 I'm calling to order the meeting of the Amherst School Committee at 6.03 p.m. on Tuesday, March 30th. This meeting is being recorded and live streamed on Amherst Media on Channel 15 and on the website. We will begin with roll call attendance. Mr. Deming. Deming present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer present. And McDonald present. I'm going to start with the voice comment. Don't think we had minutes in our packet, even though it's on our agenda. So we will skip over the next item. And move on to public comment. We have some voice comment as well as some. Written comment. I'll start with the voice comment. This first comment. The commenter. I'm going to start with the voice comment. I'm going to start with the message and then just alert everybody that they, that the written comment is also available. And I believe it's posted online. Thank you for taking comments. Dear Amherst School Committee. I was distressed to learn that the administration is again setting their sights on art teachers. Eight years after almost the same budget cuts compelled me to run for school committee. So theee, nine years ago we had special teachers in 2013. And then restoring the cuts in 2015. So many kind of things at that time about the value of arts education. Special teachers and the important roles. Arts integration. Now we find ourselves in twenty, 21, but they should know. I read that since the arts and technology staff at Parker farm are leaving and retiring, farm and have the Wildwood and Fort River Art and Technology teachers cover the other two days. Students will still receive 40-minute class each week in both subjects, but the reductions would mean that the specialist teachers will condense their classes into four days a week in each school, leaving less time for other projects or an integrated program that crosses disciplines. Well, here's what I wrote to the bulletin in 2013 before I ran for school committee. Joy and mastery in music and art leads many students who are otherwise struggling in the classroom environment to deeper engagement in school and the development of the 21st century skills such as perseverance, goal setting, and executive functioning that research is increasingly revealing are at the foundation of academic success. All parents and caregivers can take pride in watching their children perform or seeing their art pieces displayed on the walls of the school. Class, race, and language barriers are reduced to chorus, band, orchestra, visual art shows, and activities such as jump rope club. This does not happen by accident. This is not magic. This is the result of hard work on the part of the special teachers. These teachers are integral members of our school community. Their impact is not confined to 40 minute instructional time slots. Unlike grade level teachers, their relationships with children and families span across years. They understand the developmental trajectory of the children and build a multi-year relationship with family. They provide a valuable perspective on children's strengths and learning styles that informs all the adults in the children's lives. They support the classroom teachers in integrating music and arts into the curricula, further sparking student engagement and helping to make up for the woefully inadequate time for the arts in the weekly schedule. The special teachers in our schools play a vital connecting role and bring a positive energy to the entire school community, energy that fuels student and adult engagement alike. This takes real time and a presence in the school to achieve. Treating this job as if the teachers were vendors. As mentioned, the full comment is available in the packet that's posted. This is Amber Connell-Martin. I am the resident of Amherst. I have two children. I have a 10-year-old who's a fourth grader at Wildwood and I have a child who's entering kindergarten in the fall. Calling to express a couple of concerns to you today. First of all, COVID safety concerns about returning to school. A really big concern that I have is around notification of families if there's a positive COVID case in the building. I think that notifications should be automatic whether or not the child is considered to have any close contact with the person who tested positive, whether or not my child has been. I think that's really important. Another thing about safety is I'm concerned about children being allowed to play outside with no mask on because I know elementary school children and they don't think we can trust them to always get six feet away. My kids are used to wearing masks. They can keep wearing masks. They play outside with other kids wearing masks that aren't from our pods. They stay safe and I think they can continue to do that. I don't think that masks should be allowed to come off in classrooms at all. I hope that that can be guaranteed. I don't feel like that's safe. And then secondly, I just want to talk about my budget concerns a little bit. I'm very concerned about some budget cuts that are going to be happening according to the budget that I see. The first thing are the cuts that will affect bilingual families. My family is bilingual Spanish and English, so it would eventually impact us if not now. So my concern about the elimination of the bilingual psychologist position as well as the ELL interpreters, I think those are really important positions and I think funding should be found for them. My other concern is about a budget cut that was proposed for the elementary school to reduce arming tax from five to four days per week. So it's really what I think is a little bit of money. I think arts and specials are really important. It's one of the few things that a cat might pay billing through this really hard pandemic year. He loves being able to do the specials much. He loves to be touched. So if you're trying to stretch these teachers over a couple of schools, they're not going to have time to prep. They're going to be rushed all the time. I think that it's going to need to shortchange our children and then shortchange the teachers and I don't think that's fair. So I think money should also be found from other line items that continue to fund the special. So thank you so much for your time. Hi, my name is Roseanne Heldin, H-E-L-T-E-N, 516-967-4456. I am calling in hopes that you will not take away the $75,000 needed to have the full-time arts and technology teacher at Crocophone. I have grandchild who goes there and this would be a great loss. Why don't you allow the public to vote on an override and I'm sure many of us would be very willing to add a little to our taxes to make sure our kids have a good education. Thank you. This is Laura Muller and I am a parent who wildwood third graders, third graders. At Wildwood, the A team, as the special teachers have branded themselves, have provided an amazing array of learning opportunities for our children beginning last March when they started weekly A team challenges to get to students using their imagination, moving their bodies and creating art. When the students went back to having their regular specials rotation and distance learning model, parents could hear how much the A team is just back. A team. Ms. Cara and Ms. Catherine, Mrs. Well, Mr. B and Catherine Music, worked together for the thinking they asked students to do overlaps and their work with classrooms teachers uses and enhances student math and literacy skills. And of course, this dedicated group of teachers has also helped our students figure out ways to express and to process their feelings safely. I am sure it is the same at Fort River and Crocophone. The proposed budget cut asking for the elimination of one elementary technology specialist and one art teacher in the district, thereby asking the remaining two to divide their time between two schools is a bad idea. In my example, Ms. Cara and Ms. Catherine would have reduced time at each school. Not only will these teachers lose practice time, they will lose valuable time from meeting together and with the classroom teachers about what the students are learning and how to integrate art and technology into those lessons. Research shows that students learn more fully when their learning is authentic. Integration of topics and skills across the curriculum rather than discrete events is one way to do that. I oppose the budget cuts to the elementary school art and technology curriculum. $75,000 is not very much in the $24 million budget. Elementary students need and deserve curricular integration of art and technology in the form way that library, music, and PE are integrated. Thank you. I'm asking you to please restore the funds needed to prevent the reductions to the art and technology specials at the elementary schools. First, these two areas are needed now more than ever. Arts is one of the things that makes life worth living, especially in these dark times. And at a time when people are connecting by technology more than ever, technology is essential to students' lives and will be a vital part of their future. Second, all elementary children will suffer due to these cuts. Wildwood and Fort River students will lose out on things like arts integration because the two special teachers at each of those schools will be spending quite a bit of time at Crocker Farm instead of at their home school. And Crocker Farm students will have a mishmash of special teachers and will lose out on two full time teachers who can get to know them over their years at Crocker Farm, in addition to losing out on arts integration like their Wildwood and Fort River peers. Third, this change is two full time teaching positions into two part time positions, which will surely have higher turnover because when you're working a 40% job, you have to also work another job, or you're keeping an eye out for something full time. This is an equity issue that disproportionately harms Crocker Farm students while also causing harm to Wildwood and Fort River students, simply because those two positions happen to be vacating at Crocker Farm. With a $24 million elementary school budget, surely you can find the $75,000 needed to prevent this harm from occurring. Thank you. Okay, and now I will share my screening to share the written comment. The written comment, if it's not posted already on the Amherst School Committee agenda's page, it will be very soon. Are folks seeing my screen? The public comment document? I can't see folks. Yes? Yes, we can see it. Thank you. I'm going to scroll quickly. This is the text of the comment that was called, recorded as a voice message as well. This comment was also recorded as a voice message. As I mentioned, that document is posted on the Amherst School Committee agenda's webpage. Moving on to our next item, we have the superintendent's update, so I'll turn it over to you, Dr. Morris. I'll really be brief today. I know I've been working on this, but today I will be successful at brevity. I only have two updates. Both good news updates. One is the Fort River Principal Search Committee. The screening part of that has done their work. They've recommended a high number of candidates for semi-finalist interviews, which are happening within the next week and a half. That's good because they recommend candidates who are worth interviewing with electronic applications. You never know. The raw number of applicants sometimes, if you can click a button and apply for a job, you can end up getting applicants that add to your quantity, but don't add to the real pool. In this case, the screening committee felt very excited about many candidates. The interview committee has a lot of work to do because they have a lot of people to interview, but that's a good problem. We'll keep the committee and the community updated as that happens. As an aside or a summary, the screening committee will, work is done, the interview committee will interview a number of candidates. They'll recommend a small number, usually around three, to me, for Meet-A-Vet. Then when we get to the final stage, we'll bring them virtually to be able to meet the community, gather lots of feedback and input from any member of the public, the Fort River community who would like, and then we'll communicate the selection for someone to start. July 1st, I want to acknowledge that this, that person has large shoes to fill and thank Diane Chamberlain. She's here through the end of the year and working really hard, but I just want to acknowledge her work over many years in the district. Actually, districts, she's worked at the regional level as well. That's my Fort River principal search update. My only other update is that our sixth grade staff members with Tim Sheen and Jen Ries involved have been awarded $15,000 in grant funding over the next three years to be in the initial cohort of schools in Massachusetts, adopting the cutting-edge middle school because it's sixth grade. It's middle school, middle school, open-side core science curriculum, and it's called a phenomenon-based curriculum. So that's kind of a different way to say project-based learning where we're working with real materials, real applications, and learning by doing instead of learning by sort of textbook or that sort of thing. So we're really thrilled to be working with the One-Eight Foundation and the Mass STEM Hub because they're the kind of organizers of this and so they have awards for the next three years. So that's exciting. Oh, I do have a third update. For some reason it didn't come through, but it's also a good news update, which is that we got a sizable grant to continue as Comanantes grows from the Department of Education in Massachusetts for additional work on curriculum instruction and design as we go up another grade level next year to second grade and expand to three grade levels. So that was welcome. We also are trying to look if we can provide some additional summer programming because we know it's hard to learn two languages virtually, and that's the condition that most of our students have been in for most of the year in Comanantes. So we are exploring whether we can use some of those funds also to perhaps extend the year a little bit because of the specific challenge that students faced in Comanantes this year being remote for much of the year, but those are my three updates and that was I think as brief as I've been in some time. So there may be questions, but I'm not responsible for the length of duration of those. Questions? Mr. Demling? Well, I'm responsible for the length of my question. How much was the grant for the Comanantes program? So that's what I had it in my document and it went away, but it's a lot. I think it's in the order of magnitude of over $200,000, but I will, by the time if the chair has an update, I will be able to pull it. Ms. Spitzer may have it quicker than myself, but I have it on my notes for this meeting and I think I unfortunately deleted that section, but I think Ms. Spitzer will be able to give us the answer. $237,240. $237,240. Sorry. I was looking at it too because I was, I'll let Peter finish his line of question. Mr. Demling, did you have more questions? No, okay. Any other comments? Ms. Spitzer? No, I'm so happy to hear that we've got the grant funding. I have a question. Is it for one year that the, that the funding's for, is it spread out over multiple years? It's one year. It's the same grant we've gotten the last couple years and we didn't, I mean, honestly with with the pandemic and the budgeting state level, we didn't know if it was going to be there. It's happening at a different time than it typically did, but this is going to help us with supporting our staff members to get the bilingual endorsement through the partnership we have with the university and the Holyoke public schools, help us with curriculum development and curriculum materials. And again, we're hoping that we can put something together to support the continued acquisition of two languages for our young students that who are within the Comanates program, but it's, we did not, I mean, we were, that's what we applied for. You always apply for a grant. You don't know if you're going to necessarily get the full amount you apply for. So, you know, many kudos to Kitty Richardson or your local coordinator for her work as well as the staff's work to put together a grant application that was highly respected and responded to by folks at DESI. So, you know, really, really happy to get the full amount we asked for and the full amount allowable given the size of our district. And we're going to put it to good use. Okay. Okay. Any other questions? Seeing none. I actually don't have a chair's update tonight. I'll save any comments for when we were talking about the budget later on. Are there any school committee announcements? Seeing none. Okay. So, we will move on now to our new and continuing business. And our first item is the FY22 budget discussion and vote. And for folks that are watching, we had our first look at detailed ads and cuts two weeks ago at our school committee, at our budget hearing. And since then the line by item budget full budget document was posted and published on Friday. And so tonight we're going to continue conversations on the budget. And we did ask questions two weeks ago about those, the cuts that we heard a lot about in the public comment this evening. And I think we have some sort of clarification and explanations on a little bit more detail on those. But we're going to be continuing our discussion tonight and trying to come to a vote. So, I think maybe since, you know, the line by line budget's there so that Dr. Slaughter's here if there's any questions. But maybe since a lot of the feedback was on page 39 or 41 of the packet, which was the ads cuts, the committee's okay. Maybe I'll review the ads cuts list and see if there's questions on that. And we can loop back to anything on the line item budget if there's a question. Would that be agreeable? That sounds great. Okay. So, and I apologize. Some of this I'm saying again, but since some of the public comment, perhaps, you know, either, you know, wasn't able to tune in or didn't, I didn't do it clearly enough the last time I'm going to describe that. So the sabbatical, we didn't have any sabbatical requests contractually reserve a spot for sabbatical each year for a staff member says $30,000 in adjustments and the turnover savings is that we have some retiring staff. And when we do, we can assume that some of the folks who are coming in will come in at a lower pay grade. So that's what the turnover savings indicates. Yep. Thank you. I'm happy to do that. Looking funny on my screen. Can folks see that? Okay. Can try to zoom a little bit. And just to remind the public as well as the committee that this is not a balanced budget. So it's a cut of $372,000. We are using more choice than we anticipate coming in. And we did this to prevent further cuts in a year where we've had so many challenges as have many districts due to the pandemic. But this is not a budget that's balanced. It's an imbalanced budget. And it's not a sustainable budget that way. At some point, we're going to have to only spend the amount of choice money that we have coming in. So now we'll get to the budget reduction. So we do anticipate the regular education that we will be able to reduce one classroom teacher with the reduced enrollment. We don't exactly know where that'll be because of the uncertainty of the enrollments as it stands now. But we would have anticipated that sans pandemic. Just looking at the number of kids in each cohort that graduating kids, the incoming kindergartners, we would anticipate being able to reduce a section regardless. So as our numbers come in later in the spring, we will make that adjustment. There's a special ed teacher cut at Fort River. A couple years ago, we added a special education teacher at Fort River when Comanantes was coming in. And that was because we needed a bilingual special educator to be part of that program as well as part of the school. And we didn't have anyone on staff at Fort River who could fill that need. And the idea was that that was going to be a temporary ad that at the point at which Comanantes was covering a couple grade levels, we would be reducing that special ed teacher to make it line up evenly with the other schools. We'll now be at about 40% of the school. We'll have a grade level of Comanantes in it so we can make that reduction and keep it in line with the other schools. Again, Comanantes would attend it to me. I know we just got this big large grant, but it was intended to be from the operating budget as budget neutral as possible or budget neutral. And so we had a short-term cost associated with the introduction of the program, but we're trying to commit to the budget neutral language that we spoke about when the program started. Next two were the specials. Certainly there was a lot of public comment about that. So I want to share a couple pieces of information. So I think there was a number of comments that talked about public comments that talked about, you know, seven years ago or eight years ago. I think this is really about some of the other reductions as well that we have fewer students in our school. This is not a cut targeting art or technology in any way. This is that, you know, compared to then, we have about 18% less fewer students in the Amherst public schools than we did at that point. And, you know, one of the things that we've heard from different voices about budget consistency and sustainability is that we have to look at making reductions when we can based on the reduction in students and our enrollment. This is not about our enrollment staying the same and we're going to reduce the amount of art and technology since have. It'll actually be per capita pretty much the same as it was seven or eight years ago when the specials were restored to full time. I think the second thing I want to share is that all of our specials teachers every day will have a block for their prep and then also an integration block even with this reduction. And that's really just because of the declining enrollment that there still will be integration time in all schools in all areas. I want to acknowledge that it'll be reduced from what it is this moment. It'll look a lot more like what it was eight years ago when we had about 20% less students in our schools. And so I think it is worth noting that this is really about the enrollment decline and not about any particular devaluation of art or technology. Art and technology teachers are fabulous. We know they're fabulous. We know this is a hard conversation. If we were a district that was adding students we'd be having a different conversation about the potential implications but that's not been our reality for many years. I think the other thing to clarify is that from an individual student perspective they will have the same art and technology teacher all year long. It won't be like one week it's Mr. Demling the next week it's Mr. Harrington and the AB schedule or something that you might see at a high school with that. It's that the students will be able to build the relationship with their teacher in each special all year long and that won't change with this reduction if it goes through. And I think it's worth noting and I try not to do this because I don't like comparing staff members that we incredibly value the arts and technology and the other specials in our district. They tend to get integration time and in addition to their prep that lots of our teachers would be able to do wonderful things with but we don't give them the opportunity. Our special education teachers who have both special education students to teach IEPs to write evaluations to complete they would do great with an extra prep time as well. Our classroom teachers certainly would benefit if they had additional integration time and it's only because of our valuing of art and music and technology teachers that they do have this opportunity for integration and they do amazing things with it. But I do think just you know there's lots of people who would benefit from more integration time in our schools we give it to arts folks for good reason and they will still have it and even with this budget reduction. And I think this is where it really gets a little bit hard in the conversation if we don't want to make reductions based on declining enrollment then we're going to need to ask the town for a lot more money each year for our budgets because the reality is our enrollment is going down and I think unless we're in a situation where the town is going to fund us three and a half four percent more each year we do have to look at declining enrollments. We've made you know significant cuts for instance the central office over the last few years because we needed to and we had declining enrollment we were able to make some reductions that we're able to make as our as a district contracted. And so that's I think where the rub is is that it's really about class size excuse me it's about school size and enrollment size not about any specific area. I think in this particular instance it did also resolve a situation where we were able to make some reductions without riffing our staff and I think I was pretty clear in this district and other districts that one of our priorities was to keep our talented staff members on our payroll without a reduction whenever possible. It wasn't possible across the board but whenever possible and all the other reductions we would have looked at to finish getting to our number would have reduced would have had a reduction in force would have involved either some staff losing their position or becoming part-time in our school and I don't want to pretend that that did not go into our thinking that we were trying to retain as many of our talented staff members as we can. It's not the only decision obviously we're thinking about kids but we're also thinking about our adults as well. Physically it benefits our district in terms of unemployment and Doug could answer any questions you have about that but this was a hard decision but I really want to clarify it's not about art and technology and specific. The main theme would be that our teachers will still have integration time throughout the week. Students will still have the same teachers throughout the week. Students will still have the benefit of being able to see arts integration happen and it's really based on declining enrollment. We've made cuts over the years in other areas based on declining enrollment as well and it's hard to kind of process and think about which cuts to make as we look at declining enrollment but this is one we haven't made and you know given the fiscal situation as well as the enrollment we felt like we needed to to go down this road. I've said a lot I know I've got more things to describe but I think I'm halfway down the cut list so maybe that would be an opportune time to pause and see if there's questions or comments from the committee. Folks are okay. I'm wondering if it might make more sense to just continue to go through because I think some of the questions are about at least that I might have are about sort of the choices and prioritization of the cuts and so it might be helpful to go through it all. Absolutely. Okay yep I'm gonna keep going. So facilities I think we spoke about this last time that we do have some unfilled positions that have been posted for quite some time and we've been able to cobble together some contractors in our area to make sure that the work is continuing to happen. I think rightfully some committee members last time you know had a question about whether this is a long-term viable plan and you know probably not but I think we can we get through next year and see what our systems look like and and maybe a little bit less than the pandemic hopefully and reorganize and see what our needs are I think I think we can do that next year and I think we can do it effectively. That's a testament to our larger facilities crew who's figured out how to take on some broader sort of management of consultants because that's the challenge with consultants is that you know you're managing their time instead of them being in place but you know many thanks to people who are making that work. Mr. Roy Clark and his team as well. Food service we have a food service assistant position that's vacant and again going back to the retaining our staff this was a reduction we thought we'd be able to make and continue to move forward with our food service and school nutrition program. The bilingual psychologist to clarify this is a position that we've had posted for about a year and a half we've not found any viable candidates unfortunately it is not a direct service position for students it's an evaluation position so when we have students who are bilingual and there needs to be an evaluation about their academic or psychological strengths and challenges this is someone who can perform that task in both English and Spanish. We have been contracting with someone to be able to complete this that's gone smoothly we'd rather have someone on our staff but at the time you know it can be on an as needed basis but this is not at all reduce direct service to students in the least. Reception position and central office this will be a bit of a challenge especially if we start opening up to visitors so it may keep us a little more closed off but I think we'll probably be a little close to visitors for some time moving forward even as students go into the building but again it's trying to see where we could reduce as best we could and the last one is an interpreter reduction and this was recommended by an outside expert who looked at our ELL program noticed that we had many many more interpreters than other comparison districts and a concern was expressed about how long our students who are acquiring English are relying interpreters and not actually receiving instruction from teachers you know and she recommended that we condense a bit of that work in terms of best practices and supporting English language learners so this is a cut reflective of the recommendation that we had last year. The report was filed like beginning of pandemic so I know it wasn't like high on people's radar but it was the person was in our buildings visited our ELL classrooms had tremendously positive things to say about much of the work of our ELL department but this is one area where she looked at us compared to other districts with similar ELL populations and noticed a real imbalance and expressed a pretty significant concern all for the guess this none of this is a critique of interpreters it's about us and how we structure the educational environment for students so that's the rundown I think I got everything on the cuts list I want to say this is really hard it's really painful if there was if if we were not at a if we're at a different budget level we'd be having a happier conversation and a very different conversation but we're trying to balance the fiscal responsibility that town is asking for us and declining enrollment and the competing needs that we have to come up with recommendations for you all but I'm hoping any comments or questions that you might have questions it's spitzer it was a little competition there who would raise their hand first I guess it's not so much a question because I think you've done a good job of explaining the the cuts it but it's hard I think you know everything you said is true about this not being easy like it's never easy to cut from the budget so and I'm trying to get the right way to phrase this but and I've expressed some of this to you and I think I've said this before you know I think one of the tricky things as a school committee member and I'm assuming also for some members of the public is that we see the cuts to the operating budget and at the same time we're also aware of funds that are potentially coming into the district from other sources and I I understand now I feel like better than I than I had in the past the reasons you know we don't necessarily see the stimulus funds or the CARES Act funds you know stimulus isn't right but the CARES Act funds you know coming through and and adjusting the budget but I think the challenges that we're only seeing in a year like this year where there are major funds coming from outside sources outside of the the operating budget that will actually have an impact on what's happening in the classrooms and what we're able to offer it's it's tricky um because I'm not happy about making these cuts but the way you're explaining them I feel like I'm never gonna say feel good about it but I don't feel like our students are gonna have um a serious um losses as a result I think we'll continue to hopefully provide um education and and other services that provide uh well but I think it's we're only I guess what I'm arguing for is that if there's a way then in the future that we can have a report on how what grant funding is coming in how it's going to be used and kind of flush out more broadly what's going to be happening because I keep saying this I'm a broken record now but next year I anticipate that even if we experience declining enrollment because of what's happening with the pandemic and the way that education and um delivery of education is shifting that we may actually have more needs than than we have in the past and and it's hard to see I think especially from the public public if we're cutting all this money out how are we going to cover what we anticipate are actually going to be greater needs for the students so when they see a psychologist cut it it's really worrisome because we know that we're going to have kids who are dealing with trauma and and and um dealing with other issues and I when I see a cut to food service assistant and I know that we're probably going to be delivering food in a totally new way um in as we aren't starting to in person it makes me really concerned about that um and I'm also you know I'm when I saw the cuts initially to technology and arts my initial reaction was also this we should find a way to find that 75 000 and put it back in now after your explanation this evening I'm feeling less um less concerned about that cut and more concerned actually about the overall trend of declining enrollment so I'm going to stop with one more kind of comment which I think is you know we had that enrollment working group a while back I'm I'm curious um and we don't need to talk about this in depth tonight but if if there's a need to start thinking more long-term about these implications because through the jcpc meetings that we'll talk about later and through all of these other conversations that I've been having outside of just this meeting I'm concerned about the trend we're seeing and I don't know if there's any long-term planning that needs to go into thinking about how we're going to um continue to kind of deal with rather than dealing with it on an annual basis if there's any long-term planning we can do to think about how we're going to deal with if these trends continue on a more longer term basis so that was a very long comment thank you thank you morse yeah so I think I think you're right you know and we can come back and talk about grants but I do think uh what I want to acknowledge in your comment and be more specific in my response is that we do have areas that are not going to be funded in this appropriated budget that we need to take care of next year and that's where really we need to lean on grants so I'll give you a couple for instance from a health and safety perspective we have gyms at all three elementary schools that will need significant ventilation work this summer uh to be ready to go or you know different air purification systems to be ready to go for fall because I imagine we're not going to be in the same environment where we never use gyms the crociform cafeteria is the same these are very real cost that we'll have to look for grant funding for um one of the things that's interesting that I found out this week and I'll be on a webinar with Mr. Sheehan next week is that Desi is opening up if we want to apply for and they had this pre-pandemic having a remote academy I actually do think there's probably enough families who are interested in continuing in some level of remote um at least there's enough that are telling me that that it's something that we should explore and there's a financial element if we want to go down a road I'm just mentioning these as possibilities I'm not making commitments but I just I think it's worth you're raising a really good point about we're going to have pandemic-related needs and and what are some of those but I think I just want to highlight them because I think that's relevant to the discussion you know I think you're right on the mental health piece um and we've had some initial conversations of how we might access um some of the grant fundings for additional case manager uh types of work that we know that the needs are greater than they were 14 months ago and they were still a lot 14 months ago in terms of the needs of some members of our community uh we're going to need a fair amount of curriculum work right what we know and I don't want to get into the whole debate about the learning loss and people argue about semantics I'm disinterested in that what we know is that the fall will be different than this fall and it will be different than the fall before that and the before that and we want to make sure our teachers have the time and resources they need to effectively teach our students starting in the fall of 2022 2021 excuse me that too but fall of 2021 is what I was referring to so I think there are these things that are that do need to happen between now and when students come back in the fall and that's really what we rely on our grant funds for um you know it's you know that's why we have them because they recognize it's during a pandemic so I think in coming weeks we can get you know I got an email actually this afternoon from Representative McGovern with much more information than I received yet about the stimulus so I'm still processing it we're still processing it um literally came in I don't know an hour or two ago um and that's the first I've seen of kind of real numbers and some real implications it'll all get filtered through desi and we'll have webinars on desi about acceptable use um and uh but I think you're right the school committee does and the public do need to be in those conversations to understand what the needs are and the facility side and the health side are we can continue with certified nurses assistants if we are that's not budgeted for right all of those pieces play into it but I think you're absolutely right there's no shortage of of needs to take care of um that aren't going to go away even if case counts knock on wood are significantly different um four or five months from now sorry it's a long way to answer but I think it's a really important question so I'm glad I could at least throw a little bit of a teaser out and then we'll we'll get to that at a future meeting where you know we can talk about all the grants we can come in and Dr. Slaughter can organize that no way where we can have that conversation Mr. Demling so um yeah mostly a comment um primarily about how I approach budgets in particular this example of the 75 000 cuts to arts integration so um it just so happens that today is exactly the completion of um four full years of school committee for me um so it's been between this in the region eight budgets and if my count is correct six of those have had major cuts like by major I mean hundreds of thousands to more than a million um so I've been through this painful process and unenviably more often than I would I would like and um what I've I've come to see is my duty my responsibility as a public servant on school committee particularly when we are doing what we're doing right now which is articulating our thinking process towards our decision for the public um is uh you know is to frame these budget decisions is it has to be more than just reacting to the description in the line item you know because which is and by the way I make no apologies for doing that two weeks ago I like really value the arts and the arts integration experience my children had uh our elementary schools and I don't want to lose that um but but I feel like we have to go deeper than than just you know do we value the arts or do do we value special education teachers do we value support for our English language learners and the student experience of course we all resoundingly support that that's never the question it's um you know but with in terms of thinking deliberately through this process it's it's about probing further and into what extent is this a cut to truly a cut to level services that impacts the student experience versus what you described Dr Morris as declining enrollment driven and are there other factors sometimes there are cuts that aren't directly related to enrollment um that are about shifts um what's the impact to next year you know you discussed that we're already in kind of a dodgy position where we're taking more from school committee on school choice um fund than we're taking in which is not a sustainable budget practice and so you know really the only other alternative for a lot of these things would be to take more from school choice which would make that that choice worse for next year and that's what's so difficult about budgeting is that it's a zero-sum game right you have to take from somewhere to get it um and um I advise this level of scrutiny because and I think this is a really basic but key point for the public to understand the school committee does not set the budget amount like we we we this is a request elementary level it's a lot simpler this is a request to the town of Amherst to approve right and so we we we go through the line items we talk about this but ultimately this is a proposal this is a we submit it to the town of Amherst and ultimately the town council will vote on the budget and and I think at this level of scrutiny and demonstrating this level of scrutiny and that we're serious about making cuts particularly enrollment driven cuts is important because I think my opinion it's time for the town to seriously consider committing to level school services for at least the next several years and we're the elementary district so I specifically mean I think it's time for the town council to start having the discussion about whether it is needed and necessary to help our students through this recover from this pandemic and to commit to level services for the next several years um you know and like we've said before we have cut majorly a couple years ago we cut majorly this year and we're going to be cutting majorly with this budget and um if if we're going to ask for that bleeding to stop then I feel like the school committee needs to be reasonable in saying that not all cuts are too deep level services and you know like you said a 20 enrollment decline in the last eight years um means means that some of these cuts will be enrollment driven and I think demonstrating that to the town council and saying you know we are willing to work with you with declining enrollment um but what I mean personally I'm not willing to work with this cutting any significantly deeper into into level services um for the schools so that's that's kind of where I come at with with this I really appreciate the advocacy from the public about you know the valuing of arts and and support for English language learners um and and all that but um I feel like it's it's my it's my duty as as a public rep to to articulate you know why we have to make these these hard choices I mean honestly I think we should be adding to central law I feel like we need a communications director I feel like in this we're at a real pivot point with enrollment where we want those families to come back they have a lot of choices the private and charter schools are going to be out there spending many thousands of dollars marketing I would love to add you know 30 40 k to a half fte communications director that we share with the region and start promoting these services while we still have them um but it's not possible right and so I I in this budget environment um so it's it's it's difficult but again I think that you have have managed it in order to minimize the the impact of the student experience I think I want to oh Dr. Slaughter thank you and just a quick comment and I think that that uh the point by Mr. Deming is well taken relative to sort of seeing these line items on the on a page like this uh it's it's one of the challenges that that we face in how to present something as complex as the budget and it's and as broad reaching as the budget in a way that is sufficiently concise to have a reasonable conversation but at the same time give you a sufficient detail uh to make your decisions and to ask the proven questions and that sort of thing so I'm I'm uh imploring each of you and and the public at large if there are ways in which we can present these types of complex things to you that would be helpful I'd love to know about how you'd like to see it to to be presented in a way that can help articulate the the circumstances more clearly to to the public at large thanks I I sort of connects to you know where I where my head was going also with a comment about the reception position at central office and the comment about sort of support in central office we've cut like to get where we are today we've cut a lot of positions and services at central office so when you look at we are really sort of to the bone there and you know when I think about sort of the um some comments and emails that we've gotten over the last couple weeks to talk about sort of you know the timeliness and the details that we've been given and and and publicized about the budget and part of that is driven because of the resources that we have at the central office and and and the work that all of your team is doing across three districts um all at once with with with just the the minimal minimum amount of support and and staff that we need to be doing those things um community members families etc coming into the central office next year with less reception services are going to feel that and and and I think you know the choice that we're making is to protect as much as possible students support student services mental the the core education services at the expense of some of the other things that people sometimes can find frustrating if they if they're not so I think it's important to call that out that um that those are the some of the choices we made um and I share sort of um the sentiments that I hear from Miss Spitzer and Mr. Demling about I was one that you know when we were looking at these ads cuts two weeks ago was was really concerned about the impact on on sort of arts integration technology integration in in um student learning experiences in the classroom um and it it's it's facilitated the conversation and really digging and digging and understanding the impact on the student experience and so I am um pleased is the wrong word I think you know it still hurts to make cuts but at the same time it's not a riff we're not you know nobody's losing their job on to make this cut and it's not impacting the day-to-day student experience in the way that they're still going to be able to we're still going to have arts integration um our teachers are still going to have the the time the prep time to be able to to provide that amazing I think I called it special soft two weeks ago I think one of the questions we we talk about is Mr. Demling so this is a zero sum game so what are the what are the some of the other potential cuts that you looked at and didn't make in order to get to here because if we if we were to say gosh we really want to keep that this position or that position you know as we as my colleagues have pointed out we have to take it from someplace else or go even deeper in depth it's spending which doesn't set us up well for future years so what are those you know the either or it's not like let's just add these back and go our merry way what what we'd have to cut someplace else what are some of the other things that you looked at yeah so we look really holistically and our budget process starts from that place of really suggesting you know we look at classrooms and that's why there's one classroom on there they recognize that's enrollment based we look at special ed and you see the reduction in special education you know it's been a particularly rough year for many students not all but many students who have special needs and so you know we didn't feel like we could cut any further we do have some students with a higher set of needs than we've experienced in the past and and perhaps need some aren't a good fit for even our robust set of specialized programs so there's some additional costs that come from there but that's not you know we have to make decisions of the least restrictive environment and that's the law and that's also ethically what we need to do around special ed so we didn't we didn't find any other place to do that to look there from an ELL perspective you see that there is the the reduction the tutors has recommended but we didn't recommend any reductions we don't really we're not seeing the same decline in ELL students that we're seeing in the overall student population and so you know when we look there we didn't we didn't feel like we could keep the same level of programming with English language learners we then looked at and I think I spoke a little bit in terms different terms last week but we looked at intervention staff you know folks who are teaching math and literacy for struggling students and at the end we had a conversation and we just we felt like we couldn't do that that we know our students are going to need as much support as possible to acquire the skills at the typical developmental levels we know it's not a typical year and yet we still are deeply passionate about opportunity gap and some of the issues that we know that many of our students have faced a harder time than others during this pandemic and to reduce the amount of intervention staff doesn't feel like something we could do we did make a reduction there last year as you might remember when our budget turned worse with the pandemic we did make a reduction in intervention and we didn't feel like we could make yet another reduction in intervention and doing so would be harmful to students' educational futures we looked at mental health and at the end of the day we feel the same way about intervention as we do about mental health we know our students are going to need you know at least as much mental health staff as as they did in the past if not more given the the harms that the pandemic has had on the well-being of our students and families so again we looked at that and at the end of the day we've made a commitment to as an administrative team to not be recommending reductions in academic or intervention or well-being so it didn't leave too many other places to go to be very blunt with you we've cut supplies some years we cut them last year curriculum materials at the budget that we passed at the Amherst Elementary School and you know what you'll notice about what teacher supplies are is that they stay the same but we live in a world where inflation goes up so in terms of curriculum supplies particularly at the teacher level there's there's a net reduction every year doesn't realize in our budget but they're buying power of what we are able to give them doesn't adjust for inflation I know there was a former school committee member a couple years ago who was shocked he said you mean that just the line doesn't go up every year by one point whatever percent and like nope it stays exactly the same so we didn't feel like we could be reducing the funds that staff have to buy the classroom materials that they need so they're not digging into their pockets and I'm going to be honest about this as much as they already are we know I know our staff members go above and beyond I know that they're spending that I wish that wasn't the case so you know we didn't have there to go so really we ended up with a choice of one of three things one is the budget cut that you saw presented with the rationale that you heard the second one was to we've been down this road before in this district to look at instrumental music and could we push back the start of instrumental music a year and make a reduction the dollar amount would be roughly similar so instead of starting orchestra and third or band and fourth we could push that back a year and we had a lot of debates and discussion about that but at the end of the day we felt like that might eliminate some students from being able particularly the students who don't have the opportunity to start an instrument very young and have private lessons it might eliminate their capacity to continue to play when they hit to middle school and high school so at this point in time and I can't predict what the future will hold in future budgets but for this budget cycle we we we decided not to recommend a reduction instrumental music and the last one is about um para educators who work in the library you know and that was another discussion we had um you know I think one could argue either way in terms of impact and um out of respect for staff I won't do that in public right now but at the end of the day we made the decision we made partially because of the programming and programming needs that we anticipate in terms of literacy and the deep correlation between our library programs and literacy we want students having full access to the library and picking up books and having the experience they haven't had for a very long time next year it also would have involved significant number of riffs um for um employees and so you know that was our thinking in a nutshell again just out of respect for for more you know the employees involved I'm not going to go into greater detail than that but unless there's a specific question someone in the committee wants but this is a really painful process we wish we weren't having the conversations uh we have great people and this was for us a way to um so I could eliminate the impact but minimize the impact um on students and also on staff members as well um yeah I can't say that there's no impact but I think when we were looking at the other things that I just mentioned um that was the the recommendation and the decision that the team came up with thanks are there other questions yes sir I just have one very kind of specific question that I think goes to Dr. Slaughter um when I'm looking at um for example on the technology line or the arts section um it's hard to see the cut and I'm assuming the reason is for the reason um that was just mentioned where if we were going to continue with level services it would be flat so it's just not as increasing as much as we might have expected and that's why you don't see necessarily like a corresponding cut in in say the arts um section of the longer budget document right so so the the items that are in that that last page of the of that document that show the ads and cuts have not been distributed into uh the line by line um so those you know reductions in fte and the reductions in in dollars have not been taken out of the lines uh to date which is why um uh it is a little typical to sort of track that um as you say because we haven't applied it yet to to what it is so what those line by line show is really for the level services as we calculated them and then uh what you're seeing on that final page will be subtracted from what you see in that line by line yeah no it's just going to add that's the same as every year we don't reflect the budget cuts in the line by line until the committee votes um because they're not really cuts yet um or reductions yet um so but what gets published at the end when it's passed by the school committee in the town council in this instance would be would have those cuts reflected but we wouldn't do that until the budget's passed by the elected officials mr. damlin yeah um i mean i'm doctor morse thank you for articulating those additional cuts that you considered um i just want to highlight for everybody who's listening or watching in the public all those cuts are back up for consideration next year if we don't have a level services budget so this is this is why one i feel like the school committee needs to be willing to make difficult cuts that are primarily enrollment based and so that we can uh encourage the town council to seriously consider committing to level services because i mean it's great that we all the things that we're not cutting that uh instrumental music the mental health library powers it's great we're not cutting them this year you know but that means that we've saved it for a year you know it doesn't it's they are certain they're threatened next year and the year after that and the year after that unless we can commit to to level services for the schools not not you know three point x percent budget every year that's not what i mean um you know i you know repeated ad nauseam that i don't feel like all cuts are level services cuts but if if we can show and demonstrate that we are responsibly dutifully making enrollment based cuts but we do not want to cut through the bone of services significantly further i think that's i think that's really the best case we can make for a sustained um operational budget support from the town council that's a um a really good point to sort of make at this point is it's not you know after after a budget is approved for f y 22 it's not okay let's go continue on our way we're going to continue to have and and look at those those um endangered species if you will um for um for future as well if we don't have the level services i did receive some questions um from uh community members uh over the weekend regarding some of the other increases so i think you've answered a lot of the questions dr morris and dr slaughter about sort of where we looked at at cases but i want to come back more specifically um to the special ed increases because i think you you you answered this at a really um general level before but um this special ed increases from year over year um before that one that you know before the before the cuts ads cuts um are going up over a half a million dollars and then so folks in the community have been asking what's driving that um and when i look at it it's it's really exclusively or primarily driven by contracted services and um out of district tuition so i think that i'm reading that but if you could sort of give a little bit more information on sort of what's driving and what's behind some of the increases in special ed that would be helpful yep so uh dr brady is here and i think she probably could speak a little more depth than dr slaughter myself um about um special ed and some of the increases based on student need do you mind filling us in dr brady thank you for joining us as well sure sure um thank you for the questions and the interest in special ed and um i am aware that when people look at the special ed costs um they can be substantial for a district and i think we're fortunate to have a district that kind of honors and respects the education of all of our students even those who may need some more or things differently than a student with a typical learning profile so um so i think when when you look at our budget there's there's a few things that um really stand out as the reason that you'll see an increase particularly this year um from last year so what we have um so we also see our students move from six to seventh grade so sometimes the shift is just from amherst to region um wherein districts when you have you know a pre-k through 12 you don't see that fluctuation in a budget in the same way as you might see between amherst and region but what we have been um seeing increasing in the last um several years is a change in the level of need of students who are enrolling in our district either they're beginning with us as age three or they sometimes are moving in from other places for us um so we've had um certainly we as dr mar said earlier we have a number of specialized programs which reduce our need to send students to schools outside of our district um which is wonderful for our students because they're able to learn alongside their typically developing peers which we know by research um is the best outcome for for all students however there are times that our specialized programs um don't meet the needs and we have to look elsewhere we also are seeing students coming in with a host of many other health related issues and medical issues that require a level of personnel support that is more specialized and more intensive than we have had in general in our staffing so when you see an increase in contracted services it may be for um an individual student or a couple or several individual students who have needs that in order to um successfully participate in the school day needs some other support with them at that time um the other thing that I think and I believe um Dr. Slaughter has um described this from time to time is that we do have funding from other sources that offsets our special ed budget but that fluctuates from year to year so we have what's called circuit breaker and we submit our claims for um students who have higher costs on an annual basis but what we get back doesn't apply to that year it's for a couple years down the road so sometimes our current needs and our offset from circuit breaker is from a year that maybe the claiming was less so you'll see a more up and down we also um have and it gets a little complex but school choice students who have IEPs we have another um funding source called school claims and we submit for reimbursement for those students for their IEP related services those get reimbursed at 100 percent that's not the same as um circuit breaker and I know um Mr. Demling um advocates for that on an ongoing basis at the state level so um that would be wonderful if that increased at some point but there's no promises on the horizon for that um so I think those kind of really are some I'm hesitant to go into any more detail because um sometimes too much detail of special ed becomes identifiable for students so I always stay away from that but those are really some of the elements that go into what you will see in the fluctuation of a special ed budget um I do want to just make one last point and then I will stop kind of going on you can ask me any questions you would like um other than increases what we do on an ongoing basis is look at our staffing and our our numbers of students and the needs of students so you'll see this year that we were we reduced a special ed teacher um in the Amherst um system not because that was a trying to pare down and do less but when we looked at our students' needs in the programming we no longer needed that for this year I can't make you a promise for next year what might be but that's why special ed is always developed based upon the needs of the students um and as much as we can project them as well it was kind of long-winded so I apologize but it's a big topic no that was that was really really helpful I think actually you did a um give a really good concise uh uh overview of a complex topic so thank you um I think one of the things too that that um I'm going to ask the question I feel like I probably know the answer but um I think it'd be good to hear hear um to hear that in public is unlike some other areas of um of our education that we might be providing in our schools like technology or art or music we don't I guess as a stated as a question we don't have as much flexibility in deciding what we offer or what support we provide it's defined by the student need and to your point the staffing decisions and support services and spending is driven by what the child needs as opposed to do we want a classroom with 10 kids or 20 kids or 25 kids right is that yeah I can I can give you the the quick answer it's a doctor bradyism which is uh the I and IEP is the most important letter because it's about the individualized right and it's about the individual student and the individual program and what services do they require um to have full access to the curriculum and so um you can definitely go share more dr brady but I think you know I think that's a line I hear frequently from others even dr brady would say you know but I think it really summarizes how we approach special education and I think it acknowledges that we have these things called programs and even the quote unquote program uh for an individual student two students in the same program their individual program may look quite different so if you think of something like building blocks which is a specialized special education program housed at Fort River that's not to saying that two students in building blocks one student may send significantly more time in the gen ed classroom than another student but their needs align in as much where we can staff it in a way where both get the support they need for full access to the curriculum so we're not giving services that students don't need it's really setting up structures so that students can get what they need so that they can fully access the curriculum that fair dr brady sounds perfect thank you mr demling yeah a couple other comment or question dr morris so one comment you know um you know the harsh reality of special education uh for some parents in in the state and the country is that um one way that districts and schools keep their special education costs down especially for their intensive students is that they're hostile to providing services for their for the students you know you you discourage the the service from being offered you don't inform parents you take advantage of language barriers um unfortunately this is not terribly uncommon with charter schools because if a parent doesn't get what they need in a charter school they go back to this ending district and then the sending district takes care of them um this is obviously an abhorrent horrific practice but it happens um i'm thankful that that's not the case here and so that goes to our legal and moral obligation um you know on the plus side i want to just put a finer point on the this notion of out of district costs and obviously you know we want to do what is best for the student always and you know if if a student needs to go out of district in order to get what they need for the education you know that we then we we provide that um but um dr morse correct me if i'm wrong we have a very high percentage of our students stay in district compared to other districts and not only is that the i think the ethical thing to do i mean my my son benefited from that and i really appreciated that so not only that the the right thing to do for their education the education of their peers as well um but it's typically the more cost effective so if you're just looking at this from a spreadsheet point of view of how efficient are we at spending our special ed dollars um the fact that we have such a high percentage of our special leeds kids in district is is a testament to that but is that is that a fair statement it is yeah and i think you know the challenge for many districts and and i want to thank people here before dr brady and myself is they recognize that um i remember being a first or second year teacher i think my first year uh and then superintendent you know at convocation talked about the need to build up our specialized programs within our district um and and some of that was really cost-based you know and that's no critique of that individual but it was it was that the cost for spiraling out of control uh for students who are leaving our district and i think what we found is as the district of the last 20 years has built special education programs within the district that can accommodate and support most not everyone but most of our students that there's not only been some financial positive impact but also all the other pieces that you mentioned about students staying within the community not taking very long bus rides we do not live in the most populous area there's not special ed programs within a 10 mile radius for all of our students these are these are pretty far away and that has large impacts and it sometimes is forces and it does even within our own district questions about more at the secondary level about residential program just because the distance is so far um so i think there's a lot of benefits to it i think where it gets a little complicated the numbers is that where districts put the costs of at a district student sometimes makes it look like you know the costs are in different cost centers right um so in some districts so it's hard to do apples to apples comparison um but we think it's better for students and we do think it's better for the budget as well dr brady on if you did anything you wanted to add to that point yeah no um i just want to say that i think that one of the things that our community values so much is the input of the community as we're looking at our program so our specialized programs might have maintained the same name um but the staff who are working in there will tell you that the programs have changed routinely year after year based upon the profile of the student as to what are the related service personnel what is the design of the program so we're constantly changing things based upon what the student needs are that are making up those grade levels at that time and i do want to to just say kind of the one other piece when you talk about the i and the i up that teams i up teams who make those decisions one of the things that this district does a great job at is really valuing the partnership of families versus i think what you were saying mr demling where um there are some districts that just like drive those ips in a way that really silences families and intimidates them i might say and that's not something that um we will have happened in this district um i don't think our personnel nor our families and our special apparent advisory committee um we really work very closely with them they look closely at things they ask good questions they help us grow and develop our programming in a way that um really addresses our community's values of how to educate our students thanks any more um um further questions either on this special end topic or other questions about the cuts in the budget overall dr morris yeah so what i should have started with was the framing is uh we're asking the committee to vote on the budget tonight um so i should have started with why we're talking about the budget it's this is an hearing this is looking for a budget vote because the town manager has a budget that actually we are by charter need to have a past budget by thursday uh we don't have a meeting scheduled for tomorrow so i'm hoping that we get a vote on some budget tonight you know if if there's adjustments and more feedback that's fine but you know if it's the budget as presented that's fine too but that is the context that by charter and the departments need to have a presented budget to the town manager by april first i think i think we did say that we just didn't say the the deadline yeah sorry yeah i should have been more explicit at the beginning my apologies so i i'm just looking at my um school committee colleagues to um find out um are we feeling are we feeling like we're ready to to move to a vote or is there further discussion questions or adjustments we'd like like saw a finger going up on mr dimley i don't know if you had a question no okay mr hangton did you have anything that you wanted to add or say sorry to put you on the spot but oh no problem no well no i mean the only thing that i have to add to it is that i mean this is this is tough and it's difficult to have any kind of cuts but like i am relieved that we're not looking at like reductions in services and and these sorts of things and so it's about where i am but i am i feel like i'm ready to move on this tonight right now do we um unlike uh other committees we there's there isn't any stipulated language for our motion is there okay no it is a little bit easier than regionals yeah mr dimley i moved to approve the f y 22 budget for the amherst school district for 24 386 522 as presented i'll second that moved by dimley and seconded by mcdonald there any further discussion seeing none moved to a roll call vote mr dimley dimley i mr herrington herrington i miss spitzer spitzer i and mcdonald i the motion passes unanimously our next item is um april return update so i'll hand it back over to you dr more sure so um i will we've talked a lot about this i just this would be sort of quick updated points um each of our elementary schools one might be happening right now actually i think fort rivers is happening right now um but having a session for families who are returning just for uh last minute questions comments about what the return will look like um and um you know so i think um i think there's one tonight and i think the other two schools are tomorrow night um so that the principals and other folks can be in front of families and be able to talk through uh dismissal procedures arrival procedures those are big topics because we have so many people driving their cars i want to thank the facilities and transportation department we have every student on the bus and the only student who will be seated next to another student is if those two students live in the same home that is no easy feat that is not required by the state but that's the care that our folks put into putting those routes together and i was a sickler so i apologize publicly to mr. Roy Clark miss jones and and uh and randy mr civilly as well but uh it mattered so we we've successfully kind of kind of been able not we've successfully implemented the system we had originally developed even though the guidance has changed to be less stringent we're still able to meet those demands all the bus lists were emailed out yesterday to families so we're in good shape with the transportation uh families do we're informed of this there was a change in teacher uh whether they stayed remote or in person so that all went out last wednesday so we have classrooms um all set all that's done in power school so that people will be ready to go particularly in remote students on monday morning when they're going to be in different classrooms and they'll be in a new google classroom for some students staff members have had an asynchronous day or will have an asynchronous day later this week to get either classroom either virtual or in person ready and collaborate on the transition because we had a significant number of students change change classrooms i think over the weekend we sent an email out to all families just about the updates to the safety protocols that are on our website the safety protocols have been on our website but with the change in guidance our team of nurses uh went through that and did some updating to safety protocols since it was it was raised in public comment i think it's worth noting um about contract tracing and notification we are still following the department of public health and desi guidance that if there is a positive case close contacts will have very direct communication about that and all that goes along with being a close contact and potential quarantine but the whole school all staff and families will receive a generic letter that lets them know there was a positive case in their school environment so there's a very specific communication that involves a phone call from the nursing staff for anyone who's suspected of being a close contact after contract tracing occurs and and then everybody does get communication i really think our nurses they want to say it again because they put in and ben you've seen this as well just an incredible amount of work and care into implementing all the different protocols and being great resources for our schools both for staff and for families and robin's super not in particular who's in the nurse manager role and has been really doing fabulously in terms of shepherding us through uh ever evolving uh guidance that we continue to receive um so all of that is on our website it was all emailed out to families over the weekend um i'm gonna do a fun one so you know we spend so much time talking about health and safety obviously for a really important reason but we also don't want to forget that we want to make this as a joyous an event for students and staff as possible i think it's easy to get lost and i've heard from other superintendents who've been back in person longer than we have and one of the things they say is you know we obviously have to focus on health and safety but we can't make that the only focus of students returning um so something i want to thank dibbis moorland and sasha figaroa and i i think i always call this the wrong thing but you know there's those backdrops that you could see where it's behind and you can take a picture in front of it um like they'll have it at celebration so we have them coming for each of our schools um and let's see if i can share all four of them well you know three of them because palums doesn't relate to you but i think i'm really happy with them they look great and they're going to be coming in a little later this week you could see crocker farm and you know these are large you know five by five foot by seven foot panels would stand so that students can can have their picture taken and be welcomed back and you could see fort river with their logo and wildwood as well and if you're curious about our neighbors in palom i'll just keep on scrolling through to see the last one as well um but you know while that may seem less important the health and safety i think it's just an artifact of the way we're approaching this is is it's clearly that we're working hard about health and safety making sure we're doing all the best practices uh but we're also making sure that we're making it fun and it has to be both right we have to get that right that balance between uh yes it's not school quote unquote as usual but it's also the joy has to come through and i think our teachers who have done the volunteer return have done an outstanding job over at wildwood bit today and i've been over since they returned uh at the beginning of the towards the end of last week and been at crocker farm so they've been back a little while and you know you what you see is students coming back joyous and i was in a fifth grade classroom last week at wildwood and principal nick asked you know what do you like about being back in person and the hand shot right up this is their second day back in person it's friday i believe and so many students had you know really interesting things i mean there was to the point of once in saying i'm seeing things in 3d and you know that sounds like a silly comment it wasn't at all meant to be like a silly comment of uh pre-adolescent it was like no it's like weird to actually see things in 3d um so many people said you know i get to see my friends and talk to my friends but so much of it was around that sense of the community on the second day that that teacher at wildwood had created already most of the students were from from that classroom but you know in all of our in-person classrooms there's a mix right there's some students who are transitioning so we want to do things that envelop students in the community field of both the school as well as the classroom as well as implementing the health and safety and i think that balance is just a really important thing and what i've heard from other superintendents who went one way or the other is they they really express trying to stay attuned to the balance that our students need as they return and our staff needs as they return to buildings and that's the way we're approaching it so i know that was a little just like a fun thing and perhaps less serious but i think it's just it's an artifact of the way we're approaching it and also the talents of some folks who work with me because i think you all know me well enough to know i could not do those things either digitally or figure out the company and you know all those details but we want we want there to be artifacts of this and i think one way to make artifacts is is that photos do a good job of that and you know to have a specialized photo is something that we're really looking to be able to implement next week and have an artifact of what it felt like in the spring of 2000 2001 coming back to the building after not being there for many students for over a year so we think it's really important to approach it with that lens and certainly i'm happy to take any questions but that's that's sort of my spiel for return to school we're just thrilled to see the kids more of them sorry at least on the red screen mr damling yeah thank you for the update and for the contact tracing so there was i just wanted to re-clarify for you on on something you said there so there were some claims made in the press that families may not be notified if there's a positive covid case in the building unless their child's considered to have been in close contact with the individual who tested positive i think i heard you say the opposite but because it was covered in the press as a claim could you just re-clarify what you stated there on the contact tracing and the notifications that parents will receive yeah so anytime there's a positive test of any individual who's been in school whether student or staff everyone in that school community families and staff members would be notified that there was a positive case of someone who'd been in the building and this is very similar to all the way back in the fall where we did have a positive what was believed to be anyway at that point a positive test at Fort River right of students were slated to return and the state has those general generalized letters and this is in our contact tracing document on our website that was emailed the last sentence on that page talks about the communication goes to everyone in that community so it's not just kind of me casually saying it it's in the documents formally that were drafted and sit on our website as we speak mr herrington you know slightly lighter letter note i was going to say the uh like i'm i'm really happy to hear about the the backdrops and you know kids having the little selfie backdrop a little star thing because personally i think the value of a positive childhood memory is like immeasurable right and after this insanely abnormal year or year and a half actually i mean i think that's we have to celebrate every little bright and shining light and that is a huge wearing bright and shiny light that a lot of kids are going to actually enjoy so i'm i'm really hearty to hear that after this year thank you yeah i'm lucky to work with good people i will i will join that that um train and saying i that just makes warms my heart to to like i'm looking forward to seeing those artifacts as you described them with the students returning um i do want to circle back to another sort of um back to mr dimling's comment about the um what was reported in the press the comment about um uh the contact tracing um for students who may not be able to communicate um adequately or appropriately about sort of who they've been in touch with and to what extent some other adults that are in the school or have been in contact with those that student will be involved in sort of providing contacts for tracing yeah so the contract tracing process really um tries to balance the the need and the right of privacy with the need to gather the information from public health so you know if rob was here she could describe it probably a little better than me but essentially the nurses have been trained on this they've done contract tracing with the town for months now and they have to get to a threshold where they believe they have enough information to make a judgment based on the age of the child potential disability other factors that would contribute that's going to determine how many others need to be involved in the contract tracing kind of investigation so to speak and so for students who aren't able to communicate accurately uh for a whole host of reasons that's where more people and particularly more adults would get involved in the contract tracing but that's where we trust our nurses who have been trained in this process to make those judgments um there are there are professionals there are experts in this area um and they're you know the balance of privacy and getting to the bottom public health they're not going to sacrifice the public health if they're uncertain on a contract tracing front they're going to keep on going until they meet the threshold by which they're comfortable that that process is complete and they've experienced doing that in a variety of settings as well as the training that they received and support we received from Emma Dragon in the town of Amherst as well so you know I think much like Dr Brady said before every case is individual and what they tell me about COVID is that in their experience every case really is individual that the number of factors that go into their decision making in that matrix is really large but certainly uh an individual student's ability to communicate especially in elementary school student's ability to communicate is going to be a factor at the secondary level frankly what other folks find is it's not so much the ability to communicate for most students it's much more about the willingness to communicate and that's a different challenge uh prefer different committees so you don't have to manage that one so much tonight thank you and that's helpful um any other questions regarding the return to school not seeing any thank you for that that update um moving on to our next item is uh update on the MSBA elementary school building project sure um so this is this is a truly a brief update so the good news is because I think I updated you from the MSB meeting that happened all the way last month but we are on pace to be meeting the building committee to get to the June MSBA meeting and hire an owner's project manager Dwayne Chambl who works in the family center is on the building committee and he is the school-based rep on the OPM hiring committee I was involved a little bit in just some feedback on the drafting based on my experience both in my current job but also having been on a building committee before and just what potential needs of an OPM are so I gave my feedback to that process uh Kathy Chain who's the chair has been incredibly uh and I mean this only in the positive way but dogged about making sure we stay on timeline so many thanks to to her to keeping our group on task and on time which you know isn't always easy um I learned a lot from her she's great and so um that all the documents and this is I think the maybe the most important thing to note for both the committee and the public is every time we think we're done we submit for instance the OPM the ad that would potentially look for request for proposal from OPM it needs to go to MSBA legal MSBA legal invariably even though we're using their template finds a couple things for us to fix or questions for us we then respond it goes back to MSBA and that's an iterative process every single time we have a submittal or any in any single time we're submitting anything even if it's not to them but to the central registry for getting bids and that's just the way the process works for MSBA so I know it's it's um from the outside it could feel like why does this take as long as it takes and their level of detail and project management the support they give us around managing this project is huge but that also goes with um delays so we thought we were done we use their template we sent it to them they came back with multiple questions and feedback to integrate and that's that that's how they operate and honestly that's why they run a very healthy good organization is they are on top of the large and the small and if you if you ever get to you know involve the very very what seems to the outside very minutia details but for them it's not small because they've seen where projects have have had troubles when they haven't been producing documents that have all their required elements so next building committee I believe is a week from tomorrow we meet early in the morning I think it's 7.45 or 7.30 something like that looking at Mr. Harrington somewhere in that vicinity at that point we'll get an update for how the process is going from the group that is going to be looking at the bids and ranking the owner project managers and then eventually making a recommendation of the full committee for selection and is there anything I'm missing from that update I don't know if there's any questions I just wanted to say thank you to Mr. Harrington and Dr. Morris for staying on that committee I watched a lot of it the last time and man is that a long slog all the way through you know and I just hope that you don't get burnt like pace yourself like don't get burned out like I remember like the the long stretches of just administrative minutiae and just try and get through all that and it can be not the most scintillating thing in the world sometimes but you know thank you for that it's and it really does sound like the people on the committee are really committed Kathy she chairs JCPC as well so I know what you mean when she says she's dogged and you know Dwayne is great so it's a really great group of people we have there you know thanks to the town manager for his appointment participation in that process and you know thank you for attending all those meetings all I can say that you haven't been right now thank you yeah I mean I think the group is also functioning really well as a committee I mean that's probably the other thing worth noting is that even when we make subcommittees when we do this work you know I feel like everyone's really committed to moving forward as expeditionously as we can as long as we're you know dotting our eyes crossing our t's and and the kind of disbursement of responsibilities I think is working out very well great any other questions or comments so we'll move on to our next item which is the update on JCPC and the capital plan so I'm going to look to our JCPC reps Ms. Spitzer and Mr. Demling to introduce this um I always feel like we're caught off guard here Ms. Spitzer like this comes up and I'm expecting somebody else to run it so Dr. Morse I don't know if we have in a convenient place the list of the capital items um if if you're searching around for that like the the list of capital proposal items from the school um Dr. Slaughter would be more likely to have it I see at least his silhouette is still on the call I don't know if he's literally still on the call but he's probably quicker able to there he I can stall for a minute or two um whatever okay um yeah so basically we're almost at the end of the JCPC process this Thursday we we vote the final report um it's been kind of a weird experience for me I'll just be honest um we you know we've intensively met I think everybody has been pretty dutiful about it and you know we heard the presentations and we talked a lot about this and that and then and in the end it sounds like so we haven't voted yet um what we're doing a couple days but based on the discussion last week of the draft report it sounds like the committee is going to essentially support what was originally proposed um which even though it is only eight and a half percent capital I'm a little disappointed in given the the pain that's going on in the operations budget um I most of my comments were around hey can't we shave a little money off of this and and shift shift some of the financial attention back to to the ops budget but there wasn't really widespread support for that um in terms of the schools um there was pretty much you know like like every other department support but there is some language in our in our report that we're still working on um that says that if if there is money to be had from the school and town technology um budgets like lines that that could be reallocated to a sustainability line item it's a lot of talk about having a hundred thousand dollar sustainability line item for for various projects um and uh we were just sort of batting language back and forth around about that I didn't I didn't want to just speaking for myself I didn't want to make it too weak so that it could just be dipped into and uh to the detriment of the school or the town IT needs um given that given that Mr. Schlatter was one of the only presenters who was kind enough to offer up some place to cut um if if it was needed um but that's that's that's about where we're at um um Mr. Spitzer I don't know if you had anything to add no I think the only other thing that's relevant to the schools is kind of a request that we look into no surprise um finding hybrid or electric vehicles for the for the van replacements so it's going to be probably coming coming down the pipeline at us um um yeah so I think I think it's been a good learning experience good process um don't have much to add but if anybody has questions I'm sure Peter or Mr. Demling and I would be happy to to answer any um I don't have any questions Mr. Demling sorry um I kept meaning to ask this one before Dr. Morris um so for accessible playground crocker farm I presume this means the the playground in the back um it's a few fiscal years from now um but I just I just wanted to ask you about it in general I know it's not in the greatest of shape um and it's I'm just looking at the spreadsheet right now real time so and it's not on the plan until FY24 is is there is there anything we could do to kind of shore that place up for for the kids before we get to FY24 um yeah I think some of the accessibility challenges are the slope of the hill there's not like if you if you think about the lower playground at Crocker Farm there's the accessible path to get there so I think that's less about just to be blunt I don't think that's as much about shoring it up as is is providing liberal access um so I don't want people to get too excited but that slope is really large and that's really where I think a lot of the focus is there may be some equipment that's possible but a lot of it's creating a way to get there for students who have mobility challenges um so you know I'm happy to think about um playgrounds in general I mean I think you know what's a little odd is that you know 10 12 years ago maybe a little more both Fort River and Wildwood and and a little bit before that excuse me both Crocker Farm and Fort River had major playground projects and a little before that Wildwood and um they've lasted well they've done our students they've done our students wonderfully and all three of them are starting to show signs of wear and tear um so I think it might be a broader conversation about how to approach play spaces in general um especially as we see the benefits of like the updated graph park if any of you have been there um and how much that has transformed that play area but I think it's something that actually within the next couple years we're going to have to talk about for all three schools um because all of them are showing significant signs and obviously with the building project maybe we don't have to do as much at two of the schools if we're really going to replace one or more uh within the next five years but Crocker's not going anywhere so um I think it's a worthwhile conversation but I just wanted to clarify that that's really about access and not um about that much more in terms of the elements of it any other uh questions and thank you both for putting in all the time and and representing us on the jcpc thank you um great next up is uh future agenda planning um I can would you like me to speak to a little bit to this yeah that would be great so the next meeting we have scheduled the April meeting is April 13th um although potentially we could also do it April 27th so I suppose that's a conversation that um that people could have but as it stands now it's April 13th uh we would do an in-person learning up return update uh msba update um I put on at least tentatively the grants piece that um the spits are talked about I think at that point in two weeks we should have more clarity about the stimulus funds and how we might want to approach that I'll have more information about virtual school um options and that actually may be worthwhile depending what I find out next week um to have is its own option in terms of for fiscal year 22 um if the committee and the community are interested in maintaining that option what that would look like um it would be very different than this year my understanding although I'll find out more Monday is I believe it has to be its own approved school within the district that's how it formerly was before COVID um so I think it's not a decision that like is a casual one and I don't mean it was casual this year of what virtual school looks like but we just did it we didn't you know it wasn't like uh an application it was part of you know so I do think that may be something we want to talk about in two weeks uh because I think the timeline of making a decision on that and applying to the state won't be we can't do that in August you know we'll have to make a decision sooner than that so those are the topics I had anyway on the that uh agenda planning sheet I don't know if there were other topics that folks wanted to add Mr. Gemely yeah I was just thinking about timing and before you said we might need to meet in two weeks Dr. Morris I was I was gonna just throw out there is it feasible to to wait until the 27th just because I feel like after more than a year we should probably start to try and claw back a normal meeting schedule um not not just for our own personal sanity although that's a nice side benefit but like for for our you know administrators and teachers who have to you know as I've seen show up to these meetings on occasionally um prepare for them um they're gonna be pretty flat out preparing for the return of in person and I feel like now that we're past the major things of return to in person learning in the budget it's not that we're gonna want for things to talk about as Dr. Morris just itemized um but if it was um I mean I'm happy to meet if we need to and that's gonna help your planning out Dr. Morris but if it's um if there are things that we can start to queue up for um a more a more regular schedule that would be at least something to shoot for I think. My head was going there as well um and then the question would be we have a this tonight's meeting was one that we added in um so the next meeting after the after the 27th that we have slotted Pennsylvania I should say is on the 11th so then the question would be do we move that out um you know to try to get back to sort of the monthly meeting approach and cadence but we don't have to address that right now Ms. Spitzer. So one thing I'm thinking of when you talk about the virtual school um question is I think that's two things I'm thinking about one is is that a conversation that needs to go across districts is it going to be um and if so if there's any advantage to trying to schedule a meeting where it's included in some of the other districts you work for I'm not a big fan of having the huge meetings but I'm just the the other thing is that also kind of spans districts is a little bit about the fact that we're going to eventually need to to start working in some meetings where we start talking about the evaluation um and I think maybe that's a conversation I'd be you know can start having offline to um to just start planning that out but um and that's again something that I think might be worthwhile especially because of the overlap this year in in goals that we want to consider creating another joint meeting to I'm not sure when the right timing is I think that's a big to talk about in in an agenda item um in the future potentially in a different district but it it does affect the district as well. Yeah no on the first one um I'd love it if we could make applications as a joint district um they generally um don't allow for that and I do think in this case actually I would be thinking about a virtual school differently at the elementary level than secondary level um and I think yeah I'll leave it there because I don't want to go into the actual item but I think that there's a need it might benefit us to have a elementary specific conversation about virtual school. I can imagine Pelham potentially being involved but I don't think that should be the front end of making a joint meeting that way but I think for a whole host of reasons I think it should be start at least at an Amherst level. We do have oh I'm sorry I was just gonna say the evaluation thing I'm happy to follow up offline of what makes sense Miss Spitzer. Yeah we had um tentatively slotted in um having the artifacts presentation the second week of June well actually I guess it's the third week um June 15th and the evaluation on the 29th that's probably um compressed overly much quite ambitious but um we also vote on the instrument um so that's the one right we review it and we vote on it and I'm not saying it's really easy to do all that again but it's typical. But yes I agree with the notion that it would be good to start talking about that now so that we're not squeezing that in all in June. Anything else um so we're we've shifted we're not meeting on the 13th we're planning to meet on the 27th um and in-person learning return update MSBA update grants discussion virtual school discussion and question mark on the superintendent evaluation timeline which we have time to for you folks to talk offline. Anything more? We um just just for heads up um we had talked about just so folks see what's coming down the pike later in May the May meeting was when we were going to talk about sibling policy for students in specialized programs um proper farm long-term capital planning and 2021-22 preschool planning so those were sort of tentatively what we've slotted in for May. Mr. Demley? I know this is dependent on another committee um are we still thinking we're going to be able to talk about uh sixth grade to the to the middle school at the Amherst level given the sequence of region discussions at first and then the sending this way? Yeah um the region discussion is happening on the fourth so potentially the Amherst committee could be talking about it on the or at least having a separate conversation I'm not sure if the region will be in a decision point after the fourth. Great okay. There were two gifts that came in and they because they just came in late it didn't make it to the agenda so um I mean it wasn't reasonably anticipated but I don't know how the committee feels about that it could certainly wait or you could consider them tonight they were in the packet however they were added to the packet. Oh I didn't download the new packet but I do have a few warrants to read so Oh I'm sorry I apologize for getting ahead of you. I don't remember the order that we usually do warrants and gifts but um I'll read I'll read the warrants and then we can come back on the question on the uh the gifts. Sorry I just take a moment to I uh Allison McDonald authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $25,908.45 for the warrant dated April 2nd 2021 this includes general fund expenses of $24,257.77 revolving fund expenses of $300 grant fund expenses of $330 behavioral mental assuming that's a fund or is that a grant I don't know what it but um of $842.15 a gift to the school of $178.53 and I signed that today March 30th I have two more sorry um I Allison McDonald authorized by my signature to payables the amount of $132,103.77 for a warrant dated March 26th 2021 this includes general fund expenses of $119,318.29 grant fund expenses of $875 carers act fund of $994.65 behavioral and mental health fund of $6,939.50 a gift to the school of $100 an article 14 funds of $3,976.33 and I signed that today March 30th and one more I authorized payroll in the amount of $641,116.53 dated March 24th 2021 and I signed that on March 22nd 2021 and now we can consider the gifts if the committee is is amenable to uh looking at our gifts tonight you'd like me to display them that would be helpful because I don't I didn't download the packet sorry yep I'm happy to make the motion because I have them up excellent okay um so I moved that the embers school committee um except the following gift from Martha Oliver number 995,988 and 995,964 um to support the crop crop reform at the principal's discretion in the amount of $20 and I also moved to um that the embers school committee except a gift from Claudia Donald to of a Selmers Aldo saxophone which is a donation with an estimated value of $800. I'll second and move by Spitzer seconded by McDonald uh any discussion we'll move to a roll call vote Mr. Deming. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Spitzer aye and McDonald aye the motion passes unanimously and we've come to the okay that we're 10 minutes early that never happens um I will move to adjourn is there a second second moved by McDonald seconded by Spitzer there's no discussion any roll call vote Mr. Deming. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. And McDonald aye we are adjourned. Good night.