 So seeing a presence of a quorum, I'll call this meeting of the Regional School Committee to order at 6.32. Welcome, Stephen. So we will start by taking a roll call, make sure that everybody is present and can hear and be heard. So I'll do it in order on my screen, Ms. Lorde. Lorde, present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, present. Mr. Demling. Present. Mr. Monino. Monino, present. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, present. And McDonald, present. And we also have Dr. Morris and Dr. Slaughter. Great. So our first order on our agenda is to approve our minutes from May 26th and those did get added to our packets. Mr. Demling. So I had a couple of changes to one of the paragraphs in item 5A, new to this FY21 budget. Third paragraph down. Mr. Jensen, the capital requests are pet to the bone and that having teachers and students are uncomfortable is unfortunate. And then a couple more sentences. I wouldn't re-watch the section and I made those comments. Just having teachers and students on control is very painful, but not unfortunate. And then the next two sentences is probably being removed. I watched the comments two or three times. I couldn't find anywhere where I said that type of idea or those words. Which one? So Mr. Demling said that each of the municipalities and the cities and the CARES Act will fund them. Unfortunately, the regional schools are not a part of this municipal aid. Those two sentences, I couldn't find myself saying them when I was re-watching my comments on video. So if we could just remove those. Okay. Any other edits? Mr. Harrington. Yeah, I don't know if I missed it, but there was the under two. Mr. Harrington wanted to recognize the passion of Susan Kennedy. It should have been the passing of Susan Kennedy Marx. Oh. Yep. Thank you. I thought there was another one, right, that was all right. And Ms. Dancer just joined. Ms. Dancer, can you hear us? Yes, I can. Great. We're reviewing the minutes from May 26 right now. Okay. Any other for the minute? Seeing none, I'll move to approve our meeting minutes of May 26. Is there a second? Second. Moved by McDonald's, second by Harrington. Any other further comment? No. So Ms. Lorde? Lorde, aye. Ms. Spitzer? Spitzer, aye. Mr. Harrington? Harrington, aye. Mr. Demling? Demling, aye. Mr. Manino? Manino, aye. Mr. Sullivan? Sullivan, aye. And Ms. Dancer? Dancer, aye. And McDonald, aye. So the minutes are approved, eight, zero. And now we'll move on to public comment and committee announcements. So we do have two public comments, I believe. So I will, they're both audio, so I will play them right now. Here's the first one. Rebecca Sensor, I'm from Amherst and I am a professor of neuroscience at EMRAS and a parent of two art students and six in the eighth grade. As a scientist, I've been studying sleep, particularly sleep through all on learning and health for the past 15 years. On the basis of my research and the research of others, I'm enthusiastic for the school committee's consideration of instituting and delay school start times has been repeatedly verified by science and cannot be debated. For example, delay school start times has been shown to increase the time equivalent to the amount of time that school is delayed, decreased academic performance, decreases symptoms of depression, decreases teen power crashes, and increases other health factors like eating breakfast, taking medications, and reducing absenteeism. And what's just behind the times here? It has been six years since the American Academy of Pediatrics position statement that adolescents should not start school before 8 30 AM. But the upside of being behind is that we have literally over a thousand role models across the country as to how to implement this change. In Massachusetts, 25 school districts have successfully delayed school start times, including Holyoke North High School, which led the way in 2005. Worried about how it will affect athletics? These districts have demonstrated not a reduction in participation, but improved following the delayed school start implementation. Mid and post pandemic delaying school start time must be one of them for the following reasons. First, scientists don't know that changes are best made and adapted to when done all at once. Thus, adapting to new schedules will be more accepted and implemented with other changes we are being forced to consider for virus related reasons. Second, increased sensitivities from current affairs require good sleep. Now more than ever, our students need to maximize their sleep health for their mental health. Third, and finally, studies have shown that healthy sleep is one strategy to decrease susceptibility to viruses. Consider supporting increased sleep in just another way. You are reducing the spread of the coronavirus in our district. Again, thank you to the school committee for taking on this important topic, not in spite of the pandemic, but because of the pandemic. We have an opportunity to reform our schools. I'm happy to provide resources as you consider this important change. Thank you. And I will play another one. Hi, my name is Peter Everett. I am a resident of Amherst, a parent of a fourth grader at Fort River Elementary School, and a pediatrician in the community for the past eight years. I'm grateful to the school committee for the opportunity to speak and for the hard work you're putting in during this time of uncertainty. Thank you. Knowing the many issues that the school leadership and school committee face, I was very excited to see that the idea of moving high school start times back is still on the agenda. With so many things to address for the coming school year, it might be natural to want to table this one and put it off until some other time. But I think now is the perfect time to take out this issue again. To begin with, the medical evidence and support of later school start times is incontrovertible. Moving back start times leads to an increase in the amount of sleep that teams get. And in turn, schools see an increase in students' grades and increase in attendance rates and increase in graduation rates. Students have decreased rates of depression and mental health issues, as well as other medical issues such as obesity and heart disease. Athletes have fewer injuries and communities are safer. Moving school start times back has been linked to reduced traffic accident rates. The American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Medical Association, the CDC, all strongly back the school start time for high schools, no earlier than 8.30 a.m. For the sake of our children's health, this change is something I think we all agree on. This is something we should do. Now, there are challenges to be sure. This issue is not a new one, not even to the Amherst School Committee, but took it up relatively recently. But the challenge is how to arrange the bus schedules, how to accommodate the sports teams, how to support parents' needs for before and after school care. These are all solvable ones. Our superintendent has rightly in my opinion focused on student wellness this year and moving school start times back should fit right in with that goal. Secondly, as we're already exploring ways to re-enter school in the setting of coronavirus, why don't we take that opportunity to examine how a later start time can be part of the plan? In fact, in a way, the district has already implemented the later school start time. With the distance learning plan, teams across the district have already been waking up later. And I'll bet that's one part of the distance learning plan that you have not heard any complaints about. I wholeheartedly support and encourage the committee to continue the work on moving school start times back and will offer my support in any way possible as a parent, as a pediatrician, and as a community member. Thank you. So, we had no email public comments. And as always, we remind folks in the community that we always accept public comment, always expect any comment to schoolcommitteeatarps.org. And we've been receiving a lot lately. And for a specific public comment during our meetings, before any meeting and by three p, so long as we receive an email with the subject line public comment to my address or to our voicemail by three p.m. We will play that in part of our public comment during those meetings. Are there any committee announcements? Seeing none, we'll move on to the superintendent's update. I think Ms. Pitzer might have had her hand up. Oh, sorry. That's okay. I just wanted to acknowledge and think, I think it was led by Mary Custard, but I know that many of our students and educators precipitated on Sunday in the Black Lives Matter event on the town common. And I was able to be there and I just listened and I really just appreciated everybody showing up both from the community, but especially our educators and our students. So I wanted to say thank you. Dr. Morris. So Ms. McDonnell, right now, I think I got forwarded another email that was, I think it was sent to the school committee, our not address, your address, but it is titled public comment for tonight's meeting. So I wonder if you'd like me to, it'll take me about 10 seconds to organize that and display it. It's your decision, but I just wanted to, it did come in at 505. So I don't know if you'd like to play it now or we could do it on Thursday. If it's not on a topic that is a big consider, and this is no judgment, but it's on a topic that there's no vote scheduled for tonight. Okay. Since we're still in the public comment period, if folks, if the rest of the committee doesn't object, I'm willing to, yeah, why don't we have a look at it? Okay, just give me one second and I will get it queued up for you. Sorry about that. Literally just popped in as Ms. Spitzer was talking into my inbox. Gonna make the font a little bit larger so it's a little more legible for folks. All right, I will share my screen now. Is that legible? Yes, you might wanna scroll to hide the email address. Oh, yep, sorry. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. Okay. So, seeing if there's no other committee announcements, looking, nope, seeing none, then I think we can move on now to our next agenda item, superintendents update. Sure, and because we have two meetings, we have another one on Thursday. I'm just gonna make one comment and make a minor request to the committee. So we could go today, there was a tragic car accident in this town and a former graduate of our high school and a parent of the district passed away in that accident. So the parent was Euclides Almeida and the student was Alton Correa and Alton was, well, as a student, was an incredible artist and won numerous awards and scholarships such as the Gold Key Award, the Boston Globe Scholastic Art Awards, beloved by many of the faculty and administrators at the high school and there are family members who are students still in the district as well as mother of students in the district. And so I just ask if we could have a moment of silence because of that loss in our community. Thank you. I also wanna thank Dr. Guevara and the family center, the counselors for the students who are in our district, many others who reached out the GoFundMe page that was started, incredible number of staff members from our district have contributed to that. GoFundMe pays to support the family in that way but within hours of us knowing counselors from our schools will touch with the children in our district as well as the family. And so just wanna thank Dr. Guevara, the family center for coordinating those activities because in these moments it's hard to know what people need really is dependent on the person. We got a sense of that pretty quickly and people jumped in with both feet to make sure that they were supporting the family and continue to do so. So I really wanna thank the team of counselors and others who have done that but also wanna send my condolences to someone who a family that's been very significant in the ARPS family for some time. So given the gravity of that for the only superannouncement I'll make more on Thursday night. Thank you. All right, next, we're moving on to now our new and continuing business and our first item is a resolution concerning school resource officers in ARPS schools and this is a discussion and possible approval. And I'll turn it over to Mr. Harrington who is leading this. Yeah, so the motivation behind this was that I kind of felt like in these times we have to do something tangible and something real. And so it's really a matter of scratching the surface but also it's an issue that kind of came up when I was running the first time. I remember being at a legal women's voters forum with Ms. Spitzer and Ms. McDonald and the question that's posed to us would we ever consider having school resource officers in our schools? And I think there was a resounding response to that. And so that's kind of the motivation behind it. And I feel like this is the right time to actually find out here. Put the rubber to the pavement so to speak. Mr. Harrington, would you like me to display? Mr. Harrington sent me a final draft that had just a couple of my understanding it's a couple of wording changes, is that right? Right. So I'm happy to display that right now. So resolution banning the use of school resource officers in Amherst Regional Public Schools. Whereas the Amherst Pellum Regional School District is responsible for the well-being of our students and to promote an atmosphere conducive to the mission of our district, which is to advance the cause of social justice and multiculturalism. Whereas the Amherst Pellum Regional School District is committed to helping our students avoid the pitfalls of the school-to-prison pipeline by protecting our students from the effects of unnecessary increased interactions with law enforcement. So therefore, we're to be resolved that the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee will commit to indefinitely continuing not to employ the use of school resource officers in all of our schools and direct the superintendent to take any necessary action to enforce this resolution. Are there any questions or comments, discussion from the committee? Mr. Menino? Well, I endorse it. No comment. Thank you. Mr. Demley? Yeah. So I really appreciate Mr. Harrington bringing this to the committee right now. I totally agree. This is a time when we want to, even if this is a relatively minor action that we want to take substantive action. You know, and it did give me the opportunity to kind of research a little bit the history of school resource officers. And it's not the greatest history in the world. So, you know, apparently this started off as a idea in Fresno in the late 60s to revitalize the image of the police, in which case there was a plainclothes officer in schools. And then it eventually morphed into a uniform police officer there for security. It was still a relatively uncommon idea until the 80s and then especially the 90s, if, you know, not to belabor this point, but this is a pretty significant cultural thing and political thing happening in the 90s with the tough on crime, three strikes you're out. You know, that's really when prisons became, turned into the for-profit industry that they are today. A lot of fear stoked, you know, gang violence and so at that point, school resource officers worked from like 1% to like 40% and became this like thing. And, you know, to me at the end of the day, for our district, it's like, what's the problem and what would we be trying to solve with the school resource officer? We don't, you know, if it's supposedly for security, that's not the problem I've ever heard the superintendent or any other building administrator talk about us having. You know, so I'm very happy to support, I think the wording is great. The only minor suggestion I would have to make it a little stronger is change will commit to commits and it just makes it like immediately we're taking this action right now and not some point in the near future. And then the other suggestion I had as a follow on to try to future-proof this as much as possible is that, you know, even though I don't think it's likely anytime soon that the superintendent or the school committee would ever take this up, it's possible, right, that a future superintendent or school committee as it changes could. So I think we might want to refer this to becoming a policy because when we change a policy it requires that drafting the first reading, the second reading, the third reading wants a discussion and approval. And so if you think a decade or plus down the line if some superintendent or school committee ever thought to do this, they would actually have to propose and change the policy as opposed to just quietly, you know, making a hire and forgetting about a resolution that was passed in 2020. And I think with that kind of time we could craft, you know, the most declarative language about how we feel about it to make it really prohibitive for any future school committee to consider wanting to change that. But I appreciate Mr. Harrington bringing it up and I'm very happy to vote it tonight. Thank you. Ms. Lord? Yes, first thank you, Mr. Harrington for drafting this. It's an important step in starting us to interrupt the school to prison pipeline. And we are working on a draft of a statement that we'll also have some other ways in which we hope to interrupt the school to prison pipeline in Amherst schools. So thank you and I approve. Oh, Mr. Sullivan, you're still muted. So this is anecdotal but what we really need to do is to clone Mark Keenan and put him at every school because the 2017-2018 school year when my daughter was a senior and I had a whole bunch of my dance girls that he was on medical leave for a month. And those girls didn't realize how much they appreciated having him at the front of the school to greet them every single day until he was gone and came back. So we need to find those people instead. Thank you. Dr. Morris? If Mr. Harrington's okay, I'd like to comment on Mr. Deming's comment about the policy, but I wanna make sure Mr. Harrington's okay if I share our conversation. Yep, yep, that's okay. Yes, so Mr. Harrington and I connected late last week. I think it was on this topic and he deserves all the credit. I like word Smith poorly that he then had to reword Smith because I didn't do a good job. So all the credit goes his way. But on a more serious note, we talked about that the current immigration policy started as a resolution and that was a good model for how this might travel, that there was at that point, much like at this point an urgent need that the committee felt and that I endorsed for a resolution to pass. And then with time, we can follow the more formal process that is a little lengthier, but we didn't wanna necessarily or Mr. Harrington said and I agreed I should say play out a long-term process. There was a sense for Mr. Harrington that having a resolution voted now would be a strong statement and then could engender more dialogue and drafting a policy, go through policy subcommittee and can go. And I think that worked well from the immigration approach. The immigration policy that currently stands, how that flowed for those of you who weren't here was very similar to how I could imagine this resolution eventually becoming a policy that gets voted and is a little more permanent than perhaps a resolution as Mr. Demling shared. So I just wanted to say, at least Mr. Harrington, my conversation, we agreed that that flow made a lot of sense and I think it worked well for immigration. You can follow the same sort of playbook. Yeah. Yeah, and I will echo the saying and thanks that everybody's expressed to Mr. Harrington. Thank you for bringing this forward. It is really important and I agree also on the timeliness. I have the same question about like, this is important. We should make this actually policy so that it is more permanent. I mean, nothing's absolutely carved in stone but I do agree with that. So thank you for bringing that up but I do agree with the timeliness of making a statement right now. And I do think that it's important for us to say out loud also that we do not currently have school resource officers. So that continuing to not employ is a really important phrasing because we don't. And then separately just a personal question to help my understanding because I was actually asked by a police officer in another town, not in Amherst town, why doesn't Amherst have school resource officers? It's state law. And I explained why we didn't have school resource, why I thought we didn't have school resource officers but I had to beg ignorance about the state law and that. So I don't know if Dr. Morris, if you can share any insight on that. Sure, so I don't have it in front of me. I'm sorry, I should have been more prepared for that question. It's a logical one to come up. There is a state law that talks about school resource officers otherwise districts have to default to the state police. Now the reality is they have not sent, I think to any district who doesn't have a school resource officer from the state police. So it is something that the chief of the Amherst police has raised with me previously. We maintain open communication if there truly was a safety crisis in the schools. I do not have concerns that they would call Northampton and wait for Northampton to come to our schools. That's not how they approach public safety in our community. So I think there are other, there's not many but there are other school districts in the Commonwealth that did not have school resource officers and to date the state police have not assigned anyone to any school. I think it's been seen as the kind of sovereign decision of local districts to have and trying to maintain in terms of crisis interaction in terms of and not to play out negative things but I don't know how to do it unless I wanna be really clear on what I'm talking about. If there's an intruder in the building, right? Those kind of safety crisis emergency situations. I know that the Amherst police would not expect us to call the state police and wait for someone from Northampton to come. They would provide immediate agency as an emergency just like they would if someone was at home and there was an intruder into someone's home. Thank you. So I think two things we've talked about as action items. One, a minor edit to the language in this resolution. So question about whether the committee is willing to approve it with pending that change with that team and also just an agreement. It doesn't need to be a vote to refer this to the policy team, policy subcommittee to work out crafting a policy around this for future consideration at the full committee. Is that what everybody's makes sense? Okay. So does somebody, would somebody like to make a motion? Mr. Demling. Yeah, I don't wanna make the motion but just a logistical point, given this level of zoomness that we're all in or whatever we call this Google thing, I was right. It might be faster. I don't know if we refer this to a number of members or if we have Mr. Harrington and up to four members craft the policy and bring it back to the committee. That would, you know, we're a committee of nine. So the advantage is that we can have two to four people working together and not break quorum. It just, it might be a faster work around and turnaround time given our protocol of first read, secondary third as opposed to posting open meetings of the policy subcommittee. Yep. That makes sense. The policy and we do have some upcoming policy work as well, related to other legal changes. So there is a little bit of policy work that needs to be done in the next two, three months. But I do, I agree with that approach if folks want to step forward to work on that. Ms. Lord. I was saying I would step forward. Thank you. Would somebody like to make a motion regarding the resolution? Mr. Menino, you're unmuted. So why don't you go ahead? I move that we adopt the resolution banning the use of school resource officers in the Amherst Regional Public School statement. I move that we adopt it. Lord second. I move by Menino and seconded by Lord. Let's do a roll call. Mr. Harrington. I move to an aye. Mr. Menino. Menino aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Ms. Stanser. You're muted. Stanser aye. Thank you. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. Well, that's just a great, a great change. Mr. Demling, I think is the. Demling aye. I'm McDonald's aye. Did I skip anybody? No, the resolution is approved, eight to zero. And we have one volunteer to work on drafting a policy. Would anybody else like to work with Ms. Lord? Mr. Harrington. Okay. So Ms. Lord and Mr. Harrington. And I can connect with you both on that as well. To support that effort pulling up the agenda. Sorry. Great. So moving on to our next item, student opportunity act plan. Sure. So I'll give a very brief overview that this fall, late this fall, the student opportunity act was passed. And it was at that point thought to be significant amount of funds coming to local districts, particularly those who had higher concentrations of income eligible students in it. As a result, or in that document was that districts getting less than $1.5 million more in funding, which we are one of, had to do a short plan, which is two pages long. And districts that were receiving more than $1.5 million had a longer seven page plan of what they were going to do with the funds. This is an awkward conversation. As most people don't believe those funds are going to materialize. The deadline was passed in two of my districts in the Emerson and the Pelham district. I'm just saying that out loud for those members who might have said, oh, we did this already. That's true in two of the districts. We did not pass this in the region. It's slated to be due now. I think it's June 15th. I got, I checked in last week and said, is it going to be delayed again? And they said most likely. And so I suggested most likely wasn't good enough because I didn't want to, if it ends up not getting passed to rush a meeting and pull this whole body together just to pass a two page document that I think as we all know is not high on Desi's list of things to do at the moment, but I didn't want to force you all into a last minute emergency meeting for something of this nature. So since we had two meetings this week, we thought we could see if we could knock it out. It was in the agenda packet. It really talks about evidence-based programs to close gaps. We focus on mathematics, what we did last year with ELL, but for mathematics, those two looking with ELL students with a SLIFE teacher, which is students who have had interrupted or limited schooling prior to coming to our district and the new math core sequence at the high school to put some credit recovery, beef up our credit recovery program to support students who are struggling in mathematics. So those are two commitments that we made. We did share this out in a newsletter, it seems like years ago, but actually it was not that many this spring or this late winter. We did not receive feedback, was also shared with CPAC and LPAC as well. And so I would ask you for your consideration, does require a vote and does require submission to Desi? And if there's any questions, I'm happy to answer them. We certainly could try to rush to get it on a meeting, you know, because the 15th isn't tomorrow, but if the committees would indulge me in it to see if we can try to get this passed tonight. I'd appreciate it. Great. Thank you. Any, does anybody have questions for Dr. Morse? Lord. I have a question about the commitment number one. I'm curious as to our graduation rate and how that is factored. Does it include people who start as freshmen through to graduation? Are we looking for students that might be put into other programs like GED programs or I'm just curious as to how we got that graduation rate? So the graduation rate, thanks, it's a great question. The, it is calculated multiple ways. And so what you see in the outcome metrics is a four-year graduation rate. They also calculate a five-year graduation rate and it gets to some of the points that you raise for students who take an alternate path. We do have students sometimes who come with us, they decide not to continue and then they come back and sometimes that's to the big high school and some that's, and more frequently, frankly, that's to Summit Academy. Last year, for instance, we had a graduate who was over the age of 20. And so that student wouldn't have counted it in the four-year graduation rate but was able to complete his or her studies, I'll say their studies after the four-year period. So it's a complex metrics. It's, Dr. Slaughter knows this from his former job because he was part of his was to calculate this. I don't know if you wanna add anything, Dr. Slaughter, but it is, it's an imperfect science, but I think it does give us a rough number and we can follow trends over time. Or if there's anything you wanna add Dr. Slaughter to that or did I capture it? Okay, you know, and just the short story as to why we wanna track that is these programs are really focused, these two in particular, on what we know as students who have been limited, not just in Amherst, but across the country, students who have a background and who have limited or interrupted schooling are much at higher risk for not completing high school and the math course that we're adding is around credit recovery. And when we look at students who don't graduate and who don't pass the MCAS, which at the current time is a graduation requirement, we see that as a barrier and the course is designed to support students to get over that barrier and to graduate. Sorry, I just wanted to loop back your question because I think it's a good one to, it's connection to the actual plan. Are there any other questions for Dr. Morris? Not seeing any. Mr. Demling. I moved to approve the student opportunity plan as presented. Moved by Demling, is there a second? Second. I second. Moved by Demling, a second and by Spitzer. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Roll call vote. I'll start with Ms. Lorde because she's unmuted. Lorde present. Yay or no. Oh, sorry. Lorde yay. Ms. Dancer. Dancer aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Mr. Menino. Menino aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. Mr. Herrington. Herrington aye. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. And McDonald's aye. It passes eight to zero. Thank you very much. Thanks. Great, and now we'll move, moving right along. We'll move to Community Preservation Act request. And I don't, is this Dr. Moore? We'll keep it up for Dr. Slaughter, yeah. So as you might remember in the capital plan, it was a Dr. Slaughter went across the towns to talk to perhaps using asking for use of Community Preservation Act funds for some work to study the fields. I've gotten some questions from some of our member communities as well as residents about given that when we were asking for those funds, the world was in a different place, both fiscally and otherwise. What was the recommendation gonna be? Dr. Slaughter and I talked about it. He wrote a memo that was in your packet. He'll speak to that. And what we're looking for tonight is guidance from the committee to go back to those Community Preservation Act. I don't know if it's committees or groups in the different towns with a direction for us. Dr. Slaughter expressed his opinion, but we thought it was appropriate given that we talked about it here to bring the committee's attentions and see what advice the committee has for which way to go. So I'll turn it over to Dr. Slaughter with that. The only thing I think I would add is just that in the process of going to each of those Community Preservation Act committees and chatting with them about the sort of process we were thinking of, there were a couple of pieces. One that we were going to do some preliminary work this spring to talk about orientation and field surface, which obviously we have not done. And the second piece was that the amount of funding we were asking for, if all four towns funded it, would probably be about half the design engineering work to get to construction documents. And so the idea was, well, then for fiscal 22, we would probably ask of our normal capital process, the second half of that design and then potentially in the year after or soon thereafter, some monies for construction to do the actual work. And it's entirely likely that that's not gonna happen in that rapid of sequence of events just because I think the financial realities that we're existing in right now is gonna prevent us from doing that. So I didn't wanna be disingenuous to the various committees relative to our reality financially and theirs as well. But at the same time, if they were fully committed to continuing to fund it, I'd offered that we would take the money and sort of park it until we were ready to use it. But that's really the genesis of the idea. I mean, I think, to be perfectly honest, we'll probably have to revisit and reshape all of this a little bit as we see how things play out over the next couple of years, both financially and as far as the need at those facilities. Thank you. Are there any comments or questions from the committee? Mr. Demling. So what's the total amount, ballpark? So we importiate the way we do capital costs but the total ass from all four committees combined was $200,000. We anticipated that the design in ensuring work to sort of get to construction documents would be about 400,000 to 500,000 roughly. So this was essentially kind of half of that. And so Amherst would carry in the order of about $150,000, the others were between about 11 and 16,000 or so, not recalling exact numbers off the top of my head, but for each of those communities, it's a significant ask in some ways. And when you fund one CFA project, you often are not funding a different one. And so as with capital, generally, it's a bit difficult to sort of acquire the money and then not utilize it in a fairly reasonable timeframe. If you sort of hold it for a long period of time, that's a bit unfortunate because it prevents other projects from happening. Mr. Denley. Yeah, so it's funny, like part of me doesn't want to return the money because I mean, this is a massive project, right? And this has been going on already for years and we're not even close to the end of this to fulfill a real critical need. And it's not easy to get money approved and sent to us from four different agencies like this. However, given the unprecedented nature of the times and the point that Dr. Slaughter just made about, well, if you're not funding one project, you might be funding others. And the impact that those other projects could have for those communities in this now unprecedented time, I think it best to do what the memo proposes and get the CPA committees the option that if they want to park it great, we'll be happy to park it and have that guarantee for the future and we're ready to go. But I do see the sense in honoring the relationship with the agencies that are funding us. I think I shared a very similar thinking, Mr. Denley, because it is, particularly when we're looking at the new school year and thinking about sort of social emotional wellness and the importance of physical activity and recreation for that, but this money isn't gonna make it any changes for next year. So having that money, it's not gonna impact the fields for next year. And I do agree and share the same sentiments that Mr. Denley just expressed on those supporting our region communities. Any other comments, Mr. Harrington? I just wanted to thank Dr. Slaughter for all the work that went into this, that it's not an easy task to wrangle that many folks together to make the request. And I also wanna thank him for kind of having the oversight, the foresight anyway to withdraw the request as difficult as it is. But yeah, thank you for the work on that. Welcome. I think, or is this something that we as a committee need to vote on or is it a head nod, thumbs up? Yeah, I think it's a directional. We're looking for the staff, we're looking for some direction. I think we've received that direction. Check with you, Dr. Slaughter, but do you feel like you have what you needed? Yeah, yes I do, thank you. I'm seeing nodding heads and thumbs up across the board. So good, great. Thank you. I like that. Okay, I didn't bookmark my agenda, so I didn't pack it. Great, so next up is later start times and this is a discussion. And I'll just tee this up. I suggested that we have this conversation knowing that we haven't had, we haven't, we've talked about this in the past, we haven't addressed it, we sort of parked it in the midst of all of the massive amounts of work that we've been doing since March. But I did want to come back to it because it is something that we've talked about and included as sort of a mention in one of the superintendent's goals for this year was in the context of wellness. And then also as a few of the folks in the community have mentioned is thinking, just recognizing that any return to school in the next year and frankly beyond that is going to be a significant change to sort of the way things have been in our schools and particularly for the experience of our secondary students. And also because of the current situation that their schedules are completely disrupted. Have the conversation to see if this is a constraint or a principle that we want to keep in mind as we are planning our return to school for our secondary students in the fall or in beyond frankly, because we'll be talking about sort of the coming back to school for a while. So I just wanted, that's just my sort of preface and to tee up the conversation and sort of hear what the rest of the committee is thinking about whether this is something that we want to include, have more conversations just how do we want to proceed? Mr. Menino. A couple of the community comments talked about it but I want to ask Mike, I hear Boston adopted this. How has it worked out for Boston? It's probably better examples to use than Boston when we talk about school start times and reassignment plans. The short story, it was part of my understanding and I'm not an expert in this, it was part of a larger organization that involved changing school zoning and they had some MIT, this is not just MIT but they had MIT folks come up with a plan that was not well supported by the community and ended up not being implemented as designed. That's a short summary but that's an easy Google-able kind of oral history if you want to follow it. There are other districts that have talked about it. Northampton is the local district that's talked the most about it. They had it on their agenda for a potential vote in January. They ended up my understanding not voting on that and then much like us, other stuff has taken up a lot of the bandwidth and so there was a study and Ms. McDonald or maybe the public comment referenced it actually. There was a lot of work on this, I want to say seven or eight years, might be a little more even but there was a significant amount of work that was done. I think I shared that with the committee a while ago and some of you may not have been on it in terms of the report that was completed and some of the public feedback that was received. So I agree with the public comments that the data's irrefutable in terms of the benefits and I think many communities find and Ms. McDonald, I know you went to a workshop last year about this, the Devils and the Details, so to speak about athletics, extracurricular activities, what had the impact on the elementary, particular, I don't want to sound like I'm saying it's impossible but I do want to say the barriers are significant because I do want the committee to have the understanding that we could all endorse the principal and then there's a tremendous amount of work from endorsing the principal to changing start time. We operate with a joint school bus system with two other districts who are not represented, I'm not the superintendent of in terms of the Levart Elementary School District and the Streetsbury Elementary School District, they would be impacted likely by any change. So when we were started talking about this, I did meet with Ms. Superintendent Colkeen last summer and we had some loose conversations, I know she brought that to the school committee, at least just an update up in Levart and Streetsbury. So it is this thing that everyone agrees to do and the trade-offs are the ones that the community, many communities find there's a lot of feedback about in our particular instance with the split districts, it would involve some coordination and potential change of start times of five districts. And so I think it's just, it's one of these things that I'm not trying to say that it can't be done or build barriers, but I do think there's a lot of work that would need to be done to coordinate that on a functional practical level. And again, if you're asking me is a good idea for adolescent kids to wake up later, I can, I'm in, right? You could tell a personal story about that with my daughter this morning and I won't mention the time she woke up, but it was late. We're not gonna get as late and we're not gonna get to a start time as late as she woke up this morning, I'll put it that way. That's off the table. But I do think it's one of the things that if the committee wants to move forward it'll involve a significant amount of both community conversations with the region but actually significant amount of community conversations with the four different elementary districts that share a bus route with it. My, and you all know me well enough to know, Occam's razor, I try to look at the easiest solution and that's why I suggested last spring, if we wanna look at it, I think a reasonable approach is can we push everyone back a certain amount of time? Right, instead of doing something more complex with the flip, I just think in some districts that may be possible in this particular set of districts the governance barriers make that really hard to recognize and for some of the bus routes in Mr. Sullivan, I'm sure will agree with me, we have a pretty big geographic region. We're not a one town region where all the bus routes can be pretty localized. You're a North Leverett, North Shrewtsbury, you're a ways away from the middle school and the high school and so that is another factor when we compare ourselves to some towns or cities who have done this, just the geographic diversity Mr. Sullivan knows all too well in terms of his winter work is a barrier. So I think my personal opinion is if the committee wants to take this up, engaging other stakeholder groups in terms of other committees, figure out a strategy or a way to engage the larger community on it and then trying to figure out a simple solution and it might be a stop gap. You might say, we can push it back this far, this is the consensus we got and over time that may flow downhill so to speak where more things are possible but we do have some real governance barriers that are difficult to overcome. Sorry, that's like a sour taste in your mouth Mr. Menino but it's an honest answer to your question. Thank you. Yeah. Mr. Demling. So I hear you Dr. Morris but I'm also wondering about the impact to the other masses and I completely agree with, my video just went all flaky. Can y'all hear me okay? Yeah. You were tapping out, turn off your video while you speak. There. Okay, I'll do that. So yeah, so a lot of those factors that you mentioned that make it super complicated, the athletics, the extracurriculars, the elementary impact, those are gonna look a lot different in the fall of 20 than they did in the fall of 19. And so I'm just wondering, given the two very general models that we've just begun to testing, do you know enough right now to be able to say early start time is completely prohibitive with either of these models or it's a possibility. Maybe it's something that fits well with what we're implementing in the fall, maybe it's not, but to me it doesn't make much sense to start some big early start time parallel conversation if we don't know that it has at least a very good chance of working with the framework we're talking about for the fall. So the two things I'd say, I think the framework is so open. I think it is an opportunity to your point but I think the two things that I'd wanna consider is engaging and whether that's through the levered and shoot spray rep or whether it's through some kind of joint meeting to have this discussion, which honestly would be my preference because I do think Mr. Sullivan does a great job in shoot spray, but I think everyone should be engaged in the discussion in person. To talk about that, I think it may be a better conversation once we at least know a general sense of options and model for next year. And I think the second one is in many districts that have made this change, or potentially involves some collective bargaining with our organized labor and multiple units. So also thinking of engaging that group. So I agree with you that athletics may be different extracurriculars, may look different, the number of days students are there will look different. I mean, I'll just put a affirmative statement on that one, but I think the stakeholder groups that really need to be engaged even to start putting pencil to paper and drafting it would be the Shoot Spare and Leverage School Committees as well as Pelham and Amherst, but we have enough joint meetings coming up where I'm not too worried that we won't have those opportunities, but also to engage the bargaining units because it could be considered a change in working conditions if we change the times. Some places have changed the time of students and not change the time of staff. That's an option, but my personal belief is that the sooner we engage bargaining units, and I don't mean tomorrow, by the way. I mean, I think we're probably at least a conversation away from that. Even if it doesn't end up changing working conditions, I think the due diligence would be appreciated by those units. Ms. Stanser and then Mr. Sullivan. One of the comments, the person said that there are 25 districts in the state that have done this. Is there information available about where those districts are and whether they at all resemble us? I actually can answer that because as Dr. Boris referenced, I attended a workshop that an AMA Seat Mass Association of School Committees presented probably a year ago now about later start times. And it was two or three districts that had made the change to a later start time for their high schools. Sharing their experience a year after they had done it, a year or more after they had made the changes. And some of the materials that they shared out, which I will dig through and share out with the committee is a spreadsheet of all of the start times for every district and if and when they've made a change. So there's a lot, as the speaker referenced, there's a lot of data and a lot of models for both how the change was approached, right? So the process that was taken and sort of the hurdles that they encountered along the way and then also learnings about their experience since the change. So we are fortunate that we have a lot of models that we can look at to help us understand the dynamics. Mr. Sullivan? Yeah, so I've brought this up to the Shootsbury School Committee a few times and the big issue is Dr. Morris is, and it's actually, it's bigger than just. Oh, you're muted? I muted it. So Union 28 isn't just Shootsbury and Leverett, it's Shootsbury Leverett, Wendell, New Salem, which is Swift River and Irving. And every year, when we approve the calendar for the Union 28, there's always grumbling because it always ends up following because of Leverett and Shootsbury, the Amherst calendar, but it's been made very clear that having to go late start in Irving and Swift River because Leverett and Shootsbury's buses, it doesn't fly. That's a hard conversation. Thank you. Yeah, I'll just weigh in. There's a lot of barriers and challenges. I recognize that. And I think from the panel that I, like hearing the experience from school districts that have made the change, transportation, I think in the past, the past time that Amherst looked at it, transportation was an issue, but athletics became sort of the real sort of deciding issue that sort of trounced the idea then. And what many of the districts that have made the change talked about as being the biggest challenge was actually transportation. So that is a known and it's not, it's probably a little bit more complex for us, but many of the experiences that these other districts encountered it was, they had complexities that are different, but also complex. So I think, as I think about it, for me, we have to look at transportation and because of the pandemic. So no matter how many days we're in school or students are in school, no matter either model or even a third model, we're going to have to be rethinking our transportation anyway, given the requirements on buses. And we're going to have to be negotiating schedules and with our unions as well. And so I think that's part of it is like, if we're already going to be doing a lot of that work anyway, rather than tackle it at another time, sometime in the future and go through all that work again, can we sort of roll this in and sort of it feels like it could be a little bit more efficient since we have to do all of that anyway now. Dr. Morris, sorry. No, no, no, absolutely. And just as a reminder for folks, when we did a transportation study, about actually just about a year ago, we included some information about late start time in that study. So I will ask, I'll see if we can dig that up and share it with the committee because not everyone was on the committee at that time. It's a very dense report about transportation and bus models. So I'll make sure that gets forwarded to the committee. Thank you. Yeah, I was thinking about that too, that we, and I believe that that model that what had been looked at was actually not touching elementary times, the elementary times, it was really looking exclusively at middle school, high school. Mr. Sullivan. Well, as Dr. Morris pointed out, it wasn't touching the Amherst elementary schools, but it was going to mess with the Leverett and Shootsbury. Understood, sorry for forgetting that. Thank you. Ms. Spitzer. I just wanted a chance to say, I fully support the scientific evidence in for later start time for our kids is clear. I don't think there's any question about it. And I support the idea of looking at this in light of all the work we're going to be doing, looking at transportation and negotiating contracts and stuff. So, but I'm a little pessimistic about the logistics of not only our district, but all the districts we touch. So I'm in favor of us continuing to keep it on the table. I'm doing the work we can to move it forward, but that's it. I see two hands, Mr. Demling and Mr. Menino, but I also want to check in with Mr. Hangington as Lord make sure that you haven't had a chance to speak. I want to give you an opportunity to say something if you do. Mr. Harrington. I'm just listening to this conversation. I have like this burning thing in the back of my head that we have an outgoing transportation director right now. And so we would have a brand new transportation director dealing with this. So I think that whatever transportation study we have to do would have to be, I mean, thorough, just so that we're not like kind of wumping that extra piece onto someone else's book. Yeah, as far as like the data, I think I might be tunnel vision on this as far as what I've read, but like the impact on students, I've yet to read anything that's negative. And so anything positive that we can do for kids, I think it's at least worth discussing. Thank you. Ms. Lord, did you want to add anything? Mr. Menino. Just to keep it on the table and to move forward with the discussion. And Mr. Demling. So yeah, I mean, I do feel really torn by two motivations here. You know, I'm always conscious of initiative overload on our superintendent, on the committee, on our teachers and on the public about changing too many things at one time and not having enough cognitive space to do a thing properly. Sometimes that's hard to calculate because when you have so many things going on, right now we just have this one massive thing that we have to do with the fall 2020 which is itself overwhelming. And I certainly wouldn't want out of a very sincere desire to do what's best for kids. But as we've all mentioned, the incontrovertible science, I certainly wouldn't want to, endanger a quality process for the fall planning. So that being said, this is one of the few issues and more than three years on the committee that I've repeatedly get people coming up to me and emails and, you know, of like, this is, you know, we have to do this. And I do hear the complications with regards to transportation and bargaining and the outflow impacts of Levertootsbury and New Salem, Wendell and all that. But I also think, and based on what I've seen from the history of other districts, this is never going to be something that has unanimous support for everybody rolling in the same direction. In fact, I think if we pulled everybody today, we probably wouldn't have unanimous support for what we currently do, you know? And so I'm not saying I want a railroad over anybody, but I do think that even if there are what seem to be insurmountable obstacles to unanimity of all of the various districts that we touch, I kind of feel like the need to push forward at least as is practicable. So to me, what that means in terms of, you know, the actual schedule is, you know, we're trying to come up with a firm kind of model and about four, so we said five weeks last week. So about four or five weeks from now, however the calendar shakes out, I think that would be a good time to say, okay, here's, we have a much better idea now than we did the previous five weeks about what the fall is going to look like. You know, now in light of that, this is what the practicality of early start time looks like. If it's so out of left field and would require so much extra lifting, hopefully it will be obvious and the decision will be easier for us. If there is a chance, then, you know, we'll have to make a decision about how far we want to push it, but I would at least like to have a pointed conversation at that point. Dr. Morris. And I know the time's getting late and we have other items to get to and another meeting this week. I think just the two points in response to Mr. Demling, one is that I have heard from multiple families of secondary students that even when they're, we'll meet calls, you know, nothing starting before 8.30 and how helpful that has been in all the ways that people have spoken about. So I think some of it, there is the, you know, the idea of striking when the iron's hot. I think the iron's a little hot because we've secondary students who have had this bizarre experience in many ways, but one of the parts of the bizarre experience that's been seen positively is getting more sleep at night. And to the point that I just want to clarify, Mary, their statement in case I wasn't, I don't know, maybe I wasn't clear. I think the part around engaging, you know, she's very elaborate aren't necessarily to build unanimity. And I know you're not saying this, Mr. Demling, or to make a difficult decision is because functionally we actually need to, right? And that's a little different than in other districts. I think that's just the one wrinkle that if the committee really wants to go forward with this trying to figure out a way to engage those groups, not waiting four or five weeks, but engaging those bodies sooner because it's not the case that the region can unilaterally make that decision because there's four other committees that have to do it and those four other committees might have opinions. And I think particularly with the split governance model where I have, no, right. I mean, Ms. Superintendent Culkin and I talk frequently, she's a close colleague, but I have no capacity to make a recommendation to anything to do with the Leverett Elementary School, the Shootsbury Elementary School. I think that is just from a governance model, a complication that's not about unanimity or making a hard decision. It's about actually bringing more people to the party to make a decision collaboratively. And I think that is just an additional wrinkle. And I don't know, you know, Mr. Sullivan spoke about some of the challenges. I don't know Leverett, you know, Leverett members not here tonight. I don't know what challenges would exist up there as well. They do have a different Wednesday schedule with their elementary school still than we do. So I think if the committee wants to proceed, I would just encourage, whether it's full committee meetings or, you know, Mr. Sullivan reaching out to, you know, however is the best method, I think that's really what I was trying to express is that it's not something that we can do independent of our elementary districts. And that's it. I'll stop talking. Ms. Dancer. Um, if this is something that we decide we want to take on, I think it would be really important to let the community know the things that have to be taken into consideration because my guess is most people in the community have no idea what's involved. And if you really want, if you really want to work this out, I think you have to give people information so that there's understanding in the community about what's involved. Mm-hmm. Any more thoughts or comments? Ms. Spitzer. I guess the only thing I'd say in support of kind of the idea of striking while the air is hot is that this may also be a good time to engage with these committees because it won't require us driving all the way, you know, since everything's virtual, this geographic barriers that exist have diminished and so that maybe it's a good time to try to, although I'm feeling a lot of meeting fatigue, it might not be a bad time to hold these meetings while people are still at home and don't need to travel. Great. I think, you know, when you think about sort of what we're, you know, our mission and putting students and our learners first and as we're thinking about and not questioning anybody's commitment to that, I just, I think that the later start time is one thing that I think most everybody unanimously agrees with, where there's research, solid research, not even sort of insufficient evidence, there's so much behind this that it's really hard to be comfortable saying it's gonna be hard to make that change. So let's not, you know, let's delay that and tackle that another time. You know, when we, when there's so, this is an issue that is so clear as I share, Mr. Demling, I'm always asked about this and every, any event I, you know, get the questions and it's one that a goal that it has near unanimous agreement and where we get stuck is how are we gonna do it and it's gonna be hard. And, you know, nothing, I don't wanna see us sort of just sort of shy away from it because it's gonna be hard work when we know that it's gonna, it can bring such great impacts on our students and their learning and their emotional wellbeing. And with that, then we'll move on to the next topic unless I'm not seeing any more comments. Okay, so superintendent evaluation instrument and I'll let Ms. Spitzer introduce this. I noticed Ms. Spitzer did email the instrument to all of us late this afternoon. Do you wanna, do you wanna share it, Carrie? I was just bringing it up. And I apologize for the late sending. It's, I was going back and forth with some last minute edits. So. I can also share it if it's easier for you Ms. Spitzer. Sure. Happy to do it. We don't have the technical issues from last time. All right, so just to refresh everybody's memory. It's the time of year where back in September or I'll just say the fall, I'm not sure exactly when we voted on several goals for Dr. Morris. It's now a time to do the evaluation. It's somewhat delayed due to all the interruptions we've had due to COVID. But I'm presenting today a PDF of what the evaluation is gonna look like. This will be delivered electronically by email. I would like to start just by thanking Sasha Figuero for putting this together. She worked with me, it's been a while anyway. So she drew this all together. So the way it works is each goal had a corresponding, I believe it's called indicator and maybe getting this wrong from the rubric that Desi provides for us to evaluate the superintendent on. So it may be helpful, I can bring this up too, to just go back and remember that there were four main goals that we voted on. I believe it was on September 24th. One, I called in here the wellness goal. There was also a goal to look at completing the study of viability and implications of moving sixth grade to the middle school and engage the larger community on findings of the working group. That was what I'm referring to in this document as the sixth grade goal. There was also one that I'm referring to as the diversity goal, which is the goal that was, I'll just read out loud, was for the purpose of addressing the opportunity gap, identifying work on barriers and solutions to continuing to increase the diversity of our staff, both in terms of recruitment and retention and provide ongoing professional development on diversity and equity to all staff members and administrators. So that's what, when you're looking through this, that's the diversity goal. And then there was also a final goal, which I've called the strategic planning goal, which was to engage the faculty staff and school community to complete the strategic planning process by adding building-based initiatives that will achieve the objectives and outcomes, develop an action plan that details interim benchmark measures for assessment of progress and begin implementation of the plan. So when you actually do this evaluation, I don't think you're gonna have the traditional kind of, we've talked about this, you're not gonna have the traditional artifacts document that Dr. Morris often puts together, but you will have the goals that I just read off and probably a PowerPoint presentation from Dr. Morris, kind of updating the committee on progress made on these goals, at least over the, definitely through the period up until mid-March when everybody had to refocus. But this should be very similar to anybody who's been on the committee before. For those of you who are new, I think it works pretty well. Any questions or concerns? Ms. Dancer? So is this going to be evaluating the superintendent up through the time that we closed the schools? Or is there going to, I mean, thinking of the sixth grade goal, when's the last time we even considered talking about the sixth grade goal in light of what's happening? So, is it gonna include any of the work that he's done since we closed the school? So I think it's, depending on the goal, we may change the, I think it's gonna be up to the committee member to kind of think about what timeframe they'd like. And I don't, I mean, it's definitely not up to me to, give the guidance on how to complete this. I'll say from my thinking was that we will have a, and I've talked conversations with Dr. Mars and Ms. McDonald that we will have a PowerPoint presentation where we will see kind of the work that was at least definitely done through March on these goals. I think it makes perfect sense personally to, I don't think we can ignore COVID and I don't think we can ignore the fact that we've had kind of crisis management since March. And so at the end of the, I'm trying to see where it would be. If you go through, you know, there are kind of some more open-ended questions that aren't necessarily, so they're at evaluator comments. So where you can kind of talk about overall, at the very end, some overall ones that I think that might be an appropriate place where you could do something, but I do add some comments, but I think there is, I mean, it's this fine line because, and somebody should correct me if I'm wrong about this, but I don't think we're really allowed to evaluate the superintendent on anything that wasn't specifically voted on by the committee back in September, but I do believe that it's worth noting, you know, that he might not have met the goals on the sixth grade study because of COVID and maybe the wellness, you know, what wellness means has changed a little bit because of COVID, but I'm happy if anybody else has other thoughts on this issue. Mr. Menino and then Mr. Demling. Mike's performance on meeting the problem of COVID-19 have been exemplary. We need to incorporate that in our valuation. He's done an excellent job and we need to say so. Mr. Demling. Yeah, so, I mean, I'll just say that, you know, having been through this process a few times in different committees, I've seen even in non-COVID years, committee members approach the filling out of this instrument in a wide array of approaches. I've seen some that have only the ratings. I've seen some that have only text to no ratings. I've seen some that are completely filled with everything. I've seen some that are very focused on the goals. I've seen some that take a little more liberalness and relating to recent things. And I've seen some that are completely unrelated to the goals. And at the end of the day, in terms of like what we have to do and what's required, you know, we have to evaluate the superintendent. And in terms of this being reflecting the goals, it's really this agreement we have with the superintendent, right? I mean, I think we're very fortunate in our districts that we have such a positive working productive relationship with the superintendent. It's not like that in all districts all the time. And so this becomes much more of these are our expectations for you, did you meet our expectations? And there can be contention in that and whatnot. You know, fortunately we're not in that situation. And so the extent to which you talk obliquely or directly about COVID or decide to leave some of the ratings blank, I think it's entirely up to you. And I think that's if there's a wide array of approaches, I think that's fine. I think that's healthy, you know, we have nine people with different points of view and that all come together and then the evaluation will be what it is. I think before I did Ms. Dancer and just a second comment also that my recollection of our policy approach guiding what guidance for superintendent evaluations is that only current committee members may submit an evaluation and committee members must evaluate. So for new committee members, you look at the period of performance from when you start, when you joined the committee to the end of the year as opposed to the full year. And some committee members have in the past chosen not to do full evaluations for that reason in the past. But everybody on the committee may submit an evaluation. Ms. Dancer. I just wanted to say that what Mr. Demling said was very helpful to me having really only done one full year on this process. You know, it takes a little bit of time getting used to and I know that when I was working, different supervisors had different methods of evaluating. So that it's helpful to know what you've seen in the past. And, I also want to just recognize that I think, and maybe I'll try to share this, but I believe last year, chairs Anastasia Adonis and Eric Makajima actually sat down and had a conversation that's recorded about superintendents evaluations that I actually found quite useful. Is it on Desi's website? I forget where, I believe it's on Desi's website. They were included with a host of other chairs of committees. And so I might circulate that for the benefit of folks who are new to the committee or who want to refresh her because it was useful. And it's also nice to see their faces. Just as a reminder, you know, this is, I mute it again. So just, this is my, this would be my sixth time doing this. And what we've learned as a committee over time is that you, if you want to mention COVID it will have to be in that box at the end. And if you want your evaluation to count, you need to stick to what's on, you can't make your own. You've got to use this form and fill it out. Otherwise it won't count because in the past we've had people write wonderful six page evaluations but they didn't really count because they weren't following the form. Any other? So I just have, I think in the past we've voted on to accept the instrument. So I'm looking for folks have been on the committee for a while. So I think I don't know if folks are feeling ready to vote on it tonight or if we want to table that for a future one. I also, when we get to meeting planning on Thursday I think we put that on Thursday's agenda we can also include a timeline sort of of next steps. When do we want to come back to this in terms of scheduling and artifacts the PowerPoint presentation so that then we can go and actually complete our evaluation. Would anybody like to make a motion on the instrument? Ms. Stanser. I move that we accept the instrument for evaluation of Superintendent Morris for the BISC for the 2021 school year. Is that correct? Okay. 1920. 1920. Moved by Stanser. I'll second it seconded by McDonald. So we'll do a roll call vote. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. Ms. Lorne. Lorne, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. And McDonald, aye. Passes eight to zero. Thank you. And do we have any warrants to report tonight? Okay. Ms. Spitzer. Sorry to keep listening to me. So I, or excuse me. So I carry Spitzer authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $299,143.38 for a warrant dated May 28th, 2020 for general fund expenses of the same amount. And I signed that on June 5th. Also, I authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $9,450 for a warrant dated June 4th, 2020. And this was for revolving fund expenses of the same amount. And that was dated signed on June 5th, 2020. So one last one. And I authorized by my signature to payables in the amount of $274,310.33 for a warrant dated May 26th, 2020. This included general fund expenses of $259,591.32 revolving fund expenses of $4,453.76 and grant fund expenses of $10,265.25. And I signed this on June 5th, 2020 as well. And that is it. Thank you. And moving on, we have some gifts to accept. They are in our packet on page 12, very last page. So I'll make the motion. I moved to accept the following gifts from donor ARPS PGO Inc. Number 204 to support distance learning Wi-Fi access in the amount of $2,980.17 and from anonymous number 3289 to support community building awards in the amount of $250 each for a total of $500 for grand total gifts of $3,480.17. Is there a second? Second. Moved by McDonald's, second by Harrington. Any comments or discussion? Seeing none. Mr. Menino. Menino, why? Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer, aye. And McDonald's, aye. The motion passes eight to zero. Mr. Harrington, would you like to make a motion? I'd like to move to adjourn. Move back, Harrington. Is there a second? Second. Second by Demling. No discussion. So we'll vote. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. And McDonald's, aye. We are adjourned. Thank you. Bye, everybody. See you on Thursday.