##VIDEO ID:evLjtLmx264## e e good evening and welcome to the September 12th 20124 school committee meeting everyone in the studio please rise for the Pledge of [Music] 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 is there anyone here for public comment doesn't look like it thank you um any recognitions tonight I think we'll just recognize so we have Savannah with us I'm Savannah student rep from the high school welcome thank you um I would like to recognize that uh the other night at the select board um Susan rmck and Carol Kavanaugh for the Fantastic presentation to the select board and other committees on our school budget and the impact on creating an inclusive School environment for our vulnerable Learners I really appreciated that thank you thank you okay and then we're ready for your report Savannah from the student council so hi everyone my name is Savannah Rivera I am a senior at HHS and I'm really excited and grateful that I get to be here so thank you for having me to start off the United leaders and Miss carner put together a great freshman orientation on Wednesday before school started freshman and seniors got their photos taken whereas sophomores and juniors took theirs during school last week and there was a small Club Fair outside the school where freshmen had the opportunity to get involved in the after school Community they were also given a rundown of where their classes are and with a brother in ninth grade I can confirm that they only got lost once or twice um moving forward to the senior events we tied shirts for the first day of school and while I can't promise they're pretty that in addition to the senior Sunrise really brought our class together we had a great turnout at senior Sunrise people brought grills they were making kebabs and pancakes and we also had Donuts um we recently had a successful fire drill and everyone got out of the school to their designated areas efficiently and safely we also recently had our club Fair during lunch block which showcased the 50 plus clubs at HHS and I can tell you for Craft club we had a lot of new signups so we're excited to get started with that something I'm really proud of at HHS is the variety and diversity of our clubs here and there's always going to be a club if not more than one that will pique your interest and really help the underclassman specifically get involved and make connections to the Hiller Community um I would also like to thank all the teachers and faculty members who take time outside of their academic day to serve as advisers for these clubs and activities going into sports we have a lot of Junior leadership on our teams with Junior captains in boy soccer and girls field hockey who have played a crucial role both on and off the field girls volleyball has been dominating their start of the season and the boys and girls cross country teams have placed Fifth and seventh at the mstca state relays and also a huge shout out to Riley Colin for her first career goal on the varsity girls soccer team this week additionally we had our first student council meeting last Tuesday where we discussed upcoming events such as pep rally homecoming and the girls football game to wrap up I would like to mention what's going to be happening between now and the 26th we have our first home football game next Friday which always have big turnouts and we're really excited to get back into that student section and finally during Flex blocks both this week and next week freshmen and seniors will be meeting with their counselors for seminars discussing adjusting to the first year of high school and post-secondary planning for the seniors so again thank you for having me and I'm looking forward to giving you the student perspective on things discussed here during school committee thank you so much thank you what's the um girls vol ball um record now I believe they won their first game that they played but I haven't been following how many games they played since then excellent there's also a girls varsity soccer game happening right now so check the score on that that's great thank you so much superintendent report sure um so tonight I just want want to represent my budgeting report from Tuesday evening um sometimes I think that we just get different audiences so I'm going to scoot through this uh one thing you will also notice is that as we go through the budget season Mrs rck and I will make very similar presentations very many times um so we are in the preliminary stages of um budgeting this year um and one of the things that the select board very often asks us to do is kind of give them some foreshadowing of of where our our big budget drivers will be so I like to start with the historical increases over time from fy20 to fy2 so you can see where we've been over the last 6 years 6.3% 6.6% 5.4 2.88 7.9 and 5.35 um and because there's just such variability in those numbers you can see that we really do try to ask for the need to haves uh we are predicting that they will be three major budget drivers this year uh student enrollment obviously drives the budget special education needs and then contractual obligations so we'll start out with a look at our enrollment uh what you're seeing on the screen is the table that was created for us by our demographer Dr artha Wagman in the 2425 school year you can see that we are uh predicted to reach 4,29 90 students by the time we get to June of this year and so if today we're at 4,234 we're about 56 students away from getting to that 4,290 and I know people say well 56 students seems like a lot but over the year um from September to June we very often reach that 50 student Mark is there um an average that you have of from this point to the end the average number of students that kind of uh I don't so you'll see on a subsequent slide that I put in the October Sims and then the June Sims so you can see kind of how we've grown from October to June okay um but lots of times we do get you know kids who come in in September who leave you or they would well no they were like on vacation and they came in three days late or they were moving to hopkington but didn't get here till September 14th or you know those kinds of things so you still get some trickling in September August is a very busy month as you would expect um so when we are building the FY 26 budget we're building it on this number right here 4355 which is what we are predicted to reach by June of 2026 so it seems unusual that in September of 24 you're looking at June of 26 but we are so here's the slide um Susan that I was talking about uh in 1819 for example our projected enrollment was 3557 in October of that year we were actually tracking about 130 students ahead so in October we had 3,685 and that grew to 3,741 those were years where we had big increases in students so if we wanted to just look at last year for example in October of 23 we had 4,187 and in June of 24 we had 4,237 which is exactly 50 kids uh so um if you look at where we are right now our projected enrollment is 4,290 we don't haven't had our October Sims numbers come in yet so we can watch that number as well as where we are at the end of the year what does Sims stand for oh I think it's like student information management system I think that's what it is I was wondering the same thing and when we say Sims I think that that's an uh an acronym the desie puts out there yeah so everybody has their Sims report and every kid gets assassin which is their student identity number and that's how we track them forever wasn't Sims wants a family for it was a game yeah that's what I thought that's what I thought it's like okay I talked about this in my day job so it's fun to come here and a discussion about Sims more Sims all right so given the fact that we're at about 2ou 4,24 46 and we're predicting that in June of 2026 we'll be going to 4355 uh when we plan this budget we're planning it around about 110 students and so what we like to do is we take our students and we group them into 20s um because we' about 20 kids in a classroom and those 20 kids would need about 1.4 teachers to service them uh so when we take the those groups of 20 you can see that we have 5.5 groups of 20 and if we multiply L that times the 1.4 teachers for each set of 20 students we're looking at about 7.7 FTE we always estimate that we're going to hire teachers at about $75,000 sometimes you hire them at 60 sometimes you hire them at 90 but 75 is not a a bad estimate there so when we look at the 7.7 FTE and we multiply that times the 75,000 we're talking about 5,700 5007 7,500 question yes do you have you um take into account uh potential retirements in that oh we always consider that um and that's you know part of the balancing of the budget you imagine how many people will retire and you can kind of Base that on previous years and so you your seven is kind of like that takes in replacing retired teachers and then adding well least 7.7 are brand new yeah okay that's um but yes we'll have people retire and we'll have people join us and the people who join you join you at a lower salary than some who's been a teaching in the district for 32 years right uh so let's take a look at special education the special education numbers have certainly increased from 2020 to 2024 in this particular table desie offers us the numbers for 2024 you'll see on the next slide that they don't offer us the numbers yet for 2024 in 2020 we had 3,893 students and in 2024 we had 4,223 students an increase of 330 kids over a 5-year period and so if we take this number the 4,223 and we say that about it used to be in 2020 that we had 12.2% of our kids on IEPs which went to 12.1 which went to 12.4 which went to 13.5 and now has arrived at 14.2% you can see that that percentage has crept up as well so we have 330 more kids and we have 2% more on IEPs so I've gone a very long way to say that we have kids who have more with have more kids who have needs and so what has happened in terms of Staffing over the last several years and again this only goes to 2023 is that in 2019 we had 10 FTE special Educators for every 100 students with disabilities so when we had 10 teachers for every 100 Kids the ratio of teacher to student was about 10 students that number of FTE per 100 students has dipped and so it went to 8.4 9.3 8.8 and when we were in FY 23 or in the 23 school year we had that number went down to 7.3 and we realized that could no longer sustain in fy2 we have added three special education FTE two at the middle school one at the high school so when we start to get FY when we get the 24 numbers and the 25 numbers hopefully this is going to creep back up to a place where our kids ratios are much better in terms of special Educators and number of children numbers of children on IEPs nevertheless when we look at those numbers we really don't know where they will land until we see that 24 data and so uh we will be looking at that 24 data as well as programmatic needs to make sure that our special education Staffing is ample uh the town does uh sort of refill every year our special education stabilization account uh the dollar amount in there is 1, 94,000 and I guess just given the fact that we've seen such inflation over the past several years and we know we have more kids that we should be very careful to note that that 1, 94,000 may not have as much buying power as it has had in the past could you explain what the um special education stabilization account is sure so communities can set one up if they want they have to have a vote of the school board and a vote of the select board to do that and typically what they use that money for is if you have out of District placements that were unanticipated and the number creeps up kind of rapidly you want to make sure that you have a way to to fund those so it's anticipated that money will go back into our stabilization account um last last year we did not use all of it there's about $50,000 left thank you and then we should take a look at contractual obligations uh this will be a tricky year for budgeting because uh we are budgeting we are negotiating with the custodians the teachers and the nurses we just finished negotiations with our par professionals and so in addition to not knowing what those cost of living increases will be or whatever their percent increase is we use both terms for that uh we also have to remember that our teachers are entitled to step raises which means that if they've been here five years and they're on step five when they go into step year six they'll move to step six so they get an increase in terms of steps and they also get an increase in terms of lanes if you increase your degree status so if I had a master's degree and I earned 15 credits beyond my Master's Degree I would move from the master's Lane to the Master's plus 15 Lane and so we have to figure all of that out uh the salary increases for the operating budget in fy2 was 2.5 but when we looked at all of our contractual obligations so anyone that we have a contract with so for example one of the big ones is the school buses we have an a contract with Conley busing the contract obligations for all of those things was 3.07% that of course is just contracts it doesn't mean that we've paid the electric light bill or any of those kinds of things all right so just doing a little bit of math um every time we talk about a percentage we're talking about $631,000 uh we know absolutely that you are going to see three FTE special education par Professionals in the FY 26 budget because we've already hired them now and so they're working with us now in the fy2 years so they will definitely appear in the FY 26 budget all right so where does that leave us um the initial data indicate that we will have 3.0 special education par professionals um the teacher Staffing will be somewhere around that 7.7% that we talked about just to cover our enrollment increases um there could be other special education needs you know that we left that one kind of hanging because we've added some special Educators but we don't know what the programmatic and the student IEP um demands will be and then we are also trying to incrementally grow our administrative team when we show you the increases in students and I think I've been here this is the start of my ninth year we've had more than 800 students join our schools and other than one additional assistant principal at the Hopkins school we really have not increased our building administrators we may have increased directors um we may have added a director of equity and access um but we have not increased our building leadership and it's just getting really unwieldy with that many students and so few building level administrators um and then of course you'll see contract ual obligations which are salary and other obligations so we will just start meeting with our principles and directors um in the coming couple of weeks and what we always ask them to do is to make sure that they have data to support all of their asks to consider the needs of all of our children and to make sure that they are focused on the needs to have and not the nice to haves um those are really important things we will be giving this presentation on Tuesday morning at our admin council meeting so that all of the ad administrators are in one room hearing the same message at the same time all right and then finally I love to show the slide I show it all the time um the per pupil expenditure on the top row going across you see fy21 on the bottom row you see fy22 and once desie updates these we'll be able to show you 22 and 23 but what this does it breaks down per pupil expenditures by bucket so how much are we spending on Administration instructional leadership teachers other teaching Services PD guidance counseling pupil Services operations health insurance all of that retirement for for all of our teachers um par professionals everyone so you see all of that in there and when hopkington is in the bottom 25% in any one of those categories what we do is we put a red circle around it and so you can see that we are in the bottom 25% which means we're really not spending a lot of money on those things as compared to other school district districts across the Commonwealth if we are in the blue we're in the bottom 50% in fy21 we were in the top 30% for uh professional development other than that we've never been red anything but red or blue and I think that I said it the other night and I'll say it again that this is really something to I think in a lot of ways celebrate that we're getting a lot of bang for our our our tax dollars but I think it's also something to say sort of thank you to our teachers our par of professionals our administrators because they are providing top-notch education at very very reasonable prices um and really all the people in our district I don't want to um omit anyone because I think it really takes a village to be able to put together the package that we have so thank you for indulging me and letting me present that one more time well I think it's really important for the um Community to really hear this message and to really understand the budget after the meeting Tuesday night was out at a group last night speaking to some residents too about some of the issues that are coming up as they're thinking about because everyone's concerned about the large tax bills that are coming by and they' started to hear that from the select board and the select board says nobody really listens and they're trying to get that message I think we equally need to get this message out about the return on investment as Mr her said on Tuesday night and really um what's facing us in our budgets and why we're making the decisions we're making I agree because when you start looking at it in terms of teacher to student ratio that's something that a parent can identify with um I mean I'm old enough that I had classes one 30 when I was a student and to have had even when I taught uh they were most of them were one to 25 which is which is you know it doesn't sound like a lot it's a lot to handle on any 25 second graders would be a mess 25 juniors in high school produce an awful lot of paper to be read and graded a lot of be read and graded yeah I had a question that may have been answered when the solar farm I don't know if that's the right word that was put in the middle school parking lot does that save us money make us money have we seen savings do we have them at are there other places that we could put them if it does save us money that was addressed in your document somewhat yes so um we have kind of built out as much solar as we possibly can there's there's couple stories behind the solar um the Middle School canopy and roof new installation is not lit up yet we are waiting on a Transformer from eversource so right now it's a large shade structure it's not doing anything for us the bus canopy is and the new installation on the high school is so we do have solar on all the roofs um we added those two canopies in addition we have signed a contract for solar installations that are actually on South Street so they're not school buildings so we're getting some benefit from the solar generation over there as well so we're trying to do as much as we can to offset our electric do you ever forese canopies on like the student parking lot the thing with um canopies the installation the cost of installation so we don't own these um they're all power purchase agreement um so the cost of installation makes the return on investment for us much less than it is to put them on a roof okay because obviously right they take more they're going to cover their costs right yeah so are we seeing I know the Middle School canopy isn't operation yet but on the other either canopy or on the rooftops is it saving us the district money yeah absolutely after okay yeah great MH thanks any other questions great um so I'm going to stand in for Nancy's school committee chair report um it's very brief the payroll warrants s254 has been approved and the warrant is in your folder and now we're up to Liaison reports any liaison reports uh Kyla and I went to the um CPAC administrative uh meeting and and they're really working on an Innovative idea I think Kyla can probably explain it better it's called project shark and it's about trying to subsidize um things that are needed in special education really liking it to what the hpto is doing and providing enrichment and other um things that are nice to have that you aren't able to cover in your operating budgets for that teachers and program but this one's T specifically targeted to special education classrooms um and garnering um donations um from families for those materials that teachers would really like to enhance their programs but didn't make the budget cut they also have a um interesting um meet the um special education teachers what night is that oh next Tuesday night Tuesday night at the library all the administrators at the library yeah seems like it'll be a great evening and that might not have gotten uh a lot of publicity publicity and it would be a really important for thing for in Fall Festival right to in October great and so the next Tuesday is the 17th yes lovely at the library do you know the time you're I knew you were G to ask that I was trying to pull up the email real fast it's in my calendar I want to say it's 6:30 but I could be wrong that sounds about right great and I'm sure they'll put it on their website 6:30 thank 630 library on Tuesday the 17th wonderful um elpac is waiting to elect officers um I connected with Jen suker and so she'll keep me in the loop for when the elpac team is in place um youth commission is meeting next week on Wednesday night I'm going to be late because it is the same night as third grade curriculum night um so I'll be late to that one but I'll be there um Chris do you have any uh none for me great um so we'll moving into the school Improvement plans if Mrs dubo and Mr coner would like to come up only 10 minutes behind that ask a lot of questions though so you never know yeah got so as you mentioned the curriculum night one of our counterparts uh principal voner is at his child's curriculum night we said that's important you have got to go um our plan is a collaborative plan so we will certainly present this and you know you be with your family because that's so important um so here we are this is our second year having a Joint School Improvement plan a sip we off refer to it throughout all the elementary schools in years past we worked on connecting Center at the time in Elmwood but now we've recently looped that all the way up through fifth grade so preschool through fifth grade we have alignment and column Elements which really helps with those transitions from school to school when you have programs that are moving up appropriately as the children mature but are uh present in in their previous prior schools we focus on two main goals I need to thank our school councils so our school councils meet over the course of the year so this plan that you're seeing now was our school councils that were in the past year some parents would like to say have aged out because their children have moved on to new buildings um and some are able to remain on our councils but we are fortunate that we have great participation in our councils bringing forth questions concerns from the community as well as good questions in terms of where we are with our goals so um you know we can't function without them so so we just want to make sure we thank those parents so we have two goals that we focus on in our Improvement plans not that we only do two things but you'll see they're quite comprehensive and it's they're robust here we go our first goal is to refine and grow the multi-tiered systems of support to meet every student's academic and social emotional needs every day so when you think about that wow that is a lot so as we word Smith and talk about what does that mean our theory of action behind that is if we Center first on learning foundational skills within a community gradually introducing more diverse Pathways as students mature and invest in students social emotional behavioral and physical wellness and if we commit to Growing programs that help all students access challenging curricula then we Foster students who will learn to take risks think independently believe in themselves persevere and grow academically so that is a large umbrella for one and now um Matt can talk about some of the details within that and so ultimately what the school Improvement plan does is becomes the driver for all the classroom teachers as they start setting their team goals or individual professional practice goals and student learning goals so what they do is look through the the actions and the the success criteria that we put in here to to try to Branch off of those more uh individually so some of these items have sort of lived in our sip last year and then we felt like we're important enough that we either didn't get to everything or felt like we could grow them even more this year uh to help sort of tackle all of the different elements of goal one when we think about the academics and the social emotional learning of our students so you know one of the first action items that we have in here is to continue to work with the cry up which is that tool that we had um adopted through the work that we did with black print the last few years and really uh measure how we're doing with our cultural responsive practices in the classroom and as a school by starting to work in that observation tool um that teachers can use peer-to-peer or the administrators can can use in the classroom just to sort of dipstick how we're doing uh in this in this realm we're trying to catch all of the needs for kids which we know aren't just academic right we need a lot of our kids report that they feel really connected to school right and they're really happy at school but some kids right that's still a challenge and so the purpose of doing this work is to make sure that we make those connections with every single kid um in here you'll also see action items around mtss tier one and tier two um in here with that what we're really doing is trying to think about uh how kids access our tier one instruction which is that instruction that you think of from the general education teacher and then do they need a little bit more than that um do they need some math um you know boost in math facts or do they need um some reading instruction so that would be considered like your tier two and what can the teacher intervene with in tier two where do our reading Specialists and math Specialists step in uh to work with those kids in tier two so we're really trying to frame um that those toit that decision making process to make sure that kids are getting that tier one instruction um but then also getting access to that tier 2 instruction as well yeah what is bpis PBIS PBIS positive behavioral interventions and supports so we have focused a lot on tier one what are the common expectations at Marathon even our little ones can say them take care of myself take care of each other take care of this place so knowing what those expectations are um helps you then be able to feel comfortable secure you know what's going on but Mo so their tier one supports the staff completely understand we have common language throughout our schools looking at more tier two what's the next step when someone needs a little bit more um an analogy that we talked about this summer was the dentist you know think of the teacher as your dentist you might need at times to see an orthodontist or an oral surgeon you don't skip the the the dentist who is the tier one provider you might have others that come and go um so think of our tiers as who else might come and go to work on those needs for students and they'll change as student needs change whether they're academic whether they're social emotional and something we wanted to do is connect that better than we have in the past sometimes we've had them in separate places if you will how do we connect that to address the whole child a little better than we have in the past good because I I think sometimes we have things that we talk about and we flip around terms and I don't think um people in the audience understand what those things are so a good a good example of like tier 2 PBIS would be a check-in checkout system for certain kids some kids need to have that positive uh contact with an adult to start their day just to kind of get them settled some kids don't need that right that's what makes that tier two is that it's a smaller percentage of kids that need that excent so as you go through the tiers you're thinking of uh more uh in uh higher level of intervention for Less students thank you yep you know what but what we'll do to that point is where we had the culturally responsive introduction observation protocol then cry up we'll add that language before PVS because thank you very much PB add that could you not good with the acronyms myself either so could you also Define I I don't know culturally responsive what does that look like so the pillars we're focusing on are classroom relationships and instructional practices how do we make sure children feel connected how do we make sure they see themselves in the classroom in the curriculum materials that think about Connections our uh population is changing um in our schools it's changing throughout our community how do we Ure everybody feels well welcome and invested in that so that's it in a really pair down nutshell excellent thank you so much all right uh and then the the last bullet that I just want to touch on is we are going to look at our uh learning support team process um and just look to see if we need to do any restructuring or uh refinement to that process so the learning support team is a team of Educators and administrators that meet to discuss kids that uh might be struggling academically and we want to look at all right what kind what data do we need to collect in order to make those the right decisions on uh what interventions they may or not may or may not need um and as students go through the LST process we do check-ins usually every six weeks on their progress um and if students are able to make progress on those um goals that we've set forth in throughout the LS process that's great if they're not making that progress then we go back to the drawing board and find out well what more do they need often times lsts can end in a building based accommodation plan uh it could end in a um recommendation for like a 504 uh evaluation IEP or um the the interventions that we've used under tier 2 worked and they did well and we'll we document that so that it goes to the next grade and they don't have to recreate that blue print again for that student um and so just as a as an elementary as the elementary team we want to look at that process and make sure that we're still doing that the right way uh to help kids sure um our second goal focuses on WR written language we introduced this uh in our recent plans where we know it was a curriculum area that during the pandemic really didn't have much attention and was sorely in need of some some revision to that so our goal is to enhance written language curriculum to promote increased writing opportunities and cross-curricular connections so now we're at the point where we've worked on updating our um and we still have you're never done we're always going to update and go back and revisit those lessons and units but now how can we connect them to other areas of our curriculum so we have uh a a program that came in social studies program that we piloted last year K to3 called children discovering Justice there's a rich Ro robust literature that's a component of that how can we connect the writing from just writing units if you will to that curriculum content area how can we connect that to math we've used a graphic organizer and while it's focusing on the upper elementary we start that organizer in kindergarten where they're starting to explain and document evidence like we're using those terms with with children so how do you show your answer what are your strategies and it it's a little drawing but that's their evidence and that's their label um I'll let you talk a little bit well I think the challenge with teaching young kids writing is that you want to teach the the systematic approach of how you should be setting up your writing but you doing that in a vacuum can make it really boring right and so looking at how we can make those cross-curricular connections for kids to really try to engage their background what they already know about that pulls out so much more interest and and really much more robust writing from them so it's trying to on the one hand teach them that sort of like this is how you write right these are the systems that we want you to use but we want to talk about this you know thing that's in your life through CDJ right that you can relate to that you can then write a write a lot about and know how to talk about it so we've learned that we do need some structure to that and we have found um great success with using organizers like uh strategies for self-developed regul ation srsd just to say right about your weekend is really overwhelming especially for young children they cannot pick that out it it it is a lot so having a guide where you've got visuals and little checks of what you can draw to help you there has proved very helpful to us and successful but something we're noticing is sometimes the rioting is too formulaic as they move through the grades so we want a little more opportunity for creativity and a little bit more of their voice and passion to come through what do you a tribute to creating the formulaic writing so they are rule followers many of them and they know this is how I set up an informational piece this is how I set up a persuasive piece and what even you know uh I would say even at the lower levels it it starts and they follow but then you'll see the Risk Takers start to entered their voice and that's fantastic so it's it's sort of giving writers to be permission and take risks while maintaining structure to a writing piece so that's a lot because we definitely have to get the formula and structure of a piece otherwise it's not necessarily cohesive it doesn't flow it doesn't have those elements you would like in a writing piece but we're at the point now where we can start to weave in other aspects where then you're going to get more of and I would say their voice and their passion I think where we've seen a lot of growth especially last year and we wanted to keep this in our sip for this year because we want to continue to see that was the writing and math um I I can speak for fourth and fifth grade I know when I did math I did it my one way and that was it and I don't know how why I did it that way right it's just what I was told these kids now can write you a whole paragraph explaining why they did it this way and if you really want to know I could tell you how I would do it five other ways and they're able to write that out too and that's part of what they're learning and is being able to expl explain their thinking so they're really manipulating math um and part not just the wrot answer but that critical thinking and Analysis in being able to convey that so that's a really higher level skill even at the younger levels we can get at it in different ways it'll look very different than the fourth grader um who might be writing the paragraph with multiple ways but they can give other reasons why so we start small that's really really great it's a great skill I mean you even look at like tonight when Dr Kevin was presenting the the budget you have questions right about the math and you need to be able to articulate that right and that's part of what this is what fourth and fifth graders are doing is preparing to do things like that I really appreciate the way that you're balancing the pedagogy of telling kids what to learn and how to learn but bringing in some of those principles of bringing in their experiences that come from Andre GOI like the adult learning because I think that does apply to Children Learning as well as adults and we don't get give them enough credit saying they just need to be told what to do right so it's it's really nice to enrich that teaching and highlight their experiences sometimes that's a challenge kids like some kids like to be told what to do it's easier and they get really good at doing what they're supposed to do and and now the challenge is like no we it's getting that free thinking in there so and that's a process that doesn't just happen overnight where's the appropriate place to sort of interject this and let it shine that then you're going to get great return on that instructional um engagement it's so that's that's part of the work ahead that's why and it's learning how to think critically as opposed to memorizing your addition right it's a little harder yeah and it's uncomfortable we call that productive struggle but it's in the long run they are SK skills that they need to hone so that by the time they reach the upper levels their critical thinking skill are much better right and at the lower levels part of that is you don't finish a writing piece every time you start one and it's hard to leave it and come back um so that's that basic bit of we're going to come back to it is a lot of work in our level um but some of the elements that you'll see that that we're doing that we touched on that self-regulated strategy development that's that srsd so that will be there refined with graphic organizers and what's nice is that's familiar to students throughout the elementary schools the graphic organizers get more complex children can go back and find evidence in their writing but it's something that we build on appropriately so as they move through through the grade levels we're looking at those cross-curricular connections again you know thinking about math as well science you know we've we'll be working with science this year starting to really look at we had an um an audit and independent I'm um not an independent investigation but a review a curriculum review we know we have work to do in science and we're really excited because here's a great opportunity think of young children and observation logs I mean there's so many great writing opportunities um so we're so chances are you might see science next year when you're back here with that um and right we work on our teachers getting together to review writing samples and prompts and student work what is when we're scoring them with a rubric if you will making sure that we've got the inter uh rer reliability and what does it look like what is an ex Templar and that that is always going to be work that you tend to to make sure that you've got sort of that um you know settled base that you're working off of yes any questions I'm just excited what you're doing and while it seems like oh you only have two goals there's a lot in there so these are pack gos they they are they are rich they're robust and teachers will develop their professional learning goals their student learning goals um um the Sip is a guide as well as the dis District Improvement plan and we work on developing goals that everyone can connect to it's amazing when you see some of our related arts teachers and how they connect their professional practice goals to what you might think is classroom teacher goals it's pretty great to have that across your staff yeah I'll be quiet now okay um any other questions for for them they thought there were that was going to be really quick we'll do the two together I'm sorry thank you okay okay thank you thank you so much all right thanks hopefully some of those terms might have been familiar to you yes they were that's exactly it having taught writing you know at the upper levels okay there we go yeah okay good I'll go this way before I take down good evening good evening thanks for inviting me in tonight to talk about our school Improvement plan thanks good to see you all again we're off to a good start I'm promised I'll be quiet at HMS um so our um School Improvement plan uh for this year has four goal areas similar similar to last year and um as a building um staff are pursuing um year two of the professional goals that we started together as a staff um last year so you'll see a lot of that reflected in here as well as responses to a couple of new things that are that are happening in the building so just a brief overview um the first goal is around uh social emotional learning and Equity so we're um we're exploring two actions um here um but both are really continuations of work that we did last school year so the first is uh professional time being dedicated to um pill one of the cry out that culturally responsive observational practice tool um that's around classroom environment and as a building we're committed to that really being the focus of our first couple of weeks to make sure that students are feeling welcomed and connected in the building um the specific action um that we started on uh day one that teachers returned was thinking about how students can be reflected in the classroom space where do they see themselves is it a a display in the room is it in the classroom library books that you know relate to who they are as as people so um that work is ongoing but going a little bit deeper this year um and then last year we really started to dig into our HSA data that's the holistic student assessment um students complete that it's a self assessment tool um and in the spring of last year we looked at data over a couple of years for students um to not only identify how student students were feeling on a day-to-day basis which is really good data to have but also to identify supports that those students might need so um we LED those um data reviews in teams as you know the middle school is grouped by teams looking at data um And discussing students and we're going to continue that that practice um this year so those are our two actions um under our first goal um the second goal is relative to uh curriculum and instruction there's there's a lot um a in this goal but again some of it is continuation of last year um with the addition of looking at data relative to curriculum and instruction of the math 6 Plus course um that we added this year and is underway so specific to math um students have taken um their initial star assessment um that's important to give us some predata as we U go into the school year um we're looking at student performance in both classes great math and grade 6 Plus um and um observing student performance and seeing the impacts um we'll be looking at the impact of that new course um to see how students are responding to it um similar to last year the math department is engaging um in curricular work on differentiation in the classroom so that math is accessible um to to all of their Learners um they'll have some professional development tomorrow on the early release day um we'll then be working with um the math teacher their co-teachers um um throughout the school all math levels will be working on differentiation tomorrow afternoon um and then the rest of the staff will be engaged in actions um really relative to the first two action items under curriculum instruction and those are um culturally responsive um practices specifically through the lens of disciplinary literacy which is what does writing look like across all of the disciplines uh in departments in the school so that will be led um by Julie Matson the Middle School um Ela director and our new assistant principal Lauren mcdna they're going to lead that session tomorrow um it's going a little bit deeper in some into some of the work that they LED um last year so I'm excited for teachers to be identifying the different type of text that students will um encounter in each of those classes what does it look like to read a text in the science room as opposed to in the Civics room the ELA room um so that'll be interesting to dig into tomorrow and they'll leave with some ideas for introducing you know really a variety of writing strategies whether it be a quick write at the end of a period or a lengthier essay assignment so what does what does writing look like across all disciplines that's work continued from from last year some of it's already happening there was a great um display I saw in our eighth grade hallway in our civics class they just had a quick like little ticket what does civics mean to me and it was just great to read those examples and they're you know plastered on the wall outside of that teachers room so students are already engaged in a lot of writing and and sharing their sharing their ideas um what is the what is the math 6 Plus course so um so last year was decided that we were going to take essentially um the the problems work that has traditionally been enrichment um and make that part of a standard curriculum of delivery for a certain set of students coming up from the Hopkins school so um we still have that practice in most of our math classes we have a wide range of Learners with enrichment problems available to all but we are running a six plus course where those enrichment problems are essentially just part of the standard curriculum delivered to everyone in that in that class thanks you're welcome uh the third goal um is specific to um culturally proficient um practice uh this is uh again a continuation of work from last year um so I I don't have a ton to comment on this other than one thing that we're going to try this year um are classroom observation walks so we started talking about this day one day two of the teachers return to school um again how are your students reflected in the classroom setting and um we're designing um a day that will happen at the building based meeting in October where teachers will actually walk the school visit each other's classrooms kind of make observations and suggestions to see how teachers are you know fulfilling kind of that that practice and then the fourth goal um is relative to special education um this is um as you know from my presentation um the of the student handbook this is a really important area to me we have a lot of work to do um making everyone teachers families students comfortable with with the new IEP document um our staff was really excited to hear about this from Nicole Murray who's the special education director 6 through2 um excited and curious about the student voice aspect in the new IEP um and the other thing that came out of that presentation um is looking at the um the EDB portion of that and what information can teachers provide um for an IEP meeting that's that will be helpful to students and their and their families we have a an afternoon of professional development uh planned to come up uh planned coming up to to talk about that um and then um the second uh action step in here again we talked about this um prior to the start of the school year um I announced this on opening day and I was not expecting Applause from the staff but it was a great sign of the enthusiasm in our building um to become a Special Olympics unified Champion school um so we have we have a sign up happening right now for unified bachchi we're looking to uh get that started in the beginning of October with our botch coach Nicole Smith who we believe is a highly skilled botch instructor um does she play bot if you she does now um so uh if you know if you know Nicole I mean hug heart and she learned she'll do anything for the anything for our students thank you thank thank you um so we're we're working together on that a lot of Faculty excited to get in there and play Bachi um with the kids and um so uh just really that's the type of thing that can really give a real you know jolt of positive culture to a school so we're excited to um to get that going in October I hope I'm not going off too much off topic but I was hoping you might be able to talk about the middle school book this year oh the community read yeah cuz I thought it would bece if I could invite my fellow board members to join me in Reading great so um so the planning that we've done on the community read is uh selected a book called Harbor Me by jacine Woodson um and the night for that is November 14th I say with like 90% positivity um but it's in the if you're a Middle School Parent it'll it's in the Hiller heads up and we're mentioning it back to school nights um we have a school committee meeting that night we have a school committe meeting that night well we'll have to talk about it here while they're com yeah um so uh you know we wanted to do something that would be a great you know meaningful collaboration um with with families we selected a text that's an easy read um as I said at the sixth grade back to school night I love that book like if you're looking to read someone who can really capture like what teenagers sound like it's just it's awesome so you're reading it and laughing because it sounds like we did with our friends um when we were teenagers but it's a great group of students um uh depicted in the book um the middle school students will certainly identify with it but parents will as well so it's it's truly um an event for all readers in your family we're hoping to get parents siblings students there um and that's essentially the extent of the planning right now so uh what we what we plan to do is to push out Google form so there's like an RSVP and based on the number of people that respond we're going to um design an activity but essentially like a book club you said it was Harbor me yes yes Harbor me Jacqueline Woodson J I had a question on the culturally proficient practice does that mean that the goal is for each room to be culturally reflective of the kids in that room yes and it can reflect like just different aspects of who they are so like that short I just want the students to be reflected in the room some students are deciding to share an aspect of their culture um others are sharing an interest that could be shared amongst you know any any culture um so it's I mean this is students sharing it with the other students not decorations on the wall or Does it include that it would include that okay yeah but don't the kids change rooms how does that yeah they do we're working through that right now well say move room they can see other people's yeah no I yeah yeah so I'm hoping that that will evolve over time whereas right now it might be the students home room that's that's on their walls but as different projects happen over the year as different things are shared um hoping that that the space will will reflect that got it last year um we had had a a social emotional learning consultant come through the building and it seemed like pretty overwhelming that the rooms that had some element of that uh are just a very different space so some student designed yeah student student in the room helped other students feel more so a birthday wall would be an example of that student knows that their name is up there and everybody else knows where when their birthday is in an eighth grade classroom might be a piece of writing you know that's up there as a student Exemplar is there data that shows that that produces better [Music] Learners well it's reflected in the cry up yeah so in you tell the history of the cry up because it's sure you mind so the crys is very interesting thing and we learned this from our Consultants who came in uh the there were two women who had a new reading program and they were going to go into this school and train all the teachers and how to deliver this new reading instruction and at the end they found that their reading instruction thing might not have actually been as effective as they believed it would be but what they did see in that school is in classrooms where kids had the highest achievement uh there were certain conditions in those rooms and one of them was that first pillar of the cry that it was a culturally responsive environment you know and there are other things like reaching out to parents how do you present curriculum in a culturally responsive way all of those things ended up being part of the the cry up so it was really pretty organic the way it came about but so there's data that does back it up okay great and I'm hoping that we'll have our own at the end at the end of the school year where um a lot of what's in here you know they used the term uh separate the terms from generally effective practices with culturally responsive practices and many of our teachers are already doing things that are culturally responsive they're just not doing it like from that angle it's just natur um but I'm hoping that with the schoolwide push for it that we'll see it in some of those internal measures that we have over the course of the Year got it yeah thank you any other questions great thank you so much thank you thank you thank you thank you so I would welcome a motion about the elementary and middle school Improvement plans for 2024 and 2025 I moved to a the elementary and middle school Improvement plans for 24 2024 to 2025 I'll second that okay we have a motion to approve the um the plans and vote I I I I thank you and now um Mr Andrade for the athletics department good evening everybody evening how' the girls soccer team do you know we're up 20 at half the last time I checked um they're playing a game right now down you had missed it earlier saah told us yeah curious with the how they were doing Yep they're uh they're a really good team this year so they're great yeah so um I'm here to talk a little bit about a gift that the um our Athletics booster club is looking at buying us the athletic department um last year I came up here and I actually talked a little bit about our transportation issues within Athletics um plus issues late buses canceled events because of late buses um our Athletic program is large some days we have four buses that go out and often the bus company will tell us that two of those buses are going going to be over an hour late so I've been looking at Alternatives and one of the Alternatives was actually a minibus which is a 14 passenger vehicle that can be driven by anybody with a normal license and those licenses and um they would undergo some training prior to driving them but they'd be able to transport their own teams to different areas um and so now this is a little bit of a different vehicle it's a sprinter van but it's the same idea um it's a 14 passenger Sprinter van and it's more cost effective um and it would be an incredible help to our department for specifically in the fall and the spring when we have a ton of teams that have to get out to Fields um and it will help us in the long run stop us from having to cancel events which is the last thing that I want to do um a lot of other districts have mini buses I think 10 out of the 12 within the league have mini buses we're one of the ones that does not and um I think every time I go to a golf match I see a many bus from another school so this has been a lot of kind of like work in the making um so I'm hopeful that this will be come to fruition and and it'll be able to use it for our teams um so you know I went over some of the basic information but the cost of the actual vehicle is7 $7,000 brand new um and the booster club is willing to gift this vehicle to us um and so covering The Upfront cost there and then as we kind of get into managing the cost of the vehicle that will come out of our Athletics school budget and some of the specific uses for us you know I've talked a little bit our golf teams um the last year and a half have not been able to consistent ly get um buses because their events happen pretty quickly after school and that's just due to tea times that the courses give us um and so this would significantly help them um you know we have varsity and JV golf teams we've used our transportation our alternate Transportation form for our golf teams to travel um over the last year and a half but for our JV teams a lot of whom don't Drive they don't have parents that are available to drive it makes it very very difficult for them to get to matches and a lot of times we have to cancel those matches um and so we usually bring anywhere from 10 to 12 of those student athletes to those matches um additionally our girls and boys tennis teams um typically are smaller teams and so they'll travel they would be using uh this vehicle as well some of our basketball teams would be able to use these vehicles or this vehicle uh cheer JV and middle school wrestling some overflow transport for our cross country and track and field team sometimes we have 60 cross country athletes and 50 can fit in a bus this will allow us to kind of have another Transportation um vehicle without having to get another bus and free up another bus to take an earlier trip for another Tri U team would also work for shuttles to to close by schools um which we typically do for buses anyway and it would also be able to let us uh take the students to more student leadership conferences Mia events de Summit um some of those events that in the past we've had to try and get a bus for and sometimes we can't because they're during the school day um and then I you know I'm always open to the B being used in other ways whether it's during school for field trips or um Club activities that go off site other student conferences you know being able to have that vehicle to transport a smaller group of students to different things um would be incredibly beneficial for those groups and then you know some of the cost analysis that I've looked at um it would save us potentially up to $25,000 on Transportation over a year um we would be putting probably about 10,000 miles on it every year and if they're maintained well they lasts for 100,000 miles or more um coaches staff members administrators par professionals um any other really school um School Employees could potentially Drive the vehicle um and we could potentially work out trying to figure out uh pay if we had someone someone else other than a coach driving that vehicle and how about the insurance on the um the coach who drives the the vehicle I think we'd have to look at um maybe changing some wording in the contracts to say like it might be staff staff are covered by the school Insurance okay yeah um and then we have existing procedural manual manuals for other districts that have minivans um and so we would take I think a lot of that and implement it here so that we have you know background checks and training and making sure that we're not just throwing someone behind the wheel um with students and so to kind of conclude this would be an incredibly helpful vehicle for us um I think it'd be awesome for the school as well and I think it would be beneficial to a number of student athletes over the next 10 years I think this is really a great thing that the boosters are doing for the whole school actually yeah do they do they identify a vehicle or is this conceptual right now um I have identified a vehicle uh that's why I'm trying to move on it a little bit quicker well you'd be branding the vehicle with HHH on HH yep you know is that is that covered in the cost of it the wrapping um no but we would we would be able to get that done yeah yeah it's short money anyways I was just curious I mean my I mean it see this seems like a total no-brainer this is easy to me my again youve brought it up it's just making sure that coaches staff or otherwise are screened enough so that someone who's had something to drink or something else or you know just making sure that I'm sure there's some type of procedure in place for all that stuff anyways but um but this is great huge help from the booster so yeah does it need to be a commercial driver's license or is it small enough that it's can be operatable by anyone driver so if it's 14 passenger under it's oper operatable by anyone who has a driver's license yeah that's why we're not asking for a 20 passenger one well then I moved to accept this donation from the boosters for 14 passenger van for the F FL Department second dollar do we have a vote is there something yes so okay saw those looks no that's okay we had had a conversation I think in agenda planning that one of the things we wanted to make sure was that we knew what the van was so that we actually had a price tag for you to to vote on so I mean as soon as you have a van and the boosters say yes we'll purchase that then you'll be able to make a vote so that you can say accept a van in the amount of $77,200 183 or you know you just want to make sure that you have a dollar amount so we are that way we don't approve something that's $5 under I got you so what is it that we want to approve that so I don't know that you want to approve anything tonight because right now you have something that is just an idea yes okay okay but once we have the real thing we're enthusiastic about the idea though oh I see there was no motion would be be to determined but you've identified I have yeah yeah I think we just have to kind of yeah putle down some details I think it's just this is It's really con conceptual for the committee to determine that this is the path they would like him to take and then finding and then also giving that um message to the boosters instead of the boosters buying something that the committee wasn't wasn't ready to accept so okay thank you and if it need because you said it's a little time sensitive if you get the number let's say it's 77 on the dot do we have to wait till next meeting if time is if it's right if it's time sensitive can that be approved ahead of a meeting you would have to wait till the next meeting unless you want to to schedule a meeting I mean it could even be a virtual meeting as long as you posted 48 hours in advance yeah I mean if you have the van and the van could be gone at 4 days and you don't want to wait two weeks I just don't want to hold up a good opportunity just for waiting we can all I assume get on a zoom call or if we need to but he knows that we're we're on board with I got it we're on the vanm great we're back here in two weeks and we want to ride we're all welcome to come on a ride as soon as I get trained yeah you can drive the van to the meeting next time yeah yeah all right thank you very much great and thanks for your work on this you've worked really hard on this thank you okay and now we have the Hopkins element project lower Middle School is that element yeah M welcome back thank [Music] you thank you for having us this evening I'm excited to be here this big milestone um Chris loads up uh you know we presented in front of you guys a couple weeks ago with an update so you saw a lot of the exciting things happening over the summer and we're here for a major Milestone to approve the contract and present it to you guys and so Chris has got a presentation that he's cute enough to kind of walk you guys through it and take any questions so um thank you so we thought um based on how some of our previous discussions would go given that this is a major Milestone approving a Construction contract in full um that it made sense to just touch back on some of the the items that led to this point and to sort of explain the contract that you're agreeing to sign or endorse tonight um so the the project pursued CM at risk which is chapter 149a of the Mass General law and what it is is it is considered um cem at risk or construction manager at risk it's a it basically is an alternative to getting a hard bid that would be one big number that covers everything on the drawings instead what they do is they provide um the CMS brought in is a service and so they provide pre-construction services in the course of design and then when you get to Construction Services as opposed to saying you gave us this slump sum they do openbook accounting so they work with you you can see the bids of the various folks who are submitting those um those bids and you collaborate with them in selecting who you release to award um the preconstruction services are something that they provide you a price for upfront and so you consider that when you select the um cm and they also um at when you get to construction at the GMP stage they'll bid the project but they bid it in two different ways with a public bid so there are trade biders in Massachusetts who have to be publicly bid separately once you have 100% documents and then there's the remainder the balance of the trades and they're procured by Commodore directly um Commodore reaches out to Subs they collaborate with us and the designer on the subs they want to go out to and then they compare their bids and we work collaboratively to release to those subs the GMP that's before you this evening was um really started when we agreed to that original contract with Commodore and so when they submitted their RFP which was a publicly advertised process they submitted on several things one was the percentage of CM contingency and I'll go into what that is in a second it was a lump sum of what they thought their General conditions would be General conditions is a number of categories of work as well as their staff costs over the course of the construction for the proposal that they've given you um they give you the cost of the insurance based on the construction cost that you gave them as well as the cost of the bond based on the construction that you gave them and so those are proportional based on where your final construction amount ends up and they give you a percentage fee markup and so we ended up interviewing I three four four four CMS we had that information available to us they each interviewed directly with a um a subcommittee that had done the pre-qualification and ultimately we selected Commodore Builders to um be the CM at risk for the project when we get into the GMP what GMP stands for is guaranteed maximum price and the guaranteed maximum price is the maximum price that they'll charge you for the scope of work that's on the documents you gave them and that they bided and as well as what's implied by those documents so if it's implied that the intent is there that is what the GMP is intended to cover and so there may be gray areas in the documents that aren't quite figured out and so they'll come up with either a hold or an allowance to address those gray areas so when they they bid to the um various sub biders and they get their numbers back they'll do Des scoping of what the bidder came back with and if there's a gap between bidder a and bidder B they'll either assign a hold or an allowance to those um bids that would that might be a a quantity of money that they put in the bid to just level them against each other so they make sure that they're um comparing Apples to Apples when they finally select who the bidder is a hold is a con a contractual mechanism where it's an amount of money but commodor is agreeing to provide whatever that hold represents in terms of scope of work for that amount of money and if they exceed that it stays within the Construction contract and depending on how big the exceedence is it either comes from the contingency the cm's contingency that's within the GMP or it eventually would come out of their fee if they drastically over or underestimated what that would be in contrast there's an allowance within it as well and the difference between a hold and the allowance is who takes on the risk so with a hold commodor is taking on the risk that they can provide that scope for the amount of money whereas with an allowance they're saying I don't have enough money to take on that risk but I think it might cost about this amount of money so the best example for that is the drawing save plant some shrubs here so do you want four shrubs or six shrubs or eight shrubs so they'll make an assumption and and assign an amount of money to that but if you decide you want twice as many shrubs they wouldn't have known that and so the allowance difference would come as a change order to the Construction contract additionally you're going to hear contingency a lot through the course of of the project and there's three different types of contingency specifically to start we're talking about the cm's contingency So within that gu guaranteed maximum price contract they bid that they wanted a 2.5 % contingency which was competitively bid against the other biders and that um 2.5 contingency covers the scope that isn't identified and so it's maybe a hold that would be exceeded and then the balance would come from the contingency or it might be scope that's shown or implied on the documents but they didn't Discover it during bidding so we get halfway through the contract and we find a note that applies to a situation that someone's asking a change order for will say no that was already in the documents it should come out of the contingency there's also a mechanism within the contingency that bid savings when they buy out each of these trades after we've approved the um GMP those bid savings they're allowed to put that back into the contingency as a matter of the contract and they worked with us with the early GMP and agreed that we would relevel the contingency tonight when we're agreeing upon the GMP at that 2.5% so any bid savings that we have from the folks we've already bought out is essentially leveled off at this point with with what we're doing today separate from that within the budget that's provided to you all when we um submit the invoice package there are two other contingencies and those have nothing to do with the Construction contract there's an owner's contingency which is typically done um for the soft cost of the project so if the designer needs an additional service for something or if we have an overage somewhere else in the budget unrelated to the Construction contract that contingency would pay for that overage there's also a construction contingency and that construction contingency is earmarked for any change orders that come up over the course of the project um so we've been talking for a while about this project and I know we um visited with you back in June when we um approved the early Amendment and then sub quently when we approved the generator pre- purchase the um those previous contracts currently amount to 9,285 th73 the balance of that GMP that was before you tonight is 2 million or 29 m951 449 and so that makes the final GMP amount which is inclusive of three alternates which I'll go into in a moment 39,2 $2 39,5 22 within that pricing is included um going back to the building and replacing the pneumatic controls that was one of the items that we talked about at town meeting last year um where or last fall where we um are going in and taking the original pneumatic controls that control the HVAC system within the building some of them have been verted over the years and so we're converting the balance of those controls to modernize the HVAC systems in the building and address some issues that weren't functioning correctly we're also going to replace the building's original main electrical breaker um it's original to the building from 1996 and it's a majorly important piece of equipment to allow electrical service in the building so this seems an adequate time to replace that and after further discussion and seeing where the bids came in we're also recommending that we upgrade the site curving from pre-cast concrete that was originally proposed when we bid the Civil or the Civil site contract to that contractor he provided a price at that time and so we waited until this point to make a decision on that but we would be upgrading that to Granite curving anyone who has walked by Hopkins knows that the um existing pre-cast curving that was originally installed has had a hard life and so by installing Granite we think it'll provide much better durability over the long term for the school there was also a request that came up through the permitting process uh specifically to upgrade that to grite and so ultimately we're before you tonight um we have here sort of a comparison of where we landed with this GMP so in total um when we came before you with the 90% CDs the cost of um the cost of that had come down about $290,000 from where we were previously with the alternate when we came back to you for the um early package Amendment we had dropped another we dropped it so that we were saving about um 867,000 versus that original budget and now since the GMP that Commodore originally submitted on August 3rd to us we've brought that down a little bit more so we're now 78 0,000 less than Commodore had proposed to us um when they first submitted the GMP so all in all versus the construction budget that was set at town meeting not the whole project budget but specifically earmark for construction we're down 2 million $336,500 ly under budget is is really advantageous for the town and um we're we're happy with where this number is at commodor has been good to work with so far with the initial work we had a successful School opening and so we're before you today to request authorization of the guaranteed maximum price Amendment um amendment number two and so um we put the or sorry amendment number three um so we put the motion up on the screen for you here but we're happy to take any questions you might have about the contract I have some questions so so I understand this correctly the town voted on the construction budget not the total cost budget it do I understand the town voted for the a total project budget inclusive of that was several line items the $41 million was the the line item e marked for the construction budget itself but the town appropriated the totality of the total project cost which was what 52 mil 400,000 inclusive of the design phase yeah so all in the town voted for 52 yes okay and the GMP all in is 40 is 39 39 23 239 and that's inclusive of the three contingencies or does not include the three contingencies inclusive of one of the contingencies so the the cm's contingency the 2.5 2.5 that's correct so it's 39 and change plus 2.5 potential yeah that's in that 39 Oh it's in the 39 the 2.5% is within the 39 but the owner's contingency and the construction contingency is not in that that's correct got it so if you look at included within your um pack I know that's tough for for you folks to read but the folks at home can see it it was I believe page four of the document that was forwarded to all of you um and this tracks where each of those levels that are um what we're at what commodor is taking on are at with um the total construction versus the amendment before you today so when we did the early Amendment we had $23,500 of contingency within that Amendment um when we did the generator that added an additional almost $4,000 to that overall total and we're adding an additional 637 um 540 with to night's Amendment so you'd have a total contingency within that $39 Million number of $ 8449381087 set decision so as part of the so so we talked to you at your meeting back in June I believe it was we talked about the various uh Gates of change orders right and so there are some change orders that are times sensitive and so as part of that presentation to you guys we talked about items that were below I think it was 75,000 we would manage at the team level through the school administration and ncy up to 125,000 anything beyond 125,000 would have to come back in front of the committee got it if you were adding scope that was like square footage or things that are out of program you know regardless of the dollar we' be bringing out of program items back to you guys got it so anything above 125 comes to the whole group anything under 75 you guys just manage get manage and in between that number it goes to Nancy and sus okay okay um sorry so the so the the total that the town is on the hook for is 39 and change independent of the owner's contingency and construction contingency for the Construction contract right there are other contracts that have been L as part of the 52 but for the Construction contract for the Construction contract right but the other the design you're talking about design yeah so design and our contract and commissioning agents those are all within the total 52 million number okay um so I assume based on this and the good news Chris that we you know that the guaranteed Max price is has come under budget that's correct that the only way that we go above the 52 million that the town voted on is if the owner's contingency and the construction contingency push it beyond that if you fully exhausted all those items and still had more that you wanted to do or became necessary right to do got it thanks any other questions looking for the the motion it was back I move to approve the guaranteed maximum price for oh we have it on that I have it okay move to approve the guaranteed maximum price Construction contract amendment number three inclusive of alternates number one pneumatic controls replacement number two replacement of main breaker and number four Granite curbing in place of concrete curbing in the amount of 29 m951 449 and direct vertex to provide Commodore Builders with formal notice to proceed motion by Jamie is there second on that second by Susan all those in favor I any opposed or abstain thank you thank you very much thank you very much thanks guys [Music] was providing [Music] the yeah I for a while I don't know how that happened but they did it pretty interesting that was great see all right so that moves us into our FY 24 year end financial report unless that was taken out of order we're only four minutes behind now thanks to than team I hit it once I appreciate [Laughter] it good night Mr car nice job okay um thank you so in your packet you have the financial report which is the closing for fy4 actually um so the summary page indicat Ates there was a positive variance in payroll however that was offset by a negative variance in expenses so the payroll for most of the divisions had a positive variance um the negative variance in payroll was really mostly for substitutes um most of the positive variance is due to attrition uh we did struggle with uh hiring certain positions throughout the a year uh so positions stayed open for a long period of time some of the positions actually were covered by contracted services and then of course also covered by um substitutes which then created the negative variance in in those line items in the expense side uh central office building and grounds Athletics regular education and occupational day all had positive variances um however that was offset by negative variants mostly in student services um for central office the positive variance came from school committee legal and postage legal budget is really based on a three-year historical average so that's a difficult line to predict um postage as we continue to not send home paper and try to migrate to electronic our postage budget um has has been able to come down uh Athletics you heard from Mr Andrade um tonight uh Transportation was a struggle and a lot of trips were cancelled so our um transportation budget under Athletics did run under budget as well as the professional development an occupational day is really driven by student need um so we estimate the number of students that would attend norol agagi um but more students who who had put in their intent actually decided to stay in hopkington which is good news for the school system uh our utilities gas electric and phone came in under budget uh we've talked about solar and the savings that uh we've been able to accumulate as well as the new contract that we did for offsite solar uh so that does continue to save us um money gas use of course is always weathered dependent uh so far we've been running on a warmer winter weathers so that has been also saving us some money for student services um out of District tuitions contributed to the negative variance as well as contractual services and again these costs are driven by student need and can change year-to-year student by student uh translation is also an area that we have really been focusing on making sure that our documents are accessible um for all and so that has driven up that um variance for uh translations um for a good reason so that really is the summary for the operating budget taking another step down um are the revolving accounts so you have a detail analysis in there both of the balance but also the long-term projection so we estimate our usage and offset what we can use in the budget each year most of our revolving accounts you can see um we'll be able to maintain the usage for a number of years with the exception of one and that is the International tuition um at the high school they bring in students um you know in from International and they have brought down the number of students um really due to our increasing enrollment so they're limiting the number of international students um that they are able to accommodate so that has driven down the revenue and will then um reduce the offset that we'll be able to utilize moving forward the special education Reserve uh Dr Kavanaugh touched on that with the budget process and we really do try to uh utilize the the operating uh general fund uh appropriation before utilizing the special education reserve and so there was a savings in special education Transportation so we utilized that savings to um re reduce the use of that Reserve so that was not utilized by about $50,000 uh so that'll be you know something that we'll be able to look for when we're creating the FY 26 um budget and capital projects most of our um projects are complete of course the exception are the larger building projects several projects um that have been completed came in under budget such as the marathon Edition the high school edition and the roof replacement and at town meeting in the spring this authorized debt was reallocated to the charleswood project project um as well as the msba reimbursements that came in for the Elmwood feasibility study um so again that was already authorized debt that was just reallocated for um the larger project uh for charleswood so that's a lot of different things um happy to answer any questions thank you questions all right thank you all right that brings us into the bullying prevention and intervention plan sure uh so what I'm sharing with you tonight is really a I think a very subtle change to the bullying prevention and intervention plan you know that we had just gone through a almost full year process of revising that document and so um I think we're having trouble getting on that screen tonight let's see if we can do it it's not quite working um so we we had the bullying prevention and intervention plan in place and then we had a parent in our district submit a PRS to desie which means that um they wanted the department of Elementary and secondary education to look at something to decide whether the district had been fair to their child or not fair to their child and it turned out that desie said no I think the district's been very fair to your child but part of this involved the department of Elementary and secondary education reviewing kind of with a fine tooth comb our bullying prevention and intervention plan so the one area that they wanted us to make some changes to is just to be clearer on the ways in which we train our staff so that we are making sure that everyone is trained in the um in understanding The Bullying prevention and intervention plan and that they all understand the law and how to uh what to do if you see bullying or even something that you think is bullying so all we've done is we've taken this small section right here and we've made some changes to it we became very explicit so for example we added language that said for new professional staff um the training is conducted through a contracted online professional learning service and for veteran professional staff the district produces its own online training materials instructional staff members who are hired after the year has begun undergo the same training online within the first month of hire uh they wanted us to make sure that we listed all of the people who are trained and we do train everyone but we weren't before listing all of them so we have added um that we in addition to professional staff it includes our Administrative Assistant paraprofessionals custodians maintenance tech support cafeteria workers campus AIDS bus drivers to reflect the unique context and needs of these um employees um we added in a line that says remedial training takes place when faculty or staff in the opinion of administration need more professional learning on a topic we eliminated this here because it was a little bit 30,000 foot in vague and then the only other thing that we added here is that the district can modify the curriculum for some of the other groups but at a minimum all other staff members will become familiar with this plan and in particular how to spot and Report bullying so those are the changes we made as a result of desie asking us to become more specific um you do need to vote on this when you're comfortable doing that and then before December 1st we have to resubmit this to desie along with um a couple of other documents any questions comments in terms of I mean this is not significant changes I I'm comfortable passing it since it's not significantly different from the the plan that went through extensive um review but I would like to hear how other folks feel about that I'm comfortable with it I agree yeah would somebody like to make a motion I'll make a motion to approve the bullying prevention and intervention plan revisions second by C all those in favor I I and oppos thank you thank you okay then that brings us into item F which is budget planning Susan that's you okay so I thought it would be or Dr Kavanagh and I thought it would be helpful to really run through um the budget process which has already started um which for FY 26 um to really introduce it to the committee uh some of you being new um and just to put it out to the public one more time as we're developing the budget we are going back to the Strategic priorities in the district of improvement plan we are looking at the vision and the mission and of course we keep uh referring back to the three buckets to fill planning for enrollment growth meeting every student's needs and building a community of respect and collaboration and we expect those to be uh reflected in the budget as we we're developing it so the school committee po policy for the budget and the budget process the annual budget is the financial expression of the educational programs and the priorities of the school district the budget then is more than just a financial instrument and requires cooperation on the parts of the school committee the administrative staff and the community to ensure sound fiscal practices for achieving the educational goals and objectives of the school district so there are three facets to the school budget the operating budget the capital budget and grant funding so what does each of those entail the operating budget the school funding is made up of two components salary and expenses capital budget these are asset requests of $25,000 or more and grant funding is really entitlement and competitive money that then is used to augment the operating budget so looking at the operating budget in September is really the launch um so me the assistant superintendent Finance puts together the budget calendar for the school district in September and October the building principles and directors begin to evaluate their needs for the next fiscal year and and the capital budget is established and it's important to note that while school just opened and the students just entered you know a week ago they're building a budget for students that will enter next September uh so it's a long way away it's a very long process um presentations in November through January each building principal in director will make a presentation to the school committee and the um I will also present the capital budget to the school committee in January the school committee holds a budget hearing and then the budget is then voted and submitted to the town so the budget calendar in September the town manager works with the select board the school committee Appropriations Committee to establish a budget message and the budget message is based on the town's Financial projections so the beginning of this meeting just happened this past Tuesday at the select board that was the um beginning of as coming up with this budget message um the boards will then set forth a date by which the approved school budget must be handed over to the select board the school committee votes on the budget timeline that the schools will follow so you can see the draft budget timeline for FY 26 is part of the slide that's what we are working towards budget Advisory Group meetings so throughout the budget season starting in September running through annual town meeting in May weekly meetings are set up that include the following participants the town manager the town CFO a member of the select board a member of the school committee a member of Appropriations the superintendent assistant superintendent for finance and operations and a member of cic which is capital Improvement committee so the roles of the principal and directors the building principles and directors throughout the district begin to build their budgets they'll begin with a zerob base budget which means the budget is built from the ground up with students at the center of the work some of the factors um that influence these decisions are the school Improvement plans which you heard some tonight and some at the previous meeting the district strategic plan student enrollment numbers and student generated scheduling class size guidelines and case load sizes datadriven decisions such as test stores scores progress monitoring data individual student needs including IEPs curriculum instruction and assessment needs social behavior and emotional needs changes in demographics new compliance requirements and physical plant needs so typically what you will see every year um is the budget is really 80% salary and 20% expense it's really a peop driven uh budget so the administrators will present their budgets to the school committee in November you'll hear from special education technology facilities central office curriculum and instruction and in December Hopkins Elmwood Marathon high school middle school and athletic then the Consolidated budget is presented to the school committee in December also with a joint boards uh meeting again in December and January at regular school committee meetings in January for a public hearing and in January for the school committee vote so this budget will be presented to the school committee several times so the building principles and directors through the distri district will meet individually with the superintendent and assistant superintendent for finance and operations and the message always is the money is finite in these small meetings the building principal and director will present their budget uh zero base budget using input from these budget meetings choices are discussed to determine the appropriate allocation of resources across the district to recommend a budget that meets the needs of the educational priorities some asks are placed on a back burner other asks that demonstrate need are put forth to the school committee the next slide shows the asks that were not put forward and the HPS again does a lot with a little and you saw the presentation of our per pupil expenditure from Dr Kavanaugh's um update in the beginning of this meeting and we are among the lowest in the Commonwealth so an example of some of the requests that were brought forward but did not come all the way through in the budget uh in the last uh budget were new copier leases uh software and projectors art room tables one of the custodians there were two requested and one was uh reduced a family engagement liaison a science and technology director uh a technician and a system administrator so as you can see these disc discussions that happen with each um uh director and building principal some of these get teased out so moving into the revolving accounts so the revolving funds separately account for specific revenues and earmarks them for expenditure by a border officer without appropriation for particular purposes to support that activity program or service that generated the revenue typically evolving funds are authorized by state law for programmer services with expenses that fluctuate with demand and can be matched with fees charges or other Revenue collected during the year so again looking at our revolving accounts uh we utilize the parking revolving building use bus revolving preschool Athletics International tuition and circuit breaker to offset our operating budget in the amount for FY 25 of 2,696 th000 looking again at the forecast of where these the utilization can hold again the one that is needs to be looked at in FY 26 is the International tuition the rest keeping an eye on Revenue that is generated each year can hold mostly until fiscal year 30 we don't want to over utilize a revolving account that then creates a fiscal issue in the next budget year so this is really an appropriate use to make that funding last so budget changes over time looking at 2021 the student enrollment was 3,962 with a $51 million operating budget in 2022 student enrollment was was at 4,69 with an operating budget of 53 million in 2023 student enrollments 4,26 with an operating budget of 55 million and student enrollment in 24 was 4,237 with an operating budget of 63 million so moving into Capital so Capital planning state and local governments should prepare and adopt a comprehensive fiscally sustainable and multi-year capital plan to ensure effective management of capital assets a prudent multi-year Capital plan identifies and prioritizes expected needs based on a strategic plan establishes project scope and cost details estimated amounts of funding from various sources and projects future operating and maintenance costs Capital facilities and infrastructure are important legacies that serve current and future Generations it's extremely difficult for governments to address the current long-term needs of their citizens without a Sound multi-year Capital plan that clearly identifies Capital needs funding options and operating budget impacts and this statement on Capital planning comes from the government Finance Officers Association looking at the town of hopkington the financial management policy uh excerpts on their Capital program policies a it says the town has made a practice of funding the operating budget at the expense of capital items resulting in a backlog of pending Capital requirements and deferred maintenance which could ultimately lead to critical failures and increased costs the town should strive to ensure the capital items are not funded through operating budgets and should seek to ensure the capital items are properly funded even in times of financial constraint in order to prevent larger costs and losses later and second the capital Improvement committee and the town manager will continue to maintain a rolling 5-year list of anticipated Capital needs the list should be reviewed and updated annually so what governs Capital budgeting so Capital project are to build replace or improve facilities grounds mechanical and technological infrastructure that exceeds $25,000 the town has a process for requesting a capital item or Capital Improvements that applies to all capital requests the school committee will approve the capital plan in October the capital Improvement committee reviews each Capital request and presents its recommendation to the town manager by December 31st the process requires that all capital requests go through the town manager and the town strives to finance major Capital items such as major construction projects or significant Renovations with debt exclusions so what drives the capital planning for the school districts facilities keep in mind there are five buildings over 12 120 Acres so in order to maintain the facilities um and all the structure one example are the HVAC Replacements enrollment 4,200 plus students uh ages 3 to 22 and to accommodate our rapid enrollment growth physical plant space is diely needed and you can see that with some of our stick built additions the modular additions and the new construction that has been requested and enhancements evolution of programs programs often need enhancements to meet students needs or keep the district current and competitive one is the Adaptive playground where the uh location has been selected for marathon and Technology upgrades um which is almost an annual request Susan yes what's a stick built Edition so it's different than a modular so a modular is a box that is brought and just attached onto the building stick built is where you're taking the 2x4s and the steel and building it you're actually building something you're actually building it okay yes stick bu on kind of sounds like you know putting together bamboo yeah yeah it just to differentiate between dropping the Box the Plug and Play tell you more than you want to know about [Laughter] that so and again this is a a slide that has been shown many times over the years and we're looking at our um enrollment and we're using the Dr arur Wagman uh enrollment projections but also looking at the capacity within the schools and this is what has driven both the Elmwood and the Hopkins changes um to try to alleviate capacity upstream and then moving into grant funding the grant categories there is state or federal and then there are private public funding sources every student succeeds act which is title grants and idea targeted funding are the Desi grants and state earmarks entitlement these are awarded on the basis of a formula set forth in laws and regulations we are entitled to receive these based on our enrollment and demographics and we must comply with programmatic requirements competitive are are awarded on the basis of Eligibility following an application we receive these funds based on the review of a grant reading team Federal entitlement grants specific to special education idea individuals with disability Education Act Federal special education entitlement Grant These funds are to ensure that eligible students with disabilities receive a free and appropriate education fape in in the least restrictive environment and Early Education Early Childhood special education grant these are funds eligible to three four and 5-year-old children with disabilities receive fape that include special education and related Services designed to meet their individual needs in the least restrictive environment so for the federal title grants there are 22 Federal there are nine that are grouped under nine titles four of which HPS is eligible the title grants Title One improving basic programs operated by local school districts title two supporting effective instruction title three language instruction for English Learners and immigrant students and title four student support and academic enrichment the federal entitlement Grant process uh the grantor the State announces the award the district uh prepares and submits the application for Grant fund use applications are reviewed and sent back and approved those grants are then voted and accepted by the school committee and then the grant is administered competitive grants then are written um it's a grant that's available through an RFP and the district will respond to the RFP with an application these applications are then reviewed by a grant reading team and award recipients are announced if we are to get an award such as this again the school committee would vote to accept the funds and then the grants are administered what's an RFP request for proposals yeah I spend my whole day doing so as we look at the grants um that we've been eligible for for FY 24 and 25 so the Early Childhood uh special education program is around 24,000 from 24 it Rose to 25,000 for fiscal year 25 individuals with disabilities the Ida was 970,000 in 24 risen to 977 th000 for 25 title one was 91,000 it is7 7,000 and 25 title 2 45,000 and 46,000 not a big change there title three actually went from 42,000 down to 35,000 for 25 title four stayed level at 10,000 and we do not know of um the any earmarks this early in the in the year here a question the idea funding went up only a small amount relative to can you Insight on why it didn't go up more than that given our enrollment and I don't know the answer to that I'm just thinking it actually is sort of like getting a cut since what we bought iny 24 for $970,000 is Right a different you can't buy as much yeah now as you could that is true it's a good question no so again as I said we're beginning now for the children that are going to walk in the door a year from now um so these are the things that become the challenge of creating a budget and again it's a long process what's circuit breaker so circuit breaker is funding that is given to you based on there is is a threshold of spending for a student with disabilities and the state will reimburse 75% over that threshold and that's what circuit breaker is so it it's supposed to help level out students that may have very costly needs got it and International tuition kid from Spain wants to go to hopkington high school it cost 20 grand 10 whatever the that's what that is correct yeah they don't come for the full four years they come for one year one year yeah right right what what what is it cost so we charge them the per pupil expenditure with 16 and whatever with an inflation yes okay how many just off it just occurring to me now so if you don't know the number that's fine but how many International students do we have this year roughly so years ago the number was well in the high 20s and we've reduced it now down to 10 because of capacity yeah yeah and I'm just curious these kids live with billets in town or is this a program where they apply through the school and yeah so part of the difficulty is finding sponsors for the students um to live yeah um so that has been a difficult piece of it as well as capacity so yeah got it there will be calls for people interested every now and then on various Town Pages yeah it's hard to find billets yes it's a big responsibility yeah we sometimes have to build at 25 30 kids in our hockey program and it's hard MH okay you service no I it's the only place I've ever heard the word Billet Ed oh it's like service so question just back towards the beginning you don't have to move but the pre presentation talking about the capital budget that we approve in October when will we first see that maybe the next meeting okay not to put you on the spot I just been thinking oh my gosh it's almost October yeah yes beginning of the year flies through um we have been working on um the capital budget since July um with Mr person um trying to work through one of the um things that we are trying to strategize you know similar to what we heard from the select board is really trying to look at our Capital requests in terms of what needs to be done done but what could also be accomplished only as a payo as opposed to a debt so you know just looking at strategies around that that's great I appreciate that I I don't remember you doing a presentation exactly quite like this before this is really I think good even for people who follow every year any other questions I'm good okay then that moves us into the Hopkins school gift account okay this is a very easy one um the Hopkins school you know does a talent show and they have revenues in the amount of $38.75 and they would like you to accept that and it will go into the Hopkins gift account faul make a motion to accept the $38.75 for the Edward Hopkins gift account motion by Chris is there second that second by Jamie all those in favor I I and it's unanimous and so approved uh item H which is the school committee goals I actually am going to propose that we put those off until the next meeting because I had not realized until earlier today that I did not make sure that was included in the packet last year's goals which helps us build off of um it would make a much faster process I think for people to have that background okay so then I see no old business list Ed um that moves us actually into items by consensus okay as superintendent I recommend the school committee approve the items by consensus as outlined in your agenda I move to approve the items by consensus second second by Susan all those hi I it's unanimous and so passes and then I would seek a motion to adjourn I'm adjourn second second by Chris all those in favor I I I unanimous we areed at 905 our next this meeting uh is scheduled for September 26 a regular meeting here at H cam thank you all and have a good night and [Music] 9056 e