 Welcome, everyone. I am calling the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order today, Tuesday, August 20th at 6 p.m. This meeting is recorded and live broadcast by Amherst Media. Welcome, everyone. This is our first meeting of the new school year. It's great to see you all. First item on the agenda is approved minutes of June 18. And you should all have a copy in front of you. And I will give the committee a couple minutes to just check their notes and make sure there's no edits or comments. And if not, I will take a motion. Mr. Nakajima. I move that the committee approve the minutes of June 18, 2019. Second. We have moved and seconded. I have one small edit. Actually more of a question, I think, on the first page under item number one. It looks like there's a hanging line there. This is edit in line H most to add to public input. I'm not quite sure what that means. First paragraph, first page, item number one. It looks like it might just be something that got left in there. That's what it looks like to me as well. So we should probably strike that line. Sasha's nodding her head. OK. So all those in favor with the edit that's been commented on added. Raise your hands. OK. It is unanimous. Thank you very much. Just a quick announcement that Ms. Spitzer is actually not going to be attending our meeting tonight. She was away. But otherwise, we are moving forward with our agenda as previously promoted and shared publicly. So moving on to committee announcements. I don't know if there's any announcements from the committee. No, seeing none. OK. Next item on the agenda is public comment. If anyone wishes to make public comment, please feel free to do so. And just come up to the microphone over here, please. Make sure you press the button that you see the bright green light go on and state your name if you would. My name is Tony Cunningham. And I'm here to ask you to discuss the Crocker Farm expansion study and form a working group to get going on it. Maria Kopicki and I have remained deeply interested in our school buildings and have done a lot of research, studying enrollment, and evaluating the information that we have and identifying what we need to know. The goal of this study is not to advocate for one option or another. It's to get the information the town and the residents need to weigh the viable options. This past spring, when the capital budget was being prepared, we realized that Crocker Farm was the one critical piece of the puzzle that had not yet been studied and there was no plan to do so. That is why we proposed to the Capital Planning Committee to fund an exploration of possible expansion at Crocker Farm. Expanding Crocker Farm is one of the two remaining ways the superintendent proposed to get to a 600-student school. The other way is moving sixth grade to the middle school. I'm on the advisory board studying that. Members of the Capital Planning Committee, including two of you, agreed that knowing what can be done at Crocker Farm and how much it might cost was needed information. So it was included in this year's budget. Since June, Maria and I have tried unsuccessfully to get this study off the ground. We've met with the superintendent and the town manager and spoken with counselors and school committee members. We wrote an article for the Amherst Indy and another that was published in the Amherst Bulletin. The funding has been allocated, but we don't have the power to actually begin the work. I hope that who proposed this study is not the issue, although it has been suggested to us. If it's the case that some people in town cannot hear us or won't listen to us, that would be fundamentally wrong. A good idea is a good idea regardless of where it comes from. This committee has spent hardly any time in the past two years discussing the options for addressing our schools. Other than an intense period this past winter prior to the submission of a statement of interest, I'm on record supporting the study of a 600 student school as one of the options. But I still believe we need to study other options, too, and knowing what is possible at Crocker Farm is key. Much time has already been lost. Please let's get going on this. It is a critical piece of the puzzle. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public comments? Hi, I'm Maria Kopicki. Earlier this year when Dr. Morris presented an idea for a possible consolidated elementary school with no more than 600 students, he described four ways to get to that enrollment. And I have our little demo here. The first way involved merging the middle and high schools and using the middle school building for elementary students. We formed a study group, hired consultants to see if it was possible and what it would cost. And that was a smart move as we concluded that it wouldn't work. Now we're down to three ways. The second way involved merging Amherst and Pelham Elementary school districts. Again, we formed a group, hired consultants, did the study, and decided not to proceed. So down to two. The third way involved moving Amherst sixth graders to the middle school. The feasibility from a building standpoint had been studied alongside the middle and high school study. We then wanted to understand the educational impacts. And so again, we formed a group, hired a consultant, and we will have a better idea if this option is possible and desirable when that work is completed in January. The fourth way Dr. Morris spoke of involved increasing the number of students at Crocker Farm, an option for which we have no information. Like the middle and high school study, this would tell us what is possible at Crocker Farm and what it would cost. Except this study would cost a lot less than the other. The only difference between this option and the other three is that no official body has taken action to make it happen. It was put forward as a resident capital request where it was vetted by the JCPC, the finance committee, the town manager, and the town council and successfully navigated the budget process. Since the budget was approved in mid-June, however, no progress has been made. As town officials say they need school officials to act and school officials say they need town officials to act. Meanwhile, two months have passed and nothing's happened. Some want to wait to see what the MSBA will do in December before we get started, but this is a mistake. If we get into the pipeline and then begin the Crocker Farm study, it will be several months before we have the information, probably longer, as it would mean starting two separate processes at once, and progress will be delayed. If we don't get in, we won't have the information we would need to write a better SOI for the spring. The MSBA doesn't care how many elementary schools we have if we consolidate or not and where we locate the schools. They just want to know what we want to study and what we don't want to study. That's our problem, and we are responsible for figuring that out. Part of that responsibility is knowing what is possible and what is not, and whether Crocker Farm expansion is possible is the remaining question that needs to be answered. The school committee, you, need this information. The town council needs this information as part of the larger capital and financial planning needs for the town. And the people of Amherst need the information so they can understand their choices and the costs, benefits, and disadvantages to all of them. Please make the study happen now by authorizing a study group before we lose more time. Thank you. Thank you. My name is Lauren Mills. I'm a mother of two students at Crocker Farm School. I'm here because of concerns that have been raised of an injury that my son incurred during May, last May, on the school property during recess. I don't want to get into the personal details, but it did raise some safety issues about some of the playground equipment and how the students use the one particular equipment where he fell off of. And also, as a mother, I have been very upset and concerned about how it was dealt with after. And I wanted to know how the school committee could address issues of how in an injury situation at school what is the protocol for the nurse to contact parents. And also, when they're not sure if the injury is serious, how that is dealt with, I think those are the two main concerns that I have. And I just want to know how that can be addressed. Thank you very much. Any other public comments? OK, seeing none, I am going to close public comments. And we will move on to the next item on the agenda, superintendent's update. Sure. So there's a copy, both for the committee members in the back of the room, for people who want to follow. Just a quick update on the summer programs. So we had 123 students attend the Achievement Academy program, which is a combination of our ELL and Title I programming. In the summer, it's a three-week program. We had 60 students attend the special ed summer program, which is a mix of students who attend for four weeks and then our more intensive-need students attend for six weeks. If you combine those, you get over 15% of all of our elementary students. So you could see it's a substantial operation. I really want to thank the organizers, the facilitators, and transportation, which does. There's no breaks for transportation. It really does feel that way. All the students here were educated at Crocker Farm over the summer. And again, a big shout out to the summer foods program, who in the absence of a food service director, a number of staff stepped up to make sure students had high quality, healthy nutrition for breakfast and for lunch. So I was able to visit once or twice a really successful program and the feedback we got in terms of both literal feedback, but also, especially in the summer programs, the best feedback you get is attendance, because it's not mandatory as opposed to the rest of the year and our attendance was very, very high for both programs. So thank you to everyone who participated in that. Last month, I had the opportunity to follow up. You remember about 11 months ago or so, 10 months ago? It was a meeting where, I think in this room, actually, where there was a presentation by the Donahue Institute about the cost of tax-exempt housing. Students who live in tax-exempt housing who attend our district. And this is part of a larger negotiation between the town of Amherst and UMass. So I'm limited in what I can share, because this is one element of a much lot broader negotiation that's not yet complete, but I felt very comfortable and confident I was able to share the piece of information from the school committee discussion last year, both the public discussion with the consultants there. If you remember, we went back to the high school and then talked about it more. And my perspective at this point is that there was a lot of mutual understanding of the district's point of view and hopefully a pathway to responding to that. So that's the outer edge of what I can share at this point, but hopefully the town and the UMass are able to make progress in the other part so I can speak more openly about that or at least the town manager can. Last week, we had our three-day administrative retreat and the agenda is attached, really positive feedback. You can see that the range of topics was pretty broad, but there were definitely themes around collaboration, staff morale, some concerns that we experienced about vaping, but a major focus was also around LGBT. We did an LGBT audit from Gender Spectrum, which is an advocacy organization and we're gonna do continued work on all those, but particularly focusing on the T and transgender students with some work later in the year that I'm previewing now, but more to come from that. The other thing I'll note is just it was great to have the group back together. So in the summer, our administrative team, most of our administrative team continues to work, but because of vacations and other schedules, we don't necessarily spend the same amount of time collectively together and on a personal level, it felt really good to be back together. Last week and actually this continued to this week for families who continued to come in, we've now given way over 400 backpacks with school supplies to families who attend our schools. Many thanks to our community partners and individuals who donate those. And also Amherst Police and UMass Police, they're onsite issuing and installing backpacks. I mean back, ooh, that's not, that's a typo by me. Car seats, that should say car seats. So if you brought your own, they would test car seats and they also had car seats that donate to families and I think the numbers on it I think was in the 30s of donated car seats and many more than that in terms of families who are here to get backpacks and check their car seats. So many thanks for that. This was earlier in the summer, so you've seen it already in the committee and we issued a press release, but last year we got a teaching tolerance grant thanks to Fort River sixth grade teacher, Tim Austin. And you might have heard last year about or seen some of the presentations that students did and he applied for a larger grant on behalf of the district and now we're able to expand that program, not just to Fort River, but all the elementary schools in town as well as a little bit on the middle school and Pelham Elementary. So thank you, Mr. Austin, for your great work, both with students, but also on behalf of the whole district. Today, and it's continuing a little later this week for the recorder search, a permanent recorder. We had 19 applicants, 10 were invited and scheduled an interview and we'll keep the committee in the loop on that. That's a joint interview, the interview team included people from both the town as well as the district. One thing that I wanted to share in terms of the Crocker Farm Study is that we're planning for that to be on the agenda at the next meeting, which is September 17th, just to see where the committee is on that and I met with the town manager today this morning. We talked in great detail about his thoughts on that and we'll be able to bring that back to our next meeting as a formal agenda item. Finally, this is, it's getting to be busy season, so I just want to give you some dates of things coming up. Thursday, we get to welcome over 30 new staff members between our three districts to our district, I guess you could say, and we have a full day plan for them that involves thinking about the year, thinking about hopes and fears for the year, making sure that they have both the technology and other things that they need to be successful, building camaraderie with the group. The teacher association comes in the afternoon. Big shout out to the Chamber of Commerce. They come and make gift bags and welcome bags for all of our new teachers, which is incredibly, especially so many of our teachers aren't new teachers, they're new to Amherst and they're just amazed at the level of community support that they receive as they come, the bulletin, as you may remember, takes pictures of all of our new teachers by school and publishes them, and it really shows the commitment of our whole community to public education. So that's a fun one, that's Thursday and Friday. Monday, all professional staff are back in buildings for professional development. Tuesday, and this is more specific invitations for the committee, but we have convocation, which is eight o'clock in the morning on Tuesday. So that is the one time of the year that our entire district, all staff, get together in the same place. Mr. Nakajima will be speaking on behalf of the Regional School Committee and the School Committees. So thank you again, Mr. Nakajima, for doing that. We have a new teacher association president, Mick O'Connor, who will be speaking. I'll be doing some work as well. We'll be honoring teachers for a variety of awards relevant to this committee. The Roger O'Wallis Teaching Award will be announced at that as well as the Greenspoon Award winners from last spring will also be announced. So if anyone can make it, eight o'clock on Tuesday, we try to get out, try to start on time and get out of there by about 9.15, 9.30, because I know people have lost that they're going on that day, but all committee members are welcome to attend. And that evening is the first night, so that's five o'clock on the Amherstown Common. Forecast is 78 degrees and partially sunny. So if you think of last year where we were going and buying waterfans and spritzers and everything, hopefully the forecast will be correct and will be a little more comfortable, but we'll have similar wonderful things for kids and for families as we've had in the past. So that's five o'clock that Tuesday, the 27th. And then the 28th is our first day of school. It's a half day or partial day for students. So at the elementary level, this is a normal start time for grades one through six and then a 120 dismissal for those students. So really kind of chock full of events the next couple, next week and a half as we prepare for our students who arrive. Great, thank you, Dr. Morris. That was a lot of information included. No, that's great. This is our first meeting following the summer and clearly there's been a lot going on. So I just wanna give a moment to the committee to see if there's any questions or comments for Dr. Morris based on the update that he just presented. Mr. Demling? Just a brief comment that it's great to see the details on the Teaching Tolerance Grant. Something that's really right down Main Street are community's values. And since a big component of that towards the end is the students engaging the community with their campaign be great for them to come present that to us and for us to help use whatever limited soapbox we have to spread that in the community and talk to the town council. But it's just a really great opportunity and a great initiative from a teacher to make that happen for all the six great students. I actually have a couple of questions for you. So the summer programs, you mentioned the Summer Achievement Academy and the Special Education programs. I was just wondering, 123 students, if we have any demographic information about those who attended, and I don't expect you to have that right now, but I think it might be helpful to understand who's participating in these programs and who's benefiting from that. It's great to know that this exists and also we wanna make sure that we're ramping up any efforts that we have to catch kids for the next year. The other question that I was gonna ask was just about the Donahue Institute study. So we obviously had a joint meeting with town council last year to discuss this very important study and I'm wondering if there are any plans. I know that the town is in negotiation right now. If there are any plans at this point for a timeline or something for us to look forward to to hear status, just get an update from either the town council or from the town itself. So my understanding is that the town manager will be giving an update in September on where the status of the negotiations, whether they be completed or not. So I don't have an exact date, but I know he was thinking of, it would occur next month. Okay, great. Look forward to hearing that. Mr. Nakajima. Yeah, I just had a question. I was gonna ask you earlier about the cracker farm thing, you already said it's on the agenda for the 17th, so that's great. Without betraying sort of the collegial nature of the administrative team retreat, I was just curious if there were any themes that came out of it that were interesting to you or to the group or that you think would be worth sharing with the committee. Again, it's sort of like broad topics or themes. Yes, thank you for the opportunity. I'd be happy to actually, what would be helpful is just going day by day. Not that I'm gonna go into details in every part, but I think it's easier for me to do that than to capture it. So I think one of the, if we look at the first day in the morning, a lot of the work was focused on recalibrating our collaboration. So we have some, we have a lot of consistency from last year to this year in terms of who's on the administrative team. We have new members and that includes food service, that includes athletic director, that includes these roles that at the elementary level may not be as visible, but certainly are critical parts of our administrative team. And we talked a lot about how, when it says district office organization, communication, highlighting the work. Some of that was how our central office or district offices have been organized or reorganized, but some of that was also about how we continue to collaborate between building staff and district staff. And I think that's a major theme that we wanna have. We're always trying to review and make sure that our school staff feel like they have access and supported. And yes, district staff have an accountability role. That's just the nature of those roles. So I think those conversations were fruitful in kind of, again, recalibrating work that we've continued to do. In terms of the human resources update, one of the things that our administrative team is always engaged with is the data. So the hiring season's continuing, but seeing preliminary data last year to this year about how the hireings went and actually gathering feedback as we've had new models of how we interview and how we screen candidates. So some of that was collective feedback. And the afternoon was one up here who used to work, Gina, I'm reading instead of thinking. Gina Pierre, who was here two years ago leading our work on investigating particularly bias-based claims. And again, we've been two years, not everyone was here two years ago and the people who were came from a refresher. And this agenda was really co-developed by our leadership team. And we gathered topics and then me and Doreen, there was too many topics to cover. So we had to make some choices, but I think one of the themes the first day was, again, recalibrating, continuing the work that we started and fine-tuning. The second day, I think there's some similar themes, but we do have a new, relatively new fundraising policy. So there was a lot of what I would call nuts and bolts as it relates to the second day in the morning. Then we got to the afternoon where I was really thinking about what are, who are groups in our school who are groups of students in our school, issues in our school that need more direct attention. It's not that we weren't paying attention of vaping and safety and some other things here, but how do we look more deeply? And the audit in particular was recommended by some folks who are gonna come in this fall to support us in the work. One of the things that you realize is, I think in communities like Amherst, one of the pieces of feedback I got from other consultants is when we have a really accepting community in many ways, we sometimes don't build the systems we need. We rely on the people's goodwill. And I think the audit highlighted the places that we are doing really well in supporting gender diversity. And then also systems that we need to put in place. And what they told me was 70% of the issues that you find in your systems, you'll be able to solve in a week or two because they're not actually technically hard. They're just things that you need to build a system on. And then 30% you need to dig in on. And I think that happened for us and we're compiling that data. And then the last day, sorry, this is going a little more than themes, but I'm excited to talk about it. So hopefully that's okay. Is we came back to the audit results and we actually started talking about where are we individually by school and where are we collectively so that we can fine tune and continue the work this year. The anti-bias work and restorative frameworks, both of those were focused with a circle dynamic. So even though the third agenda item is specific about restorative circles, it was about practicing circle practice and how do we deepen our understanding and relationships as human beings and how do we support our own community and then model how that can happen at a larger level at the school and the district level. And the afternoon looks a little different than maybe a judgment in the past, but one of the pieces of feedback we received in prior years is we have all this great discussion and then we never have time to actually think about how are we bringing this to the school, how are we bringing this to the district so that afternoon we reserve that time to actually map out on the district level, principals meeting, district and structural leadership team and at the school level when they have faculty meetings, department meetings, so how do you map out the work of the year? So there's defined action steps at the end instead of like I feel overwhelmed because we studied all these important things I wanna bring to my school but like I don't know how to put it in a calendar. And so that works continuing but we thought it was really important at the end to actually stop with the formal content and get much more into action planning. Just one quick follow up. I thought it was really interesting to hear the audit that you just mentioned that I don't think we've ever done that before. And I'm wondering if at some point during the year we might be able to hear some of the general perceptions that came out of that. Obviously not revealing too much information about students or anything like that but I think it would be really helpful that something that's come up in the community numerous times about how we are supporting our students who are either transgender or who have different gender identities. And I think it's much clearer when we get to middle school and high school kind of how we offer those kinds of supports but not necessarily at the elementary school level so I think it'd be really helpful to hear where the district is. And I fully agree and I think one of the things that we're developing a better set of resources at the district level on is even the same resource we've used they have a really excellent framework which I'm happy to email out to the committee of how to think about systems related to this. Cause I think, well I won't belabor the point because we can come back to it at a larger agenda topic. And I think the other piece is just how do we do entry plans for students who either coming to our district or making transitions and how do we have a collaborative relationship with families and students depending on the age of how to do that. And there's 10, 15 years ago there weren't necessarily resources out there so people did their best and now we do have resources that were actively started using including at the end of last week to have these conversations to be thoughtful about not just the obvious things that most people think about but what are the, from the perspective of a student at an elementary level, what are the types of things that really matter? Cause that feels really different than, yeah we can change the coding in power school or database system like that. Those kind of things we have down but thinking a little beyond systems and bathrooms cause that's where most of the thinking goes help us develop that collaborative relationship with the parents. So I'd be thrilled to come back actually and talk more about it. That would be great, thank you. Okay, so moving on, thank you Dr. Morris. That was wonderful. So new and continuing business, first item on the agenda, facilities and fields update. And I think for folks who may be watching at home, folks in the audience, our staff and the members of this committee we have talked numerous times about where we are with our facilities, you know the condition of our buildings, also the grounds and we have a guest here today from what I understand to make a presentation but Dr. Morris I'll let you make the introduction and just set the committee on the right path for this. Absolutely, thank you. So much like we talked about the summer update for a cheapen academy in summer school, the district doesn't stop in the summer and if anything in the facilities world things only speed up. There's so many projects that can occur when our students are fully engaged with their full populations of students and adults working with them and educators that the summer is the time to get many projects complete. So I wanna thank Mr. Roy Clark and his team for the level of work that happened both in the custodial maintenance and facilities level, all three of those occurred. So what I've asked Mr. Roy Clark to do because he wrote out a moderate length memo, excuse me, is to just do some highlights particularly picking on Wildwood since we spent a lot of time on Wildwood in the past year. You could certainly look at the other schools and ask any questions. And then get into the deep cleaning procedures again just to, that was something that came up last year, the progress on that. And then to finally talk about the ADA issues that were discussed and make some recommendations for the school committee's feedback. So I've asked him to be rather brief in the oral explanation so that it opens up for more dialogue than monologue. But with that, Mr. Roy Clark, our facilities director, I'll invite you up. Welcome Mr. Roy Clark. Thank you for having me. So in your packet you've got several pages of documents. One is a brief overview of just the kinds of things that happen in facilities over the summer when everyone thinks, well I don't know what people think, but we're exceptionally busy in the summer. This summer we've been working really hard to fill out our staff and we've had a lot of empty positions, we're still working on that. Regular sort of ongoing processes include checking the roofs again and again and looking for areas where there might be potential leaks flagging them, patching them, checking them, waiting for terrain, reexamining them. It's a sort of an ongoing process. The custodians do an all out effort to get every surface scrubbed and cleaned and wiped down and vacuumed and polished and honed and ready for the next. School year and I'll get more to that later. Then in terms of our heating and ventilation systems, this is a chance for us to change filters, do preventive maintenance, identify motors and actuators that have failed, get them replaced. Just fine tune the system and see what's going on with it. And this year like others, we're always surprised at the number of things that we have to fix but we made good headway and we're really close to having everything up and running the way we'd like. Our monthly past management review comes in. Wildwood had their building reviewed earlier this month. I think Crocker Farm and Fort River are being looked at tomorrow. And let's see, I have, and then next week there's the other schools. So our past management, people come in, they know where we've had trouble in the past, they go look for traces and for trends and they address any issues and if they feel like they see anything that's accelerating, they speak with us, they get us involved, that sometimes they make more frequent visits. But we are in decent shape on that front. Most of the issues we've had this summer have been with bees and hornets on the outside of the buildings, not inside the building, so that's a little easier to deal with. Then when the transportation crew isn't doing something on the order of 500 runs for the various programs that we have during the summer, they're taking care of the fields, they're weedwacking and mowing and trimming and picking up fallen branches and generally making the place nice to look at. Cleaning, parking lots, all that stuff happens. So that's kind of the general overview of what we do in Wildwood in particular. We had a lot of trouble last year and as you know, there've been issues around humidity and around potential mold issues. And the key to mold is to defeat the humidity. So one of the things that we did is we got in some large area dehumidifiers to use in conjunction with our cleaning processes on the rugs, so they would dry more quickly and it worked out really well. Not only did it save time for the custodians, but I think we gotta clean our product out of it. We do wanna clean those rugs because dust is another problem, completely apart from mold, so we really do need to wash them, can't move them, vacuum them up and dry them out. And so we had a really good year and it's looking good over there. We also have been paying attention to the inner courtyards and the vegetative growth and we're working on finding ways to discourage the plants that produce pollen and bother people in the fall. And that's an ongoing process but we're making moves in that regard as well. And then there's details about some of the special projects that we've been working on which I'll be happy to answer questions about. And I also gave you, I think, two very dense pages to give you an idea of what deep cleaning entails. All the things that we do and the way that we do them to make sure that the schools are spotless. So all of that is there for your review and I'm happy to answer any questions about it. I think at this point I'm... Thank you, Mr. Roy Clark. I just wanna say this is the first time that I can remember having served in the committee, having received such a comprehensive report and detailed list of all the things that take place during the summer. I really appreciate that. I think it helps us a lot to understand the work that goes on during the summer months and also just if we have additional concerns or issues to be able to think about those because we have something to reference right and to work off of. I'm gonna turn over to the committee and see if there's anything, the committee, any questions for Mr. Roy Clark or Dr. Morris they'd like to raise. Mr. Nakajima? Yeah, I just want, I'm Alison McDonald, colleague of ours, when I sat on JCPC where as you may recall, we had a really long conversation about chillers, renting chillers, installing chillers, putting electricity in for them and piping all the rest and I just wanted to know, I mean there's a reference to those projects here but I just wanted to know the status, are they in place, are they up and running? The forecast looks generally benign for the next couple weeks but if it turns worse I just wanted to know whether we had ourselves covered in that regard. I'm happy to update you on that. So the Wildwood Shiller, we replaced the compressor part, one of the central components last summer. I took a long time to get it in but it's been running fairly well. Fort River we've been having trouble with when we have peak demands and so we went ahead with the rental chiller. The rental chiller is now on site and we have contractors working here this week to get the piping in place so that we can hook it up and the electoral work also I'm anticipating getting done later this week and being it next week. So I'm very hopeful that we will actually have that chiller start up and test it out Monday or Tuesday before school starts. And that will give us hopefully a much more reliable backup for those hot days in September. Mr. Jenling? Thank you Mr. Naginian for asking my chiller questions. No, that's great. The other low level detailed question I was wondering. It's your button press there, yeah. Oh yeah, I'm going to have to learn this all over again, aren't I? For the public that saw me talking without noise, I was thanking Mr. Nakajima for his chiller question. You mentioned that the PEST report had already been done for Wildwood. Can you talk about the results of that specifically? I'm sorry, I didn't hear what you said. You mentioned that the PEST report for Wildwood had already been completed earlier this month. Right, we do. That should talk about the results of that. I don't have the details to mind. I know they came the first week in August and sent us a report then, which I have unfiled, but I'd be happy to get you some more details. Mr. Jenling? Yeah, so whether it's from you or the superintendent, I think a general update on that, given what happened last year, particularly at Wildwood, would ease a lot of concerns going into the new year. Dr. Morris? And I'm happy just to forward the committee the report from Minuteman or a summary of it. I'm happy to do that. We can do that this week. That would be helpful. Thank you. Any other questions or comments? Again, thank you, Mr. Roy Clark, for bringing all of us to the committee's attention. I'm glad to hear that the chiller that we installed last year at Wildwood is doing its job and working properly. Hopefully the weather does hold up, but I also understand that it's not just the heat, it's also the humidity, right? So the chiller's definitely help keep that humidity, those humidity levels down. I was wondering, I think there was a comment from a community member during public comments today regarding an injury that occurred at Crocker Farm in the playground. And I noticed that there were bullet points under the Crocker Farm School item on page two, I believe, of your memo, mentioning the removal, cleaning and restoration of the soft floor to the interior courtyard playground. I'm just wondering if the equipment that's there and if that's in reference to what would happen if there was any other specific issues with that playground that we should be aware of or that we should be looking to. Go ahead. Dr. Morris. I think that's more related to woodchips and soft landing areas than the interior play area, but I could share more details. I could do some more follow-up with Mr. Shea and get back to the committee on that, yeah. Thank you. The space that we're working on was one of the ones that was highlighted in the ADA study, it's the interior courtyard down at the preschool end. And it's heavily used, it had a soft floor that was starting to come apart with lots of gaps in spaces where somebody could trip or a foot or something could get caught. So we took the whole thing apart and put it back together and we're almost done. And we also created a landing at the lower door that would make it possible to open the door while being on the same level instead of being at a different level and having to get up over a lip to make that more accessible from that side. I don't know of any injuries in that courtyard area. Okay, thank you. Dr. Morris. Do you mind if I preview transitioning to the ADA, the pages that follow? Please, yeah. So I want to thank Mr. Roy Clark and Gilford Mooring, who's the DPW superintendent for working on getting some cost estimates for many of the items in the ADA study. You could see that Mr. Roy Clark sort of organized them by school and then totaled them out. And if you look at the very last page of his document, he totals them and then there's maybe the second, two-thirds of the page, about a third of the way down are projects that occur this year. And in conversation with Mr. Roy Clark and this is something that we're looking for feedback from the committee on, it seemed to us that two things need to happen. One is that we need to get the ball rolling on making some of these fixes very visibly. There's some that have happened over the summer, as Mr. Roy Clark indicated. There's other ones that we want to get going on and we also need to preserve some funds for ongoing study of some of these larger ADA projects. Some of the smaller ones, we can have good estimates. Some of the other ones, we need firms in to get more specific and cost estimating. So I'll let Mr. Roy Clark expand on that, but I just wanted to orient you to the couple pages, school by school, a total, and then what essentially is a recommendation of projects to occur. And I want to put a finer point on it. Actually, I'm sorry, Mr. Roy Clark. One of the things that we know is that some of the projects simply can't happen during the academic year while students are there. And in our conversations, we didn't feel like we wanted to wait to next summer to get some of these projects done. This is a multi-year process. There'll be capital requests to JCPC for a while for these ADA pieces. And we wanted to get some more things that were visible done during this academic year. But I may have stolen too much of your content. I apologize, Mr. Roy Clark, but I wanted to make sure I emphasize and contextualize your documents. No, no, thank you very much. And it's, I think you really did hit the important points. The initial summary that I sent out with the packet didn't give you a totals page, so I generated that later. I don't know if you had a separate email or not, but just to understand that when we're looking at the outside of the building, and we're looking at things having to do with parking lots, sidewalks, curb cuts, asphalt, and concrete, there's somewhere on the order of a half a million dollars worth of improvements that need to be done in these three schools. Most of that work would make getting in and out of the schools during the school year impossible. I had hoped that we could do some of the sidewalks around the backside of the buildings during the school year, but the scope of that, I think it would just be too distracting for the teachers and for the kids to have all that happening right outside their window. So I really would rather do that also in the summer. But there are about half a dozen items on the final table there that I think we could reasonably do during the school year and that would make a significant difference by making it easier for someone with mobility issues to get to a bench outside or to get to a picnic table outside. And this will be coupled with replacing some of the tables outside to have an accessible and so that if someone were in a wheelchair they would be able to get right up close to it. And these are things that I think are mostly doable and that we can try to proceed with. I look forward to working with the DPW if we can schedule the work and if we can't schedule the work with them if they're too busy, too tied up, I think we can try to contract some of this out to make some progress there. The bottom item is the big ticket item that's the $39,000 estimated access to the playground up on the hill behind Crocker Farm. And I'm not quite sure what kind of impact that would have on the school, but I threw it in there because there's not a lot of windows right where they would be doing the work and so it might be less distracting. Thank you, Mr. Roy Clark. Any questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Demling. Do you know if the equipment on the playground that we would be building accessibility to is accessible? I'm a $39,000 line item. Mostly it's not. What we're trying to do is get a walkway that has the appropriate slope and resting areas up to the playground and to add some sort of ramp to get down into the area where most of the play takes place. There is a play structure there that has a ramp going to it, but I don't think that it's technically accessible. Mr. Demling. Yeah, and just to follow up, so when I look at the items that you've listed that could be done with minimal distraction, I'm just wondering how this cross references with the list of priorities that were identified at the end of last year, particularly from talking with staff and teachers. For example, when I look at any one of these items, it's hard to know were these on that punch list of things that would have a significant impact to quality of teacher or student life, as described by teachers or students. In my conversations with teachers that I had a chance to have a couple of the items, I think would make a big difference. I think some of the work at Wildwood to get out to some of the playgrounds where there's an abrupt change and it's a small cost item that, the next-to-last item there, to get into that larger play area in the back of Wildwood would make a big difference. I'd like to see if we could make another access into that area so that you didn't have to go up under the play structure to get down into the space, which is not calculated into this number, but I think is still doable. The other things did not come up as high on folks list of importance that I spoke with, but I think that there definitely would be a way to show our commitment and a way to just make it a more friendly place all around. Mr. Nakajima. Thank you. Thank you for the work. My understanding is described. You have sort of a hit list of things you think you might be able to do during the school year that's listed out at the back, and then you also anticipate being able to prepare, get additional costs or refine sort of the planning work to be able to then presumably either do the work or go to bed for the end of the school year. And I don't know if you're in that mindset, you're thinking of literally trying to hit the ground during this fiscal year prior to July 1st or after how that would work, but I'm just curious, do you have or do you anticipate for a future meeting describing what those priorities are and what you think you'd be able to get down on what some of those next steps are? I actually have enough that I could discuss it now and I can send some documents on if you like. The two areas that seem to be the most important it's folks that I spoke with were better ramp and ramp access to areas where kids go and better actually three areas. That more accessible tables that I'm hoping to be able to afford this year for lunch areas and picnic areas and so forth. And the third was accessible bathrooms, particularly in certain areas. And when I looked at that I realized this was not something that we would be able to do in-house. And so I'm putting forward in the central office to try to get some RFPs out there to get some design work done, particularly for the toilet rooms in rooms A and B and Fort River and Wildwood and also in the health room. And that would make a huge difference in the life of the teachers, the staff and the kids. So the next step on that is to start with the planning. The ramp work, if we have the capital funds still available, some of that could be started during the school year once we have a design. The bathroom work is going to require a lot of demolition and is restricted to summertime. And there are so many bathrooms that we wanna make accessible that we're gonna have to meet them out over several years. Dr. Morris. Just for context, rooms A and B at Wildwood and Cracow Farm, excuse me, at Wildwood and Fort River are the rooms where our specialized programs are located, both in the ILC program at Wildwood and some of the building blocks and aims at Fort River. Just for people who are trying to conceptualize where that is, that's not in the quad area, it's over heading towards the cafeteria if you've been in those schools and the nurse area, which you mentioned, but just wanna make and share that as well. Thank you. Thanks for your ask. So I'm gonna follow up, actually, because Mr. Nakajima's question was related to one that I had as well, and it was also following up in our last conversation here in this room about beginning the planning process for the longer range work that needs to get done, the stuff that I think I believe you had mentioned, bids for contracts often may start in the fall for the following summer because people are just so busy. So I think I'd like to put a finer point on requesting from the superintendent and from Mr. Roy Clark that I think our next meeting September 17th is actually quite packed at this point, but perhaps the following one would be a good opportunity for this committee to hear with a little bit more detail about when we began the bidding process because I think there's, just in terms of our town budgeting process, what this committee needs to be aware of, and if we need to take votes on anything like that, we certainly wanna have enough time to do that. So if that's amenable to Dr. Morris and Mr. Roy Clark, I think it would make sense, and if the committee agrees, would make sense for us to hear that in our meeting in October. Mr. Roy Clark. I think that's a good idea. Originally I was thinking that we could wait, afford to wait until we hear from December about our SOI, but I think you're right, I think we need to jumpstart that whole process. Yeah, I think we need to hear a little sooner because regardless, we've been saying this for a while now, regardless of what happens with the MSBA, SOI process, a lot of these projects still have to get done. We just can't wait any longer, and especially because we know that they're impacting students and staff and teachers and others. Mr. Nakajima. Just seemingly to another question. So are you thinking that if we get into the SOI, you would not do some of these more heavy-duty renovations of Wildwood before ever, for example? I think that's a question that we have to ask. One of the repairs you'll note has three options, almost, let's see, was that Wildwood? No, it was Crocker Farm. I was gonna say, I remember seeing three options for Crocker, but no. Yeah, Crocker Farm had three options, so that would not be factored into that process. So sorry, I was thinking that was Wildwood. Yeah, no, I think that if we're looking at long-term capital planning, and we're seeing that we're gonna be able to take care of these outdoor issues over a period of, say, three years, that would inform the decision-making process and the prioritization one way. And if we think that we can't do it, we need eight years to raise the money to do it, then that might change how we approach it. But if, so, thank you. So it strikes me, then, if when we're putting together bid documents and sort of the planning, then if one could do it in a sort of a modular way in which you had components that included Wildwood before ever, that could be either put in or taken out based on, because my guess is, even if you were developing those documents, you can get everything, I mean, do all of the work, have everything absolutely ready to go, and then either hit it after that point or do some revision to the bid document. That would be my first choice, because it's the most efficient way to organize the documentation. I think, in my mind, this point, the biggest priority is the walkways around the school, getting the kids to the playgrounds and from the playgrounds has been what I've heard a lot about, a lot of concern about, and I've heard less concern from folks. It doesn't mean that it's not an issue, but I've heard less concern about the slope of the parking lot is three degrees too great and we need to level a space out. So I think that will also inform how we go ahead with the decision making process. Any other questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Dunling. I guess just procedurally, I'm still wondering on this list of things that could be done this year, are the superintendent, Mr. Roy Clark, looking for a formal or informal support from the committee for some or all of these items? I'm not kind of clear on what we're, exactly what we're doing. If that's the case, I guess I would want a little more info from the principals, administrators, staff who use that background. You know, it's a large investment, but to Mr. Nakajima's point, we have to balance this capital in a very precise manner. And so, but we want to invest and make these buildings better for kids. So, sleep with that. Yeah, that was my question as well. My last question for Dr. Morris, I think we just need some clarity about what our next steps are here. Yeah, so there's not a formal note that's a vote, excuse me, that's required. These are capital items that were approved as ADA updates at the discretion of Mr. Roy Clark. And that being said, we wanted to see if there were questions or feedback from the committee before we went forward. So it doesn't require a formal vote of the committee, but I think if the conversation to me has been generative and we'll have Mr. Roy Clark and I will have things to chew on later this week. But I think if these projects aren't starting in the next three, four days. So if the committee does have thoughts or there's additional questions, we would be very interested in hearing them. But we at least wanted to lay out the priorities in the direction that we're planning to head in. Enter that both publicly as well as with the committee so that if there is feedback that we were able to receive it prior to starting the work. Okay, well, thank you again, Mr. Roy Clark. We'll look forward to a second presentation in October in our meeting to discuss a little bit more about some of the longer range planning for this. Thank you very much. Thank you all for your time. Equipment for you, Sherry. Thank you. Next item on the agenda is dual language update. And Dr. Morris. Sure. We have some guests here as well. We do. So schools are, education's an interesting operation and that things never operate slowly, but they seem to accelerate at hyperbolic speeds as we get to the beginning of the school year. And I think this is actually a good example of the changes that we make and how we try to be flexible as we're making them. So as the school committee knows, Monday, yesterday afternoon, we sent a presentation giving demographics of the school, which is in the packet. So anyone here wants to follow along in the agendas on our website. And then yesterday afternoon, we got word that one family member, one family who was slated to be part of the program is moving and the other one is opting to stay in their current school that they're in. So our numbers went down of Spanish speaking or bilingual students in the dual language program. So I'm getting into the specifics to frame it because I think one of the things that we continue to learn in all areas, but particularly areas like this, which is new with the Cominantes program, is that we try to draw things up. We try to make procedures that'll work. And then we also have to be flexible in our thinking to understand that we're not making widgets. This is based on lots of factors that are outside of our control. And so what we hope to do tonight is to share an update of where we are and that this is kind of memorializing the memo that you received today and is in the back of the room for anyone to follow along. Where we are today, what our current numbers are and two recommendations that we'd like to make to gather the feedback of the school committee, particularly around the enrollment. And there's a whole lot of wonderful things we could have talked about or could talk about in terms of the curriculum work. Some of this is going on this week and having kind of the partner teachers working together and fine-tuning the critical work of how do we welcome students in this new program. And there's been incredible amounts of work. And I want to thank Ms. Chamberlain as well as Ms. Richardson who's here tonight for that work and the staff who spent a lot of their summer working on this program. And we wanted to bring you the most relevant piece which was actually some critical challenges that we're facing right now as it relates to enrollment and decisions that we're making about what we want the program to look like. So with that, I'll turn it to Ms. Richardson, the slide deck until we can maybe, again, we're trying to do screen list tonight. So we're seeing how this goes. Maybe we'll go back to screens, but I heard a good phrase which was we're all, there's an acronym and I'm gonna mess it up, but we have constant partial attention, CPA. As we enter our world with our phones and our screens. So I have mine up because it's a reminder for later, but I'm gonna close it. But we're trying to talk through, again, the enrollment issues. So I think Ms. Richardson is gonna share an enrollment update, what our numbers are, two recommendations and we'd like to have some robust dialogue with the committee as we make decisions in the next couple of days. Great, thank you. Hello, welcome. Thanks for having me. So I won't, I'll kind of give the overview. You have the information in front of you. As we've reported earlier, there were extensive outreach efforts throughout, well, the whole school year really, but especially into the spring. And those are listed on the first slide. Those included outreach in various areas, the community, bilingually, through various community partners and spaces. So where we landed when we put this together is detailed on the second slide, which outlines that we had the way that our four enrollment groups were set up, the first and second group were Spanish speaking or bilingual families, students and families. And group three and four were, I'm sorry, group three and four were the English speakers, but the clarification between who was zoned for Fort River versus who was zoned for Crocker and Wildwood, right? Between one and two, three and four. So we did have, as of our April enrollment timeline, we had 19 students that were in group three. We opened one seat at that time via the lottery. For group four, we added two more English speakers at August 1st per the enrollment policy that we had laid out in the spring with all of you. So where we landed on Monday yesterday was with 15 and 22. And it's important to note that of those 15 Spanish speakers and bilinguals, there's really a range of Spanish language proficiency, and so we just need to be aware of that when we think of kind of the continuum of bilinguals and who's really in our community, many of our families experience English in the community, right, or at preschool, even though they're speaking Spanish at home, so students really are bilingual more so than what would traditionally be termed English or Spanish dominant. So based on those numbers, the first recommendation is that we originally have been planning with the idea of 20 students in each classroom with a total of 40 students entering into the Cominantes program. We'd like to recommend capping the enrollment of English speakers at this point as 22 is already more than half of the possible seats. So the reasoning there is just around the language balance and based on the recommendations that we've received from experts in the field, from our partners at the Multilingual Association for Bilingual Education who've really worked with us on this policy and given feedback, and other districts that we talk to, just making sure that we really have a good mix so that we can have a two-way partnership between students learning both languages. This does also leave space for additional Spanish speakers to enroll either before school starts, which we know happens. We know that we'll have a flurry of enrollment in the next week or so, and also throughout the year. And we also have smaller kindergarten class sizes at this time, so that's the first recommendation. Shall I go all the way through or do you wanna consider that recommendation first? Let's pause and ask the committee. This is a lot of information also, and we haven't talked about this topic in a little while, so are there any questions from committee at this point about what Ms. Richardson has mentioned? That's okay, we haven't. Mr. Jenling? Yes, but I think these are kinda like related to the multiple issues that are coming up, so I'm just gonna save. I think it might be easier if we, even though it is a lot of information to digest it all and feedback at the end there. Okay. Okay, great. Let's continue. So the final slide that we originally posed as a question for future consideration, I'll lay out the slide and then the updates in the memo. So we raised the question based on our situation this year as to whether there should be an enrollment group for school choice students who are Spanish speakers or come from Spanish speaking families. Our reasoning is really about kids first. So it's thinking about the program and the effectiveness of the program and what we know about the model in terms of dual language. It also comes from the fact that we'd love to see those families who are going to be in our school system anyway benefit from the program. So because of those two factors and knowing that we did have some school choice students this year that our original policy said we would not admit into the program, we wanted to pose that question for future consideration. It's important to note, I think that the regulations would not allow us to use the language criteria to impact school choice enrollment, but that these are students that would have been admitted or were admitted anyway. So the update as Dr. Morris mentioned is just that when we had lost a few students this week we thought, gosh, it gets even more concerning that we really want to have that balance. And of course as an advocate of those students always I kept asking Dr. Morris, can we revisit this question? Can we really look at this and Ms. Chamberlain as well? Just thought we have students who would really benefit that are gonna be here in our schools and it would benefit them and the program. So we wanted to revisit that question with you. We appreciate that it's a really short timeframe and that you didn't have much preview to this question and appreciate your at least considering it with us tonight. So just to clarify, make sure we're crystal clear these are students, what we're talking about are students who have already been admitted into the school choice program. So there's no question that these kids are going to be coming to our schools anyway. We're just asking now if it would be possible for them to be enrolled in the coming out this program. Correct. Okay, Dr. Morris. If it's okay with Ms. Richardson, I'd like to just get into the specifics of what I was hearing from both her and Ms. Chamberlain and my thinking about this as well. 13 is a number that concerns me a bit because if you think of that as six and seven, if you think of two classrooms and we know that in this community, we have a fairly significant transiency. If you look at just our general numbers, we turn over about 10% of our students at the elementary level each year and that's not particular to a population because I've looked at it, they're actually pretty even across populations. So I guess the concern over time is that even if six or seven would be sufficient, which is an arguable point this year, we don't have a lot of kind of planning or backup if some of those students end up, their families move to another community for whatever reason. Certainly for Ms. Richardson and for Mabe, trying to get closer to 50, 50 is always better. And so 11 and six, 11 and seven is, if it could be improved, we would want that. And for me, the shift really from 15 to 13 of students who identified as bilinguals or Spanish speaking was a pretty significant shift in my mind and that balance. As Ms. Richardson and Ms. Ardonna said, these are three students, we currently have three students who are accepted by a school choice. There is no, I'm just gonna put a finer point, I know it's been said, but there is no language criteria for school choice. The only advantage school choice families students have in a lottery is based on siblings. There's no other factors that can be considered. So from I think Ms. Richardson's point of view, and I appreciate her and Ms. Chamberlain for advocating for those students. From my point of view, I think the benefit to the program is just as important, that it's not just about these students and their learning. I think that is 100% important, but it's really about for the program to be successful. Having enough Spanish language models is also critical. And that this wouldn't fill the seats because as Ms. Richardson said, we will get more enrollments and our registrations office has been very busy the last two days. And that'll continue, but this doesn't close off Amherst families who are Spanish speaking from enrolling in the program. There still would be space and seats for students who enroll in the next week to join the program as well. So that's the only other point I wanted to- Or throughout the year. Or throughout the year. We often receive students throughout the year. Mr. Nakajima. So that you ended on the point where I was gonna actually ask the question was. So you're, we're at 13 now for Spanish language models. You're talking about three school choice children who might, presumably we don't know that they'll enroll. You wanna know if they can even offer the enrollment. And that would bring it up to 16. And then I guess the two questions I had were, A, during the course of the year, just starting at this point, how many additional enrollees in kindergarten period? Ten of you don't know about this program. Do we usually get? And how many slots would you say would still be left like numerically, how many would that leave? Cause I'm assuming if we think we're at 15 or 16, you actually have a specific cap in mind of what you'd go up to. I'm just curious. So typically we try to keep our kindergartens in the neighborhood of 20. We've gone up to 22, 23 in my experience. I think we get a little cautious above 21 to be very candid with you. So in terms of Spanish speaking students, even if these students were enrolled, I think safely we have room for four more students who are either bilingual or Spanish speaking. And that'd be on the higher end of what we would expect to get the course of the year. We typically don't have as much transiency mid-year in kindergarten. Some of the other grade levels we just tend to have it more often. Any other questions from the committee? So I have you, Mr. Demling, did you have one? Okay. So I just wanted to, you know, I think a couple of things that I'm thinking about right now. One, obviously this is a new program. And so oftentimes getting something off the ground means that it takes a while for word to get around the community that there's a new program and that we want students and families to enroll in the program, especially when it's kindergarten because they're coming from preschool presumably or other places and are not already in the school system. So it's difficult to get the word out, which we talked about, I think last year, quite a few times just about making sure that we were doing the right kinds of outreach. I'm glad to see that there have been multiple events at Fort River and area preschools. Dr. Morris and both you, Ms. Richardson, spoke quite a bit about that last year as well. Going to the area preschools, reaching out to families where they live, inviting them to come to the school and having, you know, so these networking events so they could learn more about the program. That's all great. At the same time, I'm also wondering if, you know, maybe it's worth having another push for students because again, given how, you know, word gets lost, people aren't necessarily paying attention. If it is worth, I think it's worth. I'm asking you if you think it's worth, you know, reaching out and doing another round of intensive promotion and, you know, and push to try to get additional families to come. I think to Mr. Nakajima's point about the numerically the number of students and slots that we have left, you know, I think after the cap of 22 students, and I'm actually in favor of capping the English speaking students, I think for all reasons that you've mentioned before and that we heard from Mabe, it absolutely makes sense for us to try to keep that 50-50 balance if at all possible. And it sounds like it more or less is possible here that we keep that capped, especially in the first couple of years, I think, you know, as we offer more opportunity for Spanish speaking students to join the program, that hopefully that'll help boost, you know, the word about what's going on and why we're running this program the way that we are. But that still leaves us with just 18 slots. And so, you know, I think given the numbers where we are now, I would hope that we are able to hold or set aside if, you know, if we do actually end up moving in favor of school choice and allowing school choice students, those three students to enroll in this program, that we're able to set aside and hold, you know, it sounds like we have probably about three spaces left, maybe four, four of those additional students. And, you know, given our kindergarten class sizes, it seems like something we should be able to do and hopefully in the next, you know, few weeks or so so that we can actually get them at the start of the school year and not wait until the year has progressed too far. But it is a little worrisome that we don't quite have the numbers that we had hoped for given the population that we know we have here in Amherst. And I'm sure, again, there's various reasons for that. But I do think it's worth us going back out and, you know, doing a more concerted push to try to get those students to come to the program. Mr. Demling, and Dr. Morse, is there something you wanted to respond to immediately? Yeah. And then Mr. Demling. Just very briefly. So one other data point that we didn't put in the presentation, but in terms of groups one and two students, either students, wherever they live in Amherst, Fort River or Crock Farmer Wildwood, who self-identified as group one or two, 13 of the 14 students who identified as such registered for the program. So I think it's not to disagree with the point that a push, we need to do that push, but I think that's a relevant data point just to share with the committee as well. Thank you. Mr. Demling. So I agree with almost everything that Chair O'Donnell said, capping the number of English speakers for reasons that have been well-sighted. Doing the additional concerted push, it never ceases to amaze me whenever I try and do anything publicly-facing in terms of trying to get the word out. You can fall over yourself with 800,000 things and you still run into people and say, oh, I had no idea you were. So I think that's something that we could do. It does sort of raise another interesting question of what if a parent of a kindergartner early on in the school year learns of the program or decides, you know what, I think I actually would like my child in that program. Would we allow just in the kindergarten year, mid-year transitions? We haven't talked about that. And then last about, we to allow school choice, Spanish speakers into the program. My personal feeling is yes, specifically because, so we're not violating any philosophy of the school choice program as has been repeated. This is not a qualification for the school choice lottery. The Amherst is very competitive. We have way more applicants that we do acceptees. And then just from an educational student standpoint, I think once a school choice student is in our district, they're a first-class citizen of the district. And I can't think of anything else in the district where if you're school choice, you get second crack at something. And so I feel like to honor our commitment to the students who are school choice, once they're in, they're in and they should be treated in the enrollment rules just like any other Spanish speaker not attending Fort River. But technically, once you're in school choice, you're not zoned into a particular school, right? And you may be closer to one. But so to me, they sort of logically design philosophy-wise, fit into that group too. And so I think it fits within the philosophy of how the program's been set up. Thank you, Mr. Demling. Before Mr. Naga, do you mind if Mr. McDonald, is there anything that you wanna add to this or any questions? Only that, I sort of echo and agree and thank you for clarifying and reminding us about the enrollment that we've had to date of groups one and two because that was my recollection that I was gonna ask that question to. So said another way, we've received probably close to 100% of kindergartners in the district that would qualify as group one or two have enrolled in this program. So the question is how many more might we expect to see throughout the school year? I also support the cap on the English speaking students for all of the reasons other folks have cited as well as the school choice for the same reasons and putting them in that group too. I think that makes good sense for, again, I don't see them as second-class citizens once they've become students within the district, they're gonna be there anyway. And it benefits the program. So I think that that was, I would echo Mr. Demling's question about the ability for students, particularly in groups one or two, that change, that sort of decide midway through the year or partway through the year, how might we address the question or request to move into the program or that to come up midway through the year? Thank you. Mr. Nakajima, did you still have a comment? I have a question. Is there an answer to that question? Did you hear? Yeah. Question? Sure, so my sense is that if we have Spanish speaking families that are moving to the district, that they would be offered enrollment. So that could be moving from a neighboring town. It could be moving from another country. It could be, so I think the only ones that I'm not sure about would be if there were a family that opted not in the beginning of the year that was in that group, but I don't, assuming there's space, I don't see why we wouldn't. Certainly it'd be a conversation of just the student needs and the program fit and all of that, what was the change in decision? But I think it would certainly be on the table. Thank you. So yeah, thank you. I guess one question I had is if we're gonna move in the direction of sort of adopting a policy around school choice students, I'm just curious, when do we know we have school, when's the lottery for school choice? And how does that relate to the signups in the lottery for this? I mean, I'm not really concerned for this year entirely. I mean, because I think right now the challenge, I think this goes back to the issue of whether there's just like one more push that can be done is I would hate to have a family somehow sign up their kid, to register their kid. They would benefit and enjoy the program. They, yes, they got in late, but it's actually before the school year begins, so it's not like they've violated some iron law or something, right? And it would stink if we sort of maxed out the enrollment and they weren't able to get in somehow. So the push would be great. I guess since you're asking, I'll ditto the notion that I think that we should cap the English language models and the enrollees. I also think it'd be great to find a place for the school choice students, but I'm just curious on a going forward basis, how does that sequence line up? Because even though I don't think school choice students are second class students in any way, I also do think that if you live in this town and you're planning to raise a family in this town and you're looking forward to this program, you just wanna know how are these things sorting themselves out. I particularly like the idea that if school choice, I particularly like the idea that in situations like this where we're below one of the enrollments and we want to offer it as something to school choice students and that's a wonderful thing to do, I'd hate to see it, I shouldn't say never, right? Why say never? I would hate to see a situation though where someone who'd moved, the family that had moved to this town and planned on raising a family and we're really looking forward to this, could otherwise have gotten into the program but for that reasoning. But I'm just interested in the timing. So our school choice lottery is June 1st each year. So how that sequence is for a number of people mentioned sort of like the group two idea would be that we capture for Amherst students many of those numbers in our registration period in March and April. But if this year is any indication, if we don't necessarily max out at our 20, we'll have that information in early June, which would be helpful. The challenge of course is that we don't always know, so the lottery happens June 1st, but we don't make all the decisions on how many students we're taking, that is actually a rolling process because in this community last year being a really good example, we thought we had solid numbers and then we had a much higher summer enrollee period than we had and in hindsight it worked out but we were concerned at this time of the year we're gonna need to open another section of kindergarten because of the number of choice enrollees. Ironically this year the opposite trend happened where maybe our outreach was so good in general, so much better and not just because the dual language program I think was a subsidiary of the outreach that we had a much higher enrollment than we've had in March and April and actually we've had a much slower summer of enrollments than we've had in years past. So June 1st we know the number but that when students get admitted happens on a rolling basis because we often, we'll take a couple in June and then we look back in early July, see what our numbers are and actually even look back in early August and see what our numbers are because we just wanna be cautious not tipping the balance and ever having to add a teacher because of accepting more choice students than there are seats for because the commitment we've made as we entered and become a choice district. So I just wanna state the obvious here. I think we're having two sort of simultaneous conversations or decisions if you will, the committee has been asked to make. One is capping at the 22 students which it seems like the committee is in agreement that that is a wise thing to do given what we've talked about before with the program and what we had agreed were the goals of this program. I think the second one, the request for the school choice students those extra three students, this came very last minute today. I mean this was a memo that was prepared just today and I understand this is a decision that you've been struggling with and that information is coming very quickly and changing almost day by day as you're counting the registrations. However, this feels like it should be a committee vote given the fact that it is a policy that will impact students potentially even in the future. And so I just wanna share that back with the committee to see where you are and thinking about this if this feels like a vote that you could take today. And if not, we sort of have to have a conversation about how we would wanna handle that. Ms. McDonald. So just to clarify, I think I'm here and just to play back what you just said, Ms. Ordonez, is that we're thinking that we have three decisions tonight? One. Two. So could we split maybe question two into two A and two B? What do you think? Which would be the question about the number of English-speaking students, the question of this year's school choice students and the question of sort of ongoing school choice for future? I would rather not deal with the future question. I feel like this is something that the committee would definitely have to bring back in a more formal agenda and really think about long range. Just if that makes sense to the committee, I appreciate your question, but I also feel that this is one of those things that we need some time to process. Ms. McDonald. So the question about the second decision is purely about what to do for this year and does not impact future discussion about school choice in general? Right, although I think practically speaking, what I was referencing before is just that that'll have an impact just how the committee votes or decides on this issue. Mr. Nakajima, did you have a comment? Yeah, one of the reasons I started to get into the mechanics of the sequencing of future school choice lotteries was my precise worry that by making a seemingly simple decision about three probably wonderful children who get a wonderful opportunity to get a great education, it seems like a nice and good thing to do, that you're suddenly making a much more sophisticated decision for out years that you'd stop and say, is there anything I don't know that I should be, I mean is there a question I should have asked hadn't even thought of what the question would be yet. And so which would be problematic, I think. I guess the only, I guess this has been asked, but I just feel like asking it again. I take it you're putting a high probability on there not being sufficient additional interest from Spanish speaking children and families either over the next few weeks or even at an appropriate point where they'd be transferring in where we're precluding the opportunity of them of being able to choose the program. So there's currently only one student in groups one and two who's not enrolled in the program. So I don't want to minimize the one, that's one child, that's one family, but in terms of quantifying it, it's not, I think we have space. I'm sorry, Dr. Morris just very quickly because this came up already a couple of times. Can you please clarify how we identified those 14 students? I think that might help this conversation a little bit. Yep, so the family self identified the language skills of their students, of their children, excuse me, on a continuum of bilingualism ranging from speaking only English to speaking only Spanish or speaking only, Miss Richards is better at describing this, but it's not a, we have more than two languages in our district. So I apologize for my error, but what languages are spoken and what their proficiency was in English and Spanish in particular, it's the more relevant languages for this particular program. And so they filled that out on a continuum. We did have a screening and we did, the Fort River actually screened some additional students this morning, I think that was this morning. So we do have some additional information, but with the primary mechanism we use is parents describing what languages are spoken at home and if this children are in a preschool environment what language is spoken at the preschool and utilized. And so I do feel like with at least four seats still vacant for Spanish speakers, that's gonna be sufficient for the demand based on past experience. We can't guarantee that we won't have seven Spanish speaking students enroll in the district in the next two months, but that would be atypical for the trends that we see over time. Thank you. Right, also the clarification that over time if we do have English speaking families leave, obviously we're hoping we won't because we've asked really that folks are committed and excited about being in the program because that's when we see the benefit, but I think life happens and so we will likely see that over time that in first grade say there's still that wiggle room where things could shift. So we expect to have space. Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Demling. I move to allow. I move to allow enrollment of Spanish speakers, bilinguals admitted through school choice into the dual language program. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Okay, it's been moved and seconded. Before we take a vote, I do just wanna give a committee a moment more in case there are any additional questions or anything that pops up. It is a fairly significant consideration for the district to think about this and I think my concerns are for any inadvertent actions that we might be taking at this point. I think we wanna make it very clear that this is only for this school year and that this topic will be brought back as Ms. McDonald just raised earlier to this committee for further discussion and sort of long-term policy making but for this year in particular given the fact that this is a brand new program and we're still trying to figure all this out that we are considering right now making sort of an exception for bringing in these additional Spanish-speaking students who have already been school-choiced in. So any further questions, comments, clarification from the committee before we vote? Okay, all those in favor? It's unanimous. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you and thank you for your consideration of the issue and not the timeline we typically do business and it just, this was an evolving, I mean we had two students registered. The flip side of the two students that unregistered so to speak was that on Friday we had two students registered. So our numbers went from 13 to 15 to 13 in the span of like one business day and that's the nature of our work but we really appreciate your flexibility and support in making the program what we wanted to match our vision of it. So thank you. I think in a small town, relatively small district also these changes can be felt magnified in such a stark way. I do wanna say that I think we should think about bringing this back to the committee sooner rather than later in this year. Probably before the budget season starts just so that we can have any impact conversations around school choice and all of that give the committee enough time to discuss that and also just to hear how it's going. Sure, absolutely. I think we had written into the enrollment plan that we would be revisiting this every year so we'll certainly think more with all of you about that. Great, thank you, Dr. Morris. I had loosely pegged it in for October to give the program a chance to get started but also to start that conversation as you said before the budget process gets going. If that's agree, I mean we can talk about that in the future but that's in my loose sketch when we were gonna come back with a bit of an update. Great, I see nodding heads in the committee so October sounds like a good timeline. Okay. Thank you. Thank you so much. Have a great night. Next time on the agenda is goals for the year discussion. I feel like we need, we have to kind of explain a little bit more what this means, a little enigmatic. Dr. Morris. Yeah, so much like in some other committees I work for, what I'd hope to do tonight was to share some very high level areas that I plan to write goals in to gather feedback from the committee and then come back at the September meeting with specific goals for you all to discuss weigh in on and potentially vote on but earlier in the process and before I started more formally drafting I look back at the conversation last spring at the agenda that you just voted the minutes of at the beginning of this meeting as well as my thinking moving forward of major initiatives that we have in the year. So these aren't written as goals, they're written as sort of buckets that goals might go into and what I'm looking for tonight is feedback on these on target, are there gaping holes or something I'm sharing perhaps important but not goal worthy so to speak and am I missing something that's really crucial from the committee's point of view so that I can gather that feedback tonight come back in a month or less than a month actually with more specific goals for your consideration. Is that set a framework that's helpful for the discussion? Sure. So I want to be clear that some there were some topics mentioned last at that meeting in June that are reflected in kind of these buckets and some that I feel like are agenda topics but not necessarily goal areas. So homelessness is an example of something that I didn't consider right or I considered but I didn't end up putting as a primary bucket and it's absolutely something that committee should be discussing. But so the four areas I had one you heard about tonight actually two you heard about tonight one is facilities. So that's a twofold. One is on the current capital plan and condition of the buildings and the other one is if we are indeed fortunate enough to be accepted into the MSBA program getting that project off started with the town in a collaborative way with the larger community. That's certainly critical to the minds of many in our stakeholder groups and of staff families and larger community members. The second was something that was mentioned in the spring which was developing models and increasing preschool access across the town. So I think as you remember there was a budget item added last year about developing models. We've done some work this summer but that's something that again, frankly we've talked about many times over the past few years and we wanna get to a place this year where we're getting concrete on what models you all could consider and look at along with the town council because I don't actually don't see this as only a school's perspective. This is a community need and I appreciate the town and partnering with us on this work. The third area you heard about was dual language. The coming on this program, I'm starting to shift my language so that I stop saying dual language and talk about coming on this but about the program evaluation and what adjustments are needed over time. So we talked about enrollment tonight but which is critical but even more critical is what's the student family experience? What's the outreach experience not about just getting in the program what connections are families making and what do we need to do as the program doubles in size next year? So that seemed like a critical area to write a goal about. And the last one we spent a lot of time last year talking about school improvement plans not just for Fort River although we spent a lot on that but at Crocker Farm and Wildwood and so I was considering writing a goal on updating what evidence there is about progress on those school improvement plans and identifying course corrections because as you remember there were multi-year plans but any multi-year plan needs to make course corrections as it goes. So I'd like to bring to the committee multiple times this year updates on the school improvement plans data along with that so that you're at the end of last year we heard all the plans it's not this thing that's on paper that actually just comes back once a year and says how's it going but it's actually much more connected to the work of my work with them. I'm defining my work so some of this is coming from me not just the committee but that's a core component of every supervision meeting I have this year is going over the school improvement plan what's the data, how are we doing and I'd like to mimic that actually at the committee level so that the committee and the community gets updates on these accepted plans moving forward. So those are the four areas that I was intentionally stating them not as goals but those are the four buckets of work that I was thinking would be good to write goals about. There's a whole host of other things that certainly open to but I'd love to get feedback from the committee on your thoughts on that. Great, thank you Dr. Morris. So I think at this point it probably makes sense to go around the room we've done this pretty much every year if that's helpful to you Dr. Morris just to hear from every committee member and of course they don't have to be super well formed thoughts but hopefully drawing from previous conversations that we've had can help you and orienting you in thinking about this. So I'm gonna start from Mr. Nakajima and I will skip myself and then just go that way. Okay, thanks. Can I ask a question first? Sure. So you talked last, sorry, the end of the previous, it's like what, eight weeks ago, oh, 10 weeks ago, whenever it was. Lifetime ago. Yeah, I know, I was gonna say last spring and I'm like, what am I talking about? You talked about your desire to get into the buildings more and observe more and I'm curious since I recognize that's kind of a professional goal or a personal goal, we're trying to figure out, does that desire or objective fit in some way that is materialized and how you're gonna write these goals or how are you thinking of that or did you change your mind? Great question. So I'm actually seeing that as directly connected to how I'd write this goal around school improvement plans or strategic plans, however you know the different terminology that it's one thing to get updates and get data, it's another thing to be in the building and literally seeing what's happening as it relates to the plan. So for me, my supervision and being in the buildings more often is directly connected to the goals laid out by the schools. So that's how I was, I saw the through line of articulation there. That is a great answer. So I'll go really rapidly then. I like the four goals that you have. They line up obviously with major topics, I think it's fairly obvious we want to follow through on so that they make complete sense in that regard. But a topic that I know people care about but I don't know how you'd ever fit it in is this question of what we're doing with math and math instruction and sort of the transitions in math. I realize that could cross committees but I'm not trying to, I'm saying sixth grade was part of that. So that could be fit in somewhere else on our agenda or our goals but I think that's critical not to get lost. And then the other, the question, I guess it's more of a question for you is are there wellness, every year we talk about wellness and I feel like, and forgive me but I said this at the end of the year and it was in the evaluations. Every year I feel like we don't make strategic enough progress on the subject of wellness and maybe this will come up in goals for another committee or for the whole district or something. You know the whole districts but I like these four but I'm curious, are there topics in or some broad themes around wellness that you think we should be addressing? At that level. Dr. Morris. Yeah, there are. I think if you look back and I don't mean to flip about it but if you look at the school improvement plans they do include wellness aspects and so what I think I hear from your comment and the nodding heads of the committee members as you were saying is school improvement plans aren't necessarily not every goal may be met equally in terms of attention focus but that the wellness goals that are laid out in the school improvement plans may have a higher more significant weight than the others but as for me, I was going back to those plans and saying there's a lot in here on wellness and how can that be perhaps further emphasized in my supervision work as well as what comes to the committee. Okay. Ms. McDonald. I also agree that I think these four buckets make good sense. The thing that I'm sort of noodling in my head is some of these are much bigger in meteor than the others, right? So the bucket number one facility is you have two potentially two very, very big and meaty sort of sub goals in that bucket and likewise with the school improvement plan as you just mentioned, so that's three schools each with different priorities and so that. So I would, as you begin to flesh out the goals for the year, I think having some sense of sort of how big each one of these are and that they're not sort of equivalent necessarily. I mean, they're all on the plan so obviously they're all priorities but I think right sizing them will be important. Mr. Demling. So I'd be kind of a contrarian here. I like all the content of the goals. The sort of focus point I'm trying to balance is what's appropriate for a superintendent district level goal when, so when we have the Caminante's program evaluation and the school improvement plan for Parkland Wildwood, those are building specific things, right? The evaluation and the evolution of the dual language program isn't going to be directly worked on by the staff at Crocker or at Wildwood. So these are things that are already being worked on at the building level and then there are initiatives that only a few people in the district and most prominently yourself have the ability to cross all buildings and pull some sort of weave together of strategies that can affect these things and by the way, I'm not saying don't support the school improvement plan, right? But we're talking about what's the most effective structuring of your initiatives. There's another, we're gonna be talking about should sixth grade move to the middle school, which is a collaborative effort with other committees, but it's certainly going to be a big, big topic of our committee this year. I don't think that necessarily has to be a goal. It could be if you wanted to, but that's to say, just because it doesn't make the goals list doesn't mean it's not gonna have your priority attention at some point over the school year. That was just sort of my general observation on that. In terms of details, definitely the facilities deserves that kind of top level focus. In terms of the MSBA, I think the thought as we approach December 11th, the day we hear back from the MSBA, I think that the focus has to be on what is the action plan immediately following in either case. I think not to deliberate this, but I think it is an interesting question and a serious question that our district will have to face is if we don't get in again, given everything we did this year to try and get in, what's the plan going forward? Are we endlessly going to do this? Or is there, if emergency break lasts, that we have to seriously start thinking about and having that broader conversation with the town and the community? I don't know, but in either case, that's good to have that on there as a high level goal. So yes, there's that. So in terms of wellness, I have the same feeling about wellness that I feel like we give it a lot of airtime and there are definitely lots of initiatives that relate to wellness. And I think any given year you could take a number of goals and say, hey, look, we checked the wellness box, but without a sort of a captivating kind of high level strategic driver that gets top billing, I think it's a little hard to gather attention and initiative. It's like one possible way, and this is, I'm not saying this has to be a goal, but just one possible way I thought of framing it is, when we think about kids coming to our district with increasing levels of anxiety and trauma and food insecurity and those sort of base level needs, but it's really hard to focus on your academics when those aren't taking care of that, that Maslow's hierarchy of needs. And so we have that going on. And then we also have, so there's kind of like an onboarding issue, right? Kids come into our district, we want them ready to learn, and yet there's lots of issues that we need to find support with. There's also related to the anxiety theme of kids not able to harness their attention in a calm, balanced way. Increasing anxiety, issues with technology, where the philosophy of early childhood education might be getting a little too away from that joy, that play, that exploration. And when we talk about these themes in very high levels, it gets a lot of resonance in the community. But we should minimize testing, that the kids should be there to play, that we should be supporting that. And yet we don't have a specific strategic thread that's tying that from all of our, say, kindergarten and first grades, you know? And so maybe some sort of a early childhood working group that would focus on that, and that would therefore bring staff and parents from all the buildings. That's the kind of thing I think I want to think about, a district goal that might be able to meet these sort of emerging needs that we don't yet have a really good set of tools to be dealing with, so. Just to prove for thought. So I don't want to repeat things that have been said before. I think the four goals make sense. What I am looking for is I've mentioned to you before is continuity. And thinking that there's always room for us to continue to improve. And once we have set down a path for where we want to continue to focus our attention, that we should continue focusing our attention on that. And we should continue looking for ways that we can improve on that. So I think all of these make absolute sense. They are absolutely in alignment with where the committee has been past few years. And I think where you have also been, Dr. Morris, as well as your staff. I think that the only layer that I would add on top of this is just in thinking through about how we continue to improve communication throughout the community. Specifically I think for you and how you continue to be out there. And that is not to say that I actually don't see the work that has gone on. I think the window into ARPs. I think the numerous newsletters that you send out during the course of the year. The columns that appear in the Gazette, all those things are good. The appearances that you make at different events. However, I think we keep hearing from the community, there are certain members of the community that perhaps either because they are not present at some of those events or don't use the tools that we typically would rely on for these kinds of communications, they may not be hearing from you. And I think even more importantly, may not have a chance to actually speak to you or share their thinking with you as well. And I mean you capital Y, right? Not just you necessarily in every single one of those meetings. But I think having that concerted effort to ensure that that dialogue is engaged throughout the community and that people are hearing from our schools or hearing from our administrators and they're hearing from you and have an opportunity to provide that input and feedback is critically important. So I would definitely want to hear more about that and continue to look for that. And it may be embedded in these other points. I'm conscious of the fact that you also superintendent of several districts, not just one. And so every time we start adding all these different bullet points, by the end of the evaluation process, we're talking about a couple dozen. So we don't want to get there, but I do think looking for opportunities to embed these things and it sounds like you're already thinking about that as you mentioned with the school improvement plans or what I prefer to call strategic plans, is part of the way. And I also just want to again emphasize, you mentioned this already, but I just want to emphasize it again about data collection and making sure that we are gathering information as we go along about how we're doing so that we're not continuing to repeat past mistakes and that we are actually bringing back that information to the community and to this committee for decision-making, critically important for us to be able to decide whether or not the policies that we're implementing here actually make sense and if they're having an impact. So I will be looking for that, I think, in your goals, just to understand how data collection plays a role in the work that's going on in the district. And again, not just you, but capital U, it's all of your staff and everyone because it is very important to be able to see what our progress is and see where the holes are too, quite frankly, because we know they exist. So, okay, any further questions or comments for Dr. Morris on the goals? Okay, thank you, Dr. Morris. So we can look forward to seeing a rough outline of this next meeting, perhaps, September 17th? Absolutely. Okay, great, thank you. Okay, so before we adjourn, I just want to run through a couple of under new and continuing business, some of the themes or topics that we've heard folks raise, one of them has been repeated a couple of times here during this meeting is on homelessness. We want to make sure that we make some room during our upcoming year's agendas to discuss homelessness and what we could be doing for homeless population here in Amherst that we know exists and providing more supports. I think we also talked about math update, which was something that we had agreed at our last meeting, I believe, or maybe the second to last meeting during last year, that we wanted to hear a little bit more about. And I think primarily from the study, but also just some of the work that's going on with the individual schools around this. And then the other thing that I also wanted to, again, highlight is that on September 17th, we are having a joint meeting with the town council to just discuss where we are regarding a number of different issues. And then we're also going to be including the Crocker Farm expansion study on that as well. Any other issues from the committee for the upcoming agendas, Mr. Demling? I think we need a final update from the Fort River Feasibility Committee to get that process finalized. We talked about that at the end of this meeting. That's the September 17th meeting. I'm sorry. I wasn't clear. I don't see any agenda. Yeah, yeah. Has it been sent out? It has not been sent out yet. No, that's why it was here. There's a lot of things off the checkbox list here. We talked at both the end of last year about breakfast after the bell and how there was interest in expanding that. But we need to be cautious about facilities management and yet this is something that was a net add financially and obviously value-wise. So that's something that you're interested in hearing. And potential advocacy action item. So the education, big education bill, potential for a big education bill I should say at the State House has been pushed off this fall. There may be opportunities for us to engage with our representatives and or to engage the community for late pushes on that. There seems to be these calls to contact the Joint Committee on Education. And we've been told over the course of the last year that Amherst is a louder than average community, more engaged than average when it comes to state advocacy, which is a good thing. And so we have that opportunity that might be something that I think about. Thank you, Mr. Deming. Mr. Nagan, do you have any? I think you captured the topics I'm interested in. I'm really interested in math and actually as we discussed it, how that continuing to understand how that relates to other committees or other levels of the school district. But I think on the advocacy piece, one of the things I'd like to see us do too is maybe get some good. I mean, if we're gonna do that, rather than just doing it purely from the advocacy side of, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, let's send the letters, I'd actually love it if we could start previewing what we think the budgetary impact would be of different legislative bills or approaches, particularly because one of the things that, I mean, we've discussed, is that depending on what bill or what formula has passed, it may help other school districts amazingly well. It may not actually help the Amherst School District all that much. And I'm just saying, one of the things we should be thinking about doing is not only advocating, but advocating specifically, literally on the behalf of our district while we're also helping support other districts. And that may be two different, two complementary, but different things. Thank you, Mr. Drima. Okay, anything else, Dr. Morris, that you can think of that you wanna, okay. So I think we've got a pretty full site. Yeah, so just, I think I just wanna, what I have for September at the moment is that the consultants who were, the architects on the Fort River Feasibility Study will come and present, and that's the joint part of the meeting. I know you've said this, I just wanna be stated. That's okay. I didn't state it very clearly, so thank you. It's not, the whole meeting won't be a joint meeting, but that one will be, that agenda item will be joined with the Town Council. I'll come back with more refined goals, or goals, today's where I'm really goals, they were goal areas. We'll have a discussion of the Crocker Farm Study and I'll have more information from the Town Manager at that point. But I just wanted to clarify that those were the primary topics for the September meeting as it stands now. Great, and of course, if there are additional topics or issues the committee would like to hear about, we can please feel free to send them to me and or Dr. Morris and we'll try to add them to the agenda. Dr. Morris? I know we're getting towards adjourning, but I wanna actually note, and I should have done when Mr. Roy Clark was here, so I wanna think, there was a conversation before about the Fort River portable rental chiller system, and so it was moved to behind Fort River on a Friday afternoon. I happened to be at Fort River that afternoon and happened to be for recreational purposes at Fort River that the following Saturday morning at 10 o'clock and the fencing was already done, so our facility staff recognized that it wasn't particularly a safe thing and we didn't have that much advanced notice when they were delivering it and they worked from six to 11 on a Saturday morning, mid-summer to make sure the fencing was up to make sure that it was a safe environment. So I just wanna emphasize the point of how much work our Facilities Department does over the summer and it's not just during typical working hours, so. I neglected to say that earlier. I've already think that's different, but I wanna let the committee and the community know that safety is the highest priority and appreciate our staff for doing that. Great, thank you, Dr. Morris. Okay, I will take a motion. Moved to adjourn. Thank you, do I have a second? Second. All right, all those in favor? Thank you very much, we are adjourned.