[Music] all right good evening today is Tuesday April 9th 2024 we're going to call this meeting order this meeting is being video and audio recorded for future cable broadcast please silence all cell phones for the duration of meeting and you will rise for the to the United States of America stands one nation God indivisible libery and justice for all our agenda tonight we have both the school choice hearing and the 20 fy2 school department budget hearing so I'm going to start please by requesting a motion to open a school choice hearing so move okay and I'm going to hand it over to you to give a little bit of context Dr Bailey yep so this is a hearing um I don't know if anybody signed up to speak regarding this but um as you know several districts came I already screwed up I didn't do a r called the open the scho meeting so I do need to take a roll call vote to officially open the meeting okay Mrs Downey yes Mrs go yes Mr Hood yes Mr H yes Mr yes right great sorry Dr Bailey please carry on yeah so as you know some districts take in students from other districts um and that does generate some Revenue it's $5,000 for each student um I've done a lot of research on this while we would love to be able to you know bring in diversity and bring in some Revenue um once the students are in our district we would be on the hook for tuition for high schools they would follow our students um and I just don't feel that we can afford that so my recommendation tonight is going to be um to continue like we've done in the past to vote against participation in school choice program for the upcoming academic years and just know that we've been extremely thoughtful about it we've um we've had legal council looking into things the state looking into things just to see if there was anything different that we should be doing and at this point we are going to recommend I'm going to recommend that we refrain from participating at this time and the biggest reason is we would be on the hook for high school tuitions and I don't think our budget could handle that okay so if I could request a motion please um to decline U moving forward with school Choice y after I I do just do my motion first and then we'll open up par some questions um I can have a motion so moved okay oh do I have a second I tend to support the superintendent recommendation however I think for the next year we should revisit this issue um there are guidelines that uh with that legisl you know with that uh program that what since we are the only one of the few uh tuition um schools high schools in common you know where these you know SE to seek a change for us you know what I'm saying uh I find you state bureaucracies basically um they're always good to tell you what you can't do uh but you know when they have something new they they stall you know so so I think we you know I I think we got to be creative you know we have you know facing some decline uh uh in in and you know in registration of children in enrollment um we have to think ways of of continuing High income stream as well as you know uh you know employment of us you know staff if we go into too many cut you know lose too many students we you know we' affect our our supportive staff our auxiliary staff which affects the quality of of our our output so I I I would like to you know visit next year I know we got a lot on our plate coming this year but uh I think we leave not Stone unturn as far as keep keeping our enrollments up and uh and as well as as our income stream um so I think that was a by the way uh you talk about enrollment uh uh you know it seems that Norland is faced with a great deal of drop off fertility fertility rigs as far as people having children and uh so therefore we're going to be facing some uh old school districts might be facing some some real shortages of you of children and therefore therefore how do we how we how do we realign our budgets in in output so I want to just add that to the maybe I talked too long but I want to add that that type of maybe revisit this and see wavers maybe um and all things like that it's something that we are discussing with legal counsel right now nothing that can happen for this moment but it is something that we're exploring just to see right yeah so we're on the same page right and just to make make sure the public knows this is an annual vote so it is it's an annual vote because we are choosing not to participate in school choice right so it is Revisited every year and we should to your point Mr H look at all the variables when we make these decisions um so quite well taken um so did we have a second on the table I've get a second for that motion of um not participating excuse me now CH but the vote would be in the regular public agenda the hearing is just the discussion oh okay my apologies okay okay so we take that vote later in the meeting y all righty if anybody else has anything else they want to discuss okay I know that I believe no one signed up for delegation regarding this hearing so yeah please do so when it comes to school choice um it's opened up to everyone and it is a lottery so if we're talking about budgets we do need to consider spe special education coming into our district as well which could cost much more money and we also want to think of the other side if we don't want to take away from our students that live in live in aush to bring in other students that might need special needs which again is a lottery system so there there's no discrimination so we do have to look at all the factors any other questions question or comments okay so we'll take that formal vote later on the agenda um so if I have a motion please to close the public hearing for school choice have a motion second okay and we're going to do a roll call so all those in favor closing Mrs Downey yes Mrs yes Mr Hood yes Mr M okay so if I could now have a motion please to open the proposed FY 25 school department budget hearing we'll take a arrow and if I can have a little call please um to hearing Mrs Downey yes Mrs Mr Hood yes Mr Mrs P yes okay and once again I will hand it over to Dr okay for this um budget hearing I'm going to ask Mr McIntyre to facilitate the discussion good evening school committee good evening the public for those watching listening tuning in at a later point in time um the purpose of this public hearing is to provide you know the balcony view on the budget at this point in time um this is required by law and it's an opportunity for you to learn a little bit more about the budget and and to provide feedback um so without further Ado um the the budget supports our mission and our vision um the mission of a cushion of public schools in partnership with staff parents and Community is to provote Student Success growth and learning in a safe and supportive environment the vision of the aush public schools is to be a high performing School District where all students are afforded the opportunities to realize their potential um within our our model we have our strategic objectives which are achieving academic Excellence for all students creating thriving social and emotional learning experiences for all students and strengthening Partnerships with parents in the larger Community which again every line item in our budget supports one of these objectives um the process is really a three-step process you begin with a budget basis which is called the Baseline budget so that that's the cost of the services provided last year and the year you're building the bud budget so the cost of providing services in FY 24 you start with those Services you increase and adjust the cost according to you know going rates inflations funding things like that and then you analyze the budget um we tend to do it from from the bottom up you know we solicit feedback from our teachers our principes our our leadership team our central Office Team and and bring it up to the superintendent who then recommends the budget to the school committee but during that time we look at anything to see where we can gain efficiencies or maybe need to implement more services um and just look for identified growth and continued improvements So currently where our budget stands the budget Baseline not the final recommended budget but the budget Baseline would be 16, 42174 and that would be the cost to provide the same level of services an FY 25 as an FY 24 those services are broken down by um dese category in this instance so Personnel expenses um admin ative instruction people Services operations and maintenance community services and programs with other school districts as you can see through building the Baseline there were fixed costs fixed increases um $519,000 related to Personnel administrative costs we were able to provide level Services while decreasing the the budget approximately 18,000 um instruction 200,000 um a factor of that was moving a contract service into a Personnel position um person people Services increased almost 200,000 um and then operations and maintenance decreased 60,000 approximately Community Services 6,000 and programs with other school districts which is related to our high school tuitions and transportation a decrease of approximately 86,000 most of our budget are fixed costs so most of those factors that I just mentioned categories that I just mentioned are fixed so we have our salaries and wages where we employ approximately 145 faculty and staff and support staff um many of them are union union employees and this makes up approximately 62% of our budget we have fixed cost in technology as we are Ono one District uh we need a safe and reliable system and infrastructure and much of our curriculum is is Technology based we have curriculum that becomes fixed over time as prepay for subscriptions and memberships and things like that um and again most of it's technological so you're paying for licenses that would otherwise expire so we need fixed cost related to curriculum to continue to have access to this curriculum um and that provides our Central guide and consistency um throughout our teaching and our Learning Classroom to classroom special education cost is a mandated um special education students need Equitable access to the same learning that everyone else has access to to and then we further have to provide the same level of service as we did in the last year to maintain effort in the eligible for um uh other grant funding opportunities that that help supp and supplement some of those costs transportation again required by law we need to transport our students to and from school um with certain restrictions um that makes up approximately 8% of our budget and then because we have no high school we have tuition contracts between bford high school and Fair Haven High School where we have tuition based costs that relate to 20% of our overall budget and then further you know we are a school district so we have two buildings that we need to maintain um make sure we can keep the lights on the eat on and clean for for a healthy and happy learning environment so after we adjusted and analyzed the Baseline budget um there were increased costs of 228,000 these would be additions to our local budget and those represent a maintenance worker position that was once funded through the Esser Grant and curriculum renewal so again curriculum becomes a fixed cost in our district because of our model some of those curriculum components expired and now we're looking to r that brings our grand total budget to 16,634 182 and that is what the superintendent at this time is recommending um be our budget for fiscal 25 this exhibit which by the way you can access all the material on our website to to see the figures a little bit better but this breaks down again the costs associated with our budget and shows that ultimately fixed costs do represent 90% of our budget and over um 3.89% of what is actually only a 3.5% increase between FAL 24 and 25 so that means outside mandated costs we were able to reduce our budget almost a quarter of a percentage funding opportunities this is important because for the handful of year now years now um in related to the pandemic we we received Sesser funds so a lot of communities districts whoever it may be we're advised not to um not to put local budgeted expenses into these funding sources because you essentially create a cliff for yourselves so we've done a good job in not doing that um initially we put a maintenance worker in Esser and we realized the value of that worker that it does provide significant value and saves us cost and contracted services that it should live in local um another change that came to local was a school website that originated in Esser but the costs are are a wash because we were able to cut other services now that this now that are provided by this website um on top of town funds we also receive circuit breaker funds um er techn technological funds and miscellaneous state federal grants that also help supplement our budget again closing remarks so building the budget is really a team process um next steps as we as we continue through this process and next steps uh we will continue to receive feedback from the budget subcommittee the town the public um the leadership team so on and so forth uh the budget maintains level Serv which is important to us every year we don't want to cut Services we want to make sure we maintain our services or provide what is necessary um so this budget maintains level services and looks forward to growth opportunities um we strongly encourage staff parents and members of the community to engage in the remainder of the budget process so once the school committee adopts a budget which we anticipate the next school committee meeting in May um whatever that budget may be we ask for your support we ask for you to show up to Town town meeting and help us vote for this budget because truly this is this is what we need to support our students to support our faculty and to provide an education to the community the students in the community um every cut has a has a figure beside it so you know level Services is a $572,000 increase between years if it was a 0% increase you know it would be a $572,000 deficit of services if you will um those Reves can go all the way up to 3 and a half% um for instance a 3% increase would still provide $90,000 worth of deficit of services to us um so if we don't get the support of the town we don't get the support of the other committees uh and they asked us to reduce our budget even further but what does this mean we're potentially looking at reduction in Staffing overhauls of some of our programming that we've made such progress in um looking at implementing student fees elimination of certain activities and and just general overall setback so we don't want to approach that territory otherwise um again all this information is available on our website you can always contact the superintendent's office um the business office if you have any questions specific to this budget and thank you for your time and support thank you um at this time we can open up any comments or questions I feel like I live and read this withn I just gonna say I do want to thank um Mrs goes M Mr hop for um your participation on the budget subcommittee this is a very busy time of year for the school committee and putting these budgets together takes a lot of work along with Dr Bailey and Mr McIntyre so thank you everyone for all your efforts and and putting this together and tweaking of those numbers I know so many times and I know the principles and all the leadership team work so hard you know getting the numbers to be you know Equitable and make sure that we're not overspending um which is very important right because we're not only protecting our students but we're protecting our town as well um so I I'd like to thank everybody for all their help and um again asking for all the support from the town to um at town meeting to be there and to support our budget whatever we end up you know going with in May Sarah is there another because we had a meeting with the with the town recently this is there another checkin between subcommittee and the town what's like the next steps leading up to the yeah so the fun part is in in all reality is that nobody knows exactly what we're going to get from State and what we're going to get from federal and so we're still guessing at numbers and it's it's possible that we don't know our numbers until like the end of May sometimes they were even saying like July and August and you're like wait a second so we're guessing at these numbers we're going to you know cut down cut down cut down and then come to find out all of a sudden there's you know $3 million you know something crazy at the end that that we were not expecting so our plan was and everybody agreed was just to postpone as much as we can um and that's why we pushed the um um the final thought for the school committee to our May meeting because that's literally a month before the the town meeting um because they do need to you know get the figures in the books however we're hoping that we have an idea of what the state and federal is is giving us but right before then and the subcommittee John and I are ready to meet as many times as needed once those figures do start coming in um if they are different from what we expected number one when we met with the committee with the select in the finance committee other departments have really not form the budget we didn't know what what is really you know needed they what is really needed in the final one secondly of all uh due due to a glitch in the uh reimbursement uh field where the state po of Education had had plann for inflation of only 4.5% when inflation actually in schools was at 8% or it might have been the ways and means I don't know what what about so they may be revisiting that issue which we turn effect you know affect our budget so to speak um so that's where we stand right now now the state was having a a shot fall and and you know receipts until last month now they you know now they took it $128 million additions to what they did not anticipate coming in so you it made it made that future a little brighter and I so so I says well let's wait let's wait and see and go with the with the budget that we now have which is been you know really screenline and see what uh what happens so I think that question yeah appreciate it okay so any other comments or questions related to the fy2 budget no okay then with that I'm going to request a motion please to close the proposed budget public hearing I make sure motion second okay and then we'll take a roll I'll V to close the meeting and return to open we are returning we have to open the school committee meeting yes yes Hood yes Mr yes yes I do want to acknowledge that we did see after we Clos the school choice hearing someone in delegation wanting to speak so I do want to acknowledge um that individual and um we can't reopen the school choice hearing but what we can do is welcome you to um give public comment once we open the school school committee meeting later there is a delegation as part of the meeting so um welcome you to make that comment then so with that um I do want to now have request a motion please to open our regular school committee meeting I'll make all right and if I can take a roll call mod please Mrs dowy yes Mr Hood yes yes she yes okay now we do have executive session uh this evening so we are going to move right into executive session um so if I could a mo have a motion please to move into executive session to discuss the following with intent to return to the public session to conduct to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union Personnel or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union Personnel to discuss the deployment of security Personnel or or strategies with respect there to Safety and Security of staff and students I request that motion please yes Mr Hood yes Mr yes yes okay we're going to resume our regular school committee meeting so we're going to move right into our first item uh which is the consent agenda so just get everybody all caught up to where you need to be um and so what I'd like to do is request a motion to approve the minutes of March 5th which is 2024 the minutes of the meeting on 32025 and all peril and warrants if you remember the consent agenta movs everything into one so I can have a motion please so moved and a second okay all those in favor I I do we have anyone on delegation still here to speak I know we had this one but I think he left that was it no one great all right so no um so we'll move forward um there's no old business moving into new business so I'll pass it over to Dr Bailey to get us started all right thank you and I'll move it right along um our first um item on the agenda I'd like to call it Mrs chesne and she is just going to review with us the AES violin program which was funded by the artist and residency Grant so I'd like to invite Mrs Chesney and if anybody else no they don't have anybody else okay okay Madame chairwoman school committee thank you so much for having me um one of the highlights this past year has been our program with an artist and residence um Jeff Angelie and here is Jeff right here he is someone that you might already know he um has been working in the South Coast music group he calls it South Coast lessons he's been a musician in the South Coast Area for for 20 years and he along with um the fac facilitator Beth Dupri came up with the idea of introducing violin skills to third grade students so they've been actually doing that for a for a while um just so you know that the program is definitely connected to our district plan um we want to make sure that students are engaged in higher order thinking um music is a great way for them to develop their sense of belonging and um build emotional competencies and of course we were also partnering with a Community member and I just looked as we were thinking about this research really does show quite a lot of benefit from learning a um musical instrument um starting with how someone feels about themsel even things U like executive functioning and of course as you would might expect um language skills and reading I did not expect um the pro-social skills but that does kind of make sense when you're working in an orchestra um the way that we were able to get it about a $6,000 value um we were um CH chosen by Jeff to bring this into the program um we went to um Mr McIntyre and Dr Bailey to make sure that we were all set to be approved and it's been 40 sessions with every third grade class so every class has been regularly working with Mr Angelie um he provided practice violins to the students as well and here's some pictures of them playing and okay so I just before I play the clip of them playing my kids did strings it can be a little rough at the beginning but it's really good okay so just I just want to be I just want to manage the ready go the yeah I mean the that they can actually use the bows which is not usually they he kind of accelerated their learning because they don't usually use bows for like 6 months at least um but they could you could hear the tones there that's really excellent work on his part and on the kids part too and are there any questions about the program no questions I just think it's so fantastic ftic just to offer more choices to to the kids to experience more instruments it's just great I was just really glad for the opportunity thank you very much thank you thank you all right okay so the next one is school choice is just to continue that conversation from earlier the hearing um I'll keep it brief but my recommendation to the school committee is that you vote against our school district's participation in the school choice program for the upcoming Academic Year um I believe it's in the best interest of our school Community to refrain from participating in the program at this time okay think could have a motion please to follow the superintendent's recommendation against our school's participation in the school choice program so move second okay all those in favor I I okay thank you the next thing is the agreement from Reeds uh oh no it's the annual appointment of the superintendent to the board of directors for reads so this is something that we do every year you would just need to um have a vote um which allows me to serve on this board of directors um for Reeds collaborative so if I could request a motion to appoint Dr Bailey to serve as the actionet school district's represent representative on the Reed's board of directors motion second all those in favor I I he the next one's also associated with the reads collaborative it's the um Amendment to the agreement you've had it in your packets um and it just requires a school committee vote um and then the signature from the chair I request a motion to approve the Reed's collaborative agreement Amendment as written a second second okay and all those in favor I thank you uh the next thing is um I wanted to bring up a regionalization study to the committee um as you know I've been talking about the fact that you know to run the school district we can't continue to run it fighting with the town every year from for money right so we want to look into the possibility of what are our possibilities and that a study would do that for us and I was hoping um I've talked to Mrs Gomes about chairing that committee but that I would love to have a vote from the committee and then anyone who from the committee who wanted to be on that committee but this is something that potentially could take 3 to five years um you know to see it through but the study would be a start to see what the options are and you know if it's fiscally sound for the district Etc and to explore different options and I know Mrs GES probably wants to speak to this matter yep so I've done this before we I did it about nine years ago so just to give you an idea the first thing we need to do is establish grants to pay for the study that's the first thing so it's not costing the town's any any money and then we would reach out to multiple towns whoever we were interested in not just one but multiple and and work collaboratively with them on the grant for the study for each additional district and that in a nutshell is like the first year year and a half and then once you get all that documentation um there's multiple steps for the school committees to vote on for the towns to vote on there's multiple layers to make sure everything is properly Ved and it can stop at any time when when either the towns or the school districts decide that it's it's not worthwhile anymore or we're moving forward okay I think I'll just emphasize this is a study this is to get information I know our town several years ago uh attempted to do a study around regionalization it did not move forward um but you know this is just to give us the information we need to make sound decisions with other school dist districts um so long process ahead of us starting one step at a time but um this vote would allow us to to get the process started um so with that I'd like to request a motion to move forward with the regionalization study and appoint Sarah Gomes as the chairperson of this committee do I have a motion I'll make that motion all right uh any further comments questions about the process how how do we how we dealing with the like who wants to be on so we establish this then we deal with that piece and I would leave that to Mrs so um I believe the first St and I'm going to double check with MK to see if things have changed but it's publicly announced and then we need to make sure that we have at least a town member we have a school committee member um Union representation is usually asked parent so they it's all inclusive to make sure everybody's and it'll be advertised as well okay all right so we have a motion on the floor as well as a second um all those in favor and I I okay thank you no not great I would be uh willing to participate on that commit good we can't okay that's fine we've got two that's great we can have a broad discussion but that's fine that's great all right so next I'd like to call uh Mr mistler up to give us a technology update good evening everyone good evening Madam chair school committee members Dr Bailey um I'll try and be brief on this um quick one we did a a camera system update it's uh been needing for a few years now um so we took care of that recently uh which ensures that we're secure our systems up to date can handle anything we put on it um and offers us a few extra bells and whistles for email there's a part of me that wants to get super techy on you guys but I'm going to save you for that long story short we've added a extra pieces of security no cost to us um but it's something that a lot of businesses and districts don't do we have it in place now it's up and running perfectly with no cost um mcast kudos to our principles of both buildings uh mcast been going off swimmingly um students been doing a great job bringing their devices charged we let them know through our s'more you know please have devices charged and ready to go it's been great um the last one I just have is it's been business as usual and one part of the job we don't talk about a lot but it's updating Rolling Out Security p matches all that to make sure that we're secure um and just to remind everyone uh for last year and 34s that I've been here we no longer utilize outside vendors so our savings is from within um all the department the whole tech department handles all of this internally so we've been uh just to say kudos to them they've been doing a great job and um yeah we're much more secure now than we've ever been fantastic thank you great question upates thank you Mr mler clear thank you all right and then other items that may not have been anticipated I just wanted to review a couple of things very quickly um we had the solar eclipse yesterday and we had the majority of students from both buildings participate in a viewing um very few children were not able to and if they were not able to there was a live stream going on in the classrooms um inside the building but it was such a great learning opportunity for our students because many of the teachers had done lessons prior um and I just have to say and give kudos to our teachers as well as our students that everything went off without a hitch so it was really a great day um the second thing we just notifi tonight of a grant that we received um for new curriculum for our 8th grade civics um this is the dkp which is the Democratic knowledge project through the 1 to8 foundation and I would like to thank Miss rary uh Michelle Sylvia the principal at F Middle School Karen Bentley a teacher here at Ford middle school and Christine deur the coach they've all been pretty instrumental and getting this through but the grant includes curriculum PD is quite a bit it totals $1,468 over the next 3 years for PD um and the only thing that the district I our annual cost will be $300 annually for program participation but this is very very similar to the PD the extensive PD that we went through for the open SED program which was the free curriculum that we found out about through our professional development that we go to Mr Riri and myself um but this dkp curriculum empowers student Voice through agency it promotes sustained inquiry and critical thinking it's aligned to the new Civic standards and it helps with the Civics projects so that's just a little um announcement obviously as we get into things you'll see presentations along the way but I did want to let you know that we were just notified tonight that we received this grant it's so great for so long Civics have not been a part of our you know programming and so this is really great really really great I just have a question um is the Civics curriculum would you consider it neutral in politics and in everything that's going on world I would say yes I would say it's standards based so whatever the standards are yes okay I just again as a parent I want to make sure that everything that's taught in the school is considered completely neutral not one-sided or or the other side when it comes to especially Civics I would say that if you have a specific question to contact M and then you can have a specific conversation perfect the last thing I want to go over is we sent out a survey to our families um we're looking at a company called alphab best to provide before and after school programming and this is just a quick introduction to that because they offer enrichment activities but um within the first 30 minutes of the survey we had an overwhelming response which was wonderful to see so we're going to continue exploring that we have a team that we will send out to um area schools that have alphabets um but we think it's been needed um it's something we want to explore fully and if we can get this um off the ground we look to do it for the next school year but I will keep you all informed I just wanted to let you know that we did send out that survey and we got quite a great response which was great and that is all I have for tonight all right so then we will invite um Mr McIntyre for the business manager um update to the podium please chair president down school committee thank you for your time uh business managers report update so budget FY 24 budget the numbers that you see in front of you are through March so that's 34s of the Year coincidentally just kidding it's not a coincidence um about 25% of our budget remains for the the last quarter of the year um most of that is salaries as you can see in the AES FMS and district lines while many of the other lines are spent down or encumbered to be spent down with little to no funds remaining um we have a targeted budget freeze at the end of April beginning of May so that we can kind of cut off expenses for the rest of the year at that point you know outside of non-emergencies everything should be ordered or or in hands or on campus or spoken for through an encumbrance um and that will let us analyze if we have any serious um budget savings or deficits and what we will do with those funds as far as oh and and coincidingly if there will be transfers which I can tell you there will be um between categories those will be presented in May or June for school committee vote as required um you know some of this is trying because of the the vacancies of the Town accountant you know we kind of have to get creative with where we're recording some of our grant expenses and local expenses um because of account numbers not being created so on and so forth It's all tracked on a spreadsheet we have it handled but it's going to cost some back and work in cleaning up um so I just kind of wanted to address that fy2 budget so we've met quite a bit with again people of all layers of the team um budget subcommittee especially I think we've been occupying a lot of your time so thank you to those members but the reason we're doing so again is because the the lack of clarity on the state and federal funds that the town is going to receive and we don't want to make any sacrifices that we don't need to um so we're opening the we're keeping the budget open essentially till May um um for school committee vote so that we can work with all those involved um and get some clarity on where our numbers truly need to be without making sacrifices to our services or our staffing um and you know we'll go from there um and one piece of leaving the budget open and and shared with these different departments and avenues is the the ability to review and make changes so we have made changes since the budget had was presented back in February um you know one of the more significant changes we just caught was a figure an offset figure that I was carrying for circuit breaker um that I was carrying at a higher number than what was actually going to be received next year um but we were able to catch it now before the budget became final and it became a shortfall for us um so you have notes on that there please direct any questions uh if you have them related to that instance and and potentially funding that Gap through um our special education stabilization um but that was all discussed with budget subcommittee in detail facilities so again this is a project that excites me but it takes some time and it's you know very task based and a lot of literature to read um so that's some Energy Management Services request for qualifications that I've mentioned a few School committees in a row now um so we received four submissions from energy efficient Investments Inc Energy Management Consultants Seamans and train um some of these packets are 400 Pages you know 300 Pages 200 pages so we have an evaluation committee if you will um of myself superintendent Bailey and our facilities director along with our owner agent that was hired specific to this project to evaluate these vendors in their bid submissions and determine the best fit for our school where we can Max maximize Energy savings grants tax exempts leases things like that and get these buildings up to Snuff um ultimately what this project does just to repeat again what I have in the past it looks at our building envelope it looks at where we can save you know on energy costs it it works towards the town's green initiative as we're a green Community um it looks to save us money while updating our our mechanical gear our generators our boilers our our air quality control systems um things like that so it's a very thorough process and we're going to get an investment grade audit on this entire thing with a report with monetary values tied to each upgrade and you know a a condition of each system um so it it's it's very interesting it's going to be very thorough but more reason not to rush through it and to do it the right way um because it will be information that we can hold on to and take advantage of for 20 plus years can you remind us what the timeline is once you've selected yeah so it depends on who is selected but um you know on side conversations with the vendors that have submitted bids some of them are ready to go as with the investment grade audit as soon as we select them so then they'll come in and it'll take you know a month or two for them to go through all the components of our buildings you know they look at doors the exterior doors windows the brick um again to as big as boilers our heating systems things like that so they look at everything and a lot of that um relies on us getting them materials timely too so as built schematics um access to the buildings but they'll work on off hours and you know generally that takes a month or two um to come up with an investment grade audit from there you kind of negotiate terms you look at the reports you work with the owner's agent who is again you know hired by us they're on our side um and you come up with a contract um to to move forward at an agreed upon rate with energy guarantees that if they're not met we get paid by the vendor so that we don't have to incur cost because their systems weren't as efficient as they expected um and you know in that timeline too between the grade audit in the contract is measurements and verifications which they'll run systems they'll they'll they'll um put together formulas on spreadsheets that kind of to to portray what a newly implemented system would kind of mirror and see what kind of energy it would use and savings they would have and again they come up with figures that we then work with the town's Finance finial advisers um and the town to see how it will be funded and there's there's a plethora of opportunities again through green communities through um just infrastructure grants through tax exempt bonds through bands it's it's really up to us at that point on what we can afford um and then we get moving and make some changes so again it's exciting but it's cumbersome and um it takes time uh moving on to Food Services so again just another highlight of that program um which is the farm to school highlight so we were able to secure funds not a ton but we're making the most of them you know $66,000 from USDA um Northeast food for schools and the program is to help increase purchasing locally so um again on the sheets in front of you we listed some of the Farms that we've used um Jonathan sproutz and Rochester Joe schakowski and Hadley little leaf farms in devans and backyard farms in Madison and with those Farms we were able to get you know locally grown and sourced cranberries um butternut squash french fries that we taste tested with the kids if they had a blast with and I know our principles can allude to that um like that we've done we've done lettuce for for Farm Fresh salads um which we've added to our menu um and you know with that we've added tomatoes that we were able to Source from Madison so it it it's it's fun we get the kids involved involved but we're also you know reaching goals that we set last June and you know having a more nutritious menu items options um broadening the horizons of students and what they're willing to taste and getting them excited about trying new foods other than you know chicken patties and french fries or whatever it is so so I know in one of my recent focus groups I met with third grade and they had a request to have um soup on the menu so next week I believe there's homemade chicken soup noodle soup coming and that was because of student voice um so we're able to accommodate in that way um not the first time so I do want to give our nutrition director um Kudos a shout out because she's done a shout out to shelle mow our nutrition director as well as the kitchen staff because they have to be able to change with these changes and um you know we lost D Silva to retirement in in the winter and Shell's kind of been filling that role at both schools and everyone's just really coming together as a team and working well together and learning the new processes and procedures and and trying these new menu items and all the feedback internally and externally have been positive so again another positive for us and it's exciting change so um we look forward to presenting again in June with an updated presentation the goals we've met and feedback from you on on where you expect us to go beyond that any questions on any of the items thank you for the update great thank you okay all right um I would welcome it this time any reports from school committee members no nothing all right and there's number of communications noted they fore to read uh at your convenience um our next school committee meeting is May 7th correct right back here um in the library and there is nothing further I would request a motion to adour roll call vote to officially close out 48:00 right 48:00 just for you Mr H Mrs Downey yes Mrs goes Mr Hood yes Mr H yes Mrs yes thank [Music]