 25 and if the building performs at 25 or better we will we will receive the second incentive from eversource of $175,000 we'll know that in August or September when the 12 month tracking period ends and if the and the 20 the green dash line is 23.1 which is the the um eui Target the modeling what the building was modeled at and you will the blue line is a tra is is how the building is actually performing the blue solid line and it is a trailing number here so it's looking backwards um so you can see that through the spring and then again on into the fall and now the building is performing better than targeted and uh that becomes more clear as it moves deeper into the year and the trailing numbers get better and better so I'm very exciting we're we're below the target at this time I don't want to count chickens uh too early but it's looking promising for receiving the post incentive this is another way of looking at it the the blue bars are the monthly kilowatt hours the red um solid line is is KW demand how spiky the building is you will see that in January it jumped up that's because two Motors went out in the energy wheels and the rooftop units and some other issues which um Brad helped us identify and we're and and are fixed many of them in February also February was warmer this weather is not this data is not weather adjusted yet Brad will be doing that for us um this is the same data so this this is the fall when we first opened very high energy use because kigle was still running the building wide open and doing balance air balancing um then we moved into this the first spring things got a lot better this is the summer we should have seen a dip here we didn't because we were running the building fully occupied because we were still troubleshooting even though it wasn't occupied we needed to run it like that the fall here we are with full of kids again for our second year looking real good here's the popup in January and then better in February and this is um the last chart I'll show you the dash line is the energy model uh here's the building exceeding the energy model in the summer because we were running it occupied oops and here's um here's the energy model what we should be doing in the fall and the building performing better than that model here's the jump up in January and the drop back down in February um and I also want to say that to have put up it's an extremely prudent decision that the district has made to put up a very high efficiency building with a terrific envelope on a super efficient system on that is sipping electricity um because electricity is the most stable least inflation prone fuel that we can use um you we're not talking my grandmother's baseboard electric here this is this is a a spaceship of a building um using electricity at a remarkably low rate and um electricity is is the most heavily regulated fuel that we have so it is far less inflation prone than U than gas or oil for heating a building is it's a it gives us budget predictability over time um and and uh also no emissions from the building so um it's there's no combustion happening in this building and it's it's a really remarkable achievement so hats off to the building committee for making this choice and I'm thrilled to say that it is performing as modeled thanks Kate I I think we've got a lot of questions because people were starting to ask them now so we'll we'll start down here vickram and then Ben I'm just absolutely remarkable I'm just astounded it's just this is absolutely wonderful uh we want to put geothermal in our house so I'm doubly interested for that um but the pressure testing and building that size I think is isn't that kind of remarkable to be able to do that I'm sorry to to pressure test the building that of this that size isn't it I me it's supposed to like a small box it's a huge it's not it's not commonly done to pressure to to something of that size right correct um so really my question is so it's doing well now but I mean are there things like gaskets and so on that that are going to you know degrade over time time that will sort of reduce the efficiency or that's kind of built into it in order to have a building um have a good uh pressure test you need to it's not it's not complicated you just need to set that goal and train your Crews and do it right from the start so that because when the building is wide open and not and the finishes are not on yet that's when you can get add things and make sure that they're taped and that and that seams are tight I see okay you can you can test that with a with a smoke pencil so often they'll do a blower door test and watch where the smoke is escaping and go back and fix those issues and then blow a door test it again so it's not complicated it's not expensive it just has to be done thoughtfully and done right I see so I mean that that's more of like the the main wall of the building what about like doors and windows where there seals around are those designed in such a way that they close that the seals doesn't have to be replaced any on a regular basis or anything it's more it's it's about it's about where building materials are meeting each other and it's about where the walls meet the roof and and just making sure that that we've we buil we built casual in this country for a long time because we weren't thinking about energy right but when you focus on it this is just just Remar incredible the other thing is uh we touched upon electricity is there any plans in the future going forward to mitigate some electrical cost of solar to mitigate some of the electrical costs with solar yes there are plans to do that could you speak on that perhaps I'm sorry could you speak about that perhaps yes I'm sure there going to be other questions so see comes in what happens with those all right let's go let's go to Ben there's there's definitely going to be a question or two around solar and Net Zero so my question is can you use the geothermal Loop to generate electricity to reduce the load uh that you're trying to achieve because I saw the reduction in terms of electricity costs and with potential rolling blackouts coming from ISO New England in the years to come I'm just curious could this system actually generate electricity there's tremendous EXC about using geothermal to generate electricity but those guys are going 2,000 ft down right or five I think it's 5,000 ft down not not um 600 ft down so this is only 600 it's only 600 feet so we're not tapping into um a deep enough layer to get boiling hot high pressure steam coming out let's talk offline okay maybe you know something that we should check out yeah all right uh I'm as as I'm about to go around I just want to make um one comment which is we talked about the envelope of the building and I want to point out that the contractor that was responsible for a lot of the drywall in the envelope of the building was a company called Sweeney drywall which happens to be a boxboro company one of the larger portions of the contract on this building was awarded to a boxboro local company so I just wanted to point that out because we're giving them good credit and and not only are we giving them good credit but they're a local company questions continuing around I actually have one okay Becca uh um I don't know much about how these things work so maybe this is a dumb question but um is it possible that with a colder winter than we had this year that the efficiency would go down because it looked really good this year but we didn't get like hardly anything right yes the efficiency I mean with an air source heat pump efficiency drops as because it's harvesting outside air right so as those outside Air temps drop to 2010 Z what's what's different what's new about heat pumps now is that they keep operating and they don't freeze up and so they're appropriate for Maine and the rest of New England as well now um and so that's important for people to know because your grandmother's heat pump used to freeze up but but that no longer happens and they retain efficiency down pretty far and they also keep operating um with a geoc system it's different because where we're harvesting um temperatures from is the earth which is which is giving us great um regularity for both Cooling and Heat heating right so 55° is just about where we want a building with a little bit of a tweak it's it's a it's a much better source to tap in the winter we are pulling in outside air and warming it and so if that outside air is very cold then then yes it takes more energy but none of this is expected to pose a challenge for the system I had a question from a constituent regarding the tightness of the building through that passive test and measured CO2 levels with regard to that I know that you're moving a lot of air around the building but is there a measured of CO2 that's a part of this as well I'm so glad I really appreciate we have a very smart constituent who asked that question yeah and and a super important question I really appreciate you asking it um the building has a spectacular ventilation system and what you want in an energy efficient building where you're trying to make it tight whether it's your house or a a commercial scale building like this is you want um mechanical ventilation where you are sending out the old air like this and you're using that to pre-warm the incoming air so that you're harvesting the heat but you certainly want to be ventilating and you want to be ventilating fully and thoroughly and to standards whether it's your house or whether it's a building like this and I'm happy to say that part of the design of the building in every classroom is a thermostat as you would expect but if you touch that thermostat and get to the Third screen you will see that each of those thermostats has a CO2 sensor embedded in it and when you get to the third screen it tells you the CO2 level in your classroom so every teacher can and students if they want to do it as well can find out what the CO2 level is in their classroom and the CO2 levels have been terrific and one other question not related to that um recognizing that there's a bit of a more passive system for cooling the building that I know that the top floor ends up getting very warm in when it's hotter outside the the students the teachers have complained about heat in the the building when it's very warm outside is there anything that you've heard about this or something we could take offline it's not a it's not a passive system it's the same system um we had a hot a real um um challenging uh hot spell in September as we were opening schools and I actually gathered data from the building management system and sent it to the design Engineers ggd uh ggd and they said at at at um we our CL some of the classrooms a few of the classrooms were at 76 we had other classrooms in un unir conditioned schools that were warmer than that right but it was a new building so we were thinking maybe we would see 72 um but when I packaged up all the information and sent it to them uh they said given the high humidity and the high temperature 76 is and here's the design Arc for the building 76 is what we would be expecting so there was there's a really interesting decision to put in not put in the last few geothermal Wells and put in a backup boiler instead because that was a um less expensive less Capital cost to do it that way and I um yeah I think we one of the when people ask about Lessons Learned when they come for tours I I say you know we may regret having not put in the last six Wells because that would be back up not only for the coldest days but also for the warmest days so the building will we'll we'll never have Desperate temperatures in that building but when when it's 96 and high humidity we're not going to be delivering 70 degrees to classrooms and right where are we going we don't know but I know you I know that's what your eyebrows are saying but but but you know we're the building is fully air conditioned that's a big that's also a big achievement lots of schools in Massachusetts are not so we're we're very lucky to be able to um have a building where we know kids are going to be able to learn there were issues over the course of the last year with especially younger kids having trouble because the rooms were so warm and because the rooms were so warm during the school day and it was a question to ask about this I think we may be I mean we were still troubleshooting I think we may be able to provide a more reliable product going forward in terms ofing Le me um a dumb question I have no knowledge or any haven't done any reading up also on this um the ground the water temperature that we rely on the groundw for the geothermal system you said 55 does that say stay pretty much at that temperature throughout the year and the second question is um how does climate change affect that so it's I'm glad you're asking the when if you go go down 200 300 400 500 feet is 55 degrees all the time so we're sending water underground we send it underground at um freezing almost freezing in the winter and it comes back pre-warmed and in the summer we send it down hot and it comes back pre-cooled for us so it it returns to us at 55 degrees all year long and that's good we want to work from that that's a that's a that's a useful temperature for us to you start with a source material in terms of water to to condition the building and and climate change will not affect that it's a very good question so okay thank you because the Earth will be St will be stable we'll be static okay thank you thank you Kate I want to I want to go back to sort of the the net zero and the the energy part of this building so there's still a big component that's missing which is a solar panel array and a battery energy storage system and I think it speaks a little bit to to Gary's question too at the beginning of the meeting which is um we we're we're still not complete on sort of the entire design and and and uh electrical design of this facility what will it look like what's the theory behind Net Zero what will it look like in terms of our consumption once the entire system is up and functioning fully um uh let's see in terms of our consumption so we'll be we'll be um generating way too much electricity in the summer and we'll be feeding that back to the grid and um stacking up credits on the bill and in the winter we will be buying electricity from the grid and we'll be using those credits to to to to buy it um so our consumption will be the same but but we'll be will be Prov we'll be generating quite a lot of it on site recognizing that maybe the rate that we get paid for the electricity we generate is different than the cost of what we buy from and the goal is to have a net zero consumption of electricity will we still have an electric bill for the building we certainly will because we will we will not own the solar plus storage system we are we are going to be doing that through a contract called a PPA or assessa since there will be battery storage involved and um because the district isn't owning the system um um the the company that owns the system will the way that gets that gets paid for is that we we buy electricity from the system so we'll there's a kilowatt hour price that we will pay for for the for what we buy off that system Ben real quick question what is the size of the battery that you're installing it's it's one 2 megawatt hours yes the one here on campus uh near the high school is is double that it's two Tesla Mega packs um 2 megawatt sl4 megawatt hours um this one will be a Tesla mega pack as well but just one so it'll be half that size and how long does it hold its charge for it takes two well it's a it's AAR yes it's a 2hour battery and that's a that's a sweet spot for making things work financially both of them are 2hour batter batteries for full disclosure I work for an MLP so very good very good all right any final questions or comments for Kate viam someone to Andrew's Point uh about the 76 degrees on the third floor um there are thermostats in each room are they is it possible for them to bring it down or is that um so I we're still learning how to work with this building the thermostats offer occupants a choice from 68 to 72 but it is not a fast system so I've learned to say is if you have ever been in a kitchen with radiant heat in the floor or a bathroom it's it's more like that and we run that low tempal water at a steady rate almost all the time so there's not a big setback it's very cheap and and efficient to run and it doesn't there's not a lot of snap to um get it to jump um and so it's it's more like radiant heat that we run we run it most of the time I mean you can set it back a little bit but you don't want to set it back a lot and itn't doesn't it doesn't um jump up in temperature quickly so if somebody adjusts their thermostat they're not going to get a rapid response yeah but um we it is intended those thermostats are intended to provide the user some degree of control um but if we've got 96 and high humidity it's the system is doing everything it can and not not quite able to hit the mark That's all absolutely amazing thank you very very very much all right thank you Kate thank you thank you very much thank you all right on to our ongoing business um first item in our ongoing business is our budget votes so we'll have a couple um different budget votes that we'll have to make this evening um so Peter's going to give us a presentation we have to first vote our budget assessment um and then we also have uh some of the fees that we have to vote uh individually as well so Peter I will hand it over to you for a quick reminder of where we are on our budget voting process all right so um tonight is the final school committee budget vote um you know you are slated to vote the a version of the budget tonight which is the $4,380 th000 budget um that's a 7.68% increase um over current year you can see the two assessments respectively below just a reminder the difference between the Acton and box bro assessments is enrollment based um so we are seeing more students coming from box bro than we are from Acton well excuse me an increase in the number of students is greater from box bro than an Acton um so that's that's really what's driving that um this is the same slide you've been seeing there are no updates to the budget since the prior meeting um this is the final budget vote it has to take place tonight because you required to do that 45 days uh before the town meetings um so once you vote this budget our Treasurer will then send the official Notice off to both towns uh so the warrants for Town meetings can be prepared um just as a reminder in terms of process you're voting an a budget tonight um the a budget is the official school committee budget once you vote it that moves forward to the town meetings in order to fund that budget though um the town of Acton would need to pass an operational override that override vote is scheduled for April 30th that is a ballot vote just like any other general election where a majority have to vote in favor of it um if the vote is yes on that night then the a budget continues to move forward to both Town meetings where it would then need to pass if the override um ballot question does not pass then you would need to immediately reconvene and vote your B budget to be prepared to go forward because that the B budget is the amount of money that Acton would have available under the levy limit so there's no opportunity to come back later and increase the B budget that really is the alternative to the override just to be be very clear about that there's no Rosier picture that we're able to get to because the town of Acton is is revenue constrained at that point um you know we have talked to the town of boxboro you know they do have capacity between Levy capacity and reserves um to be able to get through this year without an override vote it does still mean that the the taxpayers are paying that higher level of tax um from what we've heard from the town of boxb though we should anticipate they would need to go for an override next year I believe is is what what we're hearing so um and that means that we will probably have a very similar process in budget development to what we're doing now I just want to prepare you for that that this is actually a couple years of a process here um to get through this but what we're seeking tonight is the a budget vote is a uh two-thirds vote of the school committee because you have weighted votes that's a two-thirds weighted vote of the school committee so you know I know Adam has a a cheat sheet ready um and we're going to actually I think Adam was going to ask you to go around and vote just to make make sure we can tally this correctly and record it um and I'll turn it over to you Adam thanks Peter yes so I am I'm going to when we get to it uh I'm going to call in order of the names that I have on this list and very quickly tally it up um I will say that there have been times in the past where we've had to have a couple re rotes to make sure that we had the right vote in the right um quantity and it's a it's a majority vote of the school committee including those people sorry two-thirds vote of the school committee including those people who may not be in attendance tonight so those count as a a zero in my tally marks um so that being said there is a memo in the packet with the very specific long motion language that needs to be read does anybody have if there are no questions then we'll read that vicam you have a question just one question you said if somebody was isn't here it counts as a zero does that mean a yes counts as one and no counts as minus one is that essentially I mean aside from the waiting just generally no so it's it's even more complicated than that a yes vote from a member from the town of Acton counts as two and a half votes and the yes vote from a member from the town of boxboro counts as one what I haven't done and I'll do that quickly as someone reads the very long um motion is get what the total number is and then get what the magic number is to hit two-thirds all right read it do you I have to read the note too no I move that the committee adopt the budget of the action boxboro Regional School District for the fiscal year July 1st 2024 through June 30th 25 as presented in the amount of $4,380 105 which is reduced by estimated receipts and available funds in the following amounts anticipated chapter 78 in the amount of 16,917 31 anticipated State Transportation Aid in the amount of $2,474 25 anticipated State Charter School Aid in the amount of $150,000 anti anticipated Medicaid reimbursement of $215,000 anticipated investment earnings of $300,000 estimated miscellaneous revenues of $25,000 estimated mckin vento transportation of $150,000 and transfers from the following District reserves excess and deficiency Fund in the amount of 0 Capital stabilization Fund in the amount of 0 for a net amount to be assessed to member towns in accordance with the education reform law and the term terms of the regional agreement and amendments here to as follows Acton 79 m767 consisting of a capital assessment of 5,810 256 and an operating assessment of 73,3 60,4 19 and boxboro 15, 96,2 something4 consisting of a capital assessment of 1,80 , 560 and an operating assessment of 14, 879747 yes Lakshmi yes jinny yes vickram yes Leela yes Yensen yes Andrew yes Rebecca yes myself is a yes as well so that gets us enough votes to pass I'm not going to do the math for you we needed 14.3 we got that so so that motion passes thank you all very much okay um next up we have uh some motions that we need to do on our tuitions and fees uh give me just a second to pull the memo up because I think that's a bunch of individual motions yes okay so um these we can do uh with just a a Voice vote and I will ask uh somebody make each one of the Motions in the memo if they have the memo available if not I will take a motion to set the preschool tuition for the 2425 school school year at $3,830 for halfday programming and $7,450 for full day programming so I need a motion because I asked for the mo so moved thank you and so we got vickram and then Ben all those in favor I any opposed any OB iions that's unanimous thank you secondly I'll take a motion to set the full day kindergarten tuition for 2425 at $1,925 so move second so that was Ben and then vicam all those in favor I any opposed any extensions unanimous sorry I oppose oppose so there's one opposition uh and that is uh lme uh next I'll take a motion to establish an activity uh fee at the Junior and senior high schools of $50 per year per student so that the one-time payment of this fee each year provides access to all clubs and Student Activities within the school for the school year there may be some Academic Teams that charge additional fees as outlined in the student handbook so moved seconded so that's vicam with a motion and Ben with the second all those in favor I any opposed any extensions unanimous finally I will accept a motion to set the high school student parking fee at $250 per year so move SEC Ben with the motion and Jenny with the second um all those in favor I any opposed any extensions that's unanimous and then finally I'll accept a motion to set the junior high school and high school student athletic participation fee at $350 per Sport with an additional $250 uh fee charged for ice hockey and Alpine skiing with a family cap of $1,200 per family so move to second vicam with the motion Ben with the second all those in favor I any opposed yeah me andw is opposed any extensions none thank you okay where are we on our agenda next uh Peter who wisely chose to stay at that end of the room is going to sit in tonight um to present for uh Deb who is ill on our student Opportunity Act plan Peter all right so hello again everyone and I'm I'm going to apologize in advance for this lower skill presentation uh Deb would be much more skilled in presenting this uh and I certainly need to credit her and her whole team for all of the work that they've done to get this plan to this point um just as a quick review the student Opportunity Act um was designed to provide additional funding to schools uh we do not see any of that uh because we are District that is in hold harmless status however we still are obligated to file student Opportunity Act plans um you will see that you know there are some budget amounts um outlined in the plan that's in your packet um those there's no additional new resources it's just a percentage of already existing staff resources that we had to calculate to be able to put in that I would not give a lot of time to the budget numbers quite honestly because it has no impact on what we're doing with this um so again the goal of the student Opportunity adap Act was to address some of the real systemic inequalities in the Massachusetts education system and to push districts to develop uh three-year plans to be able to do that um it requires us to address a subset of our initiatives um and you can see it's really you know the experiences and outcomes that students have and you know rapidly improving outcomes of students in that lowest um academic performance of The District so that's really what we are targeting to do when we came to you last time we had started this process and we had done you know our initial data analysis and we had identified our priority area uh with our leadership team based on that data dive uh we were in the process of engaging families um and caregivers as well as some of our other stakeholders I'll speak a little to that we then had to take that feedback and finalize our Focus area select our evidencebased program and start to develop strategies that we want to implement to dis address some of the disp priorities um and then we have to set some three-year targets um for how we're going to improve so in terms of engaging families and stakeholders um we sent out a survey um broadly to all of our families um as well as all of our staff across the district in order to solicit feedback around that uh We additionally sought out more directed and targeted feedback from our CAC our elpac um our school councils um I already mentioned Educators across the district um and we did mentioned this last time but when we thought about it a little more especially where chronic absenteeism was a focus we really wanted to engage our nurses um and so we did some additional Outreach to our nurses to make sure they were involved in informing this plan when we surveyed um our stakeholders around their preferences for you know what they believed would lead to the greatest Improvement in chronic absenteeism um almost 60% uh responded by saying it was really about developing Partnerships with students and families um that doesn't mean we're not going to also you know have physically and mentally welcoming and safe spaces in the district we still obviously do that every day in our schools and are focused on how we improve that but the real focus of this plan in particular is on the relationship that we have with our students and families in trying to address chronic absenteeism so that gets us through you know the priority area um as well as um the strategic objective and that Focus area so we chose 1.3 developing Partnerships with students and their families um just a little bit of background I think Deb did a great job really digging into some of the survey results but just some anecdotes that came out of that survey um that we think highlighted why we want to do this um you know some comments more consistent translation across School departments um students need to feel safe and listen to um if there's a hurdle attending school learning about the tone and impact of our letters calls and Communications that we send to families is really important um in in order to identify possible solutions we have to really listen to and learn with families of children who are chronically absent um we can't do this in a bubble we have to discover why they might be chronically absent and figure out what those barriers might be so we can Implement some strategies to help so we took all of that information and feedback um back to our leadership team and we have to select then based on the feedback an evidence-based program from a pre-populated list of desie approved programs um this just as a reminder and I think Deb said this last time a program is not like a new curriculum to come in it's a focus area um and it's where evidence has shown that if you focus on something you're going to see the Improvement and so um the evidence-based program we selected was 1.3a which was diverse approaches to meaningful family engagement train all St on multiple strategies and tools to engage with families in meaningful two-way communication um two-way obviously means it's not just the school telling families something it's actually engaging in a dialogue in order to inform what we're doing and how we modify our practice we then looked at what we want think we need to focus on as a district as part of that evidence-based program and so we've really picked three areas and I want to stress this is a three-year plan that we're committing to beginning next year um so we've started to do a little bit of work on this but this is really where next year kicks in and then lasts two additional years after that but three things we want to do one is increase consistent communication and engagement between schools and families um we want to create a multi-tier system for reporting recording and responding to student chronic absenteeism um we have done a lot of work around mtss and really thinking in that tiered system of supports across the district and it's very logical to think of this as just another part of that mtss process so we want to really articulate what that is and make sure people know how we navigate that um and then we want to you know provide all of our staff some more learning opportunities about how you know about and addressing chronic absenteeism from anything from mindset and bias work to tools to engage with students and families in care you know meaningful ways um I'll I'll give you an example of what that professional learning can look like um we actually just had a group of our Educators um the other day from Miriam actually go over to the new shelter um in Acton and they got a tour of the shelter they met with the shelter director they got to learn about you know um some of the experiences of what families do in the shelter they saw a room um to kind of better understand conditions that families might be living in um it happened to be a student's birthday so they they bought a little birthday present over for the student whose birthday it was that was very exciting but just really making sure that our Educators understand and have empathy for the experiences that our families are having as a way of you know increasing how we engage and just better understanding where families are coming from so that we can meet them where they're at rather than expecting families to come to where we're at and then finally you have to set some targets um districts can choose to set their own targets however desie um already puts out targets as part of its uh accountability program every year um and typically the Desi targets um require Improvement of between 1 and 2% a year over your targets um and they do it um with their team of psychometricians and data analysts in order to develop targets and make them statistically significant um since our data team continues to be at zero um at the district we have chosen to go with their targets we think they're probably more reliable than anything we could think of um the specific student groups that we're looking at in this plan um are our e economically disadvantaged students uh multilingual Learners students with disabilities uh black African-American students and Hispanic Latino students if you remember the original data that we showed you those are the really areas on the heat map that we're seeing higher levels of chronic absenteeism and we think it's really important to help kids get back into school and make sure that we're thinking of how we modify our systems and supports in school to encourage students to be able to feel more comfortable coming back so happy to try and answer some questions that you might be thinking of for Deb um but I I will answer any questions but what we are seeking is your vote to approve the student Opportunity Act plan is presented in the packet so that Deb can then go into des's um portal and actually input the information you're going to see in the plan it looks more like a rough draft uh because there's things highlighted that say you know drop down box check box things like that that's because desie actually makes you complete a survey and individually copy and paste all your responses in it's not very user friendly but it's what what they have so um with that turn it over to you for questions thanks Peter vicam and Becca um so you're saying that Desi uh formally expects one to 2% Improvement per year but unofficially do they see higher numbers than that and I would also Imagine is it the case that over the course of several years that it sort of ramps up exponentially as sort of you know as they dig and understand why the cony AB absenteeism is there and what they do to address it um typically as you get closer to your goal Desi actually shrinks the target growth um that you need to attain the goal um and I think of um you know like our high school is for example typically has 99% of students passing mcass um on the first try to think that they would ever get to 100% is really challenging um so the the goal is really incremental at that point but the further away you are from kind of that Norm the the goal will be a little bit bigger because they think you can close it faster um I really appreciate the addition of the nurses to the um pool of people you're you're pulling information from uh because I think I know I mentioned illness and I think a couple of us also mentioned that as a a concern um and I also just appreciate that this is sort of leading with empathy and non-judgment to say you know we want to hear from families exactly what needs they have have and how we can best address it um because I agree that the issue might be something that um is difficult to talk about so it's good to leave that door open and focus on um making sure that we're meeting people where they're at I think this is also consistent with how we've tried to think of social emotional learning if you think of the goal language that we had it's about shifting our environments and our practices in order to see the gains in students it's not about you know we're it you know there there sometimes be on face value maybe people rush to a judgment that we're trying to fix kids or fix families that's actually not the case it's actually that we have to look at how we're doing our jobs and shifting our environments and our practices to better meet the needs of families and students I appreciate that that's the approach that we're taking um and I do just want to draw folks attentions draw folks attention singular um to what the C pack sent over um for their recommendations cuz I think a lot of those even just personally like experienced a bunch of medical visits that I would have been chronically absent um and I also understand that you can't really learn when you're not in the building um but there are a lot of valid reasons that students aren't able to come and the other thing that I'm connecting this to is this piece around restorative justice and wondering how that could play into this work um thinking about creating environments where kids feel safe to come to and then when there is stuff that happens um how we reintegrate students back in um to an environment that feels safe um so I know that's kind of been an ongoing conversation and I just wonder if that can be connected to this initiative yeah I mean it you know ultimately just about everything in education is connected because we know that you know you don't don't do social emotional learning in isolation you do it because social emotional learning and academic achievement are extric linked um the same thing goes for you know why we address bias issues in education because the traumatic impact of bias has a negative impact on learning um so certainly that's a piece of it we've actually started talking about goals for next year with our leadership team and we'll come back to you toward the end of the year for more feedback on this but you know one of the emerging themes that you know we seem to be honing in more on is thinking about um behavior and our ad responses to behavior um as a part of how we want to you know continue to grow around social emotional learning um and that includes you know consistency of our responses across schools and classrooms and and making sure we're really digging into the root causes of behaviors rather than just addressing maybe what we see as conduct um in a in a more traditional sense um we have a team of us are going next Thursday middle sex Partnerships for youth is putting on a dayong workshop around restorative practices um so we actually have a number of of people from the leadership team attending that um to be able to get some information bring it back um and start doing some planning so certainly thinking along that line um we don't want to link too much to the SOA because you know why be accountable for something you actually don't get money for when we can just do it because we want to um but definitely on our mind uh I I'll just Echo what Peter just said in not as nice terms this is an unfunded mandate this is this is an accountability component of a funding program that we're not eligible for so while I agree that the addressing the the root cause of chronic ACS anism is important um I'm sure there's lots of extra work that we have to do in addition to Meeting those goals that uh the state are requiring us to do and we're not getting any funding for it um just just wanted to add that in Peter Peter set me up nicely for that one uh any other questions yeah F me I I understand we don't we don't have to do it U but we are doing like Peter said right no we do have to do it we have to do it what we put in so we have to do it but what we are not saying but we would like to do we will still do it right I mean that's the goal yeah though we are not putting it down on the paper right well what we're putting down on the paper is what we're going to do but we're not going to get paid like many other municipalities that get this that this is a requirement to get their additional student Opportunity Act funding we don't get any additional funding so it's important we're going to do it we know we need to do it there's extra work that's being required of us on the accountability side of this that we don't get any additional funding in to to support that part yeah but uh my question is we're not going to skirt the accountability because it's not in SOA but we are going to make sure that is there outside of outside of this document yeah I mean you know this would have been a district goal regardless of student Opportunity Act and when we know we have to be accountable for something with student Opportunity Act what we try to do is Select something that was going to be a district goal anyway because we know it's important for example the last plan was all around early literacy and shifting our programs around early literacy you saw the gains that we're seeing where now we're are all in that high growth high achievement quadrant um across all of our schools um after three years of really targeted focused work that work was happening whether or not we did s SOA but we chose to submit s SOA because it fits the SOA model and it's something we're doing um so we're going to continue to work on implementing the literacy program we have we are continuing to work on you know really digging into our mtss processes to provide all the supports we want for students um and we would have been also looking at Chronic absenteeism this is just a subset that goes to S SOA yeah thank you that that was what I was trying to kind of put it up put it down saying we are still doing it even though we didn't put it in s so yeah any other questions vicam I was just going to comment about you know uh really it's empathy and compassion that are sort of core to this and many other things that we're implementing I think we're already very many steps ahead with you know all our factors who already on the right page about that okay thank you um next on our agenda Peter are you gonna do this one from that end of the room or this end okay so Peter's going to come back so I I'll do a little bit of a setup the the next is um really an open discussion for the committee um excuse me around um the statement of interest uh for the mass School building authority uh for a statement of interest of of the Conan elementary school so um we do have to submit that statement of interest there was a memo in our packet that Peter's going to give us a quick overview of um there's no vote tonight but we do have a deadline coming up and so we need to as a committee talk about that a bit this evening I didn't Vamp long enough for you did I no um so there's a memo in your packet um that outlines kind of a little bit of background about msba with links if you wanted to to dig in and you were less familiar with the msba process um but I'll just summarize you know some some really high level points the msba process is a yearslong process from the time you're accepted into the pipeline to the time time you actually move into a building so you know like the boardwalk campus project started the year before I started an act in boxb um with with a Community Vision process and that was once we were accepted into the pipeline but we actually had to apply multiple years to be even get to that point where we were accepted um so you know you're really thinking this is like a seven to 10 year total process to get accepted we having anticipated the duration of time that it takes right at the time we started submitting um for you know the boardwalk campus we for it was actually a Douglas project was the Genesis of boardwalk and we chose to make it a twin school as a as a district at the same time we started submitting for that we also started submitting for Conan uh because we knew that we had challenges at Douglas Gates and Conan where they needed study to determine whether we needed a renovation or replacement um of those facilities we know that when when you're accepted for a building project in the msba pipeline short of maybe like the Boston Public Schools where they have hundreds of schools um you only get one project at a time and you're not going to get a second project until one of them is completed and then you can move into that pipeline um so we've been submitting for Conan all along we just typically update the generalized statement of Interest change some data along the way and resubmit every year it's not an incredibly heavy lift for us to do that and it keeps us in that pipeline this past fall we hit a new milestone in that pipeline where Conan um made the short list at msba and msba staff came out and evaluated the Conan school for a potential project that is a very short list of schools um and you know that's generally a sign that you are close to moving into the pipeline we didn't move forward this past year um which I think would have been challenging given you know the operational override at the same time um but you know I think it's reasonable to anticipate that if we apply again we're pretty close to moving in and it would either be within one two maybe three years at the most would would be my gut instinct that so what we wanted to do was have a discussion with you tonight and get feedback from you if you want us to submit a statement of Interest this year knowing that if you submit it you're closer to being invited into that Pipeline and to to be prepared for that when we last funded a feasibility study um they're they're not inexpensive to do um a feasibility study now is probably somewhere between $1 and $2 million um just for the feasibility study to determine what the project will look like um when we last funded it the district had built up reserves for a period of time and was able to to tap into those reserves to pay a significant cost of it I think it was this before I was here but I think it was about $700,000 was the district cost and the remainder was funded by the msba reimbursement part of the project so you know in order to fund a feasability study it's probably you know on the magnitude of 7 to 800,000 somewhere in that range um I did talk to scansa um who's still on is our project manager um you know this past week um they there were some things done as part of the Douglas Gates project because we actually explored Conant at the same time so we've already done a lot of the Geotech testing Geotech does not change unless you're you know you know counting in Millennia um you know you're not going to get new you know glacial fill um your Geotech report we also deeply explored the Conan building in that so you know if we go into a feasibility study there might be1 to $200,000 of savings in a feasibility study because of all the prior work that Arrow Street did but it's still an expensive proposal that we would need to be able to fund um and you would need to know that once you start moving forward you're now going to town meetings um now what I would say is we made a decision on the boardwalk campus project um where we put together a financial model for that project and bought brought in members from both Finance committees thank you Gary um but we're looking at Bond rates at the time and borrowing costs and everything else else and we made a decision to borrow the cost of that project all upfront or nearly all upfront we borrowed I think 75 70 million of 75 million um that we needed to fund UPF front um so that that means that the tax bill hits early in the process whereas in a more traditional building process you actually do some short-term borrowing it gradually increases as the project goes and then you finally Bond it at the end um so you know in that type of a process you wouldn't be taking out your final Bond until eight years from now um but you know you'd have to be talking to the community obviously about it much sooner so wanted to just kind of put some of that color to it um and get your general interest in it tonight but if you do want to move forward then at your next meeting we'll back bring back a statement of interest for you to vote and then we would submit um I think April 1st is the msba deadline uh no sorry 15th 12th 12th but it's it would sorry thank you but it's after your next meeting so next meeting is the timeline thanks Peter uh I just want to put this out here we forgot to vote on the SOA so we'll have to come back to that oh yeah thank you um but let's let's finish this up I I want to provide a little bit more context so the msba is a quasi government agency or a full-on government agency government agency um and there's a tax that everyone pays in the Commonwealth with that funds their ability to then help um fund our projects um so the reason we go to the msba to engage in these projects as opposed to doing it by ourselves is because we get a reimbursement um for the boardwalk campus as you saw in the memo we got 50% of our roughly 50% of our eligible costs that's not all of the costs so we I think our our effective reimbursement rate was in the low 30% of the overall cost still a big amount of money roughly $35 million that we get from the state one of the things that um the msba considers pretty strongly as you move forward in the process is the community support for a project like this and so that's why we want to talk about this now um as Peter mentioned because we were probably shortlisted for this year uh there's a good chance that if we put in this statement of interest for next year we could get shortlisted which begins then the public Outreach and making sure that um well since we don't have a million dollars in reserves that we could put towards this we would have to go to the towns um uh for a vote to to be able to fund the feasibility study um should that fail at town meeting that's a pretty clear indication to the msba that there isn't community support for something like this right now um and so that's the that's sort of what we're trying to to balance is do we think we have Community Support versus what does it look like if we pull out of the pipeline and don't submit for next year um and you know I in in talking with Peter about whether or not we were going to submit I was struggling with that um which is why we're bringing it to the committee it's a it's a pretty substantial decision we got feedback at our budget Saturday from some of the other Town boards um around what we should do um and so we do have to give some Peter some direction at the end of this evening about whether or not we want them to bring forward the a statement of Interest which is not a small amount of work to prepare um for next meeting to vote on that or if we want to skip a year or two and just to add some color just the the the gentle balance here is obviously Community Resources and support versus I've never seen a building that got less expensive to build by waiting longer so that there is a a definite balance to that so I I guess um it's really important to understand to the best of our ability what the impact is for you know taking uh like at least a year off because I think you know given the situation that we find our eles in it's not a good time to try to measure Community Support um I don't think it's a real measurement I don't think it could be a real measurement and um I just think that there's too much on our plate and too you know already a really big ask in front of our community members it just feels like way too much but you know before coming to such a decision I think that we want to know as well as we can of what the impact is for saying you know this you know we're gonna we're going to consider it next year I believe at the time if memory serves I mean we did you know acknowledge that Conant was in a similar State as the buildings that were getting replaced particularly Gates and you know I mean obviously we didn't make any promises but we did make good faith representations that we weren't going to just forget about Conan if we got community support for the twin school so anyway that's a long way of saying what if we say no right now yeah I think this is this is where we're we're sort of struggling is if we pull ourselves out of the pipeline for one year how does that look to the msba you know all we're really trying to do is gauge what this agency is going to do um in terms of whether or not do we go to the end of the line if we miss a year of submitting or do we actually just pause for a year and get back in the line if if we go back in next year I think that yeah please and they will not give us that answer like you're you're not going to get that answer out of msba because you know the a they're not going to guarantee you that you're ever slated to get into the pipeline because they evaluate all submissions every year to determine what they have funding for um and then B they're also not going to be able to tell you well if you pull out now you go back to year one of seven back to year one of five because they're evaluating all the submissions every year so I like we're just unfortunately this is a decision that we're going to have to make without certainty sorry if I could just follow up on that by saying um you know obviously there's an opportunity to elaborate on the reasons and I can't imagine that we're the only District in this position this year um that is you know mightily struggling with um our budget so I mean there's opportunity for you to communicate the reason that we're not submitting a state of Interest right it's not just it doesn't show up correct um we can certainly email them separately and provide some you know information but they just wouldn't see the statement of Interest ultimately yeah so and I I don't think there's going to be Prejudice by not submitting I I mean I I think they know where Conant is they know the need they've actually seen it firsthand and documented it now um and I see I think they see this as an important project so you know I personally I don't think they're going to say well if you pull out now now you're seven years behind but I'm also not going to sit here and guarantee it for us either yeah um I have a handful of thoughts I having kids at Conan you know I'm in there a fair amount so I see the issues like the art room is in a very convoluted path you know in a very old uh modular unit and you wouldn't be able to find it except for all the little arrows that kind of help lead you along um so obviously this really needs to be done um I would argue it makes sense to just stay in the pipeline um especially knowing that construction costs are kind of doubling every year or two uh I know like windows and doors are crazy expensive right now um air conditioning units uh I guess you know a couple of thoughts on Community Support I've heard people wanting justification for spending money on these studies and why can't you know people in-house do them so I think that's a question that needs to be answered I don't hear a lot of people complaining about the boardwalk campus it seems like now that it's done people are very proud of it um I do wonder if the solar panels need to be finished if that counts as part of the finishing of that before we'd be able to move forward if that impacts the timeline and then my other question is really around bond r because I know that we got a very low uh rate when that was um built and now we're you know very high rates right now so you know that's hard to forecast but um I would hope in two to three years they would be better but if we have to take them out before then I think that certainly should factor in great considerations Ben does anybody know what the current Bond rates are for municipal bonds fiveish %c I think they're in the fiveish percent I think they they had gone up a little higher and they've started to come down again where it's becoming more more feasible but I don't have the the current answer for that the last time I checked was four but that was was it four that was a while back yeah um sort of a thought and you know this is it's certainly a struggle but you know kind of coming back to We are the advocates for the students I'm almost leaning more toward like staying in the pipeline there's no guarantee that they would even you know pull our card and say this is something you know that we would need your interest on for this year so it's possible you know that we could just be in the pipeline again and not have anything come of this um you know it might just the other thing is like you know we could just kind of Kick this can down a little bit stay in the pipeline and then deal with that bridge if we come to it not ideal but I I've had you know I would suggest that the committee approach the decision to submit as though if you submit you'll be selected um I think we're that close Okay um I don't think it would be good to be selected and then pull out correct that because that what they're doing by selecting one district is they're not allocating funds to another District um so you know they have limited funds they can't get to most of the projects that they want to on an annual basis and so when they select you they're pushing everyone else down the pipeline um but I I think you're close enough that you should assume and you could be wrong but I think you should assume you'll be selected so that you understand what what happens after I've never seen this happen I just want to be clear there's no possibility of like deferring like College admission if we were to get our ticket pulled right I I I don't believe so in fact I think if if we do that's probably a worse sign then should we not submit for a year I think if you get close and defer before they select there's probably no harm but if you wait until after you're selected and it's made public and they've told everyone else no I don't think that's a great look Le me so I'm a little confused about this I think few days ago we were talking about shut shutting the conents campus Al together right so from that we came to building this that's just question I don't uh I don't know the answer to it or expect that you would be able to answer um so the second question is what what does I mean how does our enrollment profile look are we looking at growing numbers of students where we would need that school and in that case we probably should consider having that school fixed buil rebuil whatever right so I can actually sorry yeah and uh if that's the case then if we don't even have money for what's that term that we said feasibility study uh then where do we go from there if we go I mean it looks like we lose an opportunity here to get funding but then we don't even have funds so what does the projection look like when would we need those funds and would we be able to build that build the reserves to fund that I think all those numbers should be kind of looked at first and then probably to kind of get to the community we should at least tell them what the timelines the tax burden all those at least some kind of rough projections okay I had to write them down um so the the first comment and question around um whether or not um we know what we're going to do with Conant that's one of the big questions I think that the committee is going to be wrestling with over the course of next year um and so we're looking at putting together that um that uh working group to sort of look at what how do we want to structure particularly at the elementary level our our district so um I think we heard pretty loudly from the the the the boards and committees from the town that they didn't want us to they didn't want to see us shuttering that school um and in both our A and B budgets we we have no intention of doing that so I think that you bring up a good point which is we don't necessarily know how we may structure our buildings in the future um but there was a pretty strong um feedback from both the community and the the town's leadership to keep the building so that that was one the second one was around a feasibility study um so what would happen is if we don't have the money in reserves we would um go to the towns and as part of a building project we could do a debt exclusion and that's the vote that we would have to go to both towns and that would be um we would say to them we need to we need to you know have a special assessment of a million to be able to do the feasibility study or whatever the funding amount is and that's the point at which the towns then at a vote get to choose whether or not they want to fund that that um that excluded debt which then gives a real indication of how much support there is for the project moving forward um and then I'm going to turn to either Peter or Andrew and talk a little bit about our enrollment projections for the next decade can we let's get through these questions and then we'll come to to yours vicam so in terms of projection enrollments right now we're actually right at the point where at least enrollment Wise from an elementary level next year is supposed to go down maybe about 30 students from this year and then after that the enrollments which obviously can shift over time are supposed to semif Flatline and then slowly creep up so right now next year's enrollment projection is for about 2500 Elementary age students in 2033 2034 so in about 9 years the projection is 2644 students so in 9 Years it'll slowly creep to about 150 more than we have now so we ar jeed after next year to go any lower um but over the course of 10 years maybe an extra 15 to 20 students per year over the next nine years at the elementary level um uh there's a lot going on here it seems there's sort of a Black Box about this right so we have no idea how I mean you know we could say well you know we just had this override and can you know does that it seems like that's not going to come into play at all so we really don't know about that but I think um it is it would be sort of a tough sell I think after you know this override to next year then we need this on the other hand we should really be playing the long game here which is look at the Incredible cost savings we have from this new building right the more building we have that we're saving that much money and this is like for the long term right 203 years we're saving you know in you know immense amounts of money by putting in a new building that's really this efficient um so I think that is a huge selling point with the public and we can say hey look at the gates and Douglas boardwalk and how much money we're saving there so I think if it does come to that next year I think we would prepared be prepared to sell that to the public uh fairly well I would think um and there's always a hope that they don't choose us next year but the following year and then I think it would be even easier obviously quick question uh first what is the timeline between the submission and when we would hear back that's number one um based off of that timeline would we see like uh a Deb exclusion come before both Town meetings this year or would it be as early as next year or maybe the year after because that that would color my my choice of moving forward now not if you submit this spring mhm then will shortlist schools in September and choose to visit some schools they would not visit us again because they've already visited um and we would hear at the end of November or very early December at which point there'd be an expectation that we would be finding an OPM um and going to town meetings for feasibility study that spring okay so so we obviously not this year one year from now so which you know quite it's also the same time boxb is probably looking at an over override right other thoughts Becca um I did want to add that there's sort of a discussion also on the town side about the DPW building so um it's possible that they'll be going for a capital override at some point in the future for that it might make sense to do these at the same time just a quick question um I know you guys did coffee hour last week and you have another one coming up on Saturday do you think we wise to like bring that up sort of in the community and see what people think because I want and the committee's job is to advocate for students on the other we don't want to be out of touch from the community keep coming back and asking for more money so but people who may hesitate to accept it operation override may feel differently about paying for a building so yeah I mean we we can definitely ask but we we need to we need to make a decision this evening so that we can prepare the materials um I I I'll give you you know like I said i' I've been sort of on the fence of both sides about this um honestly what I would tell you what or where I'm at is that um sort of playing off of what you said Yen and we we are responsible for the the the students in the district and in the community and I think the worst thing that we could do for them is to not pass the override this year um and that's that to me is sort of like the biggest concern I have second only to um not being able to pass an operation uh sorry a debt exclusion to fund the new building because that will for sure put us towards the back of the line so you know I I I tore it all the buildings seven years ago when we started looking at this Conan is clearly in need of of being addressed um Peter's right we spent a lot of time already looking at that and citing for that that location so there's a lot done um and we've been doing our due diligence to get into the the pipeline um I don't want to get out of that pipeline but I like if it's if it's a couple years of getting back in the pipeline versus the the B budget that's that's kind of where I'm at right now any other comments or questions Leela David I hope you'll correct me if I'm wrong but I feel like I watched the select board meeting and they got a Bond rating under 3% am I wrong okay I'm right got a thumbs up so like recently so the only problem with that is that the bonds um the ratings would change and it would be like a year from now that we would do that um and I also I feel like I agree with you that I think it's probably better to wait um to get back in the pipeline all right so I'm I'm looking for a consensus we don't need a vote but a can yes Peter please I I I'll I'll just weigh in um it's obviously your decision but I'm just going to give you my suggestion Adam just said you know his top concern is getting the override this year and then obviously you know could we fund a building project I would put funding in building project third because we have to get an override in act in this year and then an override in boxboro next year and knowing how the assessment pres projections play out based on enrollment if Bo BR is limited to a 3% assessment that's of s more significant impact on the total District budget than what you're seeing this year just to be really clear about that like so I I would say Obviously like this year is the urgency next year is just as significant um in terms of impact on schools so you know there's that element of it second I think you have now committed to undertaking kind of a thoughtful study process to how you want to organ organiz elementary schools I think whatever you choose to do with Conant having completed that process and gotten Community Support around it and been transparent in that process is going to lead to a stronger decision than for the what you do with Conan in terms of moving that forward in a building project and so I think by waiting this year and and not submitting you can go through that study process have a real commitment to how you're organizing elementary schools and then choose what you want to do with Conant after that I think that might be a I I think from the outside in I think community members would see that as a logical process thanks all right so I'm looking for uh nods of heads of people who are okay with us not submitting this year yeah okay I think we have our answer there thank you everyone um all right so I'm going to rewind a bit um would someone like to make a motion to approve the student Opportunity Act plan as presented before this last conversation so so moved seconded okay so Leela made the motion and vicam seconded all those in favor I any opposed any abstentions that's unanimous thank you sorry we missed that um moving on now to our school committee communication goal update um so I'll I'll start uh Peter and I held a Community Coffee on Friday uh at KJ's Cafe Peter and I spent a lovely uh time together uh we did have two parents come join us uh we looked like a nice couple jinny thank you um two uh two parents did come chat with us for a little bit um it was informative uh hopefully we'll head some more people on a Saturday when it's not during working hours um so it that was a good um opportunity um and most of what we talked about was just sort of a little bit of context about how we got to the budget situation that we're in what we're doing to to try and fix that um a little bit about turf fields came up as well um so just it was a great opportunity to get feedback um basically on any topic that came on anybody's mind um and then the other thing that I will share is that um Peter and I uh Liz and a couple uh other school administrators participated in a program in boxboro this weekend called strengthening community and police Partnerships or strengthening police and Community Partnerships um uh so sort of a visioning session for the boxboro police department about what they see is oh sorry Le me you were there as well no you were there as well um and and what I will share is that um as a as a group of um School oriented people we had a really good visioning session about um what works well at policing in in boxboro and where we see some opportunities for improvement um and definitely there was some alignment across the board that um we need to have sort of a better defined way of interacting with the boxboro police department um with the schools um but some also great feedback from um one of our assistant principles in one of the buildings about the um the the the one of the officers that we work with there about reaching out to families and making sure that we have a really good partner ship with them so it was it was a really good session I was I was pleased Liz or Lex me anything you want to add on that I think I think it was very good uh box bro has a new K9 unit and uh she is absolutely adorable her name is Kota well she's a she's a K9 unit so that's that's just like the official it's a dog yeah what kind of dog is she it's a black La she's a black lab black la she's so cute okay so we're going to go back to the school committee communication goal update um Becca uh I had another lovely visit to the senior center uh last Tuesday and it went really well we had uh I believe around six people come uh David Martin from the select board also joined me which was great because he could answer questions about the town side of the uh budget process and Steve noon was also there so he was able to provide um you know perspective on hit but also just sort of past doings which was really great to have like a good holistic conversation um and it was just like a really good open and honest dialogue people wanted to know how we've approached the budget process have we looked under every Rock and in every nook and cranny and uh have we been creative um and what are we doing for um some of those uh more Forward Thinking um structural changes so you know that was really great um there was interest expressed in a visit to the boardwalk campus uh people were really excited about that and you know to see the fruits of good tax revenue stewardship so um I encouraged folks to email Peter to set that up um I don't know if you can do it during the school year or if you have to wait till the summer but I thought that was cool that people really wanted to see it thank you Yin um I had two Fridays at the Acton town hall for office hour and never have had a couple visitors um it's very interesting because in the middle of this budget discussion it's very stressful but the visit the visitors I've received last week actually look to the Future talking about you know elementary school or the task force that's going to look into the possible restructure of the elementary school organizations and they have some good suggestions and also they point out there are a few studies we already have so that's good information for me as a newbie um I do have a request tomorrow morning at the Town Hall we have 10 to 12 as the office hour I'm not going to be able to make it I was wondering if somebody else will help out anybody available tomorrow from 10 to 12 I could do a half hour like from 10: to 10:30 or 10:45 so all right thank you great any other updates on uh community outreach Community communication Leela and our office hours are centrally located on our budget page which is also centrally located on our district website um at the top um we also have office hours at the sergeant Memorial Library on Thursday afternoons um 2:30 to 3:30 and ABW um is still open to volunteers and so I've been going and doing crafts with kids at the shelter um and that's a lot of fun um so if you want to get connected reach out to them um I also went to Open Door theaters Wizard of Oz it was phenomenal um their interpreters are just beautiful uh I don't know how else to say it um and it was one of the most inclusive uh just like spaces I've been in and act in um so highly suggest going if you can uh and I think that's it except that my school committee social media Pages have a link Tre in the bio and there are plenty of really helpful links to the school district website um to videos directly about the budget that Peter's developed um and a bunch of other fund resources so go there if you need some direction thanks Leela okay uh on to subcommittee and member reports uh we're going to do policy then Capital then budget all right policy um Matt last week and uh I appreciate appreciate uh all of the members of the committee for joining me on my commute into Boston um that was a fun one uh but sort of we have been setting sort of the new Direction uh that we're going to be going and we initially were planning to address the student uh resource force uh proposal that they uh have diligently been talking about at the beginning of most of our meetings uh we originally going to address that in May and we've actually pushed that up and we will be inviting um Kate our energy manager to discuss with us I think she already left um to discuss with us uh at our next meeting on March 28th thank you Capital the Acton boxboro Regional school committee Capital Improvement subcommittee convened via zoom on March 13 2024 the meeting began with an approval of the previous me minutes followed by updates on ongoing projects Mark Hamill provided insights on the Parker Damon buildings control system project Brendan uh discussed the tennis court repairs highlighting the need for crack ceiling and repainting of the junior high courts and more extensive repairs on the high school courts other updates include updates to the high school chem storage and progress to this building's roof uh replacement lastly additional discussions revolved around the Hagar well project and the cell phone tower proposal for improved communication Services meeting adjourned at 7:58 a.m. with the next meeting scheduled for May 15th 2024 thank you and budget uh the budget subcommittee met on March 18th at 3:30 p.m. on Zoom uh we invited members of the finance committees from both towns to attend and spend our time looking at budget projections for the next three years in an effort to anticipate costs and see where we could best use our energy creating structural change uh there are some there are some options for moving forward but none of them are short-term budget Solutions um so you know we're really committed to long-term fisal responsibility and close collaboration with the fin coms and select boards from both towns and want to ensure that we make the best choices after thorough research and reflection we'll meet again on April 1st on Zoom uh there will be a time change due to my schedule change uh so committee members can expect an email about that um and as always I encourage everyone to email us or come to speak up at meetings um because this is a collaborative process with the community and we want to hear from you uh also please remember that we're all in this together and we should be focusing a portion of our efforts on looking to state and federal governments to provide a more fair share of the fiscal budget to support Children and Families educated children are a vital asset for the future of our country and we should get more than we currently do and our elected our elected representatives are hard at work advocating for us and will continue to fight as Leela said um you know we have a wealth of information on the district website short videos by Peter and action TV's YouTube channel also has a lot of videos um of our meetings and budget Saturday so folks can sort of see how this process has moved along we all want strong schools happy and healthy kids and an excellent education in this District thank you all right on to the consent agenda items on the consent agenda do not usually require discussion approved by one vote unless any member would like to hold an item if you would please say hold uh you remember you don't need to be at a meeting uh to vote on its minutes so item number one is approval of the ABR RSC meeting minutes of February 10th 2024 item number two is the recommendation to approve a $25,000 check for the 14th installment from dragonfly theater to the acting boxb Regional School District and item number three is a recommendation to approve the Blanchard PTF 95580 87 donation to The Blanchard playground project play 24 so moved see that no items were held uh we sorry uh there was a motion uh by Leela and a second by Ben all of those in favor I any opposed none any extensions that is unanimous Leela can I just say thank you to Beth for producing 10 pages of notes for Budget Saturday much appreciated indeed with with gratitude as we used to say um finally statement of warrants and a recommendation to approve if everyone's reviewed the warrants we're going to rock paper scissor the front table here to see who's going to make the motion you took that other big long one I can take this one now all right um I move that the school committee vote to approve the below-listed warrants totaling 2,878 455 AP vendor warrants as follows 24- 018b dated March 7th 2024 in the amount of $266,800 NB L dated March 14th 2024 in the amount of $1,067 24-19 sh dated March 14th 2024 in the amount of $ 22,170 24- 019a dated March 14th 2024 in the amount of $255,800 payroll vendor warrant as follows 24-18 PR dated March 7th 2024 in the amount of 5 $1,138 73 and payroll warrant as follows p2418 p2418 V dated March 7th 2024 in the amount of 1,782 4937 so moved seconded so Liz with the motion and Ben with the second all those in favor I any opposed any extensions that is unanimous thank you as well uh all right before anybody packs up their stuff I need you to write these dates down June 21st June 24th and June 25th try to hold one of those dates and we're going to send a poll out shortly for our summer workshop so that's basically immediately after school ends um we want to get our summer workshop in while things are still fresh in everybody's mind um again that's June 21st 24th or 25th we'll send a poll out shortly to see um if if we can uh get uh the committee together for our summer workshop very early um the only thing that I see on the FYI is the Community Coffee that Peter and I are hosting uh uh this Saturday at 9:00 a.m. at KJ's Cafe um with that is there motion to adjourn oh you have more FYI than what's on the packet here go for it um one just a little color on that that summer workshop um Adam and I thinking ahead to some of the the challenges and opportunities that we really need to T um had been engaged with the discussion with Nate levenson um if you remember a number of years ago we did a social emotional program review um through District Management Group um Nate is not only a former superintendent in Arlington but he's also a former School Board member um and he has his own consulting firm now he is a former engineer and does a lot of design thinking as well but he has a book called smarter schools smarter budgets which is essentially a look inside structural challenges of school budgets and you know where you can look within a school budget to really maximize outcomes for students and do it in an efficient way so what we were hoping to do was get you copies of those books in advance have kind of a group read around that we're going to be doing the same thing with our leadership team um and then have Nate come in and actually do a workshop so the three dates that you got were the three dates he happens to be available um he's absolutely fantastic he you know advises whole states he's been doing work for every School District in the state of Vermont around literacy he's doing the same thing um I think in Louisiana in the South so he's that level of present he's very very good at what he does um very very smart and insightful and I think you'd enjoy that so that's that's why we're looking for those dates soon um because we need to book him and and commit to him so that's one and then I also just want to share you know I I forgot to mention it earlier but we have a new school resource officer uh joining us in Acton I'm really excited um you know we you know had had a lot of discussions with our SRO subcommittee about what we want out of a program um and so Acton had an opportunity to hire a resource officer they involved several of our administrators in that process um to be able to get feedback from us and the officer that was selected um she has a bachelor's degree in psychology and sociology uh with a minor in women's studies from the um from UMass Boston she prior to becoming an officer for the last 11 years actually worked for the department of children's and families as a case worker um for 5 years so I think in terms of really understanding students and families in a lens that is you know kind of the bridge between schools and outside agencies she's going to bring a lot of support so we're excited about that selection um she's starting to you know visit the schools now she completed all of her training um that was required and and moving forward so just want to make that announcement thank you Peter anybody want to make a motion to adjourn yanshin did you have something you wanted to I I have a request 21st can we take that off the table it's the state tournament well we're going to send out a poll and we'll see whoever we can get the most people for this is my like secret request to you guys all right so moved second all right Vic REM moved Ben seconded all those in favor I any opposed better not be any extensions thank you have a good evening thank you everyone