see if Anthony or Peter show up are they on Zoom i'm guessing nope i wonder if they thought it was 6:30 or maybe Tony went over to the school he can hop on
are these all set i think it's good hey how are you good yes guys yeah I think Yeah yeah we don't have a corn without you so when you're ready to
uh they're on the air but I know Laura we're going to get started in a couple minutes are we starting in a couple minutes y I totally Yeah I totally didn't send that message out that we changed it to six i did not know that yeah I know
nobody did I don't think yeah you trying to sneak something by right yeah something weird by myself without Carol too are we up to something she did no just worried it's going to go along I guess probably
oh gross all right he's not coming no Carol oh yeah jealous of her too everyone's got these fun are you guys doing Europe this summer again yeah I did not know it was six i'm sorry
no that was my fault yeah I did not message that out are we ready recording in progress i'd say quick let's do something Tony wouldn't like but I can't really think of fundamentally disagree with him on
Yeah I'd be down with that though i can think of a few things you might but renaming the school to football academy oh are those new about 20 years overdue does it work yes wait what about Good
evening everyone it is 6:07 p.m on Wednesday April 2nd 2025 i am Brian Leightton and the chair of the school committee i am calling the school committee meeting to order in accordance with the requirements of the open meeting law please be advised that this meeting is being broadcast live over the
Lunberg public access channel and on the Lunberg public access Facebook page and will be found on the Lunberg Access YouTube channel within 24 hours after the meeting the agenda lists all the topics which may be discussed at the meeting and are those reasonably anticipated by the chair votes may be
taken as a result of these discussions not all not all items listed may in fact be discussed and other items not listed may also be brought up for discussion to the extent permitted by open meeting law the first item on the agenda is the pledge of allegiance if you could please rise i pledge allegiance to the flag of the
United States of America and to the republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liberty liberty and justice for all thank you our next item in the agenda is public comment we'll open public comment
up for people of the public you come up to the mic if you're in person if you're on Zoom please raise your hand or your virtual hand all right uh seeing none I'll open up to public comment from the committee
yeah I'll make a comment mr bemmore um since our last school committee meeting there's been a lot of commentary about the roles of the school committee and the finance committee
uh and our ability or lack thereof uh to work together and I I come this come at this from the position of somebody who about six years ago um had some issues with the school
department budget and was encouraged by a finance committee chair to volunteer for the finance committee and I served on the finance committee for three years my last year there as as chairperson and I learned an awful lot
during that three-year period um one of the things that I recommended immediately when joining that board was that the finance committee entertain department heads throughout the time period prior to what
we know as budget season to get out on the table issues that we thought as finance committee members would be pertinent when looking at the budget in the coming year to give
the the the department heads opportunities to prepare for what we were looking for and it also gave the department heads opportunities to let the finance committee know well in advance of things
that might be coming down the pike that might be out of the ordinary uh and we did that for each of the three years that I was on the finance committee and I I think it served us pretty well uh also during that
time I served as the finance committee liaison to the school committee and during that three-year period with the exception of a a very brief period at the end of my last year as chair I was the liazison i attended or
watched every school committee meeting for three years um I think that we've lost our way a little bit when it comes to sharing information and setting expectations uh between these two particular boards
and I would encourage the finance committee to reestablish the position of finance committee liaison uh and to ensure that whoever that representative is is very active as I was during that period of
time secondly there are clear delineations of roles and responsibilities between the finance committee and the school committee and I came to realize during my third year on the finance committee that I was
taking a greater interest in the school department budget and school department operations than I was the broader town and when the opportunity came around and there was a vacancy on the school committee I volunteered um I I think
that I I have some serious concerns in particular about what occurred at last week's finance committee meeting um the way it occurred uh the presentation that was given outside of the agenda
um and and I'm not looking to make a big thing about it but I am I do think that it's worth calling out and it's worth ensuring that there are clear lanes between the school committee and the finance committee because right now I'm
I'm concerned that those lanes have been blurred um by certain members of the finance committee thank you thank you Mr bazowski yeah I think we need to talk about it but I'll save that for when we get to
the level service budget I think where is appropriate on the agenda i think so we started at six i didn't know either okay sorry that's it
we're just doing public comment if you're interested in public comment you want me to delay no no good cory Booker it any public comment Mr cullen Brady no okay all right moving on uh next item is the chair's report uh I'm going to start
off by introducing our new facilities director and inviting him up to the microphone if you'd like to say a few words uh Mr chris Evans Mr chris Stevens thank you for having me it's nice to meet all of you um and everybody here uh thank you for the opportunity be your
facilities director um I came from Fitchburg and doing the same basic stuff over there so I've seen all the same kind of issues you guys are having i was there for 13 years so I'm no spring chicken to it so we'll try to get it done and try to save you guys as much
money as humanly possible that's basically the plan you know if we can do it in house we're going to do it in the house so thank you any questions from the committee welcome glad to have you here thank Thank you much appreciate it looking forward to getting to know you a
little bit better yeah definitely all right anyway um thank you Mr stevens thank you appreciate it thank you so much welcome all right for the rest of my chairs report uh I did attend the STEM night uh at Turkey Hill it was a great success it
was uh packed and uh so many activities for the kids uh it was great seeing so many kids there the the parking was a little tough but uh I think that's a good sign too that we had a good crowd and um a lot of parents a lot of kids and a lot of staff so thank you uh to the to the staff as well for putting on
a great uh great STEM night uh the select board last night uh voted not to put the override article on the ballot um the town manager also mentioned that Margaret Scarsdale was looking at earmarks and she had her
sights on hopefully uh trying to get an earmark for the uh the security upgrades for the schools um also uh Margaret Scar Scarstdale also Representative Scarstdale also reached
out about the April 8th uh meeting for the the Ways and Means where people can either email uh or attend uh with a written statement so we can get that information out later for the uh citizens uh if they're interested but I know the um there's been a lot of
community outreach on on Facebook too recommending people write letters write emails uh to try to support getting additional state funding uh I think I can actually read off some of that too tonight just for people who want to get it from get it from us
now uh are you going to that so um the hearing is April 8th at the state house um if you'd like to sign up for testimony and submit written testimony um you would sign up with the House
chair uh it's I'm going to spell it out so the the email address is a a r o n m i c h l e
w i t z at m a house.gov GV and Senator Chair is Michael M I C H A E L Rodriguez R O D R I G U S at
massate.gov uh if you're um even if your testimony is in person you should submit written as well um the hearing is going to be hybrid virtual and in-person component um it's a public hearing uh meaning people can
testify or whatever subject they are interested in across any of the secretariates in other words it's an o it's not just education or school funding hearings um even if you're testifying in person you should also send in written testimony to the House and Senate chairs
of Ways and Means uh the testimony will be 2 to 3 minutes in length um plan for both options you'll be told at the beginning of the hearing how long you have and you have to time your remarks you'll be cut off at the end of each of that time so don't plan on going
over um there'll be no agenda that tells you where you fall for the testimony so be prepared to wait so that was information given to us by Representative Scarsdale um additionally the club reached out uh
to see if the school committee was interested in uh participating in smarter are you smarter than our sixth graders um so they're looking for three to four players so I wanted to see if there was interest
with the school committee if we wanted to put a team together i am not smarter than a sixth grader but I will do it okay our sixth graders are really I think we have at least three i'm not going to be available that evening but uh I can vouch it's a good time we we did it a couple years ago all right yeah
so I did Yeah I'll jump in so there's three and then I'll see if Carol wants to and like they said three or four so I think it' be good if we have to we'll Can we bring in another yeah we'll have to bring in like a ringer like Yeah we need a ring superintendent is a ringer we'll see all right so we'll organize that and uh I'll let them know so that
was all I had um next item on the agenda is the student representatives report do we have a student representative online on Zoom she might We do not can we stick her in she might have thought it was 6:30 yeah
we can we can adjust the agenda if uh she comes later uh next is to review and approve minutes regular session February 5th 2025 should have those in your folder any questions or comments on those were
there any corrections sent they were not school committee 10 minutes all right i'll look for a motion then i move to accept the uh the minutes for the uh February 5th meeting of the
school committee second any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed abstain motion passes next item in the agenda is to review and approve line item transfers warrants and donations we have warrants
uh from March 17th 2025 to March 26 2025 totaling $345,886.14 and I don't think we have any line item transfers questions all right next item on the agenda is the superintendent report good evening everyone i would also like
to um give a shout out to the staff that uh pulled pulled together an amazing uh steam night because we included the arts this time around um it was awesome to see such a great turnout um so thanks
to to all the families for attending the kids for um working on some active learning with their parents and in uh in session with them so that was that was really fun um uh just a heads up on uh registration
windows that are opening uh April 8th the extended day summer program registration will open may 1st our school year 202526 extended day before and after school program uh registration window
will open and on May 15th our early learning center uh registration window will open um it is that time of year again we will be sending out the transportation forms that will need to be completed by all um but we're
actually holding that until um this committee has a chance to discuss um the bus fee policy this evening um but we will be sending those out hopefully by the end of the week um I also wanted to mention that um a
conversation I had had with Rep kusher he uh indicated that he would be seeking to um secure some funding uh for mental health uh in the the state budget for 26
um that may end up benefiting Lunberg so uh we'll keep an eye out for that as well um relative to the uh central office uh move from TCP to Turkey Hill uh we have
been down to the building uh we're starting to map out um the layout of the different office spaces and um just so that you're all aware I'll be reaching out to uh Bill Bernard the director of DPW to come on
down and see about um sort of uh pushing back some uh saw turf so that we could have a gravel parking area because there are going to be more staff over there and there's not enough staff parking as
it is so um do you have like plans like written maps or plans of I have a map of the classrooms that are like the floor plan of the school but not not a map out of where specific desks are going to go
or anything like that okay but I we do know the location the room locations that we're going to go to okay so we're in we're going to be in the the rooms um if you're familiar with where the art room is yep yeah so we'll be in those rooms at that end of of the carter on
the first floor i meant where the parking um and the only place that we're going to I think be able to add any parking would be between the school and the garage that's there where you see
the um the work trucks are parked on the side of the building um if we have some gravel parking there uh the trucks can actually pull back behind there staff uh for central office can pull onto the gravel lot and we can
um map out some visitor parking where the um maintenance trucks are typically parked right now there is already a walk that goes to a door that comes right there into the stairwell right at um that area where the
uh the art room is so that would be the the new entrance for central office so that we're not disturbing will it have a buzzer on it like Pacios yep and we'll have to um create a a sign that's visible enough that we would
post probably I'm thinking on the end of the Turkey Hill building at the end of the sidewalk so that as you're pulling onto the property you'll see it and there'd be an arrow that would direct you to central office in the back okay um but now we have our new facil
facility director on board so um now we can uh get down to mapping out some some real detailed plans but I just wanted to let you know that I'll be reaching out because we will need some additional parking um I also wanted to let you know
that the um student activity fee uh input um that is still ongoing there were two sessions available for parents to participate and give feedback relative to a restructure of the student activity
fee um there were there were a handful of staff that also attended those sessions and at this point um we're waiting to take this to the school advisory council and I believe that is on April
17th um so uh we'll hopefully be back um with some additional information for your consideration uh and hopefully a vote uh for the May 5th meeting is that in
person or over Zoom which one the the school committee meeting no the the one the school advisory council meeting um do you do hybrid or they all in person they're all in person okay
um let's see lastly a few upcoming dates our next school committee meeting will be April 16th at 6:30 that will be hybrid from the middle high school uh the next regularly scheduled meeting would be May
7th and that's 6:30 hybrid from town hall and a reminder for all that April 21st all schools and offices are closed for Patriots Day and uh that is also the week of school vacation so schools will
be closed the week of April 21st and I think that's all the updates I have for you what questions or comments do the committee members have just quick comment uh the steam night was awesome it went it was total
pandemonium i don't think I've ever seen that many people in the school before that that's the best turnout we've had for a STEM night yeah and some of the things that the kids were working on like the uh I know it was something that we had that the PTO had approved it was
a like a maker kit yep and uh it was really fascinating it kind of looked like they were pulling apart the Starship Enterprise but it was really well attended and everybody had a lot of fun science is pretty awesome to say
art's good too math all right but science is really pretty awesome it was Yeah it was there were I'm I'm a little partial i was a science teacher there were so many people there it was great cuz I remember the the first one like there's been progressively more people every year and this one we walked in and
I sent you a picture like you would not believe the number of people in this room right now that was the best turnout ever the amount of kids running around having a good time and it was they learned a lot too it was a lot of fun
perfect now we can All right segue to the I will look for a motion to take the student representatives report i'll motion that we'll take the student representatives report i will second cuz I was also late wait we moved it to six
but none of us read it any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed do you need a We are ready for the student representatives report when you are ready thank you thank you um for the primary school there's a spring book
fair April 7th through the 11th and um the students started taking MCCAST um throughout the district at Turkey Hill there's a Project 361 clothing drive through the um March 31st to April 11th so there's donation boxes throughout the schools for that and then they also Yeah
they had their MCCast testing and then for the middle high school um we just started our spring sports so that's good a lot of first games this week um the skate park is running an art fundraiser students can paint a deck of a skateboard and it'll be like auctioned
off um there's a Greece trip for April 2026 registration is now open for that and the 8th grade is getting ready to go on their DC trip in a couple weeks um NHS is still offering pure tutoring every Tuesday and student government elections for next year will take place
in a couple of weeks that's all we have thank you i I did want to add too that um since we are going through a superintendent search too we want to involve all the stakeholders so there is going to be a part for you to play as the student representative too so we'll update you on that as we get more
information okay thank you all right next item on the agenda is presentation we do not have one for tonight uh next item is old business class funds request so we're we're cleaning out the last of the uh the class funds that have to be
closed out and this evening we have representatives from the class of 2015 um and so I'll invite Emily Homeman and Rachel Kersy uh to speak and request their class funds
hi I'm here on Zoom hello um yep we were just um looking to request um to have our class fund so we can start planning the class reunion any questions or comments from the committee
do they need help announcing where it is or getting their class they're all set up and ready to receive the funds so they've done everything that they need to do they just need to formally uh have the approval of the the school committee so this is the class of
2015 okay so what does the motion need to be we I motion to release the class funds for the class of 2015 second any discussion all those in favor say I i
opposed motion passes thank you additionally um we have confirmed uh from the class of 2010 uh and the class of 2003 that they would
like for their uh remaining funds to be put towards scholarships we had talked about that before creating a line within that account that um monies could be rolled into um and utilized to support
um students that may need a little bit of extra help uh so the class of 2010 um the remaining amount is $5,13516 and the class of 2003 $19.33
do you need a motion to transfer that yes and this is going to what account is it just called the scholarship account we we would create I I don't know what else to call it right it's not to award a scholarship at graduation time it's
more about um scholarships to help offset costs for different field trips or or things like that um with students previously right what account did we put that money into it's all it's all within the
student activities account it's just that there's a line within that account right now that's a line for the class of 20 20 right that's 200 so there would be a new a new subline in within that
account and we would just move the money and it would become dispersible yeah I think it would be good to change the name that way there's no open to a suggestion on what else to call that line declassify it to
class donation yeah donations line or something last donation fund something like that yep all right and this was the class of 200 10 and 03 so I move to reclassify the remaining funds from
the classes of 2003 and 2010 to be designated donations in the student activity account is there a second second any discussion
all those in favor say I i opposed abstain and lastly um in order to bring us current uh there's one other class the class of 2007 after multiple attempts over more
than a year and a half two years I think um we we have had no no contact uh so to be compliant with the policy and close this inactive account out uh we would also suggest that the school committee
uh move that money to that same donations line uh the amount $74066 and just to verify we did try reaching out a lot we had paper ad newspaper advertisements we searched uh for
contacts and reached out and they they did not get back to us with the plan so okay i just I ask cuz I want to assure people watching that we did try yeah we've tried for about two years time more than two years i think we're largely successful yeah i mean this was
I remember the original list was there were a lot of contacts in classes so I think one is Yep and then the only remaining classes with monies in their accounts would be the class of 2023 and 2024 and per policy there's a 2-year
window so technically by the end of this school year if the class of 2023 does not step forward to request their money then by policy it would be up to the school committee how to reallocate those
monies so we we are still pushing with the adviserss um on on those two classes to to bring some resolution on those but there is still a little bit of time i move to uh reclassify the funds
designated currently designated as 200 class of 2007 funds to donations in the student activity account i'll second any discussion all those in favor say I i
opposed abstain the motion passes thank you um Mr chair I think that we have a few people who wanted to do public may have wanted to do public comment and we're not aware that we had changed the meeting time to start at
6 could we do another public comment for the so people don't have to wait till the end of the meeting if the committee desires yeah I think we just need a motion can I motion that we reopen public comment at 6:30 when the meeting was originally started i I hadn't even
looked at the agenda and realized it started at six all right I'll second any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed all right motion passes we will open it up to public comment again if anybody is interested in uh public comment i have to run
just wanted to check yep just come up to the mic yep just state your name and address please hi my name is Jim Broden 24 Autumn Road so I wanted to know if there was any meeting notes or anything from as far as the ski team it's on the agenda
for tonight it is so we'll have an opportunity to uh have a public comment after we hear that so there could be an action taken during the meeting without the public input so if you have public input I I I would recommend now would be your time for
public input are you right at this point are you uh looking to keep the ski team that is going to be the discussion right so seems like I would want to wait to see what you think first
oh if there's anything that you'd want to share to Mr chair aid in our decision Mr beardmore yeah you can definitely offer yeah the school committee has the following memo in its folder ski team co-op plan for
2526 the total cost of the ski program will be divided equally on a per student athlete basis the bill will be sent to each member school of the co-op for the amount of the represented student athletes lunberg will collect the
athletic fee from our own student athletes you now have the information we have okay thank you very much that's the way it used to be good thank you any other public comment from the public
all right seeing none we will continue on with the agenda the next item on the agenda is spring athletics report you have um a report providing numbers of uh students participating in all of our spring
sports what questions or comments do the committee members have um can I Yes Mr proski what are these numbers based on are they based on enrollment at the be probably
the beginning of the season because the spring season isn't over right we just started the spring season and that the students have been assigned to teams after tryyouts i'm looking at the 2024 numbers what were the 2024 numbers based on enrollment at the beginning of
the season yep because these numbers are not the same numbers as the spreadsheet we provided last the meeting where we discussed sports numbers they're slightly different like soft uh for example softball we had 39 participants
and this lists 30 and that changes the math a little i'd invite the ad to come up and explain it it doesn't change it a lot but it does that does change the math sorry I was talking to you so what was
the question why are the numbers of student participants different than the numbers you provided a few weeks ago because we were working off of last year's numbers we just had triyouts so for example uh softball total number of
participants 2024 30 but the numbers I have that you gave me for softball participants for 2024 that you gave me a few weeks ago the participation list that you have right now is because we just had triyouts on St patrick's Day so that is this year's participants we wouldn't
have had Okay this also lists 2024 participants this says 38 for 2025 and then it says 30 for 2024 okay the one that I just provided right now I must have not changed it to 2025 at the top i guess if
I if I had just provided that then that is the number no I I know you it also says spring 2024 participation at the top i know okay i guess the past years is what you're talking about right yes okay now I'm on the same page so the question is the data that was provided
when we were talking about athletics in the context of the budget y she's saying that the number that was provided for participation in softball for FY24 yep with that information is not matching the number that's listed for 2024 in
this okay so there is a possibility I don't know off the top of my head but there is a possibility that those are the numbers on the day of tryyouts and then there's different numbers as the season progresses are you what would like what numbers are you in
that the this spreadsheet the athletic cost spreadsheet yep what number do you have for 39 um the secretary for the athletic department is asking if she can respond to your question yes please thank you if
you look at that it's because we have eight middle school specific okay athletes for softball so on the spreadsheets it there's 31 girls that are varsity and JV and there are eight middle school so
there are still 39 athletes nope cuz this softball list grades six seven and eight and in the total 1 plus 5 plus 4 plus 5 plus 5 plus 7 plus three i'm not sure I so I'm not 100% sure what what you have but I'm tell that we did have
39 eight of them are middle school 31 were high school the middle schoolers that would they pay 200 the high schools they pay 250 so that's why it was separated out okay we'll have to resolve this later yeah I think if we can send them
the info and get feedback for all the members that would be appreciated when we're doing the budget it's it's we need accurate i would love Yeah okay what other questions or comments do the
committee members have i would also just say that the when we did the spreadsheet in the spreadsheet that you sent it it said softball and since then when I was going through it I just separated it to actually make it a little bit more accurate because it is we did have eight girls that were
specific only to softball i meant only to middle school where the other girls were JV and varsity okay oh and I we also don't have I don't know what file we're looking the second file you're looking at too so that would be helpful too to that if you can that's
the one called athletics costs um is that a different folder yep that was from Oh boy um go back to drive just so we can be able to compare the two files that would be good it was
shared at the budget meeting where we discussed the ski clubs that so that was the 12th yeah march 12th march 12th okay all right and then we can compare those files and try to get some clarity on that but I I think that the JV versus
middle school okay all right any other questions on the spring participation or comments i would just want to point out again sort of a con continuation of the budget discussion we had a couple few weeks ago the middle school track and
field program has 48 students enrolled in it that's pretty good and net cost to us is less than $7,000 for that do that again yeah and I think I I would add too uh during that meeting too I had discussed in in a prior meeting too that a lot of
our sending a lot of our other other districts surrounding districts and midwatch districts um have those middle school track and field teams so we want to be competitive even the the smaller schools are going to have those teams and again if we don't offer the same
level of service that their other towns are kids are going to go to other towns to play those sports and it also it gets them in the rhythm of doing the sports by the time they get to high school which just sets everybody up from success in high school i think we're
going to more likely have championship caliber athletes who are like potentially you know top two in the state in shot put and things like that so it's it's good and um yeah you also almost doubled the number of kids doing middle school track and field between
last year and this year almost doubled you know and it es and flows like right i think our high school track numbers are a little bit down this year but that's a representation of a middle school team that might have been thin you know two years ago and those kids come through so now if we're looking at
48 middle school track that bodess well for the future of that program yeah thank you any other questions comments all right thank you next item agenda is the LHS ski team
this is back because the committee tabled this at a previous meeting um pending a plan for modifying the approach uh so you have a summary of the modified approach so that's why it's back before
you did the other schools officially approve this plan yeah I would say uh Lemonster Naragansit jumped right on it i think Littleton tried to offer some other you know alternatives to doing it which
basically put the onus back on us and you know at the end of the day it's our program um so that's the way I approached it like we can do what we want to do and if they want to find somewhere else to go then that's what they're going to have to do but I would say overall it was not a contentious
thing at all so just to be clear what was the position of Littleton are they now on board they did not say no yeah okay yep i mean Le and Lemonster knows they they
do the same thing with us with girls hockey so they were they responded right away yep we get it we understand type of thing how many gohead sorry if So when you say they did not say no that is different than them saying yes so if
they were to change their mind what happens can we still run the ski program without them we could okay all right i don't know if coach will be happy but we could how many students do we have from Littleton uh is that a significant number you know off the top of your head
uh we lost seven seniors this year not just from Littleton but four of them from Littleton so next year unless there are freshmen coming in which hopefully there will be there are right now too do you want Do you want to come up to the mic
that'd be great thank you other people yeah it's good for the community to hear it other people can't hear you at all and it sounds like we're just yelling at an empty room my name is Jake Conroy i have been involved in this ski team since jeez it's at least 11 years um so
I've taken over as coach about 5 years ago um and what you were asking as far as the Littleton involvement um with the students we graduated this year and not knowing how many are coming in to high
school next year we have two Littleton students that will be on the team next year okay so we won't fall apart without it um Kevin do you have a breakdown of Yeah so I was just going to say we do have the
numbers from this year so it cost us $12,984 that's more than last year that's it c last year it cost us how much i think it was like a I Yeah it's more than Yeah
um so if if we're talking about per student athlete uh it would cost $683 per ski team member so my suggestion obviously is that is divide you know take that per student send the
bill out to the school if they have five time 683 time 5 that goes to whatever school the five student athletes come from on our end 683 minus 250 well next year it's 325 if that passed that's what
we're looking at covering the cost so we would cover 358 per one of our student athletes so uh so a followup to that does the athletic fee
cover all sports like if a football player plays football and pays a fee is that fee covering the entire cost of the sport it definitely doesn't i I was looking it was a rhetorical question it was more of our fee does not
I don't know if at one point in time when you know Lunberg started athletics or any school started athletics that was the idea for a user fee to cover everything but it does not and I want the public to know that that these fees and other sports are not covering the entire cost of sport i think that that
might have been the mentality and the more that we look at things and dig into stuff and I'm saying how does this work off of just this it's not going to it's not realistic yeah thank you other questions comments from the committee i think this is a much more reasonable
affordable proposal i I can So if I could say something um the how much it's going to cost for the ski team is based on how many students we have participating we get a bill from NHOBA
based on the number of lift tickets that we've had to buy because we race over at Nishoba um it also is how much it costs per student for race day so that number fluctuates based on if we have six kids
it's not going to be $12,000 um we don't need a minimum number of students to participate for the ski team um the a full ski team is that races is
six varsity and six JV so that's the most we race when it comes to racing over at Nishoba if we but we also get charged um at Wuset because we practice over at
Wuset um the kids have to buy their own season pass to Wuset they provide their own equipment we do have um money that we have raised in order to cover what we have our ski bibs which we spent $600 on
this year but that is money that we did not charge the school this is money that we have in an account that um we have for any necessary like uniforms or anything like that or for our banquet we
have money in an account that um we will we're so we're self-funded and we don't charge the school for any equipment any ski passes or any uh uniforms is that a that's a booster yes club okay
what are the questions or comments to the committee members have thanks for doing the work appreciate it yeah i also wanted to say thanks to you and Jim for coaching this is great i think this is one of the things that makes Bloomberg fantastic is that people step
up and volunteer to do things like this jim Jim started this 25 years ago 19 years ago um because he had three kids his youngest being in first grade uh so he said "How does 12 years sound?" Um my
daughter was in 8th grade well she's now 24 so 8th grade uh 11 years ago and I volunteered um learned a lot from Jim uh when Jim's son graduated I ended up taking over the
program and we just started getting a uh a stipen from it three years ago but before that it was all volunteer yeah thank you so much Jim and Jay this is a great opportunity for our students
and it's uh and and Kevin thank you for putting in the work to to make sure we can support this thank you so do we need to switch around the budget or should we Nope nope okay cuz we we already have an approved budget move the money from a different
line but we do need a a motion tonight i think we we had done the bun the the bus money yeah so do we have to You could We could do line item transfers later okay i'd make a motion to approve the plan for the co-op ski team as discussed
second any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed the motion passes thank you thank you all right next item in the agenda is facilities and grounds report you have a monthly uh facilities and grounds report
um update if you have any questions uh Dr gillson is here any questions or comments on the facilities report i I just want to make a comment if y'all recall at the very beginning of this
school year we had uh I believe the chairman of the the green green communities uh uh committee green committee they're now called uh come in and was very concerned about our lack of engagement
with them um this represents an enormous turnaround when it comes to cooperation with that with that committee and with the uh the town's financial leadership um for those of you who are not keeping up on a
week-to-eek basis uh you may recall that we had gotten funding approved through capital planning for um air conditioning mini splits in the primary school inflation being what it is we couldn't afford for the whole project we
had to do roughly half of the project we did that last year now through work of submitting um our costs associated with that applying for additional reimbursements and additional grants we are effectively going to complete that
project this summer is my understanding so new update information on that um as I understand it now we can't move forward with the project because the project that was outlined and approved for the grant
uh was actually in the amount of I think about $480 some odd thousand so this grant money is here it's awarded we have until September of 27 to expend it uh what we will need to
do is make sure that in the capital plan for FY27 the remainder um of the project cost we we would have to secure that money through capital plan uh for
FY27 and if we're successful in securing the remaining I don't know it was 70ish 100 right now the the um the grant stands at 200k
um we are given a utility incentive of 113,000 Susan can you just come to the mic thanks just so the public can hear the air conditioning So um with the meeting that we held
first of all um the 200k uh grant um will also be it's comes with a 113,2500 uh or 250 113,250 for our utility incentive our
Lunenburgg cost is going to be $170,000 um and that is really it's an exceptional um un undertaking um we in the discussion if we pair down the project then they're going to have to
review it again and there's no guarantee of funding so um we um are aware that if we complete the full project as is um that's the the cost to us at
$170,000 i really would recommend that we do it and complete it and the timeline for expending um all funds must be uh spent by um September uh 30th 2027
so may I Mr chair yeah okay um I wish somebody had explained this to me five minutes ago um so so we are my interpretation of what I think you just said Mhm is that we're going to move forward with
a project but we're banking on capital funds being appropriated for FY27 what if those funds are not we can't bank on anything right we have the grant but the conditions of the grant mean that we
must appropriate somehow through some means $170,000 so we would not initiate the project until the funds are appropriated right okay so basically we're going to pump the brakes on this thing for a year then
right so timelinewise right if we get this on the capital plan for discussion in the fall right for FY27 and it's approved then in July July
1 of 26 we would have the FY27 capital money and we would have all the way till September of 2027 to expend the grant funds so the if
we're fortunate enough to get this project the remaining 170 some odd thousand um approved in the FY27 capital we can proceed with this next summer summer of 26 okay I I
understand um Mr bearded more would it be advantageous for the capital planning to select something that had grant funding linked to it part of the formula yeah it historically this is something that when we were following and and and
ranking things based on the Collins Center public policy approach this was something that you know if there was grant funding attached to it would give it a higher score right we've kind of moved away from that a little bit but there is a history of of giving
preferential treatment to these types of projects i think the problem is is that this isn't something that's projected for the FY20 you know it I I believe it actually was listed in the FY27 okay map it is there now so that
wouldn't be I mean the the figure could be adjusted the the figure is listed in the capital plan the 10-year capital plan um as for 27 27 as but the and the cost listed there is $483,000 so with the grant funding now
it's the the total is $170,000 probably be asking for less but the price will probably go up yeah like I I would but it would be a significant amount less than what's on the plan right now yeah less than half a million
dollars a year okay thank you very much i'm glad we uh What percentage of the primary is currently has a heat pump heat pumped air conditioned say that again what percentage of the primary school currently is air conditioned i
know it's a heat pump i believe on the second floor all but one classroom uh has a unit and then on the ground floor there were some existing units in the office areas that are not
functioning well that are going to need to be replaced um but the second floor classrooms uh with the exception of one classroom uh all had the the mini splits installed last summer so roughly what percentage
is that of about half that's about half and how much do we spend the first go around yeah uh 200 something it was about 27 270 273 something like that but the difference in the cost was really to
maximize the heating and the cooling we needed the two BMS controllers to link both projects together yep and that's the the the Oh no this price is going up um because now it's well there was no controller included in the first so
there's a whole different layer added so that they all talk to each other and they talk to the main system and that's the reason for the cost increase but that was a grant requirement to get this grant funding we needed both phases to be talking to one another who wrote the
grants uh we did that with uh the help of uh a whole team connected with the green committee okay yep so with Dave Blat um Karen Chapman Kelly Brown from the state um so I wanted to say thank
you just because they've been I mean some of this Yeah it was an awesome team effort it was an awesome team for Dave that's a volunteer effort that and you know do this no and like the interim town manager I was on the
phone with him contacting him the night it was due and saying "We need your signature." So it was really like you know extra effort to get it in yep yeah thank you Dr gillson and Dave Blat and the whole team any other questions or comments
um nope i look forward to uh the report on the Turkey Hill study okay thank you thank you all right is there a motion to accept the facilities and grounds report motion to accept the facilities and grounds report i'll second any discussion all
those in favor say I i opposed motion passes thank you next item of the agenda is the school choice action item all right so historically we've come to the committee in early February with a recommendation um but the committee uh
opted to table this conversation until we set the budget um this year we're we're recommending opening 10 seats for grade nine uh that's our preandemic
uh recommendation um we shifted to cutting that number in half with um our COVID hybrid year and then concerns relative to the lingering impact academic social
emotional uh we continue to keep that number low in the last few years however our current eighth grade class is at 118 students typically we lose at least 20 to Monty
Tech and that would put our freshman class under 100 um and just for some context our current grade nine is 111 students our current grade 10 is 116 students our
current grade 11 is at 119 and our grade 12 is really small this year they're only at 99 um so we have been able to meet the needs of a a class size of up to 119
um so in consultation with Mr santry uh given given the class size we feel that this is um a good time to resume our preandemic uh recommendation of 10 seats for grade
nine now just because we open the seats doesn't mean we will fill them um so I can't guarantee that we'll have 10 school choice students um but if we should have more than 10 applicants
for those seats that's when we move to a lottery um additionally as part of uh this uh topic that we we discuss each year um the school
committee typically also moves that um they would allow Lunberg students in grades 11 and 12 to remain at the high school through graduation should they move out of Lunberg
so those are the two two items for your consideration we can have conversation if you wanted to consider opening seats in grades other than grade nine we could certainly have some discussion around that as well mr
do have there been any um consultation with Monty Techch about their enrollment um there's been a lot of talk at the state level about changing the rules relative to enrollment at tech
high schools um and from my time on the finance committee I learned that each school each town in the district has a sort of a quota or a minimum and then once that is filled it becomes sort of a
free-for-all based on the application pool that is remaining outside of what the individual towns have filled for their quotas i'm probably not describing this correctly but you're you're in the ballpark on anyway to make a long story short
and these this analysis is outdated now by three years since I've said it these presentations but Lunberg's enrollment at Monty Tech has been higher proportionally based on student population than the other
schools in the district my assumption is because we put in good applications and we're sending quality students over there but the state is recommending a change in that calculus that is based on a straight lottery system mhm i don't know when that may or
may not take place but I'm just wondering if that could potentially affect this calculus in terms of how we project our 9th grade class it it could eventually but I don't think um if this bill were to pass and they
change and it moves to a lottery system I think we've got to be talking about admissions for school year 2627 because they're already looking at at accepting students for next year so I I think any
change would be another year out and we could see what that impact looks i would also add again it hasn't passed but it could be likely that it's a lottery for those particular spots versus like a Lunberg lottery for those Lunberg spots versus an application
you know I I understand but they they they also enroll above their minimum quota driven enrollment right and that's really what I'm talking about is the delta above our quota mr scholy what is the studenttoteer ratio i get it if this
passes compared to the precoid levels so I know we cut a bunch of positions so I would not want to have the same number of students with fewer teachers cuz that
that might not work as well if you don't have the numbers off the table I I don't have an exact student teacher ratio for you right now um but I would suggest based on current numbers
and with Mr santry looking at um course selections for next year um that he feels that 10 is a reasonable number that won't negatively impact um and again there's no guarantee that we
would get 10 right but like if we got 10 you're what I'm hearing is like we're kind of in the ballpark we could make it work yeah it would put us at 100 students at the ninth grade okay and a few more i apologize when we had 100
students in the ninth grade precoid were we roughly the same number of educators um I think we're we're No we'll have less educators yeah but not by not by too many i'd have to go back and look at the number of the positions that we added postco
but we would be down some one question that I asked when this came up last time and I I don't think we were able to get to an answer on it um obviously in and these numbers typically trail by a year but we receive funds
through the donator towns as a cherry sheet adjustment um at about 5,000 5,000 per student right um but these students also affect our census for
purposes of chapter 70 calculations as well right so when we get a chapter when we get our chapter 70 money based on our census those students are also included so it's not just a $5,000 bump there's a
there's an additional number associated with that which is the I'd have to go back and verify that i would check on that too i don't actually know that they do i think it's just that well if they don't then it's basically free to the donor to the to the to the donor town
and we should send all of our students out like because we receive more in chapter 70 than we spend on the way out so I I just I'd like a clarification on that just in terms of how math works
uh according to Google the answer is yes school choice students do impact chapter 70 calculations in Massachusetts as the funding formula considers students attending other public school districts or charter schools with the receiving district's foundation budget being credited for the lowinccome increment of
these students they It does well I'm looking at Google according to No no but I mean like it has the website yeah okay so school choice students so can I ask a question uh Dr burn them
um what is the argument against looking at the totals for every class and taking the minimum and bumping it up to the say second minimum so that you are opening up school choice to say let's say our
current fourth grade is only at 106 bumping them up to the current fifth grade of 113 opening seven positions i think um I would probably just want to consult with uh the administrators of
each school building they know the dynamic of the class that they have um we also would need to take a look at recent moveins to know roughly how many on average we've been seeing at each
grade level not that that is a hard and fast number it just gives you some insight as to uh what you might anticipate for moveins um and I think as long as we left enough uh buffer for that number of
moveins we could potentially open seats at other grade levels my Yeah my only concern is obviously that sixth grade I believe it's the sixth grade class is very large um but other grades potentially um increasing like looking at the grade seven is 111 this is from
the I'm looking at the budget presentation and those those those enrollment figures were as of October 1st we consistently report in that report the numbers as of the SIMS reporting October 1st each year so that
it's consistent across okay um so I'd have to check to see what our current enrollment is at each class because we have had moveins um but we could have that data available today or next meeting we could definitely have it for next meeting we don't have to um submit
to the state regarding school choice until June 1st correct correct yep so we we could table this till the next meeting i could come back with numbers at other grade levels if if that's something the committee wanted to consider i mean we
push so hard to get class sizes so what I'm saying is let's say you're looking at grade 1 and two grade one has 108 as of was it October yep so from the October data uh presented in the budget
slides enrollment and class size it lists grade 1 at 108 grade 2 at 114 so my thought being if you opened up say potentially six or even five to get it closer to the 114 those class sizes in grade 1 and two would be
very similar they'd be exactly the same yeah minimally if you bump the minimum to the So right now I can tell you um looking at power school our current grade 1 numbers are at 110 grade two is at 116
three is at 125 four is at 108 five is at 115 sixth grade currently is at 154 seventh grade is at 113 they're a fun class eighth grade is at
118 um and currently our kindergarten is at 117 yeah so my other avenue of that was through the seventh grade only at 113 but the eighth grade at 138 7th grade at 113 and eighth grade at 118 maybe there's potentially five spots
there mr skully I found the answer uh so this is Mass General Law uh 76 section 12B uh and it is in sub paragraph
uh I believe it is D the answer comports with what Peter Peter said uh it directs the aid from chapter 70 to be deducted from the sending town and distributed to the receiving town for school choice
students so I think I I mean unless there's some other provision that answers the question directly and it is as Peter thought and for for what it's worth for people who've been following along chapter 70 and local aid you see
that money the year after right so you don't see it we won't see it in the next fiscal year but FY27 is when that money will will land in addition to the what is it approximately 5,000 y So because all that's based on October
one right of the previous year yep in the quote in the statute it's actually section F the state treasur is hereby authorized and directed to deduct said school choice tuition amount for the total education aid as defined in chapter 70 of said students sending
district prior to the distribution of said aid and to deposit said aid in the school choice tuition fund uh established in section uh 12 C in other words it's going to go from one place to the other i don't think that's the chapters it It also I think may mean
that if we are receiving from a non minimum aid hold harmless district that we may receive more money for those students than we would for our own yeah and the other thing is to answer I think what Laura's next question is going to
be it it is done differently if it's a regional school district right so okay so I I think the answer is yes so just to try to move the conversation along I'm amendable to the 10 seats for grade nine i based on everything we've
heard here over the last couple of months I do not feel comfortable messing with our enrollment numbers K through 8 right now um I just I I think those numbers
are precarious and the other thing that I think we do need to keep in mind is in the event that we are facing another budget crisis next year we own those kids and and the numbers you know and and the total numbers associated with
them in the out years so I just in my mind the the high school can absorb it in a absorb 10 10 seats in a population of between 400 and 425 but I I I'm just
very hesitant about the other grade levels any other discussion i think it's worth considering because when you consider taking on three or four kids in a grade level
that's less than another kid per class and when we're looking at class sizes of 21 uh it's not a huge impact um and it might be worth considering um I'm gonna have to look more into the
monetary impacts of that okay so from what I'm hearing uh and again without Miss Arshambo too I think we have this on the agenda for next meeting with some with a potential proposal for us to vote on multiple proposals maybe look at
um if there were increases or if there were offerings on the lower grades as an option for us to to vote on as well and then for um financial data if we can get some feedback on how that works uh especially for the the years pri the the
years after I can do that i do feel a certain sense of urgency here too because you know this is when kids start thinking about where they're going to be next year yeah i think if we have a vote for next meeting I think that uh the thought I'd be okay with approving the 10 kids at
the high school yeah me too i'm fine if Mr my only question is going to be is Mr santry think we can take it on and if Mr santry thinks we can take it on so from I guess data that you got from a another town most school districts are making
these decisions or a lot of districts are probably making these decision decisions in April to decide when they want to do school choice i feel like we're still on track if we do it next meeting we are and like I said the deadline for everybody uh to submit to the state is June 1st so
um I imagine that there are other communities that are still looking at their budgets and making these decisions as well yeah if we can do it all one night I'd rather do that than potential vote next meeting and vote this meeting to have a chance to actually do legal
research instead of like on the fly yeah i think now that ideas have been tossed out we can do our research and Yep and then the public can also give their feedback at our next public comment as well that is an excellent point great at least they got an idea of what we're
thinking or some of us what some of us are thinking too all right moving on next item in the agenda is the 2025 2026 school calendar update um so the update is this is a little bit like uh Lunenburgg's version of where was Waldo
um somebody found a mistake on the calendar we actually planned only 179 days sorry kids we're going to have 180 did they win a prize i They really should i should have like that Amazon gift card i know find a birthday um so
shout out to the individual who who caught that one um so basically all we're doing is adding another day at the end of the year so the last day the 180th day will actually be June 11th and day 185 will be June 18th and um the
corrected um school calendar will be posted and we will also send that out again to families just so that they have the corrected version excellent good catch all right I'll look for a motion unless there's any other
discussion i I'll make a motion to approve the corrected school calendar second any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed
motion passes thank you i'm to thank the citizen who took the time to count and to save us from a little bit of panic at the end of the year when I ever saw that on Facebook somebody's always got to count that was fantastic all right uh next item in the agenda is
the FY26 level service budget and override so potential action on this one but we can open discussion first Mr skully so I am very grateful for TJ and the other citizens that put
the override on uh override package together and obviously we would take any money we get i think that when we have this discussion though we need to be thinking of it in terms
of this would be another stop gap measure and so if we did the override this year we'd probably have to do another one next year or the year after and obviously we would take the
money but I think that what we what we need to do is we need to do two things at once we need to say yes or we support the override effort and then we also need to say this would not be this is a
stop gap and we need to also do planning starting immediately for next year the year after you know basically a year 3 years 5 years and 10 years so we have a plan of where we're going because one of the
concerns that I have is that as we do these budget cuts where it's like a niptuck budget cut every year and then we have this possibility of an override as a funding source that we're not capable of projecting costs if if you
like and it's the same thing with like the free cash discussion that we're going to have if you take the money from free cash to fund a recurring cost you're only you're like literally just moving it down one year so I think that
you know obviously I would support the override i do support the override but I think that we need to do that at the same time that we talk about uh a larger more comprehensive fiscal plan for the district that would you know work in
conjunction with a townwide override with the town adopting Community Preservation Act and then scaling functions back or changing the functions at school during the time in which the
budget is tight so that we adopt you know like if you looked at the policy the busing policy is labeled as an austerity measure and I think that we need to have you know like a medium-term projection for austerity measures within the school as opposed to niptuck cuts
coupled with stop gap funding thank you Mr beardmore um so my my position remains the same um if the override question comes up at
town meeting and is not passed over I believe it's on the warrant I'm voting yes i'll take the money and we will figure out how to spend it but but here's the rub and this is the rub that was evident at last week's finance
committee meeting we haven't figured out how to spend it we have not vetted a level services budget we spent 20 plus hours of public meeting time and thousands of hours of administrator time over the course of
the last several months figuring out how to meet a budget that meets the available resources not the need or level services and we learned some things along the way
that we might adjust slightly uh on the level services budget it if you take that number and say is that the precise number for level services I don't think I could honestly say it it definitely is because we've
learned a few things along the way and we have not projected or presented a level services budget outside of just projecting out the costs from the current fiscal year into the next fiscal
year so in that regard while I certainly don't feel any obligation to do that and I disagree with the frustrations that certain members of the finance committee have
expressed we haven't done it we've presented the budget that we've presented and in the event that an override passes at town meeting and then a new select board is so moved to put it on the ballot and pass it then the next school committee will need to bring an
article to special town meeting saying this is how we project you know how we want to appropriate this money um so I I'm not even sure we can make a motion on this as a committee just given the lack of of substance that we have to
support it um again I'm I'm a yes but I but but we have not we have not built a budget to support it i think that might be part of it do maybe there is a motion to have the superintendent
and her team do that work to present us with that but that's the discussion whether the school committee wants to have the superintendent put on put in that work when the select board is not even putting it on the ballot mr
can I can I propose sort of like a an in between before between between a full redo of the budget and uh nothing which is if we had a list of things that we would restore if it were to pass we
could also use that list once the fiscal situation for municipalities in this country gets better so we basically have you know measures that we know we are putting in place temporarily like I I fully think that the busing fee should
be a temporary thing um and then so we have all these fees that we're putting in place that are temporary and then we have all of these things that we would put back so that we can you know pretty quickly go down the list and say we'll take this one we'll take this fee off the table we'll put this person back and
that way we don't have to go through the the 20our process of redoing the budget but it also gives us the ability to plan for a more comprehensive review going forward because we will know what the
things are that we want to sort of have like on the on deck circle if we get money whether it's from this override another override or improved financial health and we will have things that we know that we can you know get rid of and provide relief to taxpayers as soon as
things get better like I you know the bus the bus transportation fee has bothered me largely because uh Miss Bzowski has been very persuasive and persistent i am really like it is only because we are in dire financial straits
that I would agree with that because the more I think about it the more ownorous it is especially when we're not having some kind of busing fee for sports it's like we're making people pay for the essential thing and we are making them not pay for the unessential thing and
it's like that's just that but you know it is what it is we voted on it it's an austerity measure and if we have those things queued up ready to go whether it's for this override another override some you know change in chapter 70 funding some change
in the way that out of district placements are done we'll be ready to go and ready to move more quickly i don't know if we need to like try to turn the battleship around and you know take the seven mile turnaround radius that we need for another budget because that's a
lot of work on them and I don't know what the chances are that the the override will make it so like just having like a middle solution where we can see what we want to get rid of and what we want to restore in case we get money might be the way to go i don't
know so the concern is this is a quick turnover would likely have to be done by May 1st to have everybody able to vote for it and again the discussions would need to take place about whether what is the what is the community getting back are we removing the bus fee now that the
override passed what is what's going to happen with the line items so that's some that's a lot of work that we would have to go through and also Dr bham's team so Mr just ask you as a parent um I I
want the override as as a parent if I wasn't on the school committee I would be in the audience with my arms crossed blaring every meeting demanding an override i really would i probably would have if TJ hadn't done it submitted my
own citizens petition I'd be mad um I'd be sending all the emails we got i'm frustrated i wish there had been progress this year on a strategic townwide planned override last year when we were doing the override process we
kept hearing the town is suffering too the town needs more tax money too but there was very little progress done in that regard um the select board didn't even hear the budget committee's
report until when did you guys give it february that's there were a lot of delays um and if they weren't happy with the results of the report they could ask for more or been more direct with what they
needed but I do think that we we need to do a strategic planned override i think there are ways to do it um there are such things as tiered overrides next year we could do a tiered override where you can vote on people can actually vote
on the levels of override they want you want to vote for the schools you want to vote for schools plus library you want to vote for schools plus library plus fire like you you can do things like that but we need to have those discussions um I don't think we can have we don't
have time for that this year i don't I just I just don't think we have time um I also think we need to get a lot better about communicating um this is mostly for Tony and me cuz two of you the three of you are going to be gone next year we need
to get ready guys i I I do think we need to get a lot better about communicating i'm worried about next year watching the finance committee on Thursday night it was clear that we there is a fundamental disconnect in communication
and understanding about what the school department does what our responsibilities are where our responsibilities lie and where theirs are and what they're responsible for um maybe some
more training or um tutoring when between us and the finance department and things like how teachers contracts work and it's not just colas it's also you
know teachers contracts it's it's not just colas that are driving the salaries um it was clear from that presentation that there's we need to be a little bit better about communicating our base of knowledge and
what we know um and we also need to communicate to the town how dire the situation is i'm not sure we're communicating that clearly i'm cuz we say "Oh we're running lean oh things are dire but I'm not sure we're
really fully communicating like when we say we're going to get through this year it's going to be okay this year but next year's going to be bad i'm not I'm not sure I know how to articulate that message i think I need an educator to help me articulate like we're running on
fumes like the kids are going to get through fine next year but any more cuts is going to change the way we do education in Lunberg and you're not going to get the school system that you're used to seeing from Lunenburgg and these these are the cuts that you
might have to face um cuz right now it just kind of looks like empty threats because every year we manage to kind of pull it together at the last minute by cutting everything else but there's no everything else left to cut um so I I
think we need to get a lot better about communicating and I'm not exactly sure how to shape that message or how to do that i would like to see the the finance committee even just finance committee chair uh reaching out to the school committee chair and the superintendent
to set expectations early on what they are looking for and and being prepared for their presentation and not having to have multiple presentations where the the superintendent has to go to the finance committee meeting like they should be prepared to have one meeting
ask questions and even ask questions ahead of time to prepare for their their meeting i think it was frustrating that we're looking at even potentially three meetings now with the superintendent uh answering questions uh there should be a better plan whether it's um a
subcommittee a budget subcommittee where we include finance committee or again any other ways to try to collaborate on the process to to get it better cuz it didn't work this year and I think with the override it was even
more frustrating um and I think if the if they're going to have presentations about the school committee budget in a finance committee meeting we should be invited to those presentations so that we can answer questions when they don't understand
something it's the largest budget in the town it's it's going to be confusing at times especially to new members and it is difficult to understand it's a very difficult there's a lot of learning that's involved and there's it's very complicated and there's a lot of rules
and regulations it's it's very difficult to understand i mean it it takes a lot to do it and I think we need to I'm not sure i actually wanted to talk to Tony about um next year having
new members maybe keep track of the things that they're learning or the questions they have and coming up with like a this is my seventh notebook like I I want to come up with kind of a um what you didn't know and what you're
learning along the way so we can kind of have like a intro to school committees for new members cuz it it is very difficult when you come on and you don't know what you're doing and sort of like you know school committee 101 but also for other boards that aren't
aware of what we do and what the laws are and um the basics kind of because I I feel like watching that school committee meeting there was some misunderstandings uh it was very
difficult to hear the finance committee say that there was no budget crisis mr beardmore um I I think that um we do need to come up with some kind
of plan of action here and and I'm mindful of the fact that today is the 2nd of April town meeting is a month from tomorrow and we need to select a new superintendent like there's a lot of things there's a few things on the plate
here for the next few meetings um that being said I I think Laura's points are excellent particularly around what are the impacts um I had suggested a few weeks ago that maybe we
need sort of like a state of the union kind of document mhm and I I do think we need an official statement that and it could be a long one but it's here's what we had to do this year and here are the potential impacts and and
one thing that I do disagree with you on is I don't think we're just pulling it together and we're going to make it work like there are going to be negative consequences to what we did this year absolutely and it's going to
affect lots of students and families over the course of the next 12 months it just is and long term and I think that we need to articulate that number one in some kind of way and it could be it's
probably too late for a report in like warrant but a handout at town meeting and something that we can publish the second thing and it could be part of that document is in the event that an override were to pass here's where we would recommend the
money be spent and I say this because the school committee is going to substant substantively change on the 17th of May so it's just you know and it it it just could be a long list of things um but I I think
that that and a dollar value associated with different classifications of things on that list is probably about as far as we can go and even that I suspect is probably an awful lot of work that I'm describing um but it's it's probably not
as substantial as rejiggering the entire line item budget and us all going through the benefits or or or or pitfalls of expanding the athletic transportation budget by $40,000 or $70,000 i'm just picking numbers out of
a hat here but I mean those are the levels of conversations we would need to have if we went and redid a level services budget right now and and the administration could bring this to us and we could talk about it mr scullen Brady uh
picking back on what Peter said one of the things that I I found really helpful in making decisions was the recommended like saves and the recommended protected positions from the building administrators it's really hard for me
to understand how all of these parts function together as like like a I could see it like from like an overhead view because I think you guys did a really good job of explaining that to us i think it's hard
if you don't understand the lingo if you haven't kept seven books full of notes to figure out what all these things are or you're not a teacher but if you if you do that and you keep the notes and you pay attention I think you get a good overview but what I'm I'm really having
a hard time seeing is like you know like if we do this one thing in the high school how does that impact acceptance rates at you know elite institutions in
four years and I don't know that and I think that like probably the people in the building the educators the administrators those people have a better sense of that and so getting their opinions on what to restore and like what fees or or cost savings
measures to abandon would be super duper helpful to me um I I just there's too much like longitudinal stuff that I don't know or understand and I'm not even sure if you can like do like a cause this causes that but even if it
was just like some correlation between you know like uh Dr bookas and I have emailed she's probably not happy when she sees emails for me but I've asked her questions about data on student achievement impacts and various things and you know
it seems like it's a fraught thing to do but if we just had some insights from the people the boots on the ground about those kind of things I would be really valuable in making decisions so I think we see a lot of long-term goals in this
discussion um I like Mr beard Morris's idea of a memo of these are the things that would get restored and these are the fees that would go away my concern is finance committee will not be happy with that they're going to want a line item budget of everything but another part of me
says the select board already didn't put it on the ballot i'm not that worried if the finance committee doesn't approve the I I don't think they're gonna approve it either way and my concern is yeah they're the finance committee is not going to support an override whether
we give them a line item detailed line item but my concern is I'm not that worried but I also I'm also worried about our staff and I don't want to put our staff through all that work for the finance maybe it's a coin flip that they actually support
it but does that matter i think it's more it matters to the public what does the public want do they want a line item transferred do they want a detailed line item budget or do they want what's going to be restored and what are the fees that are taken away i look I I I think
that part of the calculus here is I mean for those who who aren't keeping up we've gotten a lot of email over the course of the last couple of weeks particularly from parents some grandparents more or less begging the
school committee and the finance committee and the select board to advance an override question uh because they see the urgency associated with the cuts that we're making for the coming
year the flip side of it is is you know we've all kind of done the back of the napkin math and the realization of the story we told a year ago and the expectations we set and the reality
that the school department is only about half of the town government and the rest of our town government we've had department heads union heads come before the the finance committee and the select board over the course of the last several weeks and say we need an
override and this peacemeal approach puts us in a position where we can't just as Tony said we can't plan for anything because we don't know where the political winds are going to turn are going to support an override this
year it's just enough to get us through this through this year next year the town comes with a comprehensive plan and says no well then what's the town going to do it's going to pull money from us to fund the things that the rest of the town needs
so I'm still where I was 2 or 3 months ago which is we need a town comprehensive plan and and unfortunately and and I feel I I I feel the blame for this
landing straight on my shoulders cuz I didn't yell loud enough at Tony during the fall and the superintendent and Dr gillson when the budget committee was meeting that we weren't meeting the need now privately I told you all that we
weren't but here we are um and I feel like we failed but I I don't know how to fix it either i I think the shortest path is exactly what I recommended which is if this were to pass and yes I'm voting for
it but it's a stop gap measure it's not it's not a it's not a plan no and I I agree i I wish we had the foresight last year i think we thought that the select board were actually going to do a long-term planning they had the budget
task force and they were actually going to put up an override for the town and my recommendation for the next school committee leadership is to plan for a long-term school override what does the school need hopefully the town is on
board but if nothing happens the school should be ready to put a comprehensive cuz you're you guys you guys are going to do the research and plan with the town hopefully and you'll be ready if you need be to put a schoolwide override if the town doesn't and I think that
should be a a plan Mr like comprehensive plan these one-year overrides cannot be the solution mr spazowski yeah i think when I envision if if we say screw it let's
let's go for an override this year you know cuz let's just see what happens why not what happens is if it passes yay you know we we filled the budget gaps this year and that's fantastic but
what happens next year we've done it again the idea behind last year was let's go for a lesser override and hopefully the select board will do an override we'll do a townwide
override because the message was this is not comprehensive we need a comprehensive override so even if it just doesn't strategically I think it would benefit the schools more to wait because I've thought about it and
originally my reasoning was it's better for the town to wait but my constituency is the students but I think long term and I hopefully want to be on this board for long term i I do think long term for
the school system it would be better to wait and plan and by wait I mean like a few months and then we're getting right into this and I'm going to start pushing for an override early like
it does not have to be in May an override does not have to take place in May it can take place earlier i don't want to put keep putting the staff through this this end of the year shuffle am I going to have a job or not next year should I start looking for employment elsewhere we're going to lose good people we are losing good people we
have lost good people we lost good people last year we're losing good people this year as a result this uncertainty is not good for our staff it's not good for morale we can't keep doing this to our to to our staff
so I think I'd like to wait and I hate saying that that hurts because my kids are in the schools um and this year is not gonna be fun it's going to stink we're going to get through it and yeah there are going to
be deficits and I can see that there are going to be some longer term effects um there are going to be some longerterm effects to things we are not doing that we should be doing this year as well deferred maintenance there's there's a whole lot of there's a whole list of things but
ultimately I think doing this in a more strategic way next year is the way to go and I I hate saying that all right so do we have any motions to move forward for action yes if if I
might yes what you have this evening is a sidebyside look at the budget that you voted approved with a level service budget that was adjusted it does reflect offsets from revolving it does
uh reflect offsets from grants essentially what you have in the colored column are the budget lines should
you see an override have that money and restore every cut that you have made that's the difference that's that's the difference between the two so you already scrutinized and got
to the place of approving a budget for the town manager's target budget essentially it's the same thing just putting everything back is this what the finance committee had on Thursday this is I gave to the finance
committee on March 6th because the school committee had not yet approved any budget I presented for them they had they had a similar version to this sheet
except it had the town manager's target budget that we had discussed as of March 5th we did have another meeting a week later and we did change some position cuts other positions back in but essentially
the bottom line was still the same all we did was make a couple of swap outs for cuts they also had side by side a needs budget that had only 7.9 FTE cuts and
left all of our expense lines where the level service lines are and then they had the level service budget and there were three columns for each budget how much money is in the line what's the dollar value change of
that line compared to FY25 and what's the percentage increase of that line compared to FY25 they had that breakout for three different versions of the budget and we used that overview sheet that are
talking points to when we presented that evening to compare what was different between the different versions of the budget so when did I I'm a little in agreement with Mr laughlin
that not sure what to present because the level service budget is where we started and we made cuts from there to get to the target budget that we had to get to so what's in that colored budget is
if we put everything back now the school committee may decide they don't want to put everything back but as I understand it the motion in the the article is for the override in that amount to go to the school budget too not correct line item correct so you
would end up with that amount you may decide that you're hap happy with where everything is in the lines but you could also decide in June if you got that override that we need to make adjustments within there you might recall that I came back to the school
committee with a budget that you all voted at the June 5th meeting after the override was passed and because I had made hires already at that point for this
school year because we were filling positions that we could not fill that were vacated last year we actually made job offers for this year so I had to adjust salary lines to reflect the hires that we made because
that's a normal right and I and I made the adjustments to reflect as of the latest update which was probably the May health insurance all of those numbers were accurately reflected in that June budget but the
bottom line dollar amount of that budget was the override number but we we did make adjustments within the lines we didn't make big changes like oh we're not going to hire this position and we're going to hire this position instead we didn't do
any of that we still got what we got with the override the positions that came back cuts that came back but we still did and we do it all year long we make line item transfers all year long because some things pop up and we need more money in one line and
we're doing okay in a different line we can move some money to cover expenses and we will be back with more line item transfers probably at the next meeting um but that that's what you have here this evening and that's what was
provided to the finance committee at our first our scheduled meeting for presenting the budget and at that meeting I sat at the table Dr
gillson Juliana Hansum and Dr bookis sat at that table ready to answer questions and all of my administrators were on virtually ready to answer questions about any version of those budgets
so I I don't know if there's anything in particular that you would want to change but I mean essentially for even if you were to ask me to come back with a level service budget for the override it's still going to be the same
bottom dollar i just might make adjustments to taking something out of a line and putting something in a line based on a preference that committee might have mr bny would this budget that the colored budget that
starts in column H would this roll us back to a point and and I'm not saying that I even want this or would recommend it but would this roll us back to a point where all of these additional
measures that we've taken i.e i.e the busing fee i.e the increase in the in the athletic fees like those kinds of measures are incorporated in that budget or not so the bus fee when we built the
level service we did not factor in any bus fee right so that could go away theoretically the the challenge around athletics and we can talk more about this we're over if we were overspending and and I'm going to come in with a ton of
line item transfers probably moving it all into transportation for athletics because we are in such deficit with that athletic revolving account we we've been in communication with town hall but I I think we've had that conversation what I'm trying to make here is is that it's
not really like we can't we can't depict this as the budget is the same as the current year because there there are changes that just need to be made in the natural course of going from one fiscal year to another correct facility fees
and other fees that we increase the facility fees every couple of years we review those i do think it's been a long time since we've talked about any change to a student activity fee or or even the athletic fee and all of the costs that
are increasing and it it kind of gets to the point where okay the fee doesn't even put a dent in the cost so like are we why don't we just budget everything finance committee's point is though is
that we have not discussed those things in regards to this level service budget yes so I would say to you that the only thing that would change in terms of a recommendation if you were to say come back next next meeting I would say that you could forgo
the bus fee if that was the budget i would not make any change relative to increasing athletic fees because we what line is that in the like is that built into this budget or
is that still in an athletic I think the athletic fee was going to increase we had that discussion but I want to know where that's reflected in the budget i know I'm I'm not talking about it's not because we're underfunding the that correct we are not fully 100% funding
athletics in any of these budgets okay right it's just that we're in a much better position with the level service budget i just wanted to look at it mr the skull and breeding
i think that if the override passes the will of the voters would be pretty clear that they want level service and I think it would be hard without knowing what it looks like and it'd be hard for me to not just default to what you've already done here if it doesn't pass though I don't
know that I would want to be committed to restoring these things i would want to look at like how the whole school district would be shaped and then figure out what to restore as opposed to basically just rolling back to what we
did last year cuz I think the problem that we have is because we're doing these uh you know stop gap funding measures we're not doing any long-term planning and that means that we're also not doing any long-term planning when we're making cuts like if we had you
know one of the things Laura proposed a while ago that I thought a lot about was what if we eliminated a building and like there are costs that would be saved they may not be as great as we think but it would also help in a future plan to
revamp how the district is done so like if we were to you know take students out of Turkey Hill we might see some small incremental savings but at the same time it would allow us to do something in the future
that could repurpose Turkey Hill in a way that accords with getting more revenue from the state that repurposing can happen anyway yeah it would be because if there's a new Turkey Hill building Yeah
we can and I and I have thoughts on this and we can talk all about it when we have the report from the um architects that did the study on Turkey Hill at our next meeting i have thoughts about how that building can
remain um can remain a school where renovations could be supported by MSBA reimbursement and could become um a building that could generate revenue
um so that conversation can and should happen regardless oh right i'm just saying like as an example I would not want to default to this if we it because it might preclude us from doing the long-term planning like you just referenced so that's that's all I was
going to say yep so I guess to to try to get some closure on this do we want to table this and have a memo do we want to send a memo to the finance committee do we want to what is the committee's wishes i think finance committee has a
point in that we have not I think that's fine too like we can also not vet it if we want yeah i also think do we need to vet it that's I I think a memo that aligns us
with the level services budget as presented with an explanation in terms of what those deltas are in terms of impact but not line by line but not line by line i I think we're all in the same where we want to be we don't we don't
have the time to do another full budget based on a citizen's pet petition that is not supported we can have the superintendent be it is not just that we do not have the time we do not have the staff and I wanted to say this we don't one of the members of the finance
committee brought up a report from the town of Hudson Massachusetts as if to say you know this is a great finance report from the town of Hudson Massachusetts and I actually I know that report i've looked at that report because it's a great report and I've looked at it before and been like this is a fantastic report like it's just
it's graphic it's got nice graphics it's well laid out and and I've actually looked because I look at other because I have a very boring life i've looked at other towns finance reports and I've looked at how other school departments
I've looked at other school departments finance reports and I've looked at their endofear reports and and how they uh do things and Hudson puts on a very nice report hudson has six Hudson
Massachusetts has six people in their finance department we have 1 and a half employees allocated to our finance department and I understand what the finance committee was saying about wanting certain things
done a certain way we can't afford it we can't afford we don't have the staff we are doing things the best we can the other thing I would suggest is I I've been here a number of years what people want changes every year oh
yeah so we're we're getting to a place where the budget cycle is intensely active in house for us for 7 to eight months of the school
year which means my team is being pulled away from other things that they normally do because we've been asked to pivot and get more information or pivot and come up with a different plan for cuts or pivot to do something else we are we're in budget meetings all the
time all the time yeah and we're turning things around so quickly and we don't have enough rested eyes to take a look at every line and make sure that there are no errors and then they're being kicked out and somebody finds well that's not the right one oh you are
correct that is not the right one we didn't make that adjustment say we run lean this is super lean we are running lean we don't have the staff to do this the things that we are being asked to do by the finance committee sometimes if
you want that then we need the money to do those things and to to you know have a report brought up like here why can't you do it this way we can't do it that way because we don't have six people in that department we we have less than a
third of that we're we're running ex and we're running very very lean and we are asking too much of our employees and so I guess what I'm saying is no I don't want to go over the level service budget with a fine tooth comb right now because
I don't think the payoff is worth it and if we need to we will we'll go back on May 4th and we'll immediately get to work and we'll do it then if we need to and you can trust
we'll do it but at this point I just I think it's too much and the override would just go to the school budget it doesn't go to line items it wouldn't go exactly how that would that's our responsibility that's the school committee's purview that's what we are
statutoily constitutionally legally responsible for that's us dr brennham did you have anything else to add um uh I I don't think so but could we reiterate one more time just for clarity what the expectation is for me let's
have a motion here i'd make a motion to draft a memo to finance committee uh that aligns with what Peter talked about namely what we're losing and what we would replace uh provisionally if the override passes
second uh I would second with a addition that it includes um um some form of impact statement associated with those deltas are you amendable to that yep second can we
discussion i was say can like two of us get together and work on how it would look you could work with Dr burnham yeah that would be fun uh cuz if would we also is this the same one that we would cuz Peter had suggested getting a handout for perhaps town
meeting would it be the same information or is this separate i think it would be a separate thing that we could look at after and decide if we want to bring that to town meeting or adjust it okay so a memo and then we'll take the information contained therein maybe revise it for a town meeting okay because I also think it would be useful
for parents when talking to legislators or lobbying or voting for an override yeah or voting for an override or it's going to come in handy next year when we're talking about things to give very direct information yeah none of this is information that we don't have like it's
there and that's formulate a document i did um and I don't know if Liz could screen share the slide deck um I did update the giant slide deck compressed it down to only please
don't make 24 cover slides with embedded uh reports it's largely the same there is some updated information did you highlight what changed don't don't make me look play what changed um essentially uh slide uh
23 maybe dr burnham would you be able to send us the memo before sending it to the finance committee or do you want to wait to the next meeting um we could do either what's the timeline when do you want the memo off to we should send it to them sooner
rather than I wouldn't cause Do you think it's okay to send it to all of us if there's any feedback and then they individuals can give you feedback if they have concerns yep and how soon do you want that thank you she said how soon before I think just before our next meeting is the goal
right so that it's done before our next meeting otherwise we would have waited till our next meeting so I don't think there's a rush for like tomorrow okay but I think it should be done before our next meeting i think that if any other well I timelines from I mean
frankly I I would like to see a scenario where you and the chairman of the finance committee come to some sort of agreement in terms of how to handle the current situation and if that means that it happens inside of the next two weeks then go do it don't wait for me is is kind of my
thinking on this okay and again we'll still send the memo but I will reach out to the I will talk to the chair of the finance committee i think we're good with the screen share okay and we have a motion on the floor
we need to vote all those in favor say I i i opposed motion passes thank you all right next item on the agenda is the action item for the superintendent search so there's a few things here um so we have several memos in your
folder uh I will read off the Lunberg finalist memo uh or most of it um there's also additional documents there's some organized question compil compilations um there's another file too
uh what you may ask and what you may not ask of candidates for superintendent again a lot of these files are from the MASC to uh prepare us as we uh move on um there's also the Lunberg screening questions as well
um that we had used in the screening committee so the Lunberg uh finalist memo uh the superintendent screening committee met on Monday March 10th uh for orientation and open meeting law executive sessions
and to review the initial community feedback to use as a basis for question development they met again on Tuesday March 18th after applications were closed to finalize their questions and then to move into executive session to
deliberate on semi- finalists there were 10 applicants the screening committee met on March 27th and 28th to interview the semi- finalists on March 31st they met again to
deliberate and voted to move the following slate of four finalists to the school committee brent Conway is currently the assistant superintendent in the Pontucket Regional School District he holds a bachelor's of arts in elementary
education and a bachelor's of arts in communication studies from the University of Rhode Island a master of educational leadership and management from Fitsburg State University and a doctor of educational administration from the University of Southern
Mississippi jodie Fortuna is currently the deputy superintendent of teaching and learning in Brooklyn Massachusetts she holds a bachelor of science in special education from Bridgewater State University a master of educational leadership from Framingham State
University and a doctor of educational leadership from Boston College joanie Manard is currently the director of special education and student services in Douglas Massachusetts she holds a bachelor of arts from Salv Regina University a
master of education from Fitsburg State University and a doctor of education from Capella University timothy McCormack is currently the superintendent of schools in North Brookfield Massachusetts he holds a bachelor of science in kinesology from the University of New
Hampshire a certification a certification in educational administration from the Marramac Education Center and has completed the new superintendent induction program with the Massachusetts Association of School Superintendent and then there's
additional information on the candidates that can be found if you click the link um I do want to thank the screening committee for their work on all of this um the screening committee members uh
Kristen Ryan TJ Laughlin Mandy Gilman Liz Peterson Carla Squire Jane Hall Mary Foy Brad McNamera Caesar
Nazolo Sarah Wright Carol Arshambo and myself um part of this process also is um we need to
um once we accept the slate of recommended so we will need a motion tonight to accept the potentially a motion to accept the slate of recommended by the screening committee also after that we would want to thank the screening committee again and notify them that their duties are discharged if
that is the will of this committee i would make a motion uh with gratitude to uh accept the slate of candidates from the screening committee second any discussion all those in favor say I
i opposed all right the motion passes also I would look for a motion to notify the those members that their duties are discharged moved i'll second any discussion all
those in favor say I i opposed all right thank you everyone and thank you to the screening committee for that was a lot of meetings and a lot of hard work yeah and it was also uh a change in what we had done too so the dates uh were definitely challenging for several
members uh but we got got through it so that was good um additionally um I had reached out to Alicia the MASC rep and who's working with us the field director on the search uh to see because we had actually
finished about a week early um we had squeezed in the the meetings on that actually a Friday night and then we actually met on Monday carol had to go away on Tuesday so we actually were able to deliberate on Monday so we didn't
push it to the end of the week um I inquired about whether we could change the dates and speed it up a little bit uh but the MASC is already lined up with multiple uh superintendent interviews in other districts and they are not able to bump us up a week so we are still
looking at the end of April and the first week of May so it's that April 28th 29th 30th Thursday the 1st and Friday the 2nd of May where we would um be inviting the candidates for interviews and it would be a dayong
event with if not all most of the stakeholders uh having meetings throughout the day and then finalizing it with a a interview with the s the school committee and potentially meetings on
Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday with potential deliberations of the school committee on Friday or the following Monday the the 5th so we could potentially be voting on Friday the 2nd Monday the 5th if we had interviews on
again April 28th 29th 30th and the 1st of May so our meetings would occur 5 6 7 8 in that time frame for the school committee interviews I think in the evenings i'm not sure exactly what time and that's something
we can set so there's a lot of moving parts and a lot of planning that we have to do but I think that's the right now the outline I'm asking for pure planning purposes exactly yeah no me too i'm a little concerned figure out my calendar week of evening meetings yeah that week
is not a good week at all i will be in Washington DC for two of those days and I will have an all day hearing and a homicide on another of those days it will not be good and they will be public meetings so we
can do Zooms remote we can do virtual meetings too where it's a hybrid meeting as well i'm going to be out the week prior to that so we get um anyway we need to work through it could Tony do the site visits maybe huh
you could maybe do site visits so again that's another part of the process too we have to decide on site visits and uh which groups of people that uh they will meet up with so we can have them meet with uh the the admin team the the
superintendent uh the current superintendent the the parents um does it effectively need to be the same schedule for each of the days yes yeah there should be some consistency with all the candidates and each candidate
basically gets a day yes okay and are you looking for guidance in terms of what that day should look like now no definitely not yeah so there'll be more information i think next meeting we'll be able to try to finalize that i think interview questions is also another component too
um whether if we do if we work together on the interview questions it's going to be in a public meeting we can also assign people to develop the questions are you looking to inter outside of the meeting so that we don't have them in a a public forum as well so that's another option who sent
just out of curiosity the question the what you may ask and what you may not ask is that's from the MASC okay cuz there is an obvious legal error in this I I'm just done with those people they stink So well what's the
Do we have to do that now no we don't i'm just saying like this is awful so in my experience having probably interviewed 500 job candidates in my career I've often found
that planning a series of questions in advance and running them by somebody who knows how to do this is usually a better tactic than trying to formulate a question while the person is sitting in front of me and not necessarily getting
to the heart of the question that I want want to ask so I think the form the question should definitely be formulated ahead of time they have to be the same question every candidate my thinking on this is I'm almost wondering if it would make sense for us to designate a
question writer right um who could potentially consult with our HR head and but but then take input from everybody and say I want a question about whatever you know we can we can
again do lots of those things right most of it has to be in public session for the questions but we can also have the MASC rep be a part of that process too so you're saying we would have to articulate those questions
What I'm trying to get to is like how do we how do we draw a straight line to this that isn't like too long right so for example could you collect a list of questions between now and our next meeting such that somebody's already taken a look at all of the things that
we've thought of and have a a draft right or or is this and then we can discuss it in public and read the questions yeah what we did was we went through the MASC rep so I don't think we can interact it's a It has to all be done in public session so I can reach out to the MSE rep about that for
clarification but I believe that even us we can't go back and forth she's actually on me if Yeah she is alicia I don't know if you want to add anything to that you might be able to help answer questions uh hi absolutely hello everyone so how you determine the
questions is up to all of you um I can work directly with a representative from the school committee and the HR department absolutely the question booklet we sent you is sort of it's the jumping off point mostly um most of the questions will be in those same
categories and we did share with you also the questions that the screening committee wrote themselves so Mr bizoski can we have access to Did someone take notes on what the candidates answered to the screening
committees you cannot get any information from the screening committee it is um protected okay so we could ask those questions you could ask those questions again okay okay what is your preference Mr chair
i think I like the idea of having at least some questions that are not vetted through a public forum and that they know ahead of time okay but I want to see how they think yeah exactly think on the spot right
so I like that idea but that is going to be a challenge too i also find that some of these prompts are just like so generic like how would you build rapport with administrators teaching staff and with support staff i mean like what does that mean i I want
to know what you have done what you would do specifically here and how you would go about interacting with people in the town right like some of these questions this is the problem when we have like a Mad Lib style generation of questions like these are questions that
like chat GPT could generate so one thought I had was and again I I'd appreciate Alicia's feedback on this too was that we could have individual members take a topic or a certain area generate a question my hope would be that we could send it along to Alicia to
vet it to make sure it's appropriate to ask follows the guidelines and legal requirements let's say um and that way we could actually I don't know if we could potentially go through you Alicia to send you the questions and that you would be able to compile them i like
that idea like having so that they're private and not in public a public sure absolutely and there are committees who actually they have their members develop all their questions on their own and nobody knows anything before they get to the table so if you want to do categories we can do that everyone can
develop say three or four questions per category and then again much like you do in the screening committee we would just go around the room to try and hit every category thank you and I believe you said if we have a five member committee that
approximately 10 questions or two per person is that what the recommendation was it might be so it's more so that you want to have enough questions to to have enough in the time you may not get to all of them when we go to a full um
interview with the school committee in the evening that's a 75 minute interview generally we try and allow for approximately 3 minutes for people to answer the question about a minute maybe or less to ask and then you have your opening and your closing so we would calculate out based on the number of
members who are going to be asking questions how many questions you could reasonably get to some will take a little bit longer some are a little bit shorter but we try and make sure you have enough to cover that spread of 75 minutes so one idea I had was maybe we could
have topics that you are going to ask a question but don't say what the question is maybe Alicia only gets to see the questions so you can run it by Alicia but that at least we could have the discussion as a committee hey I'm going to talk about the budget or I'm going to talk about this or I'm going to talk about this or ask questions about this
that way we get the diversity of questions but we're not disclosing the question okay I like that because there are specific things that I'm like I really think we need to hit these things but the specifics of the question and the thought might be if we do have two
questions maybe even have a third question as a backup but we go around the committee or down the line you get your first question and then we go down again we get the second question and if we have time maybe get to the third one depending on the again the 75
minutes so I have never done a interview as constrained as this is and I don't know how to ask questions like this so I might need some help but are you envisioning us asking
questions like where you know you just give them like a prompt to talk or do you want us to like push them generally what we would say is you start with the framework question and then you um say you were going to ask a question
about budget development you would want to refine the question to have some um linkage back to what your district is currently facing and then you would also want to ask them do you have experience in this can you tell us about a time when and ask them to give you concrete
examples so the questions themselves would be the jumping off point for them to tell you about what their experience is so I would also add too you can look at the the screening committee's questions as potential guidance there too as well as I think we use Alicia
that you all have her email you could send her a question and get feedback from Alicia that way we're not interacting okay does that sound good Alicia this sounds we can totally do that put that out there it is i think the challenge is the whether we want to do this in a public form it is so
frustrating that this part that this takes place as a public meeting like just we we're it is what it is i know it's question development the the attorney general has determined that question development must be public
so there's no there's no legal requirements that we have to follow these questions that's just what they're recommending no you can absolutely come up with your own questions you just have to They're a jump i lean towards the guidance just be careful with the guidance because again we want to make sure that we're appropriate in our questions we also want to certain things
you can't ask about we also want to give everybody a fair shake like you Well that's why we want the same questions for everybody yeah so Brian before I leave you all it looks like there was a type I in error put the
wrong bio under Joanie Manard okay um if I may I would like to correct the information just so that everyone has her current information and I will as soon as I sign off I will send you um the text that I'm about to say so that
it goes into her bio correctly um the links are still appropriate though thank you so uh Joanie Manard is actually currently the super the assistant superintendent for curriculum instruction in Hollist um she holds a BS
in marketing from Ohio State University an a master's degree in elementary education from Anamaria College a master's in educational leadership from Fitsburg State University and an um educational doctorate in educational
leadership from the University of Hartford um I do apologize is I don't I'm not entirely sure how that happened but I will correct that um now via email so that when it goes up on your um document uh whatever document system
you're using that you'll have it nearly immediately thank you none of this stuff is correct yeah that's more than a typo yeah that's not a typo that's not a typo that's just incorrect it was the wrong bio for somebody else no it was the wrong bio um there were multiple
searches being conducted at the same time it was just the wrong bio for the wrong person so is this a bio for somebody else that we are interviewing or not no that's not that is not someone you're interviewing okay all
right so I think the homework for the committee members is to try to develop two or three questions probably three in order of your priorities of what you'd want to look at when you want them and I
can send him on this um they would need to be vetted by I think we want to have them vetted by Alicia before the interviews so we should have this done are we planning on discussing this at our next meeting we should probably
discuss the the topics that way we're on the same page of diversity of questions for the next meeting we should get these things submitted in advance of that meeting should we also we can send you I No I don't think you
can even send me I can't even send you topics no this is ridiculous i know this is just asinine i do not want to participate in this it's an interesting process i hate the fact that MSA or MAC whatever has done it this way cuz I couldn't even talk to the screening committee members it's asinine about it
is not based in the law it's paranoia no it wasn't even majority useless it is useless it's an interesting one but this is Yeah the process that we have to follow i mean this is what we did for superintendent evaluations well no for superintendent evaluations
we sent it to one member yeah we did we This is the only Again I would just stay focused on this so we'll develop questions um could should we also send you you talked about diversity of questions if we also had specific topics we wanted to cover
should we also list off those topics too we can I think next I know I think on the 16th we can discuss the topics and if we feel like we're not hitting up the topics that we want we're going to have to reassign some areas i I am very flexible i will do different areas if
need be let me just I think some people probably have a wheelhouse that they want to talk about i think that's good let me just ask this yes i do not think it is appropriate to ask the same generic questions to everyone we had a problem at the beginning of this year with someone who had a very
particularized profile and was heranged in the community and if we ask the same generalized questions of everyone we will not be able to test that kind of information and I'm not sure what the purpose of the screening committee is if we can't ask individualized questions so
I think the challenge there and this is what I I got from my research on this is that we if you if this an area that you want to hit on one of the candidates you try to you have to ask all of the candidates the same question so it's the way you develop that question so that
you actually can talk is that what you did i you have to ask everybody the same question but this is the process MS MASC is ordering us to do so Alicia I don't know if you can clarify that part so this is the process that comes from
um the executive director and our legal counsel and our field directors that the idea is that you give everyone the same level playing field they all get the same access to the same questions and then you judge them based on the
questions they have developed uh sorry the questions they they are answering that you have developed but we don't have to follow what she says well I think it's the legal obligation that if you're grilling someone on a certain topic and not grilling the other people it's not a legal obligation i would be
worried about this for the town manager position too and this is what this is what public boards do when hiring not what boards do i'm on two other boards and this is definitely not what we do this is lunacy that we can't ask
individual questions to individual people like if somebody has something that's outstandingly great or outstandingly worrisome we can't ask them we have to do it in this vague generic man i I understand the frustration but I would not support uh asking different questions to different
people i I I don't want to put Lunberg in a If I can't ask individual questions to individual people I am not participating that is just insane i I I don't care what they tell us if they send me a legal memo with case sites I will read it but if I cannot ask
individual questions to individual human beings I do not understand the value of this process that's it i I cannot support this i do not think we should have used MASC they have sent us garbage in the
past they have sent us garbage now i do not support this in any way it is just bonkers we're gonna run into the same problem that we ran into at the beginning of the school year and we're going to do the same thing it's like I I just don't I do not think this is a good
effective way to use our time and quite frankly I'm just concerned that we will screw ourselves over by doing this in this regimented cookie cutter way it's easy for them to manage but it does not produce good results for us
i don't think this is MASC mac this is MASC i mean this is the memo that they sent us i don't MASC didn't manage our town manager no but like the same I'm sure it's the same kind of process there but what I'm saying is like if we are
not asking individual people individual questions then we have failed in screening those people i'd like to know that and I and I asked this in all sincerity i just don't know i I would like to understand the underpinnings for this guidance yes is
this mass general law is this DESIE guidance is this lawyers for MASC or is this an executive at MASC where does this where does this guidance originate from and
I'm I'm not on board with Tony's criticisms here mostly because I'm not an attorney and I don't know however I also think that we need to be very careful about giving everybody an
equal and fair shot and if that means setting a framework for asking questions and topics that we are going to hit an opportunity to present a position and then an opportunity to ask a follow-up question which I think is well within
the bounds of a of a of a normal dialogue like in my opinion that would be a path to maybe where we could agree right that's fine but but I I tend to agree with your frustration but I just don't know where this is coming from and and I' I'd like to understand that by
the way when I did the school committee training the one day mandatory MASC training we got the same story at that meeting but it was presented to us as thou shalt yes and and I and I did not
get a clear answer at that time no I didn't who said thou shalt and and I I just don't know and and I really do want to know because to the extent that I'm not bound to something as rigid but do have the opportunity to get to a place where I think everybody's gotten a fair
shot and we all believe that we've got the right information to make a decision that's really really where we want to be yes I agree i would love follow-up questions i would love to look into the possibility of everyone gets the same questions but
if we have Okay that was an interesting thing you said let's maybe ask a follow-up question about that little thing or that that little detail i which also is just more conversational because this is an interview this is a you know if someone
says something it it's a back and forth and that's another good point is we also need to get a handle on the character and the interpersonal skills of the candidates and to do that where they
know the questions coming in have a full prepared answer and no interaction or dialogue is not going to give us a fair look at the interpersonal skills of the candidate like we're just not going to get that alicia do you have any uh response
so yes I I think what I'm going to do is I'm going to I would suggest what we start with is start developing your questions like we had talked about develop your questions develop your categories that sort of thing um send them to me and then I can turn them back
around and I can get some more feedback from my executive director and our legal counsel um before your meeting on Did you say it was the 16th i I mean I'm just not going to spend time if I don't know why I'm doing this i'm not going to spend my time as a
volunteer to help with this lunacy i want the answers before we do it i am not doing it otherwise again it is to try to get our next superintendent that you'll be working with i do not care if we are not allowed to even ask follow-up questions and everything has to be
scripted what is the point in doing this entire process and I know that that is not the law no one would think that is the law that is just crazy and nobody said there weren't going to be follow-up questions the idea
is that everyone starts with the same questions so that you can drill down deeper on them but that everyone gets the same questions to begin with so that you're evaluating all of the candidates on the same questions i I understand that what you're not
giving us answers on is what are we what is the minimum legal requirement in your opinion to how to conduct this as opposed to what is the most structured cookie cutter way to do this i want to see how people genuinely think not what
scripted answer they could come up with 2 days before the interview sitting in a coffee shop so I I'm just saying this i know this is going to make it harder i refuse to participate until we are given some indication as to why they are doing this
i think it's again everybody's entitled to their opinion but it's the what the will of the committee what the school committee wants to do and how we'll proceed and again we've I think we've had this discussion before that we could stop this search today and appoint a superintendent if we chose yes
but I think we have some direction um at this point so if there's no other discussion we will move on i by the way I do I do think that we probably need before the 16th you need to work with us Mr chair
and figure out a schedule for the interviews that is going to work yes um because we all have professional obligations that I think is pretty likely to throw this thing off track yes yes and so somebody's going to have to give or something and we just we need to
figure that out rather than later so Alicia I don't know too if that's going to be a likely possibility that members can reach out to you with their schedule how can we coordinate that so generally what we do when we're coordinating the
in district days is we start about midm morning and we have the candidate come in and meet with the staff they generally meet with the current superintendent um the leadership team they do building tours with the current superintendent as the afternoon goes on and the teachers are out of class they
will have focus groups with the teachers and there will be for each of these the feedback survey um once we get into the evening there would be a community and parent and or guardian um forum in the evening and then following that there would be the interview with the school
committee that night generally what happens is that that schedule is followed during the day the school committee isn't needed until that night um for their school committee interview the school committee does not attend by best practices the school committee doesn't necessarily attend the
um focus groups during the day they get the feedback from the focus groups that way your staff your parents can ask questions of the candidates in a way that um they feel like they have uh more leeway to do so so then that night after the interview all the surveys come back
to you um and when we do the scheduling we try to put them we try to put um the candidates on the days that work for them if you need to go over a twoe span we can potentially do that um you have four candidates so that would be a very long week it's not unheard of to do four
in district days and then vote on the fifth it's also not unheard of to do two take a day off two and then vote the next week as well so maybe that's the possibility that we're looking at maybe the April 28th to the 2nd week and also
using the AP the the May 5th to the 9th week and making a decision in that second week checking out basically everybody's schedules and seeing if we're the problem that we have is is I'm traveling the last week of April and he's traveling the week after that so
we're going to have to figure this out i also frankly given everything that's going on the fact that we're going to town meeting we've got a lot of things in flight I'm not sure that four consecutive nights is the right way to and then a fifth to to to select
somebody is the right way to do this my preference is we come up with two nights or one night or one day like a Saturday or something yes drive through it yep and they can do their on-site stuff during the week as as outlined and then
the school committee interviews it could be on a Saturday one day or something along those lines and and my preference would be let's do it on a Saturday or something okay let's do it right after town meeting that'd be perfect which is an interesting point which is town meeting
is sitting right in the middle of this town meeting is the third all right so I can work with Alicia and we'll see if we can set up a schedule we'll have to reach out to each member to try to get the their schedule so we know what days work and don't work
mother's Day is the 11th and then we can reach out to the the candidates there's a lot going on then mhm all right any other discussion alicia anything else to add
uh I am sending you that updated uh memo right now thank you all right moving on the next item is a discussion FY26 budget free cash oh my gosh
okay so I have engaged the uh principles in some conversation around ideas for how we might um approach the free cash and I've also
uh solicited some input from each of you um I think the way I've been thinking about it are there there are sort of three bucket areas um one way to use the money is to
restore positions a different bucket would be to restore some of the expense cuts um but I also think that there's a third bucket ways in which we can use the funds that get
us into a better position uh to face the budget that we'll have to develop for 27 so in conversations with my admin team um the positions that they uh
thought they would like to see as the highest priority for consideration would be the fizzed teacher position at the high school the assistant principal position at the middle high school the fifth grade
teacher at Turkey Hill the high school math teacher position uh restoring the point4 music teacher cut um the world language teacher position at the middle high school the high
school secretary position and the part-time athletic secretary position relative to purchases um touch view screens at the primary restoring the I ready diagnostic
only the diagnostic not the my path individualized learning uh that individualized learning platform for 912 and the possibility of uh purchase or lease of two transport vans
i think um the feedback that I got from members of the committee um seems to me that the positions uh of most interest for conversation
uh for free cash would be the um PE teacher at the high school the math teacher at the high school and the grade five teacher and then relative to restoring expense cuts
um the committee feedback seemed to indicate that I Ready um was something of interest and then um a few thoughts relative to ways in which we might consider using
the free cash that would help position us uh more optimally for budget development in FY27 things like applying some monies to increase
the salary for the business manager position whether that is the whether we call it a business manager or we keep a finance director title on it or what have you essentially this is the one reduced
position that we have in the budget but we only budgeted it at 90,000 and the town manager is very concerned that we will not have any qualified applicants at that level um relative to a conversation
earlier we could consider hiring additional finance staff um because the demands for budget um have increased significantly in the last couple of years
um we know that um Mr santry has conveyed um the challenges of reducing staff uh with the schedule um we could potentially spend some money to contract a consultant to come in and
work with the team uh to find ways to optimize the schedule uh which would potentially allow us to better utilize staff across 612 and um potentially
uh find ways to optimally position individual classes or singleton sections of courses uh to minimize conflicts for students uh we probably should consider
once a a list is more finalized um putting some of the free cash toward unemployment there is money in the budget line for unemployment i can tell you that there are several positions that are open so there won't be any
unemployment costs associated with those cuts we have had some individuals whose positions were being cut they have resigned positions already so there won't be unemployment uh eligibility there uh there are a couple of
retirements so there won't be eligibility there so we need to narrow the list and try to figure out exactly um which individuals um will actually be
cut and then uh we'll work with um Mr della uh the town finance director to figure out what's what's the reasonable budgeted line uh for unemployment anticipating that all of those folks may be eligible and actually
collect um I think that we should really consider supplementing some of the athletic budget because we have to get the health of that revolving account uh
to a better place to position us better for the budget in 27 right now it's a liability as far as I'm concerned um purchase of those touch view screens
for the primary school um that has an impact on the learning that's happening in the classrooms and whether we uh want to consider purchase of some touch view screens uh or whether
we want to consider uh purchase of the touch view screens for all of the classrooms um something for conversation if it was a bundle of all of the classrooms could that fall under capital
planning uh it can i can tell you from previous years in front of capital plan um there have been members who believe that um technology should just be part of the operating budget um so I we we
could pursue that path i just don't know how successful we would be um particularly up against real need for other things elsewhere um I I just don't know that we'd get it above a funding line um and the other um use of the money
that would position us well for the FY27 budget and beyond um was this idea of the transport vans so as I have looked into that more deeply um initially we were talking uh based on
the AD's recommendation two 15 passenger vans uh would help us immensely reduce transportation costs with DB bus to get our our kids to different games um problem
is again the law is a is always creeping up in but that's not what the law says the quote that's here is incorrect if you look at the law if you look at uh 49 USC 30 uh 112 subsection
A 2 it says "A school or school system may not purchase or lease a new passenger van if it will be used significantly by or on behalf of the school or the school system to transport pre- primary primary or secondary students to or from an or a school or an
event related to school." That's where the quote ends but then this says unless the 15 passenger van complies with motor vehicle standards prescribed for school buses and multifunctional school activity buses under this title so it's not a a hard and fast no it just means
it has to be like a regular school bus it has to work like a regular school bus so right which I did not price out a regular school bus no no no what I'm saying is if the 15 passenger van meets the safety standards for a regular school
bus we could do it so I don't know if if it will because we've had conversations with the dealership and they said can't do it yeah so so my concern is that you go to any like sporting event
especially golf matches and golf state championships and district tournaments there's these vans lined up like the whole parking lot 15 passenger vans or are they 11 passenger vans well let's again let's look into the vans that other schools are using and let's utilize those i mean that may be the
thought right like you know after our conversation the other day I started researching 11 passenger vans and it turns out they're not as plentiful on the market they're not but but they're there i mean Ford makes a transit 11 passenger van so and I think it's
collaborating with the Central Mass or Midland Wuset League and let's talk about to those superintendents and those athletic directors to see what kind of vans they're using and maybe even who they buy them from yeah there's there's a lot of schools that are using them so I'd like to
know what they're doing how much they paid and what what regulations they're What are your expectations Mr chair and Dr bernham in terms of where we land this because we have a there's an article at town meeting and town meeting is four weeks from
tomorrow so how are we going to land this because there's a lot here i think it's a discussion today and potentially a vote next meeting getting getting some ideas of where the the committee stands and what they're interested in i think we're obviously
not ready for the van well I'd like to be I'd like to I'd like to drive that no pun intended to completely said if a parent has a passenger van and a parent wants to drive i think this Yeah that
doesn't like as a coach as a former golf coach I would drive the van all the time to Did you really the state oh all the time the state the state tournaments the district tournaments the league tournaments i would drive across the state all different golf tournaments and
I've even done it for other sports when there's not a lot of kids that are going if it's just a a varsity team i I just I think we need to drive this to ground it because I mean the the leasing cost while not inexpensive on a peryear basis
if we could take $30,000 of this $500,000 free cash and put it to two 11 passenger vans for a year and see what happens we know a lot more about how we can economize this thing than we would know otherwise correct and and in my
mind that's worth the time and effort to figure out and I I lean towards the do the investment purchase it and it provides you with all these opportunities to to transport these kids to different events you're already paying for buses so if if I had a lot more money than we have I think I would
be there it's just we you know we don't have anywhere near enough money to cover all this stuff that's on this list oh absolutely these were just right items put up for for conversation based on um a few thoughts I had relative to what I
thought might be helpful to get us further along as we're going to be facing another round of cuts next year likely um what would position us well give us information that we could utilize to help us uh with the budget um
but also again um just soliciting input from my admin team as well as members of of the committee just in an attempt to narrow the the focus of the conversation that said pretty much anything's on the
table the um Are you ready for feedback on this other than the bands yes yeah i think that was the last slide right yeah that's the slide so slide in my
thinking on this normally would be if you're using free cash use it on one time expenses right however given where we are and the the magnitude of the cuts we're facing and the hope that we're going to
address the problems that we talked about at the beginning of this meeting with respect to overrides and a long-term plan my my default is actually against what I would normally do with with free cash and use this to somewhat level the
transition or ease the pain particularly when it comes to personnel cuts that said if I were a person in any one of these positions it's a precarious situation because you're going to know that your position is being funded by free cash so I just want to throw that
all out there not it just I think it needs to be said um you may recall several weeks ago I voted no on our program of study vote and my
reasoning at the time was that I think that our high school program we if it's a chessboard we need to throw the pieces up in the air and see where they land and figure out a better way of doing business and to the best of my knowledge
we really haven't done that um and the justification for the first thing on there a PE teacher at the high school is to fill 10 empty slots over two half of a halfs a year right so
a gym teacher would teach five blocks in the first half and five blocks in the second half so it's a it's a full-time teacher um but we voted against pursuing waiverss for PE part of the
justification here is to fill um electives for kids that have already met the 1.5 requirement for PE and we're going to hire a PE or retain a PE teacher before you retain a assistant
principal or a math teacher or a music teacher or a world language teacher in my mind that just doesn't sit well with me and and I would not support that i think that we should not be
bound by the chains that we have put around our own around our own limbs and and I just think we are we put ourselves on a course where we're doing this i I I just I can't see retaining a PE teacher over a teacher
that teaches a subject that we measure that we we will sit here in the fall and winter and measure student performance around we are not measuring PE performance we are measuring math and
science and and and and English and topics like that so for starters I just I'm not that doesn't sit well with me i would invite Dr burnham and her team to respond it looks to me as though Mr santry would respond good evening thank you for having me i
appreciate it and Mr beardmore I appreciate your comments you know um Mr skull and Brady in the about 20 minutes ago asked for you know why don't we get some information from the people with the boots on the ground so the three principles that manage and operate your
schools came together and prioritized these positions to come back because they would have the greatest impact on students coming back to the high school so it wasn't just the high school principal putting these together it was all three leaders coming together
and prioritizing what would come back why did we make that choice dr book has put in a pretty comprehensive presentation in January around us adopting uh new standards in PE and health and also this one position
affects the most amount of students as in terms of direct teaching and also the most amount of spaces that I can open up that allows students to have more choices i have also given a presentation
on class size is the wrong metric to be looking at a high school if you want all of my classes to be 25 and 30 that's not going to happen you can cut until the day ends i'm not going to be able to get to 25 and 30 people in a class i have to
offer AP anatomy to seniors they're not going to be 30 kids in those classes there's going to be 10 or 15 that need it to get into a 4-year nursing class but it's never going to be 30 i'm never going to have 30 in an AP uh math class
but with those kids need it to go to WPI MIT or even be considered for those classes i'm not going to have 30 in my essentials class but it I'm not going to because I don't have 30 kids who might be the first to get a high school diploma you know you got to stop looking
at class size this is the piece that will impact our students the most it will loosen up that schedule you can have as many uh experts come in and take a look at the schedule it's not mismanaged so it's
because we continue to look at this class size to be like K8 it'll never be like K8 we have to offer choices to students this return of a PE teacher does that
so students are now able to take two APs or two honors cuz I can put kids in a different elective or I can put them in a different UA it's how a high school schedule works so the more choices you take away the less choices kids can take
so the three of us sat down we prioritized PE and we prioritized the assistant principal at the high school because you have 820 adolescents plus 135 staff members and only three
administrators it's going to bump our rates i don't know i'll be doing 45 or so evaluations i'll be doing 50 or so 504 plans this is why the principles got together to give you this information so
that's my backing for why those positions I appreciate the commentary Mr santry and and maybe we need to take another look at this and you need to explain it to me better i I just am not at a point where I can understand how
adding a PE teacher gets you to the point where a kid can therefore let me let me try to let me try to explain it this way if we have one PE teacher and PE9 is is mandatory all the kids are
taking PE9 i've now created three more singletons 10 11 and 12 that locks the schedule even tighter so if I can offer PE at different grade levels and give them more choices students aren't locked in to be able to take an honors or an AP
class in one block once again I I think you've locked yourself in i mean you you're your grade nine example is a perfect example why are we mandating grade nine PE when all we have to do is offer PE mr and we haven't seen the and we haven't seen the curriculum so can I
just I'm going to try to I'm going to try to do a bad job of what you just said uh my understanding having talked to Dr book us and done some research having taken comments that you have made here and followed them to ground is that
the wrong it is wrong to use class size as a measure in high school because the bigger determinant for student achievement among high school students is class choice yes class choice improves student outcomes
in the way that we make our schedule the PE requirement essentially becomes like a a choke point or like if you think about it from like a logic problem perspective a key log it's not the most important piece it's not the only piece
it's the piece that's in the way of making the schedule work for everybody else so if we would restore the PE position it would allow flexibility that would in turn allow improved student class choice which would increase
student achievement you did a fantastic job of explaining okay um I I I don't I don't see why we should not listen to you thank you Mr bazowski oh nope i was thinking aloud i'm sorry um No it's okay
i was just making sure everybody has a voice no the the PE teacher it does make sense to me if it frees up the students to take other things it it does i would I would actually like to also look at
maybe restoring the world language teacher position if we had a price tag attached to that one as well um however adding uh everything all up through um an additional 20k for the business manager we're already at $310,333
so but the buses are only like 65 so I I would agree with uh part of what Mr beard Moore stated uh with I think the positions are actually more important um they're they're people they're also going to help educate our students we want the the people in front of our
students back the challenge yes it is free cash but this whole reason for the free cash is to get a comprehensive override next year where are we going to continue to keep these staff so that is my thought i appreciate Mr santry's u information about the PE because I was
also very confused on why PE was on the list um because I have concerns that that's not as impactful to the the students learning um but I would agree with because based off the explanation I would agree that I appreciate the
priority list and I would support it and I think the positions are more important than the supplies at this juncture in time it's the best worst decision we can make i guess I would I would also add Mr beardmore you know we got to sell this to town meeting
i got it we're going to put a PE teacher above grade five math music world language we're going to do that we're going to trust the experts to tell us what to do yeah in eight out of 11 positions we're already restored to PK
through preK through 5 we have shackled ourselves with this schedule and we have failed to think creatively to look at other options we've we've turned down looking at waiver options we are mandating 9th grade PE when we don't
have to we are shackling ourselves here and as a result of that we are not hiring back teachers of subjects that we measure our students performance on because of this idea that it it brings additional choice i I
it just I don't I don't think I can get there and I may be I may be the one dissenting vote but I I would again caution you we need to sell this to town media for a long time and I don't there are gonna be a lot of people who are going to think exactly like I do
when it comes to this so Mr what I would what I would encourage you to look at and we pride ourselves on being able to offer AP courses honors courses right kids social emotional mental well-being
they need that break pe offers it we do in PE you are measuring students there are PE curriculum standards it's part of the Massachusetts curriculum frameworks we are measuring students performance i have never seen a report of PE
performance it's on the report cards of showing up here at public meetings um I've never heard a discussion about it our kids get graded on it but I'm saying what we what we measure what we prioritize as a school committee i the only discussions about PE that have
occurred in this meeting in the three years prior to my being on the school committee where I was the rep for the finance committee are the are the conversations that I have asked for it has never been discussed so I mean I I just I I challenge the
notion that that that it's a priority i you know from my perspective what I misunderstood before Dr bookas corrected me and Mr santry gave me information about school a class choice is that I'm
thinking of this schedule as like this is a buffet of choices right but I think the better way of thinking of it is this is a menu and we can't cook everything at the same time and so by allowing by having this one
additional PE class it opens up the schedule so that really high achieving students can take classes that will never have as as Mr centry said they'll never have 25 kids like they're just like I probably would not be taking any
AP classes maybe other than history like I would not be in AP math but like there are kids that are going to need that schedule flexibility and if we don't have the way to make the schedule work
then it's not and and I appreciate what you said principal squire about like the value of PE for me it's do I trust the experts yes and then second understanding how the schedule plays out and the fact that we're giving the kids
the ability to choice into you know very difficult selective classes or on the other end classes that will give their family an opportunity to break intergenerational poverty like that it's not the it's not the class is I guess
what I'm trying to say i think what's lacking AP classes are we going to offer next year than this year i don't have that number off my head we aren't we aren't cutting any AP courses no AP classes i think what we're lacking though is the impact statements i think we need impact statements on these positions we got them didn't we but the
impact statements on the positions as they need to be wasn't it on the priority restored the prior didn't we get another priority list yes i I had shared it through a survey okay you had Yeah yeah but you also have the impact
statements that are in that slide deck the giant slide deck for every single position so when you look at the impact statement you just think of it in reverse okay this impact won't be here i think these impact statements will be vital for say town meeting i couldn't
find the impact statements and I'm like I I swore I read the impact statements and I swear I saw a priority list but it was a survey all right was that ranked in order they were in this order okay mhm so what I wanted to say was this was
a priority list done by not just Mr sandry but by Mrs squire and Mr ivon and number one on all three of their priority list that they came up with together was the PE teacher and if I have three principles telling me restore
the PE position it is our number one priority then I'd like to re restore the PE position especially when the high school is one place that we have not restored positions and if that if if
they're telling me it's going to help I I would like to restore the PE position i understand for what it's worth seven of the eight positions that are listed here are high school positions but please the 11 were restored earlier to prek through five i totally agree no I'm
I agree with getting all of those what I'm saying here I'm I'm not going to pick the number one with restoring high school positions i'm arguing with the prioritization that's my problem so I think we also saw that the the younger grades didn't get massive cuts because
there was a lot of concern that that's where a lot of that growth is in the learning in the second grade and third grade and the reading and that was a lot of the concern of the public and this committee and that the high school sadly took the biggest hit and now when we're going to restore but I think it it
doesn't surprise us that the admin team is saying we need to restore some of these high school positions i think we can sell it to the public increase choices so students can choose the classes they want and maybe we don't list PE teacher first on the list of restored cuts maybe it goes in the
middle they're going to know cuz we just talked about it but it doesn't have to be number one at the top maybe we put math teacher but like every single person that's going to go to town meeting is going to understand the fact that you need to carry a backup catcher on your baseball team even if he bats
180 because if you don't have that person you will forfeit the game if your catcher gets injured also I feel like we This is the same kind of thing with PE where you're focusing on the the subject as opposed to the system as a whole which is exactly what I was asking for all right i think the I think we can
sell this i think the superintendent has some good feedback from the school committee this is just a discussion item we can continue this on our agenda for a future meeting thank you and I don't mean to suggest that PE teachers are backup catchers i'm just using that as a way to explain it to people that are not
educationally it is a challenge tuned in with a sports analogy i was so let's continue the uh the next item on the agenda is a discussion on the athletic summer camps update wait are we So are we done with the free cash one that is the free cash discussion
the unemployment costs I wanted to talk about are there any other departments in town where their budget holds their unemployment costs or is it just us when we are forced to do large amounts of layoffs because we don't have the budget then we have to also pay those
unemployment costs because the irony of this is it's a lot so the challenge is it's it's a town obligation right so it's a town obligation so if they are obligated to do it then I guess they're obligated not to give us as much free cash tore
pay for those it just unemployment this is covered by we can't do anything about that by federal law we also in my to my knowledge I don't think we've done layoffs at the town level not extensive
and this isn't even maybe one or two in the last six years that extensive people are already looking for jobs to you know what I would like to put this in there i would like a town meeting to highlight the fact that yeah this is how many layoffs we're doing we need an override next year so yeah I think it
makes a very good political statement this is how many so many overrides that so many layoffs that we need to factor in unemployment costs so yeah no that absolutely should be included yeah um the business manager position I think
we should go up to 20,000 and I we definitely need to hire like someone with a lot of accounting experience yeah I think that was a concern of the town manager too the um making sure we hire someone she's given us the money
i'm not sure yeah to Peter's point about selling it I'm not sure the touch view screens are a great That's going to be a tough sell right i love the Touch View screens i think they're fantastic i've seen some of the teachers do
amazing things with it but to an outsider it looks like such a luxury and I I know that it I know how much it can do but it it looks like we're just blowing money i think that goes to the comprehensive long-term
planning that those are going to be in a long-term plan of supplies maybe we can put them on a bus technology and supplies yeah no I think it's just it's a people it's a people cash this looks like a
I I would I do support the idea of either putting more money to the position that you highlighted that the town manager doesn't think is sufficient
uh and partic potentially um looking at some additional help when it comes to the inevitable research work that will be required to arrive at a long-term financial
plan um we are going to restructure this position we're going to bring in an accountant who is going to have an awful lot to catch up on and get up to speed on um and our expectation is is that they and a new superintendent are going
to deliver us deliver us together with the with the town manager and finance director to a point where we have a collective plan by next budget season i just I don't think that that's feasible the reason why we didn't we were not
able to do the things that we thought we would do this year is not entirely but in part because we lost a town manager in the middle of it we had an interim town manager we hired a new town manager we lost we changed finance directors we lost a a
chair of the finance committee like you know that kind of churn has an effect on your ability to execute these strategic things that we need to execute so I I and it's onetime money if we do it right
so I think we should think about spending there as a as an investment to make better decisions for the outcome what's the most important things to get through this year it's is the big Gary spending free cash on salaries though it's
again it's the cuts this year the cuts next year ifitation if the override doesn't pass there you do make a good point about we are you're keeping those staff we are going to have an increased demands on that department next year and
there will be someone new in there and I Yeah that's a very good point so I think maybe that should Mr i I just ask I'm assuming that Mr bigalow is here for the athletic summer
camp if we can get him up and get him to talk cuz I don't I don't know if every Are we good to continue now okay so if there's no other discussion let's move on then so I think the superintendent has some good feedback so next up discussion on the athletic
summer camps update mr bigalow sure everyone wants to talk about summer camps now yes been waiting all night anything is better than the budget again uh so we uh Miss Peterson actually reached out to um the board of health
they gave us a checklist to go through to to look over it sounded like in their response that because we were a school that we would qualify for most of those um on that checklist other than that I mean it is
what I gave you in the proposal those coaches are on board with running those weeks um does it conflict with any camps run by the town in any way no just I do not believe that it did when I gave the dates back to Dr burnham I went off of
your email and the dates that were given to her by the parks and wreck and I I think that we stayed away from every week uh I didn't think that it was going to be possible to be honest with you when I got those dates I said I I don't know if this is you know going to happen because one of them was July 4th which
obviously takes that out i'm sorry nobody runs the camp July i don't have access to these files i requested them i did I did gave I gave you permission you still can't open them nope so can we table this i just I don't have access to the files and I can't um
you've got the Blue Knights basketball camp uh that will happen at the middle high school gym the week of June 16th um boys and girls grade 3 through nine wait do these in So do these interfere with the
So I'll I'll back up for a second uh because it was called into question that I had given some false information uh deliberately um you might recall that there was a meeting over at the middle high school
uh one school committee meeting and you might remember that Mrs zash Shambo asked the AD whether or not any of his camps would potentially have we reached out to I think was the question have we reached out to the
recck department to see what they're doing so that we're not going to be in conflict and at that time I did talk to somebody on the parks and recck department and they gave me only two weeks that they were running sports camps Dr burnham then came back with additional weeks i'm not sure what those additional weeks included but they were
programming right so after that was called into question i never said that I had reached out and talked with the recck department so I did reach out to the rec director and asked her what weeks she was running things this summer
she gave me a full slate of weeks which actually ate up almost all of all of the summer quite a bit um there were very few weeks left but then I shared that list of weeks uh with AD Bigalow and I I asked that he uh make sure that any of
the programs that we would run would not run those same weeks in conflict with those programs and if necessary that we would double up our own camps the same week uh if needed um so and to be honest with you if that happened that we had to
double up our C I I don't that wouldn't be feasible you couldn't do it with our facilities um you know even if you're an outdoor sport you need rain sites uh it just it just wouldn't be able to happen so then if if one of those weeks does
and I you know misread or I you know went over on one of their weeks um you know my question at that point would be what what programming is it that that that week and if it's not a sports camp um you know is it really stepping on anyone's toes so the concern I think you
heard it last meeting that we had this discussion was Miss Arshambo Mr beardorn and myself all had concerns that we needed to make sure that the wreck department was reached out to that conversations
were had we want to I think as a school committee we want to make sure that all departments are working collaboratively they're communicating we're working together um so the concern is again that collaboration i think the committee I
don't want to speak for the committee but for me I want to make sure we're having those conversations with either the recck director preferably the rec director but maybe it is board members of their parks and wreck but making sure we're transparent making sure that we're all on the same page if we have to
adjust our camps or they're adjusting their camps but having that dialogue so that members of the parks and wreck hopefully aren't blowing up that we're not following the right protocols we're jumping into their space i think if we
can collaborate as best we can I know it's not always possible but try to have that open dialogue and try to work together and I think that we I I believe that we stayed away from all the weeks that uh were passed on to Dr bern the other the other key thing is whether
or not we'll be able to get done everything that we need to get done for the board of health in time for all of this as well because it is it is not insignificant so I thought these weren't going to be called camps it does it's really not going to matter what we call
them because we are going to have to complete all of the paperwork regardless of what we call them and that's normal like you know and it really just goes town by town on how difficult or not difficult a board of health is to work with on these
things and we're about to find out will you need a nurse on staff yeah a trainer or nurse typically at a sports camp you you would need Yep okay which just means that more of the revenue that comes in has to go to staff if we're going to have to have an have a breakdown of the
revenue well we I I don't know until we have students sign up so many kids apply well I meant at least do you have a breakdown of expenses and we'd have to figure out what the cut point is where if we don't have x number of kids we can't afford to run it because we won't
be able to staff it so yeah I'm afraid this is going to end up costing us money you won't run we won't run it if if it costs money you just don't run it but we got to do these to understand if it is a potentially right how will we know if you do the math this is why and I was
being asked at one point to say how much staff and how much are we paying them i don't know until you have kids sign up you know if you're running a camp I'm running a camp and I say this is my basketball camp i if I got 25 kids signed up I say "Okay this is uh an NCAA
and an NBA division i need three coaches plus myself." So that's four people you know you just figure it out so if you don't know what you're going to be paying say one coach and then you get kids signed up and then realize we're going to be losing money and then decide
the week before camp to cancel i didn't say I didn't say we didn't know what they do every year with like the sports leagues it's not a big deal so so my my thought on this is that we figure out what do we pay for the summer camp
coordinator cuz there would have to be somebody to take the payment and the the health paperwork so on and so forth right we're going to need to decide what we would pay um a senior coach like an adult and then we'd have to figure out
like what the pay is for a junior coach which would be a student um not one of our coaches um and my thought is is that we articulate those in we add them to the unaffiliated
salary schedule that you just approved a couple weeks ago so it spells out what what the pay rate is for different levels of coach or the coordinator or what have you
so we can iron that out but I think the point he's getting at is as far as how much revenue could come in the the numbers of kids participating is going to drive how many coaches or assistant coaches he's going to have to bring on
to manage the number of kids um so we would probably have to sit down and figure out if we hit this threshold we got to bring on another junior coach or something there is always revenue it's just a matter of how much and you'd have a deadline whether the students always
revenue i mean I think if you have one kid sign up well that yeah you you're not going to run it we're not running it you can't have a basketball and when would you be able to make that decision of when you're not going to run it so parents and families make those I had suggested that we consider a deadline
for registration for any of these camps they would all go out and be advertised at the same time and if we set a deadline date sometime early miday then that's plenty of notice because you're a month out before you'd be
running anything you'd have you'd have a month's notice to parents that it's not going to run due to lack of enrollment and the recck department has done that in the past too where they can't run a program my guess is that the recck department has has done this enough which is why I had asked that we talked to the recck department and cooperate
with them it seems like that would have been the easier way to do it mr beard so one of the one of the items that was brought up in the email that we received from Mrs manard was this idea
that the wreck department covers K through six and the schools cover 7 through 12 um which much like my earlier comment
pertaining to PE I had never heard in six years of paying fairly close attention to this so one of these camps is for a K through nine so can somebody help me out here is this like an actual
thing is there policy is there a handshake is there what What is there that that because I I I feel like we're being expected to to conform to rules that I've never seen
before or heard before there to my knowledge there there is no guiding rule on any of that and I would just offer for consideration that prior to the hiring of a wreck director position a handful
of years ago now um the schools were already in the K to5 zone because we were doing extended day summer programming and we've been doing that for more than 25 years so we've we've
always been in that space um and just to I don't know if the the perception here is is that it's only Lunberg i mean when you run a sports camp of any kind I mean we're talking about anybody being able to pay and come to your camp so I don't
you know I coach Theion who's going to run the um girls lacrosse girls field hockey split camp um she knows that she already has 15 kids from out of Lunberg that are signing up for that camp and your coaches will be able to distribute
this to other Midland Wus coaches we you know we're playing from you know behind the eightball here but we're going to catch up as much as possible if that's the case get it out as many places as we can i so to follow up on my earlier question and thank you for answering it i I do
think and to your point we are a little behind the eightball here and it does feel like cart's a little in front of the horse in some of these areas i think we should do it like we we we agreed like we want to we want to experiment with this and see what
happens i I do think that we've got to get much like the issue earlier with the finance committee we've got to get to a point where there is a clear understanding of what we do and what we don't do and what they do and what they don't do and what it what the overlaps
are or what the expectations are um because I I read things two weeks ago that I I had literally read for the first time and I can't find them in our policies i I don't know where to look
for for parks department policies i I admit I didn't go looking too hard but if there are issues in terms of territorial issues I I do think we need to resolve them we need to get them out in the open have an honest open
conversation about them resolve them and then bring them back to the park commissioners and to the school committee and say "This is what we're doing." because I I don't feel comfortable I I I feel uncomfortable saying go do this when
there's some belief that we're treading on other people's territory i agree i think I think it also is different if board members disagree with what we're doing versus the wreck director so I think having the conversation with the rec director because a board could have
five different people all with their own opinions but I think it's the rec director and the athletic director who really are maybe they have a crazy person on their board just like I am everybody's got a crazy person on their board yeah I can wait how come you get to be the crazy person after tonight's outburst I'm definitely the crazy person
um I I think there's a lot to be said for not replicating services i think it's important that we make sure we're not wasting town money throwing the same camp the same week or two camps that compete with each
other for the same age groups uh for kids that are in similar sports because that's just a waste of money to split to split the vote you know to to split the audience uh I think that's a waste
of money and it's a waste of town resources um which is why I think we should be cooperating with the right parks i think there a lot of collaboration the rec director is really nice and she does a good job and I think we should collaborate with them like the
parks department has been growing rapidly and offering a lot more services and I think we're not used to working with them because I I don't know that that is true we have a lot of communication in an ongoing way uh with
the rec director regularly all year long because they they primarily use TCP for their programming so we have a really I think good working relationship with Angela Clement the director um there
there there are open lines of communication we get emails frequently and I bounced an email to her to make sure that I could verify for myself in a response directly to me from her what weeks she had already booked out
programs and then really there were literally three weeks left in the summer that we right and one of the c one of the camps is a strength and conditioning so it's kind of it's a uh multiple week it's a
totally different type of and and believe the idea was not the intention was not to step on anybody's toes if that's you know the thought it's was just an idea to bring revenue to a revolving account that pays for everything in athletics any other Mr
celebrating just real quick i think that one of the things that I have learned in the last two weeks is that uh and I don't know a lot about the history of the town and it it is hard to operate in a town as small as Lunberg without
understanding the history and when I learned about that history I learned how special certain traditions were and so whether there are rules or not I think it is it behooves us to go hatinand to the people that are the keepers of the industry and ask how do we do this in a
way that works for the entire town and that's all I would say sure any other discussion we do have more on the agenda am I allowed to vote on it if I'm like no vote just the discussion okay cuz I'm like already ready to sign my kid up from one of the key all right thank you so much all right moving along uh next
item agenda is school committee goals i had put this cuz we've been waiting and putting it off so it's in your folder you've got like if we'd like to discuss it we can but it is also 9:45 left no it's just more of an update on the goals so that we're again paying attention to our goals and can we table yeah we can
just move on and review it on our own review it on your own time and think about all the wonderful things we've done towards these goals or not have done and if there's anything you want to keep pushing along let me know all right uh new business action item we have annual
town meeting food drink and auditorium oh that's my favorite thing we vote on i like reminding everyone what a good job our food services do yep so um I spoke with uh Naen Lorenzan our food
service director uh to see if uh she would be able to uh coordinate bag lunches again uh this year for town meeting i think things went pretty well last year and they sold out
um so she's put together a menu uh there will be some options there will be a turkey and cheese wrap or marble rye um an Italian sub hummus vegetables and pita bread uh
or a garden salad with pa the cost for this pre-bagged lunch will be $8 the lunches will be available between um 11 and 1 to be purchased um they will
come with one of the uh menu options above plus uh bottled water a bag of chips and a cookie uh cash and carry and um there there will be a limited number of lunches available um I have already
reached out to the town manager to let her know that we're going to offer this again this year uh assuming that the committee votes to allow food in the auditorium um and um we can coordinate through her
I think uh to pre-order uh lunches should any of the members of the finance committee uh the select board or the other uh staff from town hall that work for the duration of
of town meeting so that we ensure that they they have uh the lunch of their choice ready well hiding behind the big board that's right the magic board can I motion any question any questions
or comments all right i'll look for a motion motion to approve the town meeting lunch options as just outlined and do you want to combine it with the allowing food and drink in the Oh and motion to allow food and drink one time only uh just this year um on town
meeting May 3rd just during the town meeting in the auditorium at the high school please don't spill anything please is there a second i'll second any discussion no all those in favor say I i opposed the motion passes thank you
all right next item on the agenda is first read policies 1303.1 advertising in schools 3601.1 proposed bus fee policy did we have any feedback from the public
uh actually we did um we got a lot of feedback on advertising policy but not as it was written my hope is that the policy subcommittee took in all of the feedback and made it as flexible and as ad
revenue generating as possible and I would in particular like to thank Amy King who had a lot of really good ideas and uh answered email questions that I had hope and helped that I shaped it as
best as I could and enacted what she thought would work best after filtering it through a bunch of other people's opinions so So that was feedback before the development of the policy now before Yeah yeah that's what I Yeah no I don't think anybody has responded to these as
written no we did we did get one feedback oh interesting see if I can find it here um yeah we should read it aloud yeah I can read it out loud
um do I have to state their name hm do I have to state their name just read it oh no i meant we should read the policy aloud but Oh I got you should I read the feedback sure it was good feedback um yeah I meant we should read the policy
aloud yeah if I'm going to read it I'll read the name um so Christopher Sullivan uh stated that he was very happy to see the school embracing an advertising revenue stream there were a couple questions the advertising policy reads as though it is strictly limited to physical advertisements would allow for
announced sponsors instead where there may not be a sign or a banner i.e tonight's game is brought to you by XYZ company or maybe a company is hosting a table for advertising at an event for a game or band concert uh not sure if that's the level of like say Lemonster
football but it seems like at their games their sponsors announce for different plays throughout the game touchdown sponsors etc could someone sponsor team uniforms how does this impact booster groups if they were to look at sponsors would they interact with the superintendent or a designate or on
sponsorships and they're looking into he's looking into advertising policy that parks has and that would impact any possible signage related to baseball or softball at Marshall Park so thank you Chris Sullivan for the feedback and I'll open it up to So I would just offer this
thought i think that we're thinking both it's a advertising policy and moving forward with a sponsorship model as well but not if if they're not looking for advertising then that
mention of this is a sponsor for this event the policy does specifically reference real or otherwise property and digital property so if somebody wanted to like sponsor the game technically I think that would be allowed thank you i do want to point out for like baseball
games we the the baseball fields are not school property they are not correct we would have no authority there so I wanted us to just be aware of that yep so those are not our fields and the members of the public can find this
policy uh draft where uh posted on the um the page where all of the policies are located as well as posted with um the documents for tonight's meeting so it's posted in two places okay but I still think you should read
it aloud uh so we can or we can also make a motion to wave the reading as well we will have uh three readings and we can No I think you should read the aloud this time i'll wave it next time but I think this one is and we also have a uh bus policy so
before we do any of the readings I think might makes well like we could talk about it after the reading as well but the bus fee policy was there any feedback on that no I did have a question um the two G
geodessic as the crow flies language i don't know if that's clear if that's the common language oh my god i have concerns with the language for the CL like an hour on what how to do this i like straight line distance probably would have been okay hold so
the statute does not say route it just says distance it doesn't specify and I think people are going to be mapping it out on Google Maps i said that didn't I say people are going to want a definition so that's why we put I know you definitely got the the definition i
just don't know if it's that's the best wording that's going to be clear for the average Joe 8th grade level whatever we tried 100 different variations of this over the course of about an hour and it was like we'll put the actual map
geography term and then we'll put what it means and is the state two mile two miles just two miles or is it two miles just says two miles just says two miles and different districts do it by road different ways
are the kids flying over the trees or through the woods this is my worry that is what it does not specify depends if they're coming via like drone delivery see my thought would be shortest road distance on Google Maps or whatever but it does I don't how families are going to know whether they're the statute does
not specify whereas how would we how would we as admin team going to measure the distance how far away you can switch on Google map on Google maps geodestic distance all right good to know
cuz we're going to have to end up doing it for this stupid fee or we could just get rid of the fee and not have to lawyer So my um it's a comment i I don't really know how else to say this
but the the policy on the advertising says the superintendent or their design is empowered to solicit advertisements for property real or otherwise of the school district uh and then it goes all the various things
my expectation was that there would be a little bit more specificity around what areas who's actually doing the work setting the rates doing the soliciting like those kinds of things
now I'm not saying that that needs to be here it doesn't but I do I I would like to set some sort of expectation in my head in terms of how's this going to happen right so So there needs to be some sort of practical explanation to
how this happens not just a school committee policy to which we say "Okay fine." and then a new superintendent is going to come in and they and the athletic director just decide like I so I think that they're and and if that's
the preference of the school committee so be it i won't be here to tell you that it's wrong but I you can you can come and visit us i probably will frankly but but I I I there's an opportunity here to raise a meaningful amount of money and offset
some of our costs but I I think we need to be organized about it I guess is what I'm saying and this doesn't set expectations in terms of when and how the organization really happens so I think it's setting the policy is the the job of the school
committee but maybe we can give it some more meat to it to say okay it's trying to increase revenue at market rates or something just one example in a meeting a month or two ago when this first came
up i honestly don't remember if it was a public meeting or a private conversation with the ad so bear with me um but he suggested that you know maybe there's a Oh no it was a it was a meeting that Laura and I had with him and and Dr gilson yeah um he suggested that maybe
there's a like a committee you know like uh he talked about maybe re reconstituting the Hall of Fame committee and tying that up together so that you have some folks who are very focused on promoting our athletic
programs have ties into the business community and can help facilitate this sort of thing right again doesn't need to be bound in policy but it's getting late it's it's it's April and we need a game plan for how we're going to do this if we're going to offset costs in the
next fiscal year perhaps there could be a new subcommittee that you could assign to people to at your reorg meeting in May advertising or um uh revenue and then
when there's a request made then you would convene and review it and think whether or not it's reasonable and don't be right i'm just saying yeah and again I'm not I'm not quarreling with any of the language here i just I think
that we kind of owe it Yeah to our administrators and and those who replace us Brian and I that there's clear guidance direction a plan for execution i think that's procedure this is policy
yeah that's why I think it's but we haven't had like procedure that we haven't set expectations as to when the procedure follows can I can I just say this i I would like to ask uh somebody about how they do this at like St bernards because they have a ton of
advertising at St bernard's and so maybe they have insights in how to but I think it's giving those job descriptions right giving those duties to someone i think that's up to the probably the superintendent i don't know if I want to assign uh another subcommittee for for
the school committee to be doing this work where it should be the boots on the ground the advertisements the whether it's the athletic director cuz it's all of the fields or the the gymnasium wherever maybe it's on the athletic director and then that additional revenue maybe
brings in a secretary to help him support him that's my thought any discussion on the policy it is just the first read we will have a second read and third read just to point out there are laws that impact this and some of them are really
sort of weird and esoteric so for example you cannot have advertisement for fantasy sports in schools even if it does not involve betting so to the extent that we could anticipate all
those things we created a list but it also just defaults to state federal law or regulation of school policy cuz it's not possible to anticipate what like I I didn't I didn't even think about like draft kings like
so you know obviously they would be really valuable i'd make a motion to wave the first reading of policies 1303.1 and 3601.1 i'll I'll second that discussion i think we should read it aloud but been
talking about it we can do that i mean I think we don't have to do it now especially because it's 10:00 it's quick any discussion all those in favor say I i opposed no
the motion passes the next item in the agenda is warrant articles i put this on an agenda as a action item if we wanted to vote to support any of the articles that are on potentially the warrant again we do not have to discuss these tonight we can meet and discuss on the
next meeting as well what is going on with I I think we I would like to have a a brief discussion about the article that we requested for the the track and field the floor is yours so um we had a uh a capital planning
meeting a couple of weeks ago uh basically to give the capital planning committee the opportunity to meet with the town manager and discuss the capital plan uh and it was a bit of a comedy of errors to even make it happen it happened immediately following a finance committee meeting a couple of weeks ago
and I briefed this plan because as we had all discussed it was kind of out of sequence for the the capital planning request process uh and one public commenter even objected that we consider it out of sequence and it was the
consensus of the committee that it made sense to discuss it um that being said what was evident from the discussion is that there's no money to fund it and you know that money that we would be funding that article the town manager has
effectively pledged in part to the $500,000 that that we were talking about earlier this evening amongst other things that she's dedicating free cap free cash to um and the alternative path here is is that we
can come back to special town meeting with a full regular borrowing package that includes this work right so it doesn't have to be approved at regular town meeting but the idea was is that we would benefit from getting the work done
in the summer move the process along and have a better estimate in terms of what the cost would be all that being said there isn't money in the budget to support it so I I indicated to the to the capital planning committee that I
would bring this back and and facilit or have this discussion under this agenda item um but I think at this time my inclination is for us to pass over the article so yeah they are they are not even putting it on the warrant from what I saw from last night's meeting oh really
okay so they're not putting on there yeah so the other ones I just went through all of them just to highlight them so something to think about for next meeting too we don't have to have the discussion tonight but there was an article for authorization to fund special projects which is the decommission portions of TC Pasios i
feel like that is in our wheelhouse we could talk about that the article for Marshall Park debt exclusion i believe that also again we use the fields we should probably have a say in that one article uh municipal building design debt exclusion again our offices are in
that conversation article to supplement the Lunberg public schools fiscal year 2026 operating budget by 500,000 article proposition 2 and a half 2 and a half override article citizens position petition uh article appropriate
free cash to stabilization fund i don't know if that was the same as the the free creek cash i think that was all I had for the articles unless I missed any that were school related so maybe it's something to think about we could talk about a vote next meeting
thank you any other discussion uh can we make a decision about Peter's one though cuz well so what I'm saying is last night I watched the meeting this morning and they did not include it on the warrant they voted if it's not on the warrant so it probably doesn't make sense for us to even vote on it okay
which is yet another way we're costing the town is we're costing ourselves more money by not spending money when we need to spend money but what what are we going to do we don't have the money so next item on the agenda is so we'll table that the warrant articles for the
next uh meeting um the next item in the agenda is reports and I will also entertain a motion on that if anybody's interested in making a motion on the reports i would make a motion to table the reports until next day second yes any
discussion all those in favor say I i opposed all right motion passes next up is public comment we'll open up to public comment from the public come on up you just state your name and address please and if you're on Zoom you could raise your virtual hand but we are going to in
person first and Jane Hall 73 Pine Grove Road Lunenburgg so thank you i haven't been to a school committee meeting for a long time wow you've you've and done incredible work tonight as you do every
meeting i'm sure I was concerned and I have to share my concern about the discussion with our superintendent search which is now in your hands it is the most important job that you will be
doing we were very successful seven years ago with the hiring of our superintendent and very sorry to see that you're leaving but now we've finished with the screening we have four strong candidates and I understand that
sometimes we have disagreements this time it was clear that there's a disagreement you've got to let it go you're part of the committee and you have to participate 150% and I'm sure you will so thank you for the work that
you're going to be doing i'll be following as much as I can very closely and hopeully hopefully um having a chance to meet the candidates in a different situation different environment i wish you all the luck all the luck i know you're going to do a
great job so thank you thank you Jane thank you for your service thank you mrs hall is a former school committee member by the way longerving school i love Mrs i just want to say I'm very grateful that she publicly shamed me like that i
I will not I will not not participate i'm sorry for the temper tantrum and I appreciate the public shaming she's so gentle about it i just want No no i deserved it i think it's important for the public to have an opportunity to give feedback uh next up we're going to
go on Zoom we have TJ Laughlin hey y'all hello tj Laughlin 207 Rolling Acres Road um pretty quick comment i actually want to thank Dr bernham for uh covering the math and the mathematical logic behind the level services budget
and the town manager budget um I think the air came back in the room when you mentioned that because everything you said is true um but I was happy to finally hear it in a public meeting so thank you for for covering that i really appreciate it
thank you any other public comment from the public all right seeing none I'll open up to public comment from the committee if I could yes I just want to bring this back full circle
um I never intended to mislead anybody relative to our communication with the recck department i took our ad at his word when he said that in a public
meeting to Mrs ashambo and that's what I intended to convey that there had been some connection with the recck department um I'll reiterate what I said earlier we have a fantastic working relationship
with the director um from the recck department um and she has done phenomenal things lots of great programming there are kids in TCP at night down the hall it they're having a
great time she does great work good things we definitely do not want to get in the way of that good things for kids is what matters having kids have plenty of options for for what to do and
spend time with peers in a productive way all good um and again my time here is short but the commitment has always been to kind of get out of each other's way so that
everybody can have an opportunity to run some programs and kids have choice and that's a good thing so um again I'll apologize if if anything I said was misleading in any way but that was my intention i was conveying that we the
school department had had some outreach um or connection conversation uh with the rec director but I did follow up myself directly um and was provided all of the dates uh for their
programming and conveyed what I did to the AD to stay out of the lane so thank you thank you Miss Prosowski um I wanted to say that uh I am sorry for the past year for
not pushing harder to get the select board to do an override i regret it i think that um I made a mistake i think we made a mistake in not pushing harder and just sort of assuming it would get
done and um I'm not going to do that again next year and I think there's at least two uh or there's at least one future member of a board in here of the select board so um I
guess get used to um us me at least and probably Tony being very irritating about it and then one member of the public um pushing for some more strategic solutions for next year that encompass
more long-term planning financial planning for the town any other public comment topics for future discussion that we haven't mentioned already all right seeing none I'll look for a motion to adjurnn at 10:11 p.m
motion to adjurnn motion to second all those in favor say I opposed meeting is journed thank you everyone have a good night