call to order anytime you're ready uh so um are we is everybody that's going to be here going to be here are they there all right so we'll call to order the uh a meeting of the lunenberg school committee uh it is the 26th of June um this is a remote meeting everything will be done remote um the chair Brian Leighton is not here and so I will be acting as chair for the meeting today um there is a preamble that we are obligated to read by law and because I cannot get my account to work Dr Burnham will read it and insert the word chair where it should have been something I say happy to do that as a preliminary matter this is Dr Burnham superintendent of schools I'll do a roll call to confirm that all members and persons anticipated on the agenda are present and can hear me Members when I call your name please respond in the affirmative chair Mr Brian Leon not joining us this evening Vice chair Mr Anthony SCH brini present secretary Miss Carol ASO yes Mr Peter be Moore yes and Mrs brazowski yes staff when I call your name please respond in the affirmative recording secretary Miss Courtney Fuller yes athletic director Mr Kevin Bigalow yes athletic trainer Mr Dave Abraham yes we have this evening a guest presenter Dr David Ridley can you hear me do Adam oh I'm sorry about that that's okay yep I'm here yes and our food services director um Mrs naen Lorenzen yes we also have Paul Livingston who's uh our uh Finance consultant can you hear me Mr Livingston yes I can and we also have on the call uh Liz Peterson this evening Liz you can hear me right yes okay so in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being recorded and will be broadcast over the lunenberg public access Channel and streaming on Facebook live at a later time and this meeting of the lunenberg school committee is being conducted remotely in accordance with the governor's order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law uh public meetings may be conducted remotely the order which you can find posted on the town website on the covid-19 information center CER page access through the town manager's web page allows public bodies to meet entirely remotely so long as reasonable Public Access is afforded so that the public can follow along with the Del deliberations of the meeting ensuring Public Access does not ensure public participation unless such participation is required by law this meeting will feature public comment for this meeting the lunenberg school committee is convening by telephone conference or video conference via Zoom app uh and Facebook live uh as posted on the town's website identifying how the public may join for Zoom meetings please note that this meeting is being recorded and that some attendees are participating by video conference accordingly Please be aware that other folks may be able to see you and take care not to screen share your computer anything that you broadcast may be captured by the recording meeting business ground rules we will will turn to the first item on the agenda before we do so uh we will cover some ground rules for Effective and clear conduct of our business and to ensure accurate meeting minutes the chair Mr scol brini will introduce each speaker on the agenda after they conclude their remarks the chair will go down the line of members inviting each by name to provide any comment questions or motions please hold until your name is called please remember remember to mute your phone or computer when you're not speaking speak clearly and in a way that helps generate accurate minutes for any response please wait until the chair yields the floor to you and state your name before speaking if members wish to engage in colloquy with other members please do so through the chair taking careful T taking care to identify yourself for items with public comment after members have spoken the chair will afford public comment as follows theair will first ask members of the public who wish to speak to identify their names and addresses only once the chair has a list of all public commenters I will uh the chair will call on each uh by name and afford three minutes for any comments finally each vote taken in this meeting will be conducted by a roll call vote those are the guidelines for this evening's meeting uh and I will turn it back to the chair to start with our agenda items so the first item on the agenda is uh public comment um is there anybody in the meeting that wants to make a public comment if you do you can either turn on your computer's camera or you can raise your hand and we'll call in Dr Burnham do you recognize anyone as somebody that is either not a guest or a presenter I do okay but there's no one in indicating that they're interested in public comment all right uh if there's no public comments uh then we're going to uh review and approve the regular minutes um so the minutes that are before the board today are minutes from um we don't have minutes this evening I don't think oh sweet no minut all right next Who's going down the list I thought I saw them but I you not see them all right uh if there's no minutes then the next item on the agenda I believe is the chairs report and um Brian is not here and I do not want to make a report because I have nothing to report uh so we'll move on and uh go to the superintendent report actually this evening we do have some line item transfers oh we do okay sorry I miss them this my first time I'm not very good at this it's fine takes takes a little practice you'll you'll get used to it very quickly makes it look so easy all right so let's go through and uh approve the line item transfers I'm clicking back and forth um for everybody's convenience I'm going to screen share here um and I will um offer an opportunity to Dr Livingston to uh provide us an overview of uh the line I'm transfers before you this evening Dr Livingston thank you good evening everyone um this as you know has been a very unusual Year we're coming into the closing of FY 24 and with the fact that the town accountant position was vacant for about eight months your Director of Finance position was vacant for a number of months there have been many uh late postings late listings of Revenue all kinds of different things that have occurred and it's quite honestly one of the most unusual years I've seen in any school district but uh we are getting there and what you have before you tonight is a list of really reclassifications of um grant money that should have been paying for salaries in your salary budget and basically what you are doing tonight will be uh you see the reclassifications there uh where the money has been expended and where it will be going so that we are moving the money from uh into the grant salary line and out of these other lines where we have needs so I would recommend that the suggested motion be to transfer the 41675 of available funds from the general budget salary lines to the FY General budgets expense lines for the purpose of meeting expense obligations for the close out of the fy2 24 budget will anybody be willing to make a motion to transfer the money as described I can make a motion and is anybody willing to Second yeah I will second it okay Dr B I think we need a roll call vote for the transfer of the funds as described all right Mrs as Shambo yes schol and bini yes Mrs bosski yes more yes all righty thank you thank you very much for your uh for your work and helping us out on this stuff Dr Livingston I know this has been uh incredibly challenging thank you sir there's still a little bit of work to do as we you know this the uh lum Su payroll is just going to be paid tomorrow and won't be posted until probably Friday the day after that we still have the summer encumbrance payroll to be that we're factoring in into all of our figures and all our numbers so uh we we'll be landing soon and there are uh later on in tonight's meeting you have uh some encumbrances that are typical that you carry over when invoices aren't available and materials aren't available uh AR sent on time that are typically carried over into the next next fiscal year and what I would call Escrow um and you'll be approving some of those most of those will take place but a lot of them won't in fact take place and we are able uh we have held many of them because of the unusual nature of the year so whatever we need to balance we will not proceed with those so um it it's coming soon to the end thank you thank you Dr uh Mr B boy so it looks like the next item on the agenda Dr Burnham there's a notation under five for the warrant uh we don't need to do anything for that correct the warrant total was signed and everything was dealt with warrant total was signed um Mrs Peterson you didn't drop any warrants into the the meeting folder did you yes I did oh you did okay yep all of the warrants are in the meeting folder and do you have a total I do let me look that up for you the warrant total is 9,241 and2 thank you and do we need to do do anything to approve that or is that has that been finished Noe they've just they've been signed so um It's Just for information okay all right so then it's the superintendent report correct correct all right Dr Burnham all right so this evening I just want to share with the committee that um school and District administrators um as a team will be participating in the Department of Education instructional Leadership Institute this summer and that will be occurring July 29th 30th and 31st um I also wanted to make the committee aware that we uh recently learned that Linda Hargraves who has been the longtime office manager at debus has retired um and we will be working with someone new um someone new who will be working on all of our bus schedules the summer um we hope to uh have a smooth transition in working with a new partner on these efforts um I also wanted to uh make the committee aware there was a communication that was sent out uh from the mass School building authority they are getting prepared to launch their next school survey assessment in the fall um mba's en enabling statute requires that a periodic survey be conducted to assess the elementary and secondary Public Schools across the Commonwealth the survey will include site visits at approximately 1,580 schools um as well as the compilation of uh existing data at approximately 120 additional schools currently in the msba program pipel line this assessment will result in a published report sharing an understanding of the building condition and general environment for the Commonwealth Public Schools beginning in the fall architectural and Engineering experts will visit these Public elementary and secondary schools um and buildings are evaluated regardless of whether or not the district has any plans for improvements or new schools site visits will not be conducted at schools in the mba's program pipeline unless construction has been completed site visits at recently completed schools will establish a baseline for comparison in F in future um assessments the assessment will evaluate key factors including the condition capacity maintenance and educational environment um it's important to note that the data collected during this assessment is just one factor used to determine which school facilities present the highest level of need in urgency and the results are not the sole basis the msba uses to determine any District's eligibility for funding um they report that there will be an update related to the scheduling of site visits um later in August um I have several questions that were forwarded to me by school committee members I I'm wondering uh Mr school and brini if it would be all right to address and respond and provide answers to those later in the second public comment period so that we can move the agenda along for the guests who are here uh for different agenda items this evening unless anybody has an objection uh that works for me okay so um we are on to new business and we have a discussion regarding head injuries in uh the medical responses and the school's responses that had injuries so at this point I would like to uh turn things over to our athletic director Kevin pigalo um as well as our trainer Dave Abraham and of course Dr Ridley thank you um I don't so I sent in a few documents that were asked for I don't do you have those they are available in their folders yep okay okay um so I think this all started a long time back uh a question was posed and correct me if I'm wrong regarding repetitive head trauma at a younger age and how it correlates to CTE at a later age am I correct in saying that correct yes that was that was me okay um so you know from from my perspective from uh Mr Abraham's perspective you know our work is mainly you know when we see something that could be a potential head injury to address it um to you know return to play and things like that so I'm glad that Dr Ridley is here because he can definitely speak more to um you know the the question at hand so thank you everyone for uh inviting me here I'll just uh introduce myself a little bit I'm I'm Adam Ridley I am one of the six uh Sports and exercise medicine providers at UMass um we are all of the six providers that we have at UMass we are all Fellowship trained uh Sports Medicine providers uh which means that we have extra training in concussion management and make us some of the concussion experts at UMass and so we see the vast majority of concussions that uh are sustained in the seting of sports related injuries and we run the sports uh concussion clinic at UMass so our group is headed by uh Dr Lee Mancini he was going to try to be here tonight but was unfortunately unable to make it uh but he also holds many roles across the the state including he's the vice chair of the sports uh medicine committee for the Mia excuse me MIAA um and then for reference we partner with uh nearly 20 high schools I don't have the exact number I'm sorry uh about 20 high schools in the Central Mass area and are also the head team Physicians for many of the colleges in the area including uh Holy Cross UMass Hamer dump and then I play a major role at Fitchburg State University um as well as covering um for lemster high school and uh Fitchburg high school so um we're very well connected to uh the community and see a lot of athletes related to uh with concussions um and so I don't have any sort of formal presentation but uh with when uh it had come up that there was questions about concussions I offered to be available tonight to uh answer anything that that may pop up um but before I kind of open it up to concussions I will say that um Kevin and Dave have been exceptional I can't I can't speak highly enough of both of them so um they have done an exceptional job with with the with the students I've worked with a lot of um athletic directors and athletic trainers and and they do a very nice job so um I'm happy to answer any sort of questions and if you need any sort of formal statements by any means I had already spoken to uh my boss Dr uh and we can always put together a formal statement uh of sorts if you need that um but mainly here to answer questions but also gather uh information on what sort of questions you have hopefully can put we can put together some sort of um some sort of information that you might need I's see Peter has a question 's go to Peter uh Tony I don't want to preempt you because I know you had a number of questions so I'd be happy to you okay no good uh so uh Dr rley first of all thank you for uh your service to our school and our our surrounding schools um we've we've met uh during and after some sporting events and uh over the course of the last year and and uh you've you've been uh really really extraordinary as as as well as um uh Dave and Kevin uh just continually always looking out in the best interest uh for our kids um I can tell you personally um I'm I'm an alumnist of lunberg and have personally sustained concussions uh on lunenberg fields and and now my son uh has unfortunately found himself in that situation uh over the course of the last couple of years and and I can tell you that the uh the experience is literally night and day uh in terms of how far we've come over the last few decades in our awareness and and making sure that our our kids are very well taken care of in the unfortunate event that they sustain a concussion um my question though really goes to um you know a as a school committee and as school administrators obviously it it is our duty to to follow the protocols that are put in place um by the MIAA and by other authorities um and and I think that those those Protocols are are outstanding from a from from a best practice and and also from a liability standpoint though is there more that we could be doing um from a from a policy standpoint uh to ensure that the health and safety of our kids so I would say in terms terms of sort of big picture I mean from the standpoint of liability um as it relates to getting athletes back the where that that comes up most of or sort of in in two places the first being the initial assessment of concussion but then also probably just as important um the the decision to get an athlete back to sports after uh concussion has been identified and and and an athlete's being treated for that um so as it relates to um the initial assessment you know at the high school level I I would say we're very very very conservative in terms of pulling um athletes out so um you know with the rules that the Mia has set up with uh with providers on the sidelines and and going through the the assessment different types of assessment tools that we use things like what is called the scat five or scat six um which allow us to do sort of a thorough assessment the sideline usually takes about 10 to 15 minutes um that that's the first sort of Step the first sort of hurdle in terms of um uh identifying these concussions and getting someone into sort of our our our protocols um but from there I think one of the challenges that uh you know oftentimes comes up is the the ability to get patients in back and forth into clinics um to evaluate the sort of progress of that concussion and then and then ultimately be released back to the field so for us the you know the biggest thing especially at this level is making sure that the uh parents are always involved in this concussion management as we're always dealing with minors in at the high school level typically other than you know some seniors but um typically having the the parents involved so those are the two areas where I think people you know where the the liability comes up um but again because of how we have all of our athletes fall up with us in clinic and have that conversation with parents um you know that liability sort of falls out on us um to make sure as Physicians that we're we're clearing we're we're tracking symptoms appropriately and clearing these athletes appropriately to get back to to sports is there are there any other questions for Dr Ridley um Dr Ridley I was the one that uh proposed this topic and the reason I became interested in this topic is because I represented somebody who is a professional or semi-professional he was not really good at mixed martial arts but he did it for a long time like he didn't have a great record but he did it for a long time and he developed uh a concussion syndrome that resulted in some pretty serious criminal charges and some violence and so I started following the literature when that happened and the thing that made me concerned was when I looked at the most recent study from the CTE Center at Buu which was released in 2023 it was the first study that focused on amateur athletes and it was also a study that had come out long enough after massachusetts's concussion protocols were put in place that the data in the study would reflect people who were in Athletics with these concussion protocols and so the concern that I had was that the rate of concussion or of CTE for amateur athletes was significantly higher than what I had expected and it was not as high as professional athletes but it was significantly higher than what is in the population uh and so last in the last couple days I went through and looked at the Mia's protocols and looked at State protocols so far as I can tell the last time they had been touched was 2014 and this article came out in 2023 um in particular I'm interested in hearing your opinion about what you think needs to be revamped about the protocols in light of that data yes so I think that's a good question I can I can say that the Mia is in the process of working on some of those um we actually follow most of the time our Protocols are based off of most of the consensus statements um from the uh National organizations that uh Run Sports Medicine that that contribute to sports medicine um so the American uh Medical Society of excuse me American Medical Society of sports medicine and American College of sports medicine have consensus statement on concussion management and that's primarily what we follow as a group um so yes I would agree that uh the MIAA certainly probably needs to update some of their um some of their requirements but I would say that the vast majority of sports medicine providers if not all are B are going based off of the most recent um consensus statements and so every four years uh new consensus statements come out and last year due to delay from covid uh the consensus statement the most recent consensus statement came out from last year and so um that includes changing some of the uh Sports concussion assessment tool so that scat tool that I talked about went from the level five to the level six scat six um which includes additional testing and increase the sensitivities of some of the tests um so that we can pick up on some of the more subtle findings of concussion on the sideline um so yes I agree with you that the MIAA um with the probably needs to update a statement but I would say the practice of concussion management um is uh significantly more advanced and up to date as most recently as a year ago with the the main con concussion statement um um put out last year concussion consensus excuse me so a followup question on that first question um one of the things that struck me in this data was the idea that the cause of death being is is more often than nut suicide and I in looking through the protocols I didn't see and maybe this is because there're things that are sort of operating behind the scenes but looking through the protocols at the website for MIAA and the state of Massachusetts there doesn't seem to be a tie-in between the medical doctors and psychologists psychiatrists school counselors if if it's if it's more clear now based on the 2023 study that the cause of death for people people with CTE is suicide why isn't that being integrated into the the statements and protocols um why is there a psychiatric component yeah so I I will say that for our group I can only speak to sort of how we run our protocols um part of our protocol every time we see an athlete is to ask them about um suicidal ID um Suicidal Thoughts uh or self harm so in every single one of my concussion notes I ask a patient um about their uh their history of suicidal thoughts and any increased thoughts of suicide in the setting of any sort of head injury it's actually a very common thing to happen in the setting of an acute concussion for P for people to have thoughts of harming themselves so that is a topic that comes up every time we see an athlete um and so the time so not everyone gets referred for any sort of psychiatric support um but if they flag positive for any of those findings um then yes we would get them usually set up with some sort of counselor um to help with the process of getting through the concussion and then tracking beyond that point um if they still continue to have those symptoms um one of the major risk factors for prolonged concussive concussive symptoms is actually a history of anxiety and depression so that's also a huge part of our um our protocol is to dig diving deep into a lot of the other sort of um risk factors for psychiatric illness which include you know history of um anxiety depression history of ADHD Sleep Disorders um any headache history including family history of headache and again any sort of history of suicidal ideations or Haring themselves so um that is a part of the uh of the protocol for us um again I again I I can't speak to why some of these um cons consensus statements are not updated to that but I will say that for us we we that is uh certainly part of our protocol would it be harmful to have like we have a relatively small school district would it be harmful to instead of you know trying to figure out the screening tools just have them talk to a counselor is that going to be more harm than good or is that something that you know would be in your opinion would that be helpful um are you saying just to clarify are you asking for anybody who sustains a concussion if they should be immediately um connected with a counselor or or just like if there's a decision to pull the athlete from competition because of a a head injury whether it's a concussion where they lose Consciousness or not one of like would it be harmful for us or for the patient for the student to say you know like he's going to check in with Kevin he's going to check in with Dave and he's going to check in with the school counselor oh I don't think that's harmful at all in fact I I I push for every single high school student to have access to a counselor once a week um if I could I think it's it's a lot of times a matter of um accessibility and resources um I mean it's un undoubtedly like the fact you know we're currently living in a time where the stress and sort of mental health of our high school students is is you know worse than it's been a long time I think so um um you know any sort of opportunity to get uh any of these kids extra support I'm I'm all for um I don't think there's any harm in doing that in fact you know you could probably uncover a lot of different things by getting uh some consistent time with a counselor um I would say in general as it relates to the recovery from a concussion um you know we do again we do a pretty in-depth uh history and get a sense of where someone might be at and that includes having the the parents weigh in because you know not every high school student wants to talk about these sorts of things um or middle middle school student um but uh yeah I'm I'm all for it I don't think there's any harm in having that extra support um Peter has his hand up again so we'll go back to Peter yeah I just have some um specific questions in terms of the experience that our kids are going through in the event of a concussion and and I've reviewed the protocols but I don't have them in front of me I'm I'm unfortunately I'm traveling on business right now um and my Recollections are from personal experience with my own child so um bear with me for a moment but I just want to gain some clarity here in terms of who the athletes are are interacting with as part of that return protocol um my experience and this was not during the most recent Academic Year but the year before that um was that um there were a number of discussions that occurred with the coaches with the trainer and with the athletic director but ultimately my child need to be cleared after a face-to-face visit with his own primary uh uh physici um again I I recall going through that with him but I don't recall exactly you know working with either you or your office um and and what I'm getting to here is the specificity of of dealing with a sports medicine practitioner versus a pediatrician and and what the training and and and whatnot might be in terms of these different practitioners so if you could speak to that and I again I apologize I'm I'm I'm calling from my own experience here but hopefully you you can see what I'm getting to here in terms of you know the the specificity of some of the issues that you just brought up and and where my own child's pediatrician may not be as informed as you might be yeah no that's a a really good question a very incle question because that is something that we run into frequently so ultimately an athlete can or a student athlete can be cleared to return to the field um by it needs to be cleared by a physician um and that often times if someone's not established with our group often times is done by that patient's um primary care provider which could be a pediatrician Family Medicine provider um Internal Medicine pediatric provider um so in general H through those sort of um board certified physician roles uh there's not extensive training in concussion management um so for our bird certification for sports medicine we do get uh tested on concussion management uh and so that's that we do have uh significantly more training as it relates to concussion management um so technically uh you can be cleared by uh your primary care though we highly encourage people to be cleared by a sports medicine provider so uh we just recently part partnered together uh here with lunenberg um over the last year so you know what we've been doing uh most recently is having athlet see me and Clinic um the challenges sometimes families are not always um you know they're not either they're already established very well with their primary care provider and they want to be seen by that person um and and that's okay um but I I would encourage people if they can to see me I'm I'm even at I'm at lemonster hospital three days a week um so I'm I'm nearby I'm actually in the clinic right now um but you know if uh if if uh if possible it would be great to be able to see all concussion athletes in my clinic or one of my partner's clinics um our goal as a group is in the setting of certain injuries to get people in um right away so uh our goal is always about 48 Hours um to be able to see someone um that's not always the case but it is you know we we try our best to make that happen um but yeah we we certainly have more uh more experience than than most people's Primary Care Providers and and I you know obviously as a parent I don't want to uh interfere at all with parental rights I don't want to to give as a school Committee Member uh medical advice to parents but I you know I would encourage you know Kevin and and Dave when these circumstances arise you know it it certainly probably would be W worth advising parents if you're not already um of some of these issues in terms of the differences in in expertise that that that may that that that exist and and obviously you know this extraordinary resource that we have available to us now yeah I feel like I can speak on their behalf I I Dave and Kevin have been like I said have been exceptional so um they have my administrator's direct phone number and have been very good about giving athletes that number to call and get scheduled with me um as soon as possible um so um it it's been a it it's one of those things that I think it's more hesit again a more hesitation on the the parental side of things um not knowing me and you know I'm happy to introduce myself to the the community in some way if if there's an opportunity to do so but um yeah we're we're happy to see see these athletes because we know that it is you know a concerning concerning problem and something that we would be very happy to help with so you know not thank you so much not specific to uh just concussions but this has been part of the process since bringing on a full-time trainer at the school I think just the familiarity with the training room and uh being open with Dave and saying hey yeah we were at a road game yesterday and I I hurt this type of thing I think far too often I'm hanging around the training room and you know a student athlete might say I hurt this three weeks ago um and that's not really what we want right like just as the doctor said within that that time period um you know I know I know Dave wants to know uh you know what's going on with all of our student athletes can can I ask a question first of Adam this is like a really simple Logistics question Suppose there was like a meeting at the beginning of the year where it was like a meet and greet with like coaches and athletes and Kevin and Dave were there if would you be willing to go to that like onetime a year meeting so that people knew who you were yeah I I've offered that up to um all the schools I've worked with so um this past year didn't didn't work out quite right I I tore my achilles tendon so I was out for a little bit um but over the summer but I um I'd be happy um to try to coordinate whatever that date is that you do your um sort of meet and greet with coaches and parents and athletes I'd be happy to um attend or if if not available um I could always put together a video to introduce myself or however however way but I I'd love to get a chance to do that y that'd be that'd be perfectly fine and Carol has a question thank you um I have two very quick ones I think I hope first and probably more for Kevin um the handouts that we received do all parents and kids get these handouts um even if they didn't hurt their head yes so that's part of the registration process at the beginning of uh each season okay and my other question perhaps is more for Kate um as a teacher I um was asked and someone who had a fairly severe concussion as an adult um I was asked to talk to the high school staff at the school I worked in to explain to them why the kids could talk to their friends but couldn't do their homework um is there any kind of I'm assuming there is but hoping there is some kind of education for the staff so that their expectations are reasonable for kids coming back from concussions it's been my experience and I think perhaps um Kevin might be able to speak to this too as it happens at lunenberg high school um typically it would be um guidance counselors my recollection um when when I had a student who had been impacted in this way that had some um short-term restrictions brain rest that sort of thing um it was either um a a counselor or um the nurse that would provide that follow-up information um and oftentimes a shortterm uh 504 plan may need to be developed to provide those accommodations and if a 504 plan is developed everyone has to follow it um but to your point about you know the understanding of why it's important um that that messaging generally speaking like I said came through a counselor um in the guidance office or the nurse and I'll just chime in um every time an athlete sees us in clinic we write a new note or provide new accommodations uh very clear accommodations whether it be 50% less homework extended time on exams um if appropriate uh evaluation for 504 plan um and then um usually you know no standardized testing and the setting of an acute acute head injury so um we try to make it really easy so it's it's there's not a lot of decision that you know there doesn't need to be a lot of decisions made um related to what the the athlete student athlet needs um it's more about distribution of that information once that athlete returns to the school with a letter and those accommodations uh written out and and again this is this is the same sort of protocol that we use for all the high schools but we also use those those protocols at at the division one level for athletics um in college so it's a very much the same um same protocol uh across the board okay thank you Laura I believe Laura has a question yep okay sorry um what happens when a student thinks that they don't have a concussion and declines in our in our system and declines any sort of assistance and um we can't get the parents on board either what is oured yeah yeah if there's a concern for concussion and an athlete hasn't been Val valuated and a parent doesn't want them to be evaluated they they can't return to sports until they're evaluated and cleared I mean it's it it's it's pretty straightforward I mean there's not really a if there's any concern from our medical staff um that someone has sustained an injury that could have been uh a concussion or if they're exhibiting any symptoms in the setting of of recent head injury that are concerning for concussion then it's there's just you can't go back I mean that's that's the bottom line I mean that you're going to have people that um try to avoid the system I mean there's you know you're going to have athletes that um have a head injury and don't tell anyone um and that's that's sort of inevitable um but you know if there's any sort of question or concern it comes to our attention then uh the athlete cannot go back until they get a full evaluation okay and that's our that's our P our protocol we we do that with athletes and how often does that happen oh I mean on the sideline of a football game it happens all the time like we're you know we're part part of what we're you know I I stand on the sideline our our our group stands on the sideline Dave stands on the sideline one of our main jobs is scanning for scanning the field for head injuries and so you know the first you know we're watching for and and we watch you know you know that there's certain types of ways that someone can be hit and you know that they're at higher risk for a head injury or someone stands up they're a little bit Wild probably um that doesn't necessarily mean they have a concussion um but it does mean that they need to be evaluated and so that's sort of my my main role on the sidelines of games but you know again a kid could sustain a concussion playing football with their friends on the weekend you know these these things happen not at school all the time like I have a ton of student athletes that come in who play sports but they had a head injury playing with their friends and so that's you know these things happen at all all the time getting off the bus something happens they hit their head you know it could happen anywhere anytime so that's a challenging of the that's the challenging part of these injuries so I think one of the the things that I I love about Dave is that Dave has has created such a good relationship with so many of the athletes it's kind of it's really fun to watch them come in because they'll just they'll spill their they'll spill their life to to Dave um because he's always got his door open and he's very very kind to them but I think that's the biggest thing is that you know you want to have an environment where um the athletes feel comfortable sharing that information because again we're not always going to be there to watch the uh the injury occur I just want my experience the football the football refs are really good too like you know they're they're they're very well trained and very aware and we'll point to a kid and send them to Dave uh yeah when when when there's even a shred of a doubt yeah David I believe you're gonna say something yeah I mean I I want to personally thank the doc for for uh present presenting tonight and for working with us this past year he's been tremendous um the kids love him and I know every parent that has met him um they love him as well um my big thing I think is like what doc said is I think some of the parents want the kids to play no matter what and uh I had some kids that got hurt and no my son's fine I don't want to see you know I don't want to get evaluated I want to go back I want him to play as soon as he can um so I think the big thing we need to connect to the parents for um this concussion issue to get them evaluated um and re-evaluated if we need to um I think the kids are okay I've have had a couple kids this year that um one one of them had two concussions um and he's playing back he was he he was back playing but um I think the parents I think we need to connect with them more than anything and again doc thank you very much for um having a great year with the kids and myself I enjoyed you very much thanks D can I I'm GNA ask a question to uh Kevin and Dave do we have any sort of tracking data on kids and head injuries and to all three of you is there any number of head injuries where you're like okay you just can't do this anymore I'm sorry yes I I track the kids um injuries I I do have it at at work um I know we just had one kid this year that had two concussions um that I know of other than that um we haven't had any athlete that we've had a um ban from playing sports at all um but I was going to have Dr Ridley evaluate um our football player before returning to football season this year um I think that might be a good idea to talk to the parents about that as well um I do have recordkeeping um at school um in the dock everyone that goes to see the dock I'm sure he keeps our records as well yeah so we have full medical records on everyone that that sees us in clinic um and as it relates to your second question um there is sort of a there used to be this thought that there was a certain number of concussions that would limit someone's ability to return to sport that has sort of Fallen to the Wayside because we realize that every concussion is a little bit different so the severity of a concussion um is varies substantially and so um and the interesting thing is it it even a small head blow can lead to longlasting symptoms so you could have an athlete who gets totally knocked out after getting hit in the head and they have very mild symptoms and they recover from it very quickly you can have people that have very minimal head trauma and have the exact opposite long you know long lasting symptoms so again every sort of concussion is different and so our way you know the the the way that it's sort of gone most recently is again very thorough uh reassessment of sort of what some someone's symptoms are prior to and resolution of those symptoms prior to returning to sport um where we start having that conversation of whether it's worth returning to sport uh is when someone's starting to have uh more and more cussions with less and less sort of trauma um to the to the head or if they're having extended uh ex each time they have a concussion they're having extended symptoms more and more each time and that and that is um a common sort of pattern where people will have worse symptoms um with more concussions but again there it's it varies so much that we no longer say you know three concussions and you're done kind of thing it's it's a very individualized Approach at this point just like sort of the rest of medicine sort of moving in that direction or it's it's a more personalized individualized assessment da this is for my last question then we'll move on Dave and uh Kevin do we uh like what is the breakdown of concussions by Sports do we keep track of that yeah I briefly kind of wrote that down um and um believe it or not we had football we had uh roughly four concussions one one player had two concussions this year we had a JB soccer player have a concussion um we had a women's JV basketball player have a concussion none in boys basketball zero hockey concussions this year which is interesting um and one JV lacrosse player um obviously no contact Sports in the spring except Lacross the boys but uh so that's what the breakdown was this year and when you say four in football you mean two from that one person yeah four to four well that was we had three football players four football players total okay one player had two yes thank you and as a matter of fact one of the what doc was saying we had two JV players have concussions and one was more severe than the other and the one that was more severe which he had more symptoms at the beginning returned to returned to play sooner than the one that had the uh fewer fewer symptoms which is interesting y all right um all right well does anybody have any other questions I I just have um just a comment which is um you know obviously we're living in a time here when there's I apologize for the background noise I'm in a car in an electrical storm so apologies if you guys can't hear me well um but you know we're we're living in a time when there is a great deal of scrutiny particularly on contact Sports um I believe that the benefits outweigh the risks I continue to believe that I believed that my whole life um but I also think that we're extremely fortunate to have the care that we have and the professional staff that we have uh and this uh this extended staff that we have from folks like Dr Ridley who uh are just extraordinary resources and I'm I'm thrilled that uh we're living in a time when when we're able to provide this level of of care to our kids so thank you all very much all right anybody else have any questions Dr Ridley thank you so much for coming uh Dave and Kevin thank you for doing such a diligent job at watching our kids and Dr Burnham thanks for organizing this this was really helpful if anybody pleasure doesn't want to go see Dr Ridley I think they messed up he seems like a really nice genuine guy I appreciate it thank you yeah but if there's anything else that you need if we can provide any other um documentation or if there needs to be further discussion on any of these the specifics of this uh happy to uh continue the conversation uh in another in another way or another time so just just let it let me know uh I'd be happy to help all right thank you so um I think that the next thing on the agenda is the program evaluation and there's an action item here so Dr Burnham actually the program evaluation is just for discussion you have a a slide deck from uh Juliana hansam our uh director uh special services um I had advised the committee uh late last week that uh she would not be available for this evening's meeting and then if anyone had any questions they could send them my way in advance um I didn't receive any questions but I would leave that open still that if anybody has any questions um please forward them to me and uh I'll get back to you with responses after Consulting with uh Juliana hansom if needed I'm sad she's not here her presentations are the fastest well this is a lengthy slide deck for her 15 slides is a ton for her Soh all right well um is there any uh discussion on the inclusion support and program evaluation information that's in uh Miss Ham's incredibly piy 15 slide presentation Dr uh Carol uh I just wanted to comment that I think this is a really good way to do this to to have a three-year cycle of going through these things and and checking in on um what's going on particularly in the inclusion spot because that's really tough to Monitor and uh I just think it's a good method to go through and I appreciated that some of the recommendations actually align with the focus work that we had already begun uh with co- teing so that's it's nice to know that we're on the right track I will also say uh as a non-teacher looking through the slide deck and recalling things that I've learned on school committee about the impacts that kids have on other kids in terms of learning it makes a lot more sense to me knowing that looking at the slide deck and the three-year plan so like I I I'm grateful that we have that idea guiding our our special education department it does Laura Laura has a comment um I did want to say I think this did bring to our attention that we're going to have to deal with the sub shortage um I'm not sure how but that is something um we're going to have to to deal with because that was one of the big things that was mentioned in here was Paris getting pull I think that that's fairly consistent challenge across districts everywhere it it's been a challenge in every District I've ever worked in for the last 30 years but you you're right we we need to continue to try to problem solve around that um all right is there any other discussion of this agenda item being none we'll move on to the next agenda item um which is the FY 24 Budget carryover on open POS uh Dr Burnham who's presenting on this um so it'll be a little bit of a tag team but I think we'll we'll largely leave it up to uh Dr Livingston so and ually at the end of June um as we're closing out uh we have to bring forward a list of uh POS that we would need to keep open in order to um pay out the bills for fy4 so largely this is um an FYI for for the school committee um and they uh vote and acknowledge that these uh these purchase orders will be held open um so that we can continue to pay bills from the current fiscal year as they come in um Dr Livingston I'll turn it over to you sure um as Dr Burnham said um this is a very typical process um I have to give credit to Dr Burnham and the whole staff from from Liz to Heidi to Penny for all that they've done trying to keep track of everything during this year with all of the the craziness that has gone on um it it was Yen's work and we're now at a place that we have these lists we have a sense of where we are but again until we uh really come to uh the payroll is all being posted and there is a half day pay uh half half a payroll that's being done for this last week of the fiscal year uh the way it's a five-day payroll for S uh the salaried folks and the uh hourly Folks at this point which is BAS basically just the custodians it could be a few cust few administrative assistants perhaps but um overall uh I think we're we're in a good place in that we know what we have and what we have to do um we with the with the money that you you took care of tonight that frees up some of those salary monies that should have been spent by grants um and that allows us to move that into the expense lines where we you know had some overages and had some hopes of of getting some things done um as we go through that and adjust it uh between Ezekiel and again that's another person that I think you want to commend uh the new uh Town accountant uh Ezekiel at the Town Hall is just doing Yan's work trying to recapture eight months and uh part of our difficulty and part of as I said Liz and Penny and and Kate was was that and Heidi was that um a lot lot of things just hadn't been posted Revenue had come in from the state and it hadn't been posted so we didn't know where we were at and you know there were POS going against it and salaries going against it and salaries going to wrong places there are um I hope that the committee will take some time once we get Beyond this uh and look at I think some efficiencies that really need to be put in place um this has clearly shown that there are things that could be done more effectively and more efficiently then uh sending emails back and forth to town hall and then they you know approve a PO okay I I I clear I change the PO and then an email comes back and then we have to tell I mean there's about seven steps to add $30 to a PO because shipping was a little bit higher than something um those kinds of things just take an incredible amount of time from the good work that could be being done and when those things aren't in place and the people aren't in place you need to know what is the backup procedure what's the process what's you know how do you fill in those gaps that has not been put in place um and it's something that I I look forward to helping your new Finance director as much as she needs for as long as you wish to um to help consider those process and procedure things that can uh really uh really make it more effective because things happen positions do become vacant and what's who then takes over where's the backup and that hasn't always been thought of and then when you extend the backup between the school department that really functions independently under yourselves you as the school committee you were responsible for your budget well during those eight months your budget wasn't being as effective as it could have been because that position was vacant and then when the when your Finance director left and I think there's some considerations between town hall and and the school committee that needs to realize that process and procedures come from the school committee to manage their budget granted we are a piece of the Town overall and yes financial help and financial assistance and and oversight and checking certain things is very important but not to sometimes the level of minutia where it slows down effective work being accomplished and taking additional time to get things uh right now there are there are like two Personnel files there's one in the school office which as the superintendent Kate is The Keeper of the records and you you honor that and respect that and manage that but the town is also having to keep is keeping payroll records and and asking for all kinds of information that um sometimes confidential and sometimes not but I mean those things if an auditor or anybody were ever asking or towns person wed to see something we have all of that in our records so even just the sheer fact of of duplicating information going back and forth takes a lot of time so um as I said earlier you've got some folks that have done a really incredible job for you um and uh I I honor them because I haven't seen a situation like this next year we will return to uh you know again and you'll have a new person and I'll be hopefully helping out but um you will be getting your quarterly reports uh this end of the year is most difficult uh but we have a plan in place and uh we have a way as you see on that list that's being held there are many of those POs being held simply to see if the dollars are available uh there are some small items on there certainly you also have to recognize that some of the items on those list are not affecting your general ledger budget your your your town budget because they are from Grants or they're from nen's school lunch revolving account or they're from you know other places like that there actually about $100,000 between uh the ones that are truly on the incumbents list and the ones being held so um that's all going to be slotted and put in place and uh onward and upward happy to take any questions so Kate Liz anybody add add anything in there Paul I have a I have a question sure would you would as part of your like baton passing to our new Finance director would you be able to tally up and provide concrete examples of places where we could be more efficient and in doing that and writing that memo um could you also look at whether or not uh in your opinion it makes sense to have essentially two systems running in parallel all the time I mean I could see one advantage being that it's a backup and the other Advantage being that it provides robustness so that if our person has skill sets that the town doesn't we can help and vice versa um but I can also see your point about like seven emails for a $30 adjustment in a PO not making sense I I guess the thing that I don't know and it would be helpful to have a memo on is setting aside the things that are obviously just inefficient is there a good you know fin a bookkeeping reason legal reason uh procedural reason to have all of this redundancy um so if you could have a memo that would adjust those two things as part of the handoff that might be helpful I mean I don't know what is what do other members of the committee think because like this has been something I've been thinking about since I realized that some of the money we take in and then some of the money it gets for our services get paid to the town and then they give us the money and it just seems like there's a whole lot of money moving around for no clear reason like some programs the money comes to us some money that goes to the town and the more you move money and the less oversight there is the more money gets uh hard to find so I I just feel really uncomfortable having that be the situation so it looks like Peter has a comment um be ha we certainly can do that I think one of the primary reasons for having somebody else at Town Hall well basically this too um you do need a bit of a check and a balance on the finan iial kinds of final steps because they do calculate Revenue the treasure brings in Revenue they do process checks they do that so in I think a a kind of system that you want to maintain you need that kind of a check and balance you also have to remember that your school budget just like in most communities is the largest percentage of the overall budget it's uh you all have health insurance in your budget I mean with with those costs I mean well up to 75% of the Town budget if if not more I don't have an exact number in my head but that's typically what it would be so a lot of the um the responsibility for those payments of APS and payroll and Human Resource Management fall into your responsibility level uh it is uh it's different in a Schoolhouse because of the nature of things that happen and changes that can take place right up if school's going late until June 28th as it does some years you know there are there are expenses that are unknown up to June 28th that things can occur things can happen uh so I I really think it's something that requires you you've had a little bit of HR in the position before and and you know always will but but that is a good kind of with the town a check and balance system uh you know the three three branches of government uh you know you're you're one branch the finance folks in the school office and then the town and looking at that together you create the policies and procedures that are effective for schools um that's something that's missing also I mean you don't have the procedures for that I you know that I think sometimes need to be in place to clarify so even if there is a backup process by whoever you have a protocol as to what to how to follow it um so looks like Peter still has his hand raised yeah thank thank you for your comments Dr Livingston and um I we've been talking about having a workshop on this topic and I think that time would be very well spent um you know look we have a we have we have a sarid history around here and there are reasons why uh very good reasons why um we've got some redundancy and lots of eyes on our on our accounts and and um you know I I think that's more more good than bad in the grand scheme of things and you know since since some of those incidents occurred two decades ago you know we we've had some Financial challenges in lunenberg but we have not had the acute challenges that we've experienced in the last year and I think you know that is a Confluence of turnover and vacancies in positions and a debacle in software and and it and I think that you know what we should be thoughtful about right now is how do we build resiliency and efficiency into our system um but in particular resiliency um and I think that some of those procedures that you talked about and that sort of thing um could could be helpful in that direction um but I think also you know they're we need to hold our colleagues on the select board accountable and there needs to be transparency um when there are shortcomings and and and a and a plan communicated as to how things are going to get fixed when they're broken and um I think that those are all learnings from the past year that we can we can look to going forward forward definitely Laura you had your hand raised and then you put your hand [Music] down ask question I did I I wanted to say that I thought that was a really good point Tony asking for the specific examples of issues we've had I was just gonna say that was a really great idea and I second that Carol you're the only one that hasn't said anything do you want to say anything well I can just say we can only move forward because um what went on this year went on this year and it was one right that's for sure um so I I would Echo that the um Workshop this summer to um have some kind of a plan set come set some kind of policy so that the financial end is better wrapped around and um Dr Livingston um certainly has helped a great deal with this and um we know that our new Finance director will be helpful as well and um I want to thank Paul for his help too thanks C and Dr Burnham you said there was an action item do we need to vote on holding open these accounts yes please yes all right oh can I go real quick I'm sorry can I go again sure I did I also wanted to say I wanted to say thank you to Dr Burnham for this um the delays and and the the issues with communicating with Town Hall and with getting things done have been they've made this end of the budget year very difficult so I did want to say thank thank you to Dr Burnham and thank you to her administrators for getting through this it's been a really tough year the budget season in general was really tough and I just wanted to say we do appreciate how difficult this been and thank you for getting us to uh June 30th I would just like to um say that the the biggest uh lift I think was done by uh Liz Peterson Heidi spinny and Penny bornean um you know the rest of my team has been important all the way along as well as we've had regular monthly meetings all of us in the war room with the big screen going through the budget line by line um but really the the heaviest lift in supporting um Dr Livingston and Dr Deo um in in their ability to navigate and get clar ity around grants revolving accounts budget lines salaries expenses all of it um they they were absolutely critical to to that work I think everybody that's met those people having met all three of them understands just how wonderful they are so thanks to them um all right so we do have an action item to hold open I'm looking for it in the shared file Dr Bon do we have a list of the stuff that's being held open you do there there's a list of um all of the purchase orders that we would uh request be held open um as we are closing out fy4 what was the difference between the yellow highlighted ones and the non- yellow highlighted ones so the yellow highlighted ones it's more of an internal um okay indicator to us um we referenced that there were some requisitions put into the system and purchase orders were generated but we held on on moving forward on on those until we really refine how much uh funding is available to be spent so there are many on that list that could be just closed out and all of the money that's encumbered there just returned taken off of of the balance um those uh the yellow area also includes the grant uh lines it includes revolving accounts um it includes um I think a couple of service accounts um that that are still um being held open um but again that's that that's sort of uh an internal uh marking for for us to to sort of help ease the tracking um as we're working hard to to close everything out and the thing is to bring forward to you on June 26th uh when the the year closes out June 30th so we will be working feverishly for the next handful of days trying to close out as many of the the the items that are on this list as we possibly can and we didn't put this list into your folder until today because the list was actually much bigger yesterday and the day before we've been working hard to refine and close things out um so this this list uh will be shorter even by the end of this week uh and definitely in in the handful of days early into July but there will be some that will will still be open in August that will still be waiting on invoices to to come through so we're actually closing some that were still open from FY uh 23 now at the end of fy2 24 because sometimes the materials simply are not available uh sometimes they they might be available but can't be shipped for some reason they don't get to a site or sometimes uh the invoice wasn't received I mean a lot of the ones that will change in the next week or so for the final warrant that I think is July 3rd um that will that's just waiting for invoices so those will once the invoice and it's put on a warrant and AP warrant and paid they will come off the incumbent list here so Dr Burnham if somebody were to make a motion and because this is something that you just put in I want to confirm what we're talking about it's the en it's an Excel spreadsheet encumbrance list 62624 there are 145 uh open items and the yellow highlighted portion ends at line right at saying line 57 is that the document you want us to vote on that is the document okay um basically you're asking for a motion to hold open the POS as um reported to the school committee as of 626 I I will not entertain a motion because Peter has his hand up go ahead Peter I was actually gonna make a motion so I'll do it um I move to uh approve the FY 24 encumbrances list as presented second sorry ready for a vo call vote we are okay Mrs a yesi yes Mr bmore yes and Mr SCH yes thank you thank you Paul thank you Dr Burnham um let's go on to the next item the next item on the agenda is um the community eligibility provisions and I will um turn this one over to Our Food Services director naen Lorenzen and uh Mr Livingston Dr Livingston is going to hang on to this uh meeting for a bit to be available in case you had any questions for him as well so I'll turn it over to you naen um would you like to screen share or would you like me to screen share um I believe I can screen share right then I will make you co-host okay let's see how I do okay so hello everyone I'm naen lenen food service director and I am here to present to you the community eligibility prois provision um quick background um the community eligibility provision is um it is a provision that was authorized as part of the healthy hunger free kids act of 2010 and it is a provision allowing school districts and high poverty areas to feed um all enrolled students at no cost and when it began back in 2010 the schools had to um have at least 40% of enrolled students identify as free as of April 1st of the previous year they had to be participating in both of the national school lunch program and the national the school breakfast program excuse me they needed to offer free breakfast and free lunch and they needed to uh to notify their state agency of their intent to participate in the c um provision by June 30th fast forward to 2023 the community eligibity elig ility provision uh percentage rate has been lowered to 25% with that being said our our schools are now serving Universal meals all of Massachusetts is and there's a there's a difference between C and Universal meals which I'd like to highlight here so with universal meals we process applications and we process meal benefit applications I should say and our program is reimbursed through federal and state funds and those reimbursement rates are based on student statuses as in free reduced and paid with C there there will be no meal benefit applications our reimbursement will come directly from the federal government and the reimbursement rates are is a Formula based on the percentage of students who automatically qualify for for free meals based on their household participation in specific means tested programs and the reason I'm here to present this year is because Turkey Hill falls into this category I have this little chart here and um you can see that the numbers have changed drastically and I'll I'll break down the the identified student percentage rate for you we get that rate um automatically from what we call the virtual uh Gateway our enrollment is up loaded into the virtual Gateway and they send back to me what they call a direct match or a no match and excuse me those matches are based on families and the the families that are receiving supplemental well snap or tanith or any of these programs those means based programs that we talked about in the earlier slide I see that someone has their hand up already can i s all questions till the end yes thank you um so we fall into this category and I'm here to say I'm it's worth looking at there are benefits and there there are cons there are considerations as well we are not a high poverty area but the numbers have been brought down so that more schools and more districts are able to feed all students at no cost some of the benefits are it it eliminates the social stigma of the free lunch students being labeled as free and poor obviously um it it increases nutritious School meals at no cost to students and Families which in turn improves learning in the classrooms it eliminates unpaid meal balances I mean I could go on however let's get to the concerns demographics are changing in our town you saw on in Turkey Hill I just showed you Turkey Hill but if you look closely at a lot of our schools you can see that those numbers are coming up I can um tell you that the primary school was pretty close in their percentage was at 24 the middle high school was at 22% Middle School excuse me high school 22% um and those numbers seem to be on the Rise um another concern would be um is it financially viable our program would have to be responsible for providing the free meals with the federal funds that we are given um another concern also would be that we would have to fund an alternative income form to allow for families to receive the school-based fee waivers and other um or Fe waivers or reductions and such I can take questions now I am having a hard time seeing anything other than made streen see on all right you might want to stop screen share absolutely looks like we have uh Peter has a question somebody at a Galaxy tab s5e has a question so this would not be an open hearing where I don't know who that is either attendees could could question this is questions from the committee sure so maybe that person could say it for public comment correct okay Peter thank you um just a a quick question on this would be only for Turkey Hill this is a per school program it is actually it it it could be groups of schools districts single School in fact okay but the circum the circumstance that we're in right now is is that Turkey Hill meets the minimum qualification our other schools do not exactly so so we would be applying on behalf of Turkey Hill only and that would be the only School in the program for this year if we were to pursue this yes okay um that my question yep I'm sorry and I'd like to add to that actually U Mr bore and answering that question it would be the only school but I would like to say that it it would provide us an opportunity to see how it works in how well it would work for our community how well it would work for our district if we were to do it does this put an additional administrative burden on you or your staff actually know it would lighten a bit of the burden because I wouldn't be processing meal benefit applications okay that's all I have for questions thank you you're welcome uh looks like uh Laura and Carol both have their hands up uh Laura did you have yours up first no I think it was Carol okay okay um I just the kids get free meals now paid for by the state and some Federal reimbursement correct yes so if we went to this the the face of what the kids see is going to be the same or would it not be it would be exactly the same in fact it could be better there would be it looks to me as though the funds would be enhanced okay through the numbers that I've been kind of running we may get a few a few more dollars actually so so that what the the child sees will be the same if not a little better absolutely but we would have to develop a different way of determining um who needs the reduced athletic fee and who needs you know all these other things we do right so so is that what you think the the biggest change would be here the determination of that kind of thing or what do you think would be the biggest challenge to going to this um for the schools I would say that would be our bigger challenge um for the families I think it's going to be having students in all of the schools and not having to fill out an application for you know your student at Turkey Hill but you still have to fill out that application for your students at the middle high school and primary okay thank you you're welcome uh Laura you have a question um I want to say first of all I'm concerned about the increasing number of our students who are falling under the poverty umbrella um and I'm glad that we can provide things like this to them uh what happens if Massachusetts legislature makes school lunch free again for this year year would we still be able to participate in this program and enhance the funds that are coming in and I'm sorry what apologize I did not mean to cut you off please oh no I told me um but what what are the chances that Massachusetts is going to make lunch free again this year because that was a fantastic program the chances are very likely as far as I know we will still have Universal meals so the other schools will still participating in those Universal meals and Turkey Hill will be if if we apply and we are you know accepted we will be participating in the C okay so we can do both and the C just enhances the funds for Turkey Hill absolutely that's fantastic um AG okay oh are there massive downsides other than the need for oversight and all that so I don't uh to be very honest I haven't seen any yet I'm still doing research and like I had mentioned to Mr beardmore I I want to go into it with a very open mind and learn as much about it now because I honestly think that they might even bring the that 25 down to a lower number so that more schools can get in I'm not positive about that but I honestly think that's coming if if I can just jump in I've recently worked in schools with this program and we have not found it to be a problem it actually brings in a little bit uh more money as naen has suggested I think you have an opportunity here to start off with one school you do have other schools that are getting close whether they stay at the 25% and those schools hit that level or if they bring down the um the percentage you will have had a little bit of experience uh in terms of creating the forms we actually I I actually created forms for a school district recently um that allowed us to use that format for um you know determining whether fees were reduced for field trips and athletic fees and bus fees and you know I don't know all your fees but all the different things that are available so I I I would suggest or I would recommend that you proceed with this um and I think it would be a good opportunity for Lear thank you nen for putting this together I just want to put a bit of commentary here which is this is yet another example of people in the school district working to find money to help make sure that taxpayer dollars are spent as efficiently as possible and so I want to commend Dr buram and I especially want to commend naine I also always like people that uh feed children that's it it's a really good thing you do so thank you very much thank you do we need an action item on this Dr Burnham do we need to take a yes please all right uh I will uh entertain a motion uh to approve the C program motion to approve the C program for next year at Turkey Hill I can second that ready for roll call yes Mrs brzowski yes Mrs ashino yes goodmore yes and Mr SC Briny yes thank you naen thank you the next budget item is or in the next agenda item is the budget task force appointment I think we talked a little bit about this last time and we kicked it down the road until today um Dr Burnham do we yep is this an item and do we need to appoint someone we do it is an action item you do need to appoint someone um assuming that you want to participate uh you do have the charge of this uh task force outlined uh in your um in your packet um as it came from the select board I believe I think this was the thing I volunteered to do very exuberantly yeah I think you're right all right uh like we have comments from Peter and Laura um I wanted to ask Dr Burnham two things did you talk to Dr Gilson about being appointed to a committee that's going to eat up some of her time and I did not because she is on vacation so I won't bother her with her new work responsibilities while she's on vacation and not yet with us I I'll give her that one one last week of some rest okay before we add more work to your plate I wanted to ask uh your opinion on it because this is additional work for you um and I also wanted to encourage the committee when they do form to try and keep meetings um take the paid employees time considerations into account uh a little put more weight on that because this is um some of us are volunteers and we're here willingly and some of us this is their job uh so I do have a little bit of concern about the time issue there so I wanted to check in with you and see how you felt about being on this committee and if this is something we should push back on or if you're a okay with it um I I really do think that it's up to the committee um if the committee feels that it's a worthwhile Endeavor to be part of this bigger analysis and conversation um then that's what we will do Laur did she answer your question I mean she's got the point like it's just I'm I have concerns about I don't like when any thing that town hall does involves making more work for our employees on our end um so I'm trying to be cognizant of that um I just I I wanted us to consider that uh because this is requiring two of our soon to be busiest employees uh and work on there and I know they did talk about maybe making it during uh working hours but I just I have some concerns about the time Peter do you have you want to make a comment yeah um so I I had expressed some reservations about this last week and I still hold many of those reservations um I think that you know that this involves and and overlaps a lot of responsibilities that that other committees have and and other roles uh as prescribed by the charter um that being said I I did watch the select board meeting last Tuesday and the conversation that they had around it um I read the charge um I I think that the select board understands that this is a pretty aggressive charge um and the the timeline is such that for the recomm for the recommendations to be contributive to the budget process this all needs to kind of coales over the course of the next six months and and that represents an awful lot of work um that said with a new town finance director who's only been in the role for sixish months at this point um a new Finance director in the school department uh um and what we have gone through over the course of the last year with respect to the budget and honestly the lack of communication and collaboration between the school department and the rest of town government um I think that this is worth a shot even with the reservations that I hold um I I think that you know it it's a good time to to build team teamw workk uh the composition of this of this committee um is well balanced um if perhaps overly reliant on on employees um but I I think that this is worth a shot my my one my my my one caveat here is that I I do suspect that as we get further into the year um that the charge for this committee may be amended and the select board even suggested that they may do that um I would be willing to support this with the caveat that any Amendment to the charge be agreed to by the school committee in advance of that taking effect um because I I frankly don't want wh while I said last week I thought we should put the you know the horse before the cart they should come up with the charge they did exactly that um but I I think that this is a this is a good opportunity to partner but to partner in the truest sense and and if changes are made that that should be something that that we should consent to um I also think that the meeting should occur during the business day which I know is may be prohibitive for some of us but um I I Echo the concerns of of that uh that Miss bosi uh brought up a little bit earlier oh one one last thing I'm sorry um we have a regular practice uh in the schools of when information is requested from other committees or other branches of of the town government um that the school committee be furnished those documents in advance um and in some cases we approve sending those documents I I don't think that we should continue with that process for the purposes of this committee uh in fact I don't think that we should do anything to slow it down um but I do think that the school committee should be copied on all documents and Communications that the superintendent and finance director deem relevant um Peter you have anything else or can I go to car no that's it thank you very much Carol go ahead um I agree with nearly everything that Peter said I I just would mention that as we were struggling through this budget year I said many times we need to have a budget committee with the town manager so that we're not caught not understanding what happened when we got on a number we we were caught surprised by the town manager's budget for this coming year for the budget we just hassled through um this committee would in fact do that so it is accomplishing something that I think we needed which was more communication and that the budget for the next year FY 26 if my my math is correct um but anyways the budget for next year shouldn't come out of nowhere at us we should know where it's coming from and the other piece is I do believe a fair amount of this is to solve the problem of exiting staff that the town can't pay people what they deserve and they have people leaving all over the place and as you will see by the Personnel report so do we so there are things that need to be looked at and can only be looked debt by a change in the way things are funded the only way I can see of getting a change in the way things are funded or the most expeditious way of getting a change in the way things are funded is through this committee so I I'm I'm with Peter I'm a little lary about some of it but um I trust the intention um I know it is Rene's brainchild and I totally trust her intentions and and I think this is something that we need to jump in on I'm just going to make a quick comment I have three things I want to say the first thing is I volunteered because I was standing near Renee at a meeting I did not volunteer because I thought I would be the best person but I volunteered because she was close to me and I also volunteered because I thought that Carol had done way more than when was fair to place on her last year during the budget process and so I did not think it was fair to Let It Go undone or have Carol do it because she's already carried the load long enough um but I do hear what Peter's saying my concern is if it is during the work day I do not have control over my schedule um if if somebody gets arrested like soon as I get out this meeting I got to call somebody talking to the police tomorrow so I don't have as much control over my schedule as I would like and I would hate for that to mean that the school and the people in the school aren't heard when it comes to reallocating funds so that's the first thing the second thing is I think that no matter what happens we should be an active participant because in my experience and Carol's been very diplomatic about this but my experience I think that we were not addressed in good faith in certain parts of the budget negotiation with the now uh resigned uh Town manager and I think that if we have a seat at the table for this process it will mean it would be more difficult to do what they originally did when they said this is your number you're never getting anymore and then proceeded to negotiate a you know for four more months so that's the second thing and the third third thing is I think that we need to participate because Renee asked and I say that in two ways number one I have a great deal of respect for Renee she's an exceptionally smart person she's practical and wise but I also think that we need to support this because when we needed help she helped us and so if nothing else than to return the favor and say we stand with you I think think we should do this um but I I think based on my understanding of what happened at the select board meeting last night and Peter's comments and Carol supporting those comments I am concerned that I may not be the best person to do this that being said I'm happy to do it I just want to make sure that I can give 100% to make to capture every single penny we can to help retain employees that is my number one concern in particular participating in this process so I'm if anybody wants to make a comment I'm I'm happy to take a comment in response I'll I'll jump in with a comment um I can appreciate that you can't say that you can be at things during the day we don't know that that's the way this is going to roll okay so I think we could make an appointment to put you on this committee and with the caveat or whatever the correct term is that should these meetings not fit into your schedule we would need to make a reappointment okay so one one idea that I had based on something Laura said last time was Lauren said what if we had two people and the the charge does doesn't allow us to have two people right but if we had somebody that was a primary and then a consistent and designated backup that might serve the same function and so that like we wouldn't have to scramble the day of and you know like I get I get called up to federal court for an arraignment I know that I can go to whoever the designated backup is and and they can do it um and that you know like sometimes when things come up it's like I send it to like I had a PTO thing where I sent it to Carol and I sent it to Laura and both people said yes which was like super awesome but it just made it a little more clunky in terms of making sure someone was there so I I don't know what what does everybody think about having like a primary and then a designated backup that's that was actually what I was going to suggest um because uh Tony I do think you are uniquely suited to be on this committee I think you have a very good way of building consensus um and explaining things so I I actually do think you're very well suited for the committee so um yeah if one of us wanted to be a backup that would be acceptable or because two of us can each go to the meeting and one of us can just sit quietly if we want to get the lay of the land and then be like the understudy um for when someone goes and gets get thems arrested in a really fun way um not you you're a client I'm not getting arrested presumably um but you know you never know um but I was actually gonna suggest that we have uh an appointed member and then ask about an alternate I'm also not the the makeup of the committee is seven members and four of them are not elected or appointed officials they're um they're employees of the town and I'm I'm not thrilled and there's no Citizen Space there's no space for Citizens at large so I'm not thrilled with the makeup of the committee but that's not us I am thrilled that the committee is happening um so yeah those are my two points was that yeah I think we if if they're open to us having an understudy or alternate I think that would be the best course of action Peter what do you think I support the idea okay uh these are going to be public meetings anybody can go to them um I don't I don't think that there's going to be a lot of uh formal Roberts rules process in these meetings or votes this is largely an advisory committee um who's whose charge is to make a recommendation and um you know ultimately whoever we appoint really needs to represent the whole of the school committee and um I I think that that's a good strategy to come at it and make sure that we are uh all well informed and consistent in uh our approach to this all right well um we need an action item Dr Burnham yes you need to uh make make an an appointment and take a vote to make that official so um do we want to make a motion to appoint a person and a designated backup do you want to be the person Tony I'll be the person I said I would um and it would be I'm not saying this to be funny but it would be helpful if the backup was a Towny Peter and Laura Carol I don't know if you count as a town I I don't know I'm just saying I know Peter counts as and I know Laur count I've been here longer been Laura but Carol's been here long than me so I think she takes precedent there and okay yeah I um I I think that this is so first of all suffice to say that I'm going to follow this pretty closely I think you all know that my you know how I approach these things um but in terms of being a designated backup I I think it you know either Laura or Carol I think would be excellent candidates for that um the the town manager uh screening committee is actually going to take up considerably more time than I anticipated um as well as we're we are looking to uh ramp up Capital planning meetings this summer so I I I maybe overcommitted already C can I just say and this is not to slight Carol but Carol you did a lot of work you got to let somebody else take the load for a little bit I am perfectly okay with that okay all right some of I can do it if you need um okay yeah if it's evenings are easy um yeah depending on the time I can do it well it's during the day it had the problem is during the day if Tony's working yeah so I can yeah so if it's during the like school day I can do that can you do during the summer during the day yeah I actually have more flexibility for having spouses work from home I think all right well I will uh entertain a motion that we appoint myself and Laura has designated backup so moved I will second that ready for roll call yes Mrs Bowski yes Mrs aseno yes more yes Mr SCH yes um could I make a suggestion too that when this is relayed um I assume Mr Leon will relay it but or whoever since maybe Mr school and Brey since Mr Leon is not available for the next week or so um that it it also be stated that this is important and we want to make sure our voice is going to be there and that's the reason for the alternate you know that that there is an understanding that that that would be one of the reasons why that you know your your job is unpredictable and um it should it fall during the day we have to make sure we have someone available I'll take care of that if does anybody can somebody just send me an email with Rene's email I just checked my email and I don't have it it did not autop populate and I just checked my Gmail account I will send that to you okay being called a Towny is like the best compliment I've gotten in like a long time I'm like yeah that's awesome it's a badge of honor I think it is talking about his old concussion protocol was like the towest thing I've ever heard how many fingers we were fine exactly all right let's uh go on to action or the uh the first thing in Old business is the fiscal year 24 quarterly budget uh Dr Burnham so you don't have a a written quarterly budget report but we've talked um a good about it through the line item transfer uh earlier this evening as well as the um the vote to uh carry over the open POS um if you have any other questions Dr Livingston is still on the meeting um but I think he he gave you a sense of uh where we're at with the budget are there okay uh L I didn't see who up first so I'm going to go in alphabetical order uh Carol okay um as this year is coming to a close are we do we know when will we know how much money we have left do you have a guess um as I said the lump sum payroll is being posted tomorrow we do already have that number so I've calculated it in uh the final warrant will be on July 3rd uh so certainly um you know I'm hoping by you know most towns would have a goal of closing by July 15 you know I think Ezekiel has that in the back of his mind if that ever happens I would be shocked but I would think we will have that uh from the school department by then okay thank you and uh Laura brazowski is very rarely second so um I know um is so is this the end of the essr funds the fiscal year this fiscal year ending means this is the end of any essr updates and the essr funds have all been expend the the Essa funds have to be expended by the end of September but lunenberg has already committed them by now okay well then good job our end is over that was an interesting due date but makes sense I guess um okay and when did we expend the last of those funds that was uh they're being spent now on salary right now okay perfect all your funds were spent on [Music] salary Paul I have one question um will it look does it look like to you and I'm not holding you this because I understand that there's so much stuff still up in the air but does it look like to you that we will have a surplus um with the encumbrances that you have now no I I don't think we will necessarily meet all of those incumbrances and that's why we're holding some of them um those incumbrances it's weird how you might choose to define the Surplus or not uh because if we have some I know uh Kate is looking at those encumbrances very closely to determine what the priority is and um you know there are some project related things facilities related things that I think would like to get done um so yes a surplus no a surplus it it really comes down to how you define that that is the loyalest answer I've ever heard a superintendent get I should I should have been a lawyer all right um is there any other discussion of the fy2 24 uh quarterly budget all right uh the next item on the um agenda is the Keystone collaborative report Dr B you have a a quarterly update for regarding the Keystone collaborative in your packet um it's pretty straightforward if anybody has any questions they can email me and um I can get information back to them and just for the audience what is the Keystone collaborative so it's a special ed collaborative um special education programs out of District um that we are a member district of this collaborative um in addition to providing programs um that we can send some of our students and place them out of district with the collaborative we partner with um the director of the collaborative uh and and he works with us to to help uh secure Services as best he can uh for some highly specialized uh staff supports um you know uh work with visually impaired students as an example we don't have a staff M uh if we had a student who needed that kind of support we don't have a staff member uh as part of our uh uh employee base here we might rely on uh somebody who is uh employed through the collaborative instead um sometimes um you know they can work to help get us uh group rates on on things as an example handful of years ago um we worked through the collaborative for a a program that um was called interface uh that that connected families with um mental health providers that that uh took their insurance um we got a a better rate because we were a group of districts that that were looking to contract um that was all facilitated by the director of of the collaborative so there are there are benefits to and resources that are available to us as part of this collaborative U but the the programming uh for students that can't get that programming in their own District so um we don't need we don't need to take a vote on this this is just no it's just information okay I I want to I want to I'm going to promote us again this is yet another way in which the district is being resourceful with taxpayer dollars by participating in the Keystone collaborative we can get things for our students who have uh special education needs that we would not necessarily be able to do on our own and so this is a way of helping defer costs so um thanks for participating and I'm glad to see that the report indicates things are basically steady it wasn't like anything yeah um the next thing on the agenda is a Personnel report uh and uh this is not a fun report to give but I assume Dr Burnham you're the one that's gonna have to deliver the news yep um so it's it's not as uh pretty as uh Mr cass's reports used to be um but he used to give them quarterly and we will give them quarterly um thank you for your patience and understanding that while we've been under staffed in this regard um this is more of a it's more than a quarter of of updates on um staff transitions so uh you've got a listing of new hires um again these are positions that had been posted and open and are now filled um you have a listing of what we're calling separations that those are folks who have left the district um there are a variety of reasons for that um and then um I did give you some information I believe as well on open positions that that are currently posted and we are um actively uh engaged in processes to fill those positions um and we'll have updates for you uh in August or early September when all of the flurry of um hiring that happens every single summer um settles down um there there are more separations than would be typical because we did have to cut positions with Esser um but uh the the list is not um it's not com it's not all resignations it's not all staff who have chosen to take positions elsewhere retirees um any any staff non-renewals for next year um and of course the budget cuts are in here too so I I don't want anybody to think whoa that's a really big list a whole lot of people are leaving choosing to leave that that's not entirely the the accurate picture there um I I will note that the list of new hires is 11 people law and the list of separations is 47 uh 48 people including a principal and an assistant principal and they're in the same school correct correct yes so uh posted positions too so the principal position has not yet been posted the assistant principal position was posted posted um as soon as we received notification uh that Mrs cotania would not be uh returning with us next year uh we are uh in the final stage of of um hiring for that position um I have been taking a little bit of time to give consideration to how to move forward uh relative to the open position of the principal ship at the primary school um I'm considering options um and we'll have more to say about that next week okay okay I don't want to put you on the spot because I I'm considering alternatives to posting and hiring a brand new outof District person for that building because I I know that I will have to uh fill the social worker position at that building uh that person is key and integral to the day-to-day operation supporting the administration working with families supporting students um that will be a new face in the office complex uh the nurse will be on leave in the fall um we'll have a if if things work out the final candidate that we're looking at will be a brand new firsttime administrator in the role of assistant principal so you can see why I'm giving some careful consideration about what I want to do about the vacancy in the principal ship at the primary school the primary nurse will be out on leave yes so we're hiring for Turkey Hill nurse and we're going to need a we have an open position a vacated position for the nurse at Turkey Hill we are posting that we're hiring we're filling that we have an employee who is in the nurse position at the primary school who will be on a leave of absence okay early next year again the nurse is very integral to the work of this the front office in supporting student absences you know um the comings and goings dismissals uh for students who are ill going off on doctor's appointments so on and so forth so um it's a lot to have all of those key positions really the only steady that you would have at the at the primary school would be secretary Chrissy carbon hi I think she probably run the school um but we're also maybe maybe I'm contemplating making her the principal I'm wondering like is Chrissy gonna because I I could see that um we're also could I I'm considering I'm considering options there so the principal position has not yet been posted okay uh and we're also hiring a social worker at the primary so we also yeah that's a lot of really important roles that are very important roles and they they would not have context for the culture of the community expectations of parents relationships with the families relationships with staff it's a lot it's a lot um so I I've been giving that some careful consideration Dr bam the situation at the primary school reminds me of that movie K King Ralph where the whole royal family got electrocuted and John Goodman was made the king of England um so who is in charge at the primary school well the school is closed for the year now let's say somebody needed something out of the primary school they can still contact the school uh Chrissy Carboni is still the secretary there she has access to records it's not like she she she can manage to take care of all of that um I can tell you that um Mr Adams and Mrs katania worked very hard to get everything set up and ready as best they could for the fall so basically a lot of that work has already been done so that whomever comes in over the summer into these roles has a foundation of that that work that's already been done uh and and ready to open the building there's still going to be a lot of um onboarding that's going to have to happen uh with a whole new team in in that building and any way you slice it whatever options I'm pondering you will have a whole new team in that building so um I want to thank Mr Adams and Mrs katania for the extra work they did in the last short little bit of time knowing how important it was to have all this stuff ready to go um so that whomever came into the role uh of the leadership team in that building would be well positioned uh to transition and hit the ground running so and Dr B one last question the if you were to diagnose the reason why there are departures that are not related to retirements are non renewals it's salary um correct more so than it's ever been okay um that is not a reason that I used to hear um the the primary reasons that I used to hear were it's closer to home I've recently had children I'm trying to cut my commute so I have more time with my family um it's a job my dream job in my home Community those sorts of things or people pursuing different career paths moving into Administration um transitioning into a different kind of role where there was not going to be an opportunity for them in the district um but more and more uh the conversations that we're having relative to folks exiting the district um it it is related to to pay um and and that's you know it it's also compounded uh I think by the fact that we spent so many months since October November talking about the massive cuts that were coming coming and we've talked publicly about how the override satisfies next year but beyond next year we're uncertain again so when people hear that they start exploring opportunities they start applying for positions and then when they're offered positions and it's a good pay increase they're taking it rather than wait and see and take their chances whether or not they'll be on the cut list again next year so part of this Exodus initiated because of the climate that that they've been living under for the last you know six plus months which is to be expected and I said that back in October that we would see an exodus from the district because people would feel une easy if if their job if they did not perceive that their their position uh was Secure in the district um and we're seeing exactly what I said that like I said the the compounding factor is that people who have explored have found that there's better salary out there and they are going well um appreciate you diagnosing the problem um is is there anything that anybody else wants to say about the Personnel report how many maintenance people are we up to now um maintenance at this point I think we have three positions filled um I can't even tell you right now how many uh technically open positions in the custodial ranks because that seems to be a very fluid situation um it changes uh week to week so um I I do know that we still have open positions in the custodial staff as well okay it says action do you need us to do anything on this um just ex you um I think this one nope this one was just discussion okay the next item is action all right well Peter has to go at nine o'clock so let's do that one really quick so that he can vote because otherwise do we lose Quorum if Peter goes we do not okay all right let's see if we can still do it with Peter here okay so the next item is the class accounts what you have is an update there are notes updating uh progress being made with each of the classes that still had um money in their Accounts at this point um I think you can table this um and we will continue to have communication with with the folks who are in process uh trying to uh get things ready so that they can request and transfer their their class funds you can table this and we can put it on an agenda again in the fall um and and hopefully we have some some more progress to report and we can actually vote to uh either allow classes to take their their funds or close out others uh does anybody objec if we just um table that and put it on for next year no do we need to motion to table it please okay okay I move that we table the class account discussion until a further later date I can second that roll call uh Mrs brzowski yes beardmore yes Shambo yes and Mr scho bini yes I just want to say one other thing I want to thank Liz for all the time she put in on trying to clear these up this wasn't easy I grabbed a few but she get the rest so here here that that that was a tough job yep she's pretty extraordinary yes absolutely I might make her the principal of the primary school there you go funny um uh next item on the budget is uh second public comment the person that has had their hand raised since the very beginning I'm not sure if this is a real person or if it is a blinker that forgot to be turned off after the turn was made but if you want to talk Now's the Time uh is there anybody else who wants to make a public comment are you there yes yes Galaxy Tab I'm assuming that's not your name my name is Dave Rogers hi Mr Rogers how are you Mr Rogers you have three minutes Mr Rogers I don't think he he's unmuted but I don't see him talking well um does anybody have have an objection that if Mr Rogers comes back in before we adjourn that we'll just use that as public comment because he did say hello can you hear me yes you're you're the floor is yours okay um when will we on uh uh the finance director um the specificity of the the situation who is it where are they coming from how much money we're going to be paying them that's Point number one uh Point number two I have a a real question about the re reorganization of the uh school committee uh with specific regard uh to the uh the chair uh of the of the school committee uh who by the way I have a high regard for but um I understand that that he is I think I it's correct that that he is a a uh member of the uh bargaining committee where he teaches in fact he might even be the president of the of the uh Union and if and if and if that's the case then i' just like an explanation how how can he be sitting on the school committee in lunenberg and a member of uh the um uh the Union uh the last question I have is with specific regard to Dr Livingston and de Leo um who really impressed me uh how long will they be associated with the school how much are we paying them what's the financial implication here and just a a general uh outline of that if I could get some uh update on that I'd be uh be pleased thank you so much um just quickly and I know this is not question and answer but I I wanted to make sure that this was clear to people who are watching and to Mr Rogers the issue about Brian being a union member was brought up at the last meeting uh it was discussed I think the understanding that he is the president of the Union is not correct and so um the rules have always been in my understanding is it's done this way in other states as well having practice in New Hampshire and and represented me unions in New Hampshire that as long as you are not a member of the Union in that school district you can still be a member of the school committee um the other questions about the finance director I know that decision was made in the spring and in terms of the pay um Dr uh Burnham H can would you be able to provide that information so that we could you know like have a a list or an email so that if we have this come up at the next meeting we can just say here's this information I don't remember exactly when she was hired um and I don't remember exactly what her salary was but we had a discussion and the same thing with uh Deo and Livingston so I'm not sure was there a question relative to our new Finance director that we hired because I thought that the question was related to the service that we have uh contract had three questions the first one my understanding was about who's the finance director when she was hired and how much she's making my the second was about the chair who he held in high regard but was concerned about his membership in the union and whether or not he was the president of the Union of the school he was at and then the third question was uh he was impressed with Mr Deo or uh Dr Deo and uh Dr Livingston and he wanted to know how long they were going to stay on and how much they were going to be paid and I know to take precise notes because Mr Rogers questions are always precise okay well then we'll start with uh the financial services that we've contracted uh Dr Livingston and Dr Deo they are part of uh a group called TMS uh we posted uh requested uh uh quotes for this service um back in January when our first hired candidate to fill the vacant position of finance director um was was backing out of of her uh appointment here um we posted and um awarded the contract to TMS for the months uh to begin uh February 1st through June 30th believe it was approximately 31,000 uh for their services in supporting us in our finance office um relative to how long will they be staying on I that has not yet been determined but I've been having conversations with the president of TMS relative to a two-month uh guaranteed transition potentially a third month depending on how things go and I've asked that they uh stay on to complete the endof year report for FY 24 since they now know all the ins and outs of where all of our budget line fell um it it'd be a much easier task for them to take on than a brand new uh director coming in July 1 so um none of that has been decided at this point I haven't uh gotten any uh contract or proposals for their continuation um as I said their their service was due to end uh June 30th um but it's my intention that we'll keep them on the transition to help facilitate that transition since there's been still so much uh if backlog to be to be done even at Town Hall um relative to the hiring um she is due to begin uh next week her contract starts July 1 it's a three-year contract and next year she will be making $150,000 one want to last budget question if I could um I I saw a spreadsheet and the last two years of of uh your um situation um superintendent is that they they were uh vacant and it says TBD which means I think to be determined what's the status of that so I'm assuming that you're talking about the salary for the last two years of my contract exactly um it's budgeted my my salary is in the fy2 budget it will be exactly the same as it was in fy2 24 okay Dr Burnham took Dr Burnham took no raise last this this next year okay thank you so much all right um is there anybody else that wants to make a comment I am glad that the first time I was running the the meeting Mr comments his comments are always challenging and I'm grateful for it so uh let's see we have one last agenda item um so if I could Mr chair um for public comment that is the next um item I I did have those school committee questions that I wanted to uh go through very very quickly um so one of the questions was uh requesting a a running list of Staff again that's a quarterly budget report a Personnel report we will get back to those quarterly reports you had one this evening um there was a request to reexamine our policy as it pertains to school bus hiring uh and drivers um we do not have any part of hiring the school bus drivers uh the bus company responsible for hiring and training all of the bus drivers including record checks for all of those employees um so that is not our our perview um there was uh some reference along with the question to um a a problem incident uh bus driver um and the way they handled a student we do uh that is a very infrequent event that happens um but occasionally we provide specialized training for bus drivers when we have students that have behavioral challenges we our bcbas will provide training for the the drivers so that they have some better strategies and how to more effectively deal with that individual student based on what we know of the student what and what works well for the student um relative to the budget there was a question as to whether or not um my attendance at the superintendent conference in July was budgeted there is money in the budget um there was a question relative to would the Middle School continue to use I um that's sort of a a curriculum question as well that's an ongoing discussion internally with teachers administrators and the curriculum leaders um but that money is in the budget uh there was a question asked to whether or not we would be dropping EXL the platform um because we did drop it as part of a needs based budget it is still budgeted however um we'll be taking a look at that um as well but uh since we have the funding for it we will likely be looking to keep that at the middle school and high school uh for next year um a question about the uh cost for class dojo is no cost to us um a question about Outsourcing landscaping and what do they do and why can't we do it ourselves um whether or not we can cost share on this with the town um when we solicit bids we we request quotes on this um it's not U such a high price contract that it needs elaborate uh bidding process however um the the landscape that we contract specifically and we talked about this during the budget specifically take care of our Playing Fields that's all they do and we contract that out because the playing fields are supposed to be maintained at a certain level for different sports and it's much easier for for an Outsource to handle just that piece of it so in that regard that that's why we're not doing it ourselves we don't have the time to to dedicate that level of attention to the playing surfaces um and it really is not an appropriate cost share uh with the town and um a question as to whether or not it was uh we felt it was a reasonable U price when we bid and um we do they they do this work for us in the fall as well as in the spring um who's paying for the electricity usage uh that comes at um the hands of the food pantry at TCP um that is not a school department um program and the school department budget um nor any of our uh revolving accounts uh fund or pay for the electric bill that comes with the food pantry um there were many questions relative to sort of day-to-day operation Rel relative to facilities who's responsible for booking the use of TCP who carries the liability insurance um that's the town the the space is booked uh through the town facilities department and the town has the liability uh is the food pantry part of the school side of things or is it a town um the food pantry is not in any way connected to the school department programming um are we cleaning the food pantry with our custodians our custodian who was a part-time custodian at TCP does clean the whole building all of the areas that are used currently our part-time custodian at TCP has been reassigned over to the middle high school because we are so short staffed at the Middle High School um So currently there is no custodian at TCP um who's taking care of the lawn out in front of TCP and to the side of the building that is our school department maintenance and grounds team that takes care of that and we also take care of and Main maintain repair the uh Kids Kingdom Playground as well there was uh question around TCP bathrooms um no running water um concern that staff also had this concern um I was not made aware by any staff in the building that there was not running water in in the bathrooms that were being used either by our students or our staff that said this is a town facility there is a town facility department they would be responsible for it but I can tell you that what what our maintenance folks are taking a quick look at is that there are sensors in the faucets the water automatically comes on when the hands are in the right position sometimes the batteries die and it's a battery replacement that needs to happen so we're we're taking a quick look at that to see if that's um the situation there were questions relative to dat the bathroom yet is there running water in those bathrooms yet I have not I have not looked at that we do not have any students in in the building at this point either for extended day or for Ace Program and I'm not hearing this as an issue with with the staff that work in the building um there's another category of dayto day that I'll kind of put with uh scheduling and to some extent curriculum um relative to parent complaints about Library usage um and that one parent has had conversations with Mr santry this is where I will remind the the school committee and parents who might be watching uh this meeting now or at some point in the future please refer parents to the chain of communication if a parent has an issue they need need to start with the the person who has the authority closest to the problem sometimes that's a classroom teacher in this case Mr santry when people are not satisfied with what they're hearing from that level they need to move to the next level the next level in this case is me not the school committee so we have an a whole document that outlines the kinds of questions or problems parents may have and who they should start with and who is next Who's Next who's next so please encourage people that bring concerns to you to go back through the chain of communication and they really do need to speak to me before they get to you unless of course they have spoken to me and they're not happy with something that I have responded for them um how often does each grade visit the library um I can tell you that I know for sure that there's one Ela teacher of the sixth grade that takes her class several times during the week um are there high school students using the library yes high school students are in the library all the time uh that's likely due to the proximity of to the of the library to the high school wing of the building um additionally students at the high school level have a little bit more flexibility um uh to go in during uh study periods or uh advisory blocks and so on and so forth um how will we utilizing the library for the Middle School the library is used to teach one Middle School enrichment uh rotation for the seventh grade it's also a space where um developmental design uh for the Middle School uh those those classes meet there um the high school advisories meet there um and high School teachers will often take classes down to the library to conduct research and work on other projects do we keep the library open uh for accreditation purposes um it's a factor for sure but it's not the sole reason that we keep a library open um is there a reason it's not being used regularly for the Middle School um that really comes down to a scheduling um structure inside the high school um that's something certainly that the high school administration can take a look at and they can revisit the schedule uh and potentially look to increase classes rotation down to the library there were questions relative to curriculum implementation again this is kind of an operations uh question um the library issue ties back to a common complaint about uh from parents about amplify and the lack of physical books um again we've we've addressed this a couple of times um we do have physical books we do and they are available for use at the grade level we also have paper editions of amplify materials as well so it's not all necessarily strictly limited to screen um I want to remind everyone this was the first year of implementation of a brand new curriculum we have just like we did with the implementation at the K5 level we worked with teachers we common planed time with teachers we mapped out the execution of the curriculum for this year we asked people to execute with some Fidelity so that they all had common experience for the students but also common experience as teachers with the curriculum and this is how curriculum works all the time they will now revisit the experience of the first year of implementation from their lens and what worked and what didn't work as well as their perspective and what they heard from students as to what worked well for students and what didn't work well for students and in year two they will make adjustments they will reflect again at the end of year two they will make adjustments again in year three just like the K to 5 is doing again there will be more adjustments in year three implementation of the curriculum it's the nature of curriculum it is in constant reflection revision execution reflection revision execution so there's there's some misunderstanding I think around this curriculum um it is not strictly an online curriculum and I want to remind everyone we went through a process and teachers piloted different programs and teachers teachers unanimously selected this program for implementation and the school committee approved it so please parents students school committee members please be patient it's a process it's a cycle that teachers and curriculum leaders go through all the time this is the norm so again it's a work in progress um day-to-day operations relative to communication the word commencement was spelled wrong um uh I I understand that this is mortifying um there's a perception that this conveys that we maybe are not well equipped to educate the children of lunenberg um this was a typo it was a mistake it was a mistake that was caught corrected um the publisher the the print did not not send a proof back had the proof come back before they were all printed it would have been caught and corrected this was an honest mistake and I just want to call to people's attention you've got limited staff here wearing multiple hats during very busy times of the year people who are working well beyond their normal eight hour workday when people are trying to meet deadlines working over time mistakes are going to happen um the staffer who did not catch this has apologized I'm I'm not sure what more as the the primary leader of this District that you would want me to do in a situation where somebody made a mistake that was not caught um relative to emails and new newsletters with attachments and links and how that's you know not ideal we have already addressed this as well there are some limitations with school messenger and the ways in which this platform can work um I do think it's still better than a a very lengthy email Emil and we do even with school me messenger have a limitation on how long an email can be so while this may not be ideal and preferred for everyone we don't seem to have as many concerns about lack of communication as we maybe once did when I first got into the district there's not going to be any any mode of communication any one platform that is going to be perfect matched to meet the preferences of the recipients of the information there's nothing that we can individualize to that level at this time we're always on the lookout for something that's better but but there are limitations with what we work with currently so it's not that that feedback hasn't been heard we have limitations um there was a question relative to curriculum and the Lunenburg cultural Council um apparently they were before the select board a week ago promoting an upcoming fundraiser um for continuing the school programming that was funded this past year through ARA money that was that artist and residence program um I was asked to provide background that might help the committee understand the nature of of the relationship with the council um and how we are are engaged um with respect to fundraising and any curriculum involvement um we as the school department have not been involved in any ongoing conversations uh about fundraising about long-term continuation of the program we do know that they did have remaining funds and there are two artists that are booked to come in in the fall um so if there are plans for fundraisers and and maintaining this program more long term we have not been part of that conversation to this point um I will say though that I um was contacted by Mr memy who's a member of a newly formed artist group on Hickory Hills Lake um and he came to meet with me because that group um was aware of the budget disc discussion over the last many months and um they have in the past uh donated their own art pieces for auction as a fundraiser um this year they're talking about doing um a similar uh event potentially in the winter and they would like for some of the proceeds of that auction to go back to the schools for art um but they would like to know how we would like to utilize the funds so I have already had some Outreach to our um art teachers to get their thoughts on if there was a donation of funds that was to be earmarked for art what are some of the ways in which they might like to use that and I'll get that information back to Mr Emy that he can carry back to this group um we will not be um in involved in the event itself uh at this time anyway we're we're just a very lucky recipient of some of the funds that will be raised um there was another question relative to the academic purpose of the library um and we can tell you that it is a quiet place to read study for exams get homework completed take numerous high stake exams like PSATs AP exams MC exams and it's also a place where research classes are are taught at the middle school level as well as high school teachers taking their students down to um to learn how to do research as well um there were a couple of other things that were more confidential uh that I can't really uh address in a public comment but um I thought you know these questions uh rather than information going back to one member um this general information these questions and and responses might be beneficial for all members to have um so thank you for affording me the time at the end of the meeting to Rattle through some of the questions and the the responses um and information that's provided uh hopefully it's helpful thank you very much Dr B thank you for responding in a lightning round fashion to questions some of which were very important some of which were um not so important I'm just going to be candid I think the spelling error is something everybody in that does things can relate to [Music] um is there anything else we need to do I think we have reports does anybody have a report they want to go through and talk about or recognizing that it's 9:2 we have an executive session do we want to just move quickly we can put the report off it's just the fincom report up to you uh I would prefer to move quickly all right uh all right um at this point we' have completed the agenda and I am looking oh wait topics for future discussion anybody have anything they want to put on an agenda for later I would just say that we need to put the um the discussion of Finance the workshop for a later meeting but other than that so that's already in the works I sent an email requesting school committee members give me their availability July and August so that I can work with the team that will come in and provide that workshop for you as soon as I have um dates that work for everybody I'll offer those to the the Consultants so that they can uh let me know what what they can make work and we'll post that meeting um eventually not now but probably sometime next year I'd like to put on the agenda it's us taking a look at the use of uh cell phones students using cell phones and schools and I mentioned this because of an interview I'd seen with gentleman named Jonathan height who wrote a book called The anxious generation I'm not 100% convinced it's it's pure moral panic I mean we get this every 20 years when something new happens but I'd at least like to have a discussion with Educators about it and talk to people but that's it Laur you have anything you want to put on the agenda for later no all right uh at this point I'll take a a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn to Executive session and or and then adjourn to enter executive session and then adjourn after second that motion roll call Mrs bzowski yes ASO yes Mr SCH yes thank you all [Music] my intent was not to call out the person who made the spelling mistake publicly I didn't want to I just wanted to know going forward what we could change so next year we don't end up with this again because I talked to