 Seeing a presence of the quorum calling the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order at 6 o 1 p.m. Welcome everyone. This is a nice full house And I don't know if the Fort Beaver feasibility study committee wants to also Call this meeting to order right now or Okay, so you're waiting for quorum, okay, so I guess once that happens if that happens just let me know And we'll we'll take a break to do that. Okay. Thank you Okay, so first order of business is approving the Amherst School Committee minutes of November 5th and so If I can get a motion from the committee Mr. Demling to approve the minutes of November 5th 2018 second. Thank you You a minute to review this and we have any edits or comments Okay, all those in favor if I may raise in your hand All right. Thank you that meeting minutes of November 5th are approved All right Moving along we're going to announcements first and then a public comment So are there any announcements from the committee? Mr. Demling so this will be a broken record to the committee, but given with this the last week that Public will be able to take action. I just wanted to remind everyone in the community again who's focused on Public school and funding that there is a charter school that's proposing to expand And that you can provide your input to charter schools at DOE.mass.edu that goes to the commissioner of education To provide your input before Monday And I you know, I just want to take opportunity Not only because this is our last meeting before that but you know, we have a great Assembly today of people who have been engaged in local issues sometimes in spirited disagreement And I feel like this is an issue that really crosses those Specific disagreements. We lose more than three million dollars a year the Amherst public schools do to charter schools that could likely increase to five million given this Expansion more than double or almost double the the charter school in size and I've been very encouraged by the level of support from our select board from Town meeting last year which called for a moratorium on Charter school expansions the NAACP which is called for a National moratorium on Charter school expansions and also the strong statements from our senator elect Jill Cumberford and representative elect Mindy dome. It's been a lot of immunity on that that front but But this is not the kind of broken formula that should rob some schools to find some others So I know that this is the third year we're asking people to do this So it stinks that this is the process we have and so I apologize for the advocacy fatigue But if this goes through that's it and then we'll be talking about major cuts in the very near future So if you consider taking this action and also sharing it With your friends to whatever electronic means is the most appropriate for you that would be Thank you, Mr. Demley any other announcements from the committee Quarms appearing Okay, so mr. Selvin do you want to take a moment to call your your committee to order? Great, I'm not the record reflect that it's a 6.05 p.m. Welcome Okay, and so with that we will move to public comment if anyone has any public comment They would like to make please come up to the microphone State your name, and you have three minutes Catherine oppie. I just want to appreciate mr. Demling's Broken record Announcements like I think it's really helpful I'm also going to sound a little bit like a broken record because people have heard me say this before but So as we think about the infrastructure concerns regarding the elementary schools tonight and Listen to the progress of the Fort River feasibility study I want to remind the committee of some of the consequences of our failed attempt to build two new schools in Amherst Tonight you're going to hear an estimate for how much it will cost the town to keep both Wildwood and Fort River Open for two-thirds of our students and teachers We know that roofs and boilers and HVAC systems are expensive and necessary To make Wildwood and Fort River and Fort River usable What we are not talking about tonight, but probably should be is that after we spend millions of dollars Certain educational realities will still be true in both buildings for example There are no permanent walls and classrooms in grades one through six in either building There is very limited or no natural light in all first through sixth grade classrooms In both buildings the district will see no operational savings with either building and instead will see huge increases in capital expenses over the next several years Many children will continue to be bused out of their enrollment zones and away from their neighbors and siblings Either based on their special educational needs or their family's socioeconomic status Our programs for our most educationally vulnerable students will continue to be housed in classrooms without permanent walls And we'll continue to deal with constant interruptions From noise from other students some who need to walk through the classroom to use the restroom Neither of these buildings are or will be ADA accessible in 2016 a statewide teacher survey in Answered to the question the physical environment of classrooms in this school support teaching and learning The average the state average of teachers answering yes to that question was 83 percent At Crocker farm that number rose to 93 percent But it was at Wildwood the number was only 24 percent and at Fort River. It was 9 percent Given the reports from teachers who came before this school committee this past fall I believe those numbers at Fort River and Wildwood would be even lower today The main entrance to both Fort River and Wildwood is 82 feet from the front door Visitors walk by several instructional areas in a main hallway before checking in at the main office Building costs go up approximately three and a half to four percent a year If we take a one building at a time approach The most likely scenario for getting all of our students and teachers into new buildings with classroom walls is sometime between 2033 and 2037 That means that today's kindergartners will be graduating from high school and another generation of students will have gone through these educationally unacceptable buildings So as you consider asking the town for millions of repair dollars And listen to the Fort River feasibility study update I want you to keep these facts and figures in mind and ask for the minimum amount necessary to keep these buildings open I am ever hopeful that we can have all our students and teachers in new buildings Sooner rather than later. Thank you. Any other public comments? I'm sorry you can come up to the mic I Would be a chance of for public comment after the presentation. We haven't discussed that but it's up to both committees to decide if that's the case Any other public comments, okay seeing none and close public comments So moving on to the superintendent's update So thank you, and I'll keep this brief for choose one There's a lot of people here for the next topic and also a lot of the updates relate to dual language update Which is later on the agenda So I think I'll just mention four things so Before the holiday November 15th, we had our first meetings of the English learners parent advisory council Thanks to miss Richardson who you've met multiple times this fall For facilitating that I know it's on our agenda later So maybe I'll share a little more details about the work that happened and then future work that the alpac is considering at that point I want to thank chair adonis for attending the Puerto Rican flag raising that was on November 19th. It was Thank also miss Chamberlain who's here for bringing fifth and sixth grade students who were wonderful to have in the audience This was an event that wasn't typically owned by the school is owned by the town And just one of these things that happens where someone needed to take on that That mantle so in dr. Guevara Who worked in our director who worked in our family center did that and she organized the event and mr. Donis Shared some incredibly powerful words With the community of probably about 75 80 people. I'm bad at estimating that but that's my guess Who are there and I got to speak and it was just an incredibly special day Despite the sleety weather and you know everyone braved it quite well, so I don't know if you want to add anything on that I would just say was a wonderful event And I I think it was really particularly amazing because we had a couple of young students who just astounded me with their the level of confidence and poise that they had We had one student who was singing another student who gave this amazing speech Just a really great event. So thank you. Yeah. Thank you for attending Thursday is Fort Rivers having a family literacy night You can see the information below but thanks to all the Fort River staff and as we do for our family events We also provide bus transportation for Folks who might need it. So we look forward to that and I think the last thing also staying in the Fort River theme tonight is that the commissioners visit So the commissioner Jeff Riley will if he visits one at least one school a week And he's going to be in Western Mass for something or other so he's choosing to visit Fort River So that'll be a really nice thing next week or the week after next excuse me And he's going to visit fourth and sixth grade classrooms And what he likes to do as a former teacher is talk to students not just observe but actually interact with students and the last Half of the hour he's going to get a tour this Chamberlain's going to lead and I'll be there with miss Cunningham And as it mentioned concerned a little bit about quorum issues But I think the chair and vice-chair we're able to attend that as well So we'll share about that experience at the next Amherst school committee I think I'll save the rest of the updates for kind of isolated items that are already on the agenda That's okay with the chair Any questions or comments with superintendent about his update on the committee? Okay All right, let's move along then to the next item which is the Fort River feasibility study discussion And this is also part of the joint meeting with the Fort River feasibility study building committee And so I've asked or invited the committee to actually come and sit up front over here There's also a couple of chairs available if folks want to come up here You will of course be in full view of the camera, but that's You're used to that so it's okay. Yeah Fantastic great Great So just very briefly I think we've had a couple of conversations here about inviting both the chair salvin and members of the that committee as well as The designers to join us tonight so that we could hear a little bit more about The work that's gone on that committee up until now And then also just discuss with this committee about what the milestones are to be and what some of the deliverables will be You know, there's been a lot of conversation in the community of course and obviously there's a very full room here today So it shows how interested people are in this topic, which is great So we just want to make sure that we have a good, you know, sort of stepping stone for this conversation So with that, I guess I don't know if I'm turning it over to you dr. Morris or a chair if that's okay Yeah, so I just wanted to contextualize Kind of how we got here and then I'll turn it over to their misanarcha GMR Mr. Salvin to then Introduce the group and get going with their presentation but I think it's important to note that kind of the origins of the feasibility study and the committee came out of a real Desire wherever people sat on the prior building project to move the community forward and to gather critical information That was going to be essential along the process of improving the conditions of our school buildings And so that was March 2017 that we started talking about what our next steps were After the end of the last building project And I think it's a critical just we got some calls even, you know, Mrs. Moreland and some of the schools about tonight's meeting and I so I think it's important to contextualize the importance of of the work that's gone on is that There were many lingering questions some about the Fort River site some about building options some about project cost some about renovation models some about size of schools since most of the other focus of the prior project was on larger size schools and So this was really essential work that the feasibility study Feasibility committee excuse me for a feasibility committee is doing because it really is going to inform the next steps as a community because our hope or my hope I should say also speak for myself is that This is this information can be used a better advance a collaborative approach to really Move the town of Amherst forward and supporting our students at the elementary level Everyone I speak to is curious about what our next steps are what the community's next stops are the towns the schools and Without this information. I think our next steps would be less clear And so I really thank the committee for their steadfast work many many meetings and many nights and summer and all sorts of other meetings that the committee went on and I think it's critical because some someone of the critiques that's come to me as well There's not necessarily a building at the end of this Process and for me that's the context is different So for me the context is we want to have newer renovated buildings at the end of a process and this is part of that process It's not necessarily the end of the feasibility process But this is information that's critical to get to where I believe everyone in the community wants to be which is an improved Infrastructure for our elementary school students So for me it's a step along the way and a critical step And so I just wanted to make sure I was contextualizing the work as as being really helpful along that path If there's anything smoke a jima wants to add no, I just Look for a chair someone wants to introduce the committee and the team indeed I would add to what mr. Morris has said is that just to kind of contextualize where we have the work of the committee We've been working for a couple months now with TSKP studio They've developed a range of options and that's Part of what we're going to see tonight and just to kind of reinforce like said while we don't come to a building at the end of This committee's process We do provide I think it's a really valuable information on what the options are On that site and with the building so with that I will I will introduce our design team leads from TSKP studios Good evening Madam chair and members of the committee. My name is Richard Sipek. I'm an architect with me as Jesse sailor also an architect And we've been spearheading this effort on behalf of the feasibility committee So this is a work in progress what I'm going to share with you is the work that we've developed so far We still have work to do ahead of us so this is just a Summary of what we've done and ultimately what we will deliver to the feasibility committee is Some analytic information some data some diagrams that will be part of a report a bound report Some modeling for economic analysis as well next So for this evening our presentation goal is to give you a brief introduction as to who we are Why we're qualified to undertake this study and then give you an update on that feasibility study We want to review the options and there are many options. We've tried to narrow it down to some sensible ones And then we would request your feedback Next So first who are we a TSKP studio was actually formed in 1970 We currently have offices in Hartford and in Boston Both Jesse and I are from the Hartford office and we've done many school projects since not 1970 And I want to share with you some of the work that we've done. I think there's a common thread that runs through our work We do public schools what I'm going to show you is public schools These are a very simple child friendly examples. This one happens to be an early childhood school project next We use scale to make sure that the projects are comfortable for little people and We try to use recycled material if you could go back to that and we've been doing this for a very long time long before lead Was formalized as a process this particular example uses recycled wood it's actually wood that was salvaged from rainstorms or hurricane storms I should say and we Had this wood purchased and it was milled specifically to create this rain screen on this exterior Building, which is a public school Why rain screens? Well, it allows us to increase the insulation increase the thickness of the insulation on the exterior walls next This is recycled wood. This is a common lobby In a building and as you can see there's lots of natural light, which is a recurring theme in our work as well I believe that if we can create schools that don't need Artificial lighting we've achieved a great deal. So that's what we try to achieve as much as possible We work with lighting consultants daylighting special specialists to achieve that next We believe in when we're programming spaces creating Multifunctional spaces so that your spaces can serve a variety of purposes for instance a gymnasium can also be an Auditorium that stage that you see in the background can also be a music practice room for example You can have two sides one side facing the gym another side facing the cafeteria on the opposite side for example next We believe in beautiful and durable material Because you may get reimbursement from the state to build the building you may not get reimbursement to operate the building so it's important that whatever material you use is Easy to maintain and that comes with proper selection of materials. So That's what we do when we budget a project to make sure that those kinds of affordable Materials are included in the budget next We make sure that the school spaces have connections to the outdoors and if the schools have Small lower-age children we make sure that those windows are low enough so they can also Look out the windows and in this case. We have large spans of glass, but we also have little peekable windows at various heights as you can see next and Security and safety one of my partners Who has served on the Connecticut Governors Commission on school safety? This was after the Sandy Hook occurrence is also part of the team for this project We want to make sure that safety is considered in the development of the plans Next okay existing conditions investigations What we've done as part of our process is engage sub consultants to go through the Fort River School. We have mechanical engineers Landscape architects civil engineers structural engineers as well as a sustainable green engineer Next I'm not going to bore you with all of the deficiencies in the building I suspect that this committee probably has been through the building has probably received other reports that are that have described those Conditions we will give you our own independent assessment of those conditions that they will be in a separate bound Document that will we will give to the feasibility committee, but I could categorize those Deficiencies in these three areas number one is infrastructure Concerns second is educational needs a plan that really doesn't function in Delivering the curriculum that you have designed for the schools and third is security deficiencies next If we look at the plan of the Fort River School You can see that it was building that was built in the 70s But actually it's a model that is as old as the 50s in 1958 the educational facilities laboratory published the document that Described schools of the future and in that 1958 document they talked about schools without walls We knew when I started doing school projects back in the 70s That that was a mistake and we were retrofitting schools that that had those kinds of spaces so Fort River is one of the Consequences of that kind of thinking and it was faulty thinking We know today that we do need acoustic separation that you need visual separation You need to be able to divide those kinds of educational spaces into a variety of smaller spaces so that you can have group activity Without disrupting other pupils in the rooms and that's unfortunately what you don't have at the Fort River School Jesse if you could point to a typical classroom cluster such as that that classroom cluster illustrates four classrooms But and the classrooms are actually smaller than you think when you when you subtract the amount of Circulation that you need to go around the classrooms you end up with spaces that are quite small Those spaces that are the four spaces that are within that open area are about 710 square feet 712 square feet. I think the largest is about 724 square feet to put that in perspective The MSBA, which is the matches Massachusetts School Building Authority They're the agency that would reimburse you should you apply for MSBA funding Uses 900 square feet per classroom as their minimum requirement There are other fault flaws with this plan such as the Community spaces typically the gymnasium the library The cafeteria are located in different ends of the building Such as those areas that Jesse is pointing out That's a gymnasium at that end in the center is the the media center without without any windows And then on the right you have the cafeteria in order to get to those spaces after hours after school activities By members of the community you have to go through the school and today We plan facilities so that you can have those spaces open without opening up the rest of the school another defect we see here is that the administration area where the principal's office is the reception is is Quite a ways away from the front door and that's a security risk You can't really see people in the office can't really see People who are entering the building Next Well, we talked about open classrooms the disruption from one activity to another next The lack of daylighting there are these little courtyards, but they're very ineffective in providing outdoor Views or outdoor daylighting within the educational spaces next So what kind of educational spaces do you need? Next if you look at the population that was estimated for the school which Jesse if you could point that out is 420 that's the projected number and how do we get to that number? It's actually quite straightforward. We have a total of Seven I'm sorry seven grades K through Six and then we have three classrooms per grade if you allow 20 pupils per grade that works out to be 420 pupils that's that's the maximum allowable per this district standards So if you go in order to determine the range of options We chose to go to the 420 and that's for those grades now if you add the pre-k enrollment projected pre-k enrollment that would be an additional 45 Pupils for making a total of four hundred and sixty-five pupils. So that's the number that we're targeting in our study Well, what does the MSBA say about that? What kind of spaces do you need if you look at the MSBA guidelines four hundred and sixty-five pupils would require seventy two thousand seven hundred and forty two square feet But we believe based upon our assessment that you need eighty four thousand square feet Why if you look at the chart just below there you have a difference of opinion on How many pupils per classroom is the correct number according to the district 20 is the correct number? And I don't disagree with that actually if you can do fewer. I think you're better off, but that's my opinion MSBA says you should be allocating 25 pupils per classroom You can you can go to 20 you don't have to adhere to the 25 But what the MSBA does is says well, we're not going to reimburse you for that excess square footage So if you look at the at Amherst classroom guideline factor that affects the square footage that amounts to four thousand seven hundred and twenty five square feet in addition to that you have The district special ed programs that are in the school Ames building blocks, and then you also have the pre-k administrative area What MSBA says when they do their calculation is because we don't want redundant Administration in the school. We're not going to count the administrative spaces for the pre-k So as far as MSBA is concerned, that's excess. So that's how we come up with Eighty five thousand one twenty seven we round it down. We think we can do a little bit more efficient job So that's the disparity between our calculation and MSBA's calculation Next what about the spaces within the eighty four thousand square feet? What the feasibility committee did is the they asked Dr. Morris to help with this process We've met with Dr. Morris several times and we had tried to identify the kinds of spaces that would be needed in a population of 420 pupils in order to deliver the curriculum and we came up with this whole list of spaces so many classrooms Gym space cafeteria of so many square feet and so on and if you total all of that up and then you add a factor for Corridors and wall thicknesses you come up with eighty four thousand square feet that level of detail will be part of the report That we give to the feasibility study next Sustainability and net zero a subject of discussion with the feasibility committee and also a subject of discussion with the town In fact in this town you have the requirement that any new building that's built with local funding has to be built To meet net zero requirements That's a factor in the development of the options and the costs that are going to be part of that the study So let's talk briefly about that sustainability and net zero Next starting with what is sustainable? I mean it's common knowledge common understanding that sustainable Very often means safe and healthy. It's resource efficient. It's smart about using material It has to be flexible and adaptable durable and maintainable next but there's a more formal definition That Massachusetts School of Building Authority uses which is something called lead certification or New England ships or the New England Collaborative on high-performance schools either method of scoring Sustainable buildings is acceptable to MSBA That's the minimum requirement if you want to qualify for MSBA guidelines And it means 10% better than the current energy code in the state Now the state acknowledges that that puts a burden on Funding or cost on the project so they will additionally reimburse The district for projects that can further exceed the energy code by 20% Next so there's an incentive there We also have energy codes that come into play and since 1980 We are mandated by codes to continue to drop the energy consumption in school buildings And this chart tries to illustrate that right now We're at about the halfway point of where we were Back in 1980 that's how much energy is mandated to be dropped regardless of what MSBA says what you're building an energy code says so that's a requirement and You have now in town created the net zero obligation Which further makes it more challenging the next chart tries to illustrate that I'm sorry Jesse go back one more Okay, you see how this is declining keep that downward curve in mind next that downward curve is also expressed by this graph So you see the energy demand Code compliant chart that shows the constant decline of the energy goals and that brings us To a point just if you could point that out at the bottom of the curve right there now your net zero regulation says You have to be able to generate Enough energy in your facility so that you don't have to buy any energy That's an important point So how do we do that we have to create renewable energy in the project To make sure that we get to net zero next So let's talk about the design options, and I'm going to present to you a range of options from a to f next That's what this chart illustrates there are Six that we'll talk about actually there are over a hundred if you look at all the variations But I'm only only going to talk about six On the left you see option a which is a hundred percent new building It also happens to be the simplest strategy in construction phasing You build a new building you move everyone in You demolish the old building very simple phasing on the right are options e and f Those options are much more difficult to accomplish Option f does not meet all your goals. It basically just Make some repairs brings you up to energy code does not really address the educational requirements Option e does meet all your goals But it's only seven percent new construction If you compare seven percent new construction with a hundred percent new construction How do you achieve that with a building that's currently being used you have to phase it and how do you phase it? It takes you a whole lot longer You grab a little pieces of the building as you go around and do renovation work is one strategy Another strategy is you put portable classrooms on the site or you find someplace else to put the children You know to renovate all the existing building So those are the that's the range everything from a hundred percent new fifty percent new twenty nine eighteen all the way down to zero percent new Next so we have in this chart What is it a hundred and a hundred and forty seven hundred and forty seven variations? Why do we get a hundred forty seven variations? Well if you look at the six options that we talked about a through F then we looked at Different populations. What if pre-k is not? In the in the school That's a smaller population Make a smaller square footage demand. What if sixth grade moves to another facility that affects the population So Jesse if you could point to those variations in population, you'll see 465 that includes pre-k 420 does not 360 remind me what 360 is it's just a lower pre-k through six enrollment. Okay for various reasons Whatever, okay, and then the 315 is I believe the if you take pre-k away again, okay, so so that's existing Yeah, so in in each column ABCD, etc. You'll see those four variations in populations That affects footprint footprint affects cost and then if you look at the column on the left side, you'll see various HVAC systems we looked at six different possible HVAC systems They have different initial costs. They have different operating expenses in the future. They have different maintenance costs and when we spoke with the facilities director the optimal choice was as Jesse's pointing out on that line right there that option six system number six So now if you look across the chart, you'll see there are six yellow boxes Those are the six options we chose to illustrate and present to you Understand that we could go on many more times and look at other options But if I give you the this Maximum population in each column that should give you a pretty good picture of the range starting with a oh By the way, all of the options address these non-negotiable goals that were established by the feasibility cutting the committee such as the natural light has to be Available in all classrooms. None of these shortcuts like skylights or shortcuts like light wells Legitimate exterior walls with windows. You have to achieve that Good air quality good acoustics Elimination of this open classroom design. Let's make sure that the partitions are creating proper rooms Compliance with towns net zero bylaws One more thought about that The town bought bylaws says new buildings Have to comply with net zero. So if you do a hundred percent new 100% of it has to be net zero if you do fifty percent new that fifty percent is net zero Just just to be clear the renovated portion does not have to be net zero to comply with your guidelines or your bylaws And so on you can read the list Has to be fully accessible has to meet the building and energy code compliance next Okay, so let's look at option a this aerial Rendering illustrates and you can barely see it. There's the footprint of the existing building Just you can outline it. Is it in that general area? So we would build in the area shown in blue That is a proposed two-story building That could satisfy all of your educational needs that would be built adjacent to the existing footprint Once the new building is finished the existing building building would be removed next in order to meet net zero We need to put Many photovoltaic panels in the building to make this system work to met to achieve net zero So all of the pink areas that you see are photovoltaic arrays They would be on the roof of the building They would be in the parking lots as well as on the ground in the field that you see Once the new building is finished, then we would have new playfields built Next This is the two-story option. All of the classrooms have exterior walls all of the spaces have daylight and The entrance area just if you could point that out The entrance to the building would be there Off the parking areas and there's this and that's also another entrance at that end right here So admin is very close to the entrance We're minimizing the number of entrances into the building for security reasons On the upper floors, you can see the classroom spaces arranged around the perimeter of the footprint all of the Common areas such as the gymnasium cafeteria library all collected together You can use those spaces after hours without opening up the rest of the building next option B option B I think I described before as 50% new in this case It's a two-story addition to the existing building and then renovation of the remainder of the building next this option has fewer photovoltaics that would be required to Achieve net zero in the addition and then the renovation of the existing building which would also be done next And your overall strategy as as shown here. We would remove a portion of the building in the core That's that tan area In the core as well as on the left side of the footprint the blue area as new construction. The gray is renovated next When we're finished, we would have in the center of the building a courtyard And then we would have Rearranged the common areas so that they were available for use by the community after hours And the academic areas can be separated the academic areas You can see all of the classrooms in orange. They would have all exterior walls and Windows available next. I'm sorry. I'm going to ask you to pause for just one second Certainly there's a lot of information that's been shared right now So I just want to give a moment to the committee in case there's any clarifying questions or anything that you'd like to ask of the architect at This point. Okay, you're all speechless Next option C is 29% new Places the addition that the opposite end of the building next Fewer photovoltaics would be required obviously because the building new construction is is smaller Next similar strategy the blue is new construction the gray is renovation the tan area are sections of the building that would be removed Next and the footprint also achieves exterior walls for all of the rooms As you can see and we've located the common area so that they're available after hours Next option D is only 18% new Next a similar strategy fewer photovoltaics next smaller new construction in This case we would be filling in Those little courtyards that are not very effective in order to build proper square footage legitimate separate classrooms and we were building a Large courtyard in the center of the building so that we have exterior walls on all the classrooms That's what this would look like I Neglected to mention that all of these plans have pre-k in the plans Jesse if you could point those out. Those are the darker orange areas here There were those are typically clustered in an area by themselves with a separate entrance because we see a lot of coming and going at different hours at different hours, but They have their own schedule Next and then option E only 7% new Similar strategy fewer photovoltaics and renovation work next Here you can see the relatively small new construction that would be for the pre-k area only We would create a courtyard in the center of the building and then create proper classrooms with exterior walls all around Next so A through E Fulfills all of those goals that I listed makes the building accessible meets the energy codes makes net zero those new construction areas Option F fails to do that All it does all this does it achieves as you can see in the list it achieves abatement. We're replacing the roof We're replacing the windows We're reconfiguring some rooms, but we're not replacing or reconfiguring all of the rooms new sprinkler system in the building Which doesn't exist? and so on and That that we chose to include in the feasibility study so that the committee could see what's the base cost What's the base cost that we need to achieve in this building without all of those other goals so that you had some basis of comparison? Next Do we have more than that after this this is the last no, okay, so what's all this cost? We haven't had that presentation with the feasibility committee yet We have received some cost information for an independent cost estimator quite frankly We haven't vetted those numbers yet. We want to make sure that those numbers are correct So we would like to go through that with the feasibility come out of committee before we report it We also want to make sure that the phasing costs for each of those options are included because phasing costs money as well I'll be happy to answer any questions So looking to the committee at this point or mr. Not good you matter know if you want to add any comments or Well, we'll see if I have any comments, but I did have a couple I just want to clarify a couple months. I mean you were describing earlier that there were Like a hundred and fifty different potential variations on the building, but if I'm not wrong The the report we're going to be looking at at the end is going to have a distinct subset of that hundred and fifty variations Right, that's correct. It's going to have I think it's going to have a through f and then it'll include Both with pre-k and without pre-k That's right, you'll be able to glean from the report the costs associated with those variations In other words, you'll you'll yes, you'll see a cost for with pre-k and without pre-k Right, but for a for a through f. Yes, okay, and then another question. I was is our I probably should know this already, but I'm assuming that there's going to be some since you're describing Compliance with the net zero by a lot and Logically a would be 100% compliant, which would mean there'd be some estimation of the cost of Construction and maintenance, but then also some impact on the operating cost because absolutely your your co-genitor You're you have much more energy efficient building and you have lower Utility costs, I hope you would you're not buying right exactly and and then But if you go down the line as you're describing it you describe different alternatives Some of which were only like 25% compliant or 18% compliant in terms of being that zero correct And so the question would be would we anticipate seeing some sense of what the trade-off is in terms of Operating efficiency and cost and things like that. Yes We owe that information still as part of our final report to the feasibility community Yes, great great and and and just I guess I don't want to put a fine point on it But part of the reason I was asking those questions is to put I guess I'm putting fine point on something that we started off with which is in my view that the work of the work that you're doing and the work that the committee is doing is extremely valuable Precisely because of the fact that our committee is not going to be coming out with preferred option or a single option To say to the town here's what you ought to do or to this a pretend it here's what you ought to do The bottom line is we're looking at With a set of key principles, which is why just saying that to clarify for anyone in the audience who's wondering Well, why are you going through the process of defining a building program? Why are you making decisions around? You know whether building blocks is remaining there or not The reason is because you got a model something if you're going to come up with a series of scenarios and then Analyze the existing building building site and then come up with a rational analysis It's based on the expertise that you have You got it. You got a set parameters, right? You got to compare apples to apples and and so that's what you're doing and The ideal goal out of this is that both for our committee, but also for the entire community We should get this something is echoing the superintendents at the beginning. We should get Very useful information that could inform the public generally about the building site But also get a good sense of what the trade-offs so on one level and I don't know how we're going to handle this The committee hasn't discussed this, but You know on one level The key point of the report Witness why I asked the question about zero energy is it might be cheaper. I don't know Maybe it won't be cheaper. I have no idea, but I mean it whether it's cheaper or not to go zero energy Upfront then there's the question of the long-time operating impacts and the sustainability goals the town has versus Not doing that right and and I'm saying that only because I think in the end ideally What will come out of this adult to hear thoughts about how you're gonna write up the report? Is ideally the report at the end is going to be really deeply informed? The committee and the public as a whole around what the trade-offs are so what's feasible on the site per se with the building per se But then also what are the trade-offs essentially? between different options in terms of educational outcome, but also there's a cost of the things they love to hear your thoughts about How you're thinking of presenting it if you have any thoughts at this point well The report will be in written form. It will be publishable. It will be uploadable. However, the committee Chooses to convey that to members of the community From that we can glean PowerPoint Presentations that kind of highlight the main features of the report so that will be available But in terms of some sort of matrix to evaluate We haven't developed that with the feasibility committee. We need to do that. How do we how do we are we going to rank? We probably won't rank, but we probably should establish some sort of criteria. I Would think but we haven't had that discussion with the with the feasibility to start up a child spot. Sorry, I can't answer that tonight. Stay tuned Any other questions or comments mr. Dunley? Yeah, so just building up this in academia's question and your response My comment on that is that because we're not going to have a building out of this I think the most valuable way to collect and present the information in terms of what the differences are between ABCD and E is just that to articulate as clearly as possible what those differences are And so like I wouldn't be looking, you know to you or the cost estimator to make a qualitative value judgment about Oh, you should do C or a I mean that's big picture sort of discussion based on values and a number of different Variables, but I would want to have someone who's not familiar with the work to be able to say Oh, well, this is the difference between what you get with option D and option D And then you know people can talk about the value there So that that's what I would be looking for from that My my bigger picture question is to what extent is the cost estimating Factoring in the state of the site and the site analysis that was done so I read through the the draft site analysis document and The part that I felt was the most important and also kind of understated is the part on on climate change and It's just that you know the two sentences that really struck me were in addition to the new floodplain mapping The project team may want to consider changing trends in rainfall and heat associated with climate change And I read that I said, yeah, absolutely Considering climate change and then you know some more detail that I won't read through but then the last sentence today's floodplain Maybe much smaller than the footprint of tomorrow's floodplain, and I don't want to get into a big floodplain discussion It does you know dawn on me You know when I roll up to the biggest picture view of wanting to project an investment for the next hundred years as opposed to the past hundred years And so what what costs will be associated with one not just building on the the ground as it currently is but To you know to what extent do we need to factor in building costs that are going to be resilient in an environment of the future where there are rainfall percentages and the number of Category X hurricanes coming up the Northeast corridor or higher so well typically we we design and have buildings built that Are expected to last 50 years So I have never ever been challenged with the question of what's going to happen in a hundred or 200 years Honestly, I can't if you can help predict that then maybe we can Yeah, all we can do is predict Well, we are information that we are able to obtain from specialists But going beyond that it's like trying to predict the population of The what's the enrollment demand? That far into the future it's very difficult to predict But all due respect it's it's quite a challenge Okay So I actually have a couple of questions, I guess first. Thank you for taking the time to present this. It's it's actually been really informational and educational and I think hearing what the feasibility the study building committee has been grappling with is really helpful You know, I have I have some questions about the level of detail We've had this conversation before because I do think that while yes, we want to set parameters We want to be able to compare, you know Like to like in terms of the different projects at the same time a lot of this is really just our best guess with information that we currently have Project may be very different, you know five ten fifteen years down in the future right when we actually come back to it So I I wonder at some of the decisions that are being made or discussed at the you know And maybe there's some members of the committee that are here that can help answer that for us to be Focused on some of these very detailed questions at this point I guess I'm wondering what the deliverable actually is because at a certain point if we're just really looking for Information that can help guide our thinking in terms of how to invest You know a in a capital project moving forward if we have status assistance or if we don't You know those those decisions are so are going to be so much in the air Right because you know the state assistance may drive us down one path And if we don't have that we would choose very differently, right? And so I don't know if you've had that conversation at the building committee level, you know I would invite chair salvin to Certainly at all at any of my committee members try and if they need to we haven't actually talked about that specific topic of Whether this project would achieve or not achieve state assistance and I don't know Eric. I mean it's not something that has naturally come up so far mostly because I think our charge was So focused on this site this building And not necessarily the MSBA process No, so I guess what I'm asking is you know, we were we're dealing on such a high level of detail in considering all of these different options that You know may or may not actually come to fruition, right? Because it will all depend on what kind of assistance or what kind of project we actually end up taking on and so I wonder if the committee has has talked about that about, you know Why go down certain roads and actually get to the point where you're even looking at six? You know options. Why not three options, right? You know why get to that level of detail without knowing exactly what level of project we're going to end up with I'm you know, I just said it was a somewhat organic process that we wanted to make sure we we were charged with and Took seriously that the charge of looking at a a multitude of options and you're right You could choose a multiple that was three or you could choose six And I think we wanted to capture a range between obviously new and renovation and and Make sure that we had explored a reasonable selection But I don't think we necessarily will say we want to do six This time it goes back to we haven't discussed this in a long time, but when we first started about a year ago This was we discussed this at some length about what exactly we're gonna end up with at the end And where it went from there and our assumption at the start was that this feasibility study although Our committee would take it on take it forward If the town wanted to this would be the next step before we start talking about schematic designs Applying premise be a funding and perhaps the MSBA would even accept this feasibility study as part of our process Or if nothing else it would be a useful piece of information to to move the conversation And and to my mind the level of detail we've been working at With the assumption that even if this is this committee isn't losing a building someone I think we're asking why we have so many options and I think more is better than When we gather information you start with a big range of options and then you The next stage We said at least The way we say more is better in this case is more information Analytics So why restrict ourselves to just only let's speak okay a F and which ones on the middle It's very very different solutions I think the whole purpose is they want evolving as Feedback back and forth with the architects with the table ideas. They say why why don't we try this other thing? So back and forth and I think it's also a natural organic process with the nature of the building You know there's places where and Richard can talk to this word naturally you can add on in other places where it's more difficult Does that answer better than it does and thank you for for sharing that? I mean, you know, we haven't been a part of those conversations. So, you know, and we've had just limited Sort of variations of that conversation even with the chair salvin at our last meeting But it's helpful to hear from the committee your thinking on this and how you've gotten to the point where you can You know follow or pursue six different options and then think about presenting those as the final product for this end report And I have one other comment that mr. No, could you make it looks like you wanted out at something that had less to do with the number of options than the level of detail in some of the in within the information that that is being developed and my perception of that is that actually a lot of the detail was driven by The design team not by the committee itself And I'm not I'm not saying the answer is to like what do we look at this and answer questions but my point being is that Arbor the first meeting with you after you've been selected you came in the door basically sitting down and peppering us with questions many of them which were very very specific around What is what information you were going to need to be able to? realistically model potential school building and come up with information that would be Defensible and so in this case what is a defensible means some of it has really related to site and expectations around the site some of it has to do I'll pick on one because it was a favorite topic for a long time was looking at special ed special education space and The amount of space we have devoted to special education Programs at Fort River is a great variance to what the MSBA would predict you would need to have and so we were having This some semi argument back and forth that also ended up being largely driven by an engagement with with CPAC and with the the district's Professional staff to basically understand that under existing conditions future school committees and schools Supertier administrations could change how we're doing special needs Educational programming. This is what we're doing now and in my point is so we got into the weeds on that but we got into the weeds because You could potentially have five or six thousand additional square feet Then what if you simply off the rack took it off the rack and said we're we're modeling a blank template elementary school Then you would have had a building that was smaller in those areas And a that would be unrealistic So the cost modeling would immediately could be thrown out the window when you're done because it wouldn't actually make any sense And then to you get into this public conversation where people would say like the instant It's unveiled and said look this is a modeling exercise But it's modeling exercise has been done with a level of rigor You're actually going to learn something from this if somebody was going to open up the book and say well You're not even modeling the actual special needs programming We're doing right now you're way off by by you know thousands of square feet And you're not actually matching what we're doing to help children and families today So what good is this to me? And I'm saying that only because If from the outside looking in you could you could look and see a committee that seemed to be like Taking toy soldiers on a field and modeling out the battle and sort of think acting like it's the real war To use a bad analogy, but you know what I mean like basically it's a modeling exercise, but you're being so specific It seems like have you forgotten what you're doing? You're not really You know this is not the stage where anyone's building a building and the answer is it's it's in this was in the service of getting Information back at the end of this that people could look at and say not only is this reflect Educational practice in a way that makes sense to me or it seems somehow realistic It matches those principles that are put down and then say you look at and say okay now I get what the different variations are I'm willing to buy the analysis maybe a little bit better than I could otherwise that was long, but I think important Yes, but our arguments were very friendly of course they were It is important actually and that's one of the reasons why I ask you know this question I've asked it repeatedly because I think it's important to get this this on the record right I think it's important for us to hear as a community You know the reasons why we're going through this process the way that we're going and that actually leads me to my second question Which is you mentioned this final report, which I think we're all looking forward to including the the river feasibility study building committee and I I'm wondering if There has been a discussion yet about you know milestones or at what points throughout the next you know Three months six months year we will we can expect different pieces of this to kind of come together Right because as soon as we're getting information from this the building committee where you know this school committee is also Basing some of its decision-making. I mean we're going to be having a conversation on capital planning and on this agenda tonight You know some of that may be impacted at some point very soon You know by what ends up happening with with this report right so and not I don't know But because they're all this is up in the air simultaneously I think it's helpful for us to hear if there has been any discussion about how these different products will be rolled out We have had conversations with the feasibility committee, and I believe we owe you a complete draft in January That's the current schedule. I'm yeah a little nervous We may be a little behind our schedule, but but if so it's only in a matter of a week or two at this point the I'm going by memory. So I'm sure someone will poke me if I get this wrong, but initially we'd been hoping to have an initial kind of community outreach event This week. Yes, I think we'd actually this week And so but we're also hoping to have the defiant the fine cost modeling available for that And so we're a little behind on that so that that piece is a little bit delayed But the intent is to have Some form of community engagement fairly soon Get feedback just like we're going to hopefully get some feedback this evening Richard Will work to incorporate that and that will be then I Think the basis for the for the draft at least right of the final report We would love to have your input as well as anybody else So that we can then go back to the committee and said this is what we heard And this is I think how we need to edit the document But when we make our delivery in January or thereabouts Then there will be another round of revisions and we haven't really established a public meeting Community outreach schedule high on our list of things. So So that's forthcoming. I don't know what that schedule is but after after every meeting. I'm sure there'll be another round of Edits This would be a good time to point out that I think We our committee has done a good job of posting documents on the website And so anyone who wants to go and look and find And I think all the copies of materials Nearly all And we're going to be we're going to be on that point really soon No, but I'm but I'm being very serious about this because so I mean This is one of those rare opportunities We're talking to a much broader audience about what that committee is doing If there's Amherst media Is is taping every single meeting. I assume they're getting broadcast, but presumably they can also go find That link where they want to there's also materials on the website for meeting minutes meeting materials Like draft reports and things like that that have been shared With the feasibility committee. So really it's a completely open and transparent in terms of what's been presented What's been discussed and you can find all that stuff We welcome you doing so At the risk of adding complexity where I think we were trying to not do that I just want to explain All of these different options here and how we're talking about over, you know, 100 options A lot of the has to do with the fact that we're looking at a lot of Thanks, we're trying to look at multiple different ways of addressing the HVAC system And so that's going to add a lot of Even within option A, B, C, D, E or F What can we do and I want to clarify something I think it was just misstated earlier Everything that we're doing is in compliance with the net zero bylaw That doesn't mean that every single option is net zero. It's compliant with the bylaw Which means that any new construction is net zero and But any renovation Is also a dramatic improvement. So it should, you know, shouldn't be thought of as, you know, all or none So everything is an improvement And we'll be able to give you Have to formulate it in a way that that's uh understandable to say, okay for This option versus this option This is what you can think about how it's functioning in terms of a green building And its efficiency So that's all going to be part of the report as well Which I think is going to be very helpful in making decisions into the future. Thanks Just one question that that I got recently is wondering about not so much the specifics of phasing, but Um, the construction timeline and the phasing as it relates to that Is that something that you feel like in this report could be estimated? So option A would roughly take x number of Months years, whatever, you know some combination of that versus option C. Is that something that you feel like? Yes? Yes, absolutely. We'll do that. Thank you. I would assume that that would be integral to the cost modeling It's integral to the cost model because time equals money Um, extended general conditions all of those things cost money Um, but we will we will simplify the description of it into x numbers of months per option. Thank you Any other come mr. Dumlin? Yeah, I guess I just don't want to end this conversation without making the additional point that um You know, it's it's necessary to start with the assumption So if we're going to this is going to be a means to an end to getting a range of cost-estimated options to consider We had to start the sum assumption. So we said assume pre-k or k to 6 at 4 trailer I think it's important to emphasize the communications um The public and you know from each committee But we haven't had any discussion As a community or as a school committee about whether we actually should Build on forever and what that configuration should be that's that's a a bigger variable topic that has touchpoints with the unknown msba statement of interest process that you mentioned earlier as well as the maintenance cost of the building of the of the uh of the two buildings in the next decade plus So I I find that on one-on-one conversations very difficult to explain that there's all this good work That there's this train that's moving ahead and it's going to be this community engagement feedback and yet It is not starting from a point where we have made any kind of value judgment that we want to build on fort river It's I find it pretty tricky to explain honestly what i'm speaking with people So I think it's communications challenge, but I think it's something we need to continue to bring up Um so we can clarify what this process is and how that relates to the One way I find it helpful to talk to the public about that is we went through a feasibility study already with the wildwood site And so to me and and we never made it through a feasibility study of the fort river site because on the last project It was pretty clear that for one building solution to these two buildings that the wildwood site Was a preferred site and we really never dug down to see what fort river would be like That's what this work is doing. We're catching up to the work that was already done at wildwood Yeah, it actually I mean I actually would say and I think when town meeting was approving the funding for this item Part of the general discussion that happened at school committee and in town meeting at the time Being was that's kind of the entire point of this exercise Is that I mean if we'd already made a decision whether we're going to build here or not Then we wouldn't really need to do a feasibility study Because apparently we'd know enough that we didn't need the information Um, so the the cool thing about this is that the the entire point of this process is to say Let's get better information that can allow us to make Better decisions when the time comes Great, and we didn't really touch on it. Um, but you know regardless of what happens on the site There are a few items that that will be universally useful to the town We're doing additional borings that supplement the borings the soil borings that were done in the 1970s Um, and we're having a new survey done Which will improve wetlands flagging so that that's good basic data the town can Just use for whatever purpose Lots of the departmental study Yes Dr. Morris just the additional point not to belabor it but to add to what Was already been stated is that we've cost estimates for Multiple size schools, but none of them were the size that is the preferred option Um that we're looking at here. So I think also it fills out some unknowns That the community has about what are different cost options at different site size um site well sites But also different school sizes. So I think it's an additional variable That's also going to be really helpful as the town has to face What its next steps are so that's something that I also value anything will will now have a nice span of Cost estimates and sizes and sites which I think when the towns face with making a critical decision The more information the better and I think that's a critical piece from my perspective Thank you So in the interest of time, I do want to move us along. Um, I think that there was a question about feedback I don't know if you've gotten everything that you need from us or if there's another Process that you would like this committee to take Well, we gave you a lot of information I suspect that after you go home and you think about it, you'll think well, I should have asked this question I would ask you then to just forward your questions Perhaps through you the chairperson To the building or the feasibility committee and then we can we can get that feedback that way great Okay, thank you In case people don't know you can email the committee frsbc at amherstmed.gov so you can Just communicate with us directly as you can with the school committee Oh, we we won't answer you but You can you can let us it's just a violation of open meeting law if we start going back and forth So but we we all do read what you send us Okay, well, thank you very much again for taking the time to be here tonight. We really appreciate it And we'll certainly send you any thoughts or feedback comments You know, we have a usually a blurb that we take advantage of in the superintendent's newsletter on a weekly basis sometimes You know every other week depending on what our meeting schedule is But this might be a good way to actually try to gather some more input and information from the community So thank you so much. Mr. Nakajima I move to adjourn The feasibility committee All right, thank you very much again, really appreciate it Sure, why don't we take a two minute, but if you don't mind I really don't want to keep this meeting much longer No, no, I just think it's going to be two minutes. What do we take a recess? Thank you So if I can just get a motion to move to recess for two minutes. Thank you. So this is all in favor We are recessed Thank you So calling the meeting of the amber school committee back to order um 7 23 With thanks to everybody, um again from the port river feasibility study building committee that was here earlier It was a good conversation But moving along now to our capital planning item on the agenda Turn to you dr. Morris. Sure. Yeah, I'm going to start and then mr. Mungano will take over about halfway through So I want to just offer a brief piece of context for this Also, I want to apologize. There's one slotting your presentations in the wrong place, which you'll notice So for those who are following along in the packets So typically we don't share this level of detail for capital items this early in the process And for the town of amherst as we'll get into As opposed to the regional schools this goes to the town of amherst to be sorted through with other capital needs The regional schools just for those people who may be confused because there's actually votes at the regional school committee for capital That's not true At the amherst level in the same way And we'll get into that The development of the capital project I want to thank mr. McPherson who's retired for our district We thank him for his service literally combing through every single classroom in the elementary schools all three schools all the systems And the goal is that we know that there are multiple areas that separate from I'll just be very blown about it if we got an msba tomorrow. We'll find out in december, but if we got in tomorrow Many of the aspects of the plan especially in the first couple years would be unchanged because there are urgent needs now In the buildings and they need to be addressed So I want to thank mr. McPherson for his work. He's met with he met with mr. Magano and I multiple times as we developed Looking out five years, which I think is the reasonable amount of time one can look out At this we'll go into great detail in the f by 20 budget So the one for this coming the proposal for the coming year this draft But we also want to present the four years Following because looking at one year without any context of the four years that follow Think we'll lose things. There's also some unknowns as we'll talk about That we know will be Costs will be need to be born But we'll try to be clear of when we would know the cost and how that would fit into a multi-year capital plan I think multiple times this year you've heard feedback from Parents teachers about the condition of the buildings and we've done the best we can and I'll update that later When we talk about facilities update And I think we're in better shape than we I know we're in better shape than we were earlier in the fall and What we know is if we don't take firm bold steps now We will be recycling these same problems These core infrastructure problems the future and that's not acceptable to our teachers It's not acceptable to our students. It's not acceptable to our community So that's the kind of spirit with which we wanted to bring Kind of this information forward Do you want me to click Mike while you do your piece? I'm close enough. Thank you that's very nice You so just the process I described a bit We'll talk about new projects the five-year plan to restore schools We'll talk about some of the planned considerations and then a calendar moving forward I think it's worth noting as well that these Let's just think about the architects presentation and it will address some of those core problems that they also identified at Fort River But it won't address the open classrooms the sort of large-scale architectural issues That are in any of our buildings And it's really about the kind of the conditions but not necessarily the teaching and learning Direct conditions. I mean, they're all influenced by heat cooling water other items So we're looking for you to review and offer feedback We'll refine the plan as we get that feedback and more information becomes available We'll look for feedback and approval though. It's not required in this particular year I think that's a conversation we should come back to in December Even though it's not required. It doesn't preclude a school committee taking a position on that So I want to talk a bit about that Presentation of a plan to for the joint capital planning committee And really an advocacy role that I plan to play and Amish Magano plans to play. We'll be having a If we were interviewing for a new facility director this week And that person will be a critical component of this as well And then to be very candid we're looking for the school committee as elected officials also wherever you all land with You know the final draft also to play an advocacy role in the town And that'll all come to the town council for review Mr. Domen. Um, so just on process. So you mentioned that school committee vote is not required But it's possible So like as you're imagining scoping out this advocacy timeline About when would you be looking for that if the school committee was of the mindset to take a vote What would be the most appropriate point? Yeah, I'd say probably january-ish Which jcpc starts up pretty around that time So you would want to have some sort of idea what direction you want to go in as you head into the jcpc process I think one other piece before I transition from process is I also met this afternoon with the president of the amherst palms education association gene fey to review the plans with her we she's Certainly close to hearing lots of concern from staff members and it was important to us It was important to me it was important to us that she also be included in this process as well So our primary for the considerations we wanted to focus on safety Um, you can see, you know, I won't go into the detail because we'll be there in a couple minutes accessibility Improving the physical climate and then preserving the asset that is our buildings our students and our staff Uh, we wanted to have timing of projects that and one of one of the projects in particular is going to be something that requires some Some pretty intensive discussion. Uh, we could start that tonight, but certainly in the next meeting And uh, what can be managed operationally, right? So we can't rip up everything in the buildings in the summer, right? Some of it's just functionally what we can do and how to phase that That work to happen when students aren't in the building because much of this work not all that much of the work has to occur when students aren't present When funding will be available. So what we know is that our typical funding cycles um Are such that when a project's approved Which is in the late spring is usually too late to actually and the money becomes available July 1st to to procure work to happen that summer Is a huge challenge. So oftentimes large projects get approved and the work actually happens the following summer if it's a large project that students can't be there for because Companies already booked by the time the money becomes available for the by the time we actually know the money is going to be available Vendors are already booked because that's you know Five six weeks from when work would start and that's not a reasonable timeline for for contractors Um, and the plan assumes no newer renovated schools within five years So if we were to get into msb, we're fortunate enough to get in as I said next month Then that process still would likely take, you know, we tried to use a reasonable timeline For that as I said, if we if you know if we did get in next month I would still be years one through three in particular would be relatively unchanged So here's the summary and then we'll get into the more shawn excel style Description of the the longer range plans in a bit So the hVAC at the schools So we had the major issue at wildwood this year with the chiller system pumps and controls That was it was certainly the lark wildwood is a site with the largest issues But all three schools had issues with their chillers Mr. Macheteerson ranked wildwood certainly at the top, but Crocker farm was a close second. There were major major issues Classroom and classroom and crocker farm with heat Particularly in the second floor, but not exclusively and fort river also had huge variability of how it managed hot weather I think in particular wildwood mr. McPherson's Significance, this is the one I want to talk to about timeline because he's significantly concerned that if the work waits Till the summer after the coming one if it makes sense That there's a really decent chance of the system will fail again so When we get to discussion I want to in timeline I want to discuss that a little firmer because if we follow our normal jcpc Town funding process that basically leaves us in his opinion very vulnerable for a peat episode of what we had this fall Where we don't have cooling for weeks on end at wildwood and for me That's unacceptable to to think about that and so I want to hold on that because I want to go through the list But that's the when I pointed out when I said earlier. There's one that might be a slightly adjusted timeline at least a request for that That's the one i'm speaking of Water fixture replacement at all three schools. There's 41 drinking fountains And food service water fixtures that didn't receive any work. I want to be really clear This is an illegal mandate where all of our water is well below the action level And what we know is that we've got multiple water outlets that are 40 to 45 years old And they should be replaced. Mr. McPherson felt strongly about this and I tend to agree with him that That's something that we shouldn't do is we should not wait longer to take care of that need We have unit vents. This is at all three schools So this would take care of roughly a third of replacing the unit vents So you could have the best heating and cooling systems put in and if the unit vents function is to actually Realize the the the work of the HVAC system and the unit vent in the classrooms not working properly It doesn't matter how great the boiler is or how great the air conditioning is because that unit is actually the critical unit This gets to scale. There's just we don't feel like we could separate from finances Just couldn't replace the company couldn't replace that many unit vents all at once It's just not feasible to do that many and dr. Morris unit vent and just I'm sorry Is the unit that basically pushes out the cold air and also pushes out the hot air Exactly exactly and we know we're not operating close to any level of efficiency and I'm both talking about energy But I'm particularly talking about how much warmer cool air gets pushed out and its distribution So this would be taking you'll see later on the multi-year plan taking two years to replace the unit vents in the classrooms also with ones that are less Able for small hands to drop pencils in and quarters and pennies and all those things that get in the way So they make unit vents slightly differently now than they did many years ago. And again, this is across all three schools This is inclusive of cracker farm Exterior doors. So as we've talked about a couple times we are in the process of replacing exterior doors And this would complete all of the exterior doors door replacements at Fort River and Wildwood Which are the original doors which at this point are warped and it's both energy efficiency But it's also a safety risk of if there was a crisis and someone needed to get out of the room right now Some of those doors we were doing our best and we've improved the situation But they really just need to be replaced those doors weren't intended to last as long as they've lasted So again, these are all projects for fy 20. So the roof at cracker farm over the library. Oh, I'm sorry I apologize. Thank you So the replacement of shingled portions So there's a part of the roof over the library and computer lab area I think you heard about it from public comment in the past and we had our folks inspected And it just needs to be replaced. It's not a patch up. There's like structural problems Not structurally it's going to fall but structural problems that can't be just patched over As it relates to that area of the school. So it would resolve that Generator at Wildwood. So one of the challenges we have at Fort River and Wildwood was when we ever have a power outage Which I'll get into a little bit with electrical Because of the interior classrooms, it's incredibly dark and just not safe because it's so little natural light Most of our schools have generators the upside of the generator and the cost is this is something that Could be I don't know a better word for it, but repurposed if there was a new building built So it most men some of these things Hard to imagine repurposing but this is one that could be functionally repurposed It you know goes on wheels and you can move it to wherever you need to be Um as we've talked about multiple times here and is referenced in the report that the architects did that all of you Saw a couple months ago our electrical systems Particularly the ones at fort river and wildwood are made by a company that no longer exists And had a poor track record of safety This would be having an outside expert come in and certify our electrical system to ensure safety And also to make recommendations of improvement. So this is the 80 000 is a cost of the certification The unknown is what they're going to tell us So it's an 80 000 cost to both certify safety and then make recommendations for Any future cost And we're assuming that they're going to certify them as being fully safe It's but we also need someone to come in and look at that with an objective third third party eye The building accessibility upgrades at all three schools. So we've talked about this in this committee This is the ADA audit that was approved and or we talked about and was supported by the school committee So they've been out twice. I think already I think one or two more visits coming next week next week and by january we'll have an update on What it is that they're seeing is not compliant with americans with disability act And recommendations for us to consider. So again, this is a to be determined because we don't know what they'll find But we wanted to have a placeholder there. Yeah, and they're meeting with um I think some representatives of cpaq either this friday or sometime next week to get Some direct input from the people who realize this, you know every day some of the deficiencies Yeah, so on the thank you. So that's great. So on the electrical system certification item Is it you know your collective judgment? that If the 80 000 is just for the assessment and certification then I'm taking it that that doesn't include Any cost of repair or improvement of the system that they might find is necessary um Should we take that 80 000 then? as sort of a baseline figure of we know we need to spend 80 000 But just between you know between us We anticipate there's at least another X amount more that'll have to be spent that just simply isn't known yet or or what is what's the judgment? I think it's that's correct. I think there's probably going to be something that comes out of that That we have to do but I think the other part relate to this Is that so when they certify it they also sort of take ownership that if something happens during the period of time That they will come in and fix it. So it's sort of like a insurance policy to some extent that if a part that they certified breaks during the time span however many years it is Then they would come in and fix that piece as well. So I think there's going to be some upfront costs They're going to say we can't certify this piece unless you replace it Then it also provides some additional protection to the other stuff. But I get sort of like a dumb dumb follow-up question I mean is the Maybe everything's great, but if it isn't is it do you think that the The is the unknown like somewhere between $5 000 and like A quarter of a million dollars or is it you know, or is it known better? You know i'm getting it. Yeah. No, it's okay. I think it's a really big unknown because we haven't had this done. So I think I think it could be between 5 000 and maybe a bigger number than 250 000 depending on I didn't want to be alarmist No, I hear but for all three schools It could be a big number. So I think yeah, we won't know that until they do it And so I was going to pause before we go on to the five-year plan because this was the kind of proposed project for Our draft or proposed projects for the next year and then we could go then go on to five year Let's do that. Yeah, we can provide the the committee a chance to ask Anyone have mr. Dunlink. So you mentioned that you put this together Regardless of what happens with the MSBA So I think that's a natural Question is you said it would be relatively unchanged, right? So let's let's assume based best case scenario that the MSBA meets next month And that we're on the agenda and that they choose us And that that process screams along as fast as humanly possible and the building opens You know put put every positive variable in your head and the building opens It does anything change on on this on the first year plan So for me certainly the ADA piece because that's going to My prediction is and I'm not qualified to to know the answer but by people who are more qualified than me That's not going to be a small number and i'm not assuming that we do all the ad stuff right away But I think it's one of the things that you think about what are the logical things that are truly getting in the way of Access and what are things that Yes code says they're you know Not quite there if you're building new building you wouldn't build it that way Um, so you might make different Hierarchy of choices as you think about that, but we won't know until that report comes out. But as I go down the list HVAC needs to happen, right? It's I can get into more details on that But you know the expectation expectation of how our buildings respond to hot weather needs to improve and it's not just a The system broke It's actually the system's not functioning as efficiently as we needed to The water fixture placement again I feel really strongly about given the concerns that We all have about drinking water The unit vents are functionally getting in the way of the even like new systems like we've new boiler wildwood Which is functioning really well and improving and what's getting in the way is its work is being counteracted by Inefficient unit vents. So I do think that for me feels strongly Exterior doors is a safety risk. So I wouldn't say that can wait The roof is leaking More often than we not at croc farm. So we need to do that one Generator I feel pretty strongly about that's one that I could I could imagine Reconsidering Electrical system I feel strongly about again some ADA pieces I do. So I'm sorry. That was I could have done that quicker But but I think I Intentionally didn't because I wanted to stress that this is about making our conditions of our schools better for our folks now and I think some of the things that have happened over the last couple years not just this year I've created situations that are not consistent with what we value, you know and how we value our staff and our students And we need to take care of that I just have a question on the on the roof the crocker farm roof is on here But not the port river roof and so just from personal experience I know the number of buckets and trash cans they're collecting several Yeah, you'll see that in the five-year you'll see it in the five-year plan So there was some money approved this year to do some patching work that we just received some bids on So there's some money to do some short term work to get it a couple more years, but you'll see it on the five-year plan I'll point it out So this this list then these two slides is just for next year what we request to be approved for next year So I had a couple of questions and comments. I think It's really helpful to have a list like this just to see you know The the number of problems that we have currently in these buildings, which are not really that much of a surprise to all of us We've been talking about it for a long time But also just to see how much Of an expense this actually represents roughly, but that's actually I think where my question comes in is is just you know to Understand and I've asked this question to content before You know how how do we come up with these numbers? I think it's important to talk about that publicly Um, and then also, you know, those are the numbers that we are understanding perhaps to be an estimate now But is there going to be a cost creep? You know in the next year right like is there you know, has that been considered at all Because I think if we're going to be taking this and voting on it in January and potentially going To the jcpc into the town and going through that whole process And then these numbers are not the right numbers, you know What are we going back to them later on to ask for more money? Like what's that process? So if you don't mind Yeah, I can provide a little bit. So so there's always some risk, you know when you're estimating these types of things I do know that mr. McPherson was pretty meticulous with how we Arrived at these numbers their spreadsheets behind these numbers that are sort of very granular With cost estimates from the most recent data. There's resources out there that give the most recent cost data And so he purchased that information And he used it to generate most of these numbers all the ones that he provided And my experience with the things he's done in the past that he's been pretty good and on target with his estimates In terms of the summit academy job I think the Fort River Roof what he's estimated is in the ballpark what we'd expect after we got some architect numbers as well So, um, you know, there's never a hundred percent certainty But I think what I've seen of his work is that he's put a lot of time into getting the estimates To err on the side of caution, but also to be Defendable. So you're pretty confident then in these numbers I'm confident in mr. McPherson Yeah, I think and to put an additional point on it So he used also he purchased a book that is the kind of industry guide book of Estimating costs for different projects and as mr. Mcgano says there's excel files behind all of these down to the unit event individual unit event cost And he did use An escalation cost as well Because the book is for this year, but these projects might not be done for not this summer, but the following summer So he has that factored in as well I think the challenge for some of these projects is Like the electrical is a good example. You don't know until you until you know And that that can be sometimes a challenge some of the generator ones Like some of those are much more straightforward the roof. We feel pretty confident in that because it's it's a known We know it's it's a little more Packaged what we're doing the atrack even the chiller systems or you know They get delivered and then they get installed, right? So and most of these projects wouldn't involve They're larger than our maintenance staff can manage So it's not like you know the summit at one was actually harder to estimate because we were partially using our staff Partially using other staff in contractors for different parts and these ones Even though the larger numbers they're actually easier to estimate Easier is the wrong word, but they're less complex to estimate because it's all external vendors to do You know, we wouldn't use our folks to put in a chiller system, right? That that's something that the contractor is going to come in and do So it's a little more straightforward and then I think my only other question right now is about the electrical system as well I think Mr. Nakajima's points are well taken and I also think that I'm wondering if you know with something like this You know, you're bringing in People who presumably know what they're doing right to come in and assess a system right fingers crossed To assess a system and then give us their best guess as to what the problems might be But I'm wondering if maybe we don't cut out that that step if maybe you know One option might be to just bid it out and then have you know people who are also know what they're doing But can also do the the actual repairs Come in, you know, I don't know. I mean, I'm just I'm you know I'm wondering if there's ways to look at some of these these things In a way that can help save some money right because at the end of the day we we are Paying a lot of money for all of this. Yeah, this is one. I think we need to do Some more investigation in terms of what firms out there do it. I did speak with a firm Last week who actually did a energy audit of our high school middle school And they don't do this but they know companies that do and they kind of explain the process and how it works But I think once we get a better sense of what the companies out there are doing this we can talk to them and say You know, this is one option. We're looking at other other options More in line with what you're thinking Thank you for raising that again Because I think you started to articulate or Jogged my brain to articulate better why I was asking the question I was asking is that in my mind 80,000 is a good decent amount of money for something and I was trying to figure out whether you were Whether you thought essentially your best hunch was the system was Certifiable in which case spending the money with a marginal additional increment to fix the systems where you're finding it Sounds like a good investment Versus this is like phase one of an enormous investment in these schools In which case I was going to I was going to beg the question as to whether or not You know, why are you even trying to certify something? That is never going to get certified until you put another million bucks into it Just to some extent for me, it's sort of like the ADA audit We haven't had this done. So we don't you know, we've heard things a few things about the company But I don't think we have a full understanding of the problems of the system Or at least I don't so I think in some ways this is really like the first assessment of what the problems are If it comes out that it's a lot of work is needed, then maybe we change gears for the second year I think I would want to hear a little bit more once you talk about the process You know and sort of what the lay of the land looks like for something like this Because you know, again, if there are ways for us to cut costs, you know in some of this process I think it's an it's a valuable show of You know that that we are thinking about this and You know, we're trustworthy in this entire process, right? I'm not saying that you're not but I mean, you know It's just to be able to show the community that their money is being managed appropriately And that we're actually trying as hard as we can to find ways to To reduce it where we can we'll definitely do that and some of these other things we're also going to look for rebates, there's state programs like the unit events We got some figures that the high school and middle school to replace the unit events their state rebates for that So we'll pursue those things as well. Great Mr. Donner, so yeah, just briefly building on that. I do think that's one a good example. I think I think Showing that you've thought about potential impact of the MSBA Having a slider to that more fully I'm saying on terms of advocacy right in terms of the future explaining what the need is A slider to that further details what you described about How these numbers were arrived at a little more robustness Just just to show like the whole picture of how well scrubbed this was and that you know the Both administration and school committee looked at this for a while And we we understand the the need and the urgency to address these and yet we also made it as efficient as possible Because it is a big ask in terms of a capital plan And so I think we need to make sure that that we communicate the way we have the town's fiscal Stability and as much in front of mind as possible I think the additional thing and I don't want to flip ahead too much because I think the five-year plan is the next Should be the logical next step But it's also worth looking at in our last slide, which isn't in your packets But it is going to be on this deck also looks at the last Five or ten ten years. Thank you Of what the approved projects for the Amherst public schools and and so you know to be very blunt about it This is not a disagreement with anything that was stated, but this is deferred maintenance So we've not been asking for large projects for years and part of that was we were in msba And it felt really fiscally unsound to be asking for major project while The town had just spent four hundred thousand dollars on a feasibility study Um, so I think that can't be understated And again, what you're saying can't be understood either that we have to have backup for the numbers and defensible positions But I do think some of these things are they've built up over time You know, I think the town manager said it well at the four board meeting where you just said There was like a generation where there were just warrant major projects done in the community and I think because our buildings they aged when they were built the way that they were built We're feeling the effects of that kind of generation of you know bits, you know amounts of maintenance but not kind of Putting off parts that we're 40 years old like we're at the point where we need to replace items I think we can need to do a good job explaining that as well Yeah, and I think just to be perfectly clear from my position All of this is absolutely important and we heard from you know multiple staff We've heard from families. We've heard from community for a while now That these problems are very real and that we have to fix them And I think we've also talked a lot about that it is deferred maintenance, right? There's been a number of years, you know decades in fact that this work hasn't been done So, you know, but I think that that's not it doesn't take the place of the conversation that we were just having Right, because I think you know, we can absolutely agree That this work is necessary at least a you know, significant portion of it will be necessary the timeline You know, I think is is sort of up in the air. It's going to be there's a lot of factors involved in that But being able to prove that there was a That due diligence was followed and that there was a you know a clear In collaborative process to come up with these numbers will be critically important to get anything passed. Yep Mr. Dr. Jima, this is awful because it's going to seem like I'm beating a dead horse and I'm not meaning to be I'm going to take a different cut on the electrical system certification issue, but it's building off of what I'm not sure to be funny about this. No, it's I mean, but it's built it's building off of something that you were just Saying a moment ago because I mean you may you I know you know, but for the grand public You may recall that I mean we wanted you to do this the committee asked you to do this because at the beginning of the year we were having a series of very uncomfortable conversations with the public and and professional staff that Um Our deferred maintenance Was starting to actually create an unworkable environment. I mean look I'm not getting into an argument about what the conditions of the building are in general I'm saying if the if the chilling system is broken and deficient And it's 90 degrees out or whatever it has 95 degrees out You have an unhealthy environment because of these system failures, right that goes beyond open classrooms and bad design And you know thin walls and all that kind of you know thin exterior walls that are inefficient And so my point is that there's an element to Needing to face up to the idea that if we're really going to face This coming fall or this winter or whatever Um additional circumstances in which we can predict different elements of our building systems are going to fail Um, then we have we have a responsibility to take action I mean, and I think the town is supposed to take action That's why getting back to electrical systems again in my mind There's sort of like, you know certifying that the whole system Is great or a state of the art or something like that seems like beyond me Um, I mean not unimportant necessarily but sort of beyond me figuring out whether they're actually systems a that are unsafe Would be like really super important and I'd really want to know that And then figuring out whether they're electrical systems that might fail Um predictably over the next Year a year and a half or whatever Whether regardless of whether it immediately results in a safety issue Would also be something that would fall in line with issues of like roof and hvac Indoors I don't know if that makes any sense. Yeah, and I can give you so I think we said is right And just a quick example when I spoke with that company like for the electrical certification One of the things they'll do is they take this little Tool that they bring over all the the wires and they can sense the hot spots and the hot spots are typically where you're going to have a Failure or some sort of issue in the future So they can do that throughout the entire school and come back to you and say you're pretty good Or you need to replace all these sections basically with new wire and new whatever So I think again to my original points I think it's going to kind of find those things and identify those things And either certify it safe or certify we need to do some work to get it to a safe place Yeah, I was just going to less articulate than mr. Mangano share that my understanding for mr. McPherson Is it's doing exactly what you're suggesting you would want it to do that? It's it's doing the investigatory work to say understand safety. It's not looking for state of the art It's really just you know, is it safe? Are there predictive fails and what would recommend the next steps? And then it has that insurance quality that mr. Mangano said that the things they certify It's not like certified to be You know state of the art is certified to be safe and then they own that it's safe So they're they have some vested interest in the analysis as well. It's not just like oh, we stop we drop in We study it and then you never hear from us again And I think it incents them to give us the information that we would need Thank you, mr. Mangano So I'm gonna go the next okay So I'll go quickly through the five-year plan The first section is transportation. These are recurring items that we ask for every two three four years Buses special education vans maintenance vehicles things of that nature nothing really new about this section of the capital plan The next section is wildwood So you'll see several items that there's like a recurring small fix them out That those are estimates for or to some of the preventative maintenance type things the smaller parts That would have to be replaced and having an estimate for those types of things Some of the bigger projects of wildwood you'll see the three million for the roof at wildwood So that roof is not much newer than the fort river roof. We haven't had the same issues as fort river But we wanted to get on the plan because it is at that age a similar age as fort river And we could foresee in the next few years it started to have those some of those same issues also at Wildwood i'll point out the replacement windows. You'll see 400 000 dollars in a few years to replace all the windows Again, there might be msba money for that sort of thing down the road. They have accelerated repair programs We had that for the middle school We they've funded some of that, but it's sort of where we're at with wildwood at that point in time And then the univents sorry Question what is the color coding of the numbers? So the color coding so this is sort of the jcpc format and the color coding Usually means What year was it originally planned for so if you look at the top each fiscal year has a color And below that most of the time the projects underneath that are the same color But sometimes there's a different color and that means it was either pushed back or moved forward So for example, if you look at the bus the school bus 95 000 That was pushed back a year because the fleet was relatively good. We had the electric school bus That was put into place So that was pushed back a year was originally for fy 20. It got pushed back to fy 21 Okay And then you'll see the univent replacement again So in the next couple years we're hoping to replace most or all of the univents and then have sort of a Recurring amount to to stay up to date with univents going forward And then the yellow highlighted So I think a number of times you're going to see Places like the generator you can see the 75 000 and then a cost after it And one of the things that we're trying to build in is we don't just need to replace some things We have to put more money into maintenance. So one of the things that mr. McPherson Noted was you know, our team does a great job, but we actually don't fund routine maintenance that That these items need and that really Accelerates the decline and disrepair of certain items. So some of the times you'll see these recurring numbers Usually they're not that large and that's really around maintaining over time because we haven't typically put funds into maintenance maintaining those items This may seem like a picky or eccentric point to raise at this point But I remember last year I was on jcpc and last year there was like an endless argument That may recur this year or not About whether or not maintenance is an appropriate item to be funded through The capital budget or whether individual budgets departmentally should be included in eating the maintenance cost So I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just flagging it for you so that if Somebody says why did you do that? You'll be like, why didn't Eric tell me You were sitting on that committee last year, wasn't it? And I don't know how it's going to be handled going forward. I mean, obviously things are changing in town hall and stuff like that That's a good point because by the way, I'm totally in agreement with funding maintenance. Um, but yeah, that's a good point Um, okay, I'm gonna so and the last piece is those two yellow Highlighted spots. So those are just placeholders. We don't know what the outcome of the ADA audit is going to be We suspect if we get it early enough, uh, we'll put some amount in for FY 20 potentially the things that are really urgent And then try to get the rest of it done FY 21 again depending on how much comes out of that audit The next one is fort river. So the roof, uh, you'll see that and the second line down for three million Um, again, I think this is a good example of I think ms. McPherson being conservative in his estimates You know, we had an architect report that put the costs between two and 2.5 million Um, so I think he's adjusting for some cost escalation by the time it gets done But um, it's in line with what the architect was estimating if not a little bit higher. So Um, pave the parking lot 470 000. So he's got that for FY 21 And if I could add to that one, yeah, just um, He feels like there are areas of the fort river parking lot that are not just Patchable that you know, you can't just continue to add material on top of material when the material underneath is, um, failing So that's why just because I think that always comes up, you know With the region level we talk about parking lots, uh, frankly, all we do is talk about parking lots We don't we haven't been able to take action on it But that's you know, I asked him an explicit question Can we have a lower cost and just you know cover some of the issues? But you know, those of you who parked it for we're starting to lose parking spots You know, I mean it's it's getting to that place and he doesn't feel like an additional layer to cover over existing issues Is going to resolve in um any better outcome So sorry, I just wanted to mention that because that parking lots always Feels like it's more expensive than it should be for many people myself included um, you'll see some amounts here for fort river in particular, um About the electrical service upgrade. So you'll some that's a placeholder for some of the stuff that might come out of that certification report Um, it starts in FY 21 and it's you know a pretty significant amount of money going out for a few years um What else is there? I think that's most you know the same thing with the unit events replacing most of the units in the next few years and then Having some recurring, um replacement going forward and then the same thing with the ADA compliance at fort river Uh cracker farm is below that So cracker farm is probably in the best shape of the three schools. There's not, you know, many huge projects in the next five years Um, they've got some money for electrical service upgrade But that system's obviously in better shape than the fort river and wild little although sometimes it seems like cracker farm loses power Only in the other two schools, but I think that's swirl related. Um, yes So but there's not many big projects at cracker farm And just another recurring point because I think I was in that conversation I remember Mr. Nakadima the comment But the HVAC pieces is just that's another one of all of them I think he feels most strongly that the HVAC just you have to build in costs for annual maintenance because Even if it's a new system just staying on top of new systems and making sure the HVAC systems are functioning properly It's going to extend the life and it's it's money well spent in terms of the savings You end up, you know down the road and just a quick clarification So if those costs were not going to be included It in the capital, you know budget Is this something that then the school district would have to absorb or what budget would this come out of? Yeah, I think we'd have to consider adding it to the operating budget or increasing the maintenance and supply lines for the facility department Shifting it from the capital plan to the operating budget Thank you And then the last section is sort of overarching items that cover everything So energy management upgrade We have an energy management system that's sort of out of date. I think this is sort of piece milling upgrading that system The electrical system certification. So the first one we talked about 80,000 You can see it comes up again f y 22. So the thought process is that this certification only gets you so much time It's not like 80,000 and it's good forever. So he thinks it'd be good for f y 20 possibly f y 21 We'd probably have to do it again after that and it'd be a recurring thing in the future Um hvac replacements. So this is some of the bigger units for f y 21 I think some of the chiller units um the air handlers around the building that would be replaced Interior upgrades is sort of a fixed rolling amount to do painting furniture replacements a bit entire replacements Things that just wear out over time and come up every year Asbestos management. So as we do this interior upgrades often we do have to manage asbestos and there's some annual costs for managing your asbestos So this is just putting a fixed place holder in for that Um school security, I'm not 100 sure what the it's a fixed amount. I mean, we typically do some camera replacements Locks on the doors some of our doors still need to be upgraded in terms of the the locking system So I think it's going to be used for things like that. I can yeah, sorry Also, one of the pieces of feedback we've gotten is that there are certain rooms where the PA system So through our drills and through the things that we do that uh acoustics are such that if you have a Group of students in a small the classrooms are all pretty good actually But the small group rooms So we do need to upgrade some of the PA equipment to make sure that 100 of our rooms And 100 of situations would be able to hear urgent announcements So we've made some inroads that way, but we still have some of the small group rooms, particularly at the two Not older because carc farms actually older, but you know for river and wildwood Just to make sure that the PA gets to all the places it needs to get to and we've made inroads with our current You know our current systems, but we need to do need to upgrade So that's every time we do a security drill or a safety drill The next step is what are some infrastructure challenges that emerge and that that's one that we're shipping away at But we need to ship away a little faster There's a explicit line for furniture replacement. So to include desks some of the Office desks, but in particular the school the desks that the students use And then the last piece is a new feasibility study. So I believe this is the plan I thought around this was that at some point We're gonna back at the MSBA and we need some amount of money in the plan to fund the the town's portion of the feasibility study Which last time was about 400,000 dollars So that's sort of that that could certainly go either way based on when we get accepted a different column Yeah, yeah, exactly And so this is the updated capital plan. It's been updated quite a bit Um Mr. McPherson really like Mike mentioned took a really hard look at it I went through all the schools and put, you know, everything you could think of into this So you'll see that the mounts quite a bit more, but it feels more comprehensive as well So one question I have that I don't see on here is um, you know, it struck me I was with my children recently at fort river and we're out in the playground And the equipment there is pretty new but not all the schools have newer, you know, play equipment There's also a couple outbuildings like you know exterior buildings. I think fort river has like a bathroom at me, you know And that building seems to be in in a lot of disrepair quite frankly Has that been looked at at all? I mean the the state of the playground structures, you know, those exterior buildings There's lots of stuff here I don't know if it was explicitly looked at. Um, I haven't heard about it from Mr. McPherson I do know that in the past some of our playgrounds have been replaced with um grants or gifts From the rotary club. I think is how cracker farms got replaced Cracker farms was replaced partially with district funds were partially with cpa funds So I think those are other avenues we could look out But we can go back and take a look at at those two things Yeah, and I think in particular if I could comment on the the bathroom outside at fort river My understanding which I'm not a hundred percent confident. My understanding is that's more utilized by Town resources because the fields are used for a lot of community Resources, I mean the other schools don't have exterior or bathroom spaces So that's something that I can talk to mr. Bachman about Not that I'm but just yeah who manages that because it's it's I'm not that our students don't use it at recess But it's it's actually much more common that People playing softball or people who are there for community use I think that's a little more of the intention than it was specifically for the students at fort river I'm sure that might be true, but it's still regardless It's on school property right and students are using it parents are using it You know, it's it's something that probably there's at least at least be on a list, you know, yeah Are there any other comments or questions and if there's other things, you know, like of those examples certainly send them our way Mr. Demlin, um, so just Probably unfair comment and unfair questions The unfair comment and you know the spirit of dead horse feeding You know, so what I look at the big roll-off picture here so we're talking over 12 million in the last over five years right and Half of that is the Fort River roof and the Wildwood roof I just really think that if you know if hopefully, you know, if we get in the MSGA process in December of February or even a year from now That is going to be the like urgent hope the question on The big picture finance planning mind is that oh gosh, is it would it be possible? You know, what if we did uh 150 grand of patching? What if we did 300 grand of patching could we not do three million three million dollar roof? It's such a big chunk of this pie and and don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that I don't think the roof needs to be replaced You know, that's that's not I understand that you know the deferred backed up maintenance and now it's all you know coming coming on a roost. Um, I just I just think that um You know, we need to responsibly but very Uh, consciously wait until we absolutely have to replace that and then you know replace it And if you think that that is f y 20. It's f y 20. You can think it's f y 23. It's f y 23 But um, I just I can just I think that's going to be a very legitimate question for the town to ask as as a try to manage a small amount capital funds I should say finite amount of capital funds. Um, the other question I guess I just had is that um, you know You know, we've been talking about a lot of these things and some of them are small some of them You know about things that were deferred maintenance since before the uh, the building project And I'm wondering why we didn't see a number of these things proposed last year And I remember in our initial meetings after the the building project Um, didn't go through that we talked about okay now that we know we're going to have these buildings for a while What do we need to do in order to increase quality of life and we sort of talked around the edges a little bit But you know, we didn't we didn't get nearly to this level of our proposal Even even for one or two years. And so I guess I'm just wondering what you know That's why it's not a fair question because I don't need to really justify the past but it did it did kind of strike me as as this is something that you know Um, I don't know an ideal world. It would have been nice to see last year, but they may have been variables I'm not thinking of at the moment So I'll start with the first one. So for fort rivers roof, uh I understanding from our person who's expert on roofs is that it's the actual membrane of the roof that is Uh, the concern and we have kind of pretty long report that you all received last year about the condition of the roof. So um I think it gets a hard play to do more patching isn't necessarily My understanding going to be the the long-term solution there. What long term is Is a hard thing to predict I think if we were to get into msp the other variable is we don't know what that looks like We don't know how long that process is we don't know if that's taking looking going to look at a one school solution A two school solution So I think that's what's hard and and I think the calculus will change based on that This is our current thinking again assuming no new buildings or renovated buildings within five years I think you're absolutely right. We're going to have to revisit these items and one of the reasons It's a couple years down the line as we put sufficient funds in that we feel confident for the next couple years It's not an f by 20 or f by 21 um, but I think you're right to say msba Getting in may affect some of these things I Based on the report and the expertise that we've received I think the fort river roof is going to be a complicated that matrix of decision making with msba And the roof is going to be complex in terms of uh last year's plan I think I think about that a lot. So I don't think neither of the questions run fair peter. So Uh, I want to be clear about that. So that that project ended, you know, if I'm remembering correctly in march of 2017 So that's that's pretty much after the capital plan is formed for for the town And um, we think about this past year was trying to get some of these larger infrastructure things going We're also it's not excuses. It's a reality. We're between facilities directors to do the deep dive into the building. So we did have some maintenance Things we did make corrections. The boiler was a huge cost if you remember So when I get to facilities update, I'll share some positive news about the impact of the new boilers And the feasibility project, but we needed, you know, time to orient ourselves into the work and The right person come in and do the deep dive into the space. So I think it's a legitimate critique. So I think that's Completely fair and I think it's this is where we are right now That's also a reason though why I think that um This is going to be a tough process. I mean it's actually particularly the point around the roofs And the amount of money that that costs Um, I can completely understand the argument that we get into MSBA And the idea of spending three million dollars on a new roof When you maybe replacing the entire building or so substantially renovating it as to make that Renovate, you know the tent that fix Generally genuinely wasted money so to speak if you can actually from the schools and I I hate to sound um Uh like a bureaucratic end fighter, but particularly from our perspective So, I mean if if the if let's say for sake of argument The Fort River roof is fixed And the town uses the Fort River Building for something and we build something else to replace elementary school It's awesome for the town that they have a fixed roof And that may be a factor in their consideration in funding it But if it's coming out of the school's hide in terms like well, we gave you three million dollars last year Then you kind of were like, well, wait a minute. That's for your building not for our building And so that's going to be complicated In genuinely complicated because also no one's really going to want to spend that money If we can see the end of the road in terms of getting a better facility Um, but that's why that's why to me and it just goes back to something. I think Uh chair don't use a saying earlier and I've been sort of dancing around with my comments is Building a really strong case around this year Is I think therefore even more urgent and separating out this year's request Or even the next two years requests from the longer range request is also really really important because um I have no doubt that there's a bunch of this stuff we need in the near term That we absolutely need to do to ensure we have a decent enough working or at least a non dangerous and non tremendously unpleasant living and working in the learning environment In our in our schools So it needs to be so the argument or advocacy needs to be bulletproof, right? It needs to be really well vetted really well organized and wherever possible Distinguishing off things that can wait or things that we understand are going to have variables associated with it from things that it's like No, no, I'm telling you for a fact, you know, we you know july 1 we need to put this thing to bed Yeah, I think we can do that I think this first pass attempt we we took the Approach of assuming no MSBA for five years because in the past we sort of Fall into that trap of oh, it's only a year away. It's only a year away and that doesn't pass and that's you know Long time away. Um, so this first pass was no MSBA But we can certainly go back through and sort of highlight the ones that have variables to it Um, then maybe there's pieces that can be done To make it a little less expensive And the other piece is the plan will get a lot more expensive too when we put the ADA stuff in there It's right now. None of that's in there. I can imagine that's going to be pretty expensive when we put the ADA upgrades into the the plan So I just have a couple of quick comments or maybe not so quick. I don't know None of this seems to be quick So one is I think My question is really about, you know, that there's a such a large degree of repairs And I know that dr. Morris you said that all consideration is being given to make sure that It happens, you know during vacations summer breaks So it's not to disrupt students, you know learning and frankly put anyone at risk, right? A lot of these projects you don't want, you know Various things can go wrong when things like that are being done Um, so I'm just wondering if you can articulate to the degree possible, you know What that impact would look like right if assuming that all of these projects get approved And that we are ready to move forward, you know, february 1st of next year Um, what would that look like potentially and if you're not ready to answer that now, that's totally okay But I do think we need to come back to the committee at some point for us to to understand what that would look like Right so that we can you know provide some can put a feedback or at least help share with the community what to expect You know with that whole process And then the other thing that I was going to say is is just you know back to the the comments around The deferred maintenance and I just keep kind of scratching my head looking at all of this right because it's it's gotten to a degree where There are no easy answers with any of this and none of this is going to be cheap Um, and it's really too bad, but that's just kind of where it is right now And so I think you know by bringing this conversation to jcpc and to the town We're basically asking the town to kind of make a decision, right? This is you know that the burden unfortunately is going to be on the town the new town council and on our community To understand the degree of repairs and and deferred maintenance that have gone on in these buildings for so many years And now we've got to fix this problem because we have you know Hundreds of students hundreds of staff who are in these buildings day in and day out and many of them are actually working in conditions that are you know Sometimes borderline dangerous, right? I mean it's you know that there are there are certain conditions there that We have done the best that we can to replace fire doors, you know repair electrical problems and yet those are the conditions that we continue to have in these buildings and so I think we have to have a really frank conversation with our town leaders and especially our new town council coming in but certainly with our town manager about the Required costs that will go into these buildings that you know, maybe sunk costs, right? But they have to be done So we will try our absolute best to make sure that those are reasonable costs that we're not adding extra money when we We don't have to but at the same time that you know, these are necessary and important repairs that need to be done So you want to start? So, um, I think this goes back to the HVAC conversation. So that's the one that's I'm Most heightened by in terms of urgency and particularly as I said because if we follow the normal town process And I'm not necessarily explicitly suggesting we shouldn't but you can hear the implications if you like That if we follow that process, you know, mr. Rick Fierce and said the odds of the system failing again at wild Would he ranges between 20 and 25 percent? Um, that's too high for to have a repeat cycle of what we did So that the hard thing is the process around that is is not the best process Which is you know outside the normal process that we have So to answer your question more explicitly about the timing is Likely because I did have that conversation some of these like water fixture replacement There are some things that you know, we did that during the school year in the past We can do that during the school year In the future, but much of these would be really shutting down the buildings for the summer, which we did at wildwood this year um, and particularly for wildwood and at Fort river it would be not having Programs crock farms a bit more complex because crocker farm has our summer all of our elementary summer programs are located at crocker farms The idea of shutting that school down for a summer is not a realistic solution So we talked about the HVAC system at crocker that can easily be put in In any time it's not Warm so that that can be done in the winter while students are present without without any issues So, you know crocker would probably have a different set of um situations But the unit events some of those would need to happen You know during the summer so we might have to be a little flexible with our summer use of buildings There are community groups that do use our buildings at wildwood and fort river as well And much like this year at wildwood they would likely need to find different homes and locations Uh, it's also very challenging for teachers because I know our school year If their contract says 180 days and the reality is if you go to fort river or wildwood or crocker farm mid summer Or mid august you'll see a lot of cars in the parking lot It's not people with kids in the playgrounds because we have incredibly hard group of Hardworking group of educators and that was really hard for wildwood staff I'll really acknowledge that point separate from all the infrastructure challenge Just not getting in the building till august 15th was a was a real challenge for for our faculty So the way we talked about is trying to phase things like the HVAC system that potentially could go in While kids are in session, you know, just during the cool during cool weather where you're not accessing chillers and Exterior doors. I mean that is likely a summer activity as we you know, we've talked about here But we would really have to make a phasing schedule for all of these We don't have it yet But we would have to make a phasing schedule of of when the work could happen But again because of our our current system of funding projects much of this work couldn't be done until You know the middle of the academic year to come if not the following summer Yeah sort of go back to The original assumption in this which is that there's no new building in any of these five years So even in the best case scenario We get into msba. We're not we're going to be in these buildings for all five of these years And so I I like the idea of the scenario planning and talking about the You know All of the reasons why these things have to be done during this particular time frame But I think also that might be able to help is the scenario planning of what if we don't do it And I think particularly about the the two roofs, which are the biggest expenses here and yet there's At cost to not doing those so whether it's a patch or the workarounds the the tubes and you know Science experiments that are going on to divert the water from the books in the in the library I think that that's a real cost that's not necessarily in the capital plan But it's coming out of our our school's budgets And so if there's a way that we can and you know, not a super detailed Spreadsheet but something that sort of brings that to life That for each one of these big things if we don't do it So if we say, you know, there's 400 000 is too much To to put into the capital budget What is the cost then that either the schools or the town will have to pay and you know workaround costs, right? Yeah, I think we can do that I think the hard thing to estimate is like What if there's a catastrophic event or catastrophic failure, you know the leak is in the wrong place Or there's a collapse of some sorry. I mean those are the things that are really hard to estimate I don't have the biggest impact I think we can definitely estimate sort of the the patching cost the that sort of thing Also sort of the public perception cost, you know, people have choices as to where they send their students You know the roofs make a difference right for You walk into a classroom. You don't want to see all those things So that's another part of the cost would be hard to estimate But we can do definitely the recurring piece that's sort of tangible. We can do that Dr. Morse, do you want to respond to? Yeah, if it's okay So I think I think that's a great idea that you mentioned I also think the nice thing is we now have you know, really robust set of information from the feasibility study That I mean if it wasn't planned this way I didn't see this presentation till tonight, but if you look back at the the architects When they talked about existing conditions It was it was glossed over because it wasn't the focus of tonight's conversation for them But they really aligned quite well with what we're suggesting here, which um, which makes sense and I think Creating a compelling case for all these items is is essential because people say why do you need to advance and right? Not just because well, they're old. That's not a compelling reason, but we've got some really nice archival information both literal images But also some really great information that are the team The design team has created that are going to buttress support for this So I think when we were ready for prime time, which is not tonight Really having a robust kind of narrative that goes along with each of the requests is going to be incredibly important Yeah I think that's great because I think the the my point earlier about distinguishing between The sort of known urgency of year one or year two investments versus years, you know three and three to five Was not Trump was not to have us undersell the urgency of three years three to five in any way. I mean I can't Not that not that future people will care But I couldn't even imagine it for some for any reason Who cares what the reason is if we're stuck with these buildings as is for the next seven years for some reason and um, we could have Fixed the roofs at some point and made advocated for it and there was some significant failure that made the buildings substantially challenging to inhabit and work in and learn in Apox on us, right? Which also means that if we're if if we get into msba There's going to have to be probably a much more robust um Analysis of what our alternatives are short of spending three million To ensure that we don't have some kind of a catastrophic failure Even if we're essentially patching an interim to get to a new building or or substantially repair building That actually wasn't why there isn't a hand or isn't a hand because no really wasn't but it was a great point It was sort of I don't know I like reinforcing good points and Making sure we had in that direction. Um, it actually is because um So I hope you're building into your costs around summer repair test management I'm not you're okay. I'm not you're okay. That's in the app. That's in the operating. I don't know what that cost is But call minute man up and find out what you'd have to do if you shut down a building You know and look for river for a couple months in the summer and What does it cost from the come in? In august and clear out the problem so that you're not clearing out the problem in september and october and early november Right, I mean and there's got to be a cost associated with it might just be 5000 bucks might be 10 I have no idea, but but build that in please Lessons learned. Yeah Okay, so um, I'm not sure if there's one other slide That's one other slide. Yeah, yeah, it's a really quick one Thank you two more slides done So this is just um the articles that were funded in the last 10 years Uh for the elementary school capital budget So I just thought it's be helpful to see the scale and the scale is significantly different of what At least this draft looks like and what's been done, but I thought it just was helpful to get a sense of scale um, and there were there was a lot of years with I mean comparatively low numbers in there um That we can't undo You know, I mean I in particular I was looking and shot put this together, but I was looking at you know f y 10 to f y 13 and You know that was before we were in msba because we got into msba in 2013 So, um, it's not to criticize any other former school committees or anything but but I think when we think about deferred maintenance It's been deferred for some time So I what I the reason I wanted this slide and I asked shanta put it and this is not about deferred only because of msba Just deferred maintenance that's been deferred for long before there was a building project that that didn't pass It's it has longer legs than that because I really I don't want I want to avoid just very literally because it's not true But also politically anyone coming to a conclusion that this is somehow a response to a failed building project This is a response to what the building conditions are now right and just many many Things that could have been done in the past that aren't about 2013 to now is long before that And some of the high years are actually paying for the feasibility studies So if you look at 14 and 15 and 18, I think a lot of what's driving those years up is paying for a feasibility study Mr. Demling so dr. Morris I'm so glad you brought that point up and I would actually include like that fi 10 fi 14 slide the pre msba low investment in capital because Because it's it's it's absolutely true like yes technically there is a level of deferred maintenance that we would have Maybe have done had the building project Not been there, but we absolutely should not Frame it as well. Gee if we had just approved the building project We wouldn't have all this deferred maintenance. So shame on you for not voting for the building project You know, it's like I can obviously there's that emotional resonance You know that there is still some level of public attachment to but I mean not only is it not politically expedient But I think it's just not true. It's you know, we we have an absolute um We have to have a commitment to to looking at what we have today Without respect to the past at all and just say what do we have today objectively speaking and then advocate for that without any resonance in the past I mean it's because it will generate the potential for that emotional Reaction on you know in different ways and I think the more that we can model that that's just not part of this calculus The better wall off will be in the community discussion. Agreed. Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Rangano for a very good presentation Okay, so uh moving us along to the budget guidance. I think it's mr. Rangano again So this is similar to the region topic. Um, I sent you the Indicators report a little late. Sorry about that. Um, but that's not really the focus of the conversation It's more other specific programs initiatives Things going on in the district that you want us to bring back more information Have a hear a presentation from those the people that are on the ground doing that stuff Or other things that you just want to want to see coming up in future budget meetings Turn to the committee. I think um You know, we've certainly had a similar conversation at the regional level not too long ago, but obviously the Amherst elementary level is a little different so Anybody have any burning Comments they want to make or So like going through some of those charts of trends you showed Well, one thing I would love to have like a really comprehensive understanding of is Is is all of the variables that go into managing a school choice strategy? Because because we are a district where we have a lot of people that want to Come and be part of our district and we you know, we we have a weight less for school choices as I understand Um, and you know, we could if we wanted to we could be accepting a much larger Number of school choice and yet there is a cost benefit to doing that And we talk about that sometimes and I feel like from my own personal understanding I get to a certain level of Of awareness of that and then just sort of tapers off. So I feel like I feel like given that it's it's this volatile aspect of the budget and an important Aspect to be managed. I'd love to have a more like in-depth Kind of I think we actually talked about doing that A few months ago coming back with like an overview. So that's a good one that lines up with something I think we were going to talk about anyway, so I'm just going to look to you if you if you have any comments that you'd like to add or Okay Well, just go down this so I'll say I think that One of the things that I wanted to hear a little bit more about is the Food program So I think we've heard a lot from the regional level Just about food service and not as much on the elementary level We heard about the school gardens and you know some of that aspect of it, but not necessarily You know both the success of the program, I guess there's been a few new things tried in the past year We'd love to hear a little bit more about that, you know And you see actually correcting some of the past problems or you know, if there's other things that we could be doing better there But also just to hear if there's ways that we can help support that program a little bit more You know, whether it's finding new sources of you know food from local vendors or other aspects like that That I think are just you know keep coming up for discussion around the community. That would be great Um, the other thing that I would say is uh, I think in addition to dual language We've also sort of talked on the periphery around English language learners and you know It's sort of if there's An aspect of that perhaps in the other throughout the district that we should be addressing that we could be talking more about Um, I'd be really interested in hearing that Um, so aside from the dual language program specifically, but just you know the el program more generally That's funny. Yeah, it was gonna be one of mine. Um, so two votes for yellow Uh, you know, because it also also you for a lot of reasons being but we um You've also talked before about the wide Diversity of languages that families are coming or are in our community or come to our community with either way and How programming and staffing to support that diversity of learners is challenging And so I think it's just it's an interesting thing To learn more about I'm also interested in learning about I mean, I'm sure this is what you meant too But in the context of budget like and talk to the resources and the tradeoffs for making a budget Um, I would love to hear more about that. Um, the other subject is we, um I guess intentionally it seems like almost unintentionally or just by a hook and crook because our high school media center Um director a previous director had won like a big award And so we were having all sorts of like hullabaloo and learning about what an awesome Uh media program we have here. Um I'd be interested in knowing what we're doing at the elementary level and and again how we're We're sustaining resourcing how that's being utilized Um, what the stress points are there as well. I mean as well as good things, but I mean, what are the stress points there and how can we Uh, are there things we should be looking at could you clarify the last one? Did you say media programming? Library, yeah, oh library. Okay. Okay. I apologize. I the um I wasn't sure if you're going like chromebook type thing Being being an average person like you. Yeah, I would use the term library naturally But being stuck on the four irrefusability committee Where the term of art endlessly used by the designers is media center They've now beaten into my head not to use the old fashion term library, which by the way, I adore So no, I'm talking about the library. Okay, gotcha But but also, I mean that's not funny about this, but I mean the reality is um The director here was was doing really interesting work at the website and supporting Classroom integrating it with supporting curricular materials and Links for study guides and stuff like that for the classroom as well And I have no idea if that's going and I know if it's going on at the elementary level, but um Whatever is going on at the elementary level. Um, I'd love to learn more about it But also again the key point is where are the points of stress? Where should we be supporting in the budget or otherwise? And so I actually there was one more thing that I just something that you said Which was or that you said I think in response to him the chromebooks. Yeah So just in terms of technology generally A lot at the elementary level I think there's you know, there's been so much focus and conversation nationally around stem and the importance of stem Right, and I know that we've had this very robust program. We heard from you know math It's sort of, you know curriculum at the elementary school level But I I'm wondering if there's anything else that we could be talking about just in terms of supporting that and I'm actually Another thing too that I just have in my head is is uh, the recent Media that's come out about the negative impact of too much screen time on very young children And this is now, you know study after study starting to show That children that are in front of screens for significant portion of the day. It's actually negatively affecting their brain function And so obviously, you know, I think we've in at a certain level at the school You know elementary school level We've we've sort of swung the direction of trying to get our kids in front of computers as much as we possibly can So that they're not behind quote unquote But at the same time now that this information is coming out I'm wondering if there's an opportunity for us to maybe Kind of shift our thinking a little bit, right? And you know, and if there's an opportunity for us to have that conversation around the budget Because if we are poised to make more purchases, you know Maybe we shouldn't or maybe, you know, there's something different a different choice we could be making Um, I just want to raise that to see if that's an opportunity for us to hear a little bit more about, you know And and think about Jeff telling that too is actually it's really funny because we um If you're going to use the term media center or library Um, one of the things actually I really detested about that conversation Is I love books I love books even magazines whatever, you know the printed interacting with the written word um I think there are studies that show there's a powerful impact on On on brain development and cognition and things like that as well as also your ability to communicate And and sense and grow as a person and the different forms of media actually help you do that better in a different way Um, you retain information differently. Yeah, and and uh, and it's funny because Again, one of the arguments we're having on the forer of feasibility thing was what size media center do you need? And the predicates seem to be that we're moving into a world in which we don't need as many books on hand And god bless america or god bless amherst Um, we seem to be a town where apparently we had a bias towards actually having books that someone could come in Peruse sienna shelf it engage with And good for us and so i'm my point is i'm actually merging the two subjects because on some level They're connected if you're if you're pulling Kids away from the screens, but they're still supposed to learn and engage with material Then the question is how do they do that and to the extent that it's interactive with me with the print word It's an important point the extent that it's not it's and it's and learn other kinds of learning circles or formats Then that takes staff engagement and maybe engagement with classroom staff too. Anyways I'm out of my expertise, but I was inspired by your comment good so more so here's my slight Push is so I heard five things um food service school choice library media center one thing um English language learner program And then chromebooks technology so I'm just thinking is there a way to prioritize or space those out over multiple meetings just so that we don't end up in a Scenario that those of us in the region last year finally remember Um Of our december meeting which was incredible content that probably one of the most interesting meetings ever had Yeah, but over a space of like six hours, right Right, so um if if there was some prioritization the committee was able to offer us at least for the next meeting That would be really helpful to maybe win other topics down not that we wouldn't do the other ones eventually, but um You know, I'd prefer not to make that choice without the school committee's input And one that might we might be able to shift is the school choice discussion We might be able to shift that to actually part of the budget presentation Um, it'll be something that we talked about anyway as a funding source And we could go into more detail as to how we arrive at we're using 600,000 soar the budget Why? So we could shift that one to january So does that help dr. Morris? I mean we're down to have four items at this point and I I agree I don't think we have to do them all in one meeting. I don't think anybody really want mr. Dumbling I think you could maybe creatively maybe not Combine the the media library one with the chromebook tech one. I was sort of in my mind trying to construct a generalized tech and wellness You know like if you're a teacher you're a third-grade teacher and you see this happening to your kids because and you think it might be Really technology and so you're doing something in the classroom and then you go to the library And so you're engaging in some other media and you want to bring that together what? And then you roll that up to your principal and say hey, I could really use xyz or the abc isn't working Maybe i'm trying to connect too many dots into one topic Yeah, I mean I think we could do two and two perhaps of the four topics And I think I agree with mr. Dumbling combining those two to be in one meeting make sense because of the interrelationship between them I don't know if that's agreeable to the committee. Does that make sense? I don't know. Yeah, okay sounds good. Great. Thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you, mr. Mangano Okay, um, we are now about an hour We're supposed to be but Yeah, it's you know a letter Let's not say that out loud We never know Okay, so the next item on the agenda is a UMass study donahue institute report discussion And so we had a conversation around this uh previously. And so this is continuation part two I guess yeah, and I think the guidance that I'm looking for perhaps is um There is going to be a negotiation between the town of amherst and UMass because the strategic agreement will be ending And there'll be a negotiation a new one And so I guess the one piece is their guidance that you want me to bring to the town manager He's the person who negotiates that agreement Or is there a more formal role that the school committee themselves would like to play in that discussion? I think that's the kind of feedback I'm looking for Um And doesn't have to be super crisp tonight, but it's just that process probably won't be that far away from kicking off and um So I just want to make sure that if there's a will of the committee for me to play any role that I've Clarity a clear direction to bring to something I just you know I mean the town manager is his role to negotiate that but there's a role that you'd like me to play or A message you'd like me to convey that I do that appropriately. Mr. Nakajima. Yeah, so, um It's may be a funny question But if you're if you're a media question for us is What role if any should I play? meaning you in the Negotiations with the university over some new town-gown agreement That sounds like it doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the donny was to do report item listed on the In other words to me. That's a separate question, right? Like I don't need to ever mention this report again To still say I mean That's going to be critical. I'm just saying I don't need I literally just don't need to reference this report again to to say Like two thoughts on what I think you should do To help support our educational goals and partnership with the university, right? Or am I wrong? I mean this is like Yeah, so I think Can I reframe perhaps? So I think I apologize as part of going too quickly the conversation about the hour probably pushed me So the humus the Donahue Institute came did a report. We were all present for that The idea of the report came from the prior strategic agreement Which indicated that that should occur It was supposed to then inform future Agreements that would come from You know the two two parties And I think in particular that report involved the significant amount of staff time mined mr Manganos and probably one other person on the staff And I was more involved than in other aspects of the that agreement or that partnership and so the My recollection of the conversation that we had a couple meetings ago was that there was You know a stronger interest in some of the Kind of preferred outcomes or methodologies that were used particularly the using the What the property would be if it was a normal property in the tax There was a feeling that I felt from the committee of you know the per student per capita thing felt there was the strong Neutral to negative reaction towards that So as I meet with the town manager, I guess I'm looking for you know, we had a whole report And is there anything that you're looking for me to do? And communicate to the town manager as he goes into strategic planning, you know, is there particular role that you the school committee feels strongly that the superintendent not just me but the role of superintendents should play I mean those are the types of things because as opposed to every other document on that that strategic agreement It's between it's clear. It's between the town and the university That's the one place where it's a little gray that the schools and particularly on the staff end my role potentially has a has a role to play and Advocacy so I guess that's what I'm Sort of looking for. I don't know if that helped at all actually but I thought I'd shared so here's I guess maybe I don't know if this is helpful or not, but what I've what I've been hearing from my conversations with community members around this topic is a couple of things one that you know focusing on a specific number of students in a particular Development or building or neighborhood or district is not helpful um It feels in some ways, you know that it's kind of missing the forest for the trees um Well, yes, the the question that the donahue institute was technically trying to answer was You know brought into account that that number of students At the same time, there's a lot of other services and things that are in play here You know that I think a lot of community members have have said to me There's there's no way that just you know the university paying Quote-unquote for these students would cover all of that, right? So there's probably another figure somewhere that needs to be arrived at through a process of negotiation of some kind, right? the other thing that I've heard repeatedly from the community is that um The cost of educating each one of our students, which is roughly about 20 000 a year is not in any way You know, it's it's hard to quantify that because There's you know families here in town who've got multiple children who are not paying that much in taxes, right? There's a there's a murky area here So I think people are feeling some unease With trying to come up with a specific dollar amount And this in some ways feels a little contrary to my thinking because I see you know I think and I said this articulated this last time that it feels like You know at some point we we do actually have to come up with a dollar amount or you know at least Bring something to the table if we are going to negotiate around, you know an increase potentially from the university um But I also hear the community and I hear how strongly people feel about this and this is feeling like a you know Sort of bordering on discrimination. You know, there's there's a lot of very strong feelings about how we are singling out People and it's not a fair argument to be made, right? So I guess from my perspective my my thinking has shifted a little bit and I thought to myself Well, maybe there's a way for us To you know, if the town manager for you superintendent or any of us to advocate on behalf of the school district more generally And to request that the university Consider increasing its contributions to our elementary schools And maybe we you know come come up with a number. Maybe it's you know, helping us Pay for certain services. I'm not quite sure what that looks like to be perfectly honest I think I'd probably want to sit with this for a little while and how to come up with that But it feels like people are looking for a different kind of negotiation to take place And That I think it's ultimately our responsibility to help leave that to you know to figure out what that looks like, right? So maybe going to the university and saying, you know, is there an opportunity here for us to appeal to your you know Focus on education your contributions to this community understanding the value that the families that we're educating bring to the university community and more broadly to Amherst And start from that point right as opposed to just trying to focus on, you know, a specific number so You know, I think my thinking is still a little murky on that front But it's that's kind of the perspective that I'm coming at from now is just to say there is room for negotiation here I think we all can agree on that And what that actually looks like is You know a few rounds back and forth But at least getting the you know the university to in the state to agree That this is valuable and it's important for them to contribute more than they have been for for this Mr. Nakajima and then yeah I would agree I would agree with that and I think one of the things that we talked about toward the end of our last discussion around the Donahue report was that The more helpful lens to look at The university's role in this process is that they're a large property owner in town And yes, they're tax exempt but Like every other property owner in town, they have a demand for services as well as they contribute things to the town And so the question is when it comes to There are schools, you know, what what is a fair contribution that they could be making in support? I I mean, I think the tenor of our previous conversation Wasn't even neutral in the negative. It was strongly negative against In any way feeling like we're singling or picking out These students or this particular housing development But also I think it really misses the point as you were saying a moment ago as the chair was saying a moment ago You know no no housing unit in town Covers the total cost of education of the kid that goes through the schools Some do better than others, but that's only because you know, if you live in a million and a half dollar home Guess what you're paying more taxes than someone losing a 250,000 dollar on right? it's the way it goes and And so the point is that's a that's an unpleasant and welcome road to walk down in general as a community So I think the ethical place for us to be Is to simply say like any other pilot payment You know, you're a member of our community There are costs that are borne by the town their benefits that are borne by all of us And we would love to ensure that educational needs Are included in that the report if anything if the the road has any utility the report simply documents the fact That if the university were to say I don't know they wouldn't but if they were to say We have but that's something we never draw from right like we need roads and we need sewage, but we don't need this Then the answer will us not really true because you actually do have families that live You know, but I mean that's as far as I'd go with that and that's assuming they made the absolutely absurd through the looking glass You know Demand that they don't have kids in the in our district Um And then should you ever see it at the table? Yes, of course I mean, I think you know, but I think the hard part is we already we all know As exit to see members of the former town town meeting We already know that there are people in our community who would take a much partial line on this And say no, you should be reclaiming the per student tuition for every single body that's you know in our district I think it's politically completely unrealistic. I mean fiscally and politically completely unrealistic That's ever going to happen. I also think they're countervailing voices in our community that feel profoundly uncomfortable As does this committee doing it and so since that's a non-starter anyway and also it feels Like morally or ethically wrong professionally wrong You know just get to the table make the you know, we're part of the We're part of the conversation about supporting a good community Helps them recruit professors and other professional staff. Anyway Leave it at that Sorry, mr. Demond. So So like when my property taxes are calculated or the property taxes of a housing complex are Calculated that are regular tax The number of kids isn't factored into that right so So I think the easy way In this first smaller problem of how do you account for the cost? Born by the town in the schools for the students in the property that is not currently not taxed Is that you you approach it with the same model that you approach? Like you take you to the mental exercise to say okay What if this was taxed and it was on the market and it was going for market rates? What would the town recoup and property taxes done? Like there is no variable there for the number of kids Um in the in the schools. I think that's pretty simple. I think that sidesteps the whole issue Um And and you know leave it at that Except for you can't do then afford like what they did Forgive me for criticizing the report. What they did is they sat down with assessor Burgess And they assessed the property taxes based on it being You know like an extremely low income housing, you know subsidized housing development with almost zero taxes Associated with it, which was a bs exercise right so partner saying that yeah No, so point well taken. That's why I say like a market exercise and this shouldn't be that hard to do You know just sit down with some real estate people who run housing complexes today and say okay Because on the market, you know, and it was just sold up. What would it be? And that has nothing to do with the school committee or the schools, you know nor should it Um, I think more broadly speaking, um, and I agree with mr. Nakajimi should have seated the table Um, I think there are you know So and then let the town deal with the other 25 issues of how does the university Impact town finances and and how much more should they pay back in terms of the more positive aspects of a relationship You know, there are many positive aspects of being in the university town. I mean, I think of things like You know, we we we wonder about uh, can we expand the dual language program Years into the future and where we're going to find the staff for that You know, we we have thousands and thousands of students In this town, like wouldn't it be great if there was a teaching college if there was if there was a special program Dedicated to training up dual language teachers and specialized dual like dual language teachers You could do specialized or or arts integration or or uh student project Whose whose final semester project was doing the website redo for free for the schools or or or would Would meet with us and say, okay Well, here's what you guys need to do to get modern in your promotion in your marketing or 100 other ways You know, we already have so many wonderful stories about individuals from the university and the colleges coming in and volunteering their time with career day It's just one, you know, I was I was able to meet a few people doing that Um, so we already have this happening in an informal way Wouldn't it be great if if you you know, you were able to talk in a non combative way You know with with heads of schools or heads of departments who said hey We have some people who love living in this community How can they get back to the schools and you saw a way that was was both value add and and and cost efficient because it's things That weren't paid for so I think those kinds of conversations could be very fruitful Thank you I just want to add I Agree you should have a seat at the table and I'm not I agree with everything everybody else has said and I would add The only thing I would add I don't want to add a lot of time, but um is focusing on those um in tangibles because And and not just from the benefit that we are getting from having a university in in the town, but also from Them having a great school system public school system, right? So there's countless employees faculty staff from the university that Live in the town not on the university property and send their children to our schools And the reason why is because we have a great reputation. So what if there was no school? What if there was no public school that would hurt the university? Pretty substantially it's so I think you know bringing it so I totally agree on the Total property value because that's the model that our entire town budget is based on But also building in the intangibles because that's the argument that the university will bring to the table It's perfect feedback. Does that give you what it really does. Thank you very much. I appreciate it Thank you for for leading on this Okay, uh moving us along. So the next item in the agenda is location of meetings. Sure. So um This there's two two parts to this story so to speak. Uh, so the first part is that uh, a couple weeks ago Amherst media employee Please plural Checked in with me to see because there's so much work being done at Amherst town hall Um, it's actually pretty cool if you haven't gone over. Um, it's pretty neat what they're what they're doing to make the council chambers basically the old town room into There's been a lot of renovations and part of those renovations have been to support really incredible technology and support for Amherst media to be filming meetings there And so there was a request from Amherst media employees to see if we could Think about moving our meetings there because it would really support them It's you know, one set of systems in terms of training of staff. So that's one whole slice of Consideration the second slice is that uh, we're not able to film these meetings live right now Because the three cameras that we have are not working and the cost of replacing them is about $8,000 Our contract with Amherst media, which is a very fair contract suggests that They come to do incredible. Thank you, Jody incredible amount of work for us. Um, Free of charge to the district, but we're responsible for maintaining the equipment, which is pretty typical system, um I think the the only other thing I'd add Before if there's questions or dialogue is that you know, I've loosely talked to the town manager about this, you know When our council meeting is going to be to make sure there's not conflicts It's conceivable that there would be conflicts that would occur But you know, I guess the question is, you know Is this a topic if the committee wants me I'll bring it more formally to town manager to work on Kind of how the scheduling would work and make sure that he's comfortable. So I'm not looking for A commitment or an answer tonight, but Basically, whether this avenue is worth the Amherst school committee would like me to pursue Potentially moving meetings to the new to town hall. I'll just put it that way Based on both the requests from Amherst media and then the financial implications because this isn't an Amherst Public school building. This is a regional school building just to be Put for the public who may be watching a finer point on it. It's not it's not a building the Amherst public school zone And I just want to also just add very briefly to that that You know from Amherst media's perspective, not that I speak for Amherst media at all But I serve as a representative to Amherst media from the regional school committee. And so anyway The the question was posed to them by the town not it wasn't Amherst media's idea So that's important for you know for this conversation as well. So I think Amherst media recognizes the benefits Um of the you know the equipment Both the centrality of the location and all of that, but this is not their idea the town actually Has suggested it So I'm going to open this up to the committee. Um, you know, I have some thoughts on this as well, but I You know welcome any thoughts that you have Yeah, I mean it's funny, um Yeah, I approach a lot of our items in a very like data driven quantitative way get the research Spread cheated up right and then talk to people get different perspectives This one I come from a very You know, I can't really make an argument as to why I like having our meetings here and why I feel like it's important Why I feel the benefit of the meetings and the best thing I can The word I can think to talk about is is environment and I think that The environment that we have conversations in affects the The feel the the timbre of our of our dialogue and I mean, I haven't been to the completely new renovated council chamber yet. So I can't you know comment on that um, but it it I you know just from being on the regional school district planning committee going from the um The uh the palom library room to the middle school pd room to a town hall room that it it it affects differently How you how you feel and I feel like You know with the schools because we're the schools and we deal with the education of children, which is a much more Human service than you know say I don't know I don't want to pick a service It's not like we're trying to construct computer chips here and assemble them in a factory right something very disconnected like that It's very It's it's very human. It's very connective and um, you know, it's funny We were just talking about books and media center in the library and I'm looking at these beautiful stacks of books and It feels cozy. It feels like I'm in a School it feels inviting And and I feel like you know, not all of our conversations like this, but I do feel like We do have a fair bit of softness sometimes to be able to discuss things that affect kids and um, I really value that and I would I would I would worry about losing that for for in order to save $9,000 But I'm open to different points of view that's just initially how I feel about I Can see benefits and drawbacks to either solution So I agree with you it seems sort of natural to be in the school for our school committee meetings But on the flip side, I don't really have a problem my only question I Do think it's important to have a live streaming of the of the meetings or whatever we decide we should plan for that but um parking is I think, you know, it's it's really easy for us and members of the public to come and Park right here and and come in very easily into this building and it probably a little bit less so in town just because It's not the only thing that might be happening and getting there. So I don't but overall I'd say neutral Um, I think from from my perspective I actually um You know, I appreciate actually having This is going to sound funny after your cozy comments Um, I appreciate having access to I guess the seat of government as it will, you know and having Uh It feel a little more official. Um, I think it's important for It sends an important message to the community that the business of the schools is important business and that it's, you know It represents a significant portion of our town budget Um, I think, you know, oftentimes our conversations feel so removed from the town conversations That having a literal seat at the table where town business is conducted and done Is important to me And I think also, you know, that the technological aspect of it is extremely important I mean, I know, you know, I just this week I've gotten multiple, you know Comments and emails from community members who were really upset because Our, you know meetings were not posted to the website quickly enough They typically will, you know, watch it when it's live streamed and they haven't been able to and so There are some real, you know issues at play Uh, because, you know, we have an organization that is trying their absolute hardest to fill a need for us And it's all free. We don't pay for it. And so You know, if if we can make things a little bit easier for them and then simultaneously meet that technological demand That the community has come to rely on, I think it's incredibly important Um, and I agree with you the parking I think would probably be difficult At the same time, I think, you know, sometimes we we tend to get a little difficult here So, you know, I think for me, it's It kind of swings both ways on that front Um, but I do I do kind of appreciate the idea of having these meetings, you know be At city hall and essence town hall Mr. Nakajima, that's interesting I like listening to this debate No, no, because I mean it's We often so much agree with each other I've reached them the same theme. It was really nice to hear two well stated, but very different opinions Uh, so a couple of things and one I know I know we're not and Actually, we don't have quorum for the other board. That's good. I'm glad we don't have quorum for the other board Um We're gonna have to get a cost estimate for this anyway So the other the other board is going to need to know what a cost to fix these cameras Because it I there I have not been able To square in my head How you would make other towns Force other towns to go down to Amherst town hall To sit in the Amherst town council chambers and make collective decisions about all four Towns that that doesn't square in my mind in any way I don't get it. It doesn't work for me So So in and then maybe for that other board, they're going to decide they have to do it anyway So we need to get a cost estimate on what a cost to fix these things In stream Yeah, so that just to clarify that estimate is eight thousand dollars. We've done Jerry champagne. I'm sorry. You know, I'm sorry. I wasn't clear before that wasn't like a off the tip of my I thought I apologize. No, I said it too casually, but no, he's priced it out. Our staff can can install them So we don't have to pay for installation But eight thousand dollars is is his, you know Not just ballpark. I think it is he's looked up the items and you know Might there be some variance when he looks and actually purchases But the variance is going to be in this sense like in the number of hundreds not number of thousands So no, that's a real cost. I'm just I'm just bringing it up because for the virtue for the purposes of this committee It's possible. I don't know this because the other committee has to discuss it, but it's possible That the technology will be fixed anyways and it'll still be able to live stream And so that may not actually be the operative variable It's kind of an interesting question. I mean, it's kind of an interesting point. I I I like the field of being in the schools Um, I also think it is good. It's a good reminder of who we're ultimately answerable to Um And I think it feels that way Um, I actually I do think there's an interesting dynamic that for some reason Having a select board and a school committee feels more And a town meeting feels more flat In which case Yes, people would nominally think the select board is more important But you know kind of like only sort of so much, right? It's like it's it was very horizontal Form of government. I think there's an interesting dynamic that when you have a town council Um, it's going to fee it's probably is going to be more powerful, but it's also going to feel more powerful And to the extent that happens Then there is a case to be made for the school committee for the school committee to Use either regularly or occasionally the seed of power to basically prove that it's a part of the seed of power Because the the bottom line I I don't know. I hope things go well And it's all going to be up to us as well as everyone else who's involved to help make it go well Um, but the bottom line is I I suspect that As a full town people are going to be feeling their way About where the lines of authority are In the lines of decision-making And it's all with the best of intent. I think it's only because people care about the schools So it's not it's that's the hard part, right? It's not actually out of any malignancy or any power grabbiness It's because people care and so they want to put in their two cents because they care And then what people have to work out or what are the norms of behavior that allow you to work collectively with your appropriate responsibility To all care collectively together, but do so in your own lane and be effective in your own lane Um, and I could I could see that working I could see I could see using I'm not even sure I'd make an absolute decision I could see times where you'd want to Make use of the council chambers Just because you are in fact a legitimate constituted part of town government I don't know You make things more complicated for me Well, I'm also wondering just on that idea and Dr. Morris said I want to respond. Um, is you know, maybe If if if it would be possible for the committee to consider something like they have formal meetings at, you know, the town hall or city hall I'm sure Because we're we're going to be the city that's known as the town of Okay, so it's town hall for for purposes of this conversation I think, um, you know, maybe we we do formal meetings there and then we find a way to do More public comments more discussion in in here, you know, like if there's an opportunity for something like that I don't know, you know, it's I guess I'm trying to Split the baby It's interesting. I'm sorry. Yeah All right. So one thing is that mr. Demling brought this up earlier is um And look I respect the heck out of you guys, but because it's just us I sometimes get a little bit surprised and disoriented The people who come in feel intimidated talking to us and presenting and I'm not sure to be a jerk about this I'm like, I know people do I've been told that and I take that very seriously But because it's just us, I think to myself. No, really, you shouldn't be that intimidating Just come on up and say what you think But the bottom line is we have to take it seriously. And so if this environment Feels too intimidating for some people boy, I guarantee you and Somewhat ornate or formal looking council chamber Is going to scare the bejesus out of some people From coming up and saying look, I just wanted to share with you what I've been going through and what I think So just two points one is that on the transportation piece because I've done some thinking about that part as well in the parking I think the only Thing I'd offer is getting if you don't have a car getting to town hall is incredibly easier than getting here In terms of bus routes and things like that So I think I could argue that chance the parking slash transportation both ways But it is depending where you live in town Most areas of town if you can get anywhere easily it's downtown Using the pbta and that's not true for this site. So just something else to consider I think the other piece that I'd be curious about and jody i'm not putting on the spot here You're here working, but I would really be interested Just in my working relationship with the inverse media having a clearer sense of what the benefits are for them I'm not suggesting that this conversation, which is about what's best for the school committee is important But what I have what I don't have clarity yet on is What are the implications for inverse media because they've been a wonderful partner with us and not that it should sway the Decision but even the way I introduced it all I know is that they think it'd be better But that's not perhaps enough level of detail and other people may have that I don't but I think just out of respect for our partners just something that might be good Well, I'd be would it be helpful for the committee if I were to go and talk to mr Let's go that the executive director To get that, you know, at least his input on that. Okay So at least we can bring that back for another topic of conversation. Mr. Dumbling Um, yeah, I also want to say I really appreciate this discussion. It is not often that we have um Very clearly articulated different points of view and so I in terms of process I would like to like Not like take an action or a vote tonight. I'd like to take some time to think about The points of view that the y'all have brought up that I have not thought of before It's funny as I was listening in the sardony as I was I was I felt myself swaying Towards that point of view and seeing that and then mr. Nagatima brought up the fact Someone coming up and yeah, it is very true when you're just sort of sitting in a chair And it is one thing that um that I felt During our joint meeting with the select board At the in con in medius race. I constructed council chamber that it did feel very walled off like there's literally a wall between the The counselors and and where people would come up and speak almost like a MacBook 1984 kind of business So I don't know, you know and and maybe maybe you know, maybe we go when we sample it Maybe we have a sample meeting there and we give feedback to you know to the town and say We like the idea, but there's we have some significant issues with how people feel You know, you know, these are our suggestions. Maybe the town council will have the same or or similar, you know reaction Um, but but I am I am open to to you know, and I also like to like to ask people Um, I'd like to pose this topic to the public and see You know between now the next time you talk about and and see what they they feel because you both bring up some very good Very good comments How could we do that? Well, I mean, I think that What I've heard from From members of the community is you know in many ways I think they would prefer that we just sort of have a very the no walls no tables Just have a back and you know easy back and forth, right? And you know, we we hear that tension public comments all the time Uh members of the community want more public comment more access to our conversation and our discussion My you know, I completely hear and respect that at the same time. There's still You know business that we have to conduct, right? There's the time of you know superintendent and staff and others That we have to be respectful for so, you know, it's it's there's different perspectives there I think there's always going to be attention there um I I like the idea of testing something out to see how it, you know, how people react how it feels If that would be something that's amenable, you know, I can ask that even of amorous media If that's an opportunity for them to test it out and see like, you know, does this actually work better or is there, you know um So if the committee is open to that too, maybe that's something that we try, you know, once the town council has been You know Actually, uh inaugurated that we can Try taking turns with them. Mr. Donald I'm particularly intrigued or curious about the you're Where you started to go about having formal meetings at The town hall and having sort of separate public comment or listening sessions that might be More informal ditch the tables and and have it as just a free-for-all opportunity. Maybe not four hours, but um But it's an interesting thought because I've even in this environment I I know that people feel intimidated, but I also feel very awkward sitting here at a table Looking at people talking. It's not a conversation um, and so maybe it's an opportunity for us to think through sort of different ways of Reaching the public and and the community and getting that Yeah, so I think the only other point I'd raise to miss McDonald's point is that, you know One thing that I do hear from time to time from families and staff too is why couldn't the buildings Why couldn't the meetings be in the elementary schools themselves the elementary the Amherst school to me? And it you know, it really comes down to live streaming or video recording and and you know I think weighing those variables is a tricky one But but I I do think it maybe it's an opportunity separate from this space versus town hall To actually think about how we do that too. So I just I want to put it out there because that's consistent I feedback I hear routinely is why would you do it at the high school? Like that's not like people even if they don't have like an understanding of like how the region's different than Amherst It's more like but we're the elementary school It's like why wouldn't you do it at cracker farm or wildwood or fort river some rotation and you know My answer is really unsatisfying to people who particularly don't live in Amherst, which is not a small percentage of staff Um, so yeah, like I don't watch on channel 15. Anyway, because I don't get that, you know So I just think it's another thing to put in the pot Great keeping you complicated, right? Okay facilities update sure, so I'll be brief on this because of time so the Good news. I've got all good news So the boiler at wildwood So you heard about the univent problems, but the consistent thing I've heard from staff at wildwood is That in the past they would have periods where warm air would blow and then periods that cold air would blow even if It was a cold day that just the boiler couldn't keep up essentially is what it came down to so once a the boiler was Over exhausted so to speak it would just blow Not so warm air because there was no heat coming and so the reports who we've had some pretty cold days already this year Is that there's a significant difference that the the climate feels better? It's warmer and it's there's never moments where it's blowing cold air on a cold day and making the room uncomfortable So thank you for your advocacy for the boilers It's already making you know I know we had conversations last year and the year before about should we ask for the boiler because it's going to Is it going to be some cost? But right now it's making a difference for for folks at wildwood The second piece of good news is that the additional halftime custodian we continued in today I talked to the head custodian or communicated with the head custodian We it's continued to make a huge difference for the just a routine daily work that's required at wildwood And so they're very appreciative of that And the news that perhaps more of you are interested in is that it's been two weeks since we have a catch of a rodent at wildwood so that eight week window that Minuteman suggested seems spot-on it's not to say that you know We can't know if there are rodents and they also expressed which made me feel slightly better actually not totally better But slightly better that they've had many many schools in western massachusetts having significant problems this year And they don't know why you know, but they're noticing they're getting more and more busy Than they typically are and there's nothing Meteorologically that would predict that so they're Not wit's end. I'm sure they're pleased with it, but from a financial point of view, but they're They're not quite sure why but they they indicated that this is not the only school that's had about a week cycle So we're going to keep at it. We're still continuing to communicate with Minuteman. They're still coming on a regular You know increased basis And so we're going to keep track of it because we don't you know, it could recur right I can't you never really say you're done or if the moment you do you probably regret that you did But what we know is the last two weeks we've had no no catching of mice and all the Quote-unquote drops that we've set uh and no mouse sightings by staff. So that is the Facilities update for wildwood. Um the other schools. I don't have anything particularly to share that I haven't shared prior So I just have a question. Um, we had talked about you know, the the half custodian half-time custodian working on daily maintenance, but then Not just at wildwood because I know that happened already But having the weekend crews come in and maybe do some extra work And so has that come up uh at fort river or crocker farm or both? As you know, some of that you've been able to implement. I mean it sounds like there was quite a backlog across the district. So we did do that at fort river. Um It was like late. It was after indigenous peoples day. I think the weekend after I apologize for the date off the time I had A crocker farm that there was an express need. So we didn't they felt like they were caught up well enough and So we didn't put resources where they weren't requested There was conversations with the principal and the custodian, but that did occur at fort river as well And I apologize, but I believe it was the weekend after indigenous peoples day and You know the reports from fort river are they're they're doing well with the staff they have and my visual reports not that I'm as fine-tuned as that custodian, but visually It looks like the casual staff has been able to keep up with the workload Great Thank you Any other questions or comments for the superintendent On this topic I'm sorry. There's one I think so we still haven't re-engaged wildwood's composting program because we're we're not rushing to put that back And we're going to take time and just make sure that this Positive development of two weeks continues before we ease back ease our way back into That process because if that would be a logical question, you know, that was suspended Are we to put it back in place? But we've we've opted to be conservative in our approach towards that Is there anything about location or how it's housed that would the compost? Oh Some of it's that but a lot of it from Miniman was experiencing and what they were witnessing was just that It's hard to keep up with the cleaning of the bins the bins go out the bins get cleaned and just this that was the lag time they felt like there was a lag time when The remnants of food were still available that they were concerned about That's supposed to trash which is much more, you know, you put it in you replace the bag composting is a little more Tuit than that. Sure. So that was what they were that's a report they gave us Great. Thank you. Thanks Next item on the agenda is the English learners parent advisory council rep and I believe we had this conversation at the regional level Um, go ahead. Dr. Morris. And if the committee is amenable and miss mcdonald's amenable to cover both districts I think it's it's a right. It's a new committee that's formed in terms of the l-pack Um, our new council that's formed. Um I talked to miss richerson. We're not feeling like we need multiple reps for different districts Um, you know, frankly the vast majority of our english language learners are at the elementary level as compared to the regional level So I don't want to presuppose that miss mcdonald would either be interested or there wants to be more conversation But given the hour see if we can fast forward this one if we can't we'll slow it down No pressure. Yeah I will do that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you very much miss mcdonald Okay, uh dual language update dr. Morris. So that was um in the superintendent update I just didn't do it because of it was on the agenda later. So a couple updates. Um So the biggest the most significant piece of uh feedback we've received over since december november 5th to now Um has actually been from staff some from families but more from staff Who have concerns about if the lotteries after the screening process how that could create an awkward fit for families And students the screening process for those of you who Well, I'll just state it is an opportunity where families come in with their soon-to-be kindergartner They meet the staff the student gets green they get to meet Both can generally both kindergarten teachers power educators Related service providers for the screening process the family gets to meet with the council their assistant principal or principal Talk about their child and it's a really formative experience For families and for children and so the concern was if the lottery was after that We'd have this whole process where kids and families fall in love with the people they're potentially going to work with And then get into a lottery and have really mixed emotions about that process Uh, and I you know, we had not thought we were thinking so much about making sure that um We get the motion number of students able to be in the lottery Right because we were extending it beyond the typical registration time So we're still talking and thinking about how to maybe make adjustments that aren't huge Not like oh three months before we're going to make screening till the end of june But um, I do think it's a good point that I think it would be supportive of students and families If the lottery occurred before the screening so that it wasn't People the students and families didn't have the experience of making relationship positive relations with the school And then needing to make new relationships So I think we can do that and we're working on some models with slight adjustments a lottery timeline Slight adjustments to kindergarten screening to be able to do that But I think that was really substantive feedback that we're taking Very seriously and we'll come back a little more detail in december if that if we can put it on the agenda Because that's something that um, you know, it's a lot of pieces a lot of moving pieces and But that's the way this process was to work that people give us feedback. We take it in improve our product Mr. Demling The screenings happen. Is it still central or does it happen at each individual online? Registration happens centrally, but screenings happen at the building level Mr. Demling, is it more than just screening for potential services that might be needed? Or is it is it truly this like Hey breakout the band welcome to you know crock farm Kind of like you know into the community kind of thing I just I'm thinking about these like touch points, right? You're like if we were managing a brand, right? You know for some for-profit company would we would think about the user experience the user engagement Where do you have touch points with our brand and we hear coca-cola the first time we three years old the blah blah So like that's kind of like an important point in the relationship and the long relationship that parents have at the school And they're choosing to have a short or a long-term engagement So I just I wonder about those the first point like we said formative We don't feed our five-year-olds coca-cola to be clear No, I think the the explicit purpose is it's a mandated process to identify potential learning or Needs of students how it functions how our staff do a wonderful job with it. It's incredible open armed experience of yes You may be asking a student to see how high they count But you know that could be done really coldly and our staff do the opposite of that where they're incredibly encouraging for students And families are able to share their thoughts on their child, you know with again either a guidance staff member or administrator You know, I'm concerned about this my child is anxious about the bus Of course at the same time the child is always telling the teacher. I'm most excited about riding the bus, right? That's like a typical kindergarten screening experience that happened many times for me when I was principal But there are these formative experiences and if you're four or five when you go in even if someone's asking you to count They're doing in a way where you're building that relationship So yes, there's scores being written down and we are assessing But on a functional level, I don't believe the most incoming kindergarteners view it that way They're doing their viewing activities with people who might be their teacher You know, that's that's the mindset that we experience our students and families coming in with it. So I think it's both But the explicit purpose is to screen for potential disabilities as part of our child find requirements That answer Question yeah, yeah, I mean I don't want to blow it up off topic too much I just I just wonder about these opportunities, right of like, you know, you have somebody coming in You know, it's it's no guarantee that they'll you know, the child who starts kindergarten is going to be with us their entire School career, right? And so what's what's what's an opportunity where we can even make that? You know the the best the most positive experience it can be, you know before during and after, you know Like I mean even silly things like, you know, like a coffee mug or a magnet like Not necessarily that idea, but like just ways to invest and just make it, you know I'm wondering if maybe we could have a This be an agenda topic at a future meeting Not specifically the screening, but just the early experience, I guess of our students coming into the elementary schools, right? Because you know, ultimately like that you're right I think that there's that experience that that they encounter whether they're coming in as new kindergartners or preschoolers Or, you know later grades Um, but just understanding what that looks like and you know and seeing if there's ways that we can help support That might be Good. Yeah. And I think just briefly not to answer that question But I do think it's worth mentioning some of what you did you're suggesting We started last year by having a pre-registration event that we had 60 folks come to That there was no paper and there was paperwork if they wanted to fill it out when they went to register. So it would be Facilitate they're going through that process easier, but it was really just about we had principles up talking about programs We had our science, you know person we had bumper stickers. We so we did the kind of Kind of rah rah enthusiasm piece and many people brought their children We said it was child friendly So we had you know food and Ryan Harb is there talking about food services and we miss ryan. He's wonderful We're so happy with Sasha, but you know, I mean, I think we tried to integrate that into Another set of processes that didn't have the eventually I need to ask you how you can count Kind of factor to it. I mean, I think both are important But um, it was purely on the More on the or more on the pr side than it was on the functional side, but yeah, we can definitely talk Um, bring that back Great and going on so We'll be posting on December 10th for spanish teacher and the dual language program Um, you can see the long list of places that we are posting We're going to combine it education week is a primary posting mechanism We don't typically do because it's pricey It's it's basically the wall street journal for educational professionals if people are unfamiliar. It's a publication Widely read and we're going to combine it with the high school principal Um, I know that's a different district, but I think it's worth saying So we're combining it so that we're getting two high-profile positions out there to a wide group a wide audience So we're actively working with that as well as just for the public is not reading this spanish language newspapers Radio stations facebook will do some paid advertising on there universities in potterico has been recommended to us Massachusetts colleges universities school spring and d.com mabe is helping us and What I always say tends to be the best is emailing it to 700 staff members and saying hey share this with your friends. You know anybody right like the word of mouth is undervalued I think and we I think our HR department they did something they didn't mention at the regional meeting But we've been really being intentional about that being a mechanism for recruitment efforts You know, you can do all the formal things you want and if you're like, oh, yeah, they're looking for a science teacher I have a friend who wants to move to western mass and she's fantastic Right those those type of things are I think can get lost in the shuffle and we're being very clear and explicit about that Dr. Morris just a thought on this. Um, there's a lot of also latino professional organizations Both throughout the state and throughout the country that might be worth Sending, you know these notices too because it is a unique program. It's not something that you've seen a lot of different districts Um and those networks being what they are people probably more than happy to share, you know with each other If you could if anyone here has any other thoughts on places we could advertise not just that but other ones, please share Uh, the december 10th. Some people might wonder why not immediately and so we got some feedback based on other searches that Right after thanksgivings not the best time to post jobs that really you want to post it sort of heading towards the winter holidays And leaving it open till the new year and for better or worse Some people get to the holidays and say maybe I want a different job, right? It's just like this reflective time The feedback we've gotten Yeah, uh, has been after thanksgiving people are generally pretty happy where they are and after the holidays less so right? So weird psychology, but um, this is what people who do this for our living tell us So we're intentionally posting so we're ready to go. We have the posting ready to go But we're going to wait till the time period that you know has been suggested to us as best So it's by the same mindset that governs gym membership, you know We're ready to just start new things Right, exactly. No, I think there's some truth in that. Um, and and particularly education professionals have time to think about it and time to perhaps do an application so, um In december 1st, katie richardson is going to do a language leadership network which is sponsored by mabe and you can see the presentation so some of them really relate to topics that we've talked about about Working on partner language and english language benchmarks. So how do you set expectations for both the english and the partner language? in our case spanish And um, this frederickson. I've actually met and when I went to cambridge. She was the facilitator of that meeting at amigo. She's fantastic Talk about oral language and how do we get more oral language assessment in again looking at both languages and how does that work? and mabe always has poster sessions at their meetings. So looking at Multiple successful programs and where they feel really they're they're knocking out of the park One of those programs you'll notice is campaneros and a team from fort river and the district office Are visiting that program in windham connecticut. It's about an hour and a half away. So not too bad under 7 or 17th I'm seeing if I can go for part of that day Um, I'm not quite sure I can but no miss richardson miss chamberlain number the staff members are going to attend that And a member of their team co-facilitated lasiember training And if you remember that visual that we plan to use which is the continuum of language of literacy That was created by the That school um because they were running to the problem of this like, you know, false duality to bilingualism and They themselves created a shanag use and dozens of schools involved in this network. So That's coming up and the last thing I have which is not written as there was a meeting yesterday Miss richardson went to um at the university to the point made earlier just about um Working with other districts in western and central mass who have programs about you know, could you mass or other schools eventually become feeder Programs to supply teachers that would be a symbiotic relationship between A university or a college having a strong relationship now that us and holioc and southbridge, which is you know far but not that far It's still closer to us than it is to bc, which is one of the other schools that is producing teachers For dual language programs. So, you know, there's a lot of logistics. We all know that university is Big, you know, just because of its size is big and I'm not saying this negatively But it's bureaucratic institution, right? If you're 30,000 students over and they have Sometimes things, you know, need some time to marinate and develop But one of the best things that's happened is they've hired prior to this. This is for this current school year They hired a staff member who's on the mabe board who is not surprisingly incredibly enthusiastic about our program She's come to our meeting. She's been incredible resource for us and she certainly has a lot of passion for supporting this so we're at the very Early discussion phases. I wouldn't say that there's tangible but we're kitties. Mr. Richard's been great about getting that group together of multiple districts in western and central mass and See what's possible with the university. So that's just another thing we're working on And I have one quick question So we had heard a while back about some concerns from some of the teachers at fort river about this program and I know that you had gone and You know spoken with the educators directly And it sounds like Folks are feeling better at least in understanding more about what we know will actually entail There's gonna be a job changes or anything like that. Just wondering if there's any updates on that. Yeah, so I went twice Once prior to the vote and once I think the week out I think that we vote you voted on a monday and I think it went either on a thursday And I do think there was some miscommunication or You know and I take ownership as no one's fault but my own of Of just making sure everyone had clarity on the processes that would be used and I think it did resolve attention, I was really pleased so At the curriculum day on november 6, which was the you know, like 12 hours after you voted You know, I mentioned some of the great things we're doing in diversity equity and the work we have to do And I mentioned a bunch and I wasn't pausing for effect. I was just listing like The incredible work done by our saga group at the high school and lgbt Q work And I mentioned and you know last night the amber school could be voted and there was a spontaneous applause from the fort river staff That wasn't because I like Had the I gave an opportunity just happened which was really nice and and then other staff members in the district got really excited about the concept too so That was a good indication at least of some of the work and The diane the team did and then I think I was able just to help clarify some Some points that were helpful for staff to get because everyone every time I've gone even if there's been Questions or concerns every everyone's dedicated to the the program success and to the idea of The dual language program it just got a little complicated perhaps on the personnel side I think clarifying those Points and miss faye was very helpful. I met with her and she was very supportive in that regard as well kind of resolved a lot of tension that kind of Came from not being clear on on certain aspects of how would be supported and how would be staffed Yeah Thank you. Dr. Morris Okay, um, so it looks like we have a gift At least one Mr. Nakajima I move that the amherst school committee accept A donation from martha over Check number nine nine five three five three Uh to support crocker farm at the principal's discretion the amount of ten dollars Do I have a second second? Thank you. Uh all those in favor Okay, thank you very much this over All right, uh school committee planning So sorry, I'm just pulling it up. Yeah, so I've got Potentially having an alice update alice being the safety protocol Uh, we should be talked about today, but we thought there was maybe too many agenda items just for the committee You know, so when the chair and I met and I think we were the right call on that one And uh, I'd like to do an update on the dual language particularly the lottery Because I'd like to get back into the conversation with the committee on that not just the timeline, but the lottery more generally Um, we likely will have a sense from msba by then. Um, they have a meeting on december 12th My understanding is that's the meeting by which There'll be some discussion and potentially vote by their board on what projects will be accepted. So One way or the other I think we just have it as it seems like it would be relevant to talk about. Um I think locations of meetings is something I wrote down. Um to come back to The budget guidance at least the first half of that work Thing that's as far as I have for topics. Uh, yeah, I'm wondering if there's anything on the uh Oh, uh, mr. Demling, would you like to talk about the regionalization update at the next meeting shoot? I apologize Okay, and fort River feasibility and right and fort River feasibility as well It's uh, december 18 18 Okay, great. All right. Uh, I will take a motion If anyone is so inclined Mr. Demling I move for adjourning Thank you all those in favor of adjourning We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Please please send the warrants if you haven't. Oh, yes