this government meeting is brought to you by eastw works and our local cable subscribers we are going to call to order our regular session of the Easton school committee tonight we're going to begin with a roll call in which we're going to doing now so that I don't have to remember if we have to or not uh Ben hery Ben hery here excuse me here Megan hery hery here that happens at this time it the first time here and Laura Scout present uh mayor lha pal and Sam Hunter are not with us tonight but we are joined by our illustrious superintendent Moran Banda whose birthday it is today thank you thank you um this meeting is being recorded and also there is the option to join remotely through Google meets um we will be able to entertain any members of the public during public speak in just a minute um either remotely or in person we are going to begin uh with announcements and correspondence I do not have any correspondence to report um I'm just going to confirm that again that I don't have anything to report and I really don't um okay so I have no correspondents to report so I'm moving on to gifts and we have two gifts to discuss today um we have a generous donation from stevenh Melissa Brody and Ava Richardson for the donation of a drum for the band students at Mountain View School um and so I would like to make a motion that we approve the generous donation from Steven Melissa Brody and AA Richardson for the generation the donation of the drum oh can we get a second I second that MO uh all those in favor I opposed exstension motion passes we also have in front of us today um a generous and amazingly long list of donations from community members uh for we the people uh in support of their trip to Washington DC um we are very proud of with the people and very apparently so is the community um and so um I make a motion to approve the generous list of donations for We the People um for their trip to Washington DC per the attached and in the minutes you will see all of the generous donations we get a second I second that motion thank you all those in favor I I opposed extensions motion passes uh to be clear to the public there were dozens of donations so we're not going to list them individually and they continue to come in we're so very grateful for supporting the students on their way to Nationals next up we're going to begin with our Mountain View School student representative pip P baral who's joining us live in person tonight hi Piper hi um I'm going to talk to you about what we're doing in class and in science we're doing DNA in math we're doing Scatter Plots in Civics we are doing projects on the Constitutional Convention and in ela we're doing argumentative essays but we just stopped that unit and we're going on to a new unit about the holocost in World War II and in art we're doing an Andy Warhol painting in music we're making our own music as like news reporters in gym we're doing volleyball kickball or dodgeball I haven't been there the past few weeks so I don't really know what we're doing in Steam we're building tiny houses and in health we're learning about safety pretty yeah one's awesome and then there's this eighth grade reading buddies where specific eighth grade students are uh working with Elementary student students which are third through fifth graders to help them catch up on their work or just like anything that they really need help with and then our constitutional convention project uh each eighth grade in Civics class was assigned a delegate which is a person at the Constitutional Convention and they had to do a Google slide presentation on them about like their backstory life and role at the convention and just any other information about them Piper really quickly who' did you pick uh I didn't get to pick but I got assigned one and I got John Dickinson nice okay we'll talk later very nice thank you so much and just so the public is aware Piper prepares all those slides and all of that information as well really Stellar outstanding thank you we also uh have a report from McKenzie McCarthy from East Hampton High School is McKenzie able to join us there she I didn't even see you also live and in person Mackenzie can I ask sweatshirt um I haven't committed but I probably will be going to Villanova congratulations all right go ahead last week members of East Hampton student council along with high school from around the state attended a three-day annual state conference and spent time attending workshops listening to presenters and voting on students from across the state um on the state to who would serve on the state executive board as president vice president and secretary McKenna leate Mora Larsson and I all presented workshops focusing on the importance of communication and strategy for improving communication within the student council setting during the conference the East student council was awarded the five-star Council award for continued support and engagement in the state and Regional activities in the gold Council of Excellence award for demonstrating Excellence within this High School community in addition to the whole Council Awards Rosemary Marx Walter Baker and amila Richmond Kan were a were recipients of the Commonwealth award for their work and commitment to student leadership additionally Ayan kuer bayas received an honorable mention for as a nominee for the Western Massachusetts unsung hero award which is presented for going above and beyond as a leader encouraging peers to do their best and receiving little regular recognition for their work additionally today students picked their classes if you're in 9th 10th or 11th grade and seniors had a meeting for what's going to go on in June for graduation thank you so much congratulations again villain NOA anyone would be lucky to have you thank you good luck all right we are going to move on to public comment if there's anyone in the audience we could ask if you want to step up to the podium if anyone here has anything to say otherwise we could look for raised hands via Google meet we'll get that a couple minutes just to see if anybody's interested and contributing no okay do we have was that we do have one okay so we'll just remind to try to keep think was the eastampton media oh the eastampton media we do not have one okay we're not going to take public comment from East Hampton media no offense you're welcome to yeah I don't see anybody give it just a second and then the next would be our superintendent updates we're going to close public comment and move to that CL good evening everyone uh this is the time of year when we uh have to talk about the student Opportunity Act uh it's a threeyear grant that we get uh from the state and we're going to have Julian Lan explain it uh to all of you tonight it has to get a vote of the school Committee in order to go forward and it is due April 1st so to the state Julian was instrumental in also U meeting with all the stakeholders uh to have them review um the school leaders as well as the school councils to really look at uh what are the needs that we feel uh we want to have supported by the student Opportunity Act and I hope you um enjoy this really informative presentation tonight by Julian thank you um hello everyone so in my role in curriculum and grants um can I just say really quickly McKenzie McCarthy you she just told you about um the student council trip they all went on last year she did not mention that she wrote the Grant application for Elf to get funding for that trip so wow they went last week conference yes yep they went just last week and it was partially funded by e.l. because she wrote an application she like I'm going to get money to do this so nice impressive impressive student all right this is our overview of the new three-year cycle of student Opportunity Act plans we say new three-year cycle because um you may not know we just ended a three-year cycle which I'll talk a little bit about uh the overarching goal why is it not moving forward on there I thought we got off a little too scotf free with yeah right very smoothly is it advancing on your computer oh there goes I was just slow okay I just needed time all right I can I can do that okay so the overarching goal of the student Opportunity Act um through legislation was to ensure that every student in the Commonwealth has access to Equitable um high quality education regardless of zip code so um what happened was there were a number of I think primarily Urban superintendents um that went to desie and said your funding for uh your funding formula for Chapter 70 reimbursement um is not Equitable for large districts for for urban districts and so they um sought to correct that so it's it's a little different than a grant because it's it's actually part of the Chapter 70 reimbursement but it's an increase to the chapter 70 reimbursement based on the changes in the forming the funding formula and if you have questions about that um please don't ask me um ask Mr Bernier um okay uh I can do the plan part the fiscal part is is for him um so the SOA has two components both the fiscal changes and then the policy update part which is the plan um just to give you the background on the funding this has been our change in funding for Chapter 70 reimbursement over the years of the S SOA plan being in place um so over what was that four four fiscal years um the total increase in our Chapter 70 funding was $682,000 82 180,000 sorry dollars wow 682 180 there it is um which is not actually a large increase over time and it's um subject to both um inflation and our enrollment specifically our lowincome um student subgroup the last three-year SOA plan went from January 2021 to April 2023 that's not three years you're right it's not um the that particular submission cycle was modified due to covid so it's a much shorter um plan cycle now we're into the real plan cycle which is the full three years we'll be submitting the a plan in April and it will take us through um to April of 2027 um this is different from our Improvement plans so we have the district Improvement plan which for us is um the year-to-year plan based on our overall threeyear strategic plan that's our big umbrella plan um and then as you know the schools have their next level down Improvement plans um the SOA plan goes deeper into disproportionality of students and asks you to really focus in on subgroups where you are seeing disproportionality in the data at the highest levels going to show you what that means um so keeping in mind these are the plan elements what's our plan analyze our data set ambitious threee targets engage families caregivers and other stakeholders which is ongoing through this month I just want to say there's I because I haven't met with the um EHS school council yet so we're still doing that so the stakehold involvement continues through the month of March until April when we submit it to Desi um and then specifically selecting these evidence-based programs and strategies to address the disparities in the data there are a lot of resources out there if you're um interested more in the student Opportunity Act uh I highly recommend just that first website it has the links to everything else um the student outcomes comparison tool is what I'm going to show you next because that's how we find the disproportional data um and then the rest of the things on there are all just um resources you can find on that website that might help you understand more about what the um parameters of this program are so this is what the student outcomes comparison tool looks like and what it does is it's not so usually when we're looking at data we're just looking at the aggregate right so this disaggregates our data and then it shows us where the greatest disparities are between certain student subgroups and the all students group that the cherry red is the highest disparity okay yeah um this is not our data sorry this is just a a um sample slide here um so but we we do have this for our data and if you go to that SOA website um then you can it'll link to this and it's all public information so you can go and look at East eastampton all you want um so when we're looking for these um what we're looking for is is the places where the greatest dispar ities lie right but we're also looking for places where the SOA program categories have evidence-based practices that we can put in place to address the disparity so for that here are some more resources that we use the coherence guide book is puts together our mtss work and our Equity work um this is also a great protocol analyzing data for root cause um we've used it a number of times in the district over the years and it really gets you down to like what is going on with these this particular subgroup and what can we do to make it better for those kids um this is the evidencebased program aligned to the Strategic objectives for desie which are a whole lot of words that again like I'm happy to go into this but basically desie does a strategic plan just like we as a district do a a district plan sorry a strategic plan and these are the objectives from Desi's strategic plan so they want us to be looking at their strategic objectives to Define how we are doing the work around improving outcomes for students what they've then did was take those strategic strategic objectives and map them to evidence-based programs so how do we know what works to improve outcomes for students and it's literally called how do we know so you can go to des's how do we know website and you can look at the evidence-based programs that we've adopted as a district and look at all of the research that's been done on why that is the right program or the right intervention to put in place in order for student outcomes to improve um and then the final piece of it is the crosswalk between those evidence-based practices and the how do we know website and the actual student Opportunity Act program categories which is what desie has identified as the programs that should be implemented in order to connect to the data the the disparity data and improve those outcomes so review You've Got the analysis of the disproportionate subgroup data you're going to connect that to some kind of analysis of underlying causes for that disproportionality then we're going to identify evidence-based practices that it's been shown through research can impact um positively that disproportionality including what suggested metrics we look at to track our progress along the way and then it's all aligned to the student Opportunity Act program categories and all of that makes up the plan the three-year plan okay like still on board we're still there okay so the first place that we noticed um disproportionality was in our lowincome population in our elementary school so specifically looking at Ela achievement in grades 3 through 5 and the way that um the student outcomes comparison tool shows us this data is by looking at how many students are in the meeting or exceeding category or achievement level um on mcast uh and then breaks it out by subgroups so 43.3% of all students are in the meeting or exceeding um categories on Elam mcast in grades 3 through 5 only 23% of our lwi income population is in those categories I know are we I think we've halted I know we now offer a free lunch throughout the district via the state and federal funding um how are two questions Sor I'm a little slow tonight the the first is how are we collecting that data and how confident are we in that data to determine the low-income subgroups in the community um that is another great question for um Nick Bernier uhhuh yeah he fine I can I can should I call I can call a uh phone a friend phone friend here not for tonight I'll make a not I know he has a great answer for you though Nick has that answer yeah he has a really good answer for you it's just based on Sim there you go okay your your what data first report Sims data Sims that's what we do be October 1 it stands for student information management system okay data recording the district has to do like three times a year your subp that all that stuff and a lot of students are pre-certified for low income like that designation because they're parts of programs their household isn't red in some other state program exactly great I just was worried that maybe we were losing track of some of those families because we aren't doing the Nick does a cross check of it every year and so I am confident because I'm confident in him that we are not apologize for the aside thank you no no no that's great um all right so with this disproportionality only 23% of low-income students are in the meeting are exceeding um achievement levels on Ela um we're setting a target of 35% over so in three years we are hoping that our low-income students 35% of them are making up um the median or in the Medan exceeding categories for um achievement on mcast how are we going to do that so last time I was here I talked about mtss the multi-tiered system of support that's how we're going to do it so this this is our goal it is research-based you can go and read all of the research on it and the specific things that we are looking at within the mtss implementation to affect this particular data point is increased opportunity for common common planning time for teachers and increased or improved professional development so you may know just from the world that we've had some really major shifts in literac early literacy instruction and early math instruction over the past well for reading it's been decades for math I feel like it's been maybe a decade um and so with that comes a whole new um professional development model we've implemented plc's so teachers can really talk to each other about how they're providing this instruction um but we plan to continue that next year and increase how much time we're actually able to do it so that's um our first one sorry well that objective also is that is that going to be aimed at every kid who's below expectations in mcast or just low income or or subgroups oh um great so it's yes it's it's students who meet criteria for support on the so the uh I think the first one that you said not the second one based off of the data of the scoring any kid who falls below yes cool yes but what we're expecting is that because so many of those students disproportionately are low income that it will help yes absolutely yes thank you okay so the next one is um is the growth percentile in math in grades 6 to8 so this is different from the last one the last one was achievement on mcass this is growth over a year on mcast when you are measuring a growth percentile what you're looking for is the number 50 approximately 50 means you have made one year's worth of growth so it's really great that our all students percentile is over 50 and it's not great that our students with disabilities percentile is much less than 50 so they're not making even a Year's worth of progress um on mcast so because I know we can get there with our all students we've set that SOA three-year Target at 51 um so hoping to move that um more towards the average of uh all students how are we going to do that I know you're probably going to going to get tired of me saying mtss over the next 3 years so buckle up um we are going to expand our mtss programming into our middle school so right now we really haven't implemented um mtss at the middle school at all we've started to in the elementary we are building up and one of the ways that we're doing that is we are reconfiguring um the scheduled instructional time during the Middle School day to actually identify time that is for small uh I'm sorry small group intervention so we don't have that at the middle school right now we don't have any intervention staff we don't tier two intervention staff we don't have um you know a time in the day like we do at the elementary that is dedicated to responding to student data um so being able to reconfigure our instructional time and really have some more targeted time for intervention at the middle school I think is really going to help us and then we are actually increasing staff at um or we are proposing to increase staff at the middle school as well and actually have an interventionist who can do things like run our student support team to make sure that students are getting the academic social emotional and behavioral intervention at the right time when they need it so it's really building up our Middle School programming um to have much more of the academic intervention um eye on it and then our last section is um High School graduation and advanced coursework completion um and our subgroup that we chose for this one is also students with disabilities and the first one that we looked at was graduation rate so our all student graduation rate is 88.4% while our students with disabilities um only graduate in four years at 66.7% so we're looking at a three-year Target to improve that to 80% and then Advanced coursework completion is um a it's just for 11th and 12th graders and it's um when 11th and 12th graders complete a course that the state has designated as an advanced course obviously APS are in there but a lot of other courses are too um so it's not just advanced placement um it's not just IB it's like it's a it's a much more um expansive view of what Advanced coursework can look like but it's specific to how many 11th 12th graders are not only signing up for those courses but are they completing them successfully so very good news that our all students rate is 51.1% although we want to make that higher too just FYI um but what we really looked at was our students with disabilities rate only 7.7% of our 11th and 12th grade students with disabilities attempt and successfully complete um Advanced coursework and so we're really looking to improve that um 20% may not seem like a very um you know Big Goal but I think it really is I think in 3 years to get more students believing that they can access those classes and then can successfully complete that is is actually going to be quite a lot of work so um so those are the specific places that we've chosen to to focus on oh I'm sorry how are we going to do that ha uh we are going to do that by um strategic objective 2.3 reimagining the high school experience so all students are engaged and prepared for post-secondary success and to do that we need to really think about Pathways um in our high school how are students getting to the place where they feel like they can take Advanced coursework um when they're 11th and 12th grade how are we setting them up for success in nth and 10th grade examples and I'm not uh attaching myself to any of these examples but for example many high schools um Implement a ninth grade academy sort of model where you re where you team your teachers around just the nth grade and you really like you put up this little barrier of of support for them um to hold them while they transition from middle school to high school um that is one of the things that's been very successful in other places in three years that may be the sort of thing that we're trying to do in order to develop these additional Pathways and and get kids um what does that mean Julian so they don't generally that that the ninth grade because I know the ninth graders will take a variety of courses so are they precluded in that model from like higher level courses or how that no it's it's more about like the uh the the adult structure around them and how adults are communicating about about students and how they are um trying to think like sharing sharing information about students they would share students more and teach them more more curriculum um with each other so right now we have a lot of like Singleton classes like maybe one teacher teaches all ninth grade English classes let's say right so it's not a great model because you want to have someone who's on your team who's doing it with you so 9th Grade Academy like pulls the adults together and um creates much more collaboration and support students so with with the so with the idea being that with more eyes more adults seeing more of them meeting them and knowing them they'll be able to see their strings and okay beautiful yep like like many universities do where there's like a exactly yeah right there's just some support around that transition which we know is a really tough transition for students and if they if they you know start off in high school thinking this is too much I can't do it it's very unlikely that by 11th grade they're going to feel like yes I can take these heart like I can challenge myself I can really get into it so that's what we want to do was like really build their confidence um in those first couple years so they take those risks to take the more advanced course work um and no thought yet about well never mind okay great keep going uh well that's um that's it so SOA questions yeah so I want to tie this back to the SOA like so we have this plan and we're using using mcast data to develop a plan that will allow uh us to get S SOA fund funding is that so in order to have the funds you have to do the plan MH okay and does does desi require that we use mcast data yes yeah that's the the um so this oops where is it this helpful helpful tool is what they specifically say like go to this look at where your disparities are choose three sad face I mean it's not a bad totally neutral face yeah a piggyback question on that does it impact like the way that this plan gets laid out in our ideas does that impact how much of SOA funding we get or like it's whether or not okay it's a yeah it's a change in the Chapter 70 formula we have to submit a plan other than that there's not a lot of connection okay between the funds and the plan as far as I know okay yeah and you guys you who who made who makes the decision I mean these are great these three things great we did it as a leadership team so we we sat with the the principals and us and um Dr Lively and um you know all of our leadership team and we we went through this and we looked at the um where where the disparities were and we're like this looks good how about this like this is this looks like it shouldn't be that bad we should really work on that so it was really the leadership's um team but then I sent all sent it I presented it to the Mountain View school council we talked a bit about it um and I'll um present it to the EHS school council and we'll also send the plan to um the East Hampton Education assoc Association and I can't remember who else is on the stakeholder list other than you all if if if mcast is is voted out this year well as a graduation requ gr so we'll still have does that's good got it got it yep y I have a particular question for you I think it was on slide 20 um I had two questions and maybe you said this but do we do you have an idea of why we're graduating so many fewer students with disabilities yeah so this is a four-year graduation rate it goes up once you go to five year I see okay that's yeah that's huge okay we get a lot more students graduated by five year but it's Lively isn't here but there's a lot of questions I would ask about how some families may choose to stretch that timeline out and try to access Services I think is it age 21 is the 21 and there's a lot of there's a lot of reasons that could be beneficial depending on your situation you meant overall that's great yeah yeah the other question I had for you so this that column is the um completion rate for advanced course work do you have a sense of how many in both categories of all students and students with disabilities actually do attempt those but are not successful like is that wildly different or is it like about 8% attempt it and about 8% are successful I don't know that off the top of my head but I would be more than happy to look I I know I can get that data yes yeah just curious like if whether they're just not trying them or if they're trying them and it's not working like I'm just but it's a good question yeah I I can look more into that for sure thank you that's good because then I I can when I go to EHS school council I bet they're going to ask that and I can already have that data for them thank you Megan and it may help hone in like if there is a hand a cluster of classes that are there's regular attempts and and a high rate of failure maybe you know that's a different strategy than if people just aren't even trying yep yep thank you great anyone else have a question Linda no thank you thank you all so much much all right I'm going to stop sharing we have and that worked great we do so we'll need so we need a vote I'll entertain a motion to approve the student Opportunity Act as presented by Julian Le tonight I'd like to make a motion to approve the student Opportunity Act plan as presented by Julian thank you second second thank you Ben uh all those in favor I I opposed extensions motion passes thank you very much um anything else superintendent Benda U no I think it was uh Julian did a great job with that um leading the discussion and it was a really good opportunity to work together to look at the data it you know it was attendance um The College and Career Readiness or the advanced courses we had a lot of discussion about that and that's actually like how do we get kids to be aware a that the courses exist right and then for specialed kids what do we need to give them so they can be successful in those classes so you know do they need extra time for someone to work with them um do they need after school help like the idea is to look and see H every kid should be able to take advanced classes it's the support we give them that differs and that's you know what comes into that conversation about increasing those numbers of kids that get into those courses so this year um we're hoping um to have AP pre-calculus um at the high school now that's a brand new AP course that was available this year and kids that take pre-cal already take it but now it's going to be called AP pre-cal and they're going to be able to get there's another group of kids now that are going to be able to have that um opportunity and that would also increase the accountability numbers uh for eastampton high school right one less course they'll have to take if they go to a fouryear school MH um anything else or is that it for your update that's it for me thank you so much uh we are going to move on to Mr Nick berier business director of Business Services thank you do great good evening everyone um your uh FY 24 local appropriation report update um as of the publication of this business report um 69.6 one% of our appropriate has either been spent or encumbered um as I always do I'm continuing to monitor uh the budget for areas to watch and transfers that may be needed one of which is an action item on your agenda for later on this evening um areas of particular concern are the same it's utility bills it's a of District tuition um expenses that are you know more or less out of our control um some expenses currently in the general fund will be classified to Grants at revolving funds as the year gets closer to its conclusion that kind of you know thing I'll I'll be looking at after the budgets done and you know when preparations for the year-end close begin um I've done a budget forecast to predict where we'll end up at the end of the year um I'll do this again in late April I mean I I did the original one and you know during February vacation week and you know it's kind of early to be doing that but uh my forecast did indicate that that there would be a deficit at the end of the year but the size of it will largely be dependent upon how much circuit breaker extraordinary relief money comes in um I won't actually have that figure from desie until probably early May um I can project I you know based on the data that I have but um from what I excuse me can gather the deficit at the end of the year won't be as large as my February forecast indicated so that's good news um the fy2 budget process uh our finance subcommittee has met uh four times now uh regarding our fy2 proposed operating budget um as was reported last month our uh proposed budget will be higher than normal uh due to various factors such as tuitions Transportation uh utilities and our Esser 3 covid relief money depleting um we as a a leadership team and as a finance subcommittee have put every effort forth um to keep the fy2 budget as uh low as possible while still meeting the needs of our students um as you'll see in the presentation during the budget hearing in a couple weeks many of the pandemic related needs are still still there um even though we're we're you know four years to the day tomorrow uh removed from when the the world essentially shut down um the needs do linger um so my next step is to create the budget book um as well as my presentation for the school committee at the for the budget hearing um and then uh we would anticipate the school committee would vote on it on the 26th of March um good news in the summer food service program realm um now that East Hampton Public Schools is a c District both of our schools are eligible sites for uh summer food service program um you'll recall Last Summer the meals were served at mside Park which you know was it was a valuable service to the community and I know that you know the families that went daily were were pretty consistent so it you know demonstrated that there was a need and and and the folks that did come were were certainly grateful but um that type of site's not ideal I mean it's hot you're subject to weather there's mosquitoes you're near a body of water I mean there's just a lot of and you had to eat at the site it's not grab and go due to the USDA regulation so a lot of factors contributed to that but with the schools being eligible sites that's going to increase participation the schools are more central people know them they can eat indoors um we're in the early stages of planning now we we'll probably just do one of the sites um because it you know it would require a lot to probably run two and and the sites are very close to one another so um my food service director and and I have had a couple conversations the The Next Step would be to chat with our leadership team to kind of see what makes the most sense um but the application for that's not du till June anyway so we have some time um so that's good news we expect participation to be increased this summer just due to the fact that you know we'll be in schools instead of in in a park um and lastly uh my Personnel report for the month of February not too much to report here in terms of hiring uh two substitutes uh were hired throughout the month we had three separations one uh substitute teacher uh one par educator and one lunch supervisor at Mountain View um no transfers uh and our current vacancy list of the Middle School librarian position is still vacant um speech our long-term speech language pathologist substitute I at this point I'm I'm certain that won't be filled before the year ends uh we do have a parir of educator position at Mountain View open as well as two lunch supervisor positions are there any questions regarding either report all right thank you thank you very much uh we're going to move on to the policy subcommittee update uh Sam Hunter is the chair of the policy subcommittee they are not able to attend tonight Ben do you feel comfortable kind of taking those RS sure we we we met uh on the 1 I think it was and uh we we updated did I think five four or five uh policies related to Tech primarily uh they they were District security relating to Tech data and records retention personal use of tech and access to digital resources um these were template correct that come directly from the masc exactly right yep and that's sort of the primary work but then we had a couple of discussions and you guys can fill me in but or fill fill in the details here but I think U mostly we talked a little about self phones as iall and like just kind of wanting to analyze what kinds of rules and regulations there are around cell phone use and maybe starting a conversation around um whether or not it's worthwhile to consider restriction more serious restrictions or not um but that's absolutely in the beginning stages it's nothing noral but other things Linda like anything else in there no I think pretty much covered I mean we had some side discussions about a and sure yeah yeah we're to start why not on policy yeah that's yeah that's about it uh do you have a next meeting scheduled yet or no yeah 19th I think March 19th March 19th y do you have a time 6 o' 6 p.m. so those are public meetings so if you're interested in talking about AI or cell phones or Tech use please come to join it's actually pretty good it's pretty good sure uh we're going to move on to the finance subcommittee update from the chair Megan Harvey that's me uh I don't have much to add aside from what our director of Business Services is already shared we've met four times the minutes from the first two meetings February 12th and February 26th are in the packet and as such will be public shortly um the minutes from the March 5th meeting are coming and I have not yet created the minutes from the meeting that just occurred an hour before our meeting but I will soon um and so essentially we have been working really hard on looking at the proposed fiscal year 25 budget uh Nick deserves all the credit for that he's crunched the numbers as many different ways as they can possibly be crunched um we have a challenging situation coming upon us but I think we've been really clear as a committee and I think the leadership um and from what I understand you know the community it we're all feeling really aligned on District values around what we are feel is important and what we are prioritizing our district and so you know please come to that uh public hearing on March 2 6 thank you almost at 5th where 6 p.m. 6 p.m right here or right there on the Google meet uh where our director of Business Services will present the budget we voted out of subcommittee today um and we'll keep moving forward on level services for our kids thank you so much um it's going to be your work lot we're going to move on to action items next but superintendent bandes you want to say anything about the first two items the first is um voting East Hampton public schools at a school choice district and the second would be that the school calendar for the coming school year I don't know if you have anything to share sure um just that it's uh the state requires that an audit to be a school choice District uh that we have't vote of the school committee so then if you don't vote school choice then you can't take students in so it's really important um if you vote that in tonight there's also a survey uh that I have to complete um right away to get out also to the state regarding school choice and um it's important uh it the school choice funding uh this for this District actually helps us provide so many services for students uh and it's a great district and you can see why people do want to school choice into it because it provides uh so many things for students including uh very dedicated leaders as well as faculty and I hear that from parents all the time when they come to meetings how much they appreciate the teachers that work with their children and how supportive they are so we need that vote um tonight hopefully uh you'll vote Yes to keep it a school choice district and then the calendar draft uh it's already gone to the Union uh the union did a survey on it and did approve it and next year of kind of an interesting year because where the holiday of Christmas Falls and for the how the vacation on the 23rd how that works so we uh we had to get a discussion with the Union because we're actually going to um stop one day earlier uh because we have that 23rd there where it wouldn't make sense for people to come back to school for that one day uh during that Christmas break so this is the every 4year change that uh we'd like to make and the union has approve that change great could you I'm getting this question a lot more importantly I'm seeing it on Facebook where I don't like answering as a school Committee Member as of today assuming no further snow days what is our last scheduled half day of school at this point June 20th get that June 20th which will be a half day and we all have to remember that June 19th is a non-school day right and June juneth yes federal holiday so they'll come back for a half day yes so June 20th half day last official day of school unless we get a blizzard which has been known to happen has okay uh I would entertain a motion to approve the East Hampton Public Schools as a school choice district and I will make a motion to approve East Hampton Public Schools as a school choice District uh second I'll second thank you Linda uh all those in favor I opposed extensions motion passes I make a motion Tok you go make a motion to approve the 2024 2025 uh school calendar draft number two second I second that motion thank you Eric all those in favor I opposed exensions motion passes I make a motion to approve the special education budget transfer request of $50,000 from payroll account to Medical therapeutic contracted services for Mountain View School K through 5 second thank you uh all those in favor I opposed extensions motion passes I make a motion to approve the school payroll dated 222 2024 in the amount of $ 588,398 motion passes um there's more motions don't worry guys uh motion to approve the accounts payable authorization for payment dated 222 2024 in the amount of $379,999 15 oh my God second thank you Eric oh that was Eric all those in favor I opposed extensions okay motion pass passes I have a motion to approve the minutes of the February 20th 2024 work session second thank you Ben all those in favor I I opposed extensions motion passes I have a motion to approve the minutes of the February 20th 2024 regular and executive session with the stipulation to withhold until matters are resolved reviewed and released by the chair second closest it's ever been uh all those in favor I hi opposed extensions motion passes I make a motion to approve the minutes of the February 27th 2024 executive session negotiations with the stipulation to withhold until matters are resolved reviewed and released by the chair second thank you Eric all those in favor I opposed extensions motion passes I have a motion to approve the minutes of the mark March 4th 2024 executive session negotiations with the stipulation to withhold until matters are resolved reviewed and released by the chair second thank you Ben all those in favor I opposed extensions motion passes okay uh our next meeting dates we've said this three times tonight already one more couldn't hurt uh will be March 26th um that is our expected public he hearing on the budget um there will be an opportunity for public speak and uh a really flashy slideshow right yeah so i' say really flashy just flash moderately flashy slideshow um so that will be on the 26th uh then we have more meetings April 9 April 23rd May 14 May 28 and June 11 um at this time we are not going to adjourn we are actually going to move into executive session which will be closed in the rear conference room and we will adjourn the meeting at the completion of executive session will not come back into Open Session I think you have to read this e e