 So seeing a presence of a quorum, calling the meeting of the Amber School Committee to order at 6.05 p.m., just a quick announcement for the committee that Mr. Nakajima will not be joining us tonight. So we're it. We only have a couple of items on the agenda for tonight. One quick housekeeping. The agenda says that we're gonna be approving minutes of February 26th, but actually we'll be doing that at our meeting on Monday, the 11th. We don't have minutes for tonight. There's been a lot of meetings lately, so a lot of minutes that have to be drafted and prepared. So we're gonna bring that back next week. So moving on to first order of real business, committee announcements. Do we have any announcements from the committee tonight? And we also have public comment. So if there's anyone here that wants to make any comments, please come to the microphone. You have three minutes to speak and please announce yourself. I'm Drew Battle, community member. I'm a little concerned about, I wasn't at some of these talks and listening things because unfortunately it conflicts with other things and that's the way it happens in a small town. But I have a lot of concerns about the one approach and that's what this is. 600 is scary because 600 will be 700 within two years in a public school. It's been an observation. That's why schools all over the country are going smaller. The point I'm very concerned and people are starting to, I'm finding out, people are speaking for the community of color. There is no spokesperson for the community of color. I've been a community of color for 71 years. I could not speak for the community of color in Amherst. I know most of them and we don't always agree. Okay, we're not a monolith. But as a teacher, retired teacher, Long Island teacher of the year before I retired against 10,000 others. I'm here to say this is, this big is still a big school. I do think we should have been discussing more than one option together. That's one of the reasons I haven't been excited. I didn't want to create a problem but I think we need to, we may not be ready for April. And if this is submitted after you voted on Monday, I think that some of us are going to submit something else saying that this is not a consensus. This is not, it's not that we're trying to block anything. I think we can do three schools doing the other two and I don't think it's gonna take 10 years to do it. Having looked over some of the things, some schools, districts have gotten it in one year or two years or three years. It's not impossible. I just think that we should not, I mean, I'm looking at these things, today's newspaper, the hardness of whatever. I go through some of these schools. My two grandchildren are in Wildwood. I don't see this, okay? I really do not see. I don't mean that it's not, that everything is perfect and pristine but it is not falling apart. They are not dying of disease and all kinds of things and I think we need to really pull back and stop trying to make a deadline that may be impossible to form a consensus that quickly when you're only giving one main example. And that is my objection. Is that I think we need to look at more than one point of view and if not, some of us will probably have to get together and also send something to the Massachusetts School Building Association and say that we still think we'd like to look at other options and how we can work this out. And I'm really very concerned because a school of 600 is a little teeny, teeny bit better than a school of 700 for immigrant children, special needs children, many children of color and white children who just don't fit in to the scope of what a school is. And I'm speaking for them and as an educator of 40 years, I really think bigger is not better. And just because we could have a zero, that would be wonderful but we can make the other schools closer to a zero. It doesn't have to be. And we don't have enough figures to really submit anything, that real figures. And we need to do that. And all that money they spent on Fort River and there's some really good ideas that came out of this. I haven't even finished it all and I'm impressed with that. So I just think that we really need to rethink this whole thing and maybe really have a serious consensus because there's a lot of people that are very unhappy about the lack of more than one model because I think we need to really think it out. And I think the state figured this out because it was not an overwhelming mandate and it's not gonna be again. So just a food for thought for all of you. Yes, my name is Janet McGowan. I'm a parent of two Fort River graduates. I went to two of the listening sessions and I was concerned that there was only one option presented and very little information on that option. There was no information presented on the educational impact of different school sizes and school cohorts or the number of classes per grade. There was no information on how much it would cost. All we were told is we can't do, I mean basically where the group was told we can't fix the three schools because it's too expensive and it'll take too long to fix the two. There was just no numbers and it just seems like a bizarre way to make a decision. There was also people who weren't even told at the sessions that a school was gonna close, one of the either Wildwood or Fort River would close. And so presented with one option that sounded pretty reasonable and very little information was presented. People supported it but people had questions that weren't answered. I twice raised concerns about school size and cohort size because I think smaller schools work better for almost all kids. And Dr. Morris has said that schools of 350 to 450 smaller schools work better for at-risk kids. So that is a piece of information to me that seems important. It was not repeated back to the group. I'm not sure if you received it. The leader of the listening session said this is not like a survey, it's not statistical. It's just the people who came to the meeting or the people who gave opinions based on what they heard. It's not something you could say, oh, we heard X, Y, and Z. The other concern I went is my two listening sessions that there were no people of color there in terms of participants. And I thought that was sort of disturbing. And also sort of showed that there wasn't a real cross-section of the community for whatever reason. But there is a consensus. Everybody wants these Wildwood and Fort River fix. I was just in Fort River today. I would love to see a new roof. Everybody wanted to hear more information and be informed as part of the process. I think most people in our community want to make a decision based on facts and research and discussion. And I really do think we can work closely together. But I think we need to look at three options. I think let's go to the MSBA, say here are the three options we'd like to work on. And we could have a war of options. But looking at the different options, including keeping three small schools, is going to make the decision at the end better. Or people can say, yeah, I really wanted this, but it was too expensive. Or it did cost more, but it was a better value educationally. And you didn't give the community that chance by presenting one option. So I'd like to see a consensus to work together in an open way and move forward, not to kind of cut out people from the conversation from the get-go. Thank you. Thank you. Public comments? OK. Seeing no more public comments, public comments is closed. And we're moving on to the next item on the agenda, which is a conversation about the MSBA statement of interest process. We had this item on the agenda to give the committee an opportunity to reflect on the listening sessions that we've had over the past couple of weeks, and also to give some time for superintendent to talk through some of the things that we've been hearing in the listening session. So Dr. Morris, I'm going to turn it over to you. And then maybe we can go from there. And I'll thank you. There's not a microphone near me, so I'm not sure ever to be able to pick it up. So I don't know if we can show you how it started. Think about it until I start talking. Sorry about that. So I think really there's only two things that I want to talk about that have opened certainly for any questions the committee has. So one is a visual that's both out there and here and on your tables. And one of the things that I was able to attend three of the six listening sessions. That's right. And one of the things that I know came up with the three that I was at was how would a dual language program work within the proposed new building. So we tried to organize it visually because I recognized that a couple of things. One is that unless you're where I was last night with many parents who have entering kindergarten students, they were highly attuned to what dual language programming looked like because they'd been following that process or hearing about it from friends or neighbors. But if you weren't connected to that, you might have read a newspaper article or two, perhaps. But exactly how that cohort feels and looks wasn't necessarily apparent. So I tried to muddle my way through explaining that when it came up at the feedback sessions. But I thought a visual might be more helpful to describe that. So kind of front side looks, since I've said either K5 or K6 just shows how many classes would be in the dual language strand on the left and how many classes would be in the non-dual language strand on the right. And what it's trying to show is that from an educational perspective in terms of cohort, by cohort, I mean groups of students who are sharing teachers who may be in each other's classes from year to year based on which strand they're in and whose teachers are working very closely together, the dual language strand kind of by definition sort of limits that to two classrooms per grade level. Because those two teachers, one teaching in English, one teaching in Spanish, will be sharing groups of students throughout the classes educational experience in elementary school. And then the non-dual language, which again, I hate the terminology for, we're still working and can't come up. I thought it was just clearer on this document. But we described it a little differently last night at the enrollment and registration event shows that there's roughly two to three classes per grade level, which is kind of exactly the size of, the cohort size of our current schools at Wildwood and Crocker Farm and Fort River right now, which all have between two and three, with a couple exceptions in sixth grade right now, classes per grade level. So I just wanted to create a visual, or we wanted to create a visual to show that information. And maybe that would be more clear than some of the terminology that I was using at the sessions. I felt like I was being very jargony. And I tried to intentionally not be that. But I think visual displays sometimes can help with that. So that's one piece I wanted to mention. I think the second piece, oh, I'm sorry. You want me to slip? Yeah, yeah. Do you want to maybe walk through? Sure. Yeah. Because it's actually, yeah. Yeah. Sorry. I think we're not here. That is true. So what you, in looking at it, what you can see is, and I can send this to Amherst Media and perhaps they can put this in the background. You all are so wonderful about that. I'll make a note to myself to do that after the show tonight or the taping. Is in the K to 6 school, like if we're starting at that one, that in the dual language trend, there'd be 14 sections, two sections per grade level and across seven grade levels. And so if you're a student in those grade levels, you'd be in one of two classes that are working collaboratively together all throughout your experience. So you'd be roughly having half the same students in your class every year. And there'd be some shuffling. And those two teachers would be working very closely together along with educators and other related staff members. And on the right side, you can see our current programming, which is primarily in English. That's Dran. There'd be two or three sections, which is actually, primarily, Crocker Farm is actually very much like this now where there's a mix of two or three sections per grade level that would also be traveling. That cohort would be traveling up, sharing, mixing with students in that cohort and having those teachers work closely and collaboratively along that. So the cohort size, because of the dual language program, reduces the number of the change in the student body that the students have in class. So if you're looking at a school that would have, for instance, five or six classes per grade level, you're not likely to have lots of continuity with the students who are coming and going just because the kids get mixed up each year from a placement perspective, whereas this is very similar to what we know right now. It's actually precisely what we know. On the backside, you can see it's a very similar, it's just K to five. It's oriented at a K to five level. And in that level, there'd be 12 sections of students in the dual language strand and 18 sections in the mostly monolingual strand which it has three classes per grade level, which is pretty much what Wildwood has right now. So it's just trying to show a visual representation of the student experience as they would go through the one of the two strands within the school environment. Are there any questions for the superintendent on this before we move on to, is that okay? Or feedback. So I wanted to bring it both to share with the committee but also as more and more questions that are asked, not just of me, but of you all, it might be a helpful tool. So it could be questions but also I'm very open to feedback trying to display sort of complex phenomenon for many in a simple way and open to making it better. This has been a question that's come up repeatedly during the listening sessions, but also even emails, people wondering, I think really good questions actually about what the cohorts actually mean, what the dual language program, what kind of impact it would have on a future project. So it is an interesting way of representing visually what we're talking about. Mr. Dunley? So I think this is a good effort. I think this would be a good slide once you get into like at the final format to put like for your presentation to the town council when you do that. I think it could be improved visually. Like the first thing that I saw when I looked at it, that came to mind is okay, well how many students are there then in each section of the school, right? And so I just started writing the numbers down. So I can K to five, it's 240 on the dual language strand and 360 on the non-dual language. So having those numbers sort of called out, possibly also calling out the cohort number because that's when we talk about the small school experience, right? We're talking about your peer group that is small enough to encourage those long lasting bonds, right? Between peer to peer and peer to teacher and families as they move together. And so when you have three classes per grade of with the average of 20, that's a cohort of 60, right? So possibly calling that out. I found the horizontal orientation of the dual language with the vertical of the non-dual language unnecessarily confusing. I think you could maybe simplify that as well as with the rainbow of colors. Generally I like rainbows for school things, but this, I think the colors don't really, you already have the grades listed. So I don't know, I'm sort of picky-euning here, but for a visual, you want something that people don't have to decode or spend much time at all decoding. And so I think most of it is answering for yourself, what are the key metrics that you want to communicate and then showing that as quickly as possible? I think it's also a good jumping off point and if you're on that slide, I think it's a good point to mention. So you got this dark blue circle around the dual language strand, right? That separates the dual language cohort from the non-dual language cohort. And exactly how that gets implemented in the building, I think is a really interesting question. We've gotten a ton of feedback about saying, I like the proposal, yet I'm concerned about XYZ and then bulletting item lists of, and I think that's a really good example where you can talk about where the rubber hits the road will be the details of the proposal, that the school building committee's gonna work out. So this proposal is really, can we get behind this idea? And that when you come to the table about your personal concerns about how we actually implement that for that small school experience, that's when that school building committee comes in. I think it's just a good opportunity to sort of broach that issue, which is key in a lot of people's minds. Thank you, that's really helpful. Any other comments or feedback for Dr. Morris? Ms. Spitzer? So may all the other kind of lingering question that has come up among others as well related to this kind of two cohorts is whether or not there would be separate administration. And I don't know if that's something we wanna be commenting on at all now, but I'd love to know if there has been any conversation. Yeah, so that came up at some of the sessions I was at and I did answer there for the group because it seemed like a factual question in my opinion that I could answer, at least at this point, and how I responded was, we're not talking about co-located schools. Because I think that's sort of, the question as I interpret it was kind of the unspoken element of it is this co-located and that's not what I'm suggesting. And I think questions like that that relate to staffing would have to be worked out by the school building committee and the administration as things develop over time. I think I'd be a cart ahead of the horse if I start responding to specific staffing questions about that. But does that mean we'd have the same administration for the entire building when we say we're not doing co-located schools? I'm just trying to just get it out of here. Sure, so I mean my answer is I wouldn't make that determination right now. That's not something that I've gotten feedback from staff, from the community on. So it's nothing that I'd be ready to kind of make a firm decision on because I think it's, I'm trying to be cautious about, it's really as an aside, and maybe this actually relates to other things that may come up tonight. It's interesting because as much as I'm trying to present this of, here's a kind of tight idea with lots of unanswered questions like is it gonna be at Renault, is it gonna be new? There was some people found that really satisfying and some people who found it really unsatisfying. Like they wanted, no, like we wanna know whether you want it new or it should be a Wildwood, should it be a Crocker, you know, at Fort River. And so I think for me I'm trying to hold true to the kind of five benchmark pieces and answer all questions around those, around, you know, rough the size of school and warms, you know, like those are things that I'm willing to comment on and make decisions about at this point. And I think I'm not trying to be rude to the question and I think it was actually well received yesterday but when it gets to that kind of granular size it's not something that would make a decision by administrative fiat at this point before that we know what the building looks like. We've had more intensive conversations with staff members and our administrative team and the administrative team has certainly talked about it. But I do think it's a question that would have to be answered over time. No. I just wanna follow up because I'm still, I think if I'm a little confused about this then there are members of the public who are confused. So what's the difference between a co-located school project and one with potentially, I just wanna know how, what's the difference between co-located and what we're presenting now? Because I'm still not clear on the center percent that I think then the public's probably not. And my assumption has been always that maybe it would have something to do with the way we administered it but it sounds like maybe it's actually something about the physical space. Yeah. So I don't want you. No, that I can answer super clearly. Yeah. I would love Dr. Morris please. So a co-located school. We don't want any misunderstanding. Yeah, absolutely. Is two separate schools located in one building. A co-located school. Yeah, yeah. So we're talking about co-location. It's two separate schools, separate DESI codes, separate completely autonomous schools that are located. I mean there are some architectural elements to that as well. But it's that it's more, there's literally more than one school in one building. And when we talk about strands, we're talking about what we're doing right now at Fort River and all the planning that we're doing. So we're not having separate schools, even though there's a dual language, there will be a dual language strand next year that starts and there's a non-dual language strand that starts. So it's not that it's its own school, it's just an element within the school that from a student experience helps arrive who your teachers are, who your classmates are and some of the instructional program that happens in this particular case about the language of instruction more than actually the set curriculum. So that's how I'd be distinguishing it when the prior project, just to cut a finer line, it was literally building a model that would have two distinct schools that we'd already been in conversation with DESI and the MSPA that would have had separate names, completely autonomous separate entrances, all those types of things. And that's not what's in this particular proposal. That's okay. And just if I can, please. I think it sounds, I would imagine, and correct me if I'm wrong, that having a conversation now about staffing in an administration could potentially be triggering for some people or make them worried, right? Because we don't know yet what's gonna happen in terms of who's gonna be a principal or a co-principal or things like that. So getting into that level of discussion at this point when we don't even picked a site, we don't know if we even have a project seems a little premature, even though I understand people's concerns and wanting to clarify that, because I also heard that during listening sessions. Yeah, and the other thing I said that was perhaps appreciated, at least by one person who told me that, was just that we have a typical administrative models in some of our schools right now that are on the elementary level in some of the other districts that I administer. So to make a firm decision without much more contemplation and discussion and a couple years down the line, if we were fortunate to be in this program, we'll also know a lot better about what it means to administer a dual language program and do a language strand within a school than we do right now. So for me, I would wanna utilize that experience in making that decision that now we've talked to other districts, but two years from now, we'll have essentially three years of experience because this year is like, there's not dual language programming, but there's a whole lot of work going on into it that's going into it that we would use to inform our decision. So that's, that was the other thing that I shared last night, yesterday afternoon, excuse me. Spitala, I wanna give you a chance if you have any questions or comments for- On this in particular? Nope. Okay. So I have just a couple of quick, I was looking at the grade K through six school. So grade K through five kind of makes sense to me, you know, the 12 sections and teachers for the dual language strand, the 18 sections and teachers for the non-dual language strand. And then K through six sort of takes a weird turn. So the dual language, you know, strand again, 14 sections and teachers totally get that. The non-dual language strand side, you've got 16 sections and teachers are actually fewer than the one on the K through five. So I was just wondering why there are fewer sections if you can explain that and why that's different. And then why the K and the sixth grade cohorts are larger than the two through, or the one through five? Sure. Yep. So on the first question, in a K to six model, you have more students in the dual language program because of the extra grade level, having sixth grade is still in the elementary schools. So if we're capping the size at roughly 600, that's gonna reduce the number of students in the non-dual language strand. Because it's a zero sum game if we're getting to 600 and there's more on one side, there's to be fewer on the other. So the point of why kindergarten sixth grade was super random. So much like our schools now, particularly at Crocker Farm and Fort River, they're sized where there are some years, there's two sections per grade level, and some years there's three sections per grade level. And so with the number of sections we would anticipate in the number of students, it means that some years we're gonna have bumps, and most we won't, but some we will. Where instead of having you estimate roughly 40 students, you have more than 40 and enough to make a third section in another grade level is you have the more anticipated number. So Fort River and Crocker Farm are good models for this where there's slight variance based on size. And that for schools that tend to be in that kind of what I would call medium range, they're not, compared to other schools in Hampshire, Franklin and Hamden County, they often have those, they're sort of in between grade levels. And our teachers are wonderfully flexible and they make it work in those sites. Okay, so this could have easily just been third or fourth grade, like it was just really just picking two grades to show that. And maybe kindergarten six might not be the, as I hear the feedback, it might be, people might think, why the two outer rings? So that might be good feedback to mix that up a little bit. Yeah, I think given what we've, the way we've talked about population and enrollment changes in trends in recent years, it almost seems like you would want to do that maybe in the fifth and sixth grade show that larger class size, you know, in the K through four, I don't know. Yeah, and depending how school choice would work out, you might be beneficial to think about it that way. Yeah, no, that's really helpful feedback. Thank you. Okay, I don't see any other comments. So, Mr. Tom. Just thinking about, because my head went immediately to what Fort River is today, because it's so like in terms of number of classrooms at each grade. So this conversation is now sparking so maybe there should be some attempt to show some variation in the K five diagram too, because this is sort of presuming that we're always going to have three classrooms and when in reality there might be some classroom, some grades that have four and some that have two. Right, so it might be more sort of apples and apples if you do it that way. That's helpful, thank you. Yeah, our current sixth grade, just to put an even finer point on it, so our current sixth grade is an odd, we have an odd enrollment bubbles around, so two of our schools have four sections and one of our schools, Carco Farm has two sections and pretty small sized sections. So there is just some natural variance that the demographics show at any school size, so wild, but that's our only grade level with four. But Fort River, which is our smallest, K to six elementary school right now has four in their sixth grade too, so that's helpful. It's never gonna work perfectly. You know, in terms of cohort size, that's their children, they're not widgets or whatever that you get off an assembly line, so there's gonna be unpredictability of enrollment. Yeah. So Dr. Morris, is there anything else you wanted to share with the committee before we move on to the committee comments? So the question is whether it'd be more helpful for this kind of give and take between committee and me or whether, I don't know, I thought something going in the meeting and I found the last 10 minutes really useful, so I don't know if it's more helpful if there are clarifying questions that I might answer since I didn't really answer, I mean I answered some at the listening sessions, but there might have been other questions that came up at the listening sessions that because of the format, it wasn't really, we were listening, it wasn't that much answering, so would that format work okay? I know it's a little different than... Yeah, I mean, I do actually wanna make sure that the committee has a chance because we presumably will be voting next week, and we did sit through these listening sessions for the past two weeks that the committee has a chance to share just some impressions and share that with the public. Yeah. But I guess if there's some specific questions wrapped into your comments, we can also direct those to Dr. Morris or to each other that's totally okay, so I see nodding heads, okay. So is that okay? Yeah, that sounds great, thank you. Maybe we'll start this way and see what your thoughts and general impressions were if you wanna share those at this time. Not to put it in the spot, but... I don't like going first. No. Sure, well, I'll go first, and as long as the new thoughts come, as I'm hearing sort of everybody else's thoughts on that, but... If you want any rounds. Yeah. So I was lucky enough to be able to attend, I think I was lucky, to go to all six of the sessions, and so I found it actually really refreshing and a really great process for hearing from a large number of people, and I hear what the public is saying, like I looked around a couple of times and noticed that there was zero people of color, so I share that concern. I think that in the short amount of time we heard from a significant number of people, and then especially when we combine with the online survey and what sort of struck me, and I haven't had a time to really digest and synthesize, but just for the most part, broad consistency in what we were hearing, and there were outliers here and there, but regardless each group, and I could only sit in one group at each of the sessions, but heard some of the same themes across each of the groups, so in terms of the likes that I was hearing was they like the one building, we like the great configuration in keeping K through six or K through five together, and recognition that that may not be what everybody or what individuals was the ideal that they might wish for, but represented something that we could get behind, and then consistently in the concerns, and we talked a little bit about sort of, how does it work with the dual language, and I heard a lot of that, and is the dual language gonna go away if we do this, so heard that consistently, heard some of the same things that people brought up this evening as well in terms of the size overall, but even more so in what I sensed throughout was this, the biggest concern is wrapped around this uncertainty, around how we're going to get to 600, all the different ways that, sort of seeing all the different options and then questions about what those might be in terms of impact financially, if we have to build new construction, does that end up meaning that we're actually spending more than we had hoped we would spend, and then fear slash uncertainty about if we end up in that situation, does that mean we're gonna end up with a bigger school and back where we started a couple years ago? We can't answer that, I don't think, so maybe that's a question back to you, but I don't feel like seeing some of these uncertainties and concerns, I feel like are sort of just symptomatic of being in this sort of gray zone that we're in right now, which is we're not defining a specific project, we're submitting an application to get funding to do a project, and sort of my sort of takeaway and sort of hope is what I've been noodling since the last one is how do we continue to have these conversations and feedback and iterations so that we answer the questions for ourselves and for our community members so that when we get to the point that we're actually starting to have to make decisions that are more concrete, that we've at least gotten to that comfort zone, and this is gonna be a long and iterative process to answer and clear up a lot of that uncertainty. So I think the fears and the concerns and things that I'm hearing are really sort of put back to us to make sure that we're continuing to have these conversations and give and take back and forth with the community. So I talked about the size and concern and then just also the overall size and worry that we're going to change our minds as we go through this process, so. Thank you. I'm gonna skip myself for now and go to Ms. Spitzer. Do you have anything you wanna? Sure. I'd just like to say that I was able to attend two of the sessions and I wanna just start by thanking Institution Awesome for all of their really hard work both organizing and working with the facilitator. I think I was one of the first people to kind of say is it possible for us to do this really ambitious thing of listening and getting feedback in such a short timeframe and I think it's imperfect. I think a lot of the criticisms we've heard tonight are true but I think given the timeframe and the goals we set out, I think we've done a really good job and I wanna thank you guys for working so hard on this because it's a lot of work. And then I'd also like to just thank everybody who came out because it was, I went last night and I went last week on I guess it was Thursday night, the snowing nights but they were fairly well attended and people from different age groups were definitely there and then depending on the night, people from different groups within Amherst were there as well. So in terms of comments and questions that I thought were kind of trending and what I heard that was a lot of optimism and also a lot of fear also that we might be kind of re-going back into a situation where a lot of people have a lot of strong feelings about the last project and kind of this just concern of how are we gonna, once we hopefully get into the statement of interest, how are we gonna make sure we don't end up in the same situation that we are currently without any active building projects. So I think we clearly need to continue the outreach and the listening and it was interesting at the end of last night on one of the tables I was at somebody said, I think this is the right way to try to engage with the public and we should be doing more of this at early on after we get, hopefully, you know, fingers crossed but hopefully we get into the statement of interest, our statement of interest approved. So I thought that was really interesting and potentially problematic as, because we can't always be having a back and forth and we didn't have these listed as public meetings but I'm trying to think of ways that we can try to incorporate more of that back and forth and the listening that was able to happen at these meetings into our regular practice because I think it is often more productive and obviously we're gonna be engaging in surveys and trying to do outreach to those populations who weren't at the meetings last night. But I do think that sitting around a table is really was refreshing after so much time kind of sitting in a row and not being a part of each other and not being able to respond when somebody talks and not being able to have a back and forth to the public comment. So I don't know how to do it but I think if we can try to build more of that into this process, I think we'll pay off. Well, just one quick thought on that. I think a couple of years ago at this point, I think it's been two years now, almost two years, we had a forum, a public forum in which school committee was sitting still at the table, we actually did it in Town Hall but we had the community come and ask questions and make suggestions and all of that but there was more of a back and forth because it was an open meeting and we were able to engage the public and not every comment or question that was asked by the public was engaged by the school committee but a lot of them were. And Dr. Morris answered some questions so I think there are ways to do that but I think it's a really valid point that looking for more of those kinds of moments where the school committee can engage more directly with the community and the community seems to be asking for that as well. Makes a lot of sense. And I think it may help us not relive some of the problems of the past. Yeah. Mr. Denley, is there anything you want to say? Yeah, so first just quickly following up on that idea so I think we had talked actually a few months ago about the possibility in the future of potentially doing regular forums whether it's like twice a year or it was exactly how you said hearkening back to that example of the forums that had worked really well. So and I think another theme that I heard from the listening sessions in terms of engagement is just to try and use a cornucopia of approaches. It's not going to be one thing, right? It's not going to be the survey that is going to give you all public feedback at every point about everything or it's not going to be one forum or one email. It's a combination of these things. So to whatever degree our ragtag group of part-time volunteers that is the school committee can engage in that, it's good. In terms of general thoughts, so we're still getting, we're waiting for the final report on the listening sessions in the online. So I don't want to jump to any major conclusions. I think that one of the biggest things that struck me was the near unanimity on the need for compromise which is different than do you support this compromise, right? I think the facilitator said at the beginning, so we all agree that something needs to be done. I think I would probably add to that nearly every, this isn't just the listening sessions, but emails and individual conversations that this need for compromise, this acknowledgement that there has been a difference of opinion on what the community thinks is best and therefore for a solution that actually is going to gain broad consensus compromise. And I think I remember a few months ago when we first started talking about this, there was maybe a little bit of trepidation about using that term because it can sort of suggest that there used to be conflict. And I found that most people I talked to were like, yeah, they used to be conflict. It's like, people are very comfortable acknowledging that there was, this was a significant point of division in our community for a long time and people engaged on it pretty intense. Yeah, exactly, pretty intensely. And so the need to craft, to come together and craft a practical compromise as opposed to I'm going to come with what I think is best and duke it out. I think overall that was the most encouraging feeling that I got from both people who supported and didn't support the past project. I want to thank community members for staying afterwards. I was able to have some good one-on-one conversations, particularly with some people who didn't support the last project. And I was just sort of trying to get a gauge for what their concerns were. I think one thing that might help us, a point that was very helpful to clarify is that what we're asking for right now is people to support a solution that meets the guidelines of this proposal. Can we get on board with this in principle? What we're not asking for specifically, either from the public or from the town council is a firm commitment to vote the final project that emerges from the MSBA project. Because what I heard loud and clear is, okay, you say K5, K6, 600, and we have this built-in cohort, the dual language program, but how is that actually going to manifest in a building? Where does the rubber hit the road? And we've gotten some emails that I think have been very helpful in this regard, sort of endorsing the theme of the compromise, but saying, but what's really important for me for the public engagement process is ABC. And what's really important to me to implementing the small school experience is XYZ. And so I think that it's important to, it's an important reassurance safeguard to communicate because what I sort of see happening here is that we get in and then we've, the school committee and superintendent and the town council, we've made this promise, right? We've made this public commitment to implement to the best of our ability this compromise and this framework. And I cannot imagine that there will be any shortage of people in the public who will be holding us accountable. And I would empower and I would even say I would encourage people to do that. And that's what I think is really going to be what firms up the commitment. Like, so this related question of, well, you say you're committed to K5, K6, which sounds like a nice concession, but are you really, you know, are you going to change once your thinking changes? And I think in addition to our publicly stating it and making a formal vote in support of it, I really think that public attention and engagement is what is going to firm that commitment. So I think that's a reassuring thing to focus on. My one sort of question for Dr. Morris and what thoughts you had on this is, so say we're engaging this process, good faith effort and this question of how you get to 600, right? Let's say, you know, we, through our best efforts bending over backwards, every stone unturned and it just so happens that all those options don't pan out. We currently think that that's not going to happen, that we still have a high level of confidence that we're pretty darn sure we can get to 600, which is why we went to this level of effort to put it in the proposal. But, you know, even the wisest can't see all ends and so what if that happens? Could you maybe just talk about process-wise and describe for the public what that might look like if we were to get to that place that we don't think is going to happen, but could cause some concern. Dr. Morris, you want to answer that? And then I'm going to just have a couple quick comments and then we're going to move on to just a different part of the agenda, but go ahead. Yeah, I mean, it's actually a relatively brief answer, which is that, you know, we'd be transparent and engage the community, right? And that would be the school building committee and then the school committee and myself, as I say, as the key players and sharing, you know, we've explored these options, we've studied them and we don't see any viable options and being really transparent with the community as, you know, a lot of the feedback. I think we all heard about process and transparency throughout and then re-engage both the MSBA and the larger community about what's the route to go. And again, I can't forecast exactly what turn that would take, but what I think, what I can commit to from myself and I don't want to commit for others, but I think it's consistent with the ethos that all of us are talking about in our future school building committee would is to be communicating to the public, you know, we got to this place, right? There's, frankly, institutions in our town that got to really hard spots in the middle of building projects in the last five years and I think the best thing they did, the one I'm thinking of is they actually came back to their community and said, we can't make this building the Science Center work where it's designed, you know? And I think that level of transparency, I don't know everything, I just know what I read in the paper, but I appreciated that it was a public statement where this far in, we have to detour because of their unforeseen things that we couldn't have known at the front end of it. And now there's a new Science Center that I got to be in last week. And so I do think there is, there is, you know, the honesty and candid transparency in the, that's built into the process is part of what we would do. No, please. Why don't we take the floor? I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, please. Okay. So we'll call the meeting back to order. We just had a short recess and a committee member had to leave unexpectedly, but we still do have a quorum and we'll continue this agenda item at 6.54 p.m. So Dr. Morris, I'm sorry to interrupt, I think you were in the middle of responding to a question and a comment. I'm not sure if there's anything else that you want to add to that. Maybe I'll just rephrase it slightly more succinctly, which is that I think the transparency that we would have throughout the entire process, you know, the question was around a pretty major detour, but there's going to be detours that are not perhaps as, you know, significant. And I think what we heard, what I heard over the listening sessions is a desire that if we were to get into, for a fortune enough to get into the MSBA process, that they would be built into that process, a communication plan that shared with the larger community, engaged with the larger community on any major issue and even any kind of what's major to some person, one person might not be major to another. So really to say that people had access to what was happening, decisions that were being made well before they were made, and input throughout the process. So I think that's my kind of general answer is that there's always going to be twists and turns. There's going to be things you find out that are unexpected, but the big thing is making sure that the public has ways to access and hear and offer feedback on the twists and turns that are bound to happen. Thank you. Thanks. So I actually had a couple of comments from Mr. Nakajima, who's not here obviously tonight, but he wanted me to share with you. So I think overall what he's expressing is very similar to what I've heard other committee members express tonight, which is primarily a clear sense from the public that overall they like the superintendent's proposal and they strongly believe that we need to address both schools as soon as possible. Mr. Nakajima says that he heard in general comfort with the size of the school, particularly in light of the launch of the Dual Language Immersion Program, which creates something approximating to discrete learning communities were his words. He also heard a strong endorsement about creating a child center design that is safe, nurturing and provides access and welcome to students of all abilities and backgrounds. There were many questions about how exactly we do that, but a general recognition that the specifics of any plan will come later. And I think just to add and echo probably what I've heard as well, I attended all of the listening sessions also. And I think generally speaking, heard mostly people feeling like this was a compromise and that they felt that they could come together around this idea. There were definitely a lot of questions that came out when there was four framing questions that were shared with the groups and the third framing question was just asking if there was anything that people needed clarification on, if there was additional questions that they might have that might help them better understand. And that's when we heard things like, what happens to the students, we currently have around 750 enrolled in K-6, what happens to the extra 150 if we have a 600 person building? There were questions about administration and how we're handling cohorts and all of that. But generally speaking, what I heard was people saying, well, we're willing to move forward with this application and then wanna make sure that we're staying engaged and that we're getting answers to these questions as we move forward. Which to me says that people are understanding that there's a feasibility process and that feasibility process is what's going to determine a lot of the answers to these questions. I think that there's going to be continuing concern around the 600 person school. And I think there are definitely people in the community that feel very strongly about not having larger schools and we're gonna continue to hear that. And so I think that is where the point of pressure will be primarily for you, Dr. Morris, but also for the committee, to be able to come to terms with how we create a educational learning environment that feels warm and child-centered and nurturing if there are more students than what many people feel comfortable with. And I mean, I constantly hold in my mind the fact that we have these buildings, Fort River and Wildwood, that are very large buildings that were created. I hold over 600 students and at one time held close to 600 students. And so clearly there's a history already here in the community for that size of a school. And having personally come from urban schools that had many more students than that, I also know what it feels like to be lost in a sea of kids and how that can be uncomfortable and throw kids off and students off, especially in the younger grades. But I also don't, I personally don't see at this point another alternative for us, given all the conversations that we've been having. But I was generally, I guess, heartened by the, most people, the words that I kept hearing over and over again were reasonable compromise. And people felt that there was this very strong sense of urgency and they were glad that we were doing something, that it felt like there was some action and there was some movement forward. So while we don't have all the answers yet and while there's definitely gonna be continuing concern, I think, to answer some of these questions, it does feel like the community is at least at this point sharing generally where they are and that feels mostly positive and that they're mostly supportive. I think Mr. Dumling is right that we have not received yet the emails from the feedback form. I wanted to make sure that the public knows and that also the committee is aware. We talked about this during the listening sessions, but we will be getting those reports. One report from Dr, or excuse me, from Mr. Loog, who was the person who was hired to facilitate the listening sessions. So he's actually been compiling all of the notes that were taken during the listening sessions as well as the email responses that we got from the feedback form. Dr. Morris has also shared with him the responses that came from the teacher listening sessions, the three listening sessions that took place a couple of weeks ago, and there was also a neighborhood association meeting that took place that was independent of our listening sessions, but also very helpful that took place in District One, I think on the 17th of February, and those responses were actually gathered and also shared with us and shared with Mr. Loog. So he's got all of that and he's sort of pulling together this report and expects to have something for us by tomorrow that we can take a look at. Simultaneously, I know Dr. Morris, you've been working with the facilities director with Rupert to pull together a draft SOI and have that shared with the committee as well tomorrow. Is there anything that you want to say briefly about that? Sure, so the technical parts involve some updating just because we have, since the last time we applied, we have more air quality test reports, we had more reports that we wanted to integrate into the statement of interest. We at least wanted, I wanted to hear tonight a bit of where the committee was, and then I'll report that back tonight to Mr. Roy Clark, who can then integrate some of the consensus pieces for your consideration, but we didn't wanna do that until, you hadn't had a chance to deliberate on this. So that's one of the reasons we didn't have it ready. With the technical part ready tonight, it was the other part that we needed to hear more feedback from the committee on before we finalized, but we'll make sure that's available tomorrow. Do you feel that you've gotten the feedback that you needed for that? I think so, thank you. Great, thank you Donald. I just wanna go back to the staff listing sessions. So I know one of the other questions, sort of in that question about what more information would you like, and I heard consistently also that people would like to hear more about what the teacher's staff in the buildings are thinking. So I think we need to figure out a way to get those noses. I know that not a lot of people attended those staff sessions. About 45 total who attended. So making sure that that's available and easily found by people in the community that have had these questions and really wanna understand from the faculty and staff perspective what it's like in those buildings and what their perspective is on this application. And I think the other thing, this leads sort of to something else that I've talked about a couple times with individual, I can't, with you, but one of the other things that I noticed and connected was a lot of the questions really relate to information that's already out there, but not easily found, right? So we, so many times we heard where, just where's the feedback form and even finding it. And we think that it's pretty simple to find, but a lot of people had trouble finding it. But also information about student population projections and all of the feedback that we've gotten through the last eight months or so from teachers and staff in the buildings just in public comment sessions and things that we've been discussing at the meeting. So it's something, there's no answer to that, but it's a key thing that I think as we go forward, it's not just having the, and engaging the community to hear and get input on the process, but it's also sharing information as it's produced and learnings along the way. I was thinking about it as you talked about that other school district experiences, that only can work if that information is easily accessible and easily found by people who want to find it. People who really want to find it right now can find it if they invest a lot of time and energy to digging it, myself included. But we want to make it available so that people who are curious and want to inform themselves and don't want to invest a lot of time so that it's easily found and easily understood. So I think that's a key thing that we need to also noodle is how do we address that going forward? And I would absolutely agree with that. I think over and over again, we kept hearing from people, again, that fourth framing question was how do we keep people engaged? How do we, if a project actually materializes and we actually do find ourselves with state aid to build a school or renovate a school, how do we make sure that people know what's happening and allow them to get answers to their questions? And one of the biggest challenges, I think that's, for understandable reasons, but that the district has encountered before is a lack of ability to share information as it comes up and to have it someplace that's easy to find, as Ms. McDonald said. So it's something to think about, I think, moving forward, how do we create a project space that maybe is even separate from the ARPS.org website, to be honest, that maybe is on a separate platform that's linked to from the ARPS.org website but that is easily accessible for social media, that is more user-friendly, that is less clunky. There's so much content right now on the ARPS website, and people have to dig through layers of calendars and all the different announcements and all that kind of stuff, and people do tend to get lost very easily with that. So that is something that I think we need to think about because it does actually create a sense of chaos and confusion if people can't find information easily accessible. Dr. Morris? Yeah, I think the other thing to note, I agree with everything that's said, but is that I was really glad we had a quite a wide age range at the sessions I was at and to not only rely on websites and electronic forms of communications. That was something I heard loud and clear at least two of the three sessions that I was at that it's not to disagree with anything that was said, but that can't be the only medium that is... There were a lot of recommendations, I think, for town-wide mailers for all kinds of, yeah, I think that that's absolutely right. But it was helpful to hear directly from people who said however accessible it would be on the website, that's actually not where they would go to gather information. So I agree with what was shared before, I just wanted to add that one piece. Okay, so this item will come back on our agenda at our meeting on Monday. Mr. Dimlin? I'm sorry, I forgot to ask. So I haven't attended any of the meetings, but we have this building master facility use study going on, and I don't know what the status is, but it has a potential touch point with this discussion because part of that is the feasibility of sixth grade to the middle school, which is one of the potential options for getting to 600 and just, I don't know if you had any update on that and what's been shared there. Sure, so just thinking through this for a second. So it's a regional group, but I do feel like it's all the information that I'll talk about is publicly accessible on our website, so I feel like it's fair for me to, it's relevant to the conversation and fair for me to say. I just want to double-check as I think about it. I think maybe just mentioning where that information could be found and if that's... Yeah, I'm just a little cautious of, you know, we don't have a quorum of the region, so that maybe makes it easier, but so if you go to district initiatives, there's four listed and one of them is the Regional Master Use Facility Board or some, I don't know the exact term, but it's something along those lines. And it shows visuals of what a seven through 12 consolidation would look like, including the scope that would be needed. Now this is not the final product, but this is where the group is a couple meetings in. And then also our most recent meeting, which was Monday, Tuesday? Tuesday, Monday was snow day, thank you. Tuesday afternoon, which looked primarily at, or exclusively at what would it mean for sixth grade to be in the middle school and what the scope is. So I think the best thing I could say probably without tripping anything is it's publicly accessible. The scope diagrams are very clear in terms of major renovation, minor renovation, code upgrades are no change at all. And that final report we presented on March 26th in this building at a regional school commuting, but I think if there's particular questions, anyone, you all, or members of the public can get in touch with me, but I think the diagrams do clearly explain what costs might be present. Is that, I mean, tell me I can go for that. I think that's great. Yeah, yeah, I just, I want to be a little cautious. You're skirting very carefully and I appreciate that. Yeah, yeah, I just don't want to. You all mixed up in OML stuff, so yeah. Okay. Okay, so we, what I was going to say before is that we are, we will be back here on Monday to review this item and it will be a vote unless the committee decides that they don't want to vote, but I'm hoping that we, since we've had so many discussions already that we can move to a vote, that's what's on our agenda anyway, that's the only item on the agenda. So we will be here at six o'clock on next Monday to discuss this and I think in the meantime, the public is, you know, continues to be welcome to share their thinking, their, you know, via email, contact Dr. Morris if you'd like. You can also contact the school committee at schoolcommitteeatarps.org and we're happy to receive any and all thoughts and questions from the community. Okay, so Dr. Morris. The other thing I was going to say is, nope, actually I'm good, never mind. Okay. Yeah, thank you, sorry. Okay, so this is actually not the only item on our agenda tonight. That's right. We actually have two other items and the next one is acceptance of state bilingual education programs grant. So Dr. Morris, do you want to fill us in because we don't really have a packet? Yeah, on the back, there's a little description but I think I'll do that orally. So it's unusual when we get a grant from DESI for the school committee to have to approve it. What's a little unique in this particular situation is that it was a co-authored grant application and it's a co-, well it's not, we are administering the grant for both our community and the Holyoke public schools. That's working wonderfully well and it's been a really nice collaboration but because it is a multi-district collaboration, our legal counsel advised that it come for a school committee vote and certainly, you know, if you don't feel comfortable voting tonight, we can push it off, frankly. In the weeds of the grant, you know, in a good way that we're actively looking at curricula. We're working with MABE, you know, we're doing some partnering with Holyoke but most of that is actually sort of on parallel tracks if they already have two programs up and running. But because it is an interagency grant that we would bring it to the school committee, it's not something we haven't talked about, we certainly shared it with you but the wrinkle of the, it's not co-administered, it's administered by us financially, our business office is managing it, you know, in collaboration with Holyoke but that's the way these grants go. So, you know, the reframing as a new grant that we would look for you to accept and as part of that grant that it would authorize me to execute the agreement with the Holyoke public schools. So I'm sorry about the legalese that comes along with this. Great, no, that's wonderful. And Dr. Morris, so the $300,000 for this grant, is that shared equally with Holyoke or is there some other kind of arrangement that's been made? It was based on need, more than equal split, it happens that it's roughly an equal split, it's not exactly down the line, I don't have the numbers on my head but it's certainly within a pretty narrow band. But for instance, in our situation, we're dedicating funds, we have multiple Spanish classes, as you know, going on that are funded by the grant and Holyoke has one. So we're spending more on Spanish courses for our educators than Holyoke is and in some other areas, they're spending more based on their needs. None of it's wildly different but we also, when the grant was being authored, it was trying not to force artificial constraints on either community to say we have to spend exactly the same amount on Spanish courses because even our vendor, right? So we're working with GCC, that's Holyoke has HCC and other vendors that are right there. So we tried to have the same themes and goals and many of the same activities but we didn't try to lock ourselves into everyone has to go with Chewingfield Community College because from geographically it doesn't make sense for Holyoke. So it's roughly an even split though. And this is a pretty competitive grant. It was, it was only two awarded. Oh great, how do you know how many communities? I do not know. The other one was also a partnership grant in the Eastern part of the state but I know they had more than two applicants that were clear with us but they were excited about our partnership. They worked themselves close with MABE so they were pleased that MABE was kind of an official co-sponsor with us but certainly involved in the grant and they're excited about more dual language programs in the state after the Look Act. This is what they were hoping for and part and parcel of the Look Act was sort of an encouragement that this is a highly advantageous model for many of our learners and particularly for our learners that are underserved in the Commonwealth. So they wanted to support that implementation. That's great. I know that this is announced at one of our previous school committee meetings so this is just an opportunity to go ahead. I was going to make a motion. Please. I move to accept the FY19 State Bilingual Educator Program Grant from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the amount of $300,000. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. And any further comments or questions? Dr. Morris. So, I'm sorry, it could be done as a separate but the third bulletin point, it could be done separately or it could be done in conjunction. Sorry, I should have said that before a motion was made. That wasn't just that because it's $300,000, it's also acknowledging that we are not accepting all, we're accepting all $300,000 but we're administering it and splitting it in conjunction with all the others. So should the motion read differently? Is that what you're suggesting? I think it could stay as is. It would just mean that we, I'd ask for a separate motion around the third bulletin point on the agenda after, which is no problem. I just didn't know how you want to do it and I'm complicating matters because I hear myself say this so. We want to get this right. It's okay. This is a technicality. I should mess it up. But I think it's fun to stay as is. It would just require another motion after. Ms. Wismorlin. Sean, Mr. Mangano actually spoke to me about this earlier today and he said for the second piece that you could just say basically what's written there that you authorize the superintendent to execute the agreement. Okay. So we'll have two separate motions just to make it nice and clean. Yeah, sorry about that. So all those in favor? Okay, passes unanimously. And the, does somebody want to make a second motion? I'll move to authorize the superintendent to execute the agreement with Holyoke Public Schools. Great. Do I have a second? Second. Second. Dr. Morris, anything else you want to add? You sure? Sorry. I wanted to split this motion too. All those in favor? All right, so you didn't have to mess. Thank you very much. Congratulations again. This is such an incredible gain for the district and for Holyoke Public Schools as well. And I for one am incredibly proud that we're partnering with their district. I think this is going to be a really incredible program. Yeah, and we'll have more to share. I guess it's a segment of school committee planning. At the April school committee meeting we'd like to do a more full update as to where we are with staffing, with enrollment, with registration. You know, it felt like March 19th a little early. It's right before our enrollment. But we'd like to actually come back and not just do the updates but a more full, complete update for the committee. That's great. And I think at some point it'd be wonderful if we could invite a representative from the Holyoke district or a couple of representatives to come up and, you know, maybe talk through. We'd have a dual language program focus for part of the agenda. And talk through some of the work that they're doing and how we're collaborating. Just like there's an opportunity here for the community and for others to learn a lot from this experience. Yeah, that's a great idea. I love that. Okay, great. Okay, so next time on the agenda is school committee planning. I'm not gonna go too much in depth in this because we just talked about the meeting that we're having on Monday. And that will be just a one issue item. And then we will have our next full committee meeting on the 19th, which will be at the town hall, Amherstown Hall. Again, just to try that out and see how that goes. Is there anything else for school committee planning, for tomorrow's? No, not from my end. Thank you. All right, so I will take a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Mr. Dumling. Second. Second, all those in favor? Excellent, we are adjourned. Thank you very much.