##VIDEO ID:Cz-nwQhmAbo## [Music] okay I'm going to call the meeting to order it is 6:01 p.m. and note that this meeting is being recorded and if anyone is intending to make an audio videoo recording of this meeting please notify me at this time um our first order of business is to adjourn to Executive session so I'll make a motion to adjourn to Executive session pursuant to mgl c30a section 21 A3 to discuss strategy with respect to Collective barking for contract negotiations and a Halifax Teachers Association and Halifax Teachers Association as well as executive session pursuant to mgl c30a S21 A7 to comply with or act under the authority of any general or special law approval of executive minute session minutes of October 7th 2024 I second thank you Katie I roll call vote glor I and myself it's I I'm sorry there's stuff we have to do before we can continue with the regular session but it shouldn't be long so we can let you know when we're ready to go back into regular session okay all right um so now I'm opening our reg are you take sorry are you recording now yes okay I'll open our meeting again at 6:18 p.m. and we'll start with the Pledge of [Applause] Allegiance Al to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all um Welcome to our visitors um would either of you like to speak okay well welcome um now we'll review and vote the regular minutes of October 7th I have one um adjustment I was hoping could make okay um in the section where we talked about the Regional School District discussion of full regionalization there's one um so the third paragraph it says a discussion of changing the start time of the high school and elementary schools that I was just making a a comparison that we had we've gone back and forth on that that really wasn't part of the discussion so we could take that whole sentence out I just don't want it to get out there like oh we're going to be changing School times again and yeah no problem yeah we don't we don't need I can edit Sue minutes I can do that no problem awesome thank you anything else okay I'll make a motion to um accept the minutes from October 7th 2024 with the updates Lori proposed to the language about school start times second oh I'll second okay um Katie I'm going to abstain I was absent from this meeting Okay Lori myself as a yes okay now we have the HT mou impossible vote um should I let Liz I'm happy to present an educator um at Halifax Elementary School who would like to um be honored for her retirement at the end of the school year and she's looking for your support okay um I will make a motion to honor the retirement at the end of the school year um presented okay um we'll have a vote um sorry Katie yes Lori yes and myself as a yes thank you and Liz again our Halifax cafeteria substitute rate great thanks so much um currently the cafeteria substitutes here are paid um less than both Kingston and Silver Lake they're paid $16.15 per hour and there's a proposal for them to be compensated at the same rate which is $753 which is a change of $1.38 per hour the funding would come from the cafeteria revolving account which is the hell School loling fund so there's no impact on the um budget and um just for numbers there's a small amount of cafeteria substitutes it's not something that happens regularly but um it would be um more it was it's important for Halifax so that they can be competitive with our surrounding districts which happen to also um be and districts as well so that is the ask and um just so that it's totally transparent the request would be for the um beginning of the school year for it to be retroactive if moved okay and there's no concern um from the cafeteria manager that going that going back to the beginning of the school year no issue for them no great question Megan actually um couldn't be here tonight but said if it was appropriate to call or text if you any questions that I couldn't answer but she and I worked on this together she is very good about um keeping track of the numbers and knowing that that revolving account can only have a maximum of 3 months money in it but feels very confident that this is Su sustainable as well great that's good and also you know with our desires to sort of make things more uniform across the district I think it's a good idea person I would agree I I've always been bothered that our towns within our own District have paid different amounts so so I think this is a good step anyone want make I'll make a motion to accept the um change of pay rate for substitute cafeteria workers inax and I'll make a second okay um all in favor I yes yes thank you school resource officer SRO and mou so in your package tonight you will see a draft mou which um has been presented by uh the chief it was updated it's the basically the same agreement as last year but with updates to personnel and information contact information for example um what I'm looking for tonight is your approval so that Lauren May sign on behalf of the committee to formally enter an agreement with the Halifax Police Department is this basically because we changed who the SRO is generally speaking or are there other every year we should update our our agreement because sometimes there are bigger changes okay um but generally speaking we we try to update them annually okay and I noticed the assistant principle new assistant principle is listed as a makes sense okay I looked it over but yeah I have a question um so I I tried to look through this as quick or as comprehensively as I could but it's a lot um do we have um hours that the school resource resource officer is available um are they generally available throughout the school day or is there um a number of days that they're available I I maybe that's in here but I didn't see that so um the the agreement is for the year but the actual hours are not part of the agreement um principal bodri may be able to um speak to the hours of the current SRO uh well they're definitely available whenever we contact them so um whenever we we call them in they come right over and send someone over or he comes over himself um and then he's typically there in the morning times at Bus arrival and then at dismissal and then any type of major events that we have like when when we have the turkey trial or field day and it's the same person or is it um like if he's if he's on and he's there he's he's been the guy that's that showed up okay I thought it was between 10 and 12 hours but I think like today he brought in um Roxy with officer Campbell today so he just popped in for a couple hours okay but I think he does that above and beyond okay so he's the shift that he worked as a police officer coincides with the school hours yes that's kind of what I was right know we had a situation where someone was was on the night shift so okay that's great thank you absolutely any other discussion no okay I'll make a motion to accept the school resource officer mou as presented I second okay all in favor yes yes okay full regionalization discussion so in our last meeting I was asked to look into alternatives in the event that the town did not receive um the the grant to look into full regionalization we have spoken with the town manager um who has applied for the grant um has been in communication with um the grant department at desie speaking to the interest of both uh Kingston Halifax and Silver Lake in terms of looking into the pros and cons of full regionalization um um what you have in your packet is a proposal from nezda and what I would ask you to do um it gives you a a brief outline of what they would look for what they would be looking for in this efficiency study one of the things that um Sarah and I discussed was the fact that these these the qualifications of the NASDAQ people are wonderful they're great but we would probably like to see this bolstered by someone with some business um an accounting background as well because we know that that's a big big part of this um consideration so um they nezda will update and uh change or add anything that we may want them to do it's um 13 pages long so perhaps for our next meeting if there's anything that or in between meetings if there's something you would like for me to ask them to include if you could please send it to me um and then I will um see what they can do to to answer those questions or provide that additional service if we decide to go in this direction um even if the town gets the Grant I have shared this with the Town Administrator as well because the Town Administrator and we will be looking at a number of different uh possible options of how to use that money and we may contract with a group like this anyway and when would we be notified if we if we were granted the grant um that can vary uh I would typically um I think last year it was January they found out if I recall correctly it felt like during the budget season we found out that they had not been approved okay because I noticed that this quote is only effective until Fe February 15th of next year so my concern is that the rate may go up after that date as we've seen most things these days keep increasing in cost so then for next um it will be January are we meeting in December it'll be janary January so for January we'll have to make some quick decisions well we have a joint meeting too right where we can discuss possibly options for this as well like I would like to bring up possibly splitting the cost with Kingston's well that was going to be my next question did Kingston apply for the grant as well or are we doing it on behalf of the DCT uh Halifax is doing it on behalf of both Halifax and Kingston last year Kingston applied on behalf of both Kingston and Halifax so okay the thing I would like is I agree with the accounting experience if you could ask them more about that yep because that's one of our big MH concerns right so you know it's hard to imagine that it would be more expensive to read in lies but you never not right until you do the study mhm okay any other questions or comments not okay so there's nothing to vote on really so just find out okay I guess we could email you if you have any other questions we think of between now and the next thank you for doing the work yes thank you okay approval of Bill schedule so our meetings are currently out of syn with the warrant cycle there was a single signature warrant on November 4th for $42,715 31 there was also a single signature warrant for prior year bills on October 30th for $7,881 I'll speak to that further in the financial report the next warrant uh will come out as a single signature warrant on December 2nd okay thank you School correspondents and reports I don't think I have anything for that new business um future agenda items is there anything I don't think so I did have a question about something we discussed related to special town meeting but I don't know where to bring that up in our meeting at last last month's Mee probably because it's to do the boilers right yeah would be the best time to discuss that probably during fin yeah probably during Finance I would say okay okay and then subcommittees policy I don't think met negotiations I don't think they met no policy we're waiting for a date we have been waiting on the title 9 policy and now we're just waiting for um possible dates from the policy subcommittee chair okay okay and then negotiations we didn't have any um Pilgrim area collaborative so um the board met on November 7th I'm cheating on my phone because this is a lot to remember um they there were a few items that were reviewed the biggest um was the auditor report for um the fisal year 2024 so last year um it was a very comprehensive report um about many aspects of the collaborative it was in draft form they were waiting for couple of um updates so we we reviewed it and voted on it in draft form because we wouldn't be meeting again until um after it was due um there was also um well let's go to this first there were also a couple of personnel changes um Jason um nollie who is a nurse um resigned um for November 15th and there were four new hires Christina Hutchinson um and ESP for Sila Lake um Eric Keith ESP for Pilgrim Academy Sophia M malani uh ESP for Pilgrim Pilgrim Academy and Daniel McMahan ESP for Pilgrim Academy and then um the last thing which um Sarah you may already be in the loop on this I'm not sure um but they um after closing out the year for 23 24 um they gave an accounting of member Town credits um that the towns would be receiving back um and so Halifax will be receiving $1,374 as a Town Credit however um that money will most likely go to Silver Lake to be accounted I think this is I may be getting it wrong because our um funding changed last year when we real L the district um Sarah will get a accounting of all the three District three towns in the district and assign that accordingly to certain students if I'm understanding that correctly does that sound like Greek to you it it does and let me give you the answer that you're looking for thank you um we have a choice of receiving a credit yes in the amount that you stated towards a tuition for a Halifax student or receiving a reimbursement check we have chosen to take the tuition credit thank you for clarifying that you say that I do remember that being discussed so thank you and that's all the updates that I have okay um Ethan re sure okay lots of stuff going on with Town wreck um December 7th from 6:30 to 9:30 grades 5 and six will have a social here there'll be games and a raffle cash concession stands students do need a permission slip and there's a $10 entry fee um December 14th at 5: p.m. starts holidays and Halifax here at the elementary school in the parking lot there'll be plenty of food trucks in the allpurpose room of craft fair and in the gym kids activities there will be no fireworks this year s um the walking Track has been refurbished and it came out great four after school programs are going strong um they're currently trying to clean out the Gaga pit uh at the by the playground it's been roped off in the meantime for safety purposes unfortunately it was vandalized when somebody broke Neon Lights within the sand and so it needs to get cleaned up so before students can playing it again um we're getting ready for basketball season and with that the gym will be used 7 days a week and um a huge thank you goes out from the town wreck to Bob Clancy the after school teachers and Mr bodry for all of the help and cooperation and Mr steel says go team thank you um I had the PTO update from Karen they had a meeting on November 12th and they are officially an not not for-profit organization now that's awesome mhm I know that's been talked about for a long time so they talked about the Wizards that was last Monday night the Harlem Wizards which was a great activity I was able to go to that a great community building activity was awesome lots of people there um I guess they're wanting to do teacher appreciation monthly um it sounds like there's a crumble cookie fundraiser people are picking up the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and for student appreciation they discussed monthly Class Awards and the mingle and jingle as part of holidays and Halifax will be on 12:14 as well 9 to 11 no Raffles this year and a polar pop-up store and photos of Mr Mrs Claus and it's more of a focus on community engagement as opposed to a fundraiser and um they're trying to revive art to remember it's put on hold for this year the Halloween social was a success the book fair um had about a $2,500 profit um the treasure um report said they have about $65,000 in their accounts so that was the update can I ask now that we're on PTO how it if we were able to clarify the funds that they were going to be donating I know some of it we were able to accept right did the other part of that get settled my understanding is there was going to be a discussion between Mr bod and the PTO about other possible we we did we met but there is still a lot of questions up in the air so nothing's been finalized yet okay so talk with P check on that all right capital budget didn't meet admin review did meet y so admin review met several times and through those meetings it was recommended to renew the contract for Dr for three more years Union 31 and Silver Lake voted to renew her contract and um congratulations goes to Dr PR for um having that pass and we're eager to see what you and your staff can do new staff because a lot of new faces um can do to improve student achievement and communication with the towns thank you then did the e i sub we did not Karen and I have not been able to connect so hopefully we'll have an up date for January okay great um Union 31 also met for the admin review and the contract congratulations thank you um now I'll turn the time over to Mr bod for the principal's report right uh school council we had a meeting on the 20th we were glad to announce that officer Simpson has joined us as our community member because that was the one spot that we were looking to hold um so he joined us and will be with the group for this year and we had discussed finalizing our school Improvement plan and then we' Revisited um our overhaul of the handbook so that continues to be something that we're trying to streamline as well um when do you think we will see the school Improvement plan I we talked about last spring can I bring it next next meeting yeses that work yeah okay would you like it beforehand yes please and also goals I'm sorry goals goals yes okay you would also be good to see uh data that goes along with your school Improvement plan too yep thank you okay all right uh so I'll get into the endast presentation you guys okay is there anything on the fire distribution no sry okay just [Applause] checking all right so I know this presentation has 42 slides on it it's there's a lot of information there so um I'll pause after I get through the ELA section of it or just keep going keep going keep going we P questions until the end of um all right so in the beginning here we just have our this is accountability information that just we share with everybody in terms of how the the mcast is reporting out this is our accountability for Halifax in 2024 so not requiring Assistance or intervention is our overall and um we had 57% substantial progress towards our targets here were our overall School accountability percentile is at 71% that was highest in the district U so we're pretty proud about that about that overall achievement we also point out that it's higher than it was in 2019 uh here we just have just a review of the mcast administration over the last six seven years and from 2019 is where lots of us are comparing back to there was nothing in 2020 21 was a half test and then after that we went back to full test grade through 3 through 8 and then in the high school as well Statewide this is just kind of an overview uh the ELA results show lower achievement in all grades from 2023 math results show Improvement improved achievement in third amongst relatively flat results in most grades and then science results show improved achievement in grades five and 10 with lower achievement in grade eight um it's just important to note for us our Ela overall was up 1% our math was up seven and our science was up 13 previous year just in general so we're excited about those that but we still have room to grow and we have we want to make sure that we keep moving that needle to try and get to our 70% so Ela and math were they were up 1 and seven and they were both at 55% meeting or exceeding and then our science was at 60% meeting and exceeding uh this here this is just the next few slides is just uh a dark comparison and um this is a tool that Desi uses where it Compares Halifax Elementary to 10 other schools that are similar in enrollment and in low income students with disabilities in elll so this is just sorting this uh group here by our Ela scores and compared to our group of schools we were on that list up there it's just a good point to notice CU a lot of times it's not we don't necessarily compare to Kingston or Clinton or even to the state of Massachusetts so these are schools that are similar that we like we compare ourselves to so in ela we were second on that list in math we were also second on the list and in science we're also second on the list so it's it's um we like to get it up there a little bit higher but that's school and sandwich there is got a really good science score but we uh we're going to try and be beat them out next year but important to note this is per pupil expenditure so we spend far less per student um than all of the other dark schools that we're compared to so we're bottom on that list with an average per pupil expenditure of 13,000 19 or our group average is 177,000 and that school sandwich would beat us out they spend almost $22,000 per student and I'll just note that Sarah will be talking more about per pupil expenditures in her report so this is for ELA uh this is an overview uh for the state of Massachusetts where you can see compared to this column here is where we're compared to uh in for the state Itself by grade level versus 2023 and then versus 2019 so you can see the state is still pretty far off of where they were in 2019 um but also down pretty much in all grades in versus 2023 this is overall here for Halifax like I said mentioned earlier we're up 1% from last year from 54 % to 55% still back in 2021 we were at 61% so we're not quite back to where we were but um where are we going in 2019 20 I don't have that one on I'm sorry I supposed to wait I'll find I'll find it for um but yeah I probably assume it's probably a little bit higher than that 61 but I'll find that out so this is average in all grades 3 through six in Halifax and then the next few slides here's this is broken down by grade level so this is third grade currently they're up 14% over last year's cohort so this is sorry the grade three for the last you know 2023 20 this isn't like following the cohort this is like third graders in 2021 third graders in 2022 okay thank you this is current fourth grade or fourth grade last year uh they were up 2% over the previous year and the state was down three that gives you perspective this is a a growth uh scale and it goes from lighter green to darker green or yellow down the end there um so obviously we want to see a higher growth on the the dark green side as much as possible and can you give us your average uh your SGP for grade four uh this here is at 54 so typically you'd like to see where the average in in the 50 percentile is where you're so you don't and the number of students included is that the total grade or is there a reason why students are excluded this one I have to double check on the individuals but it could have been students that maybe opted out or okay not sure there was four more than 66 there's no op outs that's what I thought there were no Ops students that didn't take the test didn't take the test thank you here's fifth grade fifth grade was down 10 from the previous year state was down six previous year so that was a greater decrease in the state this the the growth here was pretty decent and this is the growth is at 55 for this particular grade it was much more on the high the very high broken range sixth grade was down 2% 57 to 55 and the state went down also 2% growth here this was a higher growth rate so the growth here was at 61 even though they didn't achieve as much at that rate but they did have a stronger growth rate than the otheres these are just some pieces that here in ela um the mcast ELA standard analysis to identify Cal strengths and areas for growth at each grade level that's been a focus area for us um on any of the PD days that we had and also staff meetings and plcs and data BS uh we're continuing with the Orton Gilling training for K to2 teachers for consistent phonics instruction and addition of responsive teaching resources and strategies and continue to differentiate instruction based on the individual needs of each student that's where all El kids S 3 through six um there's been we've had a particular Focus here in writing in Halifax but it's also we're doing this starting with districtwide but Year One ation of grade level writing benchmarks to assess narrative informational and opinion writing there's District wide consistency for writing at each grade level it's been a focus on our PD days that we've had mcast writing analysis to identify areas of strength and areas of growth and idea development and writing conventions here in this building we had a writing committee that worked vertically K through six um where we're having shared common language and shared graphic organizers and shared rubrics so there's been a little bit more consistency um and our writing scores have been definitely improving in on the higher end that we we've been seeing just basically from having that vertical team that we've had here and there's one number for each grade level that meets uh revised scheduling to lengthen writing blocks and PLC writing meanings to analyze student Benchmark writing get develop collaborate with Brian to Brian s are to develop that going into math I said math we were up 7% overall from the previous year this uh just does Statewide breakdown where grade three was up uh but in 23 but no one really is back to where they were in 2019 it was smaller increases in grade four and then from there on out the other grades makes slight declines and like I mentioned we're up seven back to 21 I'll find out the numbers on 2019 up we up 10% compared to 2021 then this breaks it out by grade level our third grade was up 19% over uh the previous year here's fourth grade slight increase of 3% where the state was up 1% this is showing the growth growth here is a little on the lower end with 41% for our mean SGP our fifth grade was up 8% which is at 59% the state was actually down in fifth grade uh by [Applause] 1% here we had a growth score of uh the mean there's 68 which is great this huge increase so feel like we're making good strides towards 70% sixth grade was actually down 5% and this state was also down but only down 1% the growth score here was 42 so again a little little under where we want it to be but again 50 is our Target for our growth but we're definitely trying to push that needle and we're working with with our teams to trying to find out what exactly where our strengths were were and where our weaknesses were so we've been having that time in data meetings and plc's just kind of math and grades 3 six just a glance we have Envision K to 5 Big Ideas in grade six big Ideas is also in middle school math is a up for a K12 math program review right now now uh ran and a team are working on looking at the math program and what options because in vision is facing out uh digital classroom support surveying teachers to identify our software program funding to identify programs to continue the programs to change there's different platforms that we've been using for a number of years so it might be a good opportunity for us to kind stream line the different platforms we do have Benchmark data analysis we have star math assessment in grades 1 through six we continue to utilize our data meetings and we analyze our math data and student needs now we have our interventions that we work on we revisit throughout the year um and we have intervention blocks in both Ela and math scheduled of the M put into our m schedule for most subject areas and we're on to science science in grade five was up three over 2023 but it was still down four compared to 2019 as I mentioned here in Halifax we were up 13 compared for our grade five students and we were up 13 from we at 48 last year 61 year before or 61 last year in science continuing to implement mystery science programs in K to 5 and ensure that the grade level standards are being taught or else working continuing with open S in grade six that's across the district consistency across grade levels teachers will collaborate to use the district scope and sequence uh mcast to inform teaching continue to analyze utilize mcast questions into each grade level um and now with how we're departmentalizing four five and six we have our science teachers are much easier to collaborate as opposed to having um self-contained teachers in those grade levels and professional development training on the new SD performance-based Nest test starting in the spring of 2025 districtwide these are some some components here RBT uh training for district teachers principles and coordinators OG training for reading fluency multi-tiered systems of support is continuing every year it's um an area that we try to tweak and focus on that was our former Child study but now it's formalized and it's much more structured um so we can provide interventions for students and then we staff to implement those interventions the educ climber platform helps us with tracking the data uh and it pulls together all of the data platforms that we do have so we really do have a lot of information on students and we can track those students information in there professional development that focuses on student performance data grade level planning to write and read social studies and science to supplement the ELA standards like I mentioned before we're on year one of the M curriculum review and we continue to assess our assessment Benchmark implementation we tweaked it again this year because last year we had added a fourth Benchmark which kind of Drew us off a little bit so we went back to our original assessment calendar that we had the year before and then we also added in writing as one of our benchmarks that we hadn't had previous years and implementing the new saber screener that's in place of the Panorama screener screener that we had prior to that um ignore this one this is um this is by cohort that we had so this is starting with Ela in First Column and the state it's Halifax in the First Column and then the state in the next column and what we're doing is just comparing year to year trying to follow those cohorts so the current grade four that's where they were at this past year when they took the third grade test and then current grade five those were their scores when they were in fourth and in third and then so on so giving you a gpse into each of the corts and then these last two columns here the white po the here and LX what the cohort is and then it's comparing that to the state and then as last column is just the the year that they actually took the test is that you have it for for oh okay never mind it's El right there so one thing I noticed on this is that when it comes to ELA our third grade educators are doing a phenomenal job they have the top scores every single year with Ela my concern is that there is a dip after they leave third grade so what what gaps do we need to be filled ing that they met in grade three but are no longer meeting after that point in fact in some of the grades they never got back up to that same point so that's a concern of mine I don't know if possibly there can be some learning walks done and teachers watch third grade and see what they're doing differently um what what can be gained um maybe it's a simple teaching strategy that can be implemented maybe it's a way that they're reviewing for mcast itself but something that're they're doing is working absolutely I mean they definitely that cohort just that we did have last year was just in ela they had kind of exceeded that Target of 7% and they were pretty close in the in the map as well so having been on walkthroughs for and with with uh principal bodry in at Halifax Elementary School one of the things that you'll notice in grade three is that they do an excellent job of differentiating and providing interventions in the classroom at all levels so there's some small group instruction going on there's um intensive support going on and there's whole group class instruction going on it at different points within the lesson they're also um a team that I par participated in their data team meeting and they're very um open and honest uh in terms of what's working and what's not and what they might try differently so they they're a high functioning team as well in terms of being able to look at the data in a way that um is is truly focused on how do we help students succeed and Thrive what do we need to do differently in order to help get them there what if we tried what didn't work what did work so there's a there are a number of things that are going right in grade three um in addition to that all of our all of our grade levels are looking at to what extent are we aligned and not just teaching topics but truly aligned with the types of questions and problems that students are going to be expected to know and be able to do um so so taking that to the next level and then we also have the work with Hill for literacy who's also going to be looking at what may be that what may answer some of the question as to why there would be a dip after third grade so that's one of the suspicions that we have but we we don't have all of the answers yet yeah I'll talk later on tonight during my memo a little bit about some of these things but in particular Kane and I have had um several uh opportunities to follow to do some walkthroughs of Kan and I um in third grade in particular and um I just went and did sixth grade so a piece of it too is looking at um many of things that Jill mentioned but also pacing also objectives formative assessment um providing some feedback to make that consistency so the things that we see that are really great and the things that we see they're great to make those more comprehensive throughout the building yeah and the other thing that I noticed is that we seem to have a dip in our Ela scores once we started collaborative classroom and part of me wonders whether or not that curriculum is a detriment to our student because it may not be matching up to our standards as you mentioned earlier nor could made their assessments be mirroring what our students are being tested on so I'm I'm greatly concerned about collaborative classroom and how it could maybe be a huge issue with not even matching science of reading routines um and we invested a lot of money in it yeah that's part of the work that we're doing with Hill and I'll talk a little bit more about too but I'll definitely cover those pieces for sure and like most textbooks we invest a lot of money but because they're all online we're continually having to revisit And subscribe so it's um it's something one time fee so what once our subscription is over then obviously we'll have to once again reexamine so the work we do with Hill should inform that decision the other question I had in regards to science and you may get to this as well um with the new mcast for science I'm concerned that um Mystery Science is not going to be meet the needs for our fifth grade Learners um having the ability to experiment digitally and analyzing data the way that the new mcast is written and um I know that we're use using open sad for sixth grade but where fifth grade is going to be having this digital component of experimenting and analyzing data I I want to make sure that we're able to meet the students needs so come spring when they get this new test they're not completely shocked yeah that's a piece of the work that we did on November 5th with Scott frell and the group that uses open and so we did some PD um on the fifth around that and I'll talk a little bit more about that so fifth grade will be included in that fifth grade was in included as we 3 four and five around professional development um connected to those things yep any other questions I have questions go forward okay so you said that you're continuing to differentiate instruction and that you revise the schedule for ELA to include more time like how are those decisions made like as far as increasing and what are you replacing when you increase just to make sure that you know things are balanced and well um when we're looking when we're creating the master schedule we're trying to create blocks of learning so they're they're not interrupted by whether it be specialist time or their lunch and recess so we're trying to give grade levels those chunks of time so that they're not interrupted by that and what we also did is we added wind blocks like what I need blocks for both Ela and math into the master schedule so that it's not something that can be modified or changed with things in the schedule because that's when our interventionists are supporting the classrooms in those particular great and it's like 30 minute blocks for each subject areas okay um the other question I have is how often are the data meetings where you're evaluating the data from so we we have the data meetings once our Benchmark data is comes out we have data meetings once the once we have access to all the data we analyze it we pull it together and we scheduled so right now it's for each subject it would be one data meeting per Benchmark so it would be uh we have the fall winter and spring and then we have map Ela and now writing is added into that so we'll have meetings for each of those subject areas and V so it's three times for each subject area three times a year yeah okay so like every few months then you're meeting pretty much um then using the mtss data and did you say that you took away one of the benchmarks from last year we' added we thought that adding of moving up the timeline for our Benchmark throughout the district thought that it was going to help us get more data earlier before mass time but we realized that we were outside of the windows for when Star growth scores come in and and with the dibles as well so we ended up doing a four Benchmark and it was late it was almost like in early June so we didn't get the results that we were hoping for when we had added that Bo Benchmark okay so then my other question is then how how are the needs identified like what are um because you know these are very high level data that we're presenting on a student level in a classroom how do you identify the kids that need the extra support so be based upon those Benchmark Meeting those data meetings that we have so we'll pull those students up and then we'll figure out when we go through their scores and their growth scores and we look at them as a team as a great level team we'll talk about like what each of these students are getting for are they getting interventions and then we discuss who's providing those interventions and because some of them should be tier one in the classroom or tier two in the classroom and then some tier tier two and three are outside the classroom and uh if they were getting supports from special education possibly CL and so then after after those the plan is devised then we revisit it and we in six to8 weeks we kind of do those checkins on like are these students making the progress that we're seeing because some of those students are targeted in the classroom by the classroom teacher and some are getting the interventions by possibly a title teacher or special teacher or math interventionist or something and how are you measuring those benchmarks for those students to see if there's progress it would be classroom data and then when we get our fall to winter benchmarks is what we would use okay I'm just worried about the amount of time you know like I don't like I feel like the teachers really know their students and are they able to because you know if we wait too long time has passed right right and I I mean and is this how you've always done it because I mean or is this a new way of doing it like is this the practice you've had in the past for your analysis or tracking students students yes I mean this is I mean Brian and I have been doing it every year we try and tweak it and make it better each year but um it's pretty much been the process that we've always used where we have a data room that we kind of trap those students when we check in with grade levels we try and see if we're moving the needle and then when we get the winter bench marks then we kind of adjust as necessary were you surprised by the mcast results after like the star data from last year and the data that we had were you expecting them like I'm wondering if there's a correlation like are the things we're doing working because it seems like I know across the state there's been a decrease but also you know and thankfully we are ahead of the state St it looks like in a lot of our subjects but like the SGP for grade 4 and grade 6 was 41% for grade 4 and 42% for grade six so like do we know what H you know like um I know you guys are doing a lot like I totally understand that but I feel like um teachers really know their students and want to make sure that maybe I don't know I'm not sure how to say it really except just to make sure that kids aren't falling through age with Lauren that we need to be doing more progress monitoring more frequently I I personally would like to see every six weeks so every six weeks we're doing some sort of progress monitoring assessment to see if there's growth and if there isn't growth um being open and honest with parents even letting them know where their child stands um even a report card period could be too long and a child may have a simple fix a a gap that can be fixed with some tier 2 interventions either within or outside of the classroom and I would rather us close that Gap earlier rather than waiting and widen that Gap till that child is at strug struggling or frustrational level and no longer open to learning I think it's the expectation that we make sure that our teachers are in constant communication with families and letting them know where they're day-to-day you know performance is in the class and if they are struggling then parents definitely want to be communicated with and that's what we're encouraging our our teachers to make sure that they're doing because we don't want any surprises when the report cards come out you know three times a year and it's it's it it is a long time it's 12 weeks or so in between from one reporting period to the next so it is quite some time but we want to make sure that our teachers are working with the students in the class at tier one level as much as humanly possible and it's not someone else that's going to come in and fix it for them trying to encourage our teachers like they can provide those tier one and tier 2 interventions right there in the classroom and the students don't have to leave the room to be seen by reading teacher or the math convention or title one or special ed so a lot of those things can happen right there in the classroom and that's something that we're trying to encourage our teachers to do more of more be more consist with that so I have a question sorry goad um under the district curriculum accommodation plan if a child is referred to the support team if a teacher refers a child to the support team that support team will monitor their progress for 6 weeks they will put certain interventions in place and then check back in six weeks are parents being aware I think I've asked that before I'm sorry I me to drup yes yes so if a student is brought to our ntss group then we do teachers will fill out um District form an mtss referral form for what it is whether it be academics or behavior or what have you and then um they put all the data on there that they have and the interventions that they've tried and then we bring it to ourt s group of eight six to eight people and then we review the data that teachers have submitted and then we kind of brainstorm ways like what's working what's not and then we put in suggest strategies to try out and interventions to put in place and then 6 to8 weeks we reconvene the team and see if there's progress that's been made or do we need to adjust or we consider is it something that we should pursue do um with test special education testing do you have data on the success of like the mtss interventions we well the mcss is like formal like this year this is year one EV it so we'd have to I'd have to look back and see I thought you were doing it last year in other years right before was called we called it child study which was a little tweak the difference that we had this year is that we're meeting twice we're meeting every week for an hour where we meet K to2 and then we meet 3 to 6 so it meets every week regardless of if there's a student that we're talking with or if they we're just meeting discussing um once been working or students that are address I mean every grade should have students right because they don't all have kids that are meeting or exceeding expectations absolutely right but they may not fit into that six week okay cuz I would I would be curious to see the data of the success of the mtss because I feel like that's where we will see whether what you're working in six weeks is a lot shorter than your time between benchmarks and you know and the concern is is like the trend seems a little bit like scores are going down so I feel like we need to change that our our scores are going well they're like back and forth like if you look through the cohorts you know 59 to 46 actually yeah that's going down current grade five grade four we already know the third grade did great you know 59 44 46 for current grade six I mean to me that looks like a trend but I don't you know there you know it seems like we I mean I know 2021 was kind of a weird year so but like you know 22 for the current grade 7 was 41 5755 which that is an impr improvement there but if you look just at if you look at math for a current grade seven it was 4551 and 42 if I'm reading the chart correctly right so there are I'm I mean obviously I'm talking about Trends I'm not talking about every single instance and that's my concern so I really want data driven results on students that are identified that need help how it's going and you know see improvements and see what and we used to you know just the Improvement basically more growth can I ask a question cuz this is more no it's okay this in my mind is more of a practicality and I wonder if this is a factor um do you have a sense of the number of kids that are in tier one tier 2 or tier three interventions like have you seen any Trends with the amount of kids needing more or less of those interventions and then so this is a multi-part question if you bear with me um so I'm curious about the number of students and then are there any Trends with how how long they're receiving those supports do they need them longer is there a point in which that they um just incorporate that into their learning style and they don't need that additional support and then kind of bottom line is do we have enough staff to do this because we are being asked to do more with less um and we are heading into budget season and I respect the fact that you know we're asking a lot um and we're looking to see a lot of growth but I have serious concerns about whether we have the staff in place and I know we're going to talk about budgets later but I don't see us gaining staff next year um so that's that's my concern did you so tier one is the instruction that all students get it's the it's the the basic sound teaching practices that we Implement to help make sure that all students access the material tier two is when this these are your smaller groups the the additional support that some students need and tier three is the more intensive support that an even in theory even fewer students should need in a perfect world all of these interventions would occur in the general education classroom because when you pull a student out of the general education classroom you tend to see the the achievement Gap widen not close because they're missing those grade level expectations often times a child is not necessarily in a category for a year or even a month so I could be struggling with um a math concept and so the teacher will pull me into the smaller group but then in working through the smaller group perhaps I have what I need i' unstuck and I can go and then work independently so at any particular time these numbers can and should be more fluid it's not like the same type of plan that you would be on for a curriculum accommodation plan or a special education plan um the tears should should be fluid and can change regularly so it's not as if you're you're read your reading teachers or your ELA teachers will be able to say this many students are scoring here in this category and they're going to need more intensive supports and they may remain in there until they take that next Benchmark assessment to to show that they've they've moved off of it so there's the day-to-day formative assessments that can occur but there's also the benchmark assessments that occur to help create um some of the things that we've that we've been talking about as far as um tier one instruction in my opinion improving tier one instruction is really step one like that's that's number one right making sure like I spoke about a few minutes ago that the objective is clear that um the lesson is you know um uh you know I do you do we do that that there's a gradual release that happens in a lesson and that there's formative checks that happen in the classroom to make make sure that students understand it before we move on right we can't just move on if people don't understand but that's a very Dynamic process that um when I go around and do rounds which I've been doing with principles that we need to give feedback to teachers it's just people are doing it but to what level are they doing it how often are they doing it and what happens when they don't when children don't understand right somebody might say well I'm taught that but be sure that they understand that right so if they don't then we need to retach it teach it in a different way doing things small group all those pieces so that work has been the primary focus and much of my work with Brian and with the principles also early that the benchmark assessments the star and the divils all happened in September and that data meetings happened right after that there was some overall there was some tightening of that that needed to happen in that right that the Assessments in my opinion need to happen very early in the year sort of like getting the Baseline and then from there the data meetings needed to happen very quickly after that so districtwide meaning districts trying to tighten that up and have it be a little bit tighter right after and then again now we're working on the writing piece which they worked on November 5th that will happen in the next few weeks and then we'll do what's called Mo y middle of year assessments need happen again and so those are the larger screeners but the formative assessment in the progress monitoring all of those things should be ongoing throughout the times that are in between are we still using Lexia in the classroom uh we do have Lexia but we have we have a couple other programs the teachers are nodding no they're saying no it's we have multiple programs and off hand we have I Exel like see what else do we have it's called Lilo and K to yeah but then 3 through six it's we don't know a we I I'm just mentioning that because on Lexia um I'm able to with my students for instance see if a student is struggling with a particular concept and do some tier 2 instruction with that student and even pull students that are around the same you know struggle struggles and pull them together in one group and um it's it's almost it's very timely that's the word I'm looking for and so I'm able to solve those problems very quickly in sometimes as short as a 10-minute lesson to get correct corrections made um so if we already have the subscription for Lexia I would encourage us to use it it's a great tool for teaching reading even if students were encouraged to work on it at home if they have a computer if I recall correctly uh last year Melissa Farrell because of budget constraints um opted to renew the subscription and and from input from teacher groups throughout the multiple districts decided to go with Lao for some grades and then Lexia in the other grades and I believe that there were reasons as to why um they chose those two different platforms but again that's why that's what we have this year yeah we have uh new leadership and so again we're people love Lexia Lexia is also very expensive so I I again I think part of the Hope was that they might be find be able to find a tool that did something similar that wasn't as expensive right I go ahead I just want to get back to the question that I asked so I understand the fluidity of you know kids might need you know just a small amount of um support and get the concept and so it's hard to track and Trend um but you know getting back to the the Staffing um have we seen any challenges I guess with having enough support staff in place um to help with these interventions I mean there's definitely been challenges I mean we've lost a lot of Staff last year year so the support staff is not what it was compared to last year by any means okay from teachers have you gotten any feedback around that um challenges this year in terms of covering those interventions I think that's that's been the challenge it's we we don't have the number of par professionals that we had we don't have the number of Title One supports that we had last year and then thing with our we're down um to one reading teacher and our one reading teacher is on a maternity leag right now so um we're definitely feeling this the challenges of having less staff than we did last year I think it's probably there's other combination or contributing factors into the scores but um you know again we're getting into the budget season um and I want to just make kind of the community aware um that these are some of the repercussions um around cutting School budgets um and that you know as as we get further into this the budget process it's really important for parents specifically but all taxpayers that vote at town meeting to understand the importance of supporting a school budget that's robust enough to have successful student achievement I would I would agree I would agree with you Lori I mean one of the notes that I made as you were presenting is um what is our current case load for our reading teacher how many how many students are they taking out for that tier 2 instruction and how many students more could they be picking up had we kept that second reading specialist um and so my concern is that students that um the teachers can't do it all yes they can do the tier 2 instruction in the classroom but if you've got these huge gaps um my concern is that it grade in grade six if you've got students that are reading at a grade three level four level they need far more support and need that tier 2 instruction regularly to be able to get closer and closer to filling those gaps and if we don't have the Staffing um to help support the teacher then that's going to become a feat that they may not be able to match um and that's where I feel like the data is really important to know the number of students impacted so we can make budgetary decisions based on that because I hear what you're saying about you know in the focus last year was preserving tier one instruction which from what I'm hearing is the most effective way to impact so so if that's the most effective way then what do we need to do to make that happen you know but also knowing what is beyond the scope of tier one instruction like I I want to know how many students this impacts because we need to make decisions yes and we have to have the data so that we can make the best decision for the students for their achievement so we have to know who's impacted how many students are here how many students are here you know numbers hard numbers so anyway no I mean I would agree with that like maybe for the January meeting if there's a way of understanding you know I know it's fluid but there's got to be a way of just you know even ticking like we've had this many interventions and grade three you know even if they're not you know lasting for multiple yeah could could you break down your star and Dibbles results not by individuals but by number of students in each category y we can do that okay be wonderful thank you all right thanks for the present does anyone questions no thank you for the information okay Sarah I Shar it with you so that it would have the animation this is the sorry stay tuned no worries [Applause] I'm sorry I have two different presentations but they're not 42 slides each Sarah well he's doing that do you have sheet codes for all of these numbers at the bottom what numbers at the bottom the 10 874 13 874 I know that these are types of accounts correct on the bottom of I'll explain those thank you yes well and this is the presentation you gave at the Joint meeting correct it's part is different yes no I'm just saying like if people you know if you were at the joint meeting and want to snooze through this I'll wake you up when we get to the I'm not saying that I'm just you know I'm sure it's Halifax specific you know it's thank you it's preparing for Budget season yeah it's the preparing for theact for people expenditure and n school spending I'm not going to sit in a very uncomfortable chair um this is is uh a modified presentation that I gave to the Joint Committee it starts off with a uh histogram of per pupil expenditures for fy22 so uh the 22 fiscal year is the most recent uh data that's available the per P expenditure is an after Thea calculation so if you think about how um in fy22 in July of 22 June of 22 the fiscal year ended fall of 22 School business managers made uh their reports to the state to desie then the reports were audited and then the audits were turned in so we're already up to 23 by the time everything comes in so usually the FY 23 data would be out by now but the FY 24 reports are still in the process of being done and haven't been audited yet so per pupil expenditures always going of seem like an old number but fy22 is what's available on the Desi website so if you look at this histogram on the bottom those are per pupil expenditure amounts so um with the histogram it divides things up to categories so the category on the left hand side is all of the districts that spend between $1,874 and $1 13,874 and then on the left hand side of the graph those are counts so that's the number of districts so this is all of the districts in the state um the state refers to them as leas local educational associations so this is all of the districts in the state all 41 one of them I think I think that's the number so if you take a look at the graph you can see that most of the districts are centered right around the this you know the tall Peak here between $66,872 $1,874 that's the um we call it the mode most frequent in math class uh the graph does tail off to the right so there is a district that that's um Provincetown way over there on the right hand side provinc town is uh exuse the data because if you think about them as a district in 2022 they had 141 students and those 141 students for example 10 of them were kindergarteners 11 were first graders 14 second graders and nine third graders so they had four teachers for those 44 students so they average 11 kids per class so when you don't have economy of scale you end up with large numbers like they had so on this graph um this is Halifax for fy22 Halifax is per pupil expenditure and I would like to point out this is in District per pupil expenditures if you go on the desie department of Elementary and secondary Ed website they give two different um calculations this is in District so this is just everything within the bricking order of this building there is a total calculation that includes in District and out of District but I thought that this was an important calculation for us to look at so Halifax for fy22 per pupil expenditure in District was $3,419 156 Kingston $3,454 two Clinton was 15,7 $ 77878 Silver Lake was $199,450 33 and the state average was $1,566 195 so this is all of our districts plural because we are four separate districts this is where we fell and this data is available on the uh desie website for fy22 21 when you going back as far as going back quite a ways this is just a list of the numbers I just read to you I'm not going to read them a second time this um was not part of the presentation to the joint committee so there were 401 local education associations represented in the spreadsheet on uh by desie I took that spreadsheet and I sorted it from least expend to highest expenditure and so this is the school that spends the least amount of money in the state it's a virtu a virtual school they don't have uh heat they don't have electricity costs they don't pay for custodians because the kids log in online the second school here also a virtual school so they're not really even comparable to us the next three schools I'm sorry the next four schools you might consider to be comparative schools to us but then Halifax is their six lowest per pupil expenditure in the state for fy22 so I saw this and like oh my goodness because I live here this is my tax dollars that we're talking about here so I wanted to point that out to you to show you where we're at and this me needs to um be part of what you consider as we move into the budget season moving on here's a 10-year comparison so the red line is the state average again um going back 10 years for all 401 local educational associations so that's the state average in red in yellow is Halifax green is Kingston the Orange is Clinton and the blue is Silver Lake here's a per pupil expenditure Regional comparison again same data type but these are all of the communities that touch our three towns so you can see that out of all of the communities that touch our three towns Halifax has the lowest per people expenditure Sarah can I ask you a quick question yes I was going to just pause and say any questions on per pup expenditure yeah so um as I look at this I'm noticing that you know we are not a fully regionalized School District we are not um so you know Plymouth is spending you know they're the top but that includes K through 12 correct yes is there any you know I don't know our Silver Lake is the most expensive PPE compared to the other three towns which are just K through six so if we were to average the three districts I know this isn't a a a sound comparison but I'm just wondering if the reason that we look so low not necessarily like if it if it would translate if we were fully regionalized like where would we rank does that make sense I'm not articulating this well it's okay because I was a math teacher for 20 years there is no way in the world you can average four numbers that are lower than the state and end up with anything at or above the state yeah no I know I'm just like you know Carver at 17 but they're fully you know that's Cas or 12 like I I just don't know how we're like Whitman hen is that K through 12 or are the elementary schools separated like are these peral expenditures typical for elementary schools because all of the elementary schools are lower than the K through2 districts so if you spend a lot of time with the data which I have um you there are pad so it does cost more to educate high school students than it does Elementary School students so the silver um per pupil expenditure being more does make sense it also costs more to educate vocational students so if you were to go through the whole spreadsheet you would see clumps of like the The Vocational Regional vocational schools spend much more per pupil than a comprehensive High School like we have where the vocational is attached to the school um and high schools spend more than elementary schools we just happen to have an unusual configuration where we're not fully regionalized okay looking at other towns budgets I don't know if you've done this far of a deep dive percentage wise is the town of Halifax ex budgeting the same amount as other towns like let's throw a number out there let's say that 10% of the town's budget goes towards education it's 51% 51% is that that does that match other towns that is an interesting question and I don't know where that metric would be stored so it so all of the data that I look to on a regular basis is house with desie because it's Department of Education and it's just school department budgets I don't know if the Department of Revenue which would have they are not as big into Data as desie is so I don't know if they would have some sort of analysis spreadsheet easily available to say you know here's the town of Abington this is what percent of their budget is the fire department the police department the library the school I I can look for that I've never seen it though so anecdotally you were you did this function in middleb middleb is kind of in the middle here MH you know from a percentage of their school budget I'm not putting you on the spot but where do we compare in terms of middle middle bar was at $1 16,34 right I'm sorry percentage of their Town budget are they spending 51% or they I don't know off the top of my head what it's not a it's not a calculation that's common got it for school business managers I can look look into it it'll require research yeah you get enough on your plate it's just a question one sort of sorry my other question is looking at the per people expenditure it's been going up you know which I mean I I mean it's it's hard because I feel like everything costs more well yeah I mean everything costs more we always you know last year even our budget was I believe 5% more than the year before um the amount you know the same amount of money is buying less like that's you know and even though we've increased as time has gone on like my sort of thing would be to compare the per people expenditure to like test scores for instance like you know there was something in 2017 where we had a major dip in the per pupil expenditure what happened there did it impact test scores things like that because I mean I I don't want to be all about tests all the time but it's our measure that we have you know it's the thing we have to measure students by so I mean that's something I'm curious about too because we are increasing as we go along and we're around Kingston and I mean I don't know so like and Kingston you know gave them everything last year so you know it's just like where's the bending Point like as a committee I mean we have the town asking for one thing we have us sitting here wanting to have the best school we can possibly have have and how do we accomplish that you know and what really matters like I guess I mean I know you have to spend money like I'm not saying that at all but it's just is you know this a measure of achievement do the kids in the districts that are spend a lot more money achieve higher than our kids I'm sure in certain towns they do but I mean it's just something I want to know as we're going into budget season because it's going to be tough and I don't know so I raised that issue last year um around budget season when we were making deep cuts that I didn't feel although we are a district that has equity in terms of curriculum in the three elementary schools I think it's really challenging when you're cutting staff and cutting enrichment and cutting Paras to not see um inequities and the education between you know the Kingston schools the Clinton schools and Halifax um and I you know even though Kingston and Halifax right now are per people expenditure is you know fairly close um Clinton is kind of very different um so I think you know I know we already talked about full regionalization but I I just want to be really mindful that we as we make cuts to the budget are not creating some inequities and for our students that will be real realized once they get to the middle school absolutely do you have a way of figuring out what are pure pup expenditure is for this past school year because as you stated this is from 22 do you have the ability to figure that out because if I recall in 22 we added positions mhm and we don't have those same positions and so my concern is using old numbers and using that to inform us and I understand that desie is not you know timely with them but do we have a way of calculating that on our own I can I can get to Ballpark actually um to separate out the in District and out of District I can get you ballpark figures we won't hold you your feet to the fire with want to hang my hat on them right because the you know the 3,000 uh row spreadsheet with the 27 tabs goes to desie and then they data mine out of it and they say this is this expense this is the these are the number of students off of your Sims reports I just think it would be helpful for our Town's people to to hear that you know in actuality last last year when we made these Cuts we're at this per pupil expenditure um rather than going off of a year where we actually did add more teachers instead of removing them yeah I mean so theoretically even though we increased our budget last year we could be under 13 419 well it depends on how many students we have and how they figure out too true I mean has our perut expenditure gone up because we've had enrollment decline I mean that would make the perut you know what I mean like well that's why I think the average for the state is important that red line there yeah that's pretty much you know if you think about groceries this is like the cost of a to toothpaste over years it goes up and goes up it goes up so that's a good comparison so here's my question too um so I've been on school committee for a few years now nobody's that I can recall has shown the perut I don't have they I don't know maybe I didn't like enter I'm just wondering Sarah Sarah and I had a conversation one day I don't even remember how it came up and we were talking about different ways that we can tell the story because we continually hear about how it's x% of the local budget and this that so we wanted to take a look at how we compared how we fared with other per people expenditures what I can tell you is that schools are often times the B biggest expense in a community it is often times um and it's not a revenue source so that's not something that um regardless of where I have worked as a teacher or as an administrator that was true in each of the districts I worked for we don't have a place where we can mine that data but again I think a unless you worked in a in a community with some some pretty big departments most communities the school tends to be the the biggest expense of the community and it's a requirement that's part of living in a in a municipal town in a community like you are required to provide an education for your students so um you know it in my opinion it's appropriate that it's the biggest expenditure um no matter what the size of the Town it employe the most people in our town like no I mean it all makes sense it's just having this data being presented and understanding that you know I sort of I guess my question is what are you trying to tell the school committee you know like what do you want us to understand from this so we're going into an interesting budget year and I need for you to understand all the pieces of the budget as best as possible POS this is just one piece leading us up to the budget um the other piece Lori you talked about the three different individual communities and we tend to lump ourselves together with the other two communities but Halifax our tax base is residential Clon has Cisco so they have residential um and Commercial ific commercial and then Kingston is a very different um just how the taxes come in so the only you know if you go on Halifax locals you see the the conversations my taxes are blah blah blah blah blah when I lived elsewhere I got this service this service this service this service I personally chose to move here because I wanted the sweet little farming community and my taxes are outrageous and that's the price I pay for my sweet little farming Community sometimes there's the goats and the pigs out in the road I didn't get that in wayth yeah and I think you know we're all we hear all the noise yeah so no I mean it's like I think it's important for the story to be told there's only two teachers sitting in the audience tonight but hopefully people will take some time to look at these videos that we make available or maybe there's some people even watching now um I you know I'm sure sure we're going to hear about it when we pass the budget um but if we can explain the import I said it last year when we were trying to pass the budget people need to support education in this town no you're right and this information is important I just am trying to understand the whole picture as well so the next piece that I want to talk about is net School spending because that's another piece that we need to completely understand for the budgeting Pro Process net School spending is the actual amount of money spent towards operating costs for a public school district relative to What's called the foundation budget and this funding requirement is one of the major differences between a school department and every other department in town no other Municipal department has a specific funding requirement due in large part to the fact that no other Municipal Department's service is guaranteed by the state constitution the school Department also tends to be the largest portion of the municipality's budget so I think that's what you were referring to earlier um it it's required for us to have a school district so there are three components to the foundation if you think Foundation budget the uh Foundation of your house is what the house is built on the foundation budget is what your budget is built on Foundation budget is a statistical measure that represents the minimum amount of money School District in Massachusetts needs to spend to provide an adequate education for its students this is calculated for districts representing minimum spending needed and adjusted annually to reflect changes in enrollment demographics inflation and geographical wage differences there's two parts the local contribution or local appropriation required to meet net School spending and then chapter 78 chapter 78 is um from from the state it's part of the 1993 education Reform Act has the state giving chapter 78 to the towns so the local contribution plus chapter 78 is the foundation budget the foundation budget will come out in January and then net School spending is shown as a percent of what's required so this graph here across the bottom are percentages so the bar on the left hand side is less than 100% that's two school districts where the state said you must spend this amount to have an adequate budget and they spent less than that amount less than 100% so the state average is 127% 127.2% so the expectation is that a town will spend more than the absolute bare minimum so if you take a look at the is 100% the bare minimum 100% is the bare minimum thank you so there are there were a couple districts that spent and and this is the FY 24 I forgot to mention this this is the FY 24 data which came off of the FY 23 end of year reports so when I when you F the end of year report for the previous year you give the budget information for the next year and so this comes from the budget information from those 401 school districts from our last graph can we get a history of the found perc of foundation for the last few years um I can get that to you yes okay thank you yeah I mean just theist rates pretty Clinton's 149% students I know I know no I'm not saying I know I get it I'm just just trying to understand the data so then again it's a histogram percentages across the bottom you do have some outliers on the far right hand side hello provin Town far right um and then um the bulk of the state is in the uh 100 to 125 % range so here's Halifax and we're in the mid-range of where the bulk of the state is yes okay um so Halifax at 11 16.3% Kingston at 117.8 Silver Lake 12.2 the state average is 127.5 and Clinton at 49.7% and again here's a regional comparison so we shifted up a little bit in the regional comparison ahead of Bridgewater rum and East Bridgewater so any questions about net School spending no I don't have any of you guys no okay then I'm going to get off of this presentation and move to my other one thank you so at a previous meeting the topic of charging bus fees came up I did an analysis basically um started with state law state law on the leand side summary on the right hand side we must provide free transportation to children in grades K to six who reside more than two miles from their school of attendance we can charge fees but not to those children who qualify for free or reduced price meals so um Everybody Beyond two miles so once I had this information about the law I had a conversation with the bus company they sent me a spreadsheet with the home to school distances and I went through the spreadsheet um the picture on the right is not to scale I I need you to know that that I just put circles there for reference because I think it's important for you to understand sort of that the distance home to school Beyond two miles um you know I live I live down here near Orchard Circle where a couple of the houses are within 2 miles but most of the houses in the neighborhood are Beyond that's what I was thinking like if the bus is in the neighborhood what do you do then right be like okay you can't get on the bus like that would be a that would be something for the school committee to decide if you want wanted to impart fees of how you would divide up the weird neighborhoods are these driving miles or as the crow flies these are defined as how do I if you imagine the end of your driveway mhm along the commonly traveled route which would be the street to the front door of the building gotcha so essentially door too but it's you know if you have a sixmile long driveway it's from the end of your driveway so what's the difference between why are students ineligible like the 18 within a month so if you start at the top there's 61 students that live within one mile of the school 142 that live within uh between one and 2 miles and 318 Beyond 2 miles so we have to transport those 318 kids with no fees at state law okay the ineligible are the students that qualify for free or reduced lunch so out of that 861 students within one mile 18 of them could not be charged a fee out of the 142 students between one and two miles 34 of them could not be charged to Fe and then again the whole 318 would not be eligible to be charged a fee because of distance hold on sorry one sec so basically the amount of students we could charge is about 151 according to like I know it's not like but about 150 students of the total number of students in our school yes okay and and I put together a price comparison using the one mile and the between one and two miles because I thought it would be interesting for you to look at for sure so if you take a look at this um grid on the left hand side would be a potential fee I just put four different amounts there $250 500 750 and $1,000 for charging and then across the top participation fee so if you charged the students within the within one mile of the school $250 per student and everybody said yes we want to do this that would be $10,750 if it were me and I lived within the mile of the school and you were going to charge me I would be walking my kid to school so I wanted to keep this amount separate just so you could see that um as the price goes up I imagine the Walkers to school would increase can I ask a question yes so if we were to adopt something like this and I'm not advocating for or against at this point but to your theory there's a high potential that parents would be like that's too much I'm just going to drive or drop them off or the walk do we if that is the case if we have parent like can we make decisions around our number of buses you or do you still have to have the number of buses in order cuz like I know the concerns people had last year was like what is there actual going any possible actual savings is like I guess it's the bottom line because can we reduce our buses again if we have people that are opting to drive their kids or do we still have to provide the same number of buses is there still that you have to be able to like in an emergency bust the whole school out we have 31 shared buses across three towns in the Regional School District and the two buses that Halifax gave up last year are now two buses in Kingston because they had increase they had buses they were paying for beyond the shared buses oh so so back I guess the question is can we cut another bus if that were to happen so back to the back to this yeah so and you can look through this at your leisure but just kind of think of you know as the price goes up the participation rate will probably go down this is the group um the with one mile group this is the between one and two mile group where again as the price goes goes up your participation rate is going to go down but probably not the same as the within one mile because when we say a mile and a half we're talking about like cranberry Drive I don't even know if there's sidewalks between cranberry and Stony wear couldn't think of the name so this is something for you to think about as we move forward so in summary you can have a bus fee if you'd like but it's only for certain Riders within two miles of the school if we were to decide to do this we would need to put an article on Spring Town Meeting In order to create a revolving account to put the fees into to then have them be accessible so then how does this work with the budget we wouldn't know in by the time the budget needs to be voted and then voted by town meeting we wouldn't know what type of Revenue would come in and who would be riding the bus and who wouldn't be riding the bus and so we couldn't count in my opinion we couldn't count on removing another bus yeah but we could if we don't have the ridership in August reduce a bus which is not terribly helpful because we've already done the budget but my other question is do you know what typically towns charge to ride the bus do you have a I I can ask my list serve group thank you for that information I I don't know that also would impact whether it's actually worthwhile instead of just annoying you know than you I don't know do we know how many students who live within that one and two mile radius are already being driven by parents I don't know this is so the the information that I got from the bus company um was for every student that's currently on the bus but there if parent had an issue and couldn't pick up their child that child could ride the bus correct yes so are they calculating all students that could or are actually taking the bus um they routed it's the students they've routed for that they have a seat for are included in that number I had I understand that but for we don't have a way of predicting we don't track like who are the kids that are getting picked up and dropped off that's my my um my question because I know when I my kids were going to Silver Lake they had a bus seat secure for them but most days they were driven to and driven home because of before and after school activities but there were occasions where they did ride the bus and I think if we already know that we have have a very large amount of parents who who live within those radiuses driving and although they have a seat secure for their child on the bus but are already driving them that I think that's information that can help inform our decision well there's what how many drivers do you have Mr VOD 70ish and obviously there's multiple students it's not just one kid in each car so I mean my gut on this is that no matter what decision we make it's going to it's going to be a tough thing um there was a lot of you know concern from parents cutting the two Buzz buses it seems like it's working um based on the feedback that we've heard um so you know it's hard it's hard to look in a crystal ball and understand like what makes the most sense if we were to put this out there but I would I mean just I think we would need to get um some feedback from parents before we go too deep into this that's my only concern I feel like they should have a right to know this is on the table um before we start really building traction towards putting it together um you know we're going to talk about budget so like if this is one of the things we're looking at then I think it should be um put in like a whole host of things that we're looking at absolutely mhm I mean I mean that the you know number of people that can participate in the amount of Revenue we could actually get from it is extremely telling yeah because like I don't know that any school charges more than like $250 right I don't know though you know but I can't imagine anyone anyway well that's discussion for another time time but I can't imagine charting more than that you know but that's just my personal I think it'll be difficult too if like the majority of our students live 3 miles an hour and you're only asking you know a segment a small segment of the population like that that's just going to be A1 students impacts a very small percentage of this school and so back to what I was saying of this 151 how many are are already driving their kit and it so the impact could be even much smaller what's the current enrollment Mr B I have 33 oh wow that went down so 28% would of the school would be impacted by this okay that was helpful thank you yeah very helpful you're welcome I'm going to try to be quick on the rest of my stuff um financial report the financial report is in your folder um if you scroll down the column the budget balance column you'll see uh there are some numbers that are negative numbers um so the first one right off the bat you can see I have created a contractual Services school committee line so this these are fees um that were lumped in inappropriately in other lines I'm in the process of trying to move things to where they belong so that's your mass Association of school committees um online policy manual and ared which is our tool for um contract negotiations um the insurance for the union 31 school committee um was $510 over what was budgeted there's no wiggle room on that and then all of the other negative numbers um are because I'm moving things around in so for example if you look at special ed lines you might see some numbers that are negative that you would be very concerned about a lot of those are due to the fact that um for example we have a on toone nurse and I've created a contractual service nursing line for that so if you look at um if you look at those don't be overly concerned the special ed Department provided me with a summary of where we're at right now for the year and the special ed uh accounts total are there's an excess of $126,000 at the moment and I'll update you on that as the year progresses any questions about the financial report um if we get to a point where we need to freeze the budget I imagine you'll let you know okay thank you yes are we close to that or no no that's good that is good I mean to know you know can I ask my question about oh yeah go ahead so at our last meeting we talked about the boiler um maintenance and you were going to ask for a placeholder on the town water so I have two other things I want to talk I'm sorry so in your folders an end a revised end of year close out so um if you recall we had some expenses that came in after the end of after our closeout meeting on July 1st and those expenses were going to go to town meeting to be paid um I had conversation with the town manager they hadn't finished closing out the fiscal year and they asked me to just send those bills so we did a FY 24 warrant in October so if you look at the um if you look at the revised close out there's one two three four um for invoices that were processed and paid by the town that reduced the um grand total of what's being turned back over the town to now $1,175 4 which brings me to the boilers so there was an issue with the boilers um and I can't recall off the top of my head because it's way past my bedtime but I think it was one or two boilers there was an issue with the boilers K how many I got three here three three boilers we have three but two of them were giving us problems so out of the three boilers two were giving problems two were covered under warranty and replaced and that has been paid for out of the fy2 school budget and the town will be transferring money to the school at town meeting out of this excess okay in the spring um December okay okay how much was the total okay good question sorry I wasn't prepared to talk about boilers tonight sorry it's nonetheless it's been fixed and there's no issues with the boilers correct correct okay and that's it for the financial report actually speaking of money and other issues that we've dealt with the water situation are we still having expenditures in regards to that or are we done with that situation so the last testing that was done um we there were no issues uh there are filters on the water fountains there are fil filters on certain kitchen equipment and they have since been retested and um those are all checking out so and no more pulling Springs then no no more PS and Springs right is there any way that we can see like a total cost all all from last year this year that encompasses this whole water situation in the end what did we end up having to spend because of this absolent thank you so that's it for the financial report if you take a look next on the agenda is the grant Awards so we are um we are recipients of federal grants Federal entitlement grants in previous years the uh Silver Lake had acted as a uh Consortium lead and so all the money went to Silver Lake and then was spent out and one of the changes that we've made made which desie has said thank you for because they're going to do this with all of their grants is the grants will be belonging to each town to Halifax we need to accept the grant award so I put um in your digital folder a screenshot of the state and federal entitlement and allocation grants by District so here's the Halifax grants what I will tell you about this is the first one on the list the s $75 that early childhood uh 262 Grant is actually for the prek which is Silver Lake so desie has moved that money to Silver Lake so that's $775 is not a Halifax Grant amount um the 240 Grant the idea individuals with disability Education Act it um Halifax is due $185,800 Title One Halifax will receive $ 56,216 n30 title4 $110,000 for a district total of $262,700 of the town of Halifax totaling in the amount of $262,700 I'll second um all right any discussion okay um a vote all in favor yep I yep um I have a quick question for you Sarah in regards to these State entitlements and allocations um the town of Halifax is going to be taking vote in the month of December in regards to the MBTA housing and we have been told that the state has threatened to pull some State funds are these funds by any chance part of those funds that our governor is planning on threatening to pull from the town should we decide as a town not to be an MBT a supporter or supporter of the so I know it says at the top of the page state and federal entitlement but these are federal grants so all one two three four five of them here are and are there any other funds that we are receiving from the state that we are possibly going to lose because of a nay vote that would affect the schools and the school budget I am I'm going to have to give back to you on that I will research that and send it out there are um there are very few grants that were Halifax grants and so um so PR Regional yes okay so how does that work if it's a regional Grant are we putting Silver Lake in Jeopardy if this town is not in compliance because I think Kingston voted to they did vote to support it right I don't know what the status of plumton is but they don't have a they don't I think they're not part of this state grants are not so where we would state grants would be competitive grants so uh back during Co and recovery from Co times there were a lot of state grants available for summer school programs for after school programs for you know what you had to apply for them um as part of a competitive process and you may or may not have been awarded them these grants here go from the US Treasury through desie to us and it's it's not like they're going to say no you can't have this money right so I need to look into the answer for that um about whether it's the desie any desie type state grants or whether it's like the road repairs and things like that that the need gives talents if we can get clarity to in terms of if we vote no on this if we put any Silo Lake specific State funding state grants in Jeopardy so I think that's important I think we just need to be transparent with the community there's been a lot of chatter about how having more housing in the town of Halifax will increase the student population in our school but I also while I I that is a very valid concern I am also concerned that we could lose money that would greatly impact our students that we currently have okay is that everything Sarah it is thank you thank you Dr Clippers um I have a few things from my curriculum and instruction assessment update the first piece is to review briefly uh the professional development day that happened on November 5th all four districts participated in the PD day um this is a a overview of what happened that day so K through two teachers throughout the three districts participated in a full day of PD provided by the spern center which was entitled introduction to structured literacy this Workshop was held virtually as Educators remained at their own schools during this Workshop the topics during this Workshop included understanding the major theoretical underpinnings of the science of reading which included discussing the reading rope and the reading brain we also discussed understanding that oral language and speech is natural but reading and writing is not also there was a discussion of pheic awareness or graphic mapping in the afternoon Educators were able to explore videos and resources that can be used in instructional planning and they were able to connect the learning that occurred during the workshop session by using templates for practicing phonic skills and reading text along with fluency and comprehension so that is what the k through 2 teachers worked on during the 5ifth um grades 3 through six teachers focused in the morning on response to reading through writing grade level teams reviewed the writing benchwork schedule and how it relates to the scope and sequence of grade level teaching they participated in mcast essay analysis each grade level analyzed their essay scores from the last few years they had access to grade level mcast essay prompts to conclude what types of prompts each grade should be supplementing into their reading and writing instruction Educators discussed how they could embed response to reading through essay writing and Ela and how they could embed grammar and Convention skills as well in the afternoon Educators within their grade level department could focus their work on prevalent topics and issues they were experiencing this included specific content area work in math and in particular in science Technology and Engineering teachers who specifically teach St at the grades 3 through six level were able to dive into St Desi expectations under the guidance of Scott frell 7 through 12 s curriculum coordinator the sixth grade s teachers were able to also focus on the implementation of open sad curriculum which we spoke about a little question about that earlier so they were really able to focus on um the the Desi standards and new per performance tasks that are going to be required but also the grade six teachers were able to discuss the opsed curriculum more um with a group from the middle school that's had a lot more experience with this and also keep in mind that this year we're implementing a curriculum review cycle for the whole for all the districts for all the areas we start with math and Kane spoke about this earlier um with the math group starting in this year um and the science group will follow so that's something that we're looking at you looking at math now science um and making sure that the curriculum we use K through 6 is aligned with the with the state standards so that's something that that we've been talking about um K through 6 art music PE Library technology nurses and guidance faculty met and department meetings during the day and we're able to connect with their 7 through 12 counterparts to share lesson planning and design along with discussions of vertical alignment so I think that was a good experience for those folks to connect with their colleagues um at the 7 through 12 level um special education teachers focused on the new IEP and uploading these to edpl par professionals were invited to a professional development offering a KES that included information on best practices and um related to practical Behavior strategies um they worked that day you know at KES on um as I mentioned practical Behavior strategies but also um brain science and how this impacts behavior and in the afternoon they worked on um differentiated teaching techniques and how they could support that in the classroom at the 7 through 12 level Educators met in departments and continued the work of September 3rd in relation to mcast data analysis in math Ela and St along with curriculum work in other departments which was a continuation of the September 3rd PD day work they also participated in breakout sessions which included a menu of training provided by faculty a sampling of the sessions provided includer included cyber training gr grading looking at grading 504 training star training and um AI use in the classroom so those are some of the things that they worked on so that was November 5th and as I spoke previously about the literacy needs assessment the district is participating in a k through2 literacy needs assessment we're conducting this assessment to discover where we are as a district in regard to literacy and future implementations of teaching and learning related to literacy um the hill which is the Consulting Group we're working with has met several times with what we call the District Administrative team that's myself and other administrators um and as an outcome from that group we formed a larger group that has more representative U members to it which is called the District leadership ly leadership team um and on November 5th at the end of our PD in all of the districts we were able to have a zoom presentation by D Darcy Burns who's the executive director for Hill where she explained to all Educators within the district what the literacy needs assessment would include this was a great opportunity to have everybody all together in all of the districts hearing directly from Darcy as to what the needs assessment would entail what their role would be and sort of what the outcome of that would be so I felt like that was a good time to have everybody hear the same thing from from Darcy which was helpful there are basically three components to the needs assessment the first are focus groups that are happening in all four districts um where teachers um are formed in small groups with the schedule as to when they meet and the hill is asking them questions and taking their information they've met with the leadership group they met with us the other day they're going to meet with us in December where they asked us questions um the second piece is they're going to um provide surveys for people to answer specific questions about um literacy throughout the district and the last piece is are inventories where they're going to say what are the assessments you're using and kind of get all of that information these components are all in progress currently after the information is gathered the hill will present their findings SL report um from there the DLT will meet to form a literacy plan for Silver Lake um Regional School District and superintendency un Union 31 so that will be the outcome of of those pieces the last piece um we spoke about this earlier too the data meeting at all the six schools in regards to English language arts and math including mcast information and star data have been completed um the information that was reviewed this fall is from the Star dble assessments that were conducted during late January and February students will be assessed again educators will again participate in data meetings to help inform instruction and to also inform tiered interventions which we spoke about so that's also a piece that I work with um Brian DeSantis on at the K through6 level and the principal to make sure like I said that that those are happening in a timely manner and the data meeting follow-ups are happening and for me it's it's twofold in many ways it's one to inform instruction which is around um all things related to teaching and learning but also to help inform those tier those um the tiered intervention piece that needs to happen um and then upcoming I mentioned the math curriculum review steering committee they've met once and now um we're forming two two subgroups from that committee one of which will be the K through six um group that will look at um um doing a core program review for math um and that will be that will stretch from now until probably the end of the year um Brian and I are working very closely on how to um set that group up and how to um make sure that we do a thorough core review and then um also analyzing teaching for student results this is a course that is run by RBT but is for mainly our evaluators to learn more about um data datadriven um instructional practices because one of the very very important pieces to um being an administrator um being a leader is being able to um do supervision and evaluation at a high level to provide feedback and to to move things forward um evaluation working group is another group that I know was established in the district um I've met with um Steve blet who was a member of that last year and we're looking to get that group back together in January and the last piece is the technology committee um we met for the first time um Dave Murphy and and also Steve blet are are members of that group among other people so we started looking at things related to um technology that's any questions highlights thank you I do actually um I noticed that your um science of reading PD was only for K to 2 do you have a plan to roll that out for those in 3 to six because if they're doing true tier two instruction they also need this PD yeah that's a that's something that we're looking at and also um I think will come out of a result of the needs assessment um more of a pervasive approach to that throughout the levels um I do think that um often times we're talking about specific um phonics instruction or reading having a good foundation that's consistent throughout all of the districts is really the primary piece but for sure I'm I'm I think that that will come out of the needs assessment to make sure that we're addressing the needs of the older students that need what we're using for phonic instruction is OG right now it's a it's a combination of things it's it is Orton Gillingham it's classroom OG um that's a piece where there are um different schools in the district that have had have had that on professional development and there are other schools that necessarily haven't had that as thoroughly so that's something that I want to address next year especially at the end of June where Stern provides a course for classroom OG and then also during the school year next year so that's something we're working on to make sure that that's more comprehensive because that's not necessarily the case throughout all the three elementary schools that everyone has had the classroom OG um that piece so that that's that's sort of like step one um in different in different districts they heg um here at hes um I'm not sure extent the extent that they use heg but I know that they use it at some of the other schools but the main piece is really the classroom OG and making sure that um they they have that also making sure that um you know the tiered invention intervention piece is stronger and also another piece I'd like to look at and and collaborate with Chon is making sure that um special needs teachers have the associates level OG is there a possibility of creating a Data Bank for our teachers so that they can easily go to a drive and get lessons and decodables that are suitable for the students sitting in front of them at a minute's notice without having to dig through a bunch of stuff yeah yeah that's definitely something that I think we could um get more collaboration and more consistency that's really been the focus of the work that Ryan and I have been doing for sure is to make sure there's more of a comprehensive Approach at all of the all the schools because as we know they all end up in seventh grade together we want to make sure they have the skills that they all need to to be in the right place yeah thank you any other questions all right Dr sah oh sorry Sarah I just I have to answer the question about the the vote thank you the MBTA vote I put two documents in the folder for this for the meeting for tonight one of them is a community B letter from the attorney general and one of them is the law the section 3A law itself the advisory for the Attorney General says non-compliant NBTA communities are also subject to the administrative consequence of being rendered ineligible to receive certain forms of State funding there's a helpful footnote on this in the Attorney General's office that says this references Part B of the law Part B of the law says an MBTA community that fails to comply with this section shall not be eligible for funds for from the housing Choice initiative as described by the governor in a message to the general court dated December 11 2017 the local capital projects fund established in section 2 e e e i there's four E I don't know how many I said of chapter 29 the math Mass Works infrastructure program established in section 63 of chapter 23A or the Housing Works infrastructure program established in section 27 of chapter 23b I don't see yeah are non-educational perfect thank you I don't know if they can change things after the vote is taken but this is what is for right now I'm sorry to interrupt thank you no thank you for the right Dr FR so the last item for tonight is um a FY 26 budget Memo from the Town Administrator um quoting a dad and um he sent this out to all Town departments um we're being asked to submit two budgets the first is a level service budget and the second should represent a 10% reduction from your total FY 25 approved budget um so this includes all aspects of your departmental budget such as wages expenses allocated Etc so I wanted to share this with you because I know that we had spoken um in our last meeting about what you'd like to see from a budget presentation I put this in here because you also needed to know what the town is looking for and um what kind of an impact that 10% of the budget would have on on the Halifax elementary school so we will we have been meeting with our principles um and uh in fact today we we finished with our last principal meeting for the first round of principal meetings and then we'll meet again uh prior to our first preliminary budget presentation where we're going to look at uh where we are with all of the requests versus where the school committee asked us to be versus the um the presentations that the town is looking for and so our goal will be for the preliminary to have all of that information for you to consider in that presentation and that's where we stand so this deadline is December 13th which is before we meet so again um we had met with the town administrators and explained that the school budgets are on a different timeline um and are regulated by um state law and it we need uh at least until January to prepare a preliminary and then the school committies have the opportunity to review those and vote a budget so the school committees will be following the regul regulations that um pertain to the school committees and we will honor the town's request by preparing them the information that they request but we will not have that information by December okay um so this was sent out to all the department heads and this pertains specifically to Halifax but are is Halifax also looking for a 10% reduction for silver link uh that that has not been asked of us we had a joint meeting scheduled I think for December 12th um but that was canceled today by the town administrators I received a notice from The Plimpton Town Administrator asking um to please cancel and to postpone it uh that they would prefer to meet in [Applause] January some concerns about 10% I I have a lot of concerns about 10% because we cut far more than we were asked to cut last time and to be asked to cut even more I think to be our children deserve better to be fair this is a this is to all the department heads for Halifax this isn't just specific to the school or I Mis reading that no it was to everyone it was to everyone Beyond I agree however I think we need to give a realistic View MH of what 10% would look like at the scho absolutely so we need to have a very definitive picture of this is what it will look like and you know go to the town and see if yeah do we have estimates of what kindergarten is going to look like yet for next year next year we have no idea huh I think the information Sarah provider tonight around the um fun foundational minimum and um the par par pupil expenditure is helpful um in kind of illustrating how low for lack of a better word hell effects already is it would be more helpful if we had something that was more current um I know that's crystal ball ask um but I think if we had those types of numbers before town meeting that would be helpful um certainly before January but um yeah I I'm not inclined I think we're going to have to talk with our um Town Administrator at some point and our border select and I just don't think it's it's fair to ask that of our school commit or of our schools okay any other comments questions okay um I dates future dates did November 28th and 29th is Thanksgiving recess we have a joint meeting on December 12th canell oh that's cancelled thank you I didn't know if we were still having the okay um December 23rd holiday vacation begins January 2nd the schools reopen our next meeting is January 13th 2024 can I have a motion to adjourn please I would like to make a motion to adjourn second all right uh uh Katie yep Lor myself yes thank you everyone have a Happy Thanksgiving please thank you [Music]