okay I think that I'm going to um call the meeting to order could I have a motion to adopt remote participation as written in our agenda please so moved okay roll call vote well Pim is not here so we start with um Erica yeah Erica Elie Bolton yes Steve Leo conquered yes Sharon must Lexington yes Jeff stanan yes alcas Joe yes okay very good uh Julie did we have any public comments please submitted we do not Jeff okay very good bring us to the consent agenda the consent agenda is only I believe um uh one grant that was detailed in the agenda or in the packet so is there a motion to accept the monthly Grant as in the packet second very good any discussion on that monthly Grant pretty straightforward so Erica Erica LZ Bolton yes Steve Leo conquered yes Sharon must Lexington yes Jeff stolin need him yes alaso yes very good brings us to the chair's report report um are there any particular notes for the good of the organization there's Pam hi Pam hello sorry I'm late I have one for the good of the organization uh it is to thank Alice DeLuca for being cheered our last meeting um for those of you who don't know uh Alice was chair for a number of years during some of the most challenging times to be chair in the history of the school committee so she is um most expert in that okay and thank you Alice for doing that it was and and uh Charlene has joined us very good Pam has a comment um I have a thank you as well I want to um thank Kevin for coming and sitting through a very very long act in town meeting and doing a fantastic presentation and so it went well and I really appreciate it thank you actually from uh now that you brought that up from the members from the membership I've heard many comments about um Kevin and Nikki at Town meetings that basically follow the same path that you just mentioned Pam and many school committee members actually brought that to my attention so it was a very successful uh town meeting season from our point of view and part of that was due to to the preparation of um Kevin Nikki and actually um stepen the fincom was very useful in that as well so thank you all I think we'll talk a little bit about that a little bit later next I'd like to bring us up to a discussion one of our long-term Minute Man favorite topics the minutes so I do have a few comments for you on the minutes oh let me Al remind you that you got a um a motion uh actually an update from Julia that our June 11th and June 23 meetings will be in person okay okay so um the minutes have been a uh a pain point of our school committee for many many years and we're not the only one and there are a lot of reasons for this one reason is uh changes in the open meeting law over time uh another one is that how how long does it take to drive there we could probably sneak in um yeah so I think Kristen Patterson you are not on mute so um we've gone through many many variations of methodologies of creating minutes and many different people who are working on it and we are are currently in a time in which the minutes are taking so long to produce and so long to uh for us to verify that means that we you know have to read them and find errors and bring to people's attention and vote on them that it is is in my opinion becoming um not a practical thing to do so what I have what I've done is informally I've uh actually so what of the goals for the O the the U minutes are uh of course it meets the um the needs of the open meeting law they present reasonable details and flavor of meeting and it's possible to create and review them in a reasonable time frame that's what we like to do for our minute that they're legal they give us the flavor of the meeting and we don't waste an enormous amount of time creating them and then revising them and what you don't know behind the scenes is that on some of the minutes especially in the more complicated meetings it could take four or eight hours of work to produce what we've been producing that's just not um possible to move forward so what I did informally is I said I think I I'd like to take this on you know uh this year and get it to a point where uh we can keep up to date with our minutes and the workload is not um orous on anybody either our record quter Julia whoever is the secretary or the school committee as a whole so what I've done informally is I've had a few inperson meetings with Julia that were very valuable and we spent a long time discussing um a strategy for creating minutes that meet that those goals now one way to meet the is legal goal is to Simply give a Verbatim transcript of everything that is happened and we've done that occasionally and those verbatim transcripts can go for five or 10 or 15 pages and that's just not working out for us uh I think that if you have minutes that are 10 pages long and you're reviewing them you're not really going to focus on them sufficiently to find the things that we really should be uh improving on them so what we've done uh Jullian eyes we've come up with some draft guidelines for creating the minutes I say draft because they got a long way to go and what we did is we took two sets of minutes and uh Julia applied the guidelines in the draft in in a first um attempt to do that and we looked at it and we had our legal counsel Peter suers involved in this so we did a single draft of those two sets of minutes one of which you're going to see during our executive session today and we sent him to Peter and he gave us quite a a long list of comments and we took his comments and we revised the guidelines and we did a second draft of those minutes following the guidelines and um he approved of our second draft and uh Julie if I could share my screen please certainly I would like to show you uh the guidelines they really aren't uh quite ready for show and tell but I'll show them to you anyways if I can find them I think this is it okay uh can you see that yep okay so it's just you know one page and I'm not going to read it out loud you can read it it gives the motiv for doing this uh the minute should include the top part is all the technical stuff right then comes the hard part the hard part is how much is a decision and how much detail to give on everything that happens during a meeting and they range from just mentioning the name of the topic all the way to doing things for bettim so you have to find what is The Sweet Spot of doing that and so this is an early draft of trying to put in writing what should be included in the minutes to keep them um legal and short and the hard part is taking a discussion a key discussion and summarizing it without a lot of extra verb or Pages or too many unnecessary details so this is the uh the first draft and one of the comments that Peter made when I had a discussion with him about how detailed will we not need to be I'm really not having a a a good grasp of that and what he said is that the truth is that this really is an art more than a science and some people over time get very good at it but there's a lot of controver University and a lot of people are having the same sort of discussions that we're having okay so um I don't think I need to share my screen anymore so uh got a long way to go and uh what I what I like to continue doing is keep this a little bit [Music] informal um you're going to see one set of minutes tonight which we are going to discuss in during executive session and do a few more using these guidelines and revise the guidelines and eventually possibly create a a minute subcommittee to uh finalize guidelines and you know to to take everybody's comments into consideration to get to the point where we will just have written guidelines uh moving forward instead of just uh throwing it in people's lap and say well you know do it you think and then you know the superintendent may have their opinion and the school committee may have their opinion and they're caught in the middle of it which has happened in the past so that is uh what I've been working on Julie has been very helpful um our legal council has been helpful and do you have any overall questions on uh what we uh hope to do with this and how it will um hopefully solve a big problem that I foresee chair having you know to kind of oversee all this stuff any kind of questions or comments Alice that was just the executive session minutes that you were talking about there right that document we're starting with the executive session but real reality when we get to the full minutes they won't be much different the guidelines won't be much different because the same rules applies you want them to be um uh legal detailed enough to give you you a flavor of what happened but not verbatim with a lot of extra pages and words that you have to read through and finding that um Middle Ground is very challenging and will require a lot of practice to do and you'll see one example of that tonight any the other questions or comments about what we're trying to do here okay now uh the the the person who is responsible of course for the minutes is the is the secretary and um Erica has has been our secretary but she's going to be stepping down from that position and Erica would you like to share with the membership why that is yes thanks so um yeah I did suffer a concussion that I'm recovering from which is why my screen is off um and it has been off for the past several meetings for those of you that have been wondering um but the job of secretary um as Jeff has described it it does involve quite a bit of reading and writing editing video watching and at this point um it just for the sake of my recovery it's better for me to step down and um let someone else do it especially since over the next few months until um uh you know the end of the current term terms there's going to be an extra amount of work because we're trying to develop guidelines and there may be additional drafts being done just to see what they look like so I knew that um that Erica had had a concussion I've seen a lot of people trying to recover from concussions so that's why um she has decided to step down as secretary and that's why you have the item in your agenda election of Officer to point in Trum secretary to fulfill the remainder of um Erica's term I'm going to suggest somebody for this I'm going to suggest Charlene and one of the reasons I want to suggest her is her legal background has become very useful uh in uh developing the guidelines for the minutes um and communicating with our legal council as is necessary so if there no more questions or comments on the discussion of uh minutes I would like to move on to the election of an interim secretary Alice I'd like to move that we appoint Charlene cabal as the interim Secretary of the school committee do I have a second okay very good um any other nominees for the very fun position of secretary just I have a question Jeff is Charlene okay with this yes I I was I was asked if I would be willing so I'm all right with it okay the sales job Jeff says gab about doing the doing the job I just was curious yeah I wouldn't I would um be very honest of what's involved in doing this and I we had a fairly long conversation um and she is willing to do it any other comments or questions no very well then um roll call vote Excuse me pamon yes um Erica oie and thank you Charlene for stepping up yes Bolton Steve will do concer yes yes Charlene you do vote can vote for yourself Charlene Lancaster yes Sharon must Lexington yes I was actually looking for Dober yeah Jeff stolin need him yes I st Gusto yes okay so again thank you Erica for all the work that you put into it I know that it was it was quite a bit and thank you Charlene for taking over for interm interum secretary do you have any comments I actually wanted to make one retroactive comment because I wasn't here at the beginning of the meeting because I had another meeting and as you are aware um but I wanted to thank Michelle rendi because she came to the Lancaster town meeting um and I don't know she went to many of them but she came to Lancaster and I really appreciated having her there and Michelle is here so I I know that she heard your comment so thank you Michelle all right very good great thank you all and principal's report Katie what do you have for us great uh thanks get started um so tonight uh river is going to start uh with some of our student reports and then we'll move on to Riley um but before we get started I just want to publicly thank River um as some of you may know river is one of our graduating seniors uh so the time is ticking by uh with River being at Minute Man um so again River just thank you so much for all of your um support with the student reports this year it's been an absolute pleasure to have you at Minute Man we wish you the best of luck in the future um River will be graduating in I'm sure they can tell you how many days um so it'll be very soon so this will actually be River's last school committee meeting um so I'm GNA turn it over uh to River in just a second river is gonna talk about the senior spirit week this week some upcoming graduation and awards night information um and then we'll turn it over to Riley will talk about prom National Honors induction ceremony uh as well so take it away River all right well first off thank you um so as as the year is ending to uh this week is senior spirit week we started off uh Monday with Adam Sandler day um being little copycats of him and then today was beach party where we had the um pona ice truck outside and dunking dunking teachers today for a dollar ball um I unfortunately didn't get one I I got close I got very close to but some teachers were dunked today uh and then tomorrow is country uh versus Country Club I'm I have my country club all set even a golf club I think and uh Thursday Jersey uh Jersey Thursday and we will have a staff versus senior softball game and then Friday we'll end with uh our senior's future whatever they are heading towards will dress up as that um so I got some pictures of an A samler Day couldn't get some for today but yeah and then we have the upcoming graduation and awards night so senior Awards night will be June 6th uh from 5:30 to 8 and this will be when Awards and scholarships will be distributed at mman to seniors and then the graduation is the next day June 7th from 2 to 4 at L Memorial Auditorium and then seniors will arrive at minan before at around 10:30 for some practice and then hop on a bus till that'll be it great um any questions for River on either the uh spirit week or the upcoming graduation or Awards night Alice not really a question just congratulations and I'm sure you're counting down the days and I hope you have a really great time thank you great thanks we'll turn it over to Riley all right for our National Honor Society induction ceremony 24 students were inducted this year until National Honor Society the ceremony took place on May 2nd in the theater uh following a dinner in the Paul rer room huge thanks to culinary for making such a delicious meal for the students and parents it was great um McKenzie kitaki Josh and David who are all students at Minuteman gave speeches on the four main pillars of NHS Mr English and Miss Bard both gave speeches to congratulate the students it was a wonderful night and also many parents and siblings and other family members came to the ceremony to support their children on this big achievement then prom all right so prom took place last Friday on May 10th at Sky Meadow Country Club in nashille New Hampshire there was am amazing views it was a funfilled night with lots of dancing it was amazing uh there's also a photo booth and a photographer so that students could take pictures with friends and also dates and other people at prom there was a buffet style dinner that was served that had salad rolls pasta vegetables and chicken parm we also did prom king and queen for each grade along with Court members sorry I was unable to find some pictures to add to the slide um but our venue was was beautifully decorated and it turned out amazing thanks to the help of staff at Sky Meadow our class advisors Miss cooperthe but also more importantly Miss Bordeaux uh she helped us create um these amazing centerpieces and other decorations for prom and went there beforehand um to help set everything up so big thanks to her and it was a great turnout and it was so much fun great thanks any questions for Riley about prom or the National Honor Society just one question on Prom how many uh students participated this year about um well I know for sure that we sold over 247 tickets I can give you the answer on that you know we were like two tickets away from being sold out so that's like around 26860 and that was a junior senior prom right both um class to 10 well that's just great that's wonderful any other questions great well thank you Riley and river we appreciate it uh next I'm going to turn it over to Christina Jen uh who is one of our skills USA advisers me thank you very much for having us tonight so um we have two of our skills USA officers here today who are also gold medal winners so they're going to do most of the talking and then uh kick it back to me at the very end so we have Kaki and Aaron I don't know who's gonna start but take it away hi um my name is ky I'm a junior in environmental science I'm also serving as this year's president of skills USA and I was a gold medalist for career pathway egg and natural resources so as you can see we had 54 competitors in 31 out of the 110 competitions um but more importantly and in addition to that we had eight gold medalists and which comprises of around 17 students because we had a couple of Team events um we also had three silver medalling teams three bronze teams and then we also got a state officer elected which is really exciting um I myself was part of a team that won Gold in career Pathways which is really exciting because um Aon we'll talk about this later we kind of have a legacy in it but also career Pathways is a really good way for shops like environmental science to show off what we do because we don't have a technical competition so um just like showing how excellent we are in our field is super exciting especially at the state level hi I'm Aron Goodwin I'm the media Specialist of our chapter and I me and my team won the career path showcase for art and Communications and just some special shoutouts from the states um we had every career path showcase team from miniman earned a medal um the career path showcase natural resources and agriculture team for Minuteman one gold for the fourth year in a row and every student from biotechnology and advanced manufacturing program who competed at States earned a medal on top of that minut man won the first ever biotechnology quiz Bowl in Massachusetts freshman Rishi Dan D Francisco beat 29 um other students at the related math technical competition most of those people most likely older than him and Karly Sanders won two gold medals at States for Action skills and t-shirt design just realized I started talking muted sorry um so now we're on to Nationals we're getting really excited about that like I said both Kaki and Aaron are part of gold winning career path showcase teams so we have a total of 12 students advancing on to Nationals in Georgia uh we're taking four advisors to chaperon um I believe since we don't have a uh vote schedule this month that you'll see us again next month to ask for formal per uh permission to take the students to Nationals um and we just wanted to give a heads up that we are working with the business office Nikki Andra has been so awesome in trying to help us figure out um where money can come from um how to adjust we've raised a bunch of money we did a double good popcorn fundraiser that was really lucrative um our my school Buck does a pickle juice donation um type fundraiser and we had really good luck with that as well uh we have two more fundraisers on the books so we're working on trying to offset that cost c as best we can but minute man has been incredibly supportive um and proactive in meeting with us to look at what it's going to cost to send these students and hopefully helped us to fund this experience for those the those 12 students that are coming with us um so the main fundraiser that we're looking at going forward is um a film screening of inundation district and this is an environmental film that is um very it pertains very well to the career path showcase project for natural resources and agriculture um so we are looking to screen that to the public charge for admissions we'll do some concessions uh tentatively scheduled for May 31st and we're hoping that that will bring in some money not only to offset the cost but it's also another Community collaboration and Industry partner um experience that our students can then add to their project to take on to actions so as always we just what is a what is a pickle juice fundraiser so my school bucks of the name of the the company where um it's how our students uh pay for certain things so it's it's the system that's set up for lunches and things like that they've changed their name to pickle juice so uh when we put up the fundraiser it comes up as pickle juice which is not sure where they came up with that it's enjoyable but it's an interesting choice they're not drinking jars of pickle juice as well no and that's the first thing that comes to mind I will say we were all like that's really what they're going with Okay um so we just want to thank the school committee again as we did before we went to States thank you for uh always supporting us in this endeavor uh my co-advisors Emily cotwall and Denise D osia are so thankful for all of the support that we get from the school and the school committee um to help students that are super dedicated both Aon and kaky worked incredibly hard all the way through States and um we're really proud to see these kids move on to the next step so thank you for everything you do that makes what we do possible comments or questions Alice good luck at uh Nationals thank you you so much all right right um so we had a lot of our uh upcoming events uh shared by the students already but there's two more I just want to hit on um so we had our rotary uh Club scholarship lunch uh so this happened uh last Monday um two of our guidance counselors were able to go with our students which is great um the criteria for the scholarship was based on grades financial needs extracurricular activities and community service so we had three Minuteman uh seniors Reed the scholarships you'll see a lot more students in the picture because we also invite students from minute man um sorry from Lexington Christian Academy and also Lexington High School so it's nice to have kind of three of the Le the Lexington based high schools um all together at Minute Man to kind of showcase our school which has always been nice um so Emma Kate from environmental um she received a scholarship um Arya D Francesco also received a scholarship and then Keith um Palmer porier um also received a scholarship so we've had a great um partnership with rotary over the past couple of years um as River had mentioned we had a dunk tank there today um in the Rotary Club it sponsors the dunk tank for us which we use as a fundraiser uh this year the fundraiser went towards um as ALS um funds to collect for our community service group which was really nice so it's been really great working with the Rotary Club they've been super helpful in a huge partner for us and they always do well for our students um able to get them some extra money for their post-secondary claims uh which has been great and then uh just our senior sign out I couldn't find a better picture than uh my friend Sonic the Hedgehog here um so they are ready to go um our seniors um so this week started kind of the senior sign out procedures um so they conduct exit interviews up in guidance this week uh Where We Gather their contact information they talk about their future plans they give us some feedback on their experience at Minuteman um they also do a really nice thing where they uh give the name of a staff member who made a really big impression or just wanted to thank um at the end of their High School careers and we share those out with the teachers which is always nice to see um May 20th they'll be doing their academic sign out so they make sure their grades are all in order and that they return all their materials and supplies um May 21st and 22nd are kind of funky days because they're mcast days and then may 23d is when we have their Career and Technical education majors in their final sign out so their shop teachers will sign them out that they've turned in all their materials they've completed their senior project they've done with their senior portfolio uh they go to the gym they get signed up with the athletic director the library the IT department also the nurse um then their very last stop of the day um is their guidance counselor where they receive their cap and gown uh which is always exciting to then bring back um when they come back the following week for graduation practice uh so that's kind of wrapping up gonna be wrapping up with our seniors next week uh which is kind of crazy to think about but they're very excited to start the process um any questions on the senior sign out or the scholarship Alice um do the senior portfolios these days turn out to be virtual or are they paper so right now our senior portfolios are virtual um they're stored in one notee notebooks but after our seniors graduate they're all um stored in Adobe um they have a online portfolio uh which is really cool um so the seniors can have it when they graduate they're easily um accessible and easy to share with future employers uh which is really nice we did do the paper version for years and then just realized that it just wasn't worth the time it wasn't the greatest storage system either so this Way kids can easily find letters of rack they can find that copy their resume um all that type of stuff is available right at their fingertips to send off thank you all right um that's the end of the principal report okay just want one comment um uh so it is it is terrifying to me that we are in the middle of May and graduation is only a few weeks away now school committee members you did get a notice about your invitation to attend graduation and what we do as school committee members as we rotate and stand up there and we get to hand out the diplomas and if you have not done that it is uh a quite an experience uh going to a Minuteman graduation I would say that Minuteman graduations are the best that I've seen in any of the high schools I've or basically colleges uh that I've been into uh it's a combination of how they run them and the attitude of the kids and the relatively small class size so most graduation ceremonies when I was a teacher or doing other things I you know dreaded going to but the Minuteman one is a kick and if you have not done at school committee members to hand out the diplomas I would advise you uh this year or next year or whatever to be one of the people who accept that invitation and go on the stage and hand help hand out the diplomas I'm sure that anybody who's been there doing that would Ellice and others would say the exact same thing and Pam and Steve and all the others who have done it right okay great so thank you very much for your report and that brings us to the fun of Finance report Steve alrighty um finance committee met last Thursday the uh the seventh um kind of later than usual but staff was as already talked about hopping around to nine Town meetings including I I think like five last week or something like that so uh uh we did receive a uh update on our town meetings which I know you guys are going to hear in a couple minutes um and you'll also uh uh will receive a presentation on the audit um uh the finance committee reviewed kind of a one pager uh done by our auditor to kind of try to summarize all those pages in an audit as to as to what's important what what you should know so uh that's in your packet as well um we also uh reviewed the third quarter uh Bank Reconciliation Report and everything looks uh fine and is in terms to all our all our bank accounts um one thing uh the finance committee is going to um uh kind of focus on over the summer is uh looking at uh trying to get um uh a management firm for our oped trust fund we we had interviewed some firms in the winter but with the budget and what not uh we did not put out an RFP so we're going to be working on that um uh during the summer months and hopefully come up with the uh somebody who can uh get a good uh bang for our buck on our OPB uh OPB funds um so that pretty much concludes my report I don't know who's going to give the town meeting update and then obviously we'll have the the audit report by our auditor scottt McIntyre well with the permission of the school committee I would like to take the audit report out of order and do that next and we can chat all we want to about how the town budgets went if there's no objection then I will assume unanimous content consent and I will introduce Scott McIntyre our auditor and I think he has mostly good news for us this year uh good evening um thank you very much uh Jeff Scott McIntyre partner with with Markham the uh independent Auditors for the for the school district um and as was mentioned just a few minutes ago um we met with the finance subcommittee about a month ago and walked through a number of the reports in a fair amount of detail and I also think I heard the finance committee chair say included in your package was a kind of a one-page summary uh it's something we put together and honestly we'll probably use it a lot going forward um and really that's what I'm going to focus on tonight I I'm going to share my screen uh with permission of of of the chair uh just to go over one page but I think it's really important to understand what the documents what our deliverables are to you and what each of them each of them says um there really four pieces of to the to the uh deliverables that we provided based on the audits that we performed the first one is what we call our governance letter and that is required communication when I say required it's required by our Professional Standards that tells you that we followed generally accepted auditing standards as promulgated by um the a aicpa as well as which is the American Institute of certified public accountants pardon me for the U acronyms as well as um generally accepted government auditing standards there are some similarities there are a lot of similarities between the two standards but there are some differences that we must adhere to uh also in that communication we talk with you about risk that we identified we talked about the estimates that are included in the financial statements are the fact that we're independent of you um and something relatively new to to the governance letter is speaking with you about uh non- audit Services um you know they are they are minut man's financial statements but we assisted the school district as we do with virtually every school district in city and town that we work with in in the Commonwealth of mass and throughout New England we actually help with the preparation of the financial statements but our Professional Standards require that I communicate that to you as a non- audit service school district has the skills knowledge and expertise to do it it just sort of has become in in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts uh very common for the audit firms to assist our clients with that process uh that that communication Al also goes on to tell you that uh there were no difficulties that we encountered during the course of our audit and that there were no significant audit adjustments as a result of the work that we performed um I think the second report that I went through in detail with the financial statements with with this finance committee is is the financial statements and um I'm GNA share my screen for a second if that's okay and while I get there sorry for the delay folks had to find the right screen to share with you um you know I'm not I'm I'm not going to walk through the opinion it starts on on page one but that really is the highlight and as we reviewed with the finance committee about a month ago our opinion is what is known as a clean or technically it's called an unmodified opinion uh there are no modifications to your financial statements and being prepared in accordance with gap with the finance subcommittee I talked about the long-term perspective financial statements mostly that's about uh your pension liability a year ago it was a pension asset this year it's a pension liability ility and your and your opep asset the focus though that most people turn to uh is is is print page 14 or PDF page 16 it's the First Column of numbers here and it's the general fund which is of course the the chief operating fund and most readers are going to instantaneously focus on the third number up in the bottom you have a total fund balance and liability there so the unassigned fund balance is the third number up from the bottom uh with the June 30 2023 account balance of 2 million 2.2 almost $2.3 million it's important to note that uh that's an increase of almost a million dollars over June 30 2022 and that increase was driven by positive budgetary results that were a little bit softened by um some end that were used for for fiscal year 24 so the the $2.2 million represents about 8% which I think that came down in early fiscal year 24 uh but it certainly shows a strong balance sheet for the for the school district as of June 30 2023 um I'm going to pause with the sharing of the screen and go back to sort of the outline that um we prepared and I believe are are part of the packages uh the the third document is is what we call your single audit report as a recipient of of federal grants and and one who expends federal grants Professional Standards require that we report on two issues uh there is two reports in what I call the single audit report the first is required by generally accepted government auditing standards and that report requires us to report to the school committee any significant deficiencies or material weaknesses in your internal control structure and I'm very happy to report as you can see in the detail of of of the report we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies as a result of our work the second report in there uh is required uniform guidance uniform guidance uh is really uh it's it's the policies and procedures and the administration how you administer the expenditures of your federal Awards and again Professional Standards require that we uh evaluate the internal controls and test your compliance with uh the Office of Management and budgets their their uniform guidance and like this the the yellow like the internal control report uh our report uh required by uniform guidance uh reads that we did not identify any material weaknesses or significant deficiencies in your internal control over compliance of federal grants nor did we find any compliance any areas where you were not in compliance with f federal grants uh so again a good report and the the two reports included in what I generally generally refer to as the single a report and in the last of the deliverables that we provided to to the school district was our end of the year report this is technically called in in in auditor auditor speak it's called an agreed upon procedures that's I just wanted to share that with you um that's probably not all that important uh but Ma the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and secondary education has a compliance supplement for audit firms to go through any organization like minute man or someone mentioned the town of Lexington earlier the town of Lexington's school department would go through this where we would evaluate uh the preparation and the internal controls surrounding the preparation of your end of the year year report there are approximately 22 or 23 um that's not a precise number compliant steps that we need to go to to evaluate the completeness and accuracy of the end of the year report that is of course sent to sent to desie and there some incredible statistics in there um and like the balance of the reports I've talked about tonight uh we found that the preparation of the Year June 30 2023 end of the year report we did not find any any compliance issues with that so our agreed upon procedures is that you did what you were supposed to do in the preparation of of of that report um that's a that's a really fast overview um I have all I have essentially all the reports on a monitor here if the anyone in the committee would like me to go into further detail I went into a you know quite a bit more detail with the finance subcommittee so I wanted to keep it a little bit brief tonight but if you have questions or would like me to evaluate a particular page of the financial statements in more Det detail I will be happy to try to do so with that I'll turn it back to the chair comments and questions members Alice my my question is how often do you find that there are significant weaknesses or um material weaknesses sorry or significant deficiencies or um not clean audits like I'm very proud of our business office for having this this record and I just was curious like is it common to find problems um we we find them occasionally um you know the evaluation of internal controls was over a period of time um and there hasn't been a lot of turnover in the finance area in a couple of years at minute man but oftentimes when organizations um have turnover in key key positions uh that's when there can be some some breakdown controls um again I'm not predicting that but based on my experience that's what I see that in general I've been doing audits in the Commonwealth for a awfully long time many years ago they you know significant deficiencies and material weaknesses were really quite common but in the past decade at least maybe a little bit longer than that as accounting systems have matured um and and um and systems have just gotten better and there's been more awareness towards the importance of internal controls uh they the volume of significant deficiencies or material weaknesses has certainly come down but and again I'm not it's just based on experience um watch if there was ever turnover that's when you really need to make sure that your internal controls stay strong thank you that was very informative wonder if superintendent Mahoney would like to comment a little bit on um uh the quality of our our audits when he first arrived well uh thank you Mr chair we did have some areas that uh we needed to focus on intently um to Scotch point there there was some turnover at the time there and uh it it did require uh significant amount of work with the the then chairman of the finance committee at that time um who was now our chairman but uh fortunately we've been able to turn that corner and I I want to thank Nikki and her staff uh for sustaining that moving forward it's uh I know Nikki puts an awful lot of time in making sure that compliance with all of our internal controls and um and and I just want to publicly acknowledge her um for for her work on this a so um um superintendent Mahoney's being very modest he did a a gang Buster job in in dealing with a new computer system a new auditor and uh the the state of some of our controls when he first arrived here and he he fixed that and um I can tell you that the information we get on the finance committee I'm sure that Steve will agree with me from from um superintendent Mahoney and from Nikki has been really Stellar absolutely um so I would concur with your um uh statements any other questions regarding the um the audit in which we have a a clean letter very well then uh Scott thank you so very much for two very concise and informative presentations thank you have a good evening everyone we look forward to working with you in the future thank you very much all right so uh these are these are good news reports and didn't always used to be interim super oh um um um meeting updates right uh yeah town meeting updates thank you uh Micky are you doing that who's doing that yeah I will if that's um okay I just wanted to um happily report I did include in the packet um that we had eight of our nine member Towns at the time um we hadn't gone to to Stow which was on Saturday so we now have nine of nine unanimously um voted U member towns passing our budget so we have an approved budget um it does only require two-thirds towns but we you know historically in the past have had United Miss support so very happy to report that um you know we've attended the the finance committee and town meetings as requested I'm prepared PowerPoint presentations and um answered questions so um you know thank you for the school committee's um support um of the budget and you know very happy to report that our fy2 budget um is approved right so any comments or questions very good so that effort is now complete after many many months of extremely hard work and uh Communications very good interim superintendent report Kevin Mahoney and I just I note that um superintendent elect Driscoll is not here today she's attending a ceremony uh honoring her son and others so that is why she is not here today so I understand that the principal search process report will actually be given by Mr mahom yeah thank you uh Mr chair um just wanted to update the uh the committee and and the public on where we are with the principal search we um decided to repost and extend the Dead line for uh applicants for for the position until uh Friday the 17th we did go through rounds of interviews and we're uh continuing uh that review it's a very tough uh tough process we've uh looked at and considered a number of really strong candidates um and we're being um very particular about the uh the candidate that we would like to to move forward in this position so we uh our uh principal uh interview search committee uh that handled the first round uh will be um interviewing any of the candidates um that meet the qualifications for the position that being obviously being licensed in experienced in the search committee which did a fabulous job with the first round this is the group that consisted of students staff um uh parents uh the school committee rep uh really did a fabulous job and it it showed that the work that they did when we when we moved candidates through the process they were really well vetted and we we uh we we think that the process works well we U continuing that process next week um there was a second round of interviews with the uh central office group that um we're not going to go through this time around instead when the U when the interview Serv search committee team is interviewing candidates the central office group as well as myself and Heidi will be at the interviews as silent observers if you will so that the finalists that come out of that room will be interviewed directly by myself and in Heidi so um it's moving along and we will keep you posted as the developments warrant that's my recort questions or comments none okay next item I'm gonna ask uh Ain noron to give an update on where we are with our missions and Aon is on mute now she's hearing her screen sorry I wanted to share my screen and then unmute hello thank you everyone for having me today um the last time I was here to share an update with you was 3:15 so almost two months to the day um and we had 175 students who accepted admission through our IND District towns we are now two months later um and as we you know had suspected we are almost um at our new family and student orientation this Saturday we have had some drop off um so we are currently at 163 for our current in District students um we have you'll see the Lexington number is highlighted as we were able to offer admission to two late applicants very early on in the process um and so that number did go up there for all offers um they did accept we do have two additional offers that we sent out yesterday to IND District students and I have an interview with somebody tomorrow so there is a you know good chance that the 163 can go up to um you know just even 166 by later this week um and we are going to continue to monitor all of our IND District late applicants as they come in very closely uh that does leave us though with the expectation that we were hoping to really have 185 at the start knowing that 175 would be our day one number as students in the summer tend to withdraw um so we're in the process of completing the application process and offering an additional 20 acceptance letters to those out of District students who completed their applications continued with getting the chapter 74 signed through their Superintendent at their sending districts um so we are continuing that process and hoping to do that to get to the 185 number again knowing that we will be at the 175 for that first day of school we will continue to put a priority to any of our IND District late applicants they will continue to you know go through the process and be offered a seat so that's something that we will continue to monor all summer long we will stay very close to that there was a lot of learnings for me through this process this year especially from a marketing point of view um looking at things differently we had applicants from 10 different private schools which is something that we don't typically Target um and that's something that I'd like to start taking a look at more deeply next year how can we get with to their guidance counselors with brochures how can we get a time to sit and speak with those students who perhaps are in our district we also would like to have more involvement with the middle schools after our openhouse we tend to speak to these families and speak to these students so early on we leave them very excited as many of the principal said to us and then we don't talk to them again and we expect applications to be in February so we've come up with a plan for a few of our districts for coming in at lunchtime setting up a table having some of our student ambassadors with us and really just continuing to have an open conversation with students through the process um we'd like to attend more meetings hosted by the Middle School principles for parents they do a lot of coffee meetings they do one principal does a podcast so we would like to Beyond those we have engaged with the principles about engaging with them as early as the seventh grade parents kind of getting in there explaining to them getting them into our summer program so they can see what we're about really engaging on a longer level uh more presence in any Town function and such as Lexington day it doesn't need to just be admissions driven it's a chance to get our kids out there to show our districts what we're doing and also push Admissions and applications um we want to continue encouraging Shadow Days for students who are unclear if this is the place for them we had a lot of success and a lot of good turnarounds from students who did ask for a shadow J and the students who participated from Minuteman um once again they're just amazing students who want to show what our school can do so they really worked very hard um to show these eighth graders what we're all about um we will be opening applications now that we have fixed them um in mid August so a bit earlier and we would like to push that digitally since we've grown our digital footprint very um large kind of really taken in everything we can do with the district within our districts um on their Facebooks and Instagrams and really grew our community there so that's something that I'm really diligent about pushing this summer um and then promotion through Partnerships such as the bolts and act those Partnerships we have they're renting our buildings they have students who are in District really working with them to make sure we always have you know brochures outside of our door they're in our building and just kind of working with them to push when our open houses Etc um so those are things that we will be starting as really as this summer does anybody have any question Alice uh what is act oh it's the Arlington Children's Theater they're a rental partner and I think saw Sharon's hand up um Erin can you go back a slide to the number of applicants yeah so I was just curious it looks like in many districts all of the oh no I'm sorry so the slot allocation is how many we had and then the offers was how many actually were offered okay I was when I had first looked at it I thought that do had 10 applicants and we only took two but now I realized it was that there's 10 slots and there was only two okay sorry about that thank you that's okay any other questions or comments I'm going to hear more about this I believe in Pam's report a little bit later or at least more on these topics very good eron thank you very much thank you look forward to making some of these improvements and how marketing works it's a very interesting list and um I look forward to that very much thank you next item on our agenda is just a quick update that the committee did here a a report from Pell on the state opportunities act there was a presentation that was made back in March um we filed the uh we filed the paperwork to the uh the application for the U for the uh State Opportunity Act Grant and and that has been accepted by the uh by deese uh it's a 22 page submission if members would like to uh receive a copy of that you can certainly reach out to Julia and you follow up um and if the committee is interested in a more detailed uh follow-up presentation on that kindly advise schedu for a future agenda any comments or questions on this item very good next item is our annual vote um on school choice uh this has to be taken every year by regulation and we have in the past consistently voted not to participate so before you under item D of my reports is the uh is the is the vote being proposed that the committee may want to consider as yes would have somebody like to make the motion not to participate in school choice program as written in the agenda Alice I make the motion do I have a second second discussion Alice just so no members of the committee know the reason why this vote ends up being not to approve school choice is because the tuition for school choice has not changed since 1993 believe it's $5,000 it used to be $5,000 and as you know it costs more than 5,000 to educate a student at minut man I should point out though something very interesting happened a few weeks ago there's a big debate in the city of Newton as to due to a clining enrollment they should participate in school choice and uh which they've never done and except like you know 50 or 70 students under this program and for a while there it looked like they may actually vote to pass it but then the political winds changed and they voted not to do so I just find it very interesting that they were considering uh participating in this program that they have not been interested in as anytime I can I can remember by the way we used to we did used to participate in this program a number of years ago now we not go into that story at this time uh but it's an interesting story some other time uh so any right we have the um the vote on the table or any other comments or questions I don't want to forget to vote on this one that would be a bad mistake very well then pamam sa yes Erica Elie Bolton yes Steve leue conquered yes Lancaster yes Sharon mustow Lexington yes Jeff Stan Needum yes Alis Lucas Joe yes I do have one comment for the superintendent maybe he knows the answer to this maybe he doesn't um the D you have to vote on this by June 1 can we vote on it in March instead of uh in April instead of may just just so we don't like Miss we'll uh we'll make a note I don't believe that it's a uh that there's a restriction on how early you can vote it but um we'll double check that and we'll note if there are future agendas okay thank you so I'd be much happier if this was done you know at least a month early in case we missed it and we have to come back great very good Surplus property yes last item is is the dispose of circl property pursuant to our policy we would need AU from the school committee to uh dispose of property that currently not being used uh in in in our shop or classroom spaces or maintenance areas for that matter um and have value uh so that we could then move on to um putting this out for uh for auction uh there's the list there um for your consideration just a couple things to note um uh there there are some welders that we were we have on the list we have upgraded the welders they were paid with a a state funded Grant so any proceed we receive from them we'd have to reimburse and state 50% for that and uh a lot of the items listed on the lower part of the green bars related to the the weight room we we've upgraded so um if there are any questions on particular items we'd be happy to answer them M shall Rend this our direct of operation put this together um but uh outside of that if the committee authorizes us to move forward we will we will proceed with spelling these items let's put the motion on the table and then we'll have uh moved second uh questions and comments I do have one comment one of the things that's interesting if you look at the report that got cut off because was split into two pages was that I believe that this is true that when we get a um some of these um equipment under a grant and at the end of the grant we sell it off we have to give some of the money back to the um government is that correct yes yeah so that you'll see in the second page it got cut off it should be all the way across you'll see that one of the items is money that is going back to the government I just wanted to point that out to you I think uh Sharon did you have who had your hand up was you Sharon no anybody other hand up yes uh Charlene I just want to say that this is a great idea um and I'm I'm glad you're doing it I did get to see some of the Overstock we have personally and um you know time to make room for new things so move out the El so just um agree that it's a great idea I had some of my Surplus property to some of these things that you're doing I've got quite a bit in here I think we're pretty well uh got our hands full with this list but good luck on yours okay so that's a no okay good I can take a hint any other questions or comments on the motion the table sing none roll call vote Hamner Acton yes Erica oie Bolton yes Steve will du conquered yes Charlie cabal Lancaster yes Sharon Musto Lexington yes Jeff Sten yes hello stas yes okay very good thank you that includes my report very good subcommittee reports policy subcommittee alisca so um I understand that the um Administration has completed review of section I and we are Sharon and I and Charlene who's our kind of um person who comes but is not a member of the subcommittee um we as soon as we get those we will schedule meeting to review them and then they're coming to you I keep saying that but it's really true but they're coming so that's the end of that report and question that Alice yes uh just to get people an idea about how many pages a section I no it's it's a good big chunk of paper like yeah so this much you're gonna and improving yeah but they're they're really meaty Jeff you're gonna love them love it thank you so and some of them some of them were going to have a motion to delete them because they're nonsense so that that'll be good okay eliminating policies that are nonsense so we should have a separate like yeah it's it's a really hard you know it's a fine line but there are some of them that are just they don't make any sense for minute man so um anyway that's that's one Capital planning Capital planning met recently and um the main topic that you should know about right now is that there there is a 10-year plan in the works to bring to you and like a maintenance 10year Capital plan in the works so I just want to emphasize how important this is to do a lot of school districts they build a new building and then they're very excited very happy about the new building and they wake up 10 years later and say whoops you know we forgot to maintain these things and now we've got to do you know a minor little renovation again because because we mess up so minute man is not going to do that and we're doing a 10-year plan so Michelle rendes is going to tell you more about that hi everybody um yeah we had done um you know looking at the building and the facilities and um we're making a conscious decision to start planning doing some Capital planning for the future um what what I did is that I you know um actually fored mentioned a company and then I contacted two other companies to um get some quotes uh from them for our Capital planning what the hold on I just got to grab my paper sorry um what each of the companies are are looking to do is that they'll come in and um with some of their representatives and they'll walk the property and examine all of our equipment the um um infrastructure as well as the um actual equipment and structure of the building itself along with our fields and our other properties um the quotes from each of them included all of our buildings on our 65 acres or 6 six acres um they would do an inspection and then they would provide us with um documentation and a report um they would come up they would uh give us information including Dimensions materials age and condition of our everything on our property um they would um they would plan Capital activity using like standard intervals and give us um the analysis that we need so that we can properly plan forward um the company that we are going to end up going with is onsite Insight um and they provided us with an example report that really met all of our needs um and they're very well-versed in um doing these uh Capital assessments on schools and universities and um everything like that so uh if any of you have any questions I mean it's um it's pretty straightforward where then we'll use that Capital plan um in our discussions with the capital planning committee and each year when we're trying to plan our capital budget guess my only comment is that this is very very desirable it is uh something that I've wanted for a very very long time and I'm um I couldn't be happier that we're moving forward with it we found a company to help us out that is a good track record that we know some people who they've been very happy with their work and uh we really do need to maintain this incredible facility that we've been gifted essentially gifted so this is how you do it okay thank you very much which brings us to emac enrollment membership access and capacity Pam okay the wonderfully named emat committee um met last night and we went over uh the report that you heard today from um Aaron and when it comes to admission we never know how the um admission wins are going to blow um and while we are um still seeing a strong response from our member districts we're not in the same position that we were last year where we had a waiting list um from Member districts and and the year before where um you know we were able to meet our goals solely from um member district students and um you know and we're seeing and it really varies you know we have some member towns that are uh um that this year are increasing the number of students that we sending and you know some towns that have been sending a little bit less you know which brings us to um the um current list of out of District students and we did have um sort of a a discussion about the pros and cons of um of admitting out of District students you know we talked about about what's best for Minuteman and what's best for students we talked about the financial implications as well as the political issues of um admitting out of District students and decided that what's best right now is to stick to the plan that we had talked about back in um last November which was to aim for um a class this year of 175 students which means going through and admitting well while always prioritizing in District students but looking this year to be admitting out of District students so that we will be able to get to that 175 and as Aaron mentioned that means you know at this point going to maybe about 185 knowing that there's going to be some drop off so um so we do have those 26 out of District students and Aaron will be going through that um we also talked about um the admission software and the fact that this year there were some hiccups um with the software and um that this summer is going to be an opportunity for Aaron and you know once Heidi gets on for Heidi to really work together to try and figure out well what's the best way of um addressing the software issues and moving forward so that we will be in a strong position and the committee will be meeting again at the end of the summer you know um late summer early September and that'll be one of the issues that we'll be um reviewing I also want to call out Erin went very quickly through her slide that was her learnings I just want to call out some of those there's some you know really insightful um topics on there that Aaron we spent some time talking about how Aaron can actually operationalize and you know one of the key things there are a number of um topics on there but in particular one of them was um you know feedback that she had been getting from some of the middle school principls that um she comes out you know she that does a presentation the kids get so excited get really excited and then there's quite a bit of time before they hear about us again so one of the things in that kind of um list of learnings is how do we keep that excitement up so we don't get you know the students really excited and then it's a long time before they hear from us so um really looking forward to sort of um you know really improving our process by figuring out the best way of um really engaging with potential students so I think um I think that is it for my committee report I don't know if um Steve and Jeff if you have anything else to add I think that was a very good summary I was also very impressed with um some of Erin's um suggestions moving forward we did talk a lot about um dealing with software and software companies are not as uh professional as we would like them to be and that unfortunately is the state of the world and we have to work around it they got some late workarounds because this was a big surprise to them last year this year will not be a surprise and they will be um using some of the workarounds that they learned and maybe they'll get some improvement from the software company but um don't count on it because that because right Alice well you be having people test the software who aren't at all associated with it never used it before just on on different pieces of equipment and from different towns just to see you know whether they can manage to try to register having never been associated with it at all that's a great idea Alice um I think for anything we explore going forward I would love to have more involvement from it in the process of going through the new company that we would choose eventually um and but then for our new for our current application that we have um I know for myself one of the first things I did I come from a very digital background I come from a very mobile first background in corporate marketing that was the first thing I tried to do was fill out the application on my phone um especially as a parent when do we have time to pull out our laptops after work we are on our phones as our kid is saying apply now we're sending lots of or at least I did change some of our marketing materials to have more QR codes to take you right to our application um from there it is easier to fill out um um that way but logging onto our website to do it it wasn't really that great so as we do improve I would love to share it with um the EMA committee as well to just kind of work through different types of phones even from an Android to an iPhone it's different so that's a great suggestion thank you any other comments or questions is that the conclusion of your emac report that is the conclusion the report thank you very much it was H quite a uh uh it was quite a good meeting that we had and I'm very happy that Pam um scheduled it and brought us up all today so I appreciated that greatly so that brings us to the end of our normal agenda and I'm going to ask for a motion uh to enter into executive session and not to return to open session for the following reason to approve the draft executive session minutes of August 17 2023 I think all we're going to need school committee members and um Julia do I have a second yes yes okay roll call vote ham s yes Erica L Steve wo conquered yes Charlie cabal Lancaster yes Sharon mustow Lexington yes Jeff stolen need yes Alis Lucas Joe yes and we have a different link for this so we're gonna cut this and go to our next link thank you thank you everybody