e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e okay it looks like we have everybody back can everybody hear me Susan can anybody hear me I can hear y can hear you you're live on hcam Ed great thank you uh so uh welcome back to the Thursday June 13 2024 meeting of the school committee we have just returned from executive session uh and we have an opportunity for public comment if there is anybody here uh that would like to make a public comment if you could just raise your hand um to be recognized okay seeing none uh we can move into the uh Hopkins project and that's Chris Eberly I believe is I don't oh I do see Chris okay all right thank you Nancy um for those I haven't had the plan pleasure of meeting yet I'm Chris Eberly I'm the project executive for the Hopkins school lower middle school project um for vertex um I'm before you tonight to discuss an approval of um an expenditure for for soil pre-characterization um in your packet is a proposal that the architect put together for his consultant who deals with site environmental issues to look at um pre-characterized the soil so what that is is when you build a construction project you're always looking to balance the cuts and the fills the cuts is the dirt that you remove from the ground the fills are where you raise the elevation ideally the amount you take out is how much you put back down but there are certain circumstances es where that's not possible for the Hopkins project because we're attempting to um maximize the outdoor space available to the children and we're limited by the wetlands we are confined to a small Site Area and so it will necessitate what's called exporting the soil or taking the soil off site to another location where they'll reuse it if the soil's of good quality sometimes the contractor will try and get rid of it as um structural fill or other reusable soils in other scenarios they'll take it to a landfill and they'll use it as cover within the landfill but in both of those um scenarios the uh the whoever is the exporter of that soil wants to ensure that they're not spreading potential contaminates that might be within that soil to those other locations so um in order to facilitate that what is typically done is that you test that soil to ensure that it's below what's called rcs1 which are State mandated LEL s that are set by mass D for how much contaminants can be within the soil there's a couple of different ways that you can do that and what can be the most efficient is to sample that soil what's being proposed is to sample that soil in advance with um a type of boring rig called a geopro what that'll do is it'll drill a small hole and capture a sample below the Earth bring that sample up and then we'll Laboratory test it to see what's contained within that sample The Proposal you have before you is um I believe uh $ 44,5 4 um for the consultant Perkins Eastman would have a 10% um contractually allowed uh markup on that which would make their potential Amendment $ 48569 40 what we're asking the committee to do tonight is to authorize uh not to exceed $50,000 [Music] um authorization for vertex to negotiate an agreement with um with Perkins Eastman so that we can begin this work right away the value of doing this work now versus waiting till construction is that by doing it now we'll have an understanding and hopefully find that all of the soil is below what's called rcs1 that means that we can take it to pretty much any of the locations that will receive it and that is what we're owning within the contract in order to deal with this soil if we delay on testing we have to test more um smaller quantities will have to be tested at once and we'll also get into a situation where the site contractor will have to move the piles around multiple times and keep the piles on site longer which can add inefficiency to the job and potentially at additional cost so this is really a cost savings Venture that we um recommending that you undertake now we do have remaining contingency within the original design authorization from town meeting and 2023 to cover the cost of what we're asking for and with that I'd open it up to any questions that the committee might have great thanks Chris any questions from the committee okay uh hearing no questions or seeing none uh is there somebody who would like to Mo make a motion to approve ver text to authorize a not to exceed amount of $50,000 for soil pre-characterization I move toov okay motion by Susan is there a second second all right so second I heard you first Chris so go with that uh and then I'll start at the bottom of my screen which is Susan yes Jamie yes Chris yes and I am also a yes uh thank you very much Chris for coming back uh with this for us tonight thank you we'll see you next week see you next week bye Chris all right and that brings us into a vote on the par professionals contract Dr Kavanaugh would you like to speak to to that uh to start sure um so as we always do um we have made language changes to the par professional contract and we've made wage changes to the par professionals contract we just spent the last five plus months negotiating a contract that's a three-year contract um and it will run from 2024 to 2027 uh I can talk a little bit about um the school committee's kind of goals I think and going into those negotiations uh one of the things that we do is we like to take a look at where our par professionals are compared to sort of what the market is paying it at a given amount of time we have sort of four levels of par professional the a par professional is a general education par professional and they might work in a library in a kindergarten classroom um our B par professionals are considered special education par professionals the C's are considered ABA techs and the D par professional are ABA techs that have RBT certification and so what we've also decided to do is to move our discipline tutors people who tutor in ela or math into that that D scale anyway when we looked at those scales what we could see in terms of a market analysis is that our A's and our B's were underpaid and our C's were being compensated more fairly in our D's even more fairly and so the first goal was to ensure that our A's and B's would be um paid competitively in the market so if people are looking at the salary schedules for the A's and Bs they're going to see that the increases there are more significant than they are among the C's and the D's and that was really by Design um so in the first year of that contract there is no uniform raise you'll see raises that can be as high as 20% you'll see raises that are 1% um and they vary all through there I think there might even be one that's at 25 and then in the second Year everyone gets a 3% increase and then in the third year they do as well um so it will it will level in years two and three but in the first year those raises are are certainly desperate um we used to have um sort of very limited steps and then you would get a super step I think when you reached year 13 in the Hopkinton public schools and what we've done is we've added more steps and so there are more opportunities to grow if you are sort of loyal to the Hopkinton public schools we have added a couple of Milestone payments which is what we're calling them so at year 15 of continuous um consecutive service to the hopkington public schools you would get a $1,000 bonus and then year 20 you would get a $2,000 bonus uh there was one little snafu in all of this and that is that there were some people who were C par professionals on step three and they were going to have to live on that step and what was kind of a donnut hole and so their increase would have only been 1% except that we have have negotiated a $500 one-time payment for those folks it's only going to exist in fy2 and then it never needs to exist again because after that all of the raises become more fluid um the language changes were far more simple I think maybe some of the standout ones are that if you are working in the role of a teacher so sometimes we a teacher needs to leave the room because that teacher needs to go to an IEP meeting or what what have you um do some kind of testing with kids then the par professional will step in and serve in the role of the teacher if you are serving in the role of a teacher at an elementary school once you have reached one hour of that and if it's the middle school or the high school it's whatever the duration of a class period is you get additional compensation in the amount of $10 an hour on top of your regular salary uh we had a lot of conversation about uh when you might need medical documentation and we resolved that um we are allowing par professionals to take their personal days they get to if you don't use both of those you can carry one into the next year and have three uh personal days for the upcoming year um I think that those might be the highlights of the language changes we did also offer that uh if you have not an associates degree or you haven't passed the Power Pro but you have six 60 credits toward a bachelor's degree from an accredited college or university it counts the same so those are some of the highlighted changes um I know that you are all very familiar with them there is a side letter for the $500 onetime payment it doesn't exist in the contract and so for tonight we are asking you as the school committee to vote this contract for 24 to 27 for a pair of professionals um and they have already ratified and I would just like to public Ally thank the par professionals our five plus months of negotiations uh well we spent a lot of time and we put a lot of thought into that I think we came out of it with a contract that I think both sides can feel really proud of and I feel like the our working relationship was only enhanced by the work that we just did together it was very very respectful and thoughtful so thank you to our pars I just want to Echo that and thankful for all the pars who said so thoughtfully to negotiate with us but uh also just really thankful for the the really outstanding pair of professionals that we have in our district and how many dedicated uh outstanding professionals we have we are very fortunate as a district so yes thank you to the Paris they are often the glue that holds us together so yes they are anybody else have anything they want to add um from the committee okay hearing none then if there is a person who would like to make a motion uh to approve the paraprofessional contract um go ahead Chris uh make a motion to approve the power professionals contract okay so motion by Chris is there a second on that second second by Susan we'll do a roll call vote starting with you Susan yes Jamie yes Chris yes and I am also a yes uh so then we also just for folks at home we need to take the paraprofessional side letter to the uh contract is part of what Dr kavana already spoke about but we do need to take a have a motion with regard to the side letter I move to approve the side letter referenced in G of the par professionals MOA okay thank you a motion by Susan is there a second on that second second by Jamie we'll do a roll call starting with you Susan yes Jamie yes Chris yes and I am also a yes uh and the both the S letter and the contract are approved um thank you to everybody who uh worked so hard on that so then the the final item of business on our agenda is just to announce a vacancy on the school committee uh many people may remember that um we had received a letter of resignation from uh Mr Monroe uh on I received it on Sunday the 9th of June uh I forwarded that on to the committee shortly after I received it I did also send it then on Monday the 10th to our town clerk uh who has accepted uh posted that and recorded it for for us uh and so the next step from here is just to announce publicly the board of the select board will receive a letter from uh send them a letter tomorrow just they are aware of it but they need to have that officially after we've announced the vacancy uh the letter will just say that there is a vacancy and then they will uh post that on the town website there will be more information coming on how to apply for that uh just it's the process for applying to the school committee for an appointment is under the charter uh there there's a number of days waiting that from the time that it is it's a 10day after it's posted waiting period and then another seven days after it closes and then we'll do a joint meeting with the select board for the majority of the remaining school committee members and the select board combined uh to choose an appointment from the applications that we remove sorry that we receive so that more coming on that it will be well advertised uh up on the town and as well as the school websites so that is all that we have uh tonight I would seek uh a motion to adjourn unless there's anybody that had anybody that anything they wanted to add right is there a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn okay motion by Chris is there a second on that second second by Jamie Susan will start with you yes Jamie yes Chris yes and I am a yes and we are adjourned at 8:54 thank you all and have a good night thank you by good night