uh good evening everybody and welcome to the April 11th black Sun mville Regional School District school committee meeting um please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance Pledge of Allegiance of the United States of America the one nation God indivisible with liberty and justice for all we'll start with an introduction of members Ted novio milville Dan Keith Blackstone mat calano milville Tara scobby Blackstone Tara Lin milville Joe spag director you told me to Joe B Director of Finance and operations Jill pag gallerani assistant superintendent director of student services and Jason DeFalco superintendent uh we don't have our student reps this evening they are actually at a conf confence on the C that was postponed till today so they're representing BMR at the State uh conference we have one more want do your introduction Charles dunon Blackstone uh this is our reorganization meeting um so I will entertain a motion for a uh chairperson for the Blackstone mville Regional School District school committee for the 2425 uh year Mr superintendent I I uh nominate uh Dan Keefe as chair person please Dan Keef is there a second second any discussion you accept the nomination Mr Keef I suppose so I think we have to do a a um R call vote yes I yes yes yes yes yes all right congratulations Mr oh Carrie sorry yes I don't know how I can miss you you're right there bring a name card to Dan yeah Dan if you want to switch your oh name plane here get to do the rest and all righty I'm going to turn the rest of this over to you Mr Keefe right here okay thank you okay now we'll entertain uh nominations for the vice chair of the blacko Milow Regional School District school committee I nominate Tara Lin for vice chair I second it motion made by Tara uh seconded by Ted are there any other nominations all right do a roll call vote in favor Ted yes Carrie yes Matt yes Chuck yes yes Tara and Tara yes and I'm a yes next will be open nomination for I apologize I forgot my glasses um the secretary of the school committee I nominate Ted novio for secretary motion B by Tara second second second by Tara and carrye any um any other nominations and close the nominations all the um so we'll do a roll call uh vote for secretary uh Ted yes Carrie yes Matt yes Chuck yes Tara yes Tara yes and I'm a yes as well okay Jason help me out what's the is that the end of that uh then we go to the uh Treasurer uh do we do the secretary yes I believe that's what I just did yep yeah then we go to the treasur all right I'll open up nominations for the uh for the treasurer of the district office for 2425 carry gordet for district Treasurer second a motion made by Tara seconded by Tara any other nominations uh I'll take a roll call vote Ted yes Carrie yes Matt yes Chuck yes Tara yes Tara yes and Danza yes and I would ask if we could hold on the last two the district Treasurer and the um Council till the May meeting if that's okay uh the district assistant treasur my apologies okay they both are still under contract until the end of June so it's not a problem okay so that wraps that up yeah all right now we'll get back to the agenda consent agenda a uh I'll take a motion to approve the warrants motion made motion made by Tara second second second by Matt and Ted any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I any oppose uh it's unanimous and I'll accept the motion to accept am minutes for March 7th 2024 some moved motion made by Matt seconded by Ted uh any other discussion all those favor signify by saying I I he opposed it's unanimous next is public forum we do five minutes five or three three um so anyone from the public would like to address the committee speak now or forever hold your piece we'll move on to school committee agenda to approve the charger for Life Authority Juro scholarship make a motion to approve the charger for Life Anthony jro scholarship all right there's a motion made by Tara second second by Chuck a discussion want to yeah yeah the scholarship information is in your packet um of Mr the jro family um sent some information along which I'm happy to read into um the record if that's okay um the the family of Anthony jro a beloved class of 2023 graduate who sadly passed away the day after graduation has established a scholarship in Anthony's memory they would like to select three class of 2024 graduates to receive a $1,000 scholarship at our annual Awards night ceremony they have named the scholarship uh the charger for Life Anthony jro Memorial Scholarship the jro family will be issuing their award checks to the students uh but requests approval from the school committee to establish this scholarship here at BMR thank you Mr superintendent are there any other comments all right uhk comment I'll make is that um on behalf I I I just want to say that Anthony jro made an tremendous impact on so many so many young men that were his teammates um and friends over the years and um I I I see no better fitting scholarship than than the scholarship thank you Ted all those in favor I I I I it's unanimous um do you mind if um sorry I'll just I'll take a motion take the meeting out of order there you go so we can move to the superintendent report for items A and B thank you so Mo motion May by Tara second seconded by Chuck so we're going to move forward to the report of the superintendent acceptance of Elementary report card changes perfect Mr superintendent thank you uh good evening everybody I'd like to uh ask to come to the front uh this evening our our friends our colleagues who have worked tirelessly on two pretty significant projects for our school district this year um and we'll do them in in pieces uh the first uh we'll hear from our elementary report card team uh just kind of a subsection I think of the group that actually did all the all of the work but we're very grateful that you're both here all of you are here this evening so thank you and then after that we'll hear from our science curriculum committee uh some uh team members that will go over uh some changes with that uh but with that I will turn over the and Mrs schaer do you want the the clicker so you can move along your slides my computer so it's a a two-part presentation starting with Rapport card changes for next school year so take it away okay so um our purpose in working through this Revis our it's not totally Chang just really more of a revision is to make sure that we're really representing all of our students um as we know all need all and also working having a positive and collaborative relationship with teachers and parents so moving the one on my computer and not this one too far I think no y all right so we have we had five goals on the committee the first was to have Clarity and transparency so that the students the parents and the staff were clear on the learning standards the expectations and it was um easy for the parents to understand and know what we were actually teaching them the second goal was a focused assessment so that we can highlight the strengths and the weaknesses um of the standards then goal three was targeted feedback so the report card will give students the feedback on their performance in relation to all the standards that they're learning and also help the parents in how they can improve on what they doing with their kids at home and what's needed and how to achieve that goal number four is we wanted to make sure it was aligned with our curriculum and what we use to teach the curriculum and goal five was consistency so we tried to make sure we looked at this vertically so that a lot of the language and the way the grading goes and how it's um presented to the parents kind of matches up vertically so it was easy to move from grade to grade when they get the report Big area with that was the um perform the performance standards or the learning behaviors um to make sure that we had some consistency so it wasn't like one thing here and then like 50 over here so and make sure that they all kind of fed into each other through the natural progression of student development and we completed all of this work obviously following this timeline we met pretty consistently beginning late fall of last year and there all of our grade levels were represented at our meetings and we had really productive conversations and small group out um outbreaks at those meetings but then all of us in attendance on the committee also went back to our plc's and got the input of all of our grade level counterparts our colleagues so that we really were representative of the whole grade um and when we would go back to the next meeting we'd be able to say okay all of grade two thinks this all of grade three thinks this versus just making those decisions unilaterally as a committee um now that that work is done obviously we're here tonight to share that with you and then our um plan is to have this new report card ready to use next school year and I also went to obviously my own school council but I also went to the um complex school council and presented the the visions and what we kind of were planning on to the parents as well school and we do plan to have like like um an FAQ available for for families um and I know a lot of us anyway at our parent teacher conferences because those occur before report cards are generally given out at the elementary level we usually share with the families that report card and sort of walk them through what they can expect when they receive it you know a month a month later so we will be doing things like that um some of the major revisions that we made um to this new report card is obviously we updated standards it's been a while since we had created this initial standards based report card um some of those standards had changed and again we were looking for more consistency like we saw in the third grade one there were certain domains that were completely missing um from the current report card so we wanted to make sure that all of those domains were um given given equal status we did revise our performance standards um the students are now scored on a 4 to1 um scale they're still going to be scored on a 4:1 but we did change the language a little bit we wanted to make sure that it now said in um at this time so the parents understood like that this too wasn't for always but just like right at that point in time we changed learner behaviors from numbers to letters um our current report card has them on a 321 which does get a little confusing for our families because our our performance standards are for 321 um most given are the 321 so it's it was kind of hard for them to know cuz they the two threes mean different things so to just kind of like well a three in respectful isn't the same as you know a three here in being able to multiply up to 10 * 10 um so now those will be letters um C it'll be a c o s and an N meaning consistently met this performance criteria often meets sometimes meet and um needs Improvement so it's not not meeting but it it needs Improvement meeting that um learner Behavior we also wanted to make sure that we had quite a bit of discussion about this that our five pillars of the portrait of a graduate were all included in the learner behaviors um or or at least somewhere on the report card like communication might be represented through oral presentation in the English language art but it's there now like it wasn't necessarily there but there are things now that definitely are connected to citizenship to character to collaboration to communication and to critical thinking across the board so that was really important an um to us and then um stem is going to be its own grade CU right now there are some report cards where it is graded and others where it is not um but I know so in our building it actually the stem teacher works with the classroom teachers to like average out the grades between stem and Science in the classroom and then I know there's another is a technology and a stem grade on their report card but they both say technology like grade three they get a technology and a techn olog and one is under attendance and one is with specials and none of us know which one is which because they both say exactly the same thing so I don't know that parents know which one is which because we can't figure out which one is which so now it we'll actually say fix St and it it will be fixed and um actually one of I think grade five did was grade five that didn't have any learner Behavior grade five had no Lear Lear Behavior Card and now they do have some so that's where a lot like Mrs duah said that's where a lot of our um five SE came in the portrait of graduate work came out kindgarten had the most like kindergarten had like a whole column which again is probably to be expected but certainly by fifth grade they still need to be demonstrating learner behaviors and the ladies that were part of our committee as we're saying well we like this one or we want and they're like what are you even talking about like we don't even have those on our report card so now they're all going to have something and they will all be tied back to the portrait of a graduate that's really about it we're just working on the final stages right now with tech um and Aspen and getting all that work done and Mrs colino and I um have met had several meetings with them and we come up we tell them what then they bring it back and check and then they so it's been kind of like a touch and go um so we're kind of in those final stages of that and ready to get it going any questions good a lot of work we we have actually a huge team we have at least one from every grade some we have two and three so we have really quite a lar and we're excited that it's going to be more consistent across great Christina I'm just and all just curious the parent feedback when you met with the families did did the changes make sense to them in terms of they all made sense um I think I think the thing that's going to be nice for families is the two different um grading keys for the learner behaviors and then the numbers because now all you see is like one two three fours and you know making that understandable like what these mean and helping we're going to make sure the other piece then that the actual five C's is actually going to be on the report card somewhere we're just figuring out where with when we finalize it with tech and Aspen but the 5c Banner will I'll be on the report card as well thank you thank Youk you thank you Dr RKA do you and our members of our science committee want to join us this also has been a sign ific amount of work as the school committee knows we're on our second iteration of revisions for curriculum so uh this is actually exciting we're we're back at science we spent a year working on this um and so we're going to hear a bit about the changes this evening so thanks for being here thank you so Mary cono actually has been leading the work so I can't take any credit she just asked me to come here for more support so I'm here for them so I'm going over it to you guys thank you thank you um not okay much like the report card committee we began our work back in the late fall early winter stages and we began by meeting as a team and collaborating and evaluating where we currently stood with our science curriculums and creating a vision from there of what we wanted to see moving forward so to help generate this Vision we met not only as a committee but we also reported back to our plc's got feedback from them we included student input because they're the ones experiencing this curriculum so their feedback back is just as important and then we looked to desie recommendations Ed reports C reports just to see what is going on in the education world and trying to narrow it down from there based on that feedback we then met with different curriculum programs and figured out which ones most aligned with our vision and then some teachers tried some of those programs moving forward and then from there we took that feedback and came to our conclusions and the decisions that we came to are that we will be maintaining what we're currently using at the elementary level which is stem Scopes we'll be keeping that through the lower elementary K through 3D as well as fourth and fifth which we'll be moving here to the Middle School in the Middle School levels 6th 7th and eth we'll be using mcra hill we will also be using that for the high school mcra Hill environmental science for grade n biology for grade 10 and chemistry for grade 11 there was a lot of different factors that went into making these decisions but I think the main factor was accessibility for teachers students as well as alignment with the Massachusetts standards Massachusetts makes it a little difficult because there's National Science standards and Massachusetts has their own different standards so many of the curriculums follow the national standards not Massachusetts standards so it was a little difficult but we narrowed it down and we have something that aligns with what we need and to build on that mcra Hill for the Middle School in the high school has really high standards for the students so it's help going to help continue to push them to Excel and then in regards to why we chose to keep stem scopes at the elementary level based on our current situations it's the most practical it's userfriendly and with the right use it's the most well-rounded for the elementary teachers and won't require as much supplementation which will alleviate a lot of the burden that's been placed on Elementary School teachers and going forward our plans are throughout the summer to gather materials organize materials get everything situated and begin professional development opportunities for especially the middle and high school teachers that will be learning a completely new curriculum but as well as professional development opportunities for us at the elementary level that are sticking with our curriculum but maybe we can get a better grasp on it so we can support our students better another thing to add on to the stem Scopes part um it's also in the curate or in the queue to be approved by curate which means that it will be closer to being one of those green programs that's sought out by more districts I know this was a really big decision I meet with Mary every week uh actually a couple times and um every week we would sit down and she would say okay we've got a plan plan this is what we're going to do we go through the plan she come back the next week she like all right remember that plan from okay scrap that plan we have a different plan this is what we saw this is the latest research I'm like all right this we're gonna yeah we're gonna the next week she's like all right so we're going to quarter turn that a little bit from last week so I I know that all of you kept going back to the research you kept going back to you know the curate which are the Department of Education reports that essentially evaluate the curriculum against our standards our state standards because we are different we're Massachusetts we don't just follow National curriculum uh standards that have been set out for a lot of different content areas um but it makes the work for all of you really tricky if it if it was just following the national framework it would be actually easy to pick one but you really do have to get into the weeds of looking at the particular standards and which programs cover which ones uh it's a a fairly impossible task because not every program is going to cover everything so to your point about needing to supplement less um we won't find a perfect program and Metts for any content because we have our own very unique set of Frameworks for each content area so my hats off to you I know that was a ton of work that you guys had to keep kind of going back to and finding the you know the right information to make the right choice and if I may add something to it um we actually work on a master schedule for elementary and student will not be pull from uh science or social study anymore uh we were very being creative with the RTI block so um they won't lose science on social study block anymore great um so we need two separate motions y That's All Right any any questions or comments from the school committee members I will just say this is my third year and with the blueprint blueprint 2.0 you can continuously see the collaboration and jelling and you just EXP explained very well make recommendations for instructional materials to keep modify or adopt and it seems like you had to do that through the back and forth through the whole process so I appreciate all the hard work and both the report card changes and the science curriculum so at this time I'll uh entertain a motion to accept the Elementary report card changes motion made by a Tara second seconded by Tara any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I you still got Carri Carrie left okay uh unanimous uh and now I'll take a motion to um accept the science curriculum as presented for the school year of 2425 so moved motion made by Tara second seconded by Chuck any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any oppos the eyes have it thank you very much thank you great work nice work all right you want to go back to the school committee agenda is it or do we think so we have anybody else in the audience no that was it okay all right so we'll go back to school committee agenda Item B uh to amend the 2324 school calendar new end date June 18th 2024 Mr superintendant yes uh we had two snow days this year uh so that pushed us out into the next week uh so our last week of school would uh be a Monday and a half day Tuesday um and so we are looking for approval to amend the calendar reflecting the two snow days that we use and that will end the year and um Tuesday June 18th am I see I'm not seeing this am I yes right here this little slash mark here yep oh there it is yep it's hard to see next okay so I'll take a motion to um amend the school uh committee calender for an end date of June 18th 2024 second motion made by Tara second second and by Matt and Chuck any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any oppose the eyes have it uh next is the msba fe uh update feasibility study agreement Mr superintendent um yes can we do the is it right to do the school committee calendar I is that all right first I apologize right check that off we'll do the school committee calendar next Mr superint sure um so in your packet you have the draft calendar for school year 2425 um we tried to make a couple of adjustments um so you'll not that we will have uh one meeting in August uh that would be August um 19th um you know my apologies jump back to July is that right or did we miss July on this one I think we missed the July meeting on this one um I'll get back to you on July my apologies um but we can start with the August um we will have one meeting in August which will be August 19th uh one meeting in September September 12th one meeting in October October 10th um the November meeting will be November 7th uh December 12th um I know some of us may shudder at this that starts our budget process um that but we'll have one meeting in uh December on the 12th and then uh January we planned one meeting because we'll schedule the workshops through January and February for our budget at the January 9th meeting 2025 one meeting for Fe February on February 6th and then for March April and May we added a second meeting uh so we don't end up with agendas like tonight's um where there's just a just a huge amount of uh material for us to work through um so you'll see two meetings in March the 6th and the 20th two meetings in April the 10th and the 24th and then two meetings in May um so we made the changes this year to add those second meetings in March April and this is subject change du to but this is pretty much our groundwork yeah um and so does anybody have any questions on the proposed calendar I'll take a uh motion to um accept the 2425 school committee calendar motion made by Tara second second by Tara any other discussion all those in favor signifi by saying I I oppose the I have it uh Mr superintendent the msba update to the feasibility study agreement perfect um in your packet this evening uh you have a few different um pieces of information regarding the Massachusetts school building authority uh feasibility study project that we are about to enter into two and so I'll just take a quick minute and kind of walk through those and Tara jump in on anything as the chair sure of the uh School building committee if I'm missing something um but the first item in your packet is titled the Massachusetts school building authority feasibility study agreement um this is a very important document that outlines uh all of the regulations and the legal e around the feasibility study itself for our project um and I I do want to bring your attention um to let me just jump to the page six if you look at page six um section B and you'll see there are some there should be some yellow highlights there on some numbers um I bring this uh paragraph to your attention because uh this highlights um the amount of the estimated feasibility study cost which was about a million um and mba's reimbursement rate should we end up moving forward with the actual project so if the project actually gets folded into um you know the cost of the feasibility study actually gets folded into the project if the project is approved by um by our residents um so I just wanted to share that with you because it actually shows that a reimbursement rate is 59.2 one% um and as such they would reimburse us for about $592,000 of the million doll feasibility study uh which is very significant um again should that project come to fruition and and be approved so I wanted to bring that to everybody's um attention um with that uh Joe and I had an opportunity to meet with Lyn Welch last week uh which is very helpful we talked about all of our Capital debt and some of the other upcoming projects and spoke specifically about um the feasibility study um and we had a good discussion um around you know needing to go out to borrow potentially for the feasibility study um one of because of the steps the school committee took and because our communities approved this uh we have 500,000 in capital stabilization that we we're going to use First on this which is great U so that if our feasibility study actually comes in under that the amount that we may need to borrow could be much less than what we're assuming it may end up being so based on the overall cost of the project and plus if the project is funded we'll be in re reimburse almost 60% of that so um I know when when uh the general public hears you know a million a million dollar price tag on something um you know kind of our our our ears perk up and it should um but at the end of the day it's really not going to shake out to that uh to that total for the reasons I just mentioned the reimbursement and the capital stabilization fund um and so um that's some really good news for our project but just to remind um our friends and families that are tuning in at home um so there's just a little bit about that um the next piece that I wanted to mention um on April 24th we will have the Massachusetts school building authority board of directors meeting it's a virtual meeting and at that meeting they will uh vote to accept um us into feasibility which is great uh that meetings at 10:00 uh on the 24th uh at 1:00 on the 24th we have a meeting with msba to train us around uh the selection of an owner's project manager so I mean we're we're moving once we're accepted and We're Off to the Races and we're looking for an OPM um which is great this was one of those that we had to like hurry up and wait and the wait's just about over uh which is which is which is fantastic for the project um so that we have to look forward to um the second item in your packet uh is listed as exhibit a and that is the feasibility study budget um you will see that there are some um estimates for an owner's project manager a designer in environmental and sight testing um and full transparency I had to design this budget um and there is no support from msba to do this they basically give you other projects and you need to comb through all of their costs and figure it out um I was informed that if I did this wrong I would be told um I no one has said anything from msba other than we got this from them in their packet so it must have been approved uh which is good um and so um I say that uh only to state that some of these numbers could change so an OPM or onus project manager may be a little less or it might be a little bit more than $250,000 the designer will probably come in less than 650,000 um but that was about what I was seeing for projects our size um and then the site testing I don't know that we're going to need the full 100,000 for that uh but again for projects our scope and size that was about kind of the the the middle of the road so just to say that these numbers if we're sitting here a year from now and they look a little bit different uh that is possible but they can't exceed the the total amount of the project uh on the back side of that exhibit B you will see um a document titled scope of the feasibility study um and this is really important uh because Ana as a chair of the school building committee I know that you know this very well this is where our enrollment um certification numbers came came in and there was a lot of back and forth with uh msba around our enrollment um this is a super important number because msba will only build 175 square feet per student so this student number is hugely important that we get this right uh and we went back and forth with msba um probably three or four times to we got them to land on on a larger number uh so this is very good news for us as as far as the enrollment is concerned um but these are the numbers that we are certified to build at now if we had a significant change in one of our towns a you know huge development goes in and is built that we were unaware of um after talking to you know both Town Halls through this whole uh process which which we did do um but you know if there was a shift in that and we had you know a large number of families move in uh there is a process for us to amend this number if something that significant would happen uh but right now like these are the numbers that we are going to be uh conducting the feasibility study around and in that study uh the reason that this configuration is broken out this way is because this is what we have asked U msba to fund a feasibility study to actually review for us so that again to our families and friends at home that includes a 6 through 12 Model A 7 through 12 model an 8 through 12 or just a traditional High School 9 through 12 so helping us uh spec out the costs for all of those different designs and then lastly the final piece of information in your uh packet this evening um is a certification of legal counil for the district um this is there's nothing that the district needs to do with this um our attorney Kelly Gonzalez will actually uh tomorrow uh go through and put this information on her uh letterhead and will execute the signing of this um document as well so once all of this is approved everything will be scanned and emailed to Jennifer Flynn our senior um uh representative from msba tomorrow and then we'll hard copy all of the signed uh documents into them as well that's really important because we needed to get everything in on time for msba to get it into um their packet for their board meeting on April 24th so let me pause here I'm not sure if there are any questions on any of the documents I do just getting back to the reimbursement if the feasibility study gets rolled into the alone best case scenario that it's all approved um so the the 59.2 one reimbursement that's a great that's a great it's more better than we've received I think 58 it's a bit higher yeah yeah y um the stabilization fund is is built off of the regional agreement percentages um and if it was rolled in it would be rolled in as a regional agreement percentages um to the um to the bigger project would we exhaust the stabilization fund because then we you say it's the million dollars half of that is the stabilization fund the other half is the assessments to the towns right we'd have to go to borrow right yep so we would exhaust this portion first correct so the recommendation from ly Welch was to exhaust the state the capital stabilization fund first then anything be above and beyond we could we would go out to borrow for for that amount and then assess the atts appropriately we can only do a shortterm um note for this particular type of project I believe it was a 5-year uh term um and so um if it's not approved the town would have that fiveyear window to pay back whatever the difference is um less our 500 you know of the 500,000 that's in the that's in the stabilization and the you know the reimbursement I I know the question will come up because some people watching will think well where is you know where is the town's portions uh but we would exhaust the stabilization account first and then if everything worked out well then this would be assessed in the bigger picture so it would it would remain fair for both communities throughout the whole process 100% And if I could so if we say the say the overall feasibility study costs 750,000 we would go out to borrow for 250,000 and then we would assess the 75 25% accordingly to the towns to to um to pay off the the amount that we borrowed for the feasibility that's all I have on it that's I mean Mr superintendent uh anybody else have anything on this uh you want to continue or can we call for make the motion yeah is it okay to do the motion this sure so we'll need a mo I would imagine the motion is to accept the agreement yes to enter into the agreement I could read the Motions that prepared for us was not used to that all right so I take a motion I move to enter the feasibility study agreement with the Massachusetts school building authority a motion made by Tara second seconded by Ted any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I unanimous I move to authorize the superintendent to sign the feasibility study agreement on behalf of the Regional School District motion made by Tara second second by Tara any any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I I you oppose the eyes have it thank you Mr superintendent thank you we get that done tomorrow next is the fy2 health insurance update um yes just a couple of quick uh notes for the school committee as ultimately it's the school committee's decision what direction we move in with our health insurance um we've had a we've had had uh two Insurance advisory Council meetings to date um and just as a reminder those meetings are comprised of um a member or two from the school committee um myself Joe um we have Representatives s Maya uh attend our last meeting um and they also include members from our retiree uh population and uh leaders from uh bargain units and so we bring everybody to the table to go through um all the projections as far as the health insurance increases across our plans um and as we've discussed through various budget workshops our health insurance increase uh for fiscal 25 is 7.59% um and that's with our current plans um that are contractual the plans are listed in our contract as far as deductibles and the percent that the district pays for the premium compared to what the employee pays for the premium uh but but with all of that you know as you can imagine it's a very high increase so we did schedule a couple of insurance advisory Council meetings um and invited Maya in um the uh vice president uh Chris Bailey um and ter Farland I think I'm saying her last name correctly uh met with us just again this week to go through you know some different options um so they are going to look at a two-year option um which we're certainly not committing to um you know to that but to try to help us bring the percent uh increase down so just wanted to give an update on that it is in the budget at 7 and a half% so we have the money budgeted um but um I know insurance is uh is a costly item it's over $3 million of our budget wanted to make sure to update the school committee and just kind of of where that stood and what you know what we've done to date um and so I actually want to give a big shout out to Fred hartnet he's been he really has been very helpful uh he's at the table the past couple meetings he spoke with uh Jessica Sinclair HR specialist he and I have spoke as well uh wealth of knowledge lots of good ideas um so we appreciated his um his Insight on things so I'll have another update for the committee uh very soon but that's where things are currently we're waiting for see what that two-year U commitment would look like if we can get the increase down a bit all right any questions or comments on that all right we will move on to early retirement incentive Unit A and C so the past few years uh last year we did not do this uh but prior we did um we took uh the opportunity to offer an early retirement incentive to Educators in our unit a um uh bargaining unit and um support staff in our unit c um bargain unit and so uh in front of you this evening um is essentially an overview of what the uh early retirement incentive looks like um and it's all broken down uh for you for unit a and for unit c um Unit A is really straightforward uh because everybody's on the same pay scale it's 184 Day contract the steps the lanes it's the you know uh it's all kind of a Level Playing Field um for Unit C it's a little bit different um and you will notice at the bottom of um the uh the handout that there's a different amount uh depending upon which unit c classification you're in so again for our families and friends listening at home that's our custodians our PA professionals our admin assistants cafeteria workers Etc um and as the committee knows each of those classifications Works a little bit different schedule so some are 10 months some are 12 months some are 6th hours some are 7 and 1/2 hours some are 6 and 1/2 hours so it's all it's all a bit different so um these totals would be prated based on the hours that the employee uh worked um we did do an analysis um my senses one of you might ask this uh so um I'll share it now if that's all right but um we did do an analysis of every single employee in the school system who's eligible to retire that means you've got 10 years vested in MTR us so from the from the unit a side um by the way I haven't met anyone yet who is retired after 10 years because you know you certainly can't retire on that um but but be that as it may we did check anyway and looked at every single employee in the school system who would be eligible underneath this and there is uh about a $500,000 liability there the likelihood that even a small fraction of our Educators would take that I think as Slim um um because um you know we're talking individuals that you know have been here 10 years 15 years 12 years so they're eligible but they wouldn't you know they're not ready to retire at that point but I did want to make sure to put that out there that we do have all of the calculations uh for each specific employee and what their buyou uh or payout would be underneath this um in early retirement incentive has anyone declared that they planning on retiring um we had a couple of uh we had one unit a and we had a couple of Unit C already um that that declared their retirement so those individuals um Mo'Nique essentially will crosswalk the incentive versus what they're already they're not going to get that in this um so it's in most cases um if they've already declared their retirement again most cases their incentive is already larger than what's here in most cases so they're not going to get both okay any other questions so Mr superintendent you need a couple of um motions on these yes to uh approve the uh incentive so we can get it out to our employees so okay someone would like to make a motion I make a motion to improve uh to approve the early retirement incentive for unit a do you want me to do them together and Unit C yeah that's that's okay I'm okay with that yeah yeah do we need to read in all the details you want all the thorough details as as presented by the superintendent as presented by the superintendent so there a motion by Tower seconded seconded by Ted any further discussion on this all those in favor signify by saying I I oppose the eyes have it next on the agenda is a vote to author authoriz a superintendent to negotiate Mo MOA regarding grade reconfiguration yeah um this is just um as you know in the contract we have things like start and end times for our Educators um because of the reconfiguration some of those are going to change um so things like um you know running what we're looking at now is a middle tier of buses so having the high school on their existing tier but it it may be five or 10 minutes earlier um then adding a new tier for grades 4 through seven and then having um the Elementary uh PK through three running on the uh last tier which again right now they're starting around 8:45 to about 305 but that might change 10 minutes the other way so those small things well you know they certainly don't seem like a significant issue but we do have to negotiate all of those uh with un a um another another topic to discuss with things like team leaders um when you bring together grades 4 through seven grades 6 through 8 have team leaders but K through five do not so then you're going have a building that has half team leaders and half not team leaders and so we just got to fix some of those things um and I do not want to enter into those discussions about your approval some housekeeping matters yeah ex exactly that's a great way to say that um any comments or questions on that I'll take a motion to to authorize the superintendent to negotiate an Mo MOA regarding grade reconfiguration some motion by Tara second second by Chuck any further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I oppos the eyes have it and that time of year the superintendent's midcycle evaluation um so I will try try to move through this quickly um largely because most of the information in here you have all seen this already uh which frankly is the way that this should be um because it's the work that we're doing um but as you know um our goals for this year are anchored in our blueprint um which was mentioned earlier which I'm great was great to hear um because truly everything that we do does come back uh to this even thinking of a a plan we had to submit recently to the federal government for our Title One audit and Jill very quickly just printed off a blueprint document we had and just submitted and was fine um because that's the work we're doing nobody has to create things and make up things it's just it's how we work um and so our our goals are all directly connected back to this and just as a refresh how the goals were determined it was a variety of uh pieces of um information um of course the feedback from our school committee from last year on our goals goal and my goals um are uh blueprint as I mentioned end of year data um the um surveys from our school community and again for our families and friends listening at home I really want to underscore that we take your feedback very seriously um and so you'll see some Focus areas uh as the committee well knows uh because we've been talking about them all year but focus on that feedback from our from our uh School Community meaning specifically our parents our educators and our students um each year we identify this uh school committee identifies different areas where they want me to focus these are the ones that we selected for this year um and I won't read these all you know through um but the superintendent evaluation covered something like 32 different areas uh which is a which is a vast uh range of uh topics and potential Focus uh for the year but we landed on these um these these areas underneath each one of the standards so underneath instructional leadership management and operations of the school system family community engagement in professional culture what I really do love about this evaluation system is the principles rubrics and expectations are very similar to these and so are the teachers so there's a really nice through line all the way through the system which frankly there should be uh but it makes coherence and consistency across the work really um really tight um our first goal um is anchored around our student learning um kind of the headline to this piece is really focused around student achievement looking for a 5% increase uh in our SGP or student growth percentile uh from last uh School Year's performance to this school year and seeing an increase in our um student uh proficiency rates um underneath that though there are uh two very specific kind of buckets of work to help achieve that goal one is in curriculum uh and one is in instruction right so curriculum is the what that's all the stuff that we teach the instruction is the how right it's the delivery of that uh and so we've outlined very specific pieces of work some of which we heard tonight around science uh and the selection of a new science curriculum um and so um you'll see after the next slide uh which is really anchoring in very specific pieces of work right so if you think about the student learning goal uh that we just reviewed it's very kind of highlevel macro we're looking at curriculum we're looking at Broad instructional practices data Cycles those types of pieces of work um but on the second piece or this extension of our student learning goal we're talking about very specific things uh and this really came from that feedback that I mentioned a couple of slides back uh about helping us bring our Focus and so specifically this is bringing extra attention to our Middle School bringing extra attention to our literacy work particularly with our male students um expanding uh some of the leadership development of our male students uh and really deepening some of that work um and then exposure to additional career Pathways and opportunities and so I just want to call those pieces out because uh this is like to me this is where the rubber meets the road like yes you can pick a new curriculum and you know we can put in data cycles and professional learning communities and all these like you know bunch of educational jargon things but like this is the stuff that we're doing with kids um that I think is really important to mention um so I'm not going to walk through any of this evidence uh as far as clicking on any of these hyperlinks this was emailed to the school committee today um so that you will have this for your review um but each one of those sample pieces of evidence is a hyperlink uh to a document um next to those pieces of evidence are the standards that they're connected to so the standards that the school committee wanted me to focus on uh and approved are all linked here so you can see exactly where each one of these pieces is connected back to the evaluation standards uh you'll notice that um underneath um the Middle School uh instructional leadership team Focus pardon some of the acronyms I couldn't type out we use way too many words in education and they're way too long and they took up way too much space so I didn't have to use the acronyms um but you'll notice that that first standard which is uh 1 a 1 b 1 C 4 a and 4 D um those apply to all of the pieces of evidence underneath I wasn't just going to sit and kind of keep rewriting the same things um so those are applied to each one underneath um a couple things just to bring to your attention though in um as far as this evidence is concerned like I said we're not going to click on these and and get into all of that you can see that when you uh peruse it later um but you'll see that our first piece of evidence is focused on our Middle School instructional leadership team um and there is some sample evidence of the work that's been happening to really uh from the beginning of the year as we know we had to bring some additional Focus to our middle school so to help reset and deepen the work around uh the teacher leadership piece at the middle scho school um and there's some other evidence to go along with that as well um the teaching learning and leading feedback um is actually a piece of evidence um Jill um and I uh give feedback quarterly to our building principles on their progress towards their goals towards increasing teaching and learning outcomes in each one of our schools uh so quarterly we write it's a couple of pages uh and we are in the schools every week so it's it's it's actually it's hard they're hard to write because there's a lot we want to say but we try to boil it down to like a page um and so you'll see a sample of that we redacted names and things but um but just to give you a sense of the feedback that we're giving as we're meeting with our principles and trying to lift um the instruction and the learning in each of the buildings so um I think that will that will be a helpful piece for you all you know to get a kind of sense of that if you jump down to the student reading survey um you'll see feedback right from the students uh so we did a survey with all the kids across the system and then we did focus groups um and we kind of organized the focus groups into those kids that said they love reading those kids that were like it's okay and those kids that were like no thanks um and we really wanted to get under the hood of all of that to figure out um you know where does that come from um and one of the things we learned to No Surprise I'm sure if anybody around the table was that uh genre was a really important piece that you know the kids will read more um if they have the right stuff on their hands so enter into uh the committee approving in the fall us to be able to purchase $5,000 worth of new reading materials for each Library we did it through a grant um but we took a lot of time and a lot of effort and energy went into making sure that we got the right books in front of the kids um we had a we had many discussions particularly with our as if we go back to a couple of slides ago uh with our young men and most of the groups that um had lower interests in Reading most of them were predominantly our young men so trying to figure out like what will spark the interest in them and a lot of it was genre the adventures and Mysteries and um there's actually some like our we learned a lot are historians they wanted more books about presidents and more things about our our nation's history and so so our Librarians worked really hard to come up with the right selections um and with that I want to give a huge shout out to Sarah Tasker uh because she really helped me lead the charge with this whole thing as a matter of fact she and I were meeting just yesterday um going through all of the collections uh we've done this Library yesterday we were doing the high school and just just being careful like going through and looking at all the selections and making sure that you know they're grade appropriate and topic appropriate and you know we've all heard horror stories of a book popping up in a library and it's like oh how'd that get there so we're just being very thorough to make sure that um you know the right books are in front of our kids so we're excited about the work um that's been done in that space so uh you'll see some photos and things as evidence throughout this too um there's nothing better than seeing some of these things and I can tell you when the books uh came in um The Librarians were going crazy it was like Librarians gone wild and I was like the photos of like boxes of books and that one it really was kind of funny I'm like my email was blowing up with pictures of books and books and books and uh it was cool it was really cool to to see the energy and the excitement um and Sarah was a uh and all the Librarians were tremendous uh but Sarah really was helpful at at being a ring leader at driving this project forward um and then just the last thing I want to highlight on this was is again just the Men's Leadership group our kind of tagline is inspiring to help Aspire um and so trying to help give our boys a kind of uh how do I say like a rebranded vision of what's possible for themselves um and so we've done things again this year like the perose family center in Worcester uh which was great the projects because now this is the second time we've been there so the projects they had our kids doing I mean they were like ripping out carpets they were painting stair I mean this was serious stuff it wasn't just kind of cleaning and you know boxing things for them and you know because the the uh director um is still there from our last visit he knew the kids he knew us he was really pumped to have us come back so he gave the kids really complicated projects I got put in hot chocolate Duty just F I had to go do a Dunkin run and bring all the kids back hot chocolate um nobody would let me paint or touch or rip up anything uh but the kids had a great time doing it um it was fun watching them kind of use the equipment and carpet cleaning and all kinds of things uh but they felt great they felt so empowered uh we also took them to the Parkway Diner for breakfast um cuz if you've ever been to the Parkway in Worcester it's like the best diner place so kids had a great time with that um and of course we did our Blackstone food pantry um we also did um we participated in a Blackstone Valley Chamber of Commerce event was kind of a manufacturing event at Polar Park which was awesome so the kids were doing a bunch of these kind of manufacturing and construction challenges which was cool um I had the pleasure of taking them on a tour to New England Tech myself which was great um it was a little bit of a kind of a last minute thing that we were able to squeeze in but they were able to um the school was able to host us so we jumped on it and um jumped jumped in the van and took the kids down to show them New England Tech um and we had a really awesome experience just this past Monday um we wanted to get them into uh a city we wanted to kind of show them something very different as some of the kidss have been in Boston before but some of them hadn't um some of the kids a couple of the kids have been on the commun rail others hadn't so we really wanted them to experience like how do you navigate a big public transit system so we all met up at Foxboro and uh jumped on the commuter rail I took the commuter rail into Back Bay uh we walked through um kind of actually over near with a marathon that was my own selfish thing it's going to finish I wanted to show the boys with the marathon finishes so we kind of walked over there and then we walked through the Boston Gardens through the um Commons and then rep soda and Senator Fatman hosted what I think is I've been to the State House a million times it was the most remarkable visit I've ever I've ever had um I mean they really pulled out all the stops for our kids they um got us into the actual governor's office like her literal office she wasn't there um we have a picture sitting on her couches in front of her fireplace like it was the kids were like totally Blown Away um we needed a special security kind of clearance and swipe badge to even get through there and rep Soder got us got us through and G Us in through uh the governor's Administrative Assistant I mean it was amazing the things that these kids saw they we have this beautiful picture of all of them out on uh the balcony overlooking the Boston commet from the governor's office like nobody gets to do that um or a few you know very few get to do that so um they had a great experience there we went into the Senate chamber we went into the house chamber uh chamber and then um from there uh we taught them how to navigate the green line we jumped on the ET train and went over to uh Wentworth Institute of Technology and we toured Wentworth which was kind of funny because the kids were like H this is kind of a bust after what we just saw maybe you should have done it the other way around um but uh it was an amazing experience we finished up the tour grabbed some lunch to go and then walked through the Back Bay Corridor which like a whole series of Gardens and things to get back to the train and then we watched the eclipse from the parking lot at Foxboro so it was really it was probably one of the best days I've had ever here I mean truly the amount of time um uh that we got to have with the kids and the activities we got to do and to see them they were just they were great I mean they were smiles and laughs and you know a lot of complaints at the end like we're tired you know because they were walking around a lot um but um but it was a really awesome day so we're looking forward to a couple more activities we've got um um actually Mr Hebert's um wife works at Waters and has got us in to uh visit um uh the waters uh company so that will be happening on May 2nd we have a group of boys going off that they're going to get to you know tour the facility and um hear a little bit from the business side of things we have some kids that are also interested in the business side of the house so to speak and how do you actually run a company like what does that look like how does this work um and they're going to host the boys for lunch as well so lots lots of really good stuff there um when we get to our uh next goal which was around a deeper learning it was a focus um around this kind of capacity building um around what we were refering to at what we referring to at the time as deeper learning um and this goal was really interesting because it actually kind of morphed um and have to say that the piece of evidence is which I think you all find very interesting I just attached one piece um this was a year-long course uh that um I had the pleasure of taking with Jill Fus Jenny Rema Lynn Scott and Linda Maro and I have to say the much like my time with the kids the best part about this course and this training was just being with our team uh we had some incredible conversations about where the district is where it needs to go um and you know if you know Lynn Scott and Linda Moro they've been here a long time uh Lynn was a student here and she went all the way through her Insight was invaluable um and so we just had the best time talking about some of our current challenges um and honestly we couldn't figure out where we wanted to land on a particular project we had a coach that was assigned to us from this course um to help us with a particular project um and we you know we kind of went back back and forth we talked about the reconfiguration we talked about supporting our elll students we talked about climate and culture and building trust I mean we ran the whole gamut um and then what was interesting you know at the end of this I kind of felt a little bit like a failure because we didn't pick this one thing in a huge action plan and have all these outcomes you guys know clearly like how we work um but they asked us to present and we were one of I don't know maybe 12 districts 13 districts that were in this and they only asked a couple to present their prod projects and we were one of them uh and I think it's because that unintended outcome of like camaraderie teamwork vision is what happened for us we all just totally synced up and got on the same page with the work we're trying to do across the district uh so it was it was really powerful Jill fallis ended up presenting as you can imagine she's so Dynamic um she did an incredible job there were you know close to I don't know probably 70 Educators in the room and without hesitation you know she stood right up and presented you know all of the work that we did uh and did a really great job so I just it's so great that BMR keep we keep getting our name out as a system doing really good work and that was another example of that so you'll see all the details uh of that along these same lines is kind of Better Together goal it was this goal was really anchored around strengthening our systems um you will see a lot of different pieces of evidence here on how we've been doing that um so you'll see a big focus on our year two and year three new teachers um you'll see some work around optional professional development modules that um we have in place the changes we've made to our mentoring program um our principal professional Learning Community um that um we just finished our last formal session yesterday just to bring to everybody's attention again that's our partnership with hope Dale and Bellingham and so um we meet every other month as a big professional Learning Community um and the superintendents do all the planning um as far as you know the activities and the work each district has hosted so we've had them in BMR uh we've been to Hopedale a couple times we've been to Bellingham um and the focus is around really strengthening uh leadership practices leadership capacity but it's been anchored in feedback like so how do we give really meaningful feedback how do we triangulate uh observations and what we see in the class with student work with our rubrics which are the tools we have to use to give the feedback and how do we kind of triangulate that data so you know kind of the headline to that is are we using our time wisely are we using it on the right stuff because as you can imagine principles have N9 million things a day that they could be doing but like five of those 9 million things will actually make a difference for kids so are we focusing on those five things I'm picking that number you know but that are going to make a difference for kids um and so we we've spent uh each of those sessions is three hours we launched this work uh we gave up one of our uh Retreat days um to do a full day retreat with the principles from BMR hope Dale and Bellingham um and the leadership team members Jill um and it was uh it's been great it's been a great experience so uh we'll be continuing that so you'll see some evidence of that in there as well um so again just a few a few things to bring to your attention our Wellness goal this year um you know in the past we focused it a lot around kind of equity and inclusivity and we're not not focusing on those things um but we took Wellness to a literal health and wellness perspective uh this year and so you'll see for evidence uh we have we and we are going to continue to do more of these uh kind of trainings but we are trying to bring information rate to kids uh and help them make healthy decisions for themselves so you'll see um you know things like healthy relationships training which I got really good feedback from parents I wasn't sure how that was going to land because the topic you know can can sound um a bit charging um but the DA's office did a fantastic job um presenting to our students and really giving a good overview on how to develop and maintain healthy relationships we actually split the kids up in groups so the freshman and sophomores had one training and then Juniors and seniors because they're dealing with different issues you know 14 to 18 is a huge grade span um with a vast you know um kind of variety of issues so um the trainings were a little bit different in tailored to the specific age groups um I got very good feedback from families um that attended there weren't a ton but there were some on the Internet safety um training some of our actually some of our staff attended it too just for their own understanding of you know kind of what's going on with our kids when they're jumping online um and then of course U they which remains a huge challenge for us um not unique to us but across the district so we're going to continue to bring this type of uh training and service to our students um and while Jill is not presenting this particular information she does a ton of this work so a big shout out to Jill and her team um and has something very big planned for the fall I'm sure we'll talk about later uh in in the school year uh that's really focused around you know uh antib and helping kids build healthy relationships so um and lastly as far as our formal gos of goals of course our facilities goal um there's nothing linked here because we literally just did these things so some of them tonight so um our feasibility study um our budget uh and capital being certified for the year and then of course the reconfiguration um it's funny because on this slide it looks like three little tiny things but as all of you know cuz you have been directly involved this was months and months and months of work um and again the standards that uh equate to those three pieces of evidence um I'm not going to spend much time at all on this uh because as you know we are in the process now of changing our assessment system and it's just you all know that star has just not been a good has not been a good indicator of where we end up Landing so I don't want to belabor any of this um um but to give everybody a sense again um the these are our Ela results from beginning to middle of year and what the difference is as far as achievement these are our meeting and exceeding numbers um just so everybody uh is aware thei test was given January and February so I know we're early April so this is old data by now anyhow um which is another reason we're not going to spend a ton of time on it but these are the changes in ela uh the next is the changes in mathematics um and there is a little bit of a story again to be told but but this just hasn't been helpful in terms of forecasting I can tell you our teachers and principles are using this data but they're just looking at the standards they're really getting into what are the skills and standards that the kids are showing they know and don't know and they're they're predominantly focusing on that information um because as we've seen in the past this data is like hmit in terms of where it actually projects our students to be at the end um but you know there are some data points when we look at the students um not meeting expectations we can see some some you know significant reductions how that all bears out you know at the end of the year we're not entirely sure yet um likewise with our growth again that Target's usually between 40 and 60% we want to land at at 50% growth so again I say take this all you know cautiously but from fall to Winter this is where our student growth percentiles uh are landing and again we we'll look at this and like oh that's really great in most cases we're at 50 or higher yep but let's be cautious about that right because we you know we know that this doesn't equate uh the way that we are hoping that it would similarly with math we can see the results here again if you look at this all but one grade level has met or exceeded the growth Target um which you know we want to celebrate but we're going to we're going to hold off on that and Jill do you want to talk a little bit about uh special ed sure I know last year we we always have our special education numbers they're always varying of students coming in and out so we just gave you an overview of the amount of students in the grade level at the time of the testing and just so you know there may be a few of those students who actually um aren't able to access the star right now um but just to give you a sense of students coming in and going out new students could be because they recently qualified or they could have been new to the district you you can see we had that little pot of kids coming in on grade three we had four new um more students coming in you know than exiting but with the number of students in each grade level a few students can make a difference to our overall but we keep an eye on those individual students just like we do in regular education our special education teachers take a really deep dive into each individual student so just to give you a sense where they are there and then you can see our scores here one thing I did want to point out that there was an error if you just wanted to fix that if you look at grade three those um on the Boi and thei are actually need to be updated the Boi was actually 53% those were number of students they were put in wrong so it should be 53 for um the Boi for not meeting and 43 for the um Moi um just to bring your attention to some things you can see some grade levels for example in fourth grade we saw some nice significant growth across the board and just to give you a sense of our second graders you may say they did show some you know we had some meeting but what um an exceeding but what doesn't show here is we have some kids in the second grade who can't yet access the star assessment so in the first round in the Boi we probably had I think it was seven students who were actually able to access it and then that number increased um for the Moi we had I think it was almost 10 students out of our 17 and one of them was is not able to access standardized testing so they did still see some growth but just to give you a sense not of our second graders are quite yet ready to do that um so these are our numbers there for the um for the uh Ela and we know we have some grade levels we need to focus on um and the same thing with the math if you see that same thing all of our second graders were able to access you can see we have some nice growth from the beginning of the year to the end of the year if you look some of those uh to the middle of the year for those percentages for math um and again fourth grade seem to to knock it out of the park with some of those growth scores um they're in fourth grade and we saw some some nice growth too when it comes down from going from our not meeting um in the beginning of the year to our um uh not meeting in in in the middle of the Year those numbers are going down and we do know that we still by looking at these some of our grades fell flat um and some of them have some more work to do but we recognize that and we we definitely address those with our teams and so in um at our May meeting you'll hear from our assessment committee with a recommendation on what we're going to do about this that's another group that has been um it's been tedious for them I mean the amount of research they're do they're trying we're trying to get this right um because we want something that's going to help give us a really good indicator of where our students are we also do not want to test our kids to death like that is a really important piece of it um so we're looking at there's a great assessment that everybody really liked but it's it's like a two-hour exam three times a year like we're not doing that so we just keep going back to trying to find like what what's the right balance that's going to help really give us the best indicator of where students are so like I said this year in jail to your point the teachers are really using this to just look at standards and skills um to help you know make sure that kids are are at grade level uh and Beyond frankly in some in some cases but questions anyone else have any questions for that detailed up update on the superintendent's midcycle evaluation oh thank you that was 20 minutes for the r not bad I noticed if I turn the page ahead as you're talking trying to keep Pace here try to stay a step ahead thank you um Mr superintendent and Madam assistant so now we will move on to the report of the superintendent item C review and approve athletic and student life director job description thank you uh in your packet there is uh a job spec for the director of Athletics and student life um and I would like to thank Carrie and um Tara who were very involved in have been very involved in athletics this year trying to keep things moving in the right direction uh and also we very helpful in putting together um the job description to to make sure we're we're you know we've got the right what here as far as what we're looking for um and as the um school committee knows this is uh designed to help us get our Athletics program so it's really robust to increase the engagement um and you know participation but also to help us establish other extracurricular activities across the system we know kids do better when they're just when they're plugged in and so we're trying to get them um involved um in our school in our school community so things like inter murals um after school evenings summer vacations um looking at other different extracurriculars looking at really having a liazon with our community so partnering with you know the heads of our soccer and it looks like little leagues coming back making a come back which is awesome so trying to create those pipelines similarly with basketball and the Blackstone um mville youth basketball league um so um I think this position has a tremendous opportunity to do something really really powerful for the kids in our community uh and frankly I think it's it's it's far reaching than the Bel to Bell school day I mean this is designed almost to not be that to look at all that out of school time and to make sure our kids are involved in uh really positive um productive things so this description outlines um the qualifications um the responsibilities for athletics and student life um it has been um um reviewed Again Carrie and terara were instrumental in this uh Jill FIS Jill PG keath uh Jessica Sinclair HR specialist did a ton of research on other AD type jobs as you know Student Activities kind of positions um was very helpful in in researching all types of qualifications as far as certification and um that we would be looking for um so it is in front of you this evening and if it is approved this evening we will post it tomorrow morning as a tentative or anticipated posting um given the budget so making sure that our budget goes any uh questions or comments does this position offer benefits yes yeah it's a 12mon uh non-union full-time position yeah anyone else it looks it's pretty well rounded looks like it's a lot of community engagement Building Bridges to the school district as well as the uh Community um Parks you know parks and dealing with the parks and other um I do have one question sure can we add anything to this yeah a recommendation yeah can we add something about um coach communication and uniforms um yeah yeah of course we have a we have um underneath the bullet that's prepares presents implements athletic budget facilitating purchase supplies uniforms equipment supervisor storage and Care evolve atic equipment you I'm wondering if we need to elaborate on the uniforms just um like the inventory you know what I'm saying yeah yeah we can um I guess just making sure that every sports team is is being checked on their inventory and things are returned I don't know maybe just elaborate a little more on that I'm not sure we can call that out as it's like separate yeah separate piece yeah yep more or less like the cycles of uniform I'd like the Cycles but I'd like to make sure it um I guess just making sure the uniforms are returned just oh you know what I mean no surprises at no surprises like oh hey we don't have enough for this now we need to purchase this yeah that kind of stuff got it that way it stays on cycle I guess is essentially what I'm going so like the the ordering the care of the inventory specifically to the uniforms and equipment got it okay well we can definitely add that any other uh oh I have one I have notes I'm trying to read my notes um is I'm not sure is it in here about like the busing to practices and stuff like the shuttle bus communicating that kind of stuff the transportation for practices and uh I mean there's a Communications piece transportation thing there is a transportation bullet but not trans not specific enough like six down I think arranges transportation for contest the practices to I just transportation for athletic as participants I'm only mentioning that because some of the middle school students will get bus to the high school for their practices or to Roosevelt or something just well on a positive note the town of Blackstone is will'll have a warrant outle for a sidewalk going to Rosa next coming up so maybe they can get their exercise jogging down down from federal yes from federal from here to dangerous cor yes yeah remember the kids used to go from the high school we used right that was part of the warm up so something around arranges transportation for athletic contests and practices or something like that can do that more or less like coordinates transportation for all eventually requiring yes yeah requiring is there anything else to add to that so I I would ask for a motion to approve this with the to approve the job description uh the the job description for the athletic director and Student Life athletic director of Athletics and student life um with the two amendments um proposed by Tara so fair enough I Shu made the motion second second invites head any other discussion all those in favor signify by saying I I any oppose the eyes have it unanimous great we'll fix those I'll send it to the committee um tomorrow updated and we'll post it anticipated thank you next on the agenda is a review of the desie Special Education civil rights monitoring report absolutely so um the district we're always in a cycle of some type of monit tiered monitoring Focus from the Department of Education and um it's it basically it's every 3 years something comes around for us that is is not just indicators but a full districtwide Focus so this year I had the pleasure of leading the um tiered Focus monitor for special EDS civil rights um English language learner which will you know present that at at one point is also our title all of our title grants but for this um if you look in a few pages deep it just gives you an in uh let's see what page just give you a sense of what it was all about on page five of 13 it talks about all the different phases that goes through it's a year-long process that ends with well it starts with they tell us basically all the indicators what they call Se indicators and CR civil rights and they'll tell us um the areas that they're going to be looking at so they're looking for policies procedures compliance and Records um so for special education besides all those they also pull from us um some re records they want us to look into our student records and um kind of go through them with a fine tooth comb have you followed the compliance or the appropriate records are in there did you meet timeline compliance was everything complete and thorough and followed all procedures that's just one part of it then then we have to gather all the other procedures that we have in place it could be handbooks it could be paperwork it could be workflows and timelines for that um in addition to that we do some indicators so they look at things like did we meet all timelines for initial evaluations did we meet timelines for early intervention did we meet timelines for reevaluation transition of students um after all of that comes around usually to the end they threw a little few few curveballs at you and say and by the way we'd also like to look at this or that so what they also ruled into this besides special ed and civil rights is there were some regulations newer regulations that I came up from the Department of Education relative to early literacy screening uh previous to that they called it dyslexia screening so um they also asked for all of that information which we already had ready to go so we were able to give them our additional updates on our procedures for early literacy um screenings in our next steps they also looked at student files for that and our early literacy screening actually is our K through three it's a requirement um and we do follow that um we have Assessments in place and they also looked at that they send a team in too to they they send it a team they crawl through our they do and I I check in on them I checked in on them off um but if you go back to the first level I'm very happy to report in the middle of that letter it does say that the department has found that our district is in full compliance with all of our unit a all of our Universal standards that they assess in special ed and with civil rights and with our oil literacy and I do I you know and it's not just me involved in this our you know team chairs are a part of this making sure they're going through their files and I will say that when we go through our own self assess we always say is is there things that we're doing that we can do better do we need to adjust form so we do make some adjustments based on that so um we finish that portion of it it will come around again in another three years and they'll look at some different things um every year that we go there are some indicators they look at so it was nice to be able to present that there are no progress monitoring we are 100% compliance in all the areas that they assessed Us in yeah and if I could just add to that it is incredibly rare to not have a finding even a partial finding in one of these so and what I appreciate if you look on page s of 13 it lists underneath the universal standards for special education for civil rights and then the targeted standards there is a ton of work that is included in each one of these um and you know the fact of the matter is they found zero partially implemented standards uh which again I that it is incredibly rare to so tremendous work to our student services team M and I know I will be officially presenting at some point our um our English language learner um findings as well but I thought I could just throw out there now the invitation that we recently got because of that so um when after we finish this you know we we get the notice that you're also going to have your English language learner audit yay so um we finished that up we did present everything that also went very well um because we're so small it's a little bit of a different audit we have to send them information we send them records we send them files they do interviews um also in our special at one where I forgot to mention surveys went out to our special education families that they did complet if they chose to complete they filled them out and they also um interviewed our CPAC for our L's they had the same thing they sent surveys out to our families they look at our records um and after we were all done I got a phone call um from our liaison and um from the office of language acquisition and based on the information that we shared with them with the work that we're doing with our family as a district that doesn't have a lot of English language Learners we were invited they asked me to come and present at that their Ola conference which is on April 24th it's virtual um but there's several other districts larger districts think Brockton New Bedford are going but but because we're a smaller District um and they felt that the work that we're doing with our families um was you know they were very impressed so myself and um Le coach Mary um are going to be presenting virtually to the to the conference so we're very excited about that and it is it's I think I can't remember the exact title I think I had sent it to you but you know our name is again going to be out there as Blackstone mville doing great things in a in a small district with yeah you know what I mean with with what we have y to make it work yeah so we're really proud of that so we'll see how it goes um but they said you know the other there there's a lot of of districts that come to the conferences and they hear from the Brockton they hear from the new bedfords that are large districts but they felt that the work we're doing um you know be being very successful as a small district and the title of that of the of it is making great strides in a small District Blackstone milville Regional School that was their title they put on it yeah so that'll be on the 24th but I thought that would be important to share so we are you know being recognized for the work that we're doing here which was really great to hear yeah congratulations thank you thank you for keeping us on the map for positive things yes any other questions on uh or comments on that okay we'll move to school consolidation grades reconfiguration update thank you so just a few uh quick headlines in terms of where uh we are currently with our work with reconfiguring our schools for next year uh we've had multip uh multiple staff meetings um frankly we continue to meet with the staff in various configurations of grade level small groups all staff leadership teams joint leadership teams uh we've done a lot of work in that space lots of conversations um we have done something called a change of principal protocol which was really really interesting we uh did a two-part session we invited all of the uh fourth fifth grade team teachers and then all of the sixth and seventh grade teachers um all of the enrichment teachers everybody and we had a big session uh where um the staff had an opportunity actually and Jenny it was interesting because Jenny wasn't allowed to be at this um the first part of it um and it was U run by uh Carrie from Focus schools I was there Jill was there um it was interesting because we got to participate but the principal didn't um at first and that it was great the teach had an opportunity to just put it all out there like what are the priorities what are the focus areas what are the things they want to keep what are the things they want to change what are they worried about um we this whole place was covered in chart paper um I think think I posted some of the pictures on on Facebook of all the teachers kind of working it's very cool to see them all come together from the different schools uh and work in this way um yesterday we had a a um combined instructional leadership team meeting so we had members of the instructional leadership team the complex and from the Middle School working together to reset and reestablish and become one team um which again was really really powerful I had the chance to be uh here for about an hour of that um so uh we continue that level of work to bring the adults together you know we can't just assume that you put adults in one space and things are going to be fine like usually there's a lot of work that needs to go into getting the climate and culture built um so some really good work happening um in that space space all of the principles have met with the teachers or Educators uh counselors Etc who are moving buildings um Jill FIS said they all did a great job and she uh brought t-shirts BMR HS t-shirts for all the eighth grade you know um teachers coming up and it was you know welcome to the charger family kind of thing that she did with everybody and Jenny the same thing she met with everyone here Christine is working with a third grade team so the principles and the um and the teachers and I would also argue the Union doing a really nice job of just coming together to make this work uh for our for our students which is great um on the other side of that also the non-renewals and the reduction in force and all those things went out too so all of that you know that level of work is done um and so that's right this is people work so those are really important pieces of this transition um shifting a bit to operations Scott's done a great job working with different vendors getting um estimates from I think three different uh vendors to put together a moving timeline um getting you know a company in place I know it doesn't sound like a huge thing but actually really is because you got to get the right number of boxes the right size boxes when can teachers be packed who needs to move first this is like a domino thing so you got to move one before you can move the next kind of situation um and so Scott has been uh instrumental at making sure that all of that work is done and put in place and has already put a timeline in place that he shared with the principles um around when when boxes will arrive when people need to be packed when things are going to get moved when you can get into your rooms uh all of those details are already out which is great um speaking of getting into buildings and things open houses that we've Set uh in place already for grades current grades three four and five um I think I posted those on Saturday um grade three um will have their open house here at the middle school on May 21st grade four on May 22nd and grade 5 on May 23rd all from 600 to 7 lots of volunteers lots of teachers are coming out uh to meet with the families um and then um Miss fallis will post um not next week but the week after vacation uh the week of May 29th she's going to be doing the seventh grade Uh current seventh grade up to the high school so that will post uh to families as well so she just kind of fine-tuning some of the plans for that night and finalizing the date um so that will be shared uh in about a week and a half uh from now so we're excited about that and our end of the Year celebrations uh principles are are moving um I've already gotten invitations to all kinds of things from Junior National Honor Society to you know the uh the stepup kinds of activities and things that they're doing uh I don't have all the in the weeds details yet but those are all of those things are are being planned planned um so lots of exciting work happening there so to our families and friends listening at home if there are any questions related to um the grade reconfiguration don't hesitate to reach out to me reach out to Jill reach out to the principles um you know we're we are up to our eyeballs and and the planning of this work and it's all coming together pretty well so that was it for uh update on that thank you Mr super next would be item F assistant superintendent director of student services office reorganization so I think you have the the handout um in your packet and going through this whole reorganization we took another look at all the services that we're providing in special ed um we are keeping the majority of our staff on board because we still have the same amount of students to service but what we were looking at is we know that there's some other additional areas in the budget so we always try to think outside of the box is there a way that we can take a look of what we have now support what we have and then support other needs in the district so if you look at our reorganization here you'll see our current model in special education we have four team chair Pur people across the district and our team chairs are the ones who schedule all our and hold all of our annuals all our reviews all our initials um they oversee the workflow within their buildings for IEPs before it comes up to my office where we have four um two of them are doing some small teaching portions of that so we looked at all the numbers and what we'd like to propose is taking those four individual teachers and moving them to three team chair people and what ended up happening was one of our team chairs actually showed an interest in an opening that we had at the high school so with that reorganization of Team chairs we're still keeping all of our team chairs we're still keeping everyone we're not losing any staff in that and what it's doing is we're sending a you know one of those team chairs who who who initially had expressed the interest of the high school and then just um reorganizing our team chairs so we'll have a team chair in one building that's K through three a 4 through 7 and the 9 through 12 in our out of District I do have a candle some of that but our team chairs do at their um at their levels as well so that's the first part of this and then any of the classes that they had where we're reorganizing that those classes can be absorbed because we're you know combining a little bit more we also currently have a clerk position in um our office so so she is a part-time Clerk and she's part-time app par professional so I'm sure you're aware that this department was a special education department it has now become a special education department a title one Department which is title 2 a and four it has become an English language learner Department it has become all the translation and interpretations we do all the mckin vento the homeless and we also do Foster again all special education we also oversee the registration process um we also do our nutrition over the weekend program and we do all of the extended school year all the uh the Audits and also all the special education um transportation comes through our office so with all of that said we thought we had the opportunity to um take our clerk position take the reorganization with the team chairs because in those new positions doing three buildings they're going to little need a little more support with that what we'd like to do is move that clerk back again at it's very cost neutral back as a pair of professional to absorb some of those kiddos and then bring on um the a full-time person to split some of the responsibilities in an office that was just special ed that has become a lot of different things um and by doing that if you look at the bottom it comes out to cost neutral be but also being able to bring back proposing to bring back we'd have the savings from the team facility position that shows you the amount there with the benefits and we'd have a small savings from the clerk position gives you that overall amount then if you look below that we could bring on that full-time admin assistant which is really only adding an extra halftime person to support as well as the potential if it's something you all would want to do bring on a full-time LPN um because I know that was a concern that was brought forward and this would pretty much be um cost neutral that's a proposal so this would be for nurse the four the lp would equal four nurses it would bring on a fourth correct yeah as the support an additional support is that more nurses than we would have that we have currently or is that a wash as far as the FTE yeah we have four and a half right now so this would be three full-time nurses so we have four and a half nurses right now this would be three full-time nurses and then one LPN of floater right yeah full time amongst the three to address some of the you know concerns and things that we're shared that was The Proposal was bringing it down to three correct so this brings it back to and their concern was so I'm sorry Dan no go ahead so we started with four and a half so you had the four one in each building and then the float so now it's kind of just getting us back to one in each building and a floater a full-time floater but not a registered nurse an LPN which is like a notch below correct but where we have a a nurse a registered nurse in each building there would always be someone there for that supervisory piece so this could potentially help with all of that so so if one of the nurses is out this LPN would take over and go into that school just like the same setup we had for the four buildings it's now going to be for the three right and if they all happen to be there that day there's always things that are going on whether it's screening or an overflow or there's that extra person there to help support I think the point stands that it's still the same amount of students yes yes that are going to have a need for nurse care so and this could help resolve that I was surprised by the volume of the the needs for the nurses when presented that night so this pretty much you know quells the fears or concerns that they had and and addresses the the needs presenting at no C really no CA level neutral cost neutral any other uh comments or questions or concerns on this all right so we'll look for a motion to um um approve the reorganization submitted by the assistant superintendent Move Motion made by Tara second seconded by Chuck any other further discussion all those in favor signify by saying I oppose the eyes have it thank you for that Mr Super Mr superintendent yes just uh one more one more thing one more Columbo yes uh fy2 budget update um so um most of you are probably aware that Monday evening uh Jill Joe and I attended the nille Board of selectman meeting um to answer uh whatever questions um they had on our U on the school committee's fy2 certified budget um we it was shared with us that we did not need to do a presentation uh we did not need to bring any materials um as the committee knows I had sent um actually multiple rounds of materials to um both Boards of Selectmen uh and the town administrators and finance subcommittee people Etc um so um it was a surprising um meeting to some extent uh there seemed to be some uh folks that were on the board of Suman that maybe haven't been following the budget cycle much at all or really aware of what was going on um and so uh I did reach out today to one of the members to schedule a sit down to go through um you know budget details Joe and I will do that U next week um and hopefully be able to answer whatever questions we can uh but uh was very surprised to learn after uh we were told we were free to go essentially that you know they they you know the board was finished kind of answering um asking questions and things um that you know the that particular topic was closed for the evening so we left um and uh but later on in the meeting uh the board of selectman took a vote to lower uh their recommended uh budget um the school committee's recommended certified budget uh to the taxpayers of milville by $100,000 um so uh all of us know very well that $100,000 is not $100,000 it's actually just over $400,000 because to get milville to their 100,000 request we then have to reduce the overall budget by about 400 and some odd, um because of the 75 25% share um we've already reduced the budget as the school committee Knows by $25 million including it was about 77 18 and a half positions but 18 people um there there's just nowhere to go we we're our budget is already coming in $156,000 less next year than our current budget right now um and I had addressed that issue and that question at millville's meeting on Monday it was brought to me well you have a level service budget said no we're actually we're actually coming in lower we're coming in 150,000 150 I think it's $156,000 less um and so you know I wanted to be sure to to share that information um but um be that as it may um that is what um the board of selectman did do so um I did send a follow-up email uh to uh the Town Administrator the chair of the board of selectman and the chair of the finance subcommittee of milville CC the school committee on U making sure that they understood very clearly what the massachus general law states are on Regional Finance and a certified budget from the school committee to the member towns and what needs to be presented so it was confirmed that they will present their recommended budget but yes they will have the school committee certified number in there as well um um and there the uh Board of sukman is meeting again uh for mville on April 22nd um and we will be in attendance uh that evening um again to see if there are any questions to see if we can be helpful in any way um but that's where that issue currently stands we I did invite them here this evening if they wanted to bring their concerns to the school committee um so um I did offer that twice uh to them and we'll to see them in a future meeting if there are issues I don't want to speak for the committee but um and on the other side of our house um we've had I've had some very um productive conversations with the chair of the finance subcommittee um and I believe we are attending their meeting on May 2nd um to meet with the Blackstone Finance uh subcommittee answer whatever questions uh they may have uh we um are also going to put out uh to the community if there's any interest some Community conversation around our budget and see people have any questions we might do a virtual thing we could do an inperson thing but to just sit down with the you know with the fol folks in Black Zona mville and just talk about our budget and share what's in it what's not how it you know was created and just to try to extend another uh opportunity to talk to folks about um you know what went into the fy2 budget so just wanted to make sure we had a moment to process that is there any uh comments or questions anything that was just presented feel free to go first US no uh so you the April 22nd is the next meeting yes and I I um I did watch the your presentation uh to the I just wasn't able to get through the entirety of the meeting so I didn't see where they had recommended um not to uh to reduce it sorry by 100,000 101,000 was that a a vote taken as part of their recommendation the closed essentially their recommendations throughout the entire budget Tara did you Tara saw the so yes um at about the 2hour 11 minute Mark they um brought it back up and said um they wanted to make a motion to reduce the budget by $100,000 there was some discussion but there wasn't really a lot of discussion one comment made was this would likely bring us to a supertown meeting by making that um proposed um reduction um and then they just um went on to vote to um say they want to reduce it and so were they um making um motions on the entirety their recommendations on the entirety of the town's budget or did they just specifically that was specifically for our line like for like the town would have a budget of different departments so were they were they so there's a board of selectman recommendation on everyone so were they going through that or they just was that was it just arbitrarily picked this I didn't actually continue watch they the highway department as well uh at that time um but it was it was just the highway department and the in our budget the regional budget oh okay so all right generally how it works in Black zone is we make recommendations on the entirety of the budget and maybe hold certain things that we had different discussions so and so do you know if they specified what portion of a budget they wanted to reduce by the 100,000 like I didn't see that in in in any of the communication I don't know if any of you noticed it and but I I didn't see anything specifically it was just an amount that I saw just it was an amount to get them to an amount with no they want us and to get um it was an amount to get the school district in line with their with what they're looking for as far as uh their guidance to their departments I'm just curious if they wanted to cut a 100,000 from Transportation their Capital cost uh so chances are it's their additional contribution that you're right they did mention going back to I think it was a January um guidance that they had received from the Town Administrator they um I know the uh communication was that we need to fall in line with their guidance that they gave to all their departments it's my understanding we're not a department of each Town we're our own municipality so why would we fall in line with other departmental budgets you are we are yeah we are our own separate independent uh political entity as you know um created by the town so I don't understand the guidance uh recommendation on that but um um so they can make a recommendation that the so just the finance committee's recommendation is what the motion is on town meeting floor so it appears as though in the email that they suggested that you they had the consensus of the finance committee the first email said yes then the second email um that I got um from the town Minister today said the finance subcommittee has not taken a formal vote yet but the first the first email that we received said to your point that there was consensus among the finance subcommittee members at in the room in the audience that agreed with them and I don't think they could they didn't open a meeting because we were they have a we were sitting there right did I they didn't have a quorum they didn't need to open a meeting so so the board of selectman is speaking and on behalf of alluding to so the finance committee is a separate entity appointed by the moderator for separation and checks and balances and the board of Selectmen suggested or the Town Administrator suggested on their behalf that the consensus is with so they have their own internal issues because that right there is not a separation of uh checks and balances there so so we we do have options um I mean the the most reasonable option would be to petition hopefully to reach back out to the board of Selectmen and so they are aware of the the implications of their vote is a $400 plus thousand reduction to the school budget that's already been reduced by 2.5 million that would be the The Diplomatic way to go about it and if un successful with that then petition the residents of the town of milville to understand the impact that it's going to have on the students um that 400,000 is about another seven teachers FTS yeah it's a lot so and and probably 35 in a classroom with a you yeah yep yeah right back to yeah um and I'm being thoughtful because my emotions inside on this matter is a little I'm in a different seat now so I have to um but we don't have to um we also you know petition the residents to to town meeting to to do the right thing but it will end up with a at a regional a districtwide town meeting um if the town goes that way because I I the town of black zone is not I don't I don't feel as though they will support this reduction the parents and and and I I don't think the I think well based on I mean watching that and you being asked by one of the members of the board of Selectmen for the for the line by line item and I'll give credit to the chairwoman and and the Town Administrator no we've never asked for that she said and but we had a a a joint meeting with Boards of selectman and finance committees just several weeks ago and and the attendance there was telling by by the communities and and um and the information is always available so it's disingenuous to state that you know you haven't been we haven't been or and the administration hasn't been forthcoming coming I mean and I'll give credit to Mr Mr Caruso the Town Administrator who said on several occasions during the beginning of that meeting that we've been very forthcoming and a lot of work was done into that so I would argue that although milville has had great services in the past they have great people running those services that are doing the best they can with year-over-year budget cuts and this is the last you know in my opinion you know and nothing from the law enforcement a fire department Library Senior Center over there they have been you know bludgeoned with budget cuts over the years and and this is the last you know great thing that they they have uh that that because we're separate to your point hasn't been able to be crushed by their irresponsible you know leadership and and budget cuts so um we have options and we'll we'll start the I would say we start the Diplomatic way I don't know I don't know if I'll attend that April 22nd tired of going to selectman's meetings needing a police detail you know so uh it's just unfortunate that they they would uh take that course of action um kind of blindsiding you you know uh the other night but we'll get through it and the end of the day that's the provision in the regional agreement uh will get us through it and and but we would have I would recommend we move quickly on that right after like the day after that town meeting we start the notification process because I remember the 112 budget nonsense from a few years ago and that's just no way to we get a lot of things you have you know the administration as as as you guys ton of stuff on your plate and and this political nonsense you shouldn't have to deal with so app we are here to support we will fight that good fight and get the money needed to properly and responsibly educate the students of the district thank you that's all I have on that so anybody else all right we'll move on to uh business office report Joe yeah Joe Joe welcome thank you very much you survived your inaugural meeting at the no bo SEL I did I'm getting for my third week so uh you do have your financial report in your packet uh that as as of April 9th of uh this year uh in the three weeks I've been here been looking at some of the activity and improving some of the purchases and things that are happening and it does appear that you know we will be able to meet the school committee's expectations on how we're going to end the year end positively um and we'll be taking steps to make sure that does happen going forward to uh I'd like to say to you if you have any questions feel free to ask not sure can answer every single question right now after three weeks but I would do my best one thing I did want to mention though too is I'm in the middle of uh creating a a different layout of report that I'm used to presenting and it's more of a projection report it'll give you the actual activity to through that that month to date and fiscal year to date but also some projected assumptions that are made that'll carry us to the year end that will change over time throughout the year but it'll give you a good idea to see what number we're looking at towards the end of the year hopefully I'll have that ready for you by the next meeting great I should um that's really all I have to report right now excellent okay thank you and then your personnel changes is uh it's in your package just to be placed on file thank you and that brings us to last but facilities update Mr facilities manager good evening so over at the high school on the baseball softball fields we have got more infield mix on order there are some low spots on the girls softball field that tend to Pond up and i' like to fill those in and hopefully get know some better drainage there plus we'll have it to fill in the baselines on the boys baseball fields as well as the baddest boxes they always get dug out and you know big valys digging in so it' be good to have extra mix on hand um I don't know if anybody's noticed but we put up a fence temporary fence on the softball field looks amazing it is a world of difference as was a little skeptical at first and you know said we're going to put a fence temporary fence up there I'm like God no but it really it pops it looks like a softball field now it's amazing it's like night and day um tennis courts along the bottom of the fence in some areas the fence is curling up so the tennis balls are able to roll right out of the courts so uh during April break I'm going to get some rebar I'm thinking and I'm going to stake it to the ground and this will keep the fence from curling up I'm going to need about 40 pieces of rebar so I run the Home Depot purchase that and we'll get that in should take care of the problem um I don't know if I'm sure you noticed the dirt piles on the baseball fields um a lot of that is the old infield mix that I took off the girl softball field and when they put in the pocking for the handicap on the track I saved that Loom as well um my plan is to fill in the back of the Rock and On Top of the Rock clear out all the trees this way we'll be able to maintain it better with the mowers and stuff and hopefully at some point put a flag pole up there and maybe have a charges flag flying we'll have to create one of those but that's my dream um I'll donate my personal time with my personal tractor um the only issue I have is getting rid of the shrubs the trees and stuff and we'll help with that I appreciate that have someone who can help with that too I didn't know if we want to maybe save some of it for bonfire in the fall I don't know that's something that we can consider we can have it right on Top of the Rock um but yeah that's my vision for that uh spring break projects over at the high school um we're going to start cleaning the courtyard getting it ready for graduation washing the exterior Windows washing the carpets around the main office area and over at the middle school during the Spring Break um you can see the head custodians going around already patching up the columns getting them ready to paint and fill in all the chips and whatnot and uh painting in the stairwells as well and doing all the air filters on the rooftop units that includes checking the belts greasing the bearings um that goes for the 35 exhaust fans that are on the roof as well they have Motors and belts in them too so they all got to get greased that's a two-day job right there that's pretty intensive I've done it many a times I know um moving on to jfkf Maloney um recently we got a new leak in one of the kindergarten classrooms it appears to be coming in from around one of the vent pipes that goes up through the roof um from the kitchen sink that's in that area uh trying to track down leak um so far nothing with this storm but again we haven't had the 2 in of rain that we had the last storm either um there are some old leaks that are still wearing their ugly head up there um slowing them down we're working on it and it depends which way the wind blows as well so um we'll get to them we'll get them we'll get them sealed up also one of the air compressors um the cylinder on it was making some loud wrapping noise um I feared the worse I thought it' be a piston going bad rod bearing turns out it was just a weight on one of the centrifugal clutches um they've ordered the pots should come in uh relatively cheap repair uh our spring break projects going on over there they're going to strip and wax the cafeteria floors as well as the JFK gymnasium floor they're going to retrieve all the balls and Batman and stuff up on the Heating units that are there as well and they'll grease and check the bars on those units as well check the belts I was like what gym equipment is on the roof um mville Elementary School not much going on there we continue to run the water for two hours a day sometimes longer uh they have a new water engineer there now and he's got my phone number he calls me he says can you run it another two hours 3 hours um so he's he's diving in get his fingers wet you can say um and let's see uh oh the data closet um little pump on the air conditioner split split Mini Split unit um the motor went bad so we had to shut that down for a while we just ordered the new pot I installed it today and it's up and running we got air conditioning to keep the electronics cold in that room so that completes my any questions have they implemented the uh remote monitoring do you know uh the Water controls is that in up and running I believe so yes because when he calls me he can see it on his end so he knows how much chlorine is being used so it's a step in the right direction that's a great step in right direction is it is it but is it automated yet it's not automated I thought I don't think it's that's automated just monitor you can monitor remotely okay but they were a it's it's end goal the it's going to get Auto okay all right I was going to say quick yeah step in the right direction credit where credits do yes absolutely yeah yeah they didn't saw some new devices a couple weeks ago um fully up and operational see you did yeah I okay thank you well thank you Scott you're welcome thanks Scott nice good work thank you school committee Forum anybody have anything they'd like to I I suppose I could go in order but Ted you have anything no Paul Set uh not few Community things going on in the next few weeks uh for everybody to be aware of on the 18th um during school vacation week at the Blackstone Public Library they'll be having a Community Showcase night uh for their local organizations um so on down and take a look and see what Blackstone is offering over there um and then we've been working on the May 11th Community uh Community Day event uh the District of one event so things are going very well with that and uh we just had a walk through yesterday of all the different things that are going to be there between where we're going to park the horses and where the helicopter's going to land um to you know just where all the different vendors are going to be and so that's uh shaping up to be a real big event so look forward to that does the district have a table at the library we do yes okay yep um very good and the yeah the May 11th event I talked to some Blackstone police officers and they have a they're very excited they yes there's is it's going to be a mustsee I hope nothing happens anywhere in the state of Massachusetts have everybody at the high school we don't want anything to happen we're going to be great yeah very call comes in you're gonna you'll see the faceb the Facebook post will be lit up with the what's in the sky we had fun laying it all out yesterday yeah almost the Facebook like an old man Facebook uh Tara okay and Tara um just um I know with um the reorganization the PTO are looking for more volunteers to um keep the PTO running so if anyone out there is interested get to a meeting and um help keep the activities going for those kids if you want them to keep going okay thank you very much I thank um the board of having the committee of having the confidence of uh putting me in this position I think uh but I look forward to a uh onward and upward positive uh keep the positive momentum going for the for the district and we will appears that we will have a couple of bumps that we will have to navigate coming up in the next month or two that we will get through and keep moving forward and um that's all we can do uh the next school committee meeting is May 9th 2024 at 6 p.m. here um we will be um going into executive session and not coming and not coming back out so I will um entertain a motion to um um exit this meeting to for the purposes of going into executive session so much motion made by Matt second seconded by Taran Ted and I'll just do a roll call vote Ted yes yes Tara Tara is a yes and I am a yes thank you very much and have a good evening