 Good evening and welcome to Byline. This is a public affairs show here at Amherst Media and it's co-sponsored by the Amherst League of Women Voters. And we have a special guest here tonight as we continue to try to understand how the transition to our new government system is working. And of course one of the biggest parts of our town council's work every year will be forming the budget. And one of the biggest parts of the budget, in fact the biggest part of the budget is of course public education. And we have our superintendent of schools Dr. Michael Morris here with us today to talk with us about first about the process and his experience as he's going through working in this new system because how many budgets have you done here in Amherst prior to this? This would be my third. This is your third budget. So you weren't there doing it that long before but you got that down and now we're heading into a different system here. So let's start with just your reaction to how it's going and how it feels differently to you or not. So I think in general what I find to be the same is that when I'm in front of for instance the finance committee where I was yesterday for the elementary school district I already went for the regional schools, I think the concerns are the same and the interest is the same to make sure that we have a high quality school system that is fiscally sustainable. And so I'm very appreciative that finance committee in a town is supportive of that first as well as the second end. Some of my colleagues don't enjoy that flexibility perhaps or the same interest but the questions I receive and similar to how I receive them historically have been ensuring that we're making fiscal decisions that aren't just one-year fiscal decisions but they're sustainable for the future because everyone's commitment is that we have high quality public education pre-k to 12 in the town of Amherst and that's something that I think speaks volumes about the elected officials, elected appointed officials in our community. This year because of the transition government we followed pretty much the same timeline. One thing that I was speaking about with the Amherst finance committee yesterday is for the regional schools that's sort of locked in because of the other three town to town meeting schedules for the Amherst public schools at least theoretically we'd be able to push that back a bit and something that I have an interest in thinking about is we released the first draft of our budget in January before the governor releases that budget the house one budget and that sometimes is hard not that we're so dependent on state funding but there are years this being actually one of them where there's a lot of discussion of educational funding and to come out with our budget before we have even the governor's first guidance to the legislature sometimes it's about the little awkward and and it's hard to communicate to the community when there are changes that we have to make changes along with it in our budget that's not new to this process that is part of the system that has been around for a long time and is likely to continue for a long time that's right in our conversation last night at least for the Amherst elementary school budget is a couple weeks would actually make a significant difference of when we list our budget and because we don't have the other three towns town's meetings or now Amherst town meeting to get one articles on might we have flexibility to think even slightly differently might might yield really positive results for how we approach the budget and and how we communicate the budget to larger community and not feeling like it changes throughout the process so much and for those who are new here in town we should point out that you're actually a superintendent of two different school systems you wear two hats and you have two school committees that you're working with tell us about that sure so so for including our friendly neighbors of Pellum it's three school districts but for Amherst particularly the Amherst elementary schools pre-k to six or its own unique school district with its own school committee its own budget and the Amherst Pellum regional school district is a four-town school district of Amherst Pellum levered in Shootsbury that covers this or governs the 7th through 12th grade students in our district and it's a regional school district which has significant differences in terms of what the superintendent role is I mean the regional district is its own separate entity it's not a municipal unit form a municipal government in the same way on dot formal documents I'm the quote-unquote CEO of the regional schools where I'm not at the elementary schools which sometimes feels it's an interesting relationship but from a budgetary financial point of view there is no relationship between those two entities they have their and so by the way I framed my question which you rightly corrected me on I'm sort of projecting forward a little bit because there's a separate effort that's been going on to look at the question of whether the small school system of Pellum and the small school system of Pellum elementary and the small school system of Amherst elementary should be combined why don't you take a second and tell us where that states sure so there was a two-town meeting on April 13th where representatives elected officials from those two towns came together to look at the work that had happened at this point there was some sense that the timing may not be right for Tim to further consider that change given a number of variables one the state funding system second is that we do have a new form of government in the town of Amherst and so I think in the next few weeks we're taping this in early mid-May there's going to be a decision by that regionalization board whether to proceed or whether to stop and have this be an artifact in case this wants to be studied again in the future so they're making so if they decide not to move forward the committee dissolves at that point or does it stay in place they do they would vote to like to dissolve okay and if the conversation needed to be restarted at a later date the two communities would have to go through a process of deciding to form a new regionalization study committee and make decisions at that time as to membership timing and charge but you would not anticipate that to happen immediately but it could happen again in the future absolutely and I think the work of the board whether it ends up being moving forward or not will still be helpful for the communities to better understand how would regional transportation aid contribute the financial piece was studied in depth the governance you know how would you transition from municipal form of governance to a regional one I think all of the information that board has whether it materializes anything tangible now or not still critically important because the question comes up all the time and we have a tremendous amount more information thanks to the tireless work of the board than we had beforehand yeah and of course by then the state will hopefully have concluded their most recent effort at education reform which the last one was done in the early 90s carried forward even until today and usually when they conclude that process and there's a lot of pressure and the governor the speaker in the center president have all said that they expect within this two-year legislative term to act finally on another reform package those packages usually get implemented over a 7 to 10 15-year period so there would be more information and more security as to knowing what the future would look like if another regionalization study committee were formed in another year or two or three because we'd be in a new pattern that would likely continue for a long time I think that's true I think the other thing that perhaps could be new information that might emerge from that is many people at DESI including the deputy commissioner have talked about the benefits from their point of view of regionalization and it's what's unknown is and there was a the state auditor last year st. Otter Bob came out with a large report on regionalization so what's unclear is in any new package what impact would have on districts that are considering regionalization and right now that's an unknown and year two from now I think we'll have a lot more information that will be able to be considered good so let's go back to the budget now and so you've presented your budget the budget is before the town council finance committee will be doing its work and some public hearings I believe and and they'll be playing this out over the next few months so during that period of time we need to understand as they look at the education side of the proposal what's the headline here what what is what should we be looking for and thinking about when we think about the budget that you've proposed for our elementary schools and for our regional middle and high school sure so when I start with the regional schools the secondary schools because the Amherstown Council has already voted on those at this date a date of this taping and two other towns levered and shoots Bayer voted affirmatively and time is taping palums voting tomorrow and so at what's true in both budgets I should start with is that we're having an unusually positive buzzard year for a couple of reasons one is that we had a pretty significant reduction in health care costs the second is that we've I was that achieved those achieved through the town and the change from being self-insured to joining a group insurance policy or program and that has netted some significant savings for the districts as well as the town towns I should say Pellum is also part of that same insurance group so kudos kudos to the town efficiency move so yeah thank you town manager and town council absolutely okay and so the other thing that I think we've been very intentional about is looking at declining enrollment which is kind of stagnating a little bit but we've had to decline and doing the principles in particular done a fantastic job analyzing how do we match that with the appropriate staffing so where places we can add staffing in areas that we needed and where places that through natural attrition we can remove it just because of that declining enrollment and we've realized some we've realized some significant savings from that and been able to redistribute that and areas that are consistent with our values I mean for me a budget is a valued document and we're in a fortunate place where we're able to express that this year and perhaps better ways than in the past we also want to be conscious that every year is not going to be this year some of the health insurance savings is one-time savings and as I said some of the declining enrollment based on our projections and our experiences looks like it's kind of plateauing so we want to also build things in in this positive variance here that we we don't have to necessarily rely on so we're trying to both do the things to support our add the things we need to support our students and also being very realistic that we're not going to be in this fortunate situation here and what are some of the things that you're adding to serve the students better yeah so at the regional level we're adding a second restorative practice technician a practitioner so we have had one there's a second year at the high school that we've had a position like that and what does that position do yeah we're adding one at the middle school and what that position has been a lot of interests both nationally and locally on how much how discipline is doled out at the second at all schools but particularly at the secondary level and one of the legitimate critiques of K-12 education is that it's often comes from a you know it's called natural consequence it feels more punitive it doesn't actually repair the harm that's done and most of our behavior challenges there is someone who is harmed and there's a harmed doer but unless that relationship is repaired it's very likely that that same trend will continue the idea of so this fits into anti-bullying and the like conflict resolution anti-bullying and it also fits in in terms of the cultural aspect so one of the critiques of of all districts and we're not excluded from that is what's the demographics of who gets suspended more often or less often and it's really working proactively with students with staff and faculty to how do we create a climate in our school where students can be leaders in some of that conflict resolution where we're highly conscious of cultural impacts and biases that we all have in that approach and we did recently a show here actually Damarse Media is one of the student leaders as well as the practitioner and it's amazing the impact it's had already in the schools and we want to expand that impact so that's one of the things we're really excited about we are revising our math curriculum in grades 6 through 12 which cuts across multiple districts who are sixth graders right now are in the elementary schools and so those are again talking about one-time cost we want to not just replace the curriculum which came out of an extra review but also provide support for teachers to be able to implement a new curriculum so we have a one-year position that is really coaching teachers on new curriculum supporting students within that and again that's the financial sustainability part as well and that decision and program was driven by a an external report that said yeah so we it was driven by community staff parent guardian as well as student concerns about our current curriculum so we did have an external review and what they found was that our curriculum wasn't well aligned to the current standards and so we need to address that the other thing they they underscored within that was that right now the type of math teaching that our students need that problem-solving that frankly employers and colleges are saying we need to have right now our philosophy at the middle school didn't match our philosophy at the high school and we heard that directly from students so we want to have a balanced curriculum that emphasizes problem-solving as well as computational fluency that's never going away no matter what's in our phones and how quickly we can do it there there's some parts of that that you need to access higher level mathematics and so there there's a cost related to both the curriculum and also the professional development and training that we want to support our teachers the best support student outcomes okay other initiatives that this budget is going to make possible sure at the elementary level we have we're starting a dual language program we're very fortunate to get a along with the Holyoke public schools a joint grant for $300,000 supporting the implementation of that program at Fort River School but there's still ongoing needs that's really for this spring and summer there's ongoing needs for the program so we do want to support we're buying a new curriculum right as we don't have an existing Spanish language curriculum that aligns and one of the choices that our staff made that that we're all supporting and excited about is they want to make sure and not just that it's a different curriculum the Spanish class and English class but actually to reform have really a very streamlined but in-depth joint curriculum so that if you're in the Spanish the students are in the Spanish class or the English class they're getting the same high quality tax they're getting the same types of teaching so at Fort River we're actually we were thinking about it more narrowly and the teachers were telling us no if we want kids to have this all kids to have this experience we want all kids to have access to kind of revised curriculum so there are some costs they're not huge but they're related to that one of the ongoing needs in the town of Amherst has been access to early high quality early childhood education we do have a program at Crocker Farmer preschool program but that is a state driven program around students with special needs there are typical peers that are associated but what we know and we've done some surveying actually community led group did some surveying is that cost is a major factor for many families in our community so families with children without special needs there aren't we have a wonderful community action program a head start program there are more families that can access that program so what we're partnering with the town of Amherst as well as the elementary schools is to provide almost a grant for us to work all three entities the town the schools and head start what would it look like if we were to expand access how close could we get to universal preschool access for income eligible families in town and so again not a huge budget item in terms of costs but maybe down the road but we've tried multiple ways to increase our preschool access over the last 15 years and and we haven't gotten there and we have this existing gem in my opinion i've been over to community actions right next to wildwood one of the sites what they do for children and families is outstanding and how do we as a school district who are the beneficiaries of their work how do we support them how does the town support them because we know that when students arrive in kindergarten without preschool access that their outcomes are demonstrably different than students who do have a lot of hidden poverty here in Amherst because we're an academic community and they're relatively high salaries associated with people who are affiliated with the colleges people think of this as a relatively wealthy community but the reality is whether they're students who have come here to study and are married with children or whether they're people who've lived in this community and are the next generation of many generations living in the community there's a lot of people who basically don't have that that high level of income that we're perceived to have generally in town and that presents itself in different ways in the school system yeah one of the things that i like to say when people say oh Amherst it's probably all affluent families and they have they have their perception is that we're one of about three or four communities across the commonwealth if you look at our school population that actually averaged that are our averages are the same as the state average in terms of race ethnicity poverty english language learners special needs students and sadly because of residential segregation there's not many communities that actually are at the state averages and we are so one of the exciting things is we're this microcosm of the commonwealth and what an opportunity we have in our math classrooms there'll be one student whose parent may be a professor of mathematics and another student who to get in that seat has this amazingly rich life story of how they got to be in Amherst and they're getting to learn from one other and what a joy that is and you know it's one of the reasons people like me stick around in this district it's my 18th year and we also have to respond to that with the appropriate staffing to make sure all students can access the full extent of the curriculum and that's one of the reasons why so many people call education the great equalizer in our society and we've recently interviewed our library director and same thing you know the library is available to everybody the school is available to everybody and it's about creating an opportunity and an environment in which no matter where you come from no matter what your background is no matter what's happening at home that you have a safe and encouraging place in which you can grow and develop and again whether you're doing it in the schools as a child or a young person or you're doing it in the library as an adult and a person living in the community those should be safe and dynamic places where you can go to improve yourself and and take advantage of everything that this country is supposed to be about so let's switch gears here for a couple of minutes the school construction so there's a lot of activity around school construction so give us the highlights of where we are in the various efforts to assess our schools and apply for grant funding and the like. Sure so I think the the two pieces I want to talk about is there's short to medium term things we're doing and then long term things we're doing I'll start with the long term but but I don't want to lose the track. The long term is more expensive right? It is yeah that's the one we need grants for. Let's start with the big picture. The big picture is that we are hoping to replace our outdated elementary schools particularly Wildwood and Fort Berber so we went through an extensive community outreach process this winter and early spring and what we found is that a proposal that I suggested which was looking at a 600 student school to replace those two outdated schools which would involve some other changes that we're exploring had community support to move forward so that proposal had to be in the statement of interest MSBA which is a state funding agency on this front on this area asked us to you know build consensus in the community so we had nine public forums on the topic we got tremendous amount of feedback from both parents in the district staff in the district and community members at large and that led to unanimous votes of again both the school committee and the Amherstown council to submit a statement of interest so that statement of interest was submitted in early April state gets many of them they do a thorough review and in December 11th at the MSBA and there's their board meeting they'll vote on which grants they're willing to accept and invite into the process so we're keeping our fingers crossed and but we really do appreciate the engagement of the community it wasn't a simple narrow discussion it was really a pretty thorough one and thank Amherstown media for videotaping 15 minute one which led off all the sessions people get a sense of what we're talking about and so if that process kicks off in December if we get positive news in December that starts off a roughly five-year process of analysis more deeper analysis and then construction we're really beneficiaries that we had a wildwood building project that wasn't successful we have a tremendous amount of data and the town took on a Fort River feasibility study so we now have more data I would say about those two sites than any applicant to the MSBA process so I feel like we will be well versed to take quick action if we are invited in so that longer-term big vision big project what's the rough cost anticipated I know five years out it's hard to predict the exact cost but in today's dollars or by today's some kind of measure how would you describe the scale right the project in relation to cost right so it's a hard one to judge also because the MSBA reimbursement is unclear until they tell us so I'm going to be cautious about my description but the cost the cost is certainly north of total cost certainly north of 50 million dollars and the town cost I think is is likely north of 30 million dollars but I think everything anything beyond that is is getting into the weeds that we don't have an architect to design this school right all that comes from when we get in but in general scale I think that those are the terms I'd be comfortable sharing and you mentioned we would start with the long term so now let's go to the short or mid term sure so we we submitted a pretty assertive or aggressive capital plan for the Amherst elementary schools to the town and the joint capital planning committee of the town government has been in my opinion very supportive of that plan they asked lots of great questions but one of the things is that we had no cooling I mean the school year at wildwood last year if you remember the last august it was incredibly warm and and really it was difficult to be there for the staff and the students and it's really hard for me to get used to the idea that our children are going starting school in august I mean because it just it just in my whole experience both my own school experience and most of the years I served in the legislature we always thought of it as sometime after labor day right but we're now august that is and most districts also moved pre-labor day starts like us and so what we've you know one of the hard things to judge about some of the capital planning was that we are hoping to replace these buildings so some of this is sunk cost and how do we judge that and so what we've landed with two in capital planning they haven't voted yet the town council but in our proposal is to rent a portable unit right now since wildwood was fixed last year we feel like that's in pretty good shape Fort River were less clear in terms of the chiller and the life but have it actually housed at Fort River and if there was an issue with the chiller if it you know has problems we're ready set to put the other one online if there was a problem at wildwood it might take a day or two to get it over to the school but we work with companies that that rent these portable chillers they would be fully sufficient to chill to cool the building so that was a major issue last year additionally we have other repairs that we want to make on the buildings that are they're not just about the cooling but just improving the environment in the school we're looking to rip up some of the carpeting at wildwood which is original to the building make it a kind of healthier improve the air quality that there's been concerns about at wildwood school that already happened at Fort River continue to improve some of the water outlets we're certainly well with well below the EPA level but we want to make sure our water is as healthy as it can be for our children and one other thing that we're working on now is ADA upgrades so we we chose as a district to have Americans with Disabilities Act audit done of all of our schools and not surprisingly given the age of the schools there were many areas that we need to improve the accessibility and we're particularly looking at we did additional sessions where we got feedback from families from staff and from the community that the access to the buildings and access to the playgrounds are two areas that were prime in terms of major issues that we have and so we're looking to improve those next year as well in terms of the capitol so while we are hoping to replace the buildings we we know there's a generation of kids in them right now and they can't wait five years for some of these fixes to occur and that's how we're approaching it. So we have just another minute or so left any other point that you would like to make that my questions haven't elicited from you? Sure well I I'm just incredibly appreciative of the support of the town of Amherst for supporting our budget I think because of our budget we're able to support our students needs in ways that not everybody has that flexible not every school district has that flexibility and because of that you know we get ranked highly recent now online ranking ranked our district as ninth overall in the state and first in western massachusetts and I can't separate that from the funding priority that the town places on at school so last thing to say is just my deep appreciation and to the taxpayers know we're very careful with with the funds that we come in and we put it directly as much as we can to student experiences where the needs are and we'll continue to do so. Terrific so I just want to thank you for being with us tonight but I also as a resident of the community want to thank you and the school committee for the stability that you have brought to town because things were a little bit rocky there and we were looking a little rough around the edges and that I would say was not the Amherst way so very very grateful for the skillful work that you and members of the school committee have done to restore a sense of calm and rationality to this most critical function in our town government. We spend the most money on our schools of anything from our taxes and it has an extraordinarily important and critical role in helping maintain and build a self-governing society and so I just want to thank you for your hard work and I want to thank you all for joining us tonight. Hope you learned a few things tonight. I certainly did and we'll look forward to seeing you at another show.