 Seeing the process of a quorum, we'll call it order of this meeting of the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee. The first item of business is to enter an executive session and the court is open meeting law master general on chapter 30a section 21a pursuant to purpose to conduct collective bargaining sessions relative to AFSCME because the chair finds that an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the committee and I do so and move the motion. Is there a second? Second. It's moved and seconded. The roll call of vote will begin on the... The Nino aye. It's our aye. Ordonas aye. Nakajima aye. Kosenski aye. McDonald aye. Astley aye. Okay. It is unanimous. We move into the session. We'll return to our regular session following that executive session. I love this. A return to open session and approved minutes of June 12, 2018. This is a perfect direction, Steph. So we will look at the minutes of June 12, 2018 and entertain a motion to approve the minutes of June 12, 2018. So moved. There's a second. Second. It's been moved and seconded. Are there any amendments to the minutes? I would like the minutes to reflect that I was in attendance at the meeting. I think Audra was in attendance only once. She's listed twice. There you go. It was doubly there. Any other amendments? Seeing none. All those in favor of approving the minutes of June 12, 2018 signify I'll be raising your hand. Okay. Any opposed? Abstentions? There's many no abstains. The minutes are approved. Vote on the APAA and ASB contracts. We're going to just run it down here. Here we are. You have anything you want to say? Not much. Just real quick. The units for meeting with us many times over the summer and fall and spring and thank the school committee for the support and in particular Anastasia who was part of all the many meetings and many hours that we spent negotiating these contracts. Do you want to tell anyone what the increases are? Yep. So there's two contracts being voted on. One is the APAA, which is for the administrators and one is AFSCME, which is for custodian drivers and maintainers. And so both agreed to wage increases the same as APAA, which is a 2% increase in FY19 for people on the top step only and a $300 one-time payment for everybody else, a 1.5% increase for FY20 and a 2% increase for FY21. Any questions from the committee? Seeing none. Any additional comments? Yes. I just want to also thank the units for their hard work to negotiate in good faith and also just to comment that this was a very difficult budget year for us as we all know. And I think thanks to the unit's willingness to negotiate we were able to find, I don't think everyone was incredibly happy with everything that we came up with, but we were able to provide increases to them to maintain their high standards of work and to thank them for their high standards of work and also to ensure that we can continue doing the work that we're doing in the district. So I just wanted to give them the thanks for that and also to Mr. Mangano for just taking all the care and time that he's taken as someone pointed out in our committee. He wears many hats. That's perfect. So we should move these separately. So I'd entertain a motion to approve the APAA contract as presented. So moved. Is there a second? Second. And moved and seconded. Any further discussion? Questions or comments? Seeing none, all those in favor of approving the APAA contract signify I'll be raising your hand. Here is unanimously. I'd entertain a motion for the AFSCME contract. I'll move to approve the AFSCME contract. Is there a second? Second. It's been moved and seconded. Any further questions, debates, comments regarding this contract? Seeing none, all those in favor signify I'll be raising your hand. It carries unanimously. Thank you Mr. Mangano. Thank you. What time is it anyways? 10 o'clock. 8 minutes to 7. Right. 8 minutes to 7. So we are running a little bit ahead. But as our agenda says, all times are approximate. So I'm inclined to move ahead and see how long this goes. I might even go to 7 in which case anyone there at 7 will still be here and be able to do something oddly rounded out and metaphysical about that I think. So as we discussed previously around announcements, I think we're going to stick with our current approach. I won't call it an official policy because it's actually an adjustment from the official policy. We're keeping to the three minute comment rule. I think we have help hitting the timer for three minutes. People want to come forward, come forward and identify yourself by name and you'll have three minutes to speak. As mentioned earlier, the other rules that we had around that regulated the content of the speech are suspended at the moment and will be undoubtedly an item of further discussion and investigation by the committee going forward. So public comment period is open. If anyone would like to make a comment, come forward, present your name and you'll have three minutes. All right. Can you guys hear me? Yeah. My name is Rena Holder and I'm just going to read a letter that I wrote to the school committee. My name is Rena Holder and I'm writing to you as a staff member of Amherst Regional Middle School. As the school year has come to an end and I'm not returning to arms in the fall, I would like to take this opportunity to address some of the points in the letter that was sent to the school committee members on June 12th and to talk about my experience as a young woman of color at arms working under this administration. I joined the arms team in fall of 2014. During my first two years working at arms, I had a positive experience with the administration that was present at the time. I felt supported and respected by the principal and was able to receive feedback through the evaluation process and how it could continue to improve as a guidance counselor. With the current administration that we have, I have not been evaluated in two years. The letter that was written to school committee members dated June 12th stated with the following statement, 52 members of the staff signed a letter in support of the positive development of our school under Patty Bowdy's leadership. When I read the letter, it did not reflect my experience as a member and I did not sign the letter. My experience under this administration leadership from 2016 to 2018 has been far from positive. It has been hard for me over the last two years to come to work every day in an environment that is not collaborative with the administration does not communicate respectfully with all staff and where I have been marginalized and not treated as a professional who has been in the district for the past four years. Another statement I would like to address is we have a history of collaboration and shared decision making together we work to identify and solve problems and to improve our school. Although this statement was true at one point, it is not with the current administration. In the first month, I met with Ms. Bowdy and I met with her along with two of my colleagues to talk about lack of communication, collaboration and support that we felt were necessary in order to best support our students. After that meeting, we noticed an improvement for Ms. Bowdy and felt that we were moving in the right direction, but that did not last long. As the school year progressed, a colleague of mine brought to my attention the way that Ms. Bowdy was speaking and interacting with me that was different than how she was with my colleagues on the mental health team. This school year, I really started to notice that and she was micromanaging me and needing to be involved in all decisions about my students. This was something that she was not doing to the other members of the mental health team. During our weekly child study meetings, it was becoming apparent to me that Ms. Bowdy would be short tempered in how she spoke to me and would always suggest that she or one of the assistant principals be involved in my meetings with parents. Again, this was something that was not done to other members. Other members of the team were not questions and spoke about the way they worked to do with the students that I was or spoke to the way that I was spoken to. Due to these interactions, in April of 2018, I had to file a complaint against Ms. Bowdy. This constant treatment for Ms. Bowdy and the administration team members started to have a negative effect on my self-esteem and my capabilities as a guidance counselor. I started to doubt myself and think that I was not a good counselor to my students who are my priority. I have watched a divided community among the staff here and the middle school if you do not agree with the majority of people who are shunned and not spoken to. The staff is afraid to change, afraid of new ideas from new leadership, and if you do not agree with them, then you are considered unsupported. And moving forward, my hope is that no one from the current administration team can, from the current administration continuing leadership position in this school. I leave this school district with a heavy heart. It saddens me that this district is losing another person of color where diversity among staff is so important to our students of color. I have made lasting friendships among some staff who will remember the warm caring parents that I've interacted with and most importantly the children who I've come to school for every day. Thank you. Is there any further public comments? Can you reset? Hi, Tiffany Tibodeau, Amherst Regional Middle School teacher and President Amherst. I'm just going to read a letter and I guess it just goes to tell you that not everyone has the same shared experiences. Dear Amherst Regional School Committee, Amherst Regional Middle School staff have been seeking your support in the support of the district for the last few months regarding the leadership at arms. The timing of our situation is unfortunate and summer is upon us. Many staff members are still concerned about the future of the school, its students, and the community heading into the fall and beyond. Please revisit our letters of the past few school committee meetings and consider our request for maintaining stability in the positive work that has occurred under the leadership of Patty Bode, Alicia Lopez, and David Rainett. The elementary school principals are being given the opportunity to look at their leadership structure and use non-existent principal roles if they choose. The current plan is for the interim principal for the middle school to decide about leadership structure at the Amherst Regional Middle School. We believe the middle school staff should have a greater voice in this as the people who know the students in the school. We ask for your support in amplifying our voices. In previous letters to you, we ask that the leadership structure include Patty Bode and Alicia Lopez in non-administrative roles in order to address the concerns about licensure. We are presidents for these positions. In previous years, we've had deans and coaches that are non-administrative roles. These are roles that other schools and Massachusetts also have in place to support staff, students, and school. Maintaining Patty Bode and Alicia Lopez in roles such as these would allow for the continuing development of the work over the past few years, including making social justice a focal point in our school's mission. It would also allow for the ongoing work with students and families in need to continue with collective knowledge of supports that work rather than having that knowledge lost. Lastly, we believe that the appropriate interim principal would have the disposition that would welcome collaborating with our current leaders to sustain the positive direction of our school. Please help us to safeguard the momentum and good work at Amherst Regional Middle School. Thank you. And I'd like to submit this form. Are there any further public comments? Oh, sure, of course you can. My name is Vera Duangmini Cage, former school committee member. Future arms parent. I just wanted to get your attention to the this weekend's Gazette. It's probably not in the newsstands anymore, but the editorial that was featured highlighting our employment, hiring practices, diversity, and licensure issues. It's also featured in the Amherst Bulletin. So, you know, we have a nice cover of the art that's featured at the high school. That's fine. That's ceremonial. You also have critical issues for Amherst schools. I just wanted to remind the committee of Chair Nakajima's words with respect to our hiring process because we will be scrutinizing for deviation of the process that was presented elaborately at the last regional school committee meeting. We will look at, you know, whether there will be gerrymandering or reverse engineering that could potentially signal red flags. So, as we await the outcome of the principal hire, the interim principal hire at the middle school, I think community members have provided input to the district about where we would like the district to go moving forward. I also understand you have an evaluation tonight of the superintendent, and having been in your seat before, I don't expect, you know, I hope that the deliberation that you will do, Conduct, is in accordance with recent new, I think, interpretation of open meeting law. I think about a month or two ago, the state supreme court suggested that individual evaluations be at least made available publicly before you all come back together to deliberate on them. The other issue is, you know, we heard again about changing leadership structures in our schools, and I would hope that, I'm not, you know, an expert in education, but that it would adhere to best practices, best instructional practices. You know, I want to remind us that a Crocker-Farm principal Derek Shea mentioned, he needs his assistant principal, so to get rid of somebody that, or a position that has been needed, you know, and then to change it to positions without administrative responsibilities is a red flag in my eyes, and I hope that when DESI, or the Board of Education, reviews what we're doing, that they could weigh in. Thank you very much. Are there further public comments? Steve Zaycon Anderson from the middle school. Well, I'm very, I was very sad to hear this holder's report of her experience. It does speak to the fact that I believe if you found a school with 100% agreement on everything, that would be rare, and we did generate quite a significant percent of people who were asking for this good work we've seen over the last two years, especially in contrast to an experience we had prior to that, to continue in some fashion, if at all possible. It was a number of weeks ago we came here, and I remember the mantras at the time were be creative, figure it out, trying to find a way to keep this administration, and at numerous meetings with the superintendent and assistant superintendent came to us, met with us as groups, as a group, met also individually, and heard a message, is there a way we could figure this out? What we got back was the appearance that it wasn't really looked at seriously. We also suggested that doing a principal search on very short notice at this time of year would be a challenge. That was, and to offer someone two years, those were all things we were concerned about, so those went ahead as planned, which brings us to kind of what we just, each time we come we ask for something a little different because we see what we're being asked for is not happening. It's really not a question to all of you really as much as, and it has been presented numerous occasions to the superintendent, but we come to you in hopes that you might have some influence on that. So we're kind of asking the same thing if there's any way that we can continue. What we think has been excellent work for the students, for the staff, for most of the staff, and as Ms. Tibido said we hope that the new administrator, the interim principal, might consider a role for people that know the school so well, know the staff and the kids and the structures of the school. I've spent the last few weeks at the school just looking at lots of things saying what's going to happen to that? Who's going to know about that? And it's true we have a committee meeting with the interim principal to share over the summer, but that's a limited number of hours, and we're wondering about having some people who have been there and do have this knowledge to be able to share throughout the whole year if there's a way to creatively make that happen. Thank you. Who's going to be the timer? Are there further public comments? We should wait for the public comment. There could be somebody right in front of us who wants to speak, and if they want to, they should be able to. For the most part, my experience has been positive, but I have to tell you there's racism in the district. You know, I hear the word social justice used a lot, but I think we speak it but we're not living it. And you know, racism operates from a position of privilege and power, and I can tell you the people who have the power or the ones who speak very loudly. And there's lots of people in the district in different schools that are marginalized and they're afraid of retaliation so they don't speak, but I can assure you it is happening. I have parents coming to me, I have co-workers coming to me, and it is happening. Personally, I address it or I go to the superintendent when it happens, so I just want you to be aware of that. It is happening and it is real. Are there additional public comments? Seeing none, we'll close the public comment period. There are announcements from the committee. Yes, just briefly that I'm going to be needing to leave about 8.15, 8.30 ish. And also, I didn't see it on the agenda, but given the recent announcement about the farm to table current, I didn't know if Mr. Morgana could say a few words about that because that seemed like a fairly big deal. Not the best person to speak about that, but I think the overview. So we received a planning grant to do some work connecting what served in the cafeteria, with the classroom, and how the source of food relates to what kids eat. So I think there was an article that goes into much more detail, but essentially we'll be forming some community stakeholder teams over the summer and into the fall to really research these different tracks. And the end result will be some sort of business plan of what we think we could do to really make a difference. And then we'll be able to apply for an implementation grant to possibly fund that plan. So I encourage people to read that article. And yeah, it's exciting. Any further announcements from the committee? Seeing none, are there any subcommittee updates? Other than the fact that we need to do a bunch of appointments to them. Yes? Sorry, just I guess not so much an update, but rather a request. So at the last School Equate Task Force, we had talked about trying to implement perhaps a new way of involving the conversation that happens at that subcommittee level and bringing it to the full committee. And maybe it doesn't have to be on a, you know, monthly basis or anything like that. It doesn't have to be quite as frequent as the meetings currently are. But even on a quarterly basis so that we can have the, you know, so we had last year a joint meeting and several of you actually attended. And many of the subcommittee members of the Equate Task Force felt that it was really helpful for the committee, the school committee, the full school committee to hear or at least, you know, a few members to hear some of the issues that were discussed there. And so I think that, you know, given the, how quickly a lot of our conversations evolve here during the full committee, it just would be helpful for both the subcommittee and for the full committee to be able to like hear each other's issues and be able to address some of the things that have come up. So it's just something for the committee to think about. I think if, you know, from my vantage point where I've been sitting for the past couple of years on the subcommittee, having, you know, maybe like I said, quarterly meetings, you know, every few months, having a joint meeting that happens here, you know, preferably. So maybe it's just built into the agenda. And it can be even like a half hour long, but it's just an opportunity for folks to kind of hear some of the concerns and issues raised by the community in a different setting than would normally happen. You know, one of the things, one of the recent SCTF meetings that I was at, one of the requests that came up was whether, and I mean, I think you're alluding to this, but also I know you're adding some other ideas to it, was the question of like, how do we literally talk with one another at the meetings because their school committee meetings is, you know, we're all sitting here, the audience sits there, the dynamic ends up being just even the structure of the dynamic ends up being something that doesn't feel like a conversation. And then usually most of the time, except for during actually almost all the time, there isn't really a conversation either. There isn't any back and forth at all in the dialogue. And so one of the questions that came up that I became interested in is thinking if there are ways in which we can pick topics sometimes that can come up from subcommittees where that might be important publicly and structure our meetings in which we have essentially a business meeting and then we have a period in the business meeting because the business meeting is what we're in now, right? So we all debate our stuff, we have motions, we pass things, it's very structured. You know, is it possible to have points in our meetings where we eventually suspend the business meeting and have sort of an open dialogue or hearing with the public? We'd have to decide to do it and then we'd have to like vote to do it, I think in terms of our rules. But I couldn't think of a reason why we couldn't do something like that just to create a different dynamic. The only thing I, and I made this comment at the meeting at the time being was that I'd like it to be structured in the sense of the topic. Like I'm not, forgive me for saying this, I'm not interested in just sort of suspending all of our rules of engagement and then saying why don't we all just talk about whatever we feel like about the schools. I'd rather have it be structured than we have to, there's a topic that comes up from the committee, from this committee, we're from the leadership or from the SCTF itself in which there's something on the agenda that's specific that we're getting a presentation on about or a dialogue about. But it's food for thought, it's something we could talk about through a treat. I think that builds on what you're saying, right? And just one more comment if I can. So we agreed at the school equity task force that we were going to meet over the summer to come up with an agenda to bring to the full committee at one of the fall meetings, or maybe several of them, but well before the budget process starts so that we actually can hear what the priority issues should be for the district. And some of the things that have come up recently are discipline, disparity, and both the hiring and retention of educators of color in the district and gathering of data. So there's several different topics that keep coming up at the subcommittee level that we want to bring back to the full committee and hopefully apply some resources to well before the budget process comes up. So we'll be doing that over the summer and then you know with the chair and the superintendent's permission bringing that on an agenda for full discussion with the committee. Right. Anything else in subcommittees? So this has been a, in terms of the chair's report, I just had that there has, this has been a very active spring on the issues that we've been engaging in and a very active sort of that reason, even though the chair doesn't have any, I guess I live in helping to put the agenda together, the chair doesn't really have any powers that are different than the other members of the committee. But I'm often, I know this is true for the other committees, the Pellum and the Amherst as well, that the chairs are often used as sort of sounding boards on things. And so a couple of things. I mean one, this spring has sort of put in relief for me how much I'm looking forward to the retreat we have this summer and additional forward-looking planning that we need to do because I think, I've said this since, I said this last meeting, but I've said this since I came on the committee that I felt like we needed to structure the work that we were doing and structure the dialogue better both for purposes of transparency, public communication and engagement around what we're doing, but also essentially as sort of a district tool for organizing our work, including what the superintendent does, including eventually as it flows down superintendent goals and then the annual goals that the district has. And I think that the recent couple of months has put into focus for me like more than I probably knew a year and a half ago when I started raising this as an issue, how important that is that we have a structure to lean on when a lot of issues come up. Let alone the fact that I think we're we're we to do that in a more deliberate way, I think we'd be able to help manage the dialogue better and also potentially enable or facilitate the superintendent to improve the work that they're doing. And I don't mean this as a shot at anything including us, so I think what we've been doing is developmental, but I just think it's occurred to me repeatedly that as I'm thinking about the meetings we're going through, as I'm thinking about frankly even the the input we've had as it's mentioned earlier, we've had serial engagement from the staff around their feedback around leadership at the middle school. We've also had serial feedback from other members of the public around their perspective on leadership management and hiring. And so the question is what's the better context that we can create around this for the work that we're doing? Because it's not satisfying like I could say as I would say that I've I've repeatedly in conversations and I'm sure other members of the committee have done this too, so I know you've all talked to the superintendent yourself in your own duties as school committee members have asked about sort of the logic or approach of the superintendent around the management structure at the middle school and the approach is going to be taken and we've repeated I've repeated at least and it was gotten the same feedback around the course that it's going so it's not like the committee isn't engaging or that I'm not engaging, but it's also thinking about our role and how we should be approaching our work, what the superintendent's responsibilities are and so in my mind the way in which we can think about planning out next year, planning out superintendent goals and the sort of that structure of our work, I'm looking for really looking forward as we're closing out the last year the meeting of this academic year I'm actually really looking forward to getting into those topics as well as others we're going to race for the retreat so I think it'll help the work of the committee I think it'll also frankly help my work and any future chairs work when they're thinking about how do you structure the meetings and the sequence of meetings in a way that not only helps us do our work but also helps facilitate a broader conversation and confidence around the quality of the oversight work that we're doing so that's that is my chair's report on that I mean it's a challenging bit of work I think in the same way that we get into the superintendent's evaluation there's going to be I think a lot of a lot of positive feedback or review it also we've also I think many people have identified challenges when they look forward to the coming year that are worth talking about I think that's an appropriate way of looking at it I'll conclude by saying despite the fact that this spring has been oftentimes very challenging in terms of our discussions if you look back over the year and you look at over what certainly what our schools have been doing but even a lot of the work that we've been doing it's been some of it's been very very good and has been developmental in terms of the progress of our district and it's good not to lose sight of that as we also appropriately set goals for next year I mean for ourselves as well as you know for the superintendent with the superintendent thinking about where do we need to go what do we need to do next to continue to prove the district so I know my point is I don't look at it as a negative challenge I look at it as a positive one and one that can build upon a lot of the work we've done that's been positive so far and I think reflective practice and there's a learning how we do things better is again it's something that's entirely appropriate considering all the emphasis on continuous improvement in the evaluation document but it's essentially like a focusing on our own continuous improvement as a committee so I'll leave it at that and we can move to item 7a new and continuing business superintendent evaluation discussion and vote what you had in your packet and sent to you previously is a draft that outlines the the basic responsibilities and process around developing the five-step process around evaluations and goals as well as also a summary of who participated and a general overview of what what we've learned through that process contrary to last year and freely borrowing imitation as a serious form of flattery ripping off from what Amherst the school district did around these little bubbles that show you the sort of the frequency or the you know the distribution of different answers I liked it more than what we did last year where last year we had a number so our number would be 4.3 or 3.2 or whatever that is and I like this more because now you can actually see where all the members on each thing what did they say I mean the names aren't associated with it you can get individual evaluations but but it shows you that and so it also doesn't submerge in any way if somebody thought somebody needed improvement or they thought they were exemplary since this is the clear median on almost everything is proficient it gives you an opportunity to see what that looked like so as Kasansky do you have anything you want to talk about or add or highlight I think in general this was followed a very similar process to last year Eric and I mostly Eric thank you went through the individual evaluations and when I was reading the summary that we put on each standard I tried to make sure those that left comments in in those that you should see something of your comment sort of wrapped in there one way or another some of the comments were very similar so they're kind of merged together but hopefully it reads that when you read it you'll pick out kind of where like yeah that's that was my thinking one hopes and I think one of the things that was highlighted in here was the precisely what I was actually just talking about a moment ago but just to focus on it in this item that as we discussed last year and it's just going into this year what we are evaluating the superintendent on is is the food with goals that were set in the review of those goals and so it can be true and is entirely appropriate that people may through this process review come up with other ideas of things they'd like to bring into next year's goals and next year's planning that they've learned upon reflection in this year but that doesn't actually I mean that mayor and it's written by the way based on I'm saying this because based on people's individual evaluations that's clearly true in some cases that occurred in other cases it didn't and so my point is even there we're calling we're calling that out only because I think it's important as a matter of process to be able to understand what we're doing um but but it's also I mean I because we're not saying this when one should say that in in every case each individual member found Dr. Morris proficient overall for the goals that were set in the the management and personal development objectives that were set and that this document reflects that evaluation in some in some cases he was found to be exemplary but the but the the median or the middle case of this in every case was that so if there are other people's I would just say that the counter is also true while and all the elements right so these are the standards beneath those are the elements that we rate as well there are some that are exemplary there are many that are proficient and there were some that needs improvement so you might not see them at the summary level but there are some details where we did point out areas for improvement that's absolutely true I mean the meaning in this document the summary document points out some areas that were identified for needs improvement so are there are there uh comments or edits or other things that people want to do or say right now I know that sounds very general but the point is this is this is in the end your document more than as much as yes so are we envisioning this discussion is also an opportunity to kind of take a step back and review the superintendent's performance for the year in a in general way sort of comment about our general thinking that went to are we just talking about the document you do okay I mean in the yeah in the context in the context of the evaluations that were completed yes no I mean that's not funny yeah so yeah but I like to have both so we end up agreeing on the document I'm sure we know whether we grant the document prior to the is one of your comment I mean I'm happy to wait Sullivan I'd just like to apologize to the committee because I had a really hard time filling this one out because I was struggling my brain and thought process was clouded the entire time by this licensure issue because the licensure issue has bothered me since the beginning because as someone who spent 30 years working on attending a license the whole issue of not having a license just really struck a chord with me and it really even now it I find it really bothersome so I just want to take this as an opportunity to talk about in a high level view how I evaluated the superintendent and what the sort of standout aspects of his performance for me for me it starts with with the budget management as needs no introduction in our meetings you know we cut 1.1 million and it was a very hard budget year and what is is it notable to me in this discussion is what we're not discussing which is a 1.8 or higher level cut which would have been the outcome had the regional assessment method not been agreed to and that was that was a ton of work and it was certainly not a one-person job that you know Mr. Margano and Mr. Nakajima and a number of other people engaged at various levels to help that happen but that could have resulted in quite a higher number of teachers and staff and services being let go and so when I sort of look at the whole picture that's the biggest sort of bullet item that stands out as well as his leadership in continuing the fight against charter school expansions which I think now that the fair share amendment is going to happen and and our budget pressures become all the greater as as each year passes becomes all the more important to be out in front and clear and direct with so I appreciated that in terms of continuing efforts for social justice and equity you know there was a comment in here that I agreed with but I think need some context about one evaluator highlighted the need for Dr. Morris to focus on improving communication particularly of controversial difficult topics so using the example of licensure and diversity of our workforce and hiring middle school whatnot I would agree with that that being said I am I am I'm satisfied that his attention and efforts over the course of the year weren't primarily focused on PR and giving speeches and getting that kind of level of support and we're more focused on what the real long-term solution to these endemic problems are which is sustained effort hard work practical solutions driven by staff and sort of going about his business in that in that way and continuing to build upon the work from the previous year and and letting the work speak for itself and you know in my mind I think that that that work and that those results speak louder than any particular voice positive or negative in evaluating how he is handled hiring a licensure you know when we talk about the the highest percentage of hires who are staff of color in five years the highest retention of staff of color in five years and the climate survey at the high school but the climate at the high school first students of color has been a very important rightfully so issue for a number of years and having those improvements in that survey particularly from students of color I thought was incredibly notable and possibly related to the implementation of a restorative justice program at the high school with with a new position for restorative justice and you know the the personnel development focus that was driven by a staff survey on social justice inequity that that did not shy away from from hard issues and that the feedback from that is going to drive the future professional development so you know this is all not to say that there's no problem here you know there's a problem in every school district that where the we where the the percentage of staff and teachers are not as diverse as the students are and and so it's it's not to say that we don't have a problem but I appreciate the the leadership of of leading through action and leading through support of staff who are leading that action and just the last thing that really struck me in a positive way this year was because I realized and it wasn't expecting it was the leadership Dr. Morris showed and and supported with the response to the events in Parkland and the student walkout I thought that that was a pretty hard problem for a superintendent to approach particularly with how it it's different at the middle school and the high school and when you have students who don't want to walk out versus do want to walk out you have staff concerns parents concerns student concerns and you know we saw a number of other supposedly progressive districts in our state really take a pass on that question and have a zero tolerance policy for walkout suspending students for walking out it was really really disappointing to me to see that happen in our state and and I like the leadership style in which Dr. Morris didn't say okay this is what we're going to do now everybody fall in line and then I'll just communicate that out to you it was you know how do we approach all of the concerns of safety and student empowerment and and the learning that needs to go on in a proper and respectful way and engaging with multiple conversations with with principals and with students and having students drive what they wanted their response to be I thought was was really powerful and in the end it was a real model experience I thought with how to how to lead a district in responding to that kind of situation so that that was that was one signature moment that I was not expecting that to really struck me in terms of the quality leadership that we have any sort of so I would just you know I I think that the superintendent certainly did a lot of good work this year and I think that's reflected in his proficient rating I think as somebody else as Steve mentioned you know there were some misses in our district that you know maybe don't directly impact certain markings on his superintendent goals but I think we would be doing the district and him a disservice if we end this without providing some areas that he should be improving on for next year right when I get evaluated as an employee you know the question always is well what do I do better next year and so you know I think there are some areas highlighted in here that you know hopefully will be reflected in next year's goals and professional development goals or district goals as applicable of areas that we would like to see him move forward and make progress on yeah I I think I just wanted to say that while I agree with the document itself and I think the analysis that was provided here and I agree with you know with some of the comments that have already been stated in terms of Dr. Morris working you know very well towards the stated goals that we had outlined for him again I think you know it's important to remind ourselves in the community that we agreed upon a set number of goals at the start of the year and that is what we are evaluating him on and so while there is a lot of other stuff that takes place during the course of the year that is not reflected in this document what we have all agreed to is that we would evaluate based on those goals that said I think when I was evaluating and it seems like you know perhaps others as well there is a lens that you are using to decide on whether or not you think you know a person or an employee has achieved those goals and you're pulling from examples that have been provided to you through the artifacts document but you're also thinking about other examples that have been you know gathered together through the meetings all of these one-on-one conversations with you know with the the person being evaluated so there's a lot happening over here I have to say that I think I agree with the strengths that have been laid out for the most part I think Dr. Morris did a great job with the budget it was an exceptionally difficult budget year we were negotiating union contracts as we just discussed a little while ago you know we were also negotiating staff changes and there's a lot of things happening and so I think he and his team were able to manage a lot of that because I also have to say you know we have to give credit to the team that works with him right it's not just the leader but that said I you know I think the one of the comments that I had made in this document was actually about communication and it wasn't about PR it was about the irregularities in communicating with a community and providing information about how processes take place and I identified that in my evaluation that there were some gaps there because we heard different things at different points and that makes it very difficult for a community to understand why something is being done a certain way or what's happening and so it's it's an incredibly important you know reflection I think for a person in this position because we hire them specifically to be able to play that role as communicator with educators with parents with students with school committee you know with a wider community it is a job principally about communication and not you know to spin certain things a certain way but really to provide information and also serve as a conduit back and forth between the community and others and to hear what people are saying so I do see some room for improvement there to borrow Ms. Goshensky's comments I also you know remarked in my evaluation about the social justice professional development I think we've done incredible work this past year reflecting back on where we were a few years ago and I think a lot of that is in credit to the assistant superintendent but also Dr. Morris and in his wanting to create an environment that we can continuously improve and that we can actually you know do better in this particular regard that said you know I want to give credit where credit is due we started the the climate survey again but it had been as many members of the community have pointed out something that was agreed to several years ago so I see this as you know the first year of a person's tenure and therefore I see some gains that have been made and I see some progress and I'm hoping and this is what I kept going back to in my evaluation I'm hoping that we continue that trajectory that we continue that path forward but I think we all need to be watchful right and it's not just because we suspect that it may not move forward but because we want to make sure that we do this the right way that we're careful with this and so that is where I'm you know that's the feedback that I'm giving back to our superintendent and to ourselves too I mean honestly I think this is as much an evaluation of us as it is of the superintendent we are supposed to work closely together we're supposed to set goals frankly I don't think we've done a great job of setting some of these goals I think we need to do better and we can do better so I think in you know in the year moving forward we've heard back from the community where we should be in terms of all these different areas right and so there's a lot of an area of improvement for all of us we have a mission we have you know for this district we've we've all said that we believe in that mission and I think we've done a good job in some respects and I think in other respects we have to keep working at it and we have to do better so that's you know the framework that I use to evaluate and I identified you know some areas that I think need improvement some areas that I think we've made some progress and you know we'll keep I'm an optimist so we'll keep moving forward and see what happens I think I hope the document tried to capture a comment that you had made but others had made as well including myself I'll be transparent about about the idea that it's great to do climate survey it's great to do some of the other professional development work or even support a restorative justice program for one year but the reality is the value isn't doing this over time and maintaining the commitment and developing it so that I think that's in there as a reflected comment I'm echoing what you said earlier that I mean it's it's it's challenging and I think I said this in the the chairs report so I'm not going to repeat all of it that that it is appropriate I think and I think Mr. Demlin captured us earlier it's appropriate to look back to last year this past year and see a number of things that have been done very well and a lot of things that were done you know very well by the superintendent but really by the staff as a whole and by the district including his leadership and I think we're remiss if we don't acknowledge that it's also frankly at the end of a really terrible budget cycle that was that was managed very well but still it was an awful budget cycle and then through the last couple months of discussion you've had around hiring and licensure it's kind of it's hard to come to a point now which feels as celebratory as one might wish to have at the end of the year and I'm not sure to be flipping about that I'm saying at the end it's like going to the high school graduation right like it is genuinely an unalloyed wonderful experience to be there and it really is it's moment in which you're celebrating all that's wonderful about the district and it would be awesome to sit here and do the same thing it's really hard to do that though frankly after the last couple months we've had and I agree with some of the comments so I'm acknowledging a lot of the positive comments that were made because I think they're true and I think they're reflected in here I also would agree and I was hinting at this earlier if not stating it bluntly enough that both for the committee as well as also with the superintendent and other leaders in the district we have work to do in looking at the coming year regardless of what wants to think about the issue of licensure for example if you once you start unpacking that it's it becomes easier to see areas in which oversight feedback mechanisms that would have given a better clear sense of you know supervisory oversight or sort of just you know red flags or alarms that would go off they would say there's probably you know more this should be done differently or this has been differently it's it's easy to see in hindsight and it's certainly and what I appreciate actually is that the one reason why the public certainly hasn't heard me be more critical of the assistant superintendent the superintendent is because they have been forthcoming and they've been very willing to admit what needs to be improved when they found it and they've been responding to for example a lot of the inquiries from desi about what need about what they're going to do differently and how they're going to approach things differently and so to me if I had heard an effort to not have that conversation openly or willingly that would have disturbed me greatly but that's not what we heard but if you step back for a second the point is that when we talked about earlier about how the budget for example felt like a high point for us in terms of the management I would say two things in terms of our engagement the school committee set out different practices last year to before we knew there was a budget crisis we actually set a different practice we were engaging earlier with the the superintendent and the finance director budget it's also one of those things that's perennial right like you know every year you're gonna have to have a budget they have to work it out between the four towns the numbers always the math always has to work like even if it doesn't work sometimes it always has to work eventually all the invoices have to clear and sum to zero and so my point is because of that structure there are a lot of and then it's also reviewed heavily it's audited over here so it's one of those areas where a lot of the practices that you'd want to have in place are in place either by dint of law or just because they they've got to be right I mean you're paying payroll you're doing all these other things my goodness everything has to be laid out and accounted for you know very meticulously there are other areas of of district practice in which you know the the structure either for management internally or for dialogue between the school committee and the district those structures aren't as clear quite frankly and I think where they're less clear it becomes easier over time to to to have that dialogue or that feedback loop sort of break down a little bit it's and that's why I was saying earlier I've been obsessed with doing strategic planning not because I particularly think the most important thing in the world is to pick a particular outcome and say we all need to do this one outcome it's because it's really a process by which we can structure a tighter dialogue between the school the public the school committee and the superintendent and and then have an organized dialogue around what we're learning through that practice so that's my that's my that's my two cents because obviously almost everything I just said was actually forward-looking around saying as we move forward to this summer to the retreat to new goal setting I'm excited about I mean I mean to mean this sincerely I mean this has been I think a really rough couple months I'm actually excited to get to work on what we choose to do next because I think there's a lot of really great work we can do together as a committee and with dr. Morris and I frankly think everything I've learned about dr. Morris over the last couple years tells me he's somebody who's really committed not only to the district but also to continue to improve and including improvement of his own work which I echoed earlier and so I'm excited to do it further just tell me so I just want to comment a little bit about but to acknowledge some of the comments that this is so I didn't find this an easy evaluation to make and one of the problems that I think that there is in any year but particularly in this year is is the problem when doing an evaluation because it is of the whole year of volume bias and recency bias to cognitive biases that when we with our mind are trying to evaluate what information should be weighted and and to what degree we naturally give a higher weight to information that's more recent so it happened at the end of the year and information that's louder and that volume can come in a number of attributes whether it's a public comment whether it's in the newspaper that we agree to disagree with whether it's an email or what not and I think I think the challenge there and this is the challenge that we sort of all accept when we give someone a professional evaluation is not to overreact to that information but not to unreact we need to try and properly react which which is difficult and it requires a lot of effort and you know and that's I think sometimes we can we can make a mistake as a committee because we don't want to appear like we're tone deaf but to overly acknowledge and again I'm this is not um ghost speak for saying that we have paid too much attention to issues of diversifying our workforce and hiring and licensure you know I don't think that that's the case but I do think there is a there's there's there's just a problem because we have the cognitive biases that we have and and I think sometimes it's it's unfortunate the timing and the volume of certain issues can can can cast a um a light upon the entire the entire year so that's that's one thing I really struggled with um and uh you know was was one of the reasons why I felt was important to sort of take a step back and look at the entirety of information trying as much as possible to eliminate the the timing of when things happened and the volume at which they were offered some some things happened very quietly over the course of the year had huge impacts other things were very loud and had very little impact and so I tried to normalize that as much as possible by having just reviewed um all of the individual evaluations my sense is and I think this echoes something Mr. Sullivan said earlier my sense is that the members of the committee at least in my view did a pretty good job of trying to do exactly what you just described I mean that's why I think that's why the evaluations do come out as being proficient across the board overall and the even the within the goals a lot of the actually the the the dominant uh position is proficient every single one of them you know even though there are subcategories with our people who say need improvement even within the subcategories proficient tended to be the dominant mode so I think that I think um my view is people did that and so I as I said in my comments my comments were more forward-looking than they were about this past year um but I think that'd be that as it may are there any additional comments I mean we also have an instrument here that needs to be moved and adopted if it's going to be moved and adopted I would just ask for the record that I chose not to evaluate the superintendent this time around and just because I so recently joined the school committee but I do support the document and appreciate the work that went into it very much yeah I guess we could summarize that for the public actually it's in the it's in the letter but we can say that six Amherst Pellum regional school committee members who served in the 2017-2018 school year participated in the evaluation process process myself Anastasia Ordilmas Eric Nakajima Peter Demling Ron Menino and Steven Sullivan the other members chose not to complete the evaluation based on their recent election to the committee and who are they Allison McDonald Kerry Spitzer and Kara Castinson they cannot remain in on it so I want to retain a motion if there is one to be made the evaluation is valuation okay is there a second second it's been moved and second any further debate discussion seeing none all those in favor of approving the evaluation of some of the valuation raise your hands they're going aye aye okay any nays any abstentions you can stand if you want that's what I'm asking for okay as Castinson understands so it is uh one two three four five six seven eight eyes zero nays one stature it is approved what else is on our hit parade tonight subcommittee assignments so um we have more responses than they said earlier in the packet no I was not I was delinquent uh you are in good company indeed indeed so we're we're now well I think it's only fair then that those that put in their choices should get first choice since they followed instructions I am largely in agreement with that notion though I noticed that the Spitzer didn't actually put any first choices I just gave the three that I would be willing to just interested in serving and I didn't rank them okay I could no that's okay I just I don't want all three if possible that wasn't an indication I have a question um this this ties into um well our last topic and also retreat planning um I think at one point in a recent ish past there was a superintendent evaluation subcommittee looked at um and so I'm interested in wanting that more in the retreat but wondering if that would ever be a permanent subcommittee that's something that would just come up in time I think as we move into year three of having that committee we probably should make it a permanent subcommittee uh you know what I mean like it doesn't seem like a bad practice to say every year we appoint a subcommittee we're going to permanently have an ad hoc committee that sounds actually even those words coming out of mouth just sound wrong um but I mean so my my personal view now we're going to be coming in we should weigh in a I think we should have it just work exceptionally well um b I think we should establish it formally so that we stop having an ad hoc do you have any opinion I think a formal subcommittee would be great cool who do we have to send it to the policy subcommittee to create a committee or something for that or something I think we get to just make them all right we'll have to we'll put that on our to do this like I mean I think I like I think you just like make it so no there has to be a description there's really a description so there's a school committee not start right but but actually just back on this so Mr. Manino do you want to be on the audit subcommittee the audit subcommittee the budget subcommittee the data trends committee stay away from things controversial oh then you haven't seen the data subcommittee are these committees do these overlap with the commit subcommittees of the Amherst school committee and if so how please I actually was going to say something along similar lines I think in past practice we have shared simply because there's just not enough of us to go around and and for those reasons I mean when you know I was going to pipe up and say that I've already signed up for a couple of these through the Amherst school committee and I'm happy to continue that for the region if it makes sense although some of these are multiples like like what this well the school equity task force is I didn't sign up for the Amherst school committee but that one I would continue doing that but that's typically two committee members okay anyone else want to volunteer for the SETA I'm sort of self volunteered for that one on a regular so far like occasion has been like every meeting so we'll see if that keeps up and since we're in the business of creating new subcommittees I'm just thinking about time commitments and things I worked on with other committee members in the last year and I thought that may be an advocacy subcommittee there are two particular subtopics of this charter school expansions and then the state budget cycle regionals that's never going away either exactly yes I didn't know if that would yeah yeah I agree at the same point on that because I think it's yeah I mean we have it so we might as well call it out yeah the only thing I don't understand about subcommittee organization is that if it's an official subcommittee does it then require a whole another level of administrative stuff like open forums and open meetings and agendas and minutes and postings and all those things right that's so that's my only um hesitation to forming advocacy as a subcommittee that's also sounds reasonable that if you have people who are helping each other do something but the challenge I mean not to sound cute about this because I mean I think I don't forget why this came up but I remember distinctly the anesthesia in our phone call with mark terry our attorney about this question at some point um you can't be cute about it like if something looks walks talks and smells like a like a subcommittee and it's subcommittee so just you might as well call it what it is because you're actually my point is you'd be violating open meeting whatever you would whether you call it that or not you're still going to be violating open meeting law if there's sort of a standing group that's doing work and stuff like that so we should we should sort through that to make sure we're kosher to mix multiple metaphors so what about c-pack you know the interest in c-pack so I know the question about so it relates back to the other question so so I'm continuing on c-pack but it's unclear as to which committee I'm continuing on because I'm not sure exactly which one I was about to cheat but you're forcing me not to cheat I was actually going to cheat and see if I can get another volunteer and then we could sort of sort out which one you're from based on whether we get another volunteer for sale but I end up missing the December January and February meetings but I usually hit the rest of them you can start the beginning of the year okay it's just Sullivan awesome as long as it doesn't ever snow in November December January February you'd be fine right well I have blightings off during the rest of the year but those so far we don't know so so far we don't know if we're going to have a regional assessment working group so we probably don't need to worry about that we do not have a representative to the collaborative for educational services um take well actually let me let me loop back up forgive me forgive me sure I think that's a case where didn't we have somebody from Amherst that was me yeah so if she can wear two hats uh well it's a voting member so the question is do we the region gets a member Amherst gets a member and you can't vote twice right so if we don't send two people we don't get two votes that's a more serious subcommittee role they do feed you but that one is it's a you know yeah they feed you though they do apparently that leaves a mind just something somebody wants to do right now we will table that one so by the way the policy subcommittee anyone who's been on the committee long enough knows that this like a super active committee and lots of stuff moves through it and it's extremely important so we can't leave we cannot leave tonight without actually working policies up committee um uh there's room I'll stick with it oh okay make it year number five so mr. Sullivan and I think you have that would make three that would make three and we only need two for the data trend subcommittee so if uh miss spitzer didn't want to serve on three we could extra name off of data trend subcommittee um well I guess I would just like to you know say that I'm expecting um baby in November so um I just you know want to put that out there that I will take a few months where I probably won't be active on the subcommittees so um just to if any of these are going to be particularly active during the period from say November through February um I would be happy to maybe take those ones off rather than that would seem like the budget one is probably the most active during that time frame it would be yeah actually budget would then maybe the budget subcommittee doesn't do much to be honest with it we sit there we sit maybe we should let him tell us what we're supposed to do it will be more active you got to get to the microphone dude if you're gonna talk I didn't I meant no disrespect no it's okay so the budget subcommittee very important um we will do early budget projections we will meet with town officials to discuss capital needs early in the process something new we started last year um we'll look at the fees for the upcoming year and the other probably should in the future have like a slash the budget subcommittee also serves as the OPEB board of trustees your sort of trustee by default of being on the budget subcommittee what does OPEB stand for? OPEB stands for other post-employment benefits so why are they important? they're important because our pool of retirees keeps growing and our health insurance for retirees keeps growing and we need to find a way to fund that liability over a long period of time so the OPEB board of trustees will um in this next coming year really decide how we're going to invest the funds we have a standing investment into the OPEB trust and so that board now needs to decide how to invest it and who to use as an investment group so um in addition to the budget stuff that'll be an important piece for the OPEB uh board this year and what's the time frame? all year long uh so the so the fall winter will be mostly budget stuff and then probably winter spring will probably shift more towards OPEB things but it's probably maybe six or seven times a year um for an hour usually before school committee meetings so we sort of you know it's not an extra night out usually so do we have a fourth person for the policy subcommittee? isn't the issue we can't have? she's she's a board member of the policy subcommittee but as far as school committee members you could have up to four yeah is there someone else who wants to be on that? I just mean that way we'd be safe based on what you were describing earlier um you could be on policy subcommittee but then if you weren't able to be a policy subcommittee for a while we would still have you know three other school committee members providing input you know anyone want to be on the policy committee? it's like a really important committee I'm sorry I've been leaping to this yes you're leaping hell some kind of leaping from the policy committee we're very efficient too that is excellent I will throw my name in for the budget subcommittee and OPEB meetings luckily that's one meeting not two and then uh Ms. Spitzer are you taking yourself off budget or keeping yourself on budget? I'd be happy to stay on with the caveat that I just laid out but I have a strong background in budgeting so okay did you have interest in data trends? yes those I will keep both three needed but if anybody wants to boot if anybody feels strongly wants to boot me off one of these I'm actually adding people in that we're moving exactly there seems like enough holes here though because I actually I mean data trends I mean just let me let me pause for a second so data trends I don't think is it even met in a year? no it hasn't met since Rick left so let me bring Rick back to his name on here and get it going again Kerry can be our Rick all right and just a comment on that I mean I think that the data trends is particularly important given a lot of the work that we were just talking about in terms of sort of social justice professional development and also just following the climate survey discussion that we had previously so the that subcommittee can help design a lot of those evaluation tools can also help synthesize some of the data coming back for the school committee and the district so that we can have rational conversations around all of that so and it doesn't have to be limited to that I mean we've had conversations around food service and food service I mean collections but also performance that the revenue is in the different point I mean if you take it broadly I mean I personally think even though it's been dormant for a while it's actually a hugely important committee because when we think about what we track what we discuss how we analyze it how we learn from it this is a great thing to get into and it's also ideally my opinion ideally a neutral forum where where there isn't necessarily a particular agenda in terms of an outcome there's a desire actually to create a platform of information that we can use and the other thing don't say out loud is that oftentimes when data requests come up publicly and I'm not thinking public records requests I mean literally just hey it'd be great to see the trend on x that happens in the context of an IT staff or an information analytics staff that's already really overburdened with other things they're doing and so part of the job to be in my mind part of the job of the data transept committee is to not only help create more rationality and progress around that process but also doing it within the context doing it with the context that the staff is overburdened and under resources resource because typically what happens just to be blunt about it is we get into this back and forth where people wish they could get reports maybe they're done on the fly for a school committee presentation maybe they're not done at all because people are overburdened with the things they're doing then we make no progress people point fingers about it and I mean for better for worse having worked within bureaucracies I know that the usual short answer is if people are sick someone's overloaded they have reporting deadlines there are a lot of good reasons why things don't happen and what I'd love to see is that I'd love to see and it was the committee make progress even like accretion like you know I mean accreting progress around this process so the more the merrier so who's having said all that you said they want so we have Ron we have Kerry we have Kara and said someone else just jump in no okay that's good still it's good this contracting is not necessarily urgent I don't think we will have any right with three-year contracts that's right and mr. Sullivan are you still in our accretion working group yes please kind of get that track and that soccer field aligned gonna get the 88 to look at the baseball field and the football field let's go get that all straightened out and how about Amherst media liaison one meeting per month serves a liaison to the advisor group working with Amherst media there's a note that it has been Amherst only in the past oh request but requesting second part of that though is requesting regional liaison too I remember a discussion about that though I know nowhere can't remember what happened it went absolutely nowhere as my recollection I think they continued to ask for a regional representative but there was an Amherst member who was the representative for the Amherst school committee and sort of ad hoc both okay so um I guess for the moment we're going to table the fact that we need an Amherst media liaison and we need a collaborative educational services representative and we are tabling that um do we have notes on this dad there's more what do you mean there's more sorry well the clerical merit award selection I think we usually take as a volunteer during the spring just yeah just before so we can keep doing that I'm not going to worry about that um professional leave request subcommittee one per committee typically the chair so I'm going to leave that one aside anyone want to go to the MASC conference this fall and do they think they're available to go yes I'm wondering if this is the same thing so I've um I'm signed up for the Amherst school committee but I don't know if the region needs one these are voting delegates but you know there's hundreds of people coming from across the state so I don't know it's a cool opportunity for some of you to not only get a lot of great workshops but also argue with fellow delegates about poor educational issues you can't pass that up right so I'm going to table this again but do you know what do you know when the registration deadline is there actually maybe even the registration um it's sometime in like July or something like that but the delegate selection and naming has to happen I think by the chair and perhaps even the superintendent or some other method because we were we were delinquent in that last year just by the chair I think it's a chair as well so here's the cool thing um we'll we'll I'll send out a notice or double send a notice whenever the registration deadline is coming up it'll also have the date for it it's probably in like late October or something and then you know you can look at your calendars look hopefully at the program and agenda see what cool workshops you can go to maybe find out what awesome things you could argue with other delegates and if you're into that you can go and uh how many do we need for the warrant some or warrant signing subcommittee surprise you didn't jump up about that one well that's why I'm still here so um so we need three and it's always best if it's three Amherst members because then they can sign for both the region and the Amherst warrant they can kind of do double duty so we don't need two separate committees so that always puts more stress on Amherst people but it makes it much more efficient well I'm here all summer so I can do it is you don't want I'll do it okay and then the Spitzer is also okay are you leaving seriously I have my my questions for my answer guy oh well you better ask them before he goes but I have to ask if it's okay because we're running out of schedule I know you do but just hold on one side I will I want to finish with this you know me I'm like orderly of this way I like to finish on top that's good um do we do you have that down or do we need to go over again I have two questions yes actually three yes um do you not need Ms. Castinson then okay we'll have the volume for column that's right I needed to confirm which um Mr. Monino I have for audit budget and data is that correct correct that's that's what I'm going to do I have for budget but I didn't hear what else is there another one Audrey super intense subcommittee when we make that a sub okay perfect all right thank you cool actually who else is in the superintendent okay I'm a solid yeah so we have three for that yeah cool uh yeah I think I got all the others okay excellent so we're gonna move on from this item and with the what's next school committee retreat plan so with the indulgence of the committee I believe a member of our committee has questions for the finance director of course if you also have questions for the finance director you will then now be at liberty to ask them but only after he's done thank you mr. mangano thank you for staying almost got out just got question number one the electric bus yeah where is it and how is it physically where is it um it's at the middle school um it was working at the end of the year to the best of my knowledge I don't have much of an update beyond what was given last time which is we're still going back and forth with the the manufacturer about extending our warranty and getting some support over the summer to really get into the bus and figure out sort of why we're having some of the quirks that we're having um and working with the state around using some additional resources to fund that warranty if there's any cost to it so I don't have much of an update beyond that but as it's one of those sort of work in progress type of things for the bus so we have one more year and a half that we have to use the bus it's a three-year commitment with the state since they purchased it for us and we have that run it from at least three years and we've done it for a year and a half so far so we've got to get through next year and then at least through one more half year to to make good on our side of the bargain thank you for that one the paving of the parking lot we've talked about that for about four years now that it's going to happen sometime well parking lot in particular what the the student and teacher staff parking out here at the high school yep so it is on the capital plan somewhere and there's some funds in the parking lot revolving fund which is funded by parking fees for students to do some repair work but the the full scale replacement is in the capital plan I want to say a few years down the road as things come up it sort of gets pushed back because it's a really large ticket item I think it's in the I think in term total parking projects is over one to two million dollars on our capital plan so it is on there and it's we keep it on the radar and we do have some funds that we work with the facility director to to make patches when there's you know big potholes that can cause damage speaking of capital planning yes the replacement of the auditorium seats I can't remember what year that was supposed to be yeah next year so that too was on the capital plan it may have been taken off of the capital plan I have to re-review it again based on other priorities and we're also looking at replacement versus refurbishing because the replacement can be more involved than we might want it to be because they're they're sable to the ground and what's underneath the the base might be problematic so replacement might be much more expensive than we were thinking it might be so we have gotten quotes from a company out of Springfield that refurbishes the seats and I can forward the the quote to the committee so you at least have an idea of the cost to refurbish the auditorium seats and the last one the 10 sites for our lunch program this summer is I had a question from one of the shoots very school committee members is the baby burq that's running around gonna be running around town is that part of this no so that's that's separate through UMass yeah okay because that was like for feeding teens or something yeah and we've looked at it um you know partnering partnering with UMass or you know the cost of doing a food truck is sort of a some districts do that so we explore that option but UMass does that so it's sort of that need is filled a little bit with UMass doing it but yeah we have expanded to 10 sites um reserve analysis e-camps jones library um Fort river uh Fort river uh summer program middle school summer programs cracker farm summer programs and so there's lots of different places over the river northampton and still at uh metal brook in northampton yeah thank you hey anything else for mr. begata so the farm to table grant we talked about earlier so that's for 30k for the planning portion were we to get accepted having them become eligible for the implementation grant what's the order of magnitude for that so i've been told it's in the six figure range i don't know specifically i think some of it depends on what your plan is and how you cost that out um but i think um what i've been told is that prior versions of that grant have been the six figure range but we have to do a really good plan to get that so cool stuff have a nice evening thank you all thank you thank you so with that you will welcome me back on to the regular agenda um school committee retreat planning um did we end up getting some usable dates yet the only date that everyone who has respond not everyone's responding a bit of those who have the only date is uh saturday between first ah wonderful it'll be a sunny day many people around town will be enjoying ice cream or going swimming um but we can go to a fluorescently lip room somewhere perfectly windowless would that be july yes i will not be able to make it i'll be able to help with ice cream and swimming pools and not for us in life yes that's all right i just because i have to run i just wanted to ask a couple of cons so one i vote yes for ice cream two so just my general thoughts on retreat i'm pretty open-ended in terms of what topics we talk about my only desire is that it felt like a retreat and that oh wow these are some things we might not normally talk about even if we had schedule opportunity for another school committee meeting so not just getting through business it's not that has to be all like fun touchy-feely trustful kind of stuff but like something to do with like i don't know team building or or bigger picture stuff just something that doesn't make our heads ache at the end of the day because we just like worked on it so like gosh darn concentratedly hard you know what i mean like a retreat where we sort of walk out there and say oh i feel better about about things that's that's kind of a generic comment but that was just my only i recommended food that helps in those that's healing you're not going to be there i don't know but we have to look maybe look for some other dates um i can send cookies tough having tough having the vice chair basically for the um actually i'd like to think i would like to look some other days i think it'd be nice to have everyone there um if at all possible um is there on this uh i don't know if we're at a point where you're willing to take some possible agenda items for that retreat or yeah i think we just heard about trust falls that's true so i mean no i i i'm sorry i apologize i wasn't trying to be flippant i just meant i wrote down team building we got we got so we got one set of suggestions already around team building ice cream a spray decor and ice cream so we can take others okay um so i wanted if possible for us to have a conversation around uh sort of efficient goal setting and how to plan you know how to how to establish realistic goals right um because i think there's goal setting and then there's goal setting and some of the goal setting that i've been hearing people want on this committee really wanting it seems to be tied in some ways to the strategic planning process that you described mr nakajima um and that you've been pushing for thankfully um and i think that it would be great to just have uh you know a conversation around how to create and establish goals based on soliciting input from various stakeholders um putting together timelines you know all those kinds of things right so there's a real you know sort of goal setting process that um we would benefit from i think if we were to walk through and i think it would help us with the evaluation process as well from the superintendent and then the other thing that i think i had mentioned earlier in another meeting um was a conversation around engaging uh difficult topics and um also just engaging um having constructive conversations with our community around difficult topics um and i think for that a lot is also just for the committee in learning how to i'm putting a final point on it because i think there's a difference in engaging facilitators and all that kind of stuff but i think it's about learning for the committee learning how to listen with open ears and open hearts and absorb information um but it's also about engaging those members of the public who may not you know who who can be sometimes very uh persistent or aggressive or you know and are not necessarily feeling heard and so giving all of us i think the skills so that we can you know be better listeners and better engagers and you know and have those kinds of conversations and hopefully minimize some of the friction um that we've been seeing a lot and then i just wanted to again make a plug for getting a facilitator um i'm a little concerned that if we're looking at july 21st or anytime over the next few weeks it gets a lot harder to find somebody if we don't start like right away so i'm happy to volunteer to help you know find a facilitator help talk to other people um i think we've got people in the community that could potentially do part of it if not all of it i think the school administration might have some names as well that they use for um like paul wiley comes to mind right they use him often as a facilitator so i don't know if he's the right person but they might have a list so why don't we um i mean i try to press people a couple more items so um i had uh also just a quick review for open meeting law right we have new members i know mark terry had given us you know an in-depth training before but maybe he has a shortened version that he could just give like a refresher for anything else so what i wanted to do is just go around the table and ask people if they have ideas to throw out knowing by the way that this won't be the last chance you have and in fact we're gonna we're gonna i guess by we i mean like myself or something like we're gonna keep asking until we actually have the retreat agenda set um and then who knows if we have a really good facilitator they'll probably ask at the beginning of the meeting are there any of the topics people are bringing to the days all right so it's not your last chance but i just want to make sure that if there's anything to capture now we can i'll start over here um so i don't know if this is too nuanced or the retreat and maybe if we are going to make a standing evaluation committee maybe it wouldn't need to be considered but um i find that even if you set the best smart goals that you could possibly come up with um at the end of the day it's still hard trying to tag those two the elements in the rubric in terms of the evaluation so i didn't know if that could almost be considered like at the beginning of the process instead of at the end um that there's some way of doing those separately anyway so just sort of like keeping that in mind as part of the goal setting process and the only other idea in the last meeting we were talking in terms of the licensure um about like the school committee's role and overseeing um how that happens like we don't want to be micromanaging i don't think the administration but maybe there could be more oversight in some way so just sort of trying to like figure out what that would look like okay so can i add to that by the way and if if you say no you can say no i i think one of the topics i'd like to have is actually a conversation about how to think about what the role of the school committee is for whatever reporting or oversight is around um sort of large managerial buckets in general so without and i agree with you i'm embracing the idea that i don't i neither want to do nor do i want to feel like we're looking over everyone's shoulder or micromanaging but since you know since on budget for i mean i know we approve the budget but still there's an example where every quarter we have updates around how we are doing against budget and stuff like that um we review the warrants and others are by law you know my point is there's lots of things we do already that essentially have that function or that characteristic i'd love to think about in general and i think we have to do that as a dialogue with the superintendent so that we're getting that balance right so i'd include licensure when i'm saying i'm willing to broaden it out and also because frankly to be blunt but we're up and meeting with the heck we hear when we talk about it um i don't actually want to have a series of conversations like we did this spring about any other area of managerial practice or supervision in the district like ever and i'm not saying that means i don't want to be accountable or do oversight what i'm saying is i would very much like to have a structure where the dialogue the visibility and expectations are way ahead of something becoming um a major flare that makes any sense i don't know how to do that that's why you said you want to talk about it i want to talk about it too um i want to come i i don't know i think the retreat would be the appropriate time but building on your earlier comments before we start talking about the retreat talking about um ways to engage the public beyond the public comment and how we might evolve that um so that it becomes more of a dialogue and how do we do that and i think a retreat setting might be a good um an appropriate setting for sort of the bringing out of ideas and different approaches and ways that we could do that and ideally coming to a process that we would want to at least pilot in some of our initial meetings in the fall and i do i don't know if it relates back to the superintendent evaluation but that it kind of connects into that how do we engage the public um in i mean we're going through the town town manager evaluation in in amherst and there there's sort of an open solicitation for input and feedback and not to sort of say we want the the community to evaluate the superintendent but a way for getting input and sort of building on peter mr. demling's comment earlier about you know the the volume right so whoever wants to speak is going to be speaking more loudly at the moment but a way to bring it open it up so that we're hearing from a wider variety of the community about their their various experiences in the district and not just the people that choose and are able to show up at the meetings for public comment so the sense of everything else um i was just as this was all being mentioned i think um putting together the list of topics or data that we would want to discuss um during the school year so that it gives the administration time to kind of plan so if there's um particular data that is of interest to the school committee to help us with that oversight or to help us with that it would not sure if we'll come out of that meeting but if there are things we should try to give them as much heads up as we can that's already already spoke my piece for all that i'm interested in so that i think no did i understand anything i'm good thank you i guess i'd just say as a relatively new member um it would be useful to kind of if there are issues that have the potential to be coming up in the future to have this as an opportunity to kind of bring us up to the new folks up to speed on potentially issues that will be emerging so that at the meetings we can be on the same page as those who've been on for a long time and then also just in terms of learning like these are my best practices for you know whatever it is for you know it could be things as mundane as communicating with folks who contact you directly but just to learn a little bit from people at the school committee for a longer longer period of time without boring the public and then any pretty logistical details of being on school committee um and then i would also appreciate and maybe this goes into team building but just a chance to get to know some of the members um you know i've met with some of you individually just to try to get to know you but this might be a good opportunity to even if it's just half an hour or a short period of time just to get to know each other better as individuals rather than just as school committee members that sounds like it's um an excellent thing to adapt peter's trust fall into something about getting to know each other and creating some camaraderie that's a good idea just me you know anything else uh deliberation and conversation every once a while a topic comes up from the audience or something like that and i want to check when do we talk uh when do we deliberate an issue when is it all done in subcommittees is it ever done at the school committee level i don't know when to have a conversation that is an excellent question i mean by the way there's a really good answer to it but i'm just saying that is an outstanding question because i mean honestly it's not about really it's what our practices are more than how we're like what the rules are i mean the reality is when we have issues coming up before the committee the committee can talk about them especially just to give you an example on all this licensure stuff for middle school principal search stuff there there weren't there weren't any school committee conversations or dialogues that were going on outside of this meeting that's actually what made frankly it's so frustrating to the public is that there weren't i mean so this was it and there weren't i mean people can fire this because i think they already have um there weren't any school committee dialogues going on via email that were occurring offline that wasn't happening it wasn't happening that i was aware of are you saying i was told early on never email another school committee member well that's one way to avoid an open meeting well uh that that that i thought that was a best practice that's not to engage in email certainly it's useful that's probably a more extreme reading of that rule than necessary but the point but but it's but the point the point you're making is right my only point is because it's useful for us but it's useful to the public is it probably was frustrated into a lot of people that there actually wasn't any dialogue going on by email or outside of this meeting among school committee members and so um you know the point being on that is simply that the question of then how do we organize our work as a committee so that if there's something people want to dig into that we we organize our discussions in a way that they feel like they're having a satisfying open and in a conversation we're learning something i think the challenge of it is just to be honest and blunt about it it's never going to happen in a setting that doesn't have these cameras and doesn't have these microphones because that's the nature of the job of being on school committee so what we have to do and we probably could find a ways of doing this we may be able to organize ourselves literally differently around the table or create a different table where it feels more comfortable but the reality is there's never going to be a point in which there's something on your mind that you want to say or ask questions about or ask questions about that isn't going to happen in a public setting and that's that's hard because it means sometimes you're asking a question you might feel is rude or you're not sure where it's going to lead to but that's what we have to do that's what we have to do but it can be a topic for the retreat how do we do that better it's an excellent question i think we have a request yes i'm just uh i'm going to unpin the door so when the door shuts it's going to lock oh because we don't have night we don't have second shift custodians okay um okay and i think actually we can probably drop retreat planning and move through the rest of our agenda fairly quickly i mean i'm just gonna we'll leave debbie in charge yeah no no we appreciate that and i hope you haven't kept you or delayed you thanks so much thank you thank you thank you yeah have a good evening so anything else on retreat planning we're going to capture this spit it back out to you we find some other dates broken funding facilitator okay okay thank you yeah uh okay so what do we have next someone can read the agenda uh school committee meeting calendar next school you want to talk about it it's attached i'm finishing it no are we uh are there any holidays or anything we're stepping on that's the only thing i would look at as it is what it is i did check for um the jewish holidays as well as the standard uh holidays that are all on our school calendar ximena i have a question how do i arrange my affairs so that three months from now when i'm looking for this a date i can retrieve this school calendar but that's a same question that's sort of a metaphysical or ontological question or something i guess what is the statement of being do we need to vote on that calendar or is it just information i don't think the votes needed um i was asked to do a draft for the amherstod committee so i just went ahead and drafted the mouth for all three committees hoping that and and we appreciate this thank you uh so here's what i guess i'd say is that if anyone after this meeting and living of his pops in your head now right but if it doesn't after this meeting you realize that there's some i don't know important reason why a different date for a given meeting might be a good idea um just send it to deb and we'll make an adjustment i will say the one thing that's different from last year um last year i didn't start putting in two regional meetings a month until budget season started and we ended up keeping on adding them so this time pretty much there's two regional meetings every month i believe so that's a little bit different so here's it oh how funny the fact that you're being generous in december and november and september uh fooled me i just realized you're right there's actually a bunch of them that's probably smart better to get them on the books and then uh you know we're never going to cancel them but if we need to cancel them again um okay anything else on this and we'll move on gifts and we have a gift by the way i'm going to hand this mr selibom this one the sole copy of the gift that we have to read and move you have to do it loud don't you have to read it first okay all right um i make a motion that we accept the one gift from stop and sharp rewards to the middle school at principal discretion for $1,257.88 is there a second all second it's moved and seconded me for the discussion seeing that all those in favor please raise your high high here's unanimously we deeply appreciate the gift um because we need to get it back to depth look at that we'll signature everything i know this is a serious document uh so upcoming topics we've already covered because that's the retreat which means um we're at item the last item on the agenda for this academic school year it's castinson you want to make a motion i move to a turn is there a second second it's moved and second this is not a debatable motion we have to move immediately to a vote all those in favor raising a hand carries unanimously and the innocent vote for the end of the year we're drunk yeah i didn't need to