 A couple of very quick announcements. So this meeting is being recorded for later showing by Amherst Media but is not being live broadcast due to some technical issues. We also have Mr. Dumling will not be attending tonight's meeting if you had another commitment. And the Spitzer will actually be about 10 or 15 minutes late to this meeting but she will be coming a little bit later. Still there's a quorum so we can proceed with our meeting. First order of business is to approve the minutes of March 19th, March 26th which is Amherst only and then March 26th which was a joint meeting with Palm and the region. So I will give the members a few minutes to review each of these and then we'll take motions for each of these together if you would like or we can do them separately but as efficient as we can be the community's information. These have been sent to the committee prior to this meeting but I'm going to give people a chance to look them over again. Mr. Nakajima. I move the approval of the Amherst School Committee meeting minutes for March 19th, March 26th for Amherst only and for March 26th, 2019 joint meeting with Palm and the region. Okay, we have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you. Any comments or edits on these minutes? Okay, all those in favor? Mr. unanimous, thank you very much. Thank you, Ms. Westmoreland once again for putting these together. Next item on the agenda is committee announcements. Are there any announcements from the committee? Seeing none, I will move to public comment. So if anyone is here and wishes to make public comment you are welcome to do so. We don't have microphones tonight but you are welcome to come to the front here and state your name and you have three minutes to speak. Okay, seeing no one coming up the public comment, I'm going to close public comment. We don't have a gavel so I'm just doing the makeshift version of that. I don't expect anyone to be rushing in here. It is a little bit before our normal time for public comment, but if anyone comes in afterwards and is dying to make a public comment we will certainly allow that to happen. Next item on the agenda is superintendents update. Dr. Morris? Sure. I wonder if the seven degrees sunny weather has something to do with it. Maybe just a little bit, yeah. It does feel like spring today, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. So a couple quick ones and then I had some of them written out that some I'll just do early, but in terms of what's written last week on Thursday I attended a meeting hosted by the Collaborative Educational Services and the chairs of the Twin Committee on Education, which is Senator Jason Lewis and representative Alice Peisch were there. That was a really good opportunity for superintendents of Western Massachusetts the message exists to share the current funding challenges that we feel, face, and they're different communities. For instance, Granby faces different challenges or they have different faces that are more analogous, but slightly different challenges than us. Here in Amherst, but it was related to one of the topics later on the agenda about regionalization. There was really good dialogue I thought on that particular topic, especially given that it sometimes gets presented as what should happen in Western Massachusetts and multiple superintendents myself included talked about some of the challenges of regionalization efforts of local communities. I know there was a second event that was for some school community members from our area attended as well as community members and community members, so, but I enjoyed being there. Right before the break, there was autism awareness night, so I want to thank CPAC for their role in organizing that event and what felt particularly distinct this year, and I want to thank Dr. Brady in the audience for her work as well, was, you know, I think very appropriate as an Amherst school community, there were a number of elementary students who were at the forefront of actually formally presenting who they are, what their experience is like, and the things that helped them learn from school, and I think in the past, my experience has been it's a little more secondary focused, and I think for logical reasons that's the case, but it was really impressive to see some students, particularly students from Fort River Elementary, be able to talk about what their life is like and be in a specialized program and what works for them and what they've learned about themselves throughout the years, and these are relatively young, not fifth or sixth grade children, pretty young children, so it's neat, so thank you Dr. Brady and thank you CPAC. After all the work that the committee and the community did on the statement of interest, I just want to be really clear, we like triple check that they got everything that was said to them and they did, so now we're in the holding zone until December 11th when they share the results of which they will accept and which they will, but they got all of our documents and all of our documentation, so. And just if I can, Dr. Morris, one quick comment for the committee, so Representative Mindy Dom has agreed to appeal to the MSBA in her official capacity as our representative, being made aware of her staff, actually we're at some of the listening sessions, Senator Joe Cumberford as well, and we, I have agreed to put together just some, you know, some brief sort of factual talking points for them on the conversations that we had both with the community and here in this committee, and they will, and I'll be sharing that with them this Friday coming up so that they can in turn take it to the MSBA, and we actually just think that's a really positive thing for our representatives to be doing at a state wide level, so just wanted to make that comment. Thank you. Last night, Carpefirm's third graders successfully presented an initiative called the Read Around Town Project. They presented to the Amherstown Council at their formal meeting last night, it was on the agenda. There was a unanimous vote by the council members to support this, and really it installs, you may have seen these, that kind of like free libraries, they're book boxes, particularly at bus stops in town, so that as people are traveling, particularly those who rely on public transportation, that there's opportunities for an exchange of books and for reading to be part of the whole town's life, and this was an idea that staff worked on, our students worked on with staff, and just really neat, and I think it was the word I got from the town manager and a couple of town councils was to highlight up their meeting last night to have the students present their work and to be approved at the town council. That's great. Yeah, for example, really neat student advocacy. The elementary science night also was the week before break. This was completely parent-organized, parent-initiated. We just provided some technical support and some thoughts about, you know, we provided buses to different housing complexes that there was greater access, but I wasn't able to attend from what I understand from those who were, it was great. We had a lot of just scientists in the community who offered their kind of individual talents and knowledge to our relatively young students, and then 150 families come, which was the perfect number because it's always hard to know how big a space you need and how many tables you need until you get there, so that was actually much exactly the target, which never happens, but they were out there and they wanted to do it again and even perhaps expand the next year, so again, just very appreciative of the resources within our guardian community, our larger community. Wasn't this not on here, and it's not just a regional item, although perhaps it comes up a little more often that the region is that, or talked about as a region, is that we were awarded a grant from the state, a diverse teacher workforce grant that we applied for a couple months ago, and it all provides support for current paraeducators who we are working with to get licensure with M-Tel courses and some course credits. We're still working on the details because what you apply for and what you get in terms of the funding is always exactly the same, so we're still working on that. Mr. Magano was actually, and his staff were working on some fine details with that this afternoon, but we're thrilled to get in with what's happened to Desi's ongoing support in this initiative for the state. Everybody reorganized themselves to try to support districts and make it a statewide initiative instead of just purely local initiative, so we're appreciative of that. The last item I wanted to, on the back, you can see that Black Scholars Rising is coming up on May 3rd, all of you are welcome to attend that event, but the bolded point on the agenda, so at the regional school committee meeting, the Amherst School and regional school committee meeting, I presented two weeks ago, yes, that I'd like to explore an analysis of the sixth grade, where the sixth grade students are educated, so currently the Amherst Public Schools, our sixth graders are educated out of three schools, and for a number of reasons, which I articulated at that meeting, I'd like to, and I have started to form a standing, excuse me, steering committee or steering board to work with a consultant to look at what would it look like in terms of curriculum, what would it look like in terms of social emotional development, what would it look like in terms of leadership, and what would it look like in terms of staff in some of those critical areas, so to be really clear, and I think italics are underlined to something that I usually don't do in emails, that this is not because we've made a decision or we're thinking it's a good idea, it's actually, we did that facility you studied at the region, we understand the space needs and limitations, and we want to take the next step of saying what would that programming look like, yes, the space needs we have a good handle on, but what would this do for the education of the sixth grade students, and what we'd like to do is come back to the committees next winter with, this is what it looks like for multiple committees to weigh in and their thoughts about that wasn't a joint meeting we had the last, when this was talked about the last, the most recent time, just to make sure that the Amherst School Committee meeting was known, and if anyone's interested, I think we're taking nominations until May 7th, right? I believe so. Yeah, something like that, we've gotten a good response to date from both staff members and community members, we're also looking for some students, more of the middle school level, if we can work out the logistics of elementary school students, we'll do that, but we have a nice sized group already, we're looking to dig into this work which was starting, it will start and we'll be back. Dr. Morris, has there been anything posted online or shared that how committee members, community members can actually apply to participate in this that they would like to? Sure, yeah. So that we can share out as a committee? Absolutely, so I can ask Ms. Westmorena to have me send an email that went up to the community, to the committee, so that if it's forwarding to people who may not have gotten that, then we can do that. Sure, that'd be great. Thank you. Yeah, thank you. And just on that point too, I think this is a topic that obviously, as Dr. Morris mentioned, has come up at the regional level. We wanna make sure we keep floating it for the Amherst School Committee, even though there's no decisions to be made right now, but just future updates to be brought back for this committee and also for the community if they wanna engage at this level, because this is one of those things that we don't want it to surprise anybody. It comes long and it's a really big deal and it's gonna have an impact on a lot of folks and their families and students, obviously. So we just wanna make sure that people are fully aware and that we're bringing this up as often as we can. So perhaps not at any time in the very near future, but sometime in the late summer or something, we can look to just get a quick update from you much in the same way, Dr. Morris, if that's okay with you. I think it would be great. Just one other thing to share is that one of the things that I'm pleased with with the early response to the request for participation has been a relatively equal number of elementary and secondary parents, elementary and secondary staff who have volunteered to be a part of this. And we're intentionally having elementary and secondary building-based administrators as part of the steering committee because we think it's, well, it's a regional, it's come through the region and we really want it to have more voices in because that's the point of the step. Great, Mr. Octavio. Yeah, I would actually, I would really welcome at a future Amherst School Committee meeting whether it's the next one or whatever's appropriate, having you update us on, and when I say composition of the committee, I don't mean literally tell us all the names, but when you have the composition and the breakdown of the composition between folks who are more closely associated with the elementary level and the regional level and maybe even different kinds of roles that they have. And then as you're getting it, and if you have it, if this were like a sake of argument, a late May, early June meeting discussion item, if by then you had a sense of how you're exploring some of the academic and programmatic issues that are associated at the, obviously for this venue in particular, the elementary level for those students, it would be great just to hear it so that as people entered into the summer, forgive me for saying this, but again, like always, the rumor mill goes around about how is the decision being made? Who's involved? What are they really looking at? Is it driven by the middle school? Is it driven, is it really looking at it from a organically from perspective of what sixth grades are experiencing or fifth and sixth graders? Knowing that by the end of the year, this year, we could at least be informed and then lay out how that's being done, I think would be really helpful because just even, not to sound funny about this, even though you mentioned sort of almost as an afterthought that you've gotten really robust outreach from both the elementary level and the regional level for participation, I wouldn't even put that as an afterthought. I think that's a really important thing for people to know right out in front. That's a highlight, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah, exactly, you can do that. Great, thank you, Dr. Morris. So moving us along, the next item on the agenda is discussion of infectious disease policy and procedures. I know it's not gonna be a surprise to the committee or to anyone watching that there have been, there's been a lot of concern raised, and rightfully so, among many different communities, including this one about some of the measles outbreaks that we have had, but also just more generally, I think, thinking about our policies on this topic because it isn't going to use so much because we know that there's some long-term impacts, public health impacts in our schools around vaccination and related discussions. So Dr. Morris and I thought it made sense to put this on our agenda for tonight for discussion. We also, in reviewing, excuse me, the policy or the schools on this topic, it is policy JLCD, which the committee has a copy of in front of them. We realize that this has not been reviewed or approved since 1996, which has been a very long time to not have a conversation on this. So for all those reasons, it just seemed to make sense to bring this before the committee tonight. And I think, obviously, we have a protocol for dealing with policies like this. I'm not intending that the committee is gonna discuss this policy in particular and review that, but it typically would go to a policy subcommittee. But anyway, with that introduction, I will hand it over to Dr. Morris. So I really wanna think, I think it is a topic that's very live, it's shared with some of you that the area I grew up in is right now from the epicenter of this discussion, both from a public health perspective and actually both, and from a legal perspective. So I've been attuned to it for this area, but also it's just gonna have a lot of standing with the, to live in the area and that area. And so I really wanna thank the town of the MRS and the nursing staff in our schools, because one of the things that's been really clear long before this topic became as live as it is at the moment is that there's a lot of collaboration. And that's been critically important in terms of the public health department of the town of MRS and our local schools. So I wanna start from that place that we're coming from an orientation of cooperation, which isn't always the case in every community, sometimes there's a gap and I feel like we catch those gaps because of our staff, but also the town staff. So with me and people who are gonna do most of the talking through what our policies and what are really what our procedures are and other policies in terms of school for the policy. Today's Jennifer Brown, who is, can you remind me of your formal title, because I'm gonna- I'm the public health nurse for the town of MRS. Yeah, and Julie Fetterman, who is, works with Jennifer, couldn't be here today, but was here when we were putting together a slide and going through our viewing of what our procedures are. And Robin Supernaut, who is the nurse at night school and the head nurse, lead nurse for the district, also contributed to that. Tonight I was only introduced by Dr. Steve Hickman, who is our school position in the district. And thank you for being here tonight. And also Dr. Brady, who also has been participated and is connected to this from her roles in the services. So really what we tried to do, and then I'll turn it over to the folks closer to the work, was kind of, we had a long conversation and we said, okay, what are the buckets of work that we wanna share with the community and the communities? The first was really, how do we encourage immunization participation? And we had a lot of dialogue about that because in Massachusetts, you get forced somewhere, there are these exemptions that people are able to take, but we're also not neutral. It's not that we're neutral arbiters and saying, yeah, whatever you wanna do, that is not the approach that we've taken from a public health perspective. We respected individuals and families' desires, but we tried to communicate information throughout the way. The second is, how do we track? So if there was an issue, how do we track who is immunized and who is not, so that we have that information internally and the nurses have that, and that's important, not just in terms of the most recent outbreak, which the measles thing is that we see on the news, it's actually always something that we need to be able to know from a public health perspective. And then the third piece is, what's the planning for the outbreak? So if there was to be sort of what's going on in my old life in the woods, what would be the steps and procedures that we'd have? So we thought those would be like the three buckets of conversation. I do wanna comment a little bit on the policy at the end, so that's probably something that I could take the lead on talking about, but I think at this, I'll turn it over to our folks about encouraging immunization participation. So, Robin, do you wanna start there? Yeah, I'll slide, sorry. So if you wanna come up over here, that way the camera can get you in more easily. Sort of awkward. Usually there's a microphone over here. Just stand here? Just stand here. All right, so we obviously follow the regulations that the Department of Public Health sets out in collaboration with the CDC. And immunizations are required at registration. So when a student is in to register, we collect the immunization record from them, and we continue to review this process throughout the year. Sometimes we have students come in with partial immunizations and we look at families to track through healthcare providers, through previous schools to collect the information and then enter into our data bags, which can tell us in a moment where students stand with immunization status. And the immunization department changes at kindergarten level and then again at summer break. So we spend a lot of time communicating with families, sometimes with translators, it can be email, be a phone, encouraging them to get their students immunized. If we have a student who comes new to the district with no healthcare, local healthcare provider, we'll work with Julie and Jennifer at the UNS Health Department. We have a monthly immunization clinic and Jennifer's been great to kind of on demand immunize kids. So we're not holding them out of school and we're getting them in school as soon as we can. And then we collaborate with Dr. Hickman as needed. So there's two ways students can be in school if they're not fully immunized. One is a religious exemption and a family would need to write on an annual basis a statement saying that due to their sincere religious beliefs they won't be vaccinated or child. The other is a medical exemption which a physician needs to write saying that there's a contraindication but whether the health condition that student can't be vaccinated. So we do update those annually that was starting this past fall from the Department of Health Reconciliation. And then when we receive the information from the families we then return correspondence to let them know that in the event of a vaccine preventable disease in the school their child could face exclusion per the guidelines of the Department of Public Health. So that's what we do. We spend countless hours working with families trying to get the kids immunized because some of the vaccines are a series of three so they may be given in over several months. So that takes time. But we work on it year round. Summer school nurses collect that information as kids are registering in the summer and then as I said you process that through the year. I think that you'd like to add anything? You don't need to but I just want to give you the opportunity. Any questions before we transition to tracking mechanisms? I have a couple of questions but I'm going to hold them. Sure. You're done. So we have a database called SNAP for the nurses and it's really important immunizations and it's programmed to look at the immunization, the age of the student, the time between vaccines to make sure that the student is compliant. And as I said in just a minute we can pull up a list of students who are out of compliance and students who have exemptions. We also are just starting to work with the MIIS. It's a state database. Massachusetts Immunization Information System. That is what it's saying as well. And we're looking at a potential coordination between our software program and the state program to help fill in some of the blanks as needed. But we are able to look at the state system for a student who maybe is vaccinated in another area, doesn't have the records and Jennifer is using that currently right now so we can work with her to get that information. But starting in the fall will be all the nurses who have access to that database. And as I said, we collect exemptions yearly and we do work, students are not supposed to be in school on day one if they're not completely vaccinated. We do have use of race period because we need to have time, obviously we get people together to have communication families sort of translation if that's needed. And then at some point in the early fall, we work with Dr. Morris and we send out exclusion letters telling families that they're a student who's not in compliance with COVID-19 vaccines and that we set a date. And the date we set is generally the day after an immunization clinic at the University Health Department. I think the only thing I'd add is that the number of students, I'm always surprised. You've been doing this a while, so maybe you're not. I'm always surprised that the number of students on the first date, who don't have all their documents and paperwork and it really dwindles because of the good work of our nurses and the town. So we don't exclude many students at the end. But the thing- He had very good students. Yeah, but the delta between who is on day one, how many students would be theoretically excluded and where we are later is pretty significant. So I just want to thank the nursing staff at all the schools for incredible amount of phone calls, working as you said with translators, working with the town, working with pediatricians' offices and health offices, it's a tremendous amount of work that our nursing staff does. But obviously very important work. I'm just going to just come in here. Do you want to? I was just going to say, we provide the immunizations- Stand up, sorry. I'm the public health nurse, John. We provide the immunizations like Robin and like we're discussing. We provide them within a big component of what we do is education to get them into a primary care provider. So we, they're here. We want them at a provider and we're sort of in the middle. We're not just the staff. So we work hard at getting health insurance. Maybe we're, John was saying, do you have a son or something? Great, thank you. And the last one was kind of great because I know those two questions that have come about what are the steps that are taken that aren't visible because we're not going to look at what we haven't had to do with this. At the current time, about how do we actively plan and the ways that aren't, again, aren't visible but incredibly important. Yeah, yeah. And that's public health. It's a lot of hard work behind the scenes. It's invisible until something like this comes out. We love talking about what we do. So local and state health officials drill potential outbreaks. That's a big component of what we do. We work under an umbrella from the Department of Public Health. We have the Hampshire Public Health. Preparation coalition. We have health and medical coordinating coalition here. We have UMass drills. So we have emergency dispensing site drills. We have the CDC come up and work with us. We do tabletops. We also do drills that are live at the Mullins Center. And we have everyone out taking a role. So the second thing is we do this. When there is an outbreak is confirmed by a state epidemiologist calling us school, state, and local health officials and health care providers communicate and collaborate to share information identified by action and violence. Massachusetts has two but based surveillance and case management system. One is the MIIS, the immunization system where we can capture information and transfer to providers. The other one that we use in the health department mostly is called MAVEN. And it's the Massachusetts Virtual Epidemiological Network. So the way that it works is that a communicable disease that's reportable gets the information is told to the state through either a clinical diagnosis or a laboratory value. And then that information comes out to the town. So that's how I get the information what's going on in town. So from that, we can work to prevent outbreaks and work with the patients virtually, so online. And then there's epidemiologists on call. So I can call their DPH number if someone picks up. And also we have an epidemiologist right here of UMass, so we communicate with them. The third thing is town school and state officials team to continue evaluate the plan. That's something about disease investigation. Where are we now? How is it going? Do we need to stop, get more information and re-evaluate and then take another course? And then we communicate the plan with the community and family members. And we have all those ways of communicating, we collaborate with the schools. Information goes to families. We have alerts, we have media statements and then we can go online with information with notes. Thank you. So I think we've mentioned it's a very quick thing on the policy and I want to be conscious that it's not a policy-self committee but it actually is relevant to, I think. Well, can you give a chance to the committee just to see if there's any questions or comments for us before we do that? Absolutely. Sure. So, if you could help me. And I guess part of this is because this is also the first public discussion we've had of this subject. I just wanted to know if you could help me with our current rate of immunization, whether or not the rates of immunization or different elementary schools are satisfactory. And I guess you mean without rattling through every last kind of shot of person gets. I recognize we could be at all even. But just if you could, that would be a wonderful thing to know. And then the second thing I guess would be the rate at which families are choosing to exempt their students, their children, for immunization. And I guess it's useful to know whether that's based on medical advice or whether it's a matter of religious conviction. Because I say that because of the obvious observation that for those, if you told me that there were 4% that were not immunized at a given school, but 99% of them were because of medical reasons, then you'd sort of nod your head and say, well, you know, I'm happy for those families that they're able to find that out, right? If you found out the sake of argument that it flipped the other direction and 70% were for other reasons of conscience, then it would make me want to ask my next question would be which is what kind of, when we're doing outreach, what kind of materials do we have and what venues do we have to try to talk to parents about the value of immunization? So beyond the requirement, why is this a good thing to do? Why is it a good thing to do for your child in particular, but also beyond that, why is it a good thing to do for even not your kid, but for other kids? And I know there was three quick questions or long questions, but I wanted to throw them out there because in some ways there's sort of table set or questions about not just what are we doing in particular or how do we do it? But what's the outcome that we're right now living on? So I just need to sector new. The state, the last statistics that are published on the DPH website are the benefit of immunization rates in kindergarten and then again in seventh grade. And the last rates were from the 17, 18 school year. So unfortunately I didn't have numbers, I don't have rates, but the vast majority, we have five students in the region, that's from pre-K grade 12, that have medical exemptions. Of that we have, I'm gonna take a quick guess about 50 students, 50 plus students that have religious exemptions, that's by far what we're looking at. So it is probably 34, the quick math in the Amherst public schools that have religious exemptions. And in Amherst there's one student with a medical exemption. So by far the greatest of religious exemptions. And the state asked us starting this fall to review all our religious exemptions in the past families to rewrite them. So at that time in the spring we worked with families and asked them to revisit the issue of immunizations and said we were available to provide education for the consult, the health care provider is needed. And quite a few to our surprise, quite a few families had stopped using the religious exemption and started asking me the kids, maybe I'm more of a delayed schedule than the schedule with the state is looking at. But still I feel we have a significant number, a relatively significant number of students with religious exemptions. So I have a follow up question to that. And another question, we're kind of related. So for, just in terms of the kinds of materials and kind of outreach that's happening, are there, is there more of a concerted effort to ensure that families who state that there's a religious exemption, that they are receiving follow up calls or emails or is there more of a push to try to, because I understand we want to be sensitive to families and their reasons for that. At the same time, it also seems like there's a lot of concern among various communities, not just this one about the potential for an outbreak. And so what steps are we taking to kind of go above and beyond the normal protocol with this? And then my other question was related to exclusions. I think that's what you said. So what happens to the excluded students? Have there been any excluded students? How many or roughly and where do they go? So when a family, when we ask them to write a religious exemption, the medical exemptions are pretty standard because we don't know what we can do with that. We accept them at this value. We have families that will have religious exemptions to one series of vaccines and not the rest of the vaccines. But we accept the statement that they give. And then as I said earlier, provide them information that they could have as an outbreak with students that potentially be excluded from school. We do encourage families to talk to their healthcare providers and those students that are going in for physical exams and other issues, healthcare providers are also reviewing immunization records and talking to families at that point, we do have a lot of information from the state department of health and from the CDC about the importance of vaccines for your students. And as far as the exclusion rate, very few students have been excluded. I don't know, one or two a year potentially will be excluded until they get their immunizations. And sometimes if they're excluded today, they may be back today was the day, they may be back in the afternoon after we've been to the doctor to get updated or to see Jennifer. Very few students, one or two a year, over the years are actually excluded from school. And they're excluded until they get vaccinated. Just a quick follow-up, do we keep track of those students? So if a student is excluded, do we keep tabs on them just until we know what has happened? We do. As I said, sometimes it's just a matter of hours before they're going to school, but we do continue to work with families. And the only exception is students that come to our district for a wholeness. We don't exclude them at all. We welcome them into schools. And then we work with families kind of behind the scenes and check through the previous schools to see if they have a reference of a previous position's office and often single records, facts. And if they have nothing, because we do have students from other countries who know that students at all, then we'll work with Jennifer in the health department. Or sometimes if students have kind of families that are committed to the university, we work with UMass health services to get children of their students vaccinated to get into our school. Thank you, Dr. Morris, did you want to add to that? Very briefly, the only thing I'd add is students who potentially get excluded with the local health providers are highly aware of the date if they get many calls from our staff and from parents. And they have been wonderful in working with us. So not that the town has it, but I know oftentimes it's getting that. And I know we've occasionally made exceptions where the doctor's office says we can't do it on Thursday, we'll do it on Friday. We work with families and their health providers and big kids knowing that there's a date, there's a time when their, when the signage is going to happen. And once we get confirmation that we try as best we can, actually, to see if there's any rules. And then we've been pretty successful with that. We've been pretty successful. And there have been times, unfortunately, where sometimes providers have run out of a vaccine and then we hope they're back to it. Thank you. So I do want to move us on to the conversation about the policy and I know Dr. Morris, you were eager to share this, but are there any other, Ms. Busser? One question. I'm glad to have somebody from the town today. So I understand that the school committee so I love you, the schools, but I mean, there was recently that, there's that article that mentioned that the date's very widely in terms of public schools, private schools, and this community that has so many of our families are going to contact people who aren't necessarily in public school. Do we have any concern about the rate in the town that's up there or the larger community? I would say yes, in terms of concern. In terms of what can be done about it, it's a little more difficult. There are some other schools that have quite high rates of non-compliance, up to 25%, and there are homeschool families that again, we don't really have much control over. I would just make a comment that I would agree completely with the exclusion. That's the way it is in the pediatric population as well. Probably less than 5% are not immunized because of medical reasons and 90% plus are because of religious reasons. Our practice actually has been debating some of this because there's moves some places to not allow families that don't immunize to be a part of your practice. But we've opted not to do that in part because of just what was mentioned, that that's an opportunity to keep talking to them. I have an 18 year old who's just started getting immunizations on his own because his family never did and so he is actually beginning a process of getting immunized. So that can happen. Thank you. I'm sorry, I'll be back. I apologize. I don't know if I'm really directing this too. It could be the superintendent or the town. So I remember distinctly when I was a kid, there were also to TV commercials and stuff on around getting immunized. And when I look to think back to that era because I was just too little to remember, you know, it was almost in that long, like after vaccinations became widespread and really common. And I think there was probably a lot of a really broad level understanding because vaccinations were like this miracle that reduced infant mortality enormously as well as long-term debilitating conditions that were preventable. The point is they're preventable. And so my guess is if you go back 30 or 40 or 50 years, there was a broader widespread understanding of this sort of really neat miracle of vaccines and how micro-decisions that individual families make not only benefit their kids, but also benefit a broader community and that it grows over time. And I think when you have people making what seem micro-dynamic decisions around not immunizing their kids, if the vaccination rates are up at 98%, they may not be creating any risk for others. They might be posing some risk for themselves, but not for others. And it's only when you start chipping away at that percentage that all of a sudden you're creating a broader public health challenge that exists beyond the kid. And so I say all of this because I would never want to have a situation in which we encountered families in a way that was anything less than respectful around who they are, what their beliefs are and how they're coming to that conversation. But it seems to me that we need to do much, much more than we are around re-engaging our community in populace around what vaccines even are, how they work and how they benefit. And just, I don't know who that'll end up affecting. You suggested that there were actually folks who were having this conversation already of re-engaging getting vaccinated. So I'll stop, except for to say, if this is sort of the end of our conversation about this tonight, I really passionately believe is we're ending this school year and looking at the next. We should be thinking about what more we can do and what more we should do to raise the level of dialogue and education around the value of vaccines. And not again in a polemical way, but literally just explaining to people the science and how what they do and the choices they're making can benefit their child and many people beyond them. And the State Department of Public Health, Sorry to do my standing, thank you. The State Department of Public Health looks at pockets across the state and there's a pocket of low vaccine rates in Berkshire County and Southern Franklin County, out in Duke's County out in the islands. And so their plan is also to provide additional educational information to providers and families out there and it's something that they're working on this plane to raise the immunization rates in those communities. Looking forward to hearing also about that here if there's any opportunity for that as well. Dr. Morris, did you want to? Yeah, I can be very brief and I'm super not, actually alluded to this, but in terms of the policy, so I did look it up, it's based on, it is literally word for word national law, that's the reference, but it's, what's in it, Alex is literally the law. But I think the thing that perhaps is a little misleading about the law and thus the policy is that there are two exceptions. One was the one that Mr. Supernaut mentioned, the key mental law which governs homeless students provides an exception for this. So if a student comes to us and there's a legal definition of homeless status, then this doesn't apply to that scenario. And the other one is when we've taken families, families comp I should say, leaving for instance, the most recent one was Puerto Rico after working in Maria, the clear guidance was students are enrolled in school regardless of, and that was some practical reality about how are you going to find immunization records given the state of what was happening in the national disaster of Puerto Rico. So I think the only thing to note is that the law, the first sentence of the, says no child should be admitted to school except, but it really doesn't include the exceptions that are actually legally based that potentially conflict with this law. So perhaps for the policy subcommittee to look into, but this is still the text of the law, the law hasn't changed since 1996, but the bikini bento, some of those other pieces sort of supersede this particular law in isolated cases and not so isolated in the bikini bento in our district in lieu of a fair number of students who have statuses on this. So it does sound like a good opportunity then though to send this to the policy subcommittee, at least for review, right, to be able to say that we've reviewed it and bring that back to the committee for a vote and approval, it may be that the policies of committee decide that they don't want to make any changes to this and that this is fine the way it is, but I think it's really worth the conversation and I see some nodding heads here, so I think the committee agrees. Great. Okay. Well, unless there's anything else, any other comments or questions from the committee, I think we'll move on this topic. Thank you so much for being here tonight. I really appreciate it. It was really, really helpful to hear. Thank you. Okay, moving us on to the next item on the agenda, it's dual language update. And Dr. Morris, is this new or this is... I'll do a quick introduction, I guess. So just brief introductions and descriptions getting set up. There's a lot of positive, exciting things to share and I think we did a lot of the heavy lifting of talking about this, actually getting back to last summer, thinking back to summer, we had a number of summer meetings, if you remember, about zoning. And so the neat thing for me, first of all is that Ms. Richardson, Ms. Chamberlain, a number of others are just the work is coming to fruition thanks to their hard work, but also some of the deep dialogue we had about wanting to have the right enrollment rates and all that is actually really beneficial to feedback we received from the committee in those dialogue, now that it's reality, it's I think the feedback that I'm receiving and that what we have our conversations is having those things discussed well ahead of time really paid off in terms of where we are and what we're doing and some good news I'm staffing to share as well, but I'll turn it over to Ms. Richardson. So just a couple of points. There's lots and lots of things going on, but thanks for having me here. I'll just highlight it over the points and you can ask what else you're curious about. So one big piece was we did choose a foundational curriculum that we're gonna use for the dual language program and the curriculum team, which was a subcommittee of the dual language planning group. So there's different folks tackling different things. We looked at three options in depth, had publishers come and reviewed materials and offered those materials to the school community and the families to look at and respond to. And the team chose the National Geographic Panorama as the sort of background of the curriculum and I listed the reasons there. They're really beautiful, engaging materials. They really attend to diversity and social justice in terms of the content who's represented and the kinds of topics that are covered. I should say this is a reading through science and reading through social studies curriculum, the way that it's framed. So it really aligns well to the standards in both reading and then in our content areas for unit study. So it's equitable and available in both languages. Everything is there to be able to work across topics in both English and Spanish. The school in general has been interested in and looking to move towards a more thematic approach of language and content together. So this will really support that piece. Another piece that the team really liked is that our teachers have a lot of expertise and they really want autonomy and flexibility. And so some of the other options we looked at, well, they had more stuff. They felt too scripted or too basely or too kind of confining in the way that they laid things out. And this gives us an opportunity to really map the curriculum, how we want, do more project-based learning, and build in other pieces that we want to see. Yeah. Do you wanna add just about across all three classrooms? Yeah. I think that's a worthy... Yeah, so we've talked about, originally we were thinking really of just purchasing a Spanish curriculum and we've shifted that thinking because we don't wanna feel like the dual language program is separate from the rest of the school. That conversation came up a bunch with this group, I think of them all. And we've continued to think about that and feel like we want the Spanish and the English teacher within dual language, but also the monolingual classrooms all be able to collaborate and plan across. So this move will be across the kindergarten and we're actually looking at including the first grade team and hopefully getting them on board to start using these materials as well while we're doing the planning and PD and all of that around that so that there can be some unified efforts. So I think that's really exciting because it does get everybody on board. And teachers were excited about the work that this will take. So that's the only thing that I mentioned at the bottom is that it does require a significant amount of work because it's not basically and it doesn't come with all the pieces. But that's where our teacher expertise is gonna come into play. We're gonna put the pieces together. Something that was interesting for our team is that the rigor of the texts that come with this program are really high in a way that is exciting and in a way that we know will need to be balanced by level text at student's reading level. So that was an interesting piece to look at just the way different curriculum approach that there's a lot of research around giving students really high grade level text and at the same time beginning readers especially in kindergarten, need to start from the foundation. So I think we're looking at how to provide for both of those needs. And the last piece I'll say there is that the phonics decision was to continue with super kids in English for all students and to add the Spanish component just for the phonics instruction. And we're looking at the two curriculums in the bottom of the two most commonly used Spanish language phonics. And you can't, it's not really, just because the phonics system's completely different it's not like, oh you can buy this in English and this is Spanish, like the phonics, the subset of phonics is different. So they are unique. You wouldn't want to translate the important version for a whole host of students. Students would want to learn some English or Spanish if they did that. So we're looking to make that decision. Soon, yep. Both are really strong options so we're not, I'm not feeling worried about it. Just we have to make a final decision. So just a quick question for you. Sure. Because it's a new curriculum, what kind of evaluation are you guys working into just to help decide a year from now, two years from now whether this is actually being successful, right? Like, what does that look like? Yeah, I think like any curriculum that's an ongoing conversation, right? So we can't, we hope that we'll love it and we'll be able to use it for a long time. But we're gonna have to continue to, with all the assessments we normally use with students to see how this is working, what we need to shift, what we need to add. I think the particular challenge to that on this front and that's why I appreciate Katie's work with Mabe is that the curve of language acquisition is different in the dual language program versus a monolingual program. You know, we've talked about that multiple times here. So from the monolingual English class we would expect a different curve than we would for the dual language program particularly in the first grade. So I know that there's some work going on at Mabe about norming the expected growth that you could see. That's kind of my question. It's really, you know, how does, because yeah, we're not gonna have the expertise in that, you know, and I don't expect you guys to come up with the answer right away, but other folks have been studying this for a while and doing this work. They must have a sense of what is quote unquote normal or expected progress anyway and if there's reasons to catch something or change something. Right, absolutely. So we do have resources in terms of Mabe and other districts that have been collecting that data longer. We're also looking really carefully at what are the assessment points we're gonna use in both languages. So there's a lot of thinking about that right now. All the way starting with kindergarten screening, how do we start to think about that for class placement for next year? Through how are we gonna assess well, right, but not over assess next year and continue to have useful benchmarks that help us really help inform instruction. And we're also partnering with some folks around that to help think through that. So this is kind of a related question. And you may be getting to it next for all I know in the next slide, but how are you building in moments for collaboration amongst teachers in the fall too? So one question is, what's the curriculum doing? But my guess is if this is a really good set of materials, the real question is gonna be is how are we optimizing the teaching, right? The actual work of translating it. And so part of that's assessing what's going on with the kids, but part of it's also building in, I assume, building in time for the teachers to have checkpoints and reflection moments and sort of think about what have I been learning, what's been working, what hasn't been working? How are you thinking of that sort of question? So there's a couple layers, I guess. One is to have some support for mapping to do some curriculum mapping and looking at how do we kind of divide up when we're in a unit about whatever topic, what happens in English, what happens in Spanish, how do we think about that. But then there's the day-to-day schedule or the week-to-week reading. The principals at Fort River are working really hard on the schedule right now to figure out how do we get more team time, right? So we need to have our individual planning time for those teachers as usual, but then we also need time for the partner teachers, we're calling them, right? We're not co-teachers, but the partner teachers to work together. And then a team of everybody that's working with these students. So they're looking at a weekly additional planning time and that's all in the works, but we can share kind of how that teases out. We're looking at some flexibility with specials options to provide some time for that. Sorry, I can't see your face. So, this may be getting way ahead of ourselves, but I do want to acknowledge that we have this state of interest that's gone forward. And other than that, I'm just seeing some potential dominance of like adopting this curriculum and impacting that non-dominant language program at Fort River and that in five or somebody years potentially, and this is all really far down the road, but then it could also spill over potentially into affecting all of the first graders who are in Fort River, Fort River, or whatever the future school is. So I'm just wondering if there's been any thought given to that piece of this, because if the curriculum changes that are happening to enable the dual language program go really well and we love these books, that's wonderful, but it also has the potential to trickle down and over form it to the other areas and that could be negative if they don't go really well. Yeah, so I think we've had brief conversations and this really goes back to what we'll see on the agenda next time, which is some of the strategic planning work that happened particularly at Wilder than Karker Farm and how much flexibility we want to offer and autonomy for schools and what we need to do to assist them. So we do have those conversations with principals so that people are aware, I think it is, in my opinion, opportunity, and I know I hate the word title, so I'm not gonna use it here, but I think some of the benefits of the concept of piloting something is that you do get firsthand experience from students, from staff, from family, and about how something's going. I wouldn't call this a colleague because this is not like, oh, we're gonna try National Geographic, no, we've had around a curriculum out, but I think it will give us some first hand experience of how that's worked because all three of the elementary schools, and we've heard this, are looking at how do we have a more integrated project-based curriculum. And if this is something that's separate from your language programming, we're finding it really successful and there is an opportunity to have that conversation. Yeah, I would just add that we know that our curriculum is not currently well aligned to the new science and social study standards, so that's work that has to happen across the district, so it is kind of a cool opportunity to say, well, let's see how this works to address some of that. What do we like? What do we not? What do we have to build in? So, a couple pieces on staffing and professional development. Our kindergarten Spanish teacher has been hired, which is wonderful. We're all starting to feel like, okay, it's still early in the hiring season, but it'd be really great, so that's good news and we feel really excited about her. And then the next steps for hiring, we're looking for, by the whole special education teacher, the parent educator for the Spanish classroom to be hired and that there are lots of folks within our district and without, so that should be not too difficult. Maybe the difficulty would be with too many good people, if anything. And then we're also looking at having a permanent substitute position so that when, that is bilingual, so that when somebody is out in the Spanish classroom, we're not sacrificing Spanish instructional time, so that, please. Yeah, and if I could add just previously to that. Yeah. So this is looking at having a substitute or educator position. We do have that in some of the secondary schools. Just frankly, there's enough people out on a daily basis where there's never like, oh yeah, everyone's here and there's never any first up in those days if you have probably to be in the school the size of Fort Rivers with the staff the size of Fort Rivers. Most typically what happens in most kindergarten classrooms is when the teacher's out, our educator takes over for the teacher and this would be providing a bilingual for our educator for the classrooms, so that the classroom remains fully staffed. And vice versa, the entire educator that's assigned to kindergarten is out that we don't lose, there's no loss of instruction or shortfall support in those classrooms. Specifically in Spanish, because we just know it's easy to be one towards more English throughout the day, so. I think the only thing I'll add without giving respect to confidentiality of staff is just we're excited about the person we hired. I would let them just detail on it as it usually happens, but I heard one of the things and there was both an interview and a mock lesson that was taught so that we could get to see teaching and that someone who's going back to college they should be out a while back is a native Spanish speaker that has taught both in Puerto Rico and in Texas and in Texas in the dual language program, so not only do we think this person will be a great fit for us here, but also the person who has some institutional programmatic information that is going to be incredibly important as we move forward, separate from our work with the students that she's teaching, so yeah, I'm very excited. Yes. So then the piece below is connected to going back to the grant that we received between Holyoke and Amherst and one of the big components of that work was partnering with UMass to create a bilingual education program. We're finally at the place of recruiting teachers for that, which is great. UMass and the Department of Education are a little more slow moving than we like sometimes, but they're both really trying to help us out and make this work within a really tight timeframe of the grant guidelines. So we're looking at a 15 credit program that will be offered to a cohort of 12 teachers between Amherst and Holyoke to provide them with the bilingual education endorsement for those who need it, which are those who are teaching in Spanish or a bilingual education certificate program for those who will be teaching on the English side, but still should be gaining the same knowledge and skills. So we're really excited about this opportunity too, and it's largely paid for by the grant, so yeah. It's also worth mentioning that these programs don't exist across the state. They're more like the second one to get approval. Exactly, so we're very fortunate to have UMass partners so close, because frankly, there's not any place to do it, and the likelihood that the geography will work out as nicely as it is testament to the UMass College of Education working for the language. Absolutely, yeah, and I think that'll be a great, the first group will go through the program now, but the program will resist, and so we'll be able to kind of grow more our educators who are interested in that work. I'm going forward. So enrollment is the other update. So of the 88 families that we have registered for kindergarten at this point, just over the whole district, 47 were interested in dual language, and then the numbers are there for what the enrollment looks like so far. So we have nine families who are within the Spanish-speaking or bilingual group. 18 families that are zone for Fort River that are English speakers, and 20 that are within the Cogger Farm or Wildwood Districts that are interested English speakers. So our next steps are the latteries coming up next Monday. We're reaching out to families this week to confirm that with a little bit more information that they're really interested just to kind of say, here's what this really means and hear the benefits and hear the challenges and what does that look like and do you want to talk about it? So that when we go into the latteries, people really feel like they're committed and excited and you know what they're talking about. Because it's a new model for people. There's a lot of excitement, which is great. And we want to make sure that people are really thoughtful about it. And another reason for that is that there is so much interest across the other school zones that we don't want to have a seat for a Fort River family that then says, actually, if we don't want that seat, we'd rather start to offer it to other folks if not everybody would like to participate. Idea, I think it's worth mentioning, it's not explicit on your slides, but they've also had a number of opportunities where you've had office hours, you've had different departments. I know there's- Yeah, well, and I'll mention that too with the outreach. Absolutely. But just in terms of the email that went to families, it was also an invitation to an additional office hour. So it's not only relying on electronic information, it's been opportunities and there will continue to be opportunities for families. We'll have questions before they want to commit to having a child in it and kind of be apart. So I know that's on your outreach, but I think it's relevant. Yeah, no, that's true. Absolutely. So the lottery will happen, but what we've let families know is essentially that anyone in groups one or two is automatically in the lottery because of the numbers at this time. And we'll hold 20 seats, so the remainder of the seats will be held through August 1st as we continue to do more outreach. We do have a lot of that that has happened and a lot more that's coming up. We've been connected with LSSE to go to some of their events. We've been to in communication with various preschools, outreach to regional community action and Head Start and just everywhere we can find that there are folks who will listen and want to hear more. So I think that process will, I feel optimistic that we'll get a lot closer to 20 because I think there's so many folks that we haven't reached. And yeah. As of last week, I can't speak for if anything happened in the last three days, but out of the families that were identified as being either bilingual or predominantly Spanish speaking, all of them registered for the program. So that might have changed last week, it's possible, but I think it's just worth noting that that was one of our concerns was will there be additional barriers for families who just Spanish for a whole list of reasons? And I think the average that your team's done and to Jared Torres, who I think deserves lots of commendation and praise is the key register of the elementary schools at the moment to try to work through and answer questions. Yeah, and it's been exciting that just in conversations I've had with families to say, how do you feel about this? Or you have a three year old who's coming up, but what do you think? And your other students go to different school, how do you feel about that? We've had a lot of folks who feel like, no, it's okay, as long as they're getting the bus there and I understand and I feel like it's really valuable. So I'm excited to talk about that. So really just in terms of the lottery, the true lottery will be for students in group four. And if we have any students who register after the initial enrollment period in group three, I don't believe we have many at this point, but so that lottery will essentially set up a list, a numbered list of where are you on the wait list. So maybe two families would get in at this point, but if we have openings, then we would let folks know. So after the lottery, we'll let them know where they are so they have a sense of likelihood. Ms. Bishop, do you have a question? So I just want to make sure I understand this right. So there are nine families who have registered from groups coming to you and those are all of the families you've currently identified as really who are Spanish-speaking people we know of now. So but we're holding 11 seats for until the end of the summer for those students. How confident are you that we'll find 11 bilingual? Or I mean, it seems like we always have this goal of having the 50-50. Are you at all concerned about having a different mix than what we've hoped for? I think as long as we end up in the ballpark, we'll be okay. I mean, I think there's a couple layers, right? There's the biggest issue in terms of the program makeup is just do we have enough Spanish-speaking models to have a true two-way bilingual program? I feel like usually from the patterns we've seen historically, we do have folks registering over the summer really consistently and that our average numbers of Spanish speakers across the three schools, it was between 15 and 25 each year over the last five years. So I don't feel concerned that we'll be much below, we may be a little bit below. I would agree with that. I think, so we'll have more than 88 kindergarten students next year and so, well, we do all the outreach we can for kindergarten enrollment during the three days that we have it set up. This is a really typical pattern. Actually, this is a higher enrollment number than we had last year and we have a lot more than 88 kindergarteners this year. So we know that that's likely to be the case and based on the past patterns and structures, we said, this is, if you told me two months ago, this is where we are, I'd say, okay, that's actually sort of in the zone of what would be predictable. The thing that I feel the best about is the percentage of families in groups one and two who opted into the program because that would be a harder problem to solve. But so far, so we don't have that. So I'm looking at the group three in particular. So the families that are zoned to Fort River that are choosing not to enroll in our register for the lottery, is there a concern that that's going to be too large a number for one classroom? Yeah, go ahead. I mean, that's the majority. Last time I checked, there were like 10 students who were zoned to Fort River who opted not to be a part of this. I think it was less than. You think it was less than 10? Mm-hmm. Okay. It was really small to begin with, which is great because we don't want it to. No, including the number one, I'm sorry. I'm really not wrong, because I'm not doing. I think it was five or six in the initial enrollment. So of course, we'll get more, but that's great. We need this space for those folks who don't want to be able to join as well. Yeah, thank you so much. And I think the other thing to note, well, it's not, I mean, I'm making a small hypothesis that's related to this agenda topic, is this was the highest number of registrants we've had for Fort River during the enrollment period and since the redistricting in 2010. So typically that has the lowest, as you know, we've went over enrollments. It's the small K-6 elementary school right now. And it was at the end of the three-day registration period, it had the most number of enrolled K-6 students for next year. So my hypothesis is this might have something to do with it. I don't have evidence, it's one year. Like there's a whole number of factors. Maybe there's a lot of kids in Echo Hill or Amherst Woods, right? So it's hard to come to broad conclusions, but it was this change in pattern that we've had for nine years in a row. Great. When we talked about the fact that there's a lot of interest and excitement around this program, there has been for quite some time, there hasn't been much to your credit for pushing this out there and continuing to bring it up and talk about it. So I'm going to be surprised if that's actually what's going on. I'm conscious of the time because this was actually slated for just 10 minutes and we've now gone to almost 30, so. That's how I'm at, unless you wanna ask. Yeah, so I think the only thing to note is that Mabes continue to be a willing and interested partner. They've asked us to attend a conference at the end of next month about basically how to start a dual language program that's high quality without breaking the bank. Because we've tried to do things not only from the grant, we've tried to do things with our own staff and how that's worked. So they could be partners with us and we're happy to get back to them because they are interested in promoting dual language education across the region. So I think just what the committee is knowing is that they picked us in one other district and then that's all. Congratulations. And I just want to mention that we will say something about outreach before and struck reminder in my mind. I think there's anything that the committee can do to also help promote those remaining involved in seats. And I know that the community has expressed an interest in doing that as well. Let's take advantage of all of those different networks that we have and that people typically use to spread the word around this and especially for Spanish speakers in the community. I think it's worth going that extra mile to try to share those things with them. Yep. I'm happy to share any information or ideas. Awesome. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Okay, so moving us on, the next item on the agenda is ADA update and capital update. So I'll start with the ADA piece and I don't know if John or someone who is on JCPC wants to share one of the capital. So, Elazi, sorry, there's so many notes as people talked about it, pretty deep in the background. But there's two documents that I wanted to share with the committee. I would have ordered them. We'll start the way this organized. So the first one at the top is ADA audit prioritization final summary. So this was organized. It took the report from KMA and Rupert Roy Clark, tried to make it a little more condensed and perhaps easier to understand. But really some of the work KMA did was twofold. One was to try to look at what they listed as areas of non-compliance and organize them but what could be done in-house? There's labor costs of our own that we pay. So there's only so many things that our staff can do but things that can be done. What's single trade cost? And so those are things that are a little easier to done. It might involve working with an outside vendor but it doesn't involve a large project. And then the complicated ones. So think about filling a well that's in a library. Ones that involve closer to what we call construction. So the lower KC but true. Contractor team perhaps. Exactly. So I thought it was a really helpful way to look through it. The second thing that KMA did is they held three meetings for users. So anyone in the community was involved. CPAP was well represented as well as their administrative team to represent what they hear from staff and from the students and families. And they were all invited but the staff did, our principals particularly did a great job of taking that information. So I think perhaps it's worth skipping to the third page of KMA's report where it's preliminary recommendations. So that's what I'd like to share. So that's on page three? Yep. Exactly. Some of this has already been done for number one. What Rupert did is he assigned one of three complexity categories to those barriers. The ones that can be done by our maintenance staff, the ones that are straightforward but flummer, electrician, one trade. And then one that would involve additional study. And I think that's a key phrase is if they put a price tag as a rough placeholder but would involve, you know, ain't other place can say, yeah, this is what it would cost to fill all the wall of the library. And really they tried to help us with what a plan might look like in the three different complexity categories and try to understand the user and prioritize not just based on what's easiest to be done but also what has the most bang for the box in terms of the user needs. And that's where principles were helpful in thinking about it. And you can see that the user concerns on, sorry, I'm just gonna run a bit, but on page two, this is across all the schools in the district. You can see that this is where it came from the users, both parents, guardians, and then principles about the largest barriers that they care about affecting the experience of students and families. So we're in the process of doing one state CPC wraps up, which I think is pretty close, we'll care about in a second, is working with a dollar amount that potentially will be assigned to us and offered to us by the town, and then having another decod on how to take all the information about user feedback, prioritizations, looking at what staff capability is, particularly as of summer months when some of this work really needs to happen when students and staff aren't as present and coming up with a detailed list with you, like the next month of what we'd recommend for what potentially looks like from the capital plan, $100,000 to spend on ADA compliance as a next step. So we wanted to present just the report that KMA did to you, talk about the work and come back next month with a more detailed, articulated draft of something for you to respond to. Great. I just wanna give just a quick chance for the members here who served on the JCPC if they wanna add anything to those or if there's any initial responses. You don't have to. Ms. Spencer? I'm just noticing that Wildwood's excluded both on page two and then on the ADA audit prioritization and the financial summary, excuse me. And Robert calls that out. And I think it's worth finding out why Wildwood's so included in the, just wanna make sure that we're talking about this. Sure, we didn't have as much user feedback at school for. I should just say that for whatever reason. I think what I've talked about with the principles is that Fort River School, while not identical, was pretty close in trying to see if, even those two reports, if you remember looking at that, there were very minor variations in those ADA reports, but they were much more similar or much more analogous in comparing them to a car performer in the other schools. So trying to see if the same challenges at Fort River are the case at Wildwood is a different student population. So we wanna be really conscious that even if they're the same issues, the first student population because it doesn't specialize programs may affect the user piece more, but we definitely need more outreach at Wildwood, so I wanna acknowledge that point, but we didn't have as much feedback. I mean, help, please. Yes, there it is. I'm curious where it's to offer, but we'll take you up on that. Mr. Nakajima? Yeah, I guess it probably is, we're saying a couple things about JCPC and if there's a Donald or a swing down or something to add or correct what I'm saying, please do. That, A, we did talk about this at JCPC. The members of the JCPC, I think shared a question that members of our committee had of trying to make sure that particularly for Wildwood and Fort River, if we're looking to replace those buildings sooner or later, how do we think about prioritizing investments that aren't overly expensive and essentially with help with the accessibility but not have some costs that can't be recovered later? But I think beyond that, our recollection is that there was a lot of support for the basic requests that were being put forward by our schools, including the ADA investments. Sorry? Yeah, I agree. Great, it's good to hear. Yeah. So, thank you for that. It's really helpful, I think, to just get these regular updates in front of the committee just to hear the conversations as they're moving along. I would be curious also how we can get some input from Wildwood sooner rather than later because these things seem to have a life of their own and once they get put forth out there, and money starts to, actually hard money starts to get appropriated and discussed. We don't want to have a community feel like they're left out inadvertently or just because of the process. So, it'd be great if we can, at the next update, at least have an update on that. Absolutely. Wonderful. Thank you. Okay. So, there's nothing else on that. Moving us on to the third quarter budget update and I think this is Mr. Mourn-Varnell. Hi, it's... So, I know it's the first part. They can hear us without microphone? They can hear us so there's a mic that's pointed at us from the camera over here. But just speak loudly, please. I will, especially if we start singing again. Outdoor voice. Through that. Yeah. It's worth noting that this is a welcome for Senegalese and Gambian students in the cafeteria. So, that's the... The music that we're hearing. The music that we're hearing. Yeah. It's a regional event. It was nice hearing like this in the back. I think it creates a statement that there's an element of self-sacrifice on our parts because it's obviously that's much more fun. Just kidding. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. So, with that note, the third quarter budget... No, you're great. It's a lot of fun. The present company is a lot of fun. I'll move through. So, this is the most important quarterly budget report because it's having the most information. That's your fourth quarter, which at that point things are too late to act on. So, a few changes from last time, which I'll point out for a few little highlights. So, with three months remaining, the Amherst Public Schools are projected to finish under budget. We would save into health insurance. Salaries are projected 101,000 over budget. So, that's one area that's changed. You look back here, a few report we were under budget at that point and paid all of that up to my upload. In this bullet list, the item mentioned in that way. So, the items that haven't changed much are the vacant instructional coach that the savings position hasn't unfilled all year, a vacant special educator, our special education pair educator position, the additional custodial position that we added in response to the summer facilities that we have. The new thing is to shift to the idea of grant funds. You may recall one of the initiatives that we've been working on this year and it's probably definitely a 20 budget. There's really two things. One, it's to better align our IDEA grant among the three districts. Out of over time, it's sort of gone out of whack in terms of how much it supports the elementary district, how much it supports the secondary district and how long. So, this is helping align that better. And the other piece is we're trying not to pay for positions as much out of that grant. Because when you pay for positions, especially in particular teaching positions, you have the earmarks and additional funds for retirement that you normally would not have to. So, it actually reduces the amount of spendable funds you have from that grant. So, we're trying to find other sources, other things to pay for from the grant. So, one of the things we're looking to pay for is extended year programming costs for the summer. Those aren't positions, it's basically the teachers in Paris who run the special education summer program. But they're stipulated positions. So, that's the big change in payroll that's flipped it from savings in payroll to an overage in payroll. In contracted services, there was a deficit at Q2. It's gone a little bit worse. Extended, special education extended year services. So, it's sort of a funny thing. So, the grant that we're shifting to cover extended year services, we're shifting it to cover this coming summer, extended year services. So, it's definitely 20, it's in July and August. This past summer is over budget. So, next year it won't be over budget because the grant will be helping top senate. But this past year is extended year programming costs over budget. In addition, crossing guards are trending over budget. It's another area that's sort of a constant struggle. So, we try to find paraeducators or the part-time staff to do the crossing guard work. When we're unable to, we end up relying on the head custodians to go out and do the crossing guard work and they're more expensive typically than what we have budgeted. So, at a couple of the schools, we've had head custodians do that work for most of the year. Yes, and also, just we've had elevated levels over time this year. We've had a number of, last year we had a really large number of clerical requirements. And so, we've had a lot of new positions that we're trying to do this morning on in the position. In substitutes, we're on track to finish over budget by $13,000. We had a long-term leave-app since that's pushed those costs up. Special education, I think that's the same as Q2, is tracking over budget. We had a new audition placement that sort of went out after the budget was put in place and that's pushing our official costs up and our transportation costs over budget. Spent accounts, sorry, so the second thing is expense accounts are tracking as expected. Those are discretionary accounts that the principals have control over and they spend on supplies throughout the year. Any unexplained funds of those accounts are typically used on PD, it can be your first step. And we have a lot of time at the end of this year because of no snowdrings. So, we've got, I think the most time we've had and a long time to do professional development just goes. Utilities are on track to finish under budget. Do savings and heating costs at Fort River and electricity costs at Wildwood. So, I'm just scratching my head like why was Wildwood under budget with electricity? And then I remember it was vacant for two months this summer. There's no activity in that one, it's not too much. Oh, that makes sense, all right, I got it. So, that was an unintended kind of a benefit. Transportation is expected to finish under budget. We went out to quote all of our liability insurance that we have with the town of Amherst. And so, for vehicles we've changed our providers and went from a charter, it was a local group here, with HUD International, it was a bigger group, but after it was passed a better rate. So, our transportation, my vehicle insurance with that, probably went down about $14,000. School lunch, we're seeing the next presentation a few months out of the week today. That continues to be strong. Anything really above the 50% range is positive compared to the prior experience. We've got one district where it's trending a little bit under last year. It's Crocker. Now Crocker is under last year, so it might be just a kind of a corky thing with a specific group of students this year, but in general this year, the other school is just tracking better than last year. Risk and benefits are expected to finish with surplus due to the savings of health insurance and also the same quote process with every vehicle insurance, with different liability insurance for our buildings, that also provides for savings. So, the next page, let's do the charts. So, this chart, I'm going to update it with April number, so you can still see the impact of the transition from being self-insured to full-insured. We're down about 11 plans from what we budgeted, and there was a big switch from PPO stage modes, which brought in savings as well. And in addition to surcharge, which we thought could last up to two years, was suspended after six months. And then you can see the liability insurance would have about $12,000 for our buildings. So, we've got some available funds that we're looking to spend it on this full list in the next paragraph. Professional development, as I noted, the school level curriculum development, instructional materials and equipment, so we've reached out to principals in terms of what are their needs, another department has what are their needs right now. The dual-language curriculum materials that you just heard about, due to facility equipment and supplies, and part of the budget for quite the point was that we would prepay retirement incentives from that budget this year. We had the option of retirement incentives to pay them either in July or June, depending on what kind of budget year we have and so this year, since it's a good budget year, we can pay them out of this facility here. And any remaining funds will revert back to the town's general fund at your own. Dr. Morse, do you want to say something? Just, I think the other thing, particularly, actually all the items, particularly the first three, is the last two budget years, we've had to freeze the budget at certain times. So, some of this also is letting principals, you know, letting them know what are the needs and what haven't happened in the last few years because we haven't been in a position to kind of be able to spend, and people have filled that out because we've had a typical budget year if people spend their lives, but I think it's worth noting just the context of what matters in terms of things that just weren't purchased because of, you know, the opposite side of the health insurance level. Last year, and we didn't have to freeze the budget for a time in the prior as well. So, I think they've done a really excellent job of prioritizing and talking to staff about what the needs are, what are the things that just, you know, have been sort of backlogged in terms of purchasing. So, I just want to appreciate the process, Sean runs to get the principals and how they get, is what it's using for staff as well. Yeah, it's focused on one-time costs. So, we've, you know, we say nothing that's going to create a, or occur anything in the future that we're going to have for a budgetary. Like these positions, right? Yeah, exactly. And also, just the last couple of years, I don't think we've had many days for professional development. It's a lot easier to do the professional development at the end of the year, than it is to be able to come back over the summer. So, it's sort of the best time is to attack it out right at the end of the year, while they're still thinking about it. Mr. McJune? Yeah, I guess, so, obviously, this is the end of the third quarter. You have some good visibility and whoever can end up. But, I guess this is, logically, this is a preamble to the next item, which is a requested transfer item. I'm sort of going to ask the question and I might have a bearing on that here, which is, are you conservative at all in estimating what you think actually is available? To say, I'm assuming once you transfer it into another account, you've already worked out how to operationalize it. So, unlike the current budget, where you can kind of at the end of the third quarter and say, oh, it turns out we didn't spend all of it. The entire point of the transfers is it's likely that 100% of those funds will be expended. So, do you leave yourself a wiggle room? Yeah, so the request with the Department of Departments for needs, it doesn't fully expend what we're projected to be available. There likely will be funds available and we'll go back to the town. And I don't think we're at any risk of going the other way, of thinking that we have a deficit. Think of anything, we're going to return some funds to the town at the end. Which sort of makes sense, again, because of the surplus of health insurance, that's sort of a big budgetary surprise this year. So, yeah, I don't think we're at any risk of overspending. Dr. Morris? Yeah, and to Sean's point too, well, we certainly want to make sure our teachers and students and staff have what they need. We do appreciate that they went up to 3.5% last year to support the budget, given the health insurance piece. So, the most sure, as Mr. Mangano knows, I'm bugging him incredibly at the end of June, we're like, you know, and this year we want to make sure that the needs are met and we got requests from the principals and different departments of the central office. But we also do acknowledge that there was additional support offered to this as well. We had a question from the committee for Mr. Mangano or Dr. Morris. Yes, but certainly not a small question. Just going over the budget, isn't it too suggestive? Well, I just want to highlight the ones where the town meeting added back into the issue. I believe that was for after school. So, does this mean that going forward, we're also, we're not going to have to have any cuts to the after school? Yeah, we rolled over. I hope the double check, but we rolled over the higher amount for next year in terms of tuition vouchers. Oh, okay. So, I'll double check that. So, I'll just quickly go through the transfers. Great, thank you. So, some of them, there's a regular offering transfer of just a principal or department requires a transfer fund, sort of a smaller one. But the 10,000 is adding back the funds that were approved at town meeting for tuition vouchers. We sort of held that in control accounts until we moved budgets into good shape and on the side we put it back if it was so. District point of support. So, one of the more volatile budgetary items that the elementary level is, homeless transportation and foster transportation year-to-year and very mildly. In this year, we've seen a large increase, particularly in the foster transportation. And that, we all get any reimbursement for. So, a couple of years ago, the end of year report, they changed how you reported that the separate foster homeless and how you didn't use it too fast. So, now we report that with gun and reimbursement. There is an effort by the state to try to get some better reimbursement for foster transportation. It's on a survey, one of the districts they reached out to because we actually had a large cost for a multiple budget. So, we might get some money in the future, offset that, but it likely will go to town anyway, not directly to us. And just a quick note on that. It sounds like part of the problem is related to the decline in the number of foster families. And therefore, you have families that are actually spread out in larger, geographic area. And therefore, the transportation is impacted. The accessibility audit that we just spoke about. So, this is putting funds into the facility account to pay for that. Accessibility audit. We originally don't pay for that out of the revolving fund, but didn't have any of the funds in the operating budget. We might as well keep the revolving fund in the hole. Pay roll, this is the increased ability to shift to the grant. That will bring the operating transfers. Control accounts, again, this is the offset. So, where the difference can increase and then decreases, the difference goes into control accounts. And that's the number that we can pay for some of those end of year requests from. We should just read those though. I mean, I think it's worth. The end of year request. Just that these amounts. Oh, for control accounts, it's $217,000. So, it's being transferred into the control accounts. And there's a large number actually there. There's some other accounts already down there that'll be available for those underyear needs. More of a operating transfer. So, risk and benefits, that's the big source of savings this year. So, in total, transferring out $335,000 to the savings of health insurance and liability insurance. Transportation, we're transferring out as a savings, this vehicle insurance savings. And utilities, same thing, savings of heating across the Port River and not just to the out wildwood. Savings is going to that control account. Mr. Nakajima, can I go back to my question again? I know you're going to put my mind at ease. But I just want to say that on Q3 total expenses, you show us running $368,000 in change over budget. Under budget, under budget, under budget. And then over here, we have $367,000 in change being moved into other accounts for spending. So, do we have more wiggle room? Like I said earlier, that if expenses went a couple thousand one way or the other, it would still be covered up. Because of that $360,000 that's being transferred, like $217,000 of that is going into the, it's not being transferred for a specific use, it's being transferred into the control account, which is basically where we put identified savings. And from that account is where we're going to approve the end of the year requests. And so, we received those requests and we've compared that to what we anticipate having available. And we're not approving exactly up to that amount, we're approving something else. And at the Amherst budget level, there's really not too many surprises. At this point, the payroll is pretty much known. And we don't have charter choice in our budget. Health insurance is pretty stagnant at this point. So there's really, I don't anticipate surprises. But also just mechanically, the point you're making is even though we're approving up very close to the amount that we're under budget, in fact, you're monitoring very closely as you're approving through. So over the next few weeks, we'll get closer to the end of the actual fiscal year. You're sort of making sure that you'd never spend or approve enough expenditures to bump up against that. Yeah, and just so people have a sense of sort of under their process. So a whole week to go, last week actually, so we sent out a purchase order deadline. It goes all to farm heads and principals and it gives them till May 15th to submit purchase orders. And after May 15th, we cut off new purchase orders. So on May 15th, we'll still have plenty of time to sort of close out the year. We have an exact snapshot basically of what's out there. And then there's all this work basically that we do to close out purchase orders that have been open and created that they aren't gonna spend because some people have open purchase orders if they anticipate and they never end up spending it all. So then we work to close it out. So there actually could be some more funds that actually get freed up as we go through that process of closing out the open purchase orders. So just put another way, 150,000 of this is actually accounted for right now in terms of what is gonna be spent. And then the remainder is basically just being held until a later date and may or may not be used but sounds like probably not. Yeah, there's some way or other between how much we anticipate being available and what we work with farmers and principals to dispense. If there are no other questions for Mr. Mangano, there is a motion. Someone is feeling very ready, a spitzer. I move to approve budget transfers and shown by them. Do I have a second? Second. Okay, Ms. Badala, are there any further questions or comments for either Mr. Mangano or Dr. Morse? Okay, all those in favor of the motion as stated. It is unanimous. Thank you very much. I do have to say it just a quick note. It's a remarkable, as Mr. Morse mentioned previously, we were in a very different position last year to where we are this year. It feels a little weird. It's great, but it's also, it just gives you a sense of the volatility of these budgets, right, to a certain degree. And so having a process like this where we can check in on a regular basis just to make sure that we're doing okay and that we're really doing okay is really important. That's actually one of the reasons why, sorry, I apologize. That's one of the reasons why I was asking. I mean, it may sound weird to the public to ask questions of, especially for someone who's been out like a couple of years, it's like, so how do we deal with surpluses in the budget? It's like, kind of haven't had this problem. We haven't had this problem. So we haven't had occasion to ask the question of how are you spending extra money appropriately? We usually have like smaller versions of this. So it's a little bit that you're trying, but yeah. Thank you. Okay, next item on the agenda is fundraising policy, which is also a possible vote. Dr. Morris. This is a policy that was passed by the region on March 26th about school fundraising so that we have clear rules and approval processes. I'm really just going to support staff, but also community members about the ways in which we have acceptable fundraising and the ways we want to control for that. It's been a couple issues that not in our district, but more generally have come up about where does cash go? Who controls what? What's the accounting for it? And really it sets in place structures so that it supports the accounting we would want, not just for the sake of the audit, but actually just for good housekeeping of when funds are being raised, particularly if they're connected to the school. So, committee or from the policy committee or some kind of what they add to it, but I don't know how much more we want to go into it as much as including the budget. Again, this is a policy that was reviewed by the regional school committee in March, Mr. Mugano. Yeah, I'm just going to reiterate this. So this is an issue in activities that has its own policies and procedures around it. This is really sort of staff, district level fundraising initiatives. Okay, thank you. Are there any questions or comments from the committee rather than Mr. Mugano or Dr. Morris? Okay, there is a motion if someone would like to make it. I move to approve the new fundraising policy as Chris did. Great, we have a motion. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Nipijima. Any other questions or comments? All those in favor? Thank you very much. That was unanimous. Okay, next item on the agenda is a superintendent evaluation discussion. This is a conversation that has already started at the regional level and it's not a surprise for all the members in this committee because we had this conversation last year right around this time. And looking back through our previous agendas, it looked like we're basically on track, more or less, from the same exact timeline, which is happy news for me. But I also feel like we can always do better just in terms of getting along to this a lot faster. However, I think for this cycle, what we did last year was that we had a very general conversation around this topic here in this committee at this meeting and then in the next meeting we reviewed the tool, the instrument that's actually used to evaluate the superintendent had input and feedback at that point from the subcommittee that's been appointed by the regional subcommittee to deal with this process. And then the following meeting after that is when we will be reviewing Dr. Morris's artifacts and voting on the actual evaluation. So I don't know if there's any questions or comments from the committee at this point. This feels like it's fairly wrote by now, which is funny to say, but it's true. But this is the meeting to do that. Or if there's anything you would like to add, Dr. Morris. I think the artifact document will be ready for the next AMR school committee meeting because of the way it's structured for the all three committees. But the goals actually are more distinct than they have in the past. The actual elements and standards are actually better aligned than the goals are. It may not make sense, but that's the way it works out. But it still makes sense to work on it as one collaborative artifact document. So that'll be ready for the next AMR school committee. Great. That's a lot. Do we have a sense of like what are our schedules literally? Like what meeting are we, like which meetings are we planning on doing this stuff? Well, so I think again, going by the previous year's timeline, our very next AMR school committee meeting would be when we'd be reviewing the instrument and the goals. So that's in May, May 21st, thank you. May 21st. Wow. I know. So again, this is feeling some urgency. If it's great that we're sort of on track, but at the same time it feels like it's always feels like it's late. So May 21st would be the review of the instrument. Does that sound right to everyone here? I'm just- Which would be the instrument of the artifacts? Well the instrument and we would be given the artifact that Dr. Morris presented, the artifacts, yeah. That sounds about right. Okay. And then the following meeting would be June 11th, I believe. Is that right? No, that's the regional meeting, June 18th. June 18th. So that would be our actual vote. That would be. On the superintendent's evaluation. So then the instrument would be put up by Mrs. Laurel between after the 21st and with time for a stall figure to fill out what we're doing. Yeah. Does that work for everybody? Okay, great. And I will share that with Mr. Demling as well. Okay, if there's nothing else on this item that really was just a quick review for everyone. Okay, we'll move us along. Next item on the agenda is school committee meetings, format and location. So this has been a continuing topic of conversation for this committee. I have to apologize. I actually had hoped that we could meet at town hall tonight. And it was just a, I think, just communication. But I haven't heard from the committee any concerns or very strong concerns anyway about doing it in town hall. I'm taking that to be sort of a tacit approval of continuing to do that there. I've spoken with Dr. Mr. Demling and he's actually fine with us continuing to have these meetings at town hall. So this is just a quick check in. I think it sounds like Amherst media is continuing to work with the school district to figure out the cameras in here. But town hall still seems to be a better option technologically anyway. I haven't heard anything negative from the community. I don't know if anyone here has about attending the meetings. No, I'm not gonna say anything negative. I mean, I was gonna say actually. Well, please don't. No, I mean I'm not. Actually, what I was, I don't know if I'm surprised at the right word, but I was just interested that the only, I'd gotten feedback from a few people and the feedback was all positive because A, it's much easier to get the public transportation and B, it's reliably on the, it's a lot reliably broadcast. And so if you wanna stay home and put on PJs and watch the meetings, then you can actually do that. And then email us what you think afterwards. And so like, so you start thinking about it that way and you're like, all right, look, if that's actually a better mode for people to be able to participate when they want, show up when they feel like it and watch it when they don't wanna show up, then great. Yeah. And I've been proceeding cautiously with this committee with this topic because it is a big change, right? And I think a lot of people are used to including myself sometimes it's like, I have to stop and think, where am I going for this meeting? But, I've also heard positive things and that's great. So, okay, Dr. Morris, do you wanna? Yeah, I was just gonna say, so well, for the two remaining meetings for this school year, we'll contact Town Hall and just make sure that space is available and we'll get back to you about that, but I'll assume that it is and unless you hear something differently from us, it'll be on the agendas clearly, but let's just assume that we'll make that transition for major. Great, great. And then just very quickly, I think on the topic of meetings format, again, I think it sounds like the committee is on the same page just in terms of trying to keep these meetings as efficient as possible. Mr. Demling and I met with Dr. Morris to talk a little more thoroughly about this topic and to try to make some recommendations to the committee. I think from our perspectives, we didn't wanna put any hard and fast rules on the committee. I mean, if there are topics that necessitate longer meetings and we're gonna have a longer meetings, and if there's a lot of interest from the community during public comments, and there's issues that we really wanna spend some time with, we will do that, but generally speaking, I think the idea is to try to keep these meetings to our two hour agendas. If they carry after two and a half hours, that we will basically take this to a vote for the committee so that we can decide whether or not it merits continuing the conversation. And that requires, again, a lot of discipline on our part, right? Working very closely with Dr. Morris and the staff at the schools to make sure that we're all staying on topic and we're staying close to our agendas. But it feels like the last couple of meetings have actually been pretty good, right? If the energy levels are a lot higher than they have been in the past, and hopefully that works for all the committee members, and I think that's what we'll just continue doing from now on. Great, okay. So next item on the agenda is a regionalization update. And Dr. Morris, do you have anything you want to say on this, or? I will leave it to the elected officials to handle that. That's kind of what I thought, yeah. So, and anyone who was at the last meeting on the 13th, we had our two towns meeting between Pallam and Amherst, it was a good meeting. I think, you know, very well attended from the quorum from all the different boards across both towns. People were very engaged in asking a lot of questions. And, you know, this has been a topic of conversation not just at this, in this area, in this region among these two towns, but also at a statewide level about the, you know, the attempts from many communities to try to regionalize in order to increase efficiencies, you know, across school districts and all of that. I think the regionalization board has done a very good job of staying true to their mission and continuing to move this forward and, you know, they have, you know, conducted themselves in that way. You know, Mr. Dumling has chaired that board, but we also had members from both Amherst and Pallam who were serving on that board and they have put in a lot of hours in the past year and a half, I guess, considering this question. So it's translated into an incredible amount of work and thought, you know, and care. The outcome of that meeting on the 13th was that, you know, Amherst town officials and members of this committee actually recommended against regionalization for many different reasons, primarily because of the uncertainty in relation to the new building project that we have just applied to the MSB4 state. You know, there's so much uncertainty there that committing to regionalizing among the two towns feels like just a huge risk, right? And there's unknowns just in regards to who would actually, you know, own the new building, right? You know, whether or not that can negatively impact the application process and feasibility study and all that. But I think beyond that as well, just, you know, some serious concerns, which is the reality for a lot of our towns around finances more generally, you know, and long-term impact on our taxes and, you know, how we are going into these kinds of decisions that will have binding financial decisions for, you know, for not just our schools, but our towns and our communities more broadly. So, you know, from Mr. Dumling had actually prepared an update to, you know, that I'm just some bullet points for me to share with you here. I think I've covered pretty much all of it. You know, what I will say is, you know, I think Pellum definitely expressed disappointment during that meeting and they were, you know, they had been interested in moving forward with us. Our two towns have had a very, you know, important long-standing relationship. We share a superintendent, you know, we've had a good working, you know, neighborly relationship for many, many years. So we want to continue that. And so this is, I think, a difficult conversation to have, right, at a community level. You know, it's important to be respectful and to understand the positions, you know, both towns. So there were forms that had been planned prior to the two towns meeting. Those forms were taking place one last night and one on Thursday this week, I believe, in Pellum. Yeah, Thursday the 25th. So residents from both towns have been invited to participate in those forums and to share their thinking on it. I don't believe the Amherst form was very well attended earlier this week. I think it's just because of spring break and, you know, it's just an awkward time to have a forum like that. We'll see what happens on Thursday night in Pellum one, but, you know, possibly more or less the same. So the Board, the Regionalization Board has yet to vote on this issue and to make the formal recommendation to either, you know, to do whatever it is that they're gonna recommend. We are expecting that they would come back to this committee at some future point once they've had a chance to vote, meet and vote, and, you know, share their formal recommendation. That is basically just the status of everything right now. I don't know if there's any other comments. Dr. Morris, Mr. Amherst, you and Maria are out in, you know, Mr. Spitzer, if there's anything you'd like to add when you've been with that meeting. I think I would just like to add that I hadn't had a real good read on what Pellum, the town of Pellum, wanted, I think. I have a lot of concerns about working for the Regionalization, but I think one of the things that was not, I didn't feel like there was a lot of information was the desire of Pellum before we had the breakout sessions. And so I would just like to put out there that an assistive that I said, I think around the table when we were meeting at the town was that I think we should continue to be open to and everywhere we can support Pellum because I do view them as neighbors and folks. I mean, really, you know, I never teaches in Pellum, you know, and I have good friends who live in Pellum, so I just, I want to make sure that we continue that relationship and do whatever we can to support their school system. And obviously, because of the kids and stuff there. You know, the only thing, yeah, sorry, the only thing I'd add to it is, I mean, one, I completely agree with what Mr. Spister just said that we should look for ways to continue to partner, and I think if we're not, I'm echoing something I said actually the second day, one thing Mrs. Spister said is that I think we should actually be, the next step after saying no, so to speak, should be okay, great, no, if we're not doing this, let's have really involved conversations about how we can find other ways of partnering that could provide some fiscal relief to Pellum, not at the disadvantage of Amherst, what are the ideas and what can we do, including around facilities and programming in schools? I know we're doing a lot of that already through Union 26, so it's tough, and then the other thing is just to put a fine point on something, along with the concern around the statement of interest and a lot of unknowns around what would it mean to regionalize, I really respected the conversation that came out of all the different people who are from Amherst about we just went through a momentous change in government and charter, it isn't in some ways even complete yet, like we're still working through a lot of things, and the more we started to surface the complexity of all the different unknowns, some of which were fiscal, some of which were legal, some of which were like governance and representational, you just like you stop and you say to yourself, oh my God, we haven't even finished doing what we're doing right now as well as we need to, and the community hasn't had a chance to sort of digest all the changes, contribute to them, take our next steps together, this is not something we can do right now. And I felt like if, you know, I'm saying this, I'm trying to say this now on camera, because it supports everything you both said, but I also think it's something that if the public recognizes and says, look, when we said no at this point, and you think about what we're trying to do and accomplish collectively as current leaders in this town, it's actually a good thing. And it's even a good thing for Palom in the end, because I'm not sure we were gonna be able to say yes to anything would be useful to them at this point. And that's, you know, they need things that actually help them, not for them to suddenly be stuck in the middle of, you know, between two towns, a really, really bad conversation. And I think the sense was we were gonna end up there, whether we did realize it, but like if we hadn't realized it, guess what, six months from now, we were gonna be like an absolute mess, and that mess was gonna affect everything else we're doing, including the new school. Yeah, it feels like a lot of these kinds of questions, timing is everything, right? And, you know, the timing on this, even though, again, the board has taken a very long time to make sure that they are, you know, pursuing a process faithfully and authentically, it's still, you know, the timing for all the work that we have going on and the government changes, as you mentioned, Mr. Nakajima, means that it's probably a bad time for us to try to attempt this. And I would just add to this too, I think, you know, Dr. Morris has sort of mentioned this a little bit, and you know, I know you and I have had this conversation previously, but we had also been looking at this from an educational perspective and also thinking about are there certain efficiencies that could be gained by, you know, bringing the school districts together and combining our schools. And at the end of the day, they're not that great, right? And so it's, you know, it's probably not worth, in that risk analysis, you know, it's not worth taking that risk at this point in time to see if we can operationalize or gain, you know, some small efficiencies. We're also extremely uncertain about the state in terms of helping to fund a lot of the regionalization efforts that are taking place. And again, you know, my point's made at the very beginning of the discussion topic that this is an issue that has continuously come up in many different communities, right, where the state has been encouraging communities to regionalize and has made a lot of promises in terms of the money that they could potentially get. And then, you know, they're not actually realized, right? So, again, I think, you know, it was a useful conversation, a really useful exercise. At some point, if the communities, you know, are interested in something like this, I heard from officials anyway, you know, a openness to continuing the conversation and coming back to it at some point in the future. Great. Okay, thank you. So next item on the agenda is accept gifts. And I know we have one gift it looks like. You can do it. Excellent. I will take a motion if somebody wants to read it. Mr. Navejima. I move that the school committee approve the following gift. Project Bred, number 68595, to support teacher champion awards, school-based nutrition program, of Jennifer Reese's choosing at the amount of $1,000. Great, we have a motion, we have a second. Second. Any questions about this? Comments? Very briefly. So this is Project Bred, it's been a partner. Food program, I think it's been talked about a couple of times here, a couple of attended events. And this was a request they made to Ms. Palmer, who was at our last meeting, around someone who's an educator who's making a huge difference in nutrition of children. So Ms. Reese, a few other community. A couple of years ago, you saw her come. She's our Science and Gardening Coordinator. She's a part-time role. She does incredibly more than, an incredible amount in both in terms of the gardening, but also in the science education at the elementary level. She's only worked for the, currently at the Amherst Elementary Schools. Remember, there's a slight FTE change to expand her reach a little further. So this was Ms. Palmer's idea of an educator who's making a huge difference in nutrition of children. So I just want to add that. That's great. Yay. All those in favor? All right. Well, thank you very much to Project Fred. School committee planning. Dr. Morris, are we going to run through? Sure. So my understanding from the chair of this committee is that the Fort River Feasibility Committee will have a presentation at the next, they'll be ready for a presentation at the main meeting, the architects. I just want to, if that's what I heard from Mr. Salvin, I want a few different chairs. I think May 21st will censor it. Yeah. I haven't heard any difference through last week. Let's check in with him and make sure that's, yeah. Yeah. I mean, considering how soon May is, I think we're going to be, we should be done. It's going to cut close. Yeah. I did confirm this with him, but it's probably worth going back. Yeah. It's good. It's probably worth going back. Yeah. Another one that has been kind of floating in our agenda, but we'd like to nail down and have at the next meeting is a presentation on Alice at the elementary level. Alice is the acronym that describes the current approach towards risk management and safety, school safety. And actually the Amherst Police Department, the representative would come in to talk about what they've done at the elementary. And particularly how that differs from what we've already heard for those of you who were here when it was a secondary approach, that obviously the age of the kids makes it very different. Kids aren't involved in training and planning, but the staff is. So we wanted to come back and make sure that there was a presentation of this and interested in any of that. We have a school improvement plan drafts from Parker Farman and Wildwood that has been worked on, but this is the date where they would have to do some brief presentation last time. A draft for ADA and capital, particularly to the ADA aspect of the capital. I think the grade six through eight, the sixth grade piece that we talked about today, if we could keep it in. The composition of it, yep. If we could keep it in the superintendent update. I mean, I'm open to making a agenda topic, but I think I'll be able to do that. That makes sense. Give it due time in that update. And that's what happened. Oh, and superintendent evaluation. Nothing important. Nothing important. Great, anything else from the committee for topics? I would just like to use Spitzer. I'll be on vacation. I'll be on vacation. I'll be on vacation. I'll be on trips. I'll be on Dallas. So unfortunately I'm unable to attend. You won't be. You're my committee first. And I know I've been the one, I think I'm the only person on this committee who's also on the evaluation of the committee. So I think we should make sure that we communicate as one. Yeah, I had a time. Absolutely. Okay, great. Okay, fantastic. I will take a motion. Mr. Nakajima. Move to adjourn. Thank you. Do I have a second? Thank you. All those in favor? All right, we are adjourned. Thank you very much.