 Michael's, I am one of the co-presidents of the Amherst Education Foundation, and we are honored to be hosting this educational forum tonight with our out-large candidates. Our moderator tonight is Rebecca Woodland, who is an associate professor of education at UMass in the School of Education. She has a bunch of wonderful questions to ask our candidates. I just briefly want to let you know what Amherst Education Foundation does, but I mostly want to turn it over to Rebecca to run the night. AES is a 25-year-old nonprofit. We are a volunteer run. Our goal is to raise money in the community and then to give it back to the public schools in the forms of grants. So what we do is we raise money and then we give it away. And I would invite everybody to go to our website AmherstEducationFoundation.org. If you're already on our mail-in list, you can sign up to be on it. It's a great way to find out about all the interesting things AES is doing, like this kind of forum, as well as other events that we have. It's also a great way to give money, which will then get given to the public schools. And so I would invite you to do that. It's also, we will post up there the date on which the recording of this event will be put onto the Amherst Media website so that if you want to notify other people about how informational it was, you'll have the information there. All right, thank you so much. I'm going to turn it over to Rebecca. Microphone, so it doesn't squeak. I'm really not sure what makes it squeak or doesn't make it squeak. We don't know. Anyway, want to welcome everybody and especially want to thank Becky, Michael, and Jennifer Page, the co-presidents of AEF for running Center for Wonderful Local Education Foundation and all the members of the Board of Directors. Are there a Board of Directors here? Are there other Board of Directors here? I just want to give a shout-out to them. Thank you. So as Becky said, I am a professor in the College of Education, UMass Amherst, and my field is educational leadership. We talk about UMass, what is leadership and what does it mean, and really in a nutshell, leadership boiled down is having a vision for where you want to go, what the ideal is and where you want to be, what it would look like, if all things were going the way you wanted them to go, but also taking stock of where we are in relation to that vision. You're really figuring out where we are and then enacting the policies and processes and systems and doing the things collaboratively that need to be done to close the gap between where we are and where we want to go. So I really want to thank this group of six people because these six people have ideas about where we should go with education and how things should happen and be financed and taken care of and have an idea about where we are now and have ideas for how to close the gap. So I just really want to thank these six people for putting themselves out there and running for Town Council at look. So the way it's going to work is this. It's going to be a lot of me hitting a timer and hoping that I'm hitting the right buttons as I'm doing it, but essentially they're each going to give up to one minute of an introduction of themselves and something about the Valley of Education in Amherst and then we'll move into questions and the way the questions will work is I'll pose the question and then each person will have up to one minute, excuse me, up to two minutes to respond to the question. Once all six have given their initial response to the question, we loop back around again and there's another up to a minute for each person for a rejoinder or something that they didn't get to say because they got cut off or something that they thought of after the fact. None of them have to use the full two minutes or the full one minute, but essentially if they did, it would be 18 minutes a question. So we're prepared for four questions, but if they use not all that time, then we have five questions and six questions and we're ready to go. Are there teachers in the room? Are there any teachers in the room? You know, you've got the questions prepared just in case it goes. Okay, and then after the question and answer session, they will each have up to one minute to give a closing remark and then Becky will give a closing remark and then we'll move into the meeting. Okay. And for everyone that's starting with Alyssa, please briefly introduce yourselves and your position on the value of education in Amherst, Alyssa. Good evening. My name is Alyssa Brewer and I'm one of your five select board members and have been since 2007. I want you to vote for me because our community needs experienced, passionate, proven leadership at this historic moment in local governance and I've served in town-wide elected office for 16 years and can bridge the transition to a constituent-based legislature that incorporates far more than 13 people's views. Prior to the select board, I also served five years on the Amherst and Amherst Pellum Regional School Committees. Education is the industry of Amherst. Being part of an excellent institution of higher learning draws thousands of new people to Amherst each year and many of these people have or will have children to educate in our public schools. I want all of our public schools to continue to serve as a draw for potential faculty and staff at the colleges and UMass while we continue to connect with every student every day. Great, thank you. Bob? Hi, I'm Robert Greeny or Bob. I live on McClellan Street. Two out of our four children went to Wildwood School and the other four went to the middle school and the high school. I teach at Holyoke Community College, a shining example of inclusion and diversity. I love this town. It is important that we govern together. It is important that governing be characterized by broad and diverse inclusion and participation. It is important that we listen to each other and work together. Thank you. Mandy Jo. Hi, I'm Mandy Jo Hanneke and I've lived here with my family for seven years. I was vice chair of the charter commission, sat for seven years on town meeting, serving on the committee that proposed and implemented electronic voting and until last month served as the renter representative to the rental bylaw implementation group. I'm a court appointed special advocate at Friends of Children and I was president of the Pioneer Valley Symphony for three years serving on the board for six. Education in Amherst is extremely important. We host the flagship campus of our state university and two other colleges and we have one of the best public school systems in the state. Our public schools strive to educate each student at their appropriate level and where they are and meet them where they are. It's one of the hallmarks of a community invested in its children. Yet we're facing challenges and our school committee is tackling them head on. If elected I'll support their efforts to bring dual language education to the elementary schools, opposed charter school expansions until the funding formula is fixed and improve the school building infrastructure. I look forward to expanding on these positions tonight. Thank you. Thank you. Rob. Hey, good evening. I'm Rob Kussner. I am an educator like my colleague, Mr. Greene. I've been an educator for more than half a century. How's that possible? I started at a very young age. Professionally I've been one for more than 40 years starting in actually in high school. And when I moved here I had just spent the longest stint in a public institution. Unfortunately that was called graduate school out in California. When I moved here there were two reasons. One was obviously I was looking forward to working as a faculty member at the university which I've done for the past three decades. And also I had a three year old son at the time who was interested in going to excellent public schools which he did. Graduated many, many years ago he's now a faculty member at another university in the country. I care deeply about education. I think I voted for every override that supported it. You'll find out tonight that there's one vote that was very tough and we'll talk about it later in the meeting so I hope to engage you all. Thank you. Thank you, Jim. Hi, my name is Jim Pistrang. Thank you to the AEF for this opportunity. Strong schools are what attracted my family to Amherst 30 years ago. Both my children are successful products of the Amherst public schools. While not lessening the importance of public safety and other town services, I believe that education through our public schools is the single most important service offered by our town. Strong public schools make Amherst a better place, providing critical services to our children regardless of their socioeconomic background or their learning abilities. Thank you. My name is Andy Steinberg. I'm a member of the Select Board, former member and former chair of the Finance Committee. Finance Committee, I was the person who was responsible to be lay us onto the schools and to present the school budget to town meeting. And the Select Board, I was the presenter of the building project that was presented in 2016 and 17 and worked closely on that project from the Select Board side of the schools. I have been the chair of the regional to school district planning board that looked at regionalization. And I was a member and worked hard for all these years on the regional school assessment method working group. Education runs in my family. My mother was a school board member and school board president. I have a son who, as with my daughter, went through Ford River all the way through 12th grade. I look forward to talking my experience kind of the community. Thank you, Andy. Okay, great. One minute goes by quick, doesn't it? It's a fast, it's a fast times. But now we move to two, so it's gonna seem like twice as much, twice as much time because it is. Okay, so with the first question, the school committee is an independent body of publicly elected officials charged with hiring the superintendent, setting school and superintendent goals, and overseeing all aspects of school budget, planning, and policy. In addition, we have a town manager and finance director who prepared town budgets and financing proposals. Given this context, what responsibilities does the town council uniquely have with respect to governing our public schools and how will the town council ensure that the dynamic between the town council and the school committee will be a healthy and productive one? And Bob, we start with you. You have up to two minutes. I mentioned in my opening statement about participation and inclusion. And I think both in our town government and the school committee workings, this is an issue where we haven't done as well as we might. And it often leads to controversy and conflict among members in the town. So part of the reason I'm running is to try and contribute to improving on that situation. To try and encourage more inclusion in participation. And I think the failure has been in the early stages of planning. Whether it's zoning issues or planning for a new school or deciding what to do about Wildwood and Fort River, we create unnecessarily, and I'm not saying that it's kind of idealistic to imagine that we operate perfectly all the time. But we need to try a little harder at the very early stages of planning to make sure that all voices feel heard. And if that's the case, it becomes much easier for people to accept a plan or an outcome that they're not necessarily in agreement with. Thank you. So the question was, I think, something about the differing responsibilities. And yeah, we have a school committee that are charged with governing the schools. The town council per the charter doesn't have any responsibility governing the schools and they shouldn't. The town is electing five town-wide members to set that policy and supervise the school, the superintendent. What the town council's responsibilities are related to the school are making sure the budget's there, passing the budget, because the elementary school's budget is part of the town's operating budget. And then it's also responsible for figuring out and approving funding formulas, the allocation formula for the regional district after negotiations and being part of that negotiation and working with the school committee and the other various interests in capital issues in order, a way to ensure those relationships are productive and healthy is to work collaboratively and look at the situation as something where the two committees can come together and work together to find common goals and achieve those common goals, be it finding a way to fund properly and appropriately the capital needs going forward for the elementary schools and making the hard decisions that might need to be made in order to do that at a level necessary to ensure our children are being educated in buildings that don't detract from their education. I think it also requires respecting the varying responsibilities and not stepping on each other's toes in terms of who's responsible for what management. Thank you, Rob. So it seems that one of the tasks that the council's going to have, which is one that actually the select board has had in the past as well, is balancing the priorities among the very large portion of the town's budget devoted to schools, both the regional schools and the elementary schools and all the other parts of paying for governing the community. I don't think that's changing. One of the new things that's involved now is their major capital projects regarding the schools. And traditionally that's again been something that's been thought through carefully by not only the school committee, but the other bodies. Again, traditionally the finance committee and the select board and in some cases the library through the John Capital Planning Committee. And I think something like that is gonna have to continue. Again, it's a balancing act that the council will be in some sense in the driver's seat in enabling that process. Before Mr. Steinberg and Ms. Brewer served on the select board, I also was a select board member. And when we joined that board back in 2005, it was towards the end of the budget process. And it wasn't so much a surprise because for years I'd served in town meeting, but a lot of the operating budget is incremental. Decisions that get made in the operating budget are really at the margins. And one thing I think we can be doing really echoing what the previous two colleagues here said is that we need to be listening to people sometimes to get out of the rut of that budgeting process. Sometimes there's some good ideas that will come in even in the operating budget that we need to step back and listen to. Professionally, I'm an expert on optimization problems. We can always get the perfect, but what I do for a living is finding the best solutions to problems. I think that's something that the council have to be working on hard. Thank you. School committee's job is to set the policy on education related issues. And the school committee will also be the body that determines how their portion of the budget is spent across the school system. Function of the council, the primary function, I would say is to appropriate the funds needed by the school and other portions of the budget. The council, I hope, is going to have another important function. I would hope that when the council first gets proposals from the school committee, for instance, for the next building project, which I hope to hear from the building committee soon, I feel it's the council's job to ask questions, reach out to the public, get opinions from people, make sure we reach out to the entire community and not just small sections of the community, but then ultimately it's the council's job to get the facts and make fact-based decisions to appropriate funds the way they should be appropriated based on the request of the school committee. You have another minute left if you want to keep going. Okay, period. Thanks. The school committee is the elected body that oversees educational policy and it is not the role as some of my colleagues here at the table have pointed out for the council to second guess the decisions made by the school committee. We ask questions, we make sure that it's clear, we make sure that there's good process, but our role is going to facilitate communication with the public, listen to the public and make sure that the public's deepest wishes and highest priorities are fully considered. I think that one of the weaknesses of what happened in the last round of the school building process was that there was an override passed that was very specific, including the exact provisions for the building project that was proposed and that the process that went forward was a feeling that there could be a review and reassessment and a redecision of decisions made by the elected school committee and most important by the community at large in passing that override. I'm going to be looking very much to make sure that we listen, that we make wise budget decisions on the overall budget, but that we respect the educational decisions made by the body elected and accountable to the public to make those decisions. Thank you. Thank you. I was serving on the school committee when a previous select board attempted to insert itself in school programming and service delivery and I had really strong feelings about that because I felt it was the school committee's role. Sharing information is really important and the new charter retains the budget coordinating group which is a newer body than the joint capital planning group and both of those are so important to affect a prioritization of our residents' needs across the different budget areas. That's a great place for school committee and council to talk just as it is now and as soon as that budget coordinating group was created I was then asking that the schools which are generally around 60% of our budget that the schools get an even larger sliver of the pie than the standard guideline by just giving equal percentage increases while also encouraging working with others on bridge funding for one-time expenses, not punishing the schools for things like applying for Medicaid reimbursement and not giving the municipal side a larger percent of operating budget increases due to the municipal side's ability to increase fees when the schools don't really have that option. All that said, it's incredibly important to leave school budget decisions, school policy and programming decisions in the hands of the elected school committee working with the superintendent. It's not going to be appropriate for the town manager, even one who himself has served with distinction on a school committee in another community. It's not appropriate for the town manager to second guess the school's budget. And any town council member serving as a non-voting liaison to the school committee should not be influencing the decisions of the school committee but rather serving as an informational resource to both the school committee and the town council. Thank you. And now there's up to a minute for everybody to have another word to say about this. So Bob. The only thing I would like to add is we do have these four capital planning projects and the schools is one of them. And as far as I'm concerned, that's the highest priority of the four. I just want to add a little bit about the need to seek public participation and public opinion from the beginning of any process to the end. And I do think it might be a town council's duty to if it sees other committees in town maybe shirking on their responsibility to urge those committees, whether it be other elected bodies or not to urge them to make sure that they are seeking that opinion. I do believe that the school committee right now is doing that and is working hard to seek opinion on all of the difficult decisions they're going to be making. I don't believe it's the town council's position to or job to second guess the decisions they make after that but everyone should be seeking the public's opinions on the decisions being made. Yeah, just reiterating what I said initially I think the council's largest role is balancing the different functions in town. But with that said, I'm going to keep the gloves on for a minute. I wasn't quite sure what my colleague meant by an earlier select board intervening but I can think of a couple of things where the select board did have some role and one of them was in the mid 2000s. Both the school committee and the select board were approached by a very earnest couple and a large constituency who wanted to create a dual language program in the public schools. We had an opportunity back then to do that and unfortunately that was forfeited and that's become depending on how you look at it a very successful charter school in Hadley. It's something that we might have benefited from rethinking. The only other things I could think of from that time were some decisions by the superintendent to try to purchase farmland for a new public school in North Amherst. I need you to wrap it up. Thank you. I just did. Thank you. I want to get back to the concept of one of the important roles of the town council will be to make sure the community is heard. I was, I loved town meeting but I also recognize one of the big flaws with town meeting was typically the bulk of the public opinion came at the end of the process after all the studying had been done, the plans had been created and then kind of at the last minute when it was time to appropriate the funds that's when the public got to weigh in. That's what needs to change. We need public opinion to be front loaded in the process. So when the council first receives and has its first hearing on a project that's when they have to reach out to the community to all the community, get opinions, get feedback. So it happens early in the process so maybe things can be changed slightly if need be and then after the feedback is heard that's the time for the council to gather the facts and needs and come to a final decision. Thank you. Several things I could respond to but I'm gonna have to limit it to one because of the amount of time available. I want to just point out that 61% of our operating budget goes to the schools, 36% of the elementary schools, 25% of the regional schools and that is compared to when you look at it the 36% of the elementary schools is almost the same amount as goes to the entire body of the municipal functions within town government. So as we look towards the possibility that I think ought to be considered of whether the increase for schools should be greater than increase to other functions in government, that doing that will have a substantial and direct effect on things like public safety and public works which are also important to the community and also important to the schools to provide safety and access and quality grounds for the schools. Thank you. While not second guessing the council it is really important the committee. It is really important that the town council have good relationships with the school committee. Fortunately, I have been able to maintain those over the years of different people have come and gone and it's really important to be able to work in partnership as well. So when the school committee is looking at fighting against charter school expansion the select board also came up with a letter about why that was impacting the community. As Mr. Steinberg pointed out we worked with the school committee on regionalization and we can for really effective partnerships that way. Great, thank you very much. So now we've come to question number two and we're already starting to have different questions that are coming. Your responses are sort of touching on them a little bit. Now you're going to be able to go in a lot more detail on them. So the second question is Fort River and Wildwood Elementary schools require significant capital investments for replacement repair and maintenance. The proposal to replace Fort River and Wildwood Elementary schools with co-located schools subsidized by the state was rejected by town meeting. Please describe your plan or what you would hope the town council's plan would be to address these pressing school infrastructure issues so that we can provide the very best environment for our educators and students. And Mandy Jo, we start with you. Thank you. I think the town council needs to work with the school committee but also the other bodies where capital funding comes from and goes to public works, libraries and other portions of the town to figure out a way to appropriately fund and make the repairs that are necessary. Unfortunately, the failure of town meeting to authorize the borrowing of the money means that we will have to expend a large portion of money in the next upcoming five or 10 years to keep those buildings sufficiently operable before they can be replaced. That is going to require a lot of hard decisions to be made. Those decisions might fall on the school committee to make in terms of finding a way to potentially close a building before a new school is built so that the repairs don't have to be made. But the sum of the decisions will probably have to be made at the town council and the budgeting process on those issues, potentially dedicating a larger portion of the capital budget of the budget as a whole to capital projects. We're already at 9% of the property tax levies. Maybe we have to go higher in order to appropriately fund the improvements that need made or the repairs that need made to keep the buildings functional. Do you need to cut programs in order to add money to the capital budget? Those are tough decisions to make because people love all the programs that we're doing and having to make those decisions that they might need made. Another potential is deciding to spend more of the current capital budget for schools over other things. That might require a trade-off of less road repairs or not renovating a North Amherst Library or other libraries or going longer between replacing town vehicles. All those decisions are gonna need to be made because we have buildings in the schools that our children are in that really need repairs so that they can be in a better learning environment. Thank you. We are getting to the tough questions. I know a lot of people feel still a great deal of pain about the decision not to fund the co-located school just up the hill there. Unfortunately, I was one of them who thought that while it was an interesting and good idea, there were better ideas that I'd like to discuss now. I watched this weekend, I couldn't attend it directly, the Fort River Billet Committee's meeting. It was a long meeting. It was very interesting to see the plans that were being presented there. One of them included the possibility of the co-located school at that site. That is one of the reasons why I had a tough decision a year and a half ago to not support the Wildwood site. I think the Fort River site would be a better place if we had to have a single larger school because of its central location. One of the unfortunate things about this decision is we've got buildings that are not that old. Both those buildings are between 40 and 50 years old. They're fairly young public buildings. The planet Fort River now seems to be to do some combination of renovation and new construction. And it's very promising looking. And I think we should be focusing on the future rather than on the past in that regard. The cost may be higher, but it's one that I think we'll be happier with if we get a plan that's basically more suitable for the educational function of our schools. As you know, one of the complications was the combination of new construction and a complete reconfiguration of the educational system. That conflation of two different things I think made this a very difficult decision. I really support funding the programs, our teachers particularly, and hope that the buildings themselves will never be an obstacle for that function, that important function of education. Thank you. There's no doubt in my mind that both Fort River and Wildwood need to either be rebuilt or replaced. I am looking forward to hearing from the school building committee to see what their plan will be. And as a council member, I feel the council's role is to work with them in any way we can to help them move forward with a plan. Once that plan is presented to the council, again, the critical thing is to get feedback from the community, get questions answered. It's really critical, I feel, that people in town look forward and not back. I know there's a lot of anger, a lot of frustration with the failed project. I was frustrated with the failed project. But looking forward is critical. One of the values of getting feedback from the community and making sure that the community is heard and respected is that when we ultimately vote on and decide on a plan, even though not everybody is gonna be in favor of it, people will feel that they've been respected and they've been heard and they can move forward. So that's my hope for the future of the town. I mentioned at the beginning that my children went to Fort River. They went to Fort River when it was a fairly new building. And it was not a great building then because it was built on an educational model that was already not in use by the time it was built, this open classroom concept. And the buildings have only deteriorated since then substantially deteriorated in physical condition and in their ability to use because the demands on buildings are very different now with much more in the way of special education needs and need for specialized spaces. There was also health issues at Fort River because it's on a very wet piece of land which makes it questionable as to whether it should be used going forward as a building site unless that can be addressed. It was carpeted at the beginning that they had to rip out all the carpeting in order to make it healthier. As a consequence, the noise level in the school which is one of the problems with that type of classroom has only deteriorated. As far as the process was concerned before, there were a lot of public meetings. There were, they were not well attended. They were well advertised but not a lot of people showed up. A lot of people then chose after hearing the outcome to oppose it as opposed to having participated at the beginning. So it's incumbent on the entire community, hopefully the school committee will take the lead but with the support of the council to make sure that that process gets the attention and participation that we would have benefited from much earlier in the process going forward. Unfortunately, we lost 34 million plus dollars in the costs that are only going up for construction because time goes on. The council needs to present a fully developed financial plan that addresses the capital needs of our children's schools and our public safety officials and our library patrons and the thousands of users of our roads and sidewalks. That said, replacing the Fort River and Wildwood buildings does need to be our first priority. While the Fort River study is still underway, it's highly unlikely that even extensive and very expensive repairs will provide the 21st century learning environments our children need. We have to admit that the days of two neighborhood schools which used to serve over 600 students each is long gone and figure out how to serve today's children. I'm not even talking about providing the 21st century technology things like smart whiteboards, projectors, Chromebooks, which are all lovely. We have those now, but we have to get rid of the noise, the distraction, the roof leaks, the HVAC systems, where the office is located, something that was never envisioned back in the 1970s but is now critically important to school climate safety. You know, I spend a little over an hour, one hour in Fort River every year in Tim Austin's wonderful civic literacy unit. And while it's incredible to talk with those students about their projects to improve our community, I'm also always depressed and frustrated by the conditions I find incredibly distracting as an adult over 50, because even though I happily experienced modified quads when I was in grade six to eight myself, I would not have thrived in Wildwood and Fort River conditions when I was younger. This needs to be fixed. The last plan was good enough. We now need to come up with a new possibility that is not simply fiddling around the edges. Well, it seems like we all support renovated or new schools. And I've already stated that this would be, as a council member, what I would consider the highest priority. I'm really encouraged that the new building committee represents the kind of diversity that we need to have on planning committees. And I'm also encouraged with the prospect of getting MSBA funding. But I think part of the problem, and I rarely hear anyone talk about this, but if the school isn't bad for so many years, why didn't we just fix it? Why did we wait 10 years to get the MSBA funding? And isn't it possible that the 30-some-odd million dollars we're gonna have to spend to fix those two schools that 12 years ago, we might have replaced one of those schools for half of that amount without the MSBA funding? So I think we need to keep on our radar screen that if we don't get the MSBA funding, this is urgent enough that maybe we need to fund it without MSBA funding. That's how important I consider this issue to be. Let me be clear. One minute. Yeah, one minute. I am for replacing those schools, not renovating them after looking and watching the school committee meeting last week where teachers reported mice falling from the ceilings during classes, leaky roofs, destruction of books and libraries. Those buildings, the most likely financially responsible thing to do is going to be build them from the ground up, not try and renovate them and keep the shell. It is the town council's obligation to vote on a financially responsible plan if one comes. But in the meantime, until that plan can be had, and hopefully it will include MSBA funding to share the cost of those buildings with all taxpayers in the state, we're gonna have to spend a lot of money keeping them just basically barely functioning, and that's gonna require hard decisions, which is what I talked about in my first response. But we also need to find a way to get those buildings replaced. I also watched the entire school committee meeting. It was long, four hours. And I'm very sympathetic, although I keep cats in my house to avoid that from happening. Apparently the Wildwood School was closed for a large part of the summer, and that had contributed some to the problems that may not have been so much structural problems, but maintenance problem or cleaning problems in the building. But I am sympathetic to that too. When I came to town 30 years ago, those schools were considered outmoded. And so Mr. Greeny's comment about having done it 10 years ago, I think the same would have happened 30 years ago. The Four River School Building Committee was presented with not just a menu of three options, but some sense of continuum between some renovation and some deconstruction of the current building to a completely new building. And I think they are keeping an open mind, and I think that's the good process. And I hope more of us will get involved. I plan to go to one of their meetings soon. And I think that's what we should be looking at. I'm not predisposed one way or the other to a new building or to renovation. But I think we should find what's the best option. A comment by previous speakers struck me when it was said that there were lots of public meetings while the last plan was being developed, but nobody came to them. Or very few people came to them, and people sort of came at the end and got involved at the end. This is one of the challenges that the council is gonna have to face. And I think it is the primary responsibility of the council to figure out ways to reach out to segments of our community that aren't normally heard from. There's people who have two parents, both working or a single parent working, people whose English isn't their primary language. The council has to find ways to reach out to people in the community who aren't normally sought after or heard from. It might mean not having meetings in town hall, but going out to communities and apartment complexes and churches to have these meetings. If we can get this feedback and this public opinion of people feel that they've been heard at the beginning of the process, then when we get the next plan from the school building committee, it can be something we can get the facts on and vote on and be successful with. Starting from where Mr. Pustring was talking about, one of the strengths of the charter is the requirement that there be district meetings in a minimum twice a year in each of the districts. And those provide opportunities to think in a new way about how we reach out to the community. In the end, we have to rely on the school committee largely because whatever goes into MSBA has to have an educational plan. The educational plan has to be a responsible one. And the educational plan should address as to the last one, questions of equity and it needs to make sure that it is protecting the health of our students. And for all of those reasons, we have to rely on that because this community and I will explain it if I have another opportunity, cannot afford to build a building without MSBA help. I'll echo that. We've looked at the finances for this several times, several ways over the years. We cannot build a new building without MSBA help, fact. So we need to figure this out and simple repairs will not do it. I also wanna make sure we're clear that as we continue this outreach, which we always need to get better at. And there was a lot of but not sufficient in some respects. Let's remember that some of the outreach that didn't happen or some of the people who felt not outreach to were elected town meeting members. I think we'll find that to be a different situation when we have the council who obviously is very engaged in this, many have been paying attention to the Fort River School Building process. In a way, the town meeting members, not all, some portion of town meetings members did not feel included earlier. Town council members I don't think are gonna be able to avoid this situation. As I said earlier, I'm very encouraged with the process that's currently going on. And my only, my one comment that I made to one of the building committee members was, can you move faster? And I'm sorry, I'm gonna take issue. I think if we went back 12 years, 15 years and priced the school that we could have built a school for $15 million, half of the cost of what we were gonna spend recently. So I don't think it's impossible to do without MSBA funding. And I think we held ourselves hostage for 10 years to MSBA funding. That's all in the past. I shouldn't be harping on it, but I'm not gonna be told that it can't be done. Thank you all very much. So for our third question, you take a deep breath. My neighbors, we're all there, okay. On our third question, which follows from the last one a little bit, it relates, but there are other infrastructure issues in our town, but in addition to our two elementary schools, Amherst has a number of other immediate building and infrastructure needs, including but not limited to a South Amherst fire station, a new TPW garage, a Jones library update, a backlog of road and sidewalk repairs and athletic facility repairs. How will town council prioritize these projects? And how would you approach the challenge of budgeting and paying for them? And this time, let me start with Rob. Some of you may have noticed that I came in on crutches. This happened on a road, but it was a University of Massachusetts road, not a town road. It was potholes that did my leg in all seriousness though. I prioritized the schools first. We've talked about that. When I was walking ably in South Amherst during August, almost everyone I spoke with, and this was dozens of people, said we're more than five miles away from a fire station. Our fire insurance rates are extremely high compared to everyone else's. Why haven't we built a South Amherst fire station? Someone in a third station, actually most one of the third station, they thought we should keep something in the center of town. I think that is the next priority. Large vehicles, a piece of equipment, are used both by the fire department and by the department of public works, often with different functions, obviously. Snow plowing is different from putting out fires. But often they use the same types of truck washing facilities and garage facilities. So I think it makes sense to co-locate them. Where to do that exactly? I don't know yet, but I think someone in the audience I saw come in probably has some good ideas about that, and I'd love to talk with her more about it. I have a few ideas too. We need to be able to serve South Amherst mainly. The library, I grew up in a big city, Philadelphia, and I spent most of my time in the Philadelphia Public Library. I love the Jones Library, like it the way it is, although it's not as accessible as it should be. I think we should be preserving that library as best we can, even though it needs obviously major repairs in the two branch libraries, our jewels in our library system, we should be doing our best to improve them. Thank you. Every one of those large projects that you mentioned is important and is something that absolutely needs to be done. If I had to personally rank them, I would actually put the South Amherst Fire Station on equal footing with the two elementary schools. There's been study after study over the last 40 years, at least I believe, talking about how dangerous a situation we have with people in South Amherst not being close to a fire station. As to how to manage and pay for all of these, obviously the council's going to need to work out, again, hearing from the public as well, what the priorities are, which things need to happen when. Our last finance director, Sandy Pooler, worked long and hard with the help of others on the finance committee and the select board, coming up with different scenarios in which we could pay for and have happened multiple projects at the same time. It is possible. These don't have to be done serially one after the other. It'll take some creative financing and some hard work and it'll take the will of the town council to make it happen. Again, we need to have public feedback so we can hear from the community what their priorities are as well. Once we hear them, we also need to get the facts. How important is the fire station? How important is a new DPW person? I think it's pretty important. I've spent a lot of time there and the building is falling apart. But we need to hear from the public. We need to make fact-based decisions and we need to come up with a plan and then implement it. So there's been some good discussion and Mr. Kastrang just brought up reference to Mr. Pooler and the work that he did on planning to, in order to reach the conclusion that we can afford all four projects, whether we still afford all four projects is now a different question as in light of what happened. But there were four parts to the analysis. One was that we'd rely on grants, that's why the MSBA, Mass School Building Authority and the library commissioners funding for schools and libraries was essential. The second is we built up a lot of reserves in order to be able to use some of those reserves for building needs because those large capital needs can't be met in part that way. Some of it is retirement of old bonds which any responsible manager looks to do as you retire old bonds, he can take out new ones. And the last but unnecessary piece was the override which was what started the school discussion. It was a way of testing the public's attitude towards the schools both in general and the specific proposal. So we need to go back into an analysis again to see how we can still afford as much of the projects as possible. And I think that they are all doable and all need to be done. And the last thing that just, we have been working very hard on finding suitable land that is a challenge in Amherst. We don't have land that is available, a lot is in conservation, a lot is set aside for very special purposes or is privately or institutionally owned. So it has been a greater struggle to find lands by looking for it very hard, but we are doing that. While I don't wanna necessarily repeat things that other people said, I do wanna reference again, Mr. Pooler's work in laying all of that out, which we obviously didn't communicate effectively enough to the entire community because we heard those questions later as we were talking about the school project to explain that yes, we could do it if we had the grants and we worked all this out. Well, we don't have the grants anymore. So that plan doesn't work anymore. So we will have to work on something else. The voters did agree to raise their taxes. We tested their attitude and they agreed. I would be really thrilled if we had an override here someday that had an 80% voter acceptance rate. I just don't think that's going to happen. And we did have a voter acceptance rate of an override then. I'm not sure how that will look the next time we do it. When we've done it for general operating, the last time we did that was in 2004 and 2010. In 2007, it failed. And one, another thing we continuously hear along with why don't I have a South fire station is why are my taxes so high? Which brings us to the final point, which is we need revenue to pay for this. We have to accept some form of development that we can agree on so we have additional revenue beyond going back to the taxpayers because the taxpayers are not going to be able to accommodate all these projects without overrides that create less diversity in town and force more people out of town. I'm a big fan of roads and sidewalks. That being said, I'm quite comfortable letting the town decide what the priority is for those four projects. I do have my own opinion, and it's pretty clear that I consider, by far, schools number one. Personally, we probably put the DPW and roads and sidewalks. Second, but I hear people's concern about the fire station. I don't think this is a matter of facts. This is a matter of our comfort level with risk and insurance policies and so on. That's really a kind of a personal decision. And if the town feels the fire station is that level of urgency, I'm fine with it. But I do think the DPW is in terrible condition, and I do think that if we could begin to catch up on the road and sidewalks, then we could get ourselves to a place where we were spending the same thing, but we wouldn't be always chasing our tail in terms of fixing roads and sidewalks, and that might take an infusion of capital up front. So I'd like to see us look at that. Each of those four major capital projects, depending on how you count the two elementary schools, five maybe, are vitally important to this town. We haven't done a major capital project in a few decades. I think the last one was the Northammer's fire station. Our fire department has to specially order fire trucks to fit in the downtown fire station. We should not be doing that. We should have a fire station where the modern trucks fit in it. We've already talked about the state of the school buildings. The library should be updated for how libraries are used in this day and age. They're used much differently than they were before. And as Mr. Greeny said, the DPW building is in a sad state of affairs right now. So I think it's extremely hard to prioritize them. I'm not sure we need to prioritize them. I think we can do them all if we get grants, if we use those grants wisely, and if we can somehow create more revenue, as Ms. Brewer said, because that's one way to do it, use the reserves, as Mr. Steinberg said, and also not be afraid to ask the public for an override. You know, the Southammer's fire station has been said in the works for 40 years, I think, is what it is on how long it's been in study saying we need it. So many of these projects have been waiting decades or more, and they shouldn't have to wait longer because we're afraid of asking for an override. So I think there is a way to probably do it. It's going to take a lot of finessing, but we should figure out a way to do it, but also pursue as many grants as possible and don't turn down grant money to get these done. One minute. Thanks. I want to turn to the funding issue, which I didn't discuss in my first two minutes. There are different types of grants. Some are tax-based grants like the MSBA grants. So we do pay for those, although it's distributed throughout the Commonwealth, and I think we should continue to apply for those. They're private grants, and we have to remember that as far as the Southammer's fire station, that would serve two large institutions, one an extremely wealthy one, Amherst College. I think we should be thinking about asking again for support from our private institutions to fund that type of thing, which affects them. The college does not have its own fire station. These are long-term projects. One of the basic principles of municipal finance is to have bonding that is approximately the same length as the lifetime of the asset that's being paid for. It's fair, and it's wise, and I think we should be looking at that too. I believe it at that, since I'm asked to stop. I don't have too much to add. I think a lot of people have said a lot of good things here. I do feel that there will be some prioritization that has to be done. Not all of the projects are equal, and that's something that's going to be the work of the council, including hearing from the community. I also feel that a community that is reached out to and feels they've participated in the process is going to be one that's more willing to vote in favor of an override if it's determined by fact-based study that an override is necessary. I have heard good arguments on behalf of every one of the projects, and if we go forward with this discussion in the way that we all think that this table are agreeing that we should, we will hear more from advocates of each of the programs as far as what is missing now and what is needed in the future to provide the quality service that this community needs in order for the community to provide its opinion through the council and other indirectly in whatever way that they deem appropriate to help us make those priority choices, which is why I'm a little bit hesitant to say my priority choices now because I really want my priority choices to come from the community and not give them to the community from my opinion solely. The other thing that we have, well, I'll say the other, it'll come up later, I'm sure. Thank you. It is always a balance to be struck in terms of hearing from the community, hearing from the community over and over again and deciding to work hard to convince the community of what you believe is also important to our community and brings their values to fruition. The schools remain my top priority while we figure out how to figure out everything else. No further comment. I'm just reiterate that it's not just the council that needs to make those determinations. They do have to hear from the public. It's one of my priorities if I am a counselor is to hear from the public on all of these issues and reach out to them and all because it's their tax money. But I think it's also going to be a council duty to educate the public about how the projects are going to be funded if one project happens to come up first. Don't leave the public in the dark about where the plan is for the other three or four projects. Educate the public about what that current plan is as of the current project, whatever project might come up first, where that one stands, where the plan is for the other one so that the public can be fully informed when making a decision on say if the first project to come up, the council decides to ask for an override that they know is there another override coming for all the projects or is that the only one coming? That's going to be a duty of the council too. Great. So that's a wonderful segue into the next question because so many of you have talked about getting the input from the public and educating the public and hearing from constituents. So this question, the fourth question is, moving to a new town council format will present its own challenges and opportunities for communication with citizens of Amherst. What will town council do? Specifically, what will it do to ensure ongoing communication and dialogue with the citizens of Amherst? More specifically, how will you stay abreast of citizen perspectives related to our system of schooling? In short, how will you reach us and how will you educate us and how will we educate you? And we start with Jim. Thank you. You're right. This is one of the biggest challenges facing the new town council and I can't say that I know exactly how it's going to work or what's going to happen. But I have some visions and some hopes. I know the charter mandates twice a year district meetings. I would love to see once a month district meetings where the district councillors go out there and reach out to the community. I don't think we can have district meetings at town hall. I don't think councillors can sit at the black sheep and declare they're having office hours. We have to go out and find the people in the community and hear what they have to say. We do have this new position mandated by the charter of an outreach officer. It's not clear to me anyway yet exactly how it's funded or what type of position it is full-time part-time. But I think it's critically important. I'd love to see somebody who's a member of one of the less heard from minority communities be in that position if possible. But we need to reach out to everybody. I'm encouraged by a new neighborhood association that sprung up in district one. I'd love to see neighborhood associations like that in all five districts. But we have to be careful with that. You have to be very careful that associations like that are nonpartisan that they're not sort of sponsored or run by groups that have a specific agenda. And there I think the district councillors can be of effect and the at-large councillors as well to make sure that this outreach to the community is done in a respectful way and done in a way where people aren't afraid to come to the meeting because they're concerned they feel differently from somebody else and might not be treated as well. So this outreach has to really go out to the community and find people wherever they are, respect people and listen to people. I can't help but start with recognition of the election process that we're involved with right now. When I ran as a precinct member for a town meeting I just put my name on the ballot and got elected. But when I started running for Select Board and now even more so running for council I've had to go out and talk to a lot of voters and I have found through the Select Board elections and through this election that that opportunity is extraordinary. So just having had this experience of elections and future experiences of elections I think is important. Other things besides the meetings which Chris Chang talked about Amherst Media plays a very important function as they are by broadcasting in the future on a take the late basis tonight's meeting attendance at other meetings and forums making sure that all of us are accessible by phone, email, social media or whatever technology evolves in the future for me to predict what that would be and I think that and very vigorous use of the plans built into the charter for the district meetings provides incredible opportunities for us to hear from the public. We do have to work together with an adequately resourced community participation officer that's hired by the town manager and could at his druthers be 0.15 of a position, 0.75 of a position, we need to all work on what that should look like because we do need to actively engage our residents through multiple avenues throughout the year, not just for those required district meetings and forums and our decisions need to fully consider the complimentary and competing needs of college students, recent graduates and workers of which we have thousands in town, young families empty nesters and retirees are we listening to people with disabilities people of the global majority and people who are less wealthy than we traditionally find attending meetings in town hall, it's not a matter of simply opening the floor to extended listening sessions it's actually regularly engaging residents in deep discussions before owning the decisions we make on their behalf we have to look to groups we know exist, something that's frustrated me forever is we have a disability access advisory committee, does town hall or another committee think to ask them their opinion on most things no, even though we've talked about it numerous times we need to take advantage of the expertise we already have and continue to figure out who's not at the table in terms of the district neighborhood associations those have incredible opportunity one thing we did talk about at our most recent one however in district 1 North Amherst where I live is that it's actually a much smaller voting population there than say you would see in district 5 and so we have to figure out how do we bring a lot of different people together in a lot of different ways but not just expect them to come and fill up an auditorium for example to have a listening session so we have a lot of creativity we need to bring to bear on that I agree I think this would be an important challenge for the council and I I hope we could set an example for the school committee to see it the same way personally I'm maybe because I'm an academic and an educator but I really like public forums and the thing that's nice about public forums is it brings the community together and we hear each other's opinions and there's a diversity of opinions I think the failure for me has been that these public forums this is going to sound terrible but they seem to happen after decisions have already been made and they just don't seem to be soon enough so whether it's I don't know parking with the schools it's just like oh the building we had this building forum some time ago and many of us went I think and we just felt like people were complaining about what was happening downtown and we just there was just a feeling like this is happening we're not being listened to and and it's already happening so these forums have to like as soon as the concept of something is in our minds it should be open to public forum and we should be encouraging the input of all kinds of people informing the decision not getting input or opinions after decisions are already well in place Outreach and public participation are some of the most important things the town council will do but also the bodies in town and other appointed bodies in town should do I agree absolutely that outreach process and the opinion collecting process and thought collecting process from residents should begin from day one not wait till the committees that might be making a decision have met 20 times and are almost at the end of that decision as I when I sat on the charter commission we started the public forums right away and just started asking people what they wanted from the government and we continued to hold them through to the end of the time the charter commission sat because it was important to go back to the residents after a decision was made to see what they thought and then go back and revisit that decision and be willing to revisit it and be willing to change your mind based on what you heard we need to have collaborations with apartment complexes with PGOs with non-profits with the colleges with neighborhood associations with homeowners associations to go to where people are already meeting so they don't have to come out especially to be able to talk to counselors that includes the district forums but it also includes just informal gatherings where there's a homeowners association annual meeting send a counselor to it so that anyone that's going to that can talk to a counselor they need to be done at various times in various locations not always at town hall not always at 7pm on a weekday we need to be emailing people that they can sign up for an email list that updates them on what counsel is doing what if the council finds out school committee set up a new committee or a new feasibility study or whatever that they can go on the counsel's email that goes out to people so it ends up in their inbox of what's going on and what just happened those are things we can concretely do to involve the public and to get opinions from them I could probably go on and on about other things that can be done but my time's up so Thanks Mandy I just want to comment on one thing that Mr Steinberg said I didn't realize that was that old but when I first ran for town meeting I needed to gather 10 signatures and that experience was valuable because I got to meet probably gather 25 many many people in my neighborhood and when we changed that rule we lost something a little more pointed towards gathering information and making good decisions I said this is the legal movement voters forum in August as well we still have a large number of committees in town I don't know how healthy our committee system is but I think one of the most important things the council is going to need to work on is revitalizing that committee system and investing it with I mean authority is too strong a word but the respect of their expertise and their diversity of opinions diversity in all senses of the word political diversity ethnic diversity etc and I think that's one of the most important ways of gathering information and doing the preliminary steps of decision making on things that concern the town that's sort of a system that's structurally organized to deal with various topics transportation is one that I was involved for a long time with many others I also attended the district neighborhood association meeting this Sunday and that's a completely different type of thing lots of different topics come up there I think those are going to be informal for the time being they'll be challenging in district 5 of course with a much larger population but the committee system seems to be the most important way of gathering information I just want to add one last thing one minute we do have tens of thousands of not so much participating constituents at the university I thought as I started writing some notes on this I do read and respond to email at crazy hours I don't want to be responding to 10,000 emails but I'll give out my email address to everyone I want to touch back on two different things the first is timing I think it's really important that these district meetings are synchronized with the council meetings so at the point in time when the council first is approaching a new issue whether it's the review of the budget whether it's a new school building plan whatever it is that's the point in time when the district meetings also need to have that on their agenda so these district meetings shouldn't be vague open-ended things they should have something of an agenda in sync with what the council is doing so you get your feedback at the important time of listening one thing I learned that was forced to learn as moderator for the past six years is to really listen to people and when you do some valuable things happen if you really listen to people and really respect people you get some great ideas and great information from unexpected sources and it's easy to just give people their time to talk and just sort of tune out until they're done and it's a little harder to really listen because that's something I'm really hoping will become a habit of the council so the numerous ideas that have come forward I think that I made my list and they came out as boards and committees need to be strengthened we need to make sure that we post agendas in a very public way and that the material that supports the agenda what's often referred to as packets is readily available and people know how to find them and that we provide private minutes after meetings but the real challenge in the end is getting people's attention to that material and making sure that they're aware of issues at the beginning and not at the end when there's a proposal that's ready for decision and we need to be very creative in looking to the bulletin and the gazette of Amherst Media looking to social media anything that we can think of and that's where the community participation officer must have the expertise to help us out we would all like to talk about this for a really long time so I'm going to talk really fast transparency takes many forms and we need to keep figuring out what will help with that back in the day I was one of two school committee members that actually pressed to have our school committee meetings be taped by Amherst Media I think we have all found over time that it was actually very valuable for the community to be able to watch those we talk about adding a 360 degree component to the superintendent evaluation later the town manager evaluation again transparency and we need to be seen participating in local events that's why we set up the town council candidate tables at first day on the comment to meet families where they are same with the big block party meet families where they are people running for school committee etc and let's bear in mind that unfortunately according to the division of open government and the attorney general's office we can't just all go from council to go home and blog about what we're going to do at the next meeting they don't allow that so we need some creative thoughts I actually want to thank Alyssa for organizing two events for the candidates to meet with the public and I think it is a good model for how we can outreach people Amherst is full of a lot of many opinionated, active and engaged citizens that's one of the strengths and beauties of this community and I think a lot of us worried with the new council that our voices are going to not be heard so I'm encouraged to hear that we're having a very active discussion about how not to let that happen I just wanted to add one thing that councillors can also do which is use their networks to get information out to people they may not be connected a network of individuals that you can go to when an issue comes up to council and say hey this issue is coming up where I heard the school committee is doing this or I heard the library trustees are looking into this issue and I think you might be interested where the people you know might be interested and I might not have that ability to go to them because I might not know who they are will you take that information to those people to actively go out and say you need to know about this send an email to the people you think would be really interested and ask them to then forward that email or talk to their own networks and get that information out that way that direct ask not just for disseminating information but also for finding committee members or finding people to participate is one other way of getting information disseminated but also getting opinions back to the councillors and feedback back to the councillors I think I wanted to foreshadow something that you'll see in my response the legal voters which is how to ensure that we have not only stronger and more respected committees but ones that have people that are diverse in their outlooks backgrounds but also very qualified and the idea I had was that there are 26 people actually on the ballot for this council 13 of them will be the loyal opposition on November but is it 7 I guess one thing I think we should consider not seeing which side I'll be on in that case is I think the council should reach out to the loyal opposition and I recommend a group of these members majority which would be those 13 who didn't make it to not only vet candidates but mentor candidates for committees to help mentor them because a lot of us have experience and I think that would be a great way to create some continuity sorry for going over okay so I'm actually going to ask a fifth question but I'm going to change it up a little because we are at 8 20 so we're not going to have the 6 minute follow up so you're all skilled now at what you do with your 2 minutes so we're just going to use the 2 minutes and not have any follow up that way we'll get another question in and still have time for a minute to close which you can also probably put something in there if you really wanted to said okay back to yours back okay great so here's the fifth question the state education commissioner is accepting public input until December 3rd now that just was recently changed but the state education commissioner is accepting public input until December 3rd on the proposed expansion of the Hadley Charter School the number of Amherst students attending the school is declining but our elementary and regional school districts still paid over $2 million in tuition costs to the school last year what is your position on the expansion and what role does time council have if any on Charter School funding and expansions in our region and Andy we start with you Charter School issue is a significant one both for our regional schools that are the 7 through 12 schools and for our elementary schools and there are a challenge in a couple of important ways one is the funding mechanism that provides the funding takes the money directly from the local schools our schools as the moderator just indicated lose money to the schools there was a reimbursement for a very short period of time it declines after the school is opened so there is the financial cost the other cost is enrollment is declining all over western Massachusetts this is not unique to Amherst and as students decline in the traditional public schools and think about some of our neighboring communities like Hellum and Loverett and Shitsbury when they lose a small number of students they no longer have enough students to support programs in elementary schools because they don't have enough for each of the grades going forward and it creates a cascading problem in our middle school and high school we have a significant problem and that is that we don't have the ability to have the diverse programming we need because there may not be enough students left in the middle school and high school to offer all of the courses that we offer this is something that needs to be presented forcefully to the board so that they understand what the impact is on districts such as those in western Massachusetts and we need to take a strong position both as a council and our school committee working together thank you so I think we can agree that charter school funding is broken so it's great that they're accepting comments again until charter school funding is provided another way charter schools serve only a tiny fraction of our school age children whether here or elsewhere and continues to have a negative impact on the rest of the school populations experience while the Chinese charter school is the one that's in our crosshairs right now because they are the one that is attempting to expand going back I believe for their third time attempting to do something that they've been told twice is not really necessary at this point and the select board has supported the school committee and their push back against that I would see the town council also taking on that role because it is a community wide issue taking our lead from the school committee on that I would also mention that though people don't like to talk about it we do have a performing arts charter school as well and we have tried to do things here in our schools to keep children here so that they don't feel the need to go to those schools but those schools cost us money every year too so let's continue to level the blame everywhere as we talk about charter school funding. I don't know what to say about the broken funding mechanism for charter schools I don't think I understand it well enough to comment on it but we're all in agreement that that needs to be fixed and I think the select board and the town council standing behind the school committee makes sense and we do need to protect the integrity of the schools we also do need to recognize though that there are children being well served by these schools so it isn't entirely black and white so I am opposing the candidate and if I'm on the council expansion of charter schools that are serviced or whose service area includes Amherst until that funding formula is fixed as a town meeting member and as I've looked into the issue more I've noticed that the money going to charter schools and as Alyssa said it's not just PVCICS it's PVPA there's one over in across the river there's a couple of them and it's detrimental to our schools ability to offer the programs they want to offer and that that funding formula needs fixed because of that and the state should be fully funding the reimbursement that they're supposed to be required to and that's not even part of the funding formula and they're not even fully funding that reimbursement and the funding formula is fixed it punishes schools like Amherst's that strive to educate its special education and special needs students in district instead of out of district and that's that's our school committees take in pride and our school rightfully takes pride in educating special needs students in district and not sending them out of district and we should be proud of that and we shouldn't be punished for that when students leave to go to charter schools and so I do think it's the role of the council to advocate for to the state for the fixing of the funding formula to Desi and Bessie the board and the department for just explaining to them why that funding formula and why how charter schools are funded affects our town so much and should be an active participant in that advocacy to the board department and the question began with a specific recommendation on the current proposal to expand PVCICS as I mentioned at the outset that was an opportunity we had to do that within the schools to start with the elementary schools right at Wildwood dual language Mandarin English program and unfortunately we didn't take it up more than a decade ago I would also not want to see the PVCICS program expand at this point I think both Alyssa and Mandy Jo said what I think about the funding formula and the punitive aspects of it I think that's wrong I think we want to be doing our best commonwealth wide to enhance funding for public education in whatever way we can the idea that we're punishing the Amherst schools for letting students leave here to go to those schools which are also good schools and so many people have gone there and liked them very much it's an unfortunate tax on ourselves and I think we need to find a way to do that I don't know enough about the details of how we can do that but I'd certainly be an advocate if I'm on the board on the town council to try to work with other communities I think are facing the same problem in having their public schools decimated at the expense of some of the charter schools I think we need to reflect on what happened in Amherst a decade ago and Bob touched on this there are sometimes programs which the schools public schools are less sensitive to than they could be as long as we stay attuned to the needs of our own children and the community and the wishes of their parents sometimes then we can avoid having some of these things happen I think if we can keep the schools ecumenical in some sense that's the best thing of all so I hope we'll work to do that together as councilors, school convene members as all of us together in the public I am absolutely against the expansion of the Chinese immersion school and I hope the council will take a stand on that as well the primary reason is the funding formula which is dysfunctional and particularly bad for a community like Amherst in effect we are assessed a large amount because of the fact that we have such good quality services here especially for disabled students the one thing we can do of course is the council can write letters to the state but I think it's also really important that we work with our new state representative and new state senator both of whom I have heard talk about this issue as strongly as I am and feel the same way and I think we need to work with them and make sure they know the position of the council and they can be given that mission to work as hard as they can to work on a change to the funding formula Thank you Thank you everyone so now we're at time for closing remarks and everybody will have up to a minute to make them and we will start with Alyssa Thank you all for having us here tonight I'm grateful we're all getting to talk about particular areas of strength and focus throughout is a very historic campaign as Woodland talked at the beginning about where we are and where we want to go and I hope we gave you a sense of that this evening as well as looking at many other sources of information this first town council has the new charter as a framework but the people you vote for on November 6th are the ones that will develop the details the shared norms, the new practices that meet our residents clear expectations for inclusive representation while we all work to fully understand and continually explain how the roles of our appointed and elected officials interact please contact me through my campaign website, elissaforammerz.com please vote for Alyssa Brewer at large on Tuesday November 6th thank you and please come to the trivia bee on Thursday October 25th at 6pm it's a great time if you've never been so I hope you'll pick up a copy of my brochure on the way out that explains my position on a wide range of issues and also links you to my website each of you will vote for two district and three councilors at large this is a 13 member council will have unprecedented power I urge you to ensure that there is representative diversity of viewpoints this first council will serve for three years while that council will have influence over school issues keep in mind that they will have far greater influence over zoning and future development of our town trends set in place today will be irreversible three years from now your vote is extremely important thank you to AEF for hosting us tonight in this forum I think I've made clear that I'm going to search for a responsible way to fund the capital projects including the two elementary schools that need to be replaced hopefully we'll be able to secure some MSBA funding to get that done because our children need to be in the new schools soon but we also need to make sure that the old schools continue to be operational in the meantime and if elected I'll prioritize the public participation process you heard a little bit about over the last hour and a half with the awareness surrounding the state of our schools we have a golden opportunity to really involve the public and the community in the planning process so let's do that so I urge you to vote for me Mandy Johannike on November 6th thank you I'd like to also thank you for all of you for coming out tonight AEF for hosting us obviously I hope that a few more of you will vote for me in the preliminary one bring your friends if you'd like to but in all seriousness that is serious but what I aim to do if I'm elected is try to work to build consensus on some of the device of issues that have confronted us it's tricky I do like to listen to people with opinions about things but I'm pretty good at making decisions once facts are presented and I'd like to gather facts I'm a scientist at heart and an optimizer as a mathematician so I think I'm good at that and I hope you'll recognize that the main thing I'd like to see us be doing is keeping the many many experienced thoughtful people they can be different thoughtful people but the many thoughtful people in town engaged in governing sometimes at night keeping our committee system strong and encouraging its diversity is the most important thing that I'll be able to help do as a counselor thank you I am committed to studying and understanding school based issues as they are brought to the council by the school committee the school building committee and the superintendent I am committed to getting feedback from the public listening to what they have to say listening to their opinions I am committed to making fact based decisions and coming to votes in council and I am committed to keeping strong schools in Amherst, thank you So I want to start by recognizing that we've spent a lot of time tonight with a very good discussion about problems and issues that will be confronting the council in particular about education but I want to also remember that we really do have great schools and I think we should be really proud of our elementary schools and the high success of so many students that are in our schools and that have graduated from our schools by addressing the issues that we've discussed we'll be able to continue to have those great schools and I think that is our number one commitment that is why I am running for council and I hope for your vote because education is a core value of the community we all look at the town seal and see the book there and the book symbolizes education and I think that that core value is what we have to stand for Finally, I want to thank the Education Foundation and I want to thank Professor Woodland for the excellent job she did tonight in moderating this, thank you Thank you all Thank you to all of us here today Thank you all so much for coming on behalf One minute I just wanted to say on behalf of my co-president Jennifer Page and the entire AEF board I want to thank you for being here We are going to have a meet and greet for the next half hour or so so feel free to mingle, we've invited all of the district candidates to come as well so there are lots of people to meet Thank you to everybody here and I would like to echo Alyssa to say please come to the Amherst Education Foundation Trivia October 25th at 6pm is the youth round 7pm is the adult round if you'd like to play, we need players so go to the AEF website and you'll find out how to join up Thank you