 Good evening. I'd like to call the Tuesday, May 14, 2013 meeting of the Amherst Pellum Regional School District School Committee to order at 7.01 p.m. And the first order of business is to ask for a motion to go into executive session for purposes of discussing collective bargaining. May I have a motion, please? I make a motion that we go into executive session for purposes of collective bargaining. Is there a second? Second. We have a second. I need a vote by person, please. Lawrence? O'Brien, aye. Baptiste, aye. Shabazz, abstain. Fully, aye. Trapegan, aye. Banch, aye. We are adjourned to executive session, and we shall return shortly. Five minutes. I'd like to call back to order the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee to regular session at 7.20. I'd like to begin by reading a statement as follows. On behalf of the APAA and the districts, we are very pleased to announce that we have reached agreement in our contract negotiations with the APAA. Our administrators group, which currently consists of assistant principals, two special ed administrators, and the athletic director. The three-year contract, which commences July 1st, 2013, calls for cost of living increases of 0%, 1%, and 1% over the three-year term. We also agreed to work toward changes to the administrative evaluation process, consistent with the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education regulations. In addition, we have agreed to an amended longevity plan to recognize administrators who have long-term service in the districts. Both the APAA and our districts recognize the increasing educational demands and the challenging budget times we are facing, and we work together to come to a satisfactory agreement for both parties. Thank you very much. Thank you. I would like to take care of a couple of sort of procedural issues before we proceed. First and foremost, I would like to officially welcome Kathleen to the regional school committee and express my own personal looking forward to your sharing, your experience, your expertise, your background. And as I indicated to you, I believe earlier in a correspondence, your obvious commitment to the children of the district. So we welcome you and look forward to working with you. My too. Welcome. Thanks. As you can see by looking around, we're in the process of transition, which might last for a month or two, depending upon how things go. But I would like to take this opportunity just to remind people, both on the committee and in the audience this evening as well as people at home who may be watching on TV, that these are the business meetings for the Amherst Palom Regional School District. This is the only time that we can come together as a group to conduct the very, very important educational and financial and governance business of the school district. And so it's important that we conduct our business in as efficient and as orderly a fashion as possible, while at the same time making certain that everyone who wishes to speak and contribute to an issue or a matter before the board is allowed to speak. I'm going to reiterate something that I've said before, but feel compelled to say it again. And that is, I am going to ask people who from the committee who wish to be recognized, please raise your hand. I will recognize you as I see fit in terms of the number of hands that may go up. And also who has spoken and who hasn't spoken, that kind of thing. And try to respect everyone's willingness, desires in speaking before the board on any particular issue. So I am going to ask that you continue, as you have in the past, to observe that. I'm also going to ask members of the committee to also remember that as representatives of our communities, it is not at all uncommon for people in other communities to contact us about a concern or an issue, either that affects a particular person or family or child, but also may be seen by that person from our community as having a larger interest within that community. I'm going to again remind members of the committee that when you are informed of those kinds of matters, they should be communicated to both the chair and the superintendent for consideration of how to respond to those issues. It's very, very important that we speak. We're a collection of individuals, but we're also a collective and we need to speak as one voice. And so I am going to ask the members of the committee and forgive me, but as we go through this transition period, I may feel a need to say it again and I apologize for being repetitive and redundant. But I am going to ask members of the committee to please make sure that you follow that procedure. So that if a response is necessary, that it can come with one voice from either the chair and or the superintendent. So I would ask that you do that. I'm also going to pass around, I'm not going to pass out, but I am going to pass around the warrants we have as we always do confiscated your automobiles until you make sure you sign these. So please make sure you sign them as they come around. I also, I'm not sure if the superintendent is going to say anything, but I'm going to preempt the superintendent and express publicly congratulations to Sharon Palmer, the 2013 teacher who received the 2013 teacher award from the Connecticut Valley section of the American Chemical Society. Chemistry teacher at Amherst Palom regional high school, an extraordinary honor both for, of course for Ms. Palmer, but also I think for the department as well as for the high school. Truly extraordinary recognition of excellence in teaching and education. Next, I'm going to ask the members of the committee to review the agenda. We're going to make one slight possible change and that is when we get to 3B, Rob Detweiler is going to make a brief presentation about the OPEB liability trust agreement proposal. You'll notice that it says it's for discussion. I am going to ask the committee and I will ask the committee to make the decision whether or not it wants to vote on this particular proposal this evening. That is not a requirement. I'm simply going to ask if you are ready to vote tonight if you wish to do that, otherwise we will postpone that vote. He is going to make that presentation later this evening. Other than that, does anyone see any items on the agenda that they wish more time to be spent on? Not hearing any, I'm also going to turn your attention to the calendar. We only have about a month and a half left of the school year but the amount of business that we need to take care of over the course of the next month and a half is really continues to be extraordinary. The budget is behind us but our work is not finished and I would include amongst the most significant tasks that of the evaluation of the superintendent. So we are going to have to pay close attention to the final month and a half of the calendar. So with that I'll ask if there's any public comment from members of the audience. Not hearing any from the assembled multitude. I will turn the attention to the superintendent to have some announcements. Yes, I do. I'm going to go around. Sure. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you. Since you took one of my highlights for the evening, no, it's great. It's less for me to speak to. So a couple of quick things I just want to remind the community of the Amherst Education Foundation annual spring sprint, which is Saturday, the 18th. And that will be a 5K run or walk and that starts at 10 a.m. And it starts at Wildwood Elementary School. Also we have our 7th annual Latino achievement night, which is Friday, May 17th at the middle school auditorium. And the celebration begins at 6.30 and recognizes our students K through 12 for academic effort and progress, leadership and community spirit. And there's lots of performances that happen that evening with our students and we hope people will come and join us. So the Amherst Human Rights Commission is seeking nominees for the Human Rights Youth Heroism Award and Amherst students who are in K through 12 can be nominated for demonstrated acts of kindness, unselfishness and community service. I absolutely love this award. So we hope we will see many of our students nominated and letters of nomination are due to the committee by May 31st and the winners will be celebrated in a community gathering in June. There's an attached letter for you just so that you can see more information about this nomination. Also Camilla Carpio I believe is how we pronounce her last name Camilla is one of our students at the high school and she received first place in the northwestern district attorneys spoken word contest. So we want to recognize and celebrate Camilla. She's a member of Poku and an MSAN scholar and her work is entitled eliminate moments of silence. You can view that on YouTube and the address is there or the YouTube address I guess that's what you would say. URL. Thank you. Is there for people to be able to take a look and we thank Camilla for all of her hard work in our schools and recognize her talents. We also have a mixed media artwork award. Our high school senior Natalie Shuler Moss will be featured at the center for arts and native on May 16th and the event will celebrate the creative forces behind the Massachusetts high school magazine of the arts. So we'd like to recognize her and her selection is entitled the lonely one. So congratulations to Natalie. Our corral has been recognized as many of you know under the direction of Anita Cooper. They won the best the award for best overall ensemble at WGVY together in song series and they will be performing for us on the 28th. So we will yes I know we said they said one song I said oh no two. So they'll be coming here to allow us to be inspired because they are so inspiring. We also just want to mention that our Vela scholar summer program is happening this summer again at the middle school which is a free three-week academic and enrichment opportunity for our rising seventh graders and our eighth grade students. So this is a wonderful opportunity for academic projects building relationships with the middle school faculty enrichment led by Amherst college interns and the program runs from 8.30 to 2.30 Friday July 8th through the 26th with transportation and lunch provided. So more information can be found on our website. A few more congratulations. One is to Dave Reynan and I'm not going to do a great job with Kristin's last name Debbie do you know Kristin's last name. It's the second page up in the top I'm going to allow you to see who can do that well. Okay. Kristin Dulcy I know okay I'll do that. Who recognized recently by the Harold Grinspoon Pioneer Valley Excellence in Teaching Award. We really appreciate when our teachers are recognized for the exceptional work that they do in our schools so congratulations to Dave and to Kristin. Also Dr. Norman Price one of our middle school science teachers has defended his dissertation and we are now all calling him Dr. Price every time we see him and I will allow you to read the amazing work that he has put together which his presentation presented is paper at the National Association of Research and Science Teaching a conference this past April so congratulations to Dr. Price. We also have our students which specifically Team Greylock will be going to Groth Park and this is a field trip that was sponsored in part through AEF grant that funded a program with Rushing Rivers Institute in Amherst and this is an interdisciplinary trip where our students move through six different stations and they're having the opportunity to take samples of life forms and learn about ecology in the natural setting so again we always thank AEF for the opportunity and I know that this is a wonderful opportunity for our students that they've greatly appreciated. And our last announcement is our seventh grade English students have recently written integrated social studies and science essays and some of the students worked on informal essays about issues affecting Caribbean or Central America and these essays will be collected and in a book on display in the middle school library and we have some of our other seventh graders who wrote analytical essays comparing the identity development of young people growing up around Jerusalem in the documentary Promises and in the novel Habibi. So and these students are highly impressive as always and I would welcome people to come and take a look at their work so lots of recognition again at this time of the year it's so much fun to spend time acknowledging not only our faculty and staff who are exceptional but our students so this is a great time for celebration so again school committee members we'd love to have you come to as many of the opportunities to recognize our students as possible. Are there any comments or questions? Yes Kathleen. I missed the last meeting so I don't know if it was said but also Linda Castranova and Emily Fry of Fort River got the Harold Grinspin Teaching Award as well. Thank you. So I just wanted to make sure that they got recognized. Thank you. I appreciate that note. I don't believe it was noted at the last was it? Well I think it was noted at the last time. That's right. Okay thank you. I greatly appreciate it. So we recognize our teachers and I think we have an opportunity to recognize some of our other staff later in our agenda. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? If not thank you very much. That's a very impressive set of announcements. I know it's always so much fun. Rob I'm going to ask you to come up and make the presentation on the third quarter FY 13 budget update. If I may before you do that I'd like to thank both you and Maria for the very professional study and informed presentation of the FY 14 budget and responses to questions at last night's Amherst town meeting. I also want to thank members of the committee who attended. It was roughly two and a half hours of presentation and responses to questions and I thought the performance was exemplary and I want to personally thank you very very much for being operating and functioning at that high quality and high level. Thank you very much. Rob please. Thank you. You all have copies of the third quarter report. Essentially this is really good news so we're going to spend a whole lot of time here. I've jotted down some of the changes that happened during the course of the year as you know we form a budget now or November this January and then the year rolls out and things happen things change and we have to reallocate funds. Other funds get freed up and so forth so I pretty much listed out on this report what happened and what where it went and so forth but I want to just highlight where we're ending up and we're not ending up in a very nice place. When we formed the budget for next year we were looking to have perhaps $50,000 left at the end of this year that could go into E&D and be used to support the next year's budget. Well things have happened since then including premium holiday for health insurance both for employees and retirees which freed up $338,000. Not insignificant. When the Amherst health insurance trust fund did that the idea was to take those funds and put them into the OPEB trust fund of the entities. So Amherst has an OPEB trust fund and they voted at town meeting to put the money in there. Pelham has an OPEB trust fund and so they're moving their stuff into there. Region doesn't have an OPEB trust fund so we can't do that but we could let that go back into E&D and be available for future allocation to OPEB trust fund or future budget support. So instead of $50,000 being left at the end of the year we'll have that amount of drop down as well. Of the remaining funds that we have there we knew we were going to have some left and as part of the FY14 budget we factored in pre-paying retirement obligations of $117,000. So with the premium holiday money dropping down to E&D we still have about $55,000 unaccounted for to get us through the rest of the year which is comfortable. I say that because every year we cut off, there's a cut off date when staff can submit requests for purchase orders. That date is tomorrow. So as of once they all get processed by the end of the week we'll know really where we stand and it's going to be, you know, not exactly here but pretty close to this. So if there's any questions we'd be happy to go into it but that's the good news. Any comments or questions? Shabazz. So if you could speak a little more on how this premium holiday emerges. The ed jobs funding, the other ways in which these holidays occur in terms of it being something that we aren't able to anticipate I'd imagine. Sure, that's right. So let me do the ed jobs first because this is a little piece. We thought we had expended the last of the ed jobs grant last year. It turns out that there was an eligible amount so we hadn't used it up and we had that little bit dribble off into this year. That's how we used it up. The premium holiday is a decision by the health insurance trust fund board to look at the fund, the trust fund itself. And so what happens is for the last couple of years we've had a really good experience, claims experience meaning that we are collecting at least as much in premiums as we need to pay out the costs. And as a consequence two things have happened. We've had a zero percent increase in health insurance premiums for the last two years, which is good. And still the fund balance has been growing. So the question becomes what do you do with that? Well you could leave it there because we know at some point of course the experience is going to catch up with us and we're going to have to start raising rates again. Hopefully not as bad as the national trend but at some point. And what balances there can help to soften that perhaps. But there is a large balance there and so the thought thinking was gee we also all have these OPEB trust fund obligations. It would be proper to transform into that venue for future liability on retiree health insurance premiums. Other comments or questions? Lawrence. So we can ask questions about the whole budget that we got. So I have a question about a couple of times. It's mentioned that there were three unfilled special ed positions that we then filled. What's the status of that? I don't know. Particularly everything for next year. Are we going to attempt to fill those positions and then have we budgeted accordingly for those? Yeah it's all budgeted for. What happens during the course of a year you get a certain point. It doesn't make sense to hire somebody for a portion of the year and go through all that. It's just easier to fill with a contract and service. Can I ask a follow up? Do we know why it was difficult to fill it? I know that with special ed it's very difficult to find basically people for positions. I think one of the positions was specifically hard to fill. It was I think an ABA position applied you know a behavior analyst which is they're few and far between. So it took us a bit there. I can't remember where the other positions were off the top of my head. I don't know which ones were hard to fill and which were just a matter of timing that it didn't make sense to hire. And typically what we do at that point is it is the shifting of the funds because we're looking at contracted services through special education versus filling the position. But all positions have been posted and we are actively in the hiring process. That was my next question. Okay. Yes. Thank you. Any other comments or questions? Shabazz. And with respect to the way food services was budgeted at 70 but has come in this point at 101 100 the explanation presented had to do with increase in the cost of food itself so that there's nothing related to our provider in that or No. Now the providers on a fixed fee which has not increased in five years it's a matter of costs it's a matter of participation and the new standards require good stuff. Fresh fruits, fresh vegetables wide assortment and pretty much food service departments throughout the state country, I don't know about the country but state I know are struggling to make ends meet because of the increased costs. One of the and that's pretty widely known so the USDA had provided an option to apply for an extra six cents per meal which required documentation menus what we're serving, how it's served the whole thing. And so we did that back in the fall and qualified to get that six cents so it helped but it doesn't close the gap but it's good for the kids. And the do we ever look at whether the children are actually eating all what was there isn't a waste factor because you can change menus and put new things in and acquire them to have certain things and if they're not eating it then it's waste, not imagine. Exactly, it's fascinating. So we start this year let me go back a couple years before we had to we're ahead of the curve in some ways it's not too difficult for us to come into the new standard compared to some districts. Couple years ago we moved to all whole wheat product no white, so pizza for instance went from like near white crust pizza to whole wheat crust pizza and a popular line I used to eat at the middle school so I watched the lines at the middle school I can't speak for the rest of them a popular line and all of a sudden it just dried up because it was whole wheat and then after a couple of months I think they started realizing that's pretty tasty stuff it's got some flavor to it it's got some nuttiness to it and it became more popular than ever so that's just one of those learning curves okay fast forward to this year this year a kid is not allowed to leave the line unless they have a fruit on the tray and two vegetables and all this stuff well they're not used to eating fruit but they couldn't leave the line unless they had a fruit on the tray and to their credit we don't want to throw it out it's a waste of food so they set up a sharing table so you don't want the stuff you have to take it you don't have to eat it if you don't want to eat it you can put it on the sharing table somebody can take it for a snack later take it home whatever and we wrap our apples in plastic wrap and so forth for health reasons so that was a big thing for a while in the fall well it's kind of dwindle off now they're starting to eat this stuff there's a learning curve there's an experimental curve but it moves along it's hard to take out so much time but I think it's fascinating to watch these guys feel the way along if I may as a member of the subcommittee that was involved with designing the RFP for food vendors for next year the conversations that we had on the subcommittee about pre-adolescent eating habits was a fascinating experience as well as the sort of the economics of trying to provide as healthy a lunch as possible it was a fascinating experience and I'm wondering well can you share with us where that process is at the moment as we speak yeah absolutely so it was a couple three weeks ago we released the RFP having noticed it in papers and through the state outlets and so forth we received six I think it was a request for the proposal itself we shipped them off they were due back two weeks ago Friday so okay we can half ago and we only got two responses and they had to show up for a mandatory meeting so that we could take the representatives around to each of the kitchens they could see what the facilities looked like what the equipment looked like what the layout was so they could make an intelligent proposal to us only two companies showed up a disappointment we know both companies so okay we reserved a large yellow bus to take everybody around but we all needed a van it was Friday and then next week the food service committee will get together and review the proposals and rank them rate them against the rating criteria that the committee had developed before we issued the RFP itself so that'll go on and we'll probably invite semi-finalists back to interview them in person make a final decision and hope to bring a recommendation to this committee I would also add if I may that the contributions of the community members to the subcommittee in terms of incorporating very specific explicit expectations demands if you will into the RFP in terms of locally produced food, organic food natural food, healthy food and so on and so forth was really extraordinary to be a part of that I'm embarrassed to say that I didn't contribute as much as I would have liked to nor as much as the members of the community contributed but it was I think a process that resulted in a document that people had to respond to that I think I would say that everyone at this table would feel good about in terms of doing what we could to ensure as much as possible that kids would be receiving a nutritious meal a healthy meal and also one that would be pleasing to the taste as well and so I'll be very interested to see what these two companies come up with because the effort that went into producing the RFP particularly in the part of the community members was really really very very thoughtful quite an experience very good let me ask if I may since we'll be coming forward with a recommendation on June 8th would it be useful to you to see a copy of the RFP before then I don't want to chop down trees unnecessarily but if you think it would be interesting we can bring a stack of these things to the next meeting and you can look more I think it would be on the 11th not the 8th June 11th is our next panel we just have it sent to us maybe even an e-mail so we can look through it it's pretty big can you do electronically electronically so we can look at it because reading it here is hard to talk about sure but I thought we could bring it to meetings before I see okay we'll do both any other comments or questions on the board of budget update if not I'm going to ask Rob to stay right where he is and proceed to the OPEB Liability Trust Agreement and again just this prologue I'm very sensitive to the notion of not asking people to vote on something without having due notice and so I'm perfectly okay if you're not comfortable voting on what he is going to be presenting this evening however the reason why I would even entertain voting on the proposal is because of time we need to move forward in the development of a policy regarding this trust fund and what I would envision being able to do is the policy subcommittee is meeting on the 23rd of this month if we could craft a policy related to this proposal that day we can present it to you for the first reading on the June 11th and then the second reading on June 25th so we could wrap it up in time for the fall when we begin the next budget process so that's sort of what my thinking is in terms of planning ahead and forward however I certainly respect anyone on the committee feeling that they don't have sufficient time to vote and I want to respect that but I also want to make clear that if it's the wish of the committee we can do so this evening if we didn't vote on it would that preclude you making a policy on it? yes I don't say that to put pressure on you to vote because I was just the way I could consider it a policy would be not approved unless we vote on it and it's a hypothetical and if you made a policy we can look at the policy and say if we could approve a trust you know despite whatever you put in a policy or we can approve a trust considering what you put in a policy I understand and I hear what you're saying let me ask you to do this let's put a hold on that until we've heard of the proposal and then we can consider the process afterwards that we might want to deal with I just want you to know there's a discussion on it as well but thank you that's a good point thank you so we've talked about this quite a while now and I don't know Ms. Trapegan how much you've heard about I'm reading okay good so what is OPEB it stands for other post employment retirement benefits and it has to do with staff workforce we part of the agreement is that when they retire they are eligible to continue receiving health insurance through their employer us and the employer will pay a percentage of their premium well someone retires at age 50 then the district is on the hook for paying a percentage of their premium for decades a lot of people build up over time every two years a couple years ago the accounting board specified that public entities, town, cities school districts had to start reporting in their financial statements what that outstanding liability if you will is or approximates so if you were fully paying setting aside funds to pay those obligations in retirement you would have a lot of money set aside but what we all in government do is just pay the premiums to do that year and never mind setting aside for future premiums so that is why there's outstanding obligations for future liabilities that haven't been funded and we don't have to fund them but we do have to report what that obligation looks like and so we do and the regional school district this was like 32 million that would need to have set aside to be fully funded as a fully funded pension would be well that's impossible but what is not yet required to be at some point is that we start to make some motions to addressing that obligation meanwhile as a region, as a city town, we also are looking at what the impact of these regulations is on our bond rating and if bond rating agency looks at our financial situation or anybody's financial situation and sees that nothing's happening or bearing our heads and it looks like we're avoiding the issue it's going to be a negative point of view if it looks like we've set up a trust fund and we are in the process of fully funding it and putting million dollars in every year to get up to where we need to be they can be very happy and give us a plus tick if they see that we have started to address it and have set up a fund and maybe there's a few bucks in there and they've come our way without stretching us because Lord knows nobody has extra dollars to put in there then they'll say well at least they're trying and they're aware of it and they're not ignoring it and they're doing the best they can so that's part of the reason for doing something is to address the rating agencies when they look at us okay so more and more cities, towns, districts are catching on to that and setting up these funds so now we're in some ways competing with the folks who are looking at us well are you in that group that is doing something or are you in that group that is not doing something so it's a little hazy but that's pretty much where we are so tonight and what we've been talking about lately is just setting up the trust fund and we can at some future time decide if we want to fund it financially, fund it occasionally or what so let me address that a little bit Amherst is funding it systematically as part of the budget and that's okay Pelham is funding it on occasion as funds become available we could, if we had a trust fund set up, put that holiday money in there or we could decide not to but if we had a fund we could the other thing if we had a fund we could do is capture some of the refund money that the health insurance trust fund gets for Medicaid Part D so pay for retiree medical medicine pharmaceuticals and we get reimbursed a portion of that so Amherst wants to put that reimbursement into their okay and that is actually specified as one of the things that you can do and should do if we had a fund we could capture the portion that's being refunded based on the regional districts retirees and put that money in when that comes through not a large amount, I think it's like $17,000 a year but when I capture it it shows some kind of growth even though it's not planful but it's better than nothing so I am advocating that we set up a trust fund and decide what to do with it so last time we met we had a couple questions and one was can we change how the fund works and the other question was if there's something catastrophic happen can we access that money to help us out in the situation so I called our attorney and ran both by and you have his comments on this memo the answer is you can change the trust agreement within the parameters of the trust agreement it still will only be able to be used for retiree benefits but how you manage it and if you get a tight space you could use funds that are in that fund to pay for retiree benefits because that's what it's for so that could relieve pressure if need be for other budget situations so the other thing that's in your packet is a draft agreement that our attorney provided and I went over with them way too many times so I bring this to your consideration and I'll be happy to answer your questions questions I want to make sure thank you I'm trying to remember to hand raise I want to make sure that I am clear on the ways of funding it that you're advocating I'm understanding how to medicate part D trickling the bucket but over time could accumulate I'm understanding any budget surpluses we have we're going to allocate a portion of it currently our budget surpluses we put in a fund that revolve so that I forget the name that you described it to me before but the slush fund sort of that we used what did you call it before no slush funds it's part of the general fund balance the general fund balance that's what I'm trying to the E&D fund to understand it you're also prescribing that we can take some of our E&D fund and put it in this if we still chose and then finally those two influxes of money the managers of the trust could decide how to try to grow that money how to invest that money or what that money could do to grow without putting more money just on top of it no the trust fund would be managed by the district treasurer who would invest the money on behalf of the board and with financial advisors of course but it's a very conservative kind of move at this point we would look to put anything we have with the MMDT the Massachusetts depository trust which has very low return but we would need to have a quarter million dollars before we get into any actual gain returns at which point I would suggest that we team up with the state OPEB fund and put it with them they pass legislation this past year which allows town, city towns and districts to join them as with a separate account in their fund but they have an entry requirement of a minimum of a quarter million dollars so I could take us some time to get ready to be in that so we're just suggesting it's between now and when we have a quarter million dollars which if we're just putting 17,000 a year plus anything we decide to take off the top of V&D could take quite some time but until that point the treasurer would be investing it however the treasurer saw fit and it may not take that much time because we just look, I mean this year we just had a premium holiday of 300,000 if that had dropped in finger you've got access the lawyer did address that the trustees could decide to invest the trustees could not delegate that to the treasurer who was a bonded individual and that's part of the outline of this thing that's not so actually there's another document I've handed on it a while ago it's called Establishing an OPEP Liability Trust Fund and like who does what and what the responsibilities are other comments or questions Trevor, I mean excuse me, Shabazz what is our OPEP obligation look like and at what rate does it grow each year you know I didn't bring that document with me but it's at about 32 million and it grows a million a year that's just us the regional for the regional school district correct I'm sorry so when we talk about this some of us were at the presentation with the actuarial individual who did the study for us and we met with the Amherst finance committee and he points out and if you read the report you calculate what the obligation is a certain way if you have a zero plan okay and that inflates the number if the other extreme you are fully funding your plan you use a different rate and it's about half the obligation and if you do something in between of course you have a rate in between so the actual number isn't that meaningful the concept that we have a liability obligation to pay retirees that is the fact and that will grow and it makes sense to address it at some point as we are able to because this is all in the context of an economy that is not generating a lot of extra dollars when we need to put stuff into our classrooms so that's why I'm going really easy on the funding and saying just you know we'll see what we can do but let's at least set up the fund itself we're making steps showing the world that we are aware of the situation and these are benefits beyond what they would expect as a state employee in terms of pension life insurance, health care there's something above and beyond that the pension is taken care of by the pension boards whether it be the teachers retirement board or the Hampshire County retirement board this deals with the health insurance portion and the life insurance portion the life insurance portion is very small it exists but it's small dollars the health insurance is the big dollars one and that's what this addresses she buys so before this what happened bill gets paid every year but then there's not a lot of planning about what the obligations are for the future there's no provision for future obligations we're just paying what's coming due this year just hoping that you can kind of meet the bottom line keep up with it and so for example where does the $17,000 go right now it stays with the health insurance trust fund because you don't have a place to move it to so it's not available for example there's no funding and other deficits in the school's budget no because it's in the town the health insurance trust fund is a trust fund managed by the town of Amherst it's like a self insured health plan and it covers the town of Amherst employees town of Pelham employees and the regional district employees kind of banded together to all those monies were paid for health insurance and they stayed with health insurance so at this point your recommendation to do this really is to set ourselves up to be more prepared in the future Annie I just want to say I think I'd be happy to vote on this tonight and be comfortable with that because it's something we discussed and it's just a good thing for our district to go that route I'd like to make sure that there are no other comments or questions Lawrence so at the last meeting I think I was one of the persons who said we need to have this conversation and I think this is a good start I'm a little concerned that we're down in terms of school committee representation but I don't I think voting for this doesn't in any way inhibit or preclude paying for our classrooms and what's the resources and the human resources and the other resources that are necessary in our classrooms but at the same time we do need to be mindful that we have I think someone at the presentation Mr. Stone's presentation mentioned that in a sense we have a covenant with our employees and I am very concerned this is part of our covenant with our employees we pay them a salary and I think it's also important that we at least make a gesture to say that we are living up to that covenant for their future care because that's what this meets so I'd at least, I'd be in favor of at least establishing the trust fund that I hope that we have a conversation because I know that there are other people on the committee who at the Stone presentation had really some great insights I practically I'm echoing that I think this is worthwhile to do but the devil is in the details so when I read this draft there were some provisions in this draft that I'd like to change so if we voted on this today it would be just to bring this into existence and we'd have future conversation on what the draft of it would be or would we be voting on this draft is my question to the chairman I guess I'm seeing us if there's a motion the motion would be to adopt the draft this draft, yeah I don't want to draft this draft other comments or questions I'm not sure I'm hearing that the entire committee is ready to vote on a motion however I would like to add my own two cents very briefly I could not agree with you more Lawrence regarding an there are multiple obligations here one of which is to current students making sure that we have sufficient funds to provide for a quality education which is ongoing but not as obvious not as directly in front of us is the obligation to people who've already moved on with their lives that we still have that covenant with so that's point number two and point number three and Rob alluded to it I believe earlier this evening is that the absence of a good faith effort on our part sooner rather than later could have an impact on our bond rating and as an institution that has as an organization rather that is responsible for among other things a pretty valuable infrastructure that may probably will require some significant renovations down the road and necessitate borrowing I think we want to make certain that we make every effort to create conditions where what we're going to be charged for that borrowing is as minimal as possible so I think at some point soon we're going to need to make a good faith effort here I do have if I may Rob unless there are other comments or questions Lawrence go ahead so I have a so with Trevor you've probably read it a lot closer I read it and didn't have too many concerns but I was wondering if this Trevor's concerns can be met by the answer to this first question which is amending the agreement Rob yes you can amend the agreement to a certain extent as to how to allow for changes in the conditions so if we had another I can't imagine but if we had another obligation that we don't currently incur we could add that to this document the nuts and bolts of how it works is fairly prescribed you alluded to can the trust fund board make investment decisions that probably you can't change because they want to keep people lay people out of that arena and put it to professional hands who is licensed and bonded and so forth so yeah what I'd like to do if we're not going to vote tonight if I may take your questions and I'll get them to the attorney and see what he says he's done a number of these for other districts in the last year and this is pretty much how they're all turning out because you know it's not it's not a great writing exercise along those lines I'm wondering if perhaps if within the next three days, four days members would email to you concerns about the document would that be yes I'm just my concern is that I am for doing this but when I'm this part in particular I'm looking at and it's not a big deal I don't know if it would require input from the lawyer but the succession plan as it's outlined in this draft just doesn't seem to be robust enough you know of what happens when a person leaves the school board and the succession to a new trustee just seems bare bones and doesn't seem enough so I'm not opposed to the concept or the idea but think to rush into this without thinking this through in terms of how this fits to us I guess to put the question straight forward when would the draft be finalized with an initial vote to make this happen finalize this as this draft is being now set in stone or is there another meeting we can have to discuss the nuances of how this works that's what I'm asking so that's a great question the way it's set up is to make it as easy as possible and the easiest way to do it is to have the school committee as trustees and so what happens when somebody leaves the school committee well none of the other school committee replaces them and so that's what the succession thing is whoever is on school committee is a trustee and what he specifies is when a new person comes on you sign on to it you know putting your name to it acknowledging that you are a trustee that's all there is to it it's very advantageous we'd like to see as people leave that they submit a paper that says they are also withdrawing from the trust but because of the way it's worded you don't actually have to do that because if you're no longer a member of the school committee you're not a trustee so that's why it's worded that way is just to make it as easy as possible for the changing school committee composition but I'm just thinking I'm foreseeing some nuances that would make that some details that have to be spelled out and that's all I'm saying before I voted for this I would like to know that the school board is willing to sit down and discuss those nuances and that's it and we move on and not consider those factors that's really what my concern is other comments or questions if not then I'm going to suggest that members of the committee email Rob over the course of the next week reasonable concerns about the draft proposal and then submit a revised draft proposal on the 28th well I don't know if we need a revised draft or not maybe we just need to answer some questions and see what's going on I'm be willing to vote on this and if the things that I'm describing can be addressed in an amendment process that's fine I'm just I just don't want to vote on this thinking that this is the end of this and we don't revisit how this would be administered and how this would work that's all I'm saying before I accept the motion to that end I want to make sure that you're confident that you know that to be true that it can be amended to meet your confidence that's the first question that the lawyer responded to saying how it how or what it does and my concerns are not about what it does my concerns about how we would do it my concerns are revolve around succession revolve around perhaps even quorum you know and those are things that we would discuss amongst ourselves and decide this is the way we will administer this and I want to obtain a motion to accept the draft proposal I make a motion that we accept this draft proposal with a date to discuss procedure or amend procedures before I ask for a second I want to make sure that you're comfortable with that procedure I'm not sure how this goes so if we're not comfortable with the draft let's not adopt it if there are some questions you have give me some scenarios like the question too I kind of like took some concerns I heard here I crafted a scenario and ran it by him and had to respond to it so if you could craft me a few scenarios to capture your concerns or questions I'll have them respond to the scenarios and see what he says so in the 28th we'll go with a continued discussion on the 28th and in the meantime email Rob your concerns thank you we also had a vote on the 28th and a discussion and a discussion and potentially a revised draft potential potential may not be if there's some reason to revise the way he crafts these things is to allow maximum flexibility and to make it as easy as possible to administer because nobody wants to spend endless hours doing extra meetings and that's why he uses school committee meetings some night and then when it's over he called the trust fund meeting to order to just take care of your business which probably take half hour 45 minutes to listen to reports find out where the money is going on make some decisions and you're done so there's not extra meeting time and so forth Lawrence so my concern with an amended draft and this is with due respect to your concerns is that if we have an amended draft then we could get into a position where there are other members who are now concerned about the amendments and the revisions that have happened with that so I think at some point it would be great to get Rob's scenarios get some clarification from the attorney and then once we get back the clarification then make a judgment based on the clarifications of the actual language we have it's just wondering is now not the time to talk about those procedures because if that's something we're going to talk about shouldn't we just do it now shouldn't we just talk about those things now if there's a question about succession or whatever Trevor's questions are is it now the time to talk so um Shibas I'm wondering and I'm not clear in this document where it identifies who will be the investment service provider what is the investment policy the question of are there any tax liabilities to this or are we completely exempt from that totally exempt from tax liabilities and in fact because this is a trust fund as part one of the funds of the regional school committee we would be using the same tax ID number the same tax exempt number it's still part of the regional school financial package if you will and we have other trust funds for scholarships like that this is a special trust fund because it's irrevocable which means the money put in here can only be used for those liabilities for benefits for employees you can't use it for some other purpose that's why it's a special document it's a special type of trust fund but still part of the regional school's financial package okay sorry article 2 talks about the administering by board of trustees and that being the school committee members the administration of the trust fund is in article 3 where okay I have a vote okay so where does it say the treasure goes up front well you're looking for that Rob the other thing around the policy is that once this is voted then the policy subcommittee needs to create a policy so that's part of the process that your representatives would need to work on in the subcommittee great thank you Annie did you have your hand up I was asking I'm sorry so what was this article 5 7 where it says a trustee may require other trustees as well as other parties to the agreement to execute a release after an audit of the trust fund I think that should not be a may but that should be a requirement after a term that there is definitely a release that after you know of my term as trustee and school committee person is over I think that may require you know should just be common procedure that can be a policy of the of the trustees it doesn't have to be in the trust document but you can make a policy that's that's why I'm describing that's where we're in murky water what comes first the chicken or the egg I'm thinking that some of my things can just be addressed in terms of what the policy is but when I read some of these articles it seemed like some of these things were too generic and should be dialed down another one that I looked at and this may be you know debatable or controversial but the quorum of one half plus one I think it should be at least one half plus two only because one half plus one could be one town that's not in the whole trustee thing that is that's article 3 article 3 number 2 or the number 3 no the number 3 article 3 number 3 you know one half well you can read it one half plus one of the then sitting trustees shall constitute a quorum so for us that's 5 and for us that could just be immersed and so I think it should at least be one half plus two simple change okay excuse me excuse me I'm sorry if I go back to your previous question I think it's addressed under article 4 number 1a one of the duties is to establish policies and rules pursuant to which a trust fund is to be operated administered so that's where you would say you know you'd have to have a release okay article 4 1a alright so yeah that's covered that we have the right to look at the side how that would happen right I was just going to say is the answer to Shavas' question on page 3c and page 4f right because we would say basically say that we can hire people to do the work and then F says that the APRSD or another person would be custodian yeah so if that then is determining all the guidance that determines the external consultants or investment service provider if that is the guidance it's basically saying the treasurer will do that not the trustees is that what I'm reading trustees give up any claim over who the investment service provider will be alright article 4 which one I'm just asking what Catherine said the charge would be to maximize returns at the lowest possible risk that's a general guidance to all treasurers for city's towns and districts and it's pretty much how the state association of treasurers works so I don't see anything going terribly awry here I see some very conservative people now you can decide that we want a policy where we're going to just invest it with the state OPEB fund or maybe you will decide that you want to hire an outside investment advisor at a fidelity company or whatever that but then the discussion you will have is what kind of fees are you going to be paying for what kind of risk so that becomes a larger question I don't think you need to nail that in here that's something you decide as we go along that's what we want to do with Lawrence I just guess I need a clarification we have a treasurer right now and the treasurer is to some degree managing our finances in some capacity and we trust the treasurer we do I'm comfortable with giving the power to the treasurer I don't I guess I've only been on the board for a year so I just in all my watching of school committees I've never heard of an instance even here where we have the school committee start to manage the responsibility of a treasurer the professional who we've hired to do that is that correct? so I'm prepared to trust the treasurer with that responsibility short obviously if the treasurer does something illegal or a sort of egregious then we'll step in but I will be honest I'm a high school teacher I don't have knowledge of investments so I'm prepared to hand over that responsibility to the treasurer and I'm hoping that we hired someone who's capable of that and I don't think we would have the treasurer investing the funds the treasurer finding the right place and person or venue to invest the funds on our behalf and they're doing that right now in other capacities if I could ask for a follow up on that my understanding that if we hit the quarter million mark you can then take our trust fund and piggyback it with the state and at that point their financial advisors make decisions about our piece of that overall trust fund is that correct? so we would apply to become part of that system and we would have an account with that system think of it in terms of a mutual fund we all know about mutual funds so we would be buying a share in that mutual fund which is the state OPEB fund and so we'd have a separate account segregated and we'd grow with the rest of the fund and availability is as I've expressed to you before while I accept the responsibility of moving forward with this concept there's a part of me, maybe I'm still a little close to 2008 that is concerned about the instability of the financial markets and what it might do to us if we were to join the state is there any are there any kind of state safeguards to further protect whatever monies we have in our trust fund there'll never be any guarantees that you won't take a hit with market downturns what you look for is track record how they do in the last downturn compared to other investment vehicles they again the charge for public monies is to get the best return at the lowest risk so this is not a hedge fund this is not a startup fund this is like a broadly diversified fund with everything from real estate to bonds to the whole panoply what we would want to do is look at some of those experiences that this group's had which I understand is quite good I'll look at it directly myself that's what I hear and benchmark it is that place okay is that reasonable can't guarantee that you're not going to have a downturn everybody had a downturn but how do they do compared to name your fund or name your retirement it's not our treasurer who at any stage in this makes those investment decisions the treasurer simply prior to joining the state the treasurer simply identifies what he or she believes to be the best investment institution for us to link up with and so once we were to go to the state then we become still further removed from investment decisions about our money is that correct so the state OPEB fund for lack of a better term has professional managers who manage the various types of funds that are within that fund and I guess one other question I would have then and forgive me I'm thinking about what little money I place with my financial advisors I have some choices to the kinds of mutual funds that I can divide up my assets in if we were to go to an independent investment financial advisor we would make those decisions as to how to divide up the money into various funds I would suggest no I would suggest we have professional investment advice the same thing would be true with the state even if we went to a fidelity to have our own little thing you'd want a licensed registered financial advisor making those kinds of suggestions thank you other comments or questions which then comes back to the question of this way the wording of this current document so right now that places the sole authority or custodial rights that decision-making not to anyone on this board not to you but to Mary Wallace does that make I hear my colleagues point well doing it for everything else for our accounts I still feel the question does that make sense well I don't think she would be operating in a vacuum I think she'd be coming to the board of the trust fund and suggesting you know here's what I think we should be doing and make sense show you some evidence as to why goes ahead with your blessing invest it and then gives you quarterly, semiannual, annual reports as to how it's doing what the returns are what that looks like against a benchmark so you have feedback as to whether it's working the way you want it to work or not it just doesn't say that in the document Kathleen what does E mean on page 4 because it kind of does say that in terms of giving us E on page 4 to invest in re-invest any money in the trust fund as the trustee see fit in their sole discretion so that seems like power that we actually don't want that's a good question let me clarify that but it seems to be in here that we have I'm sorry let me clarify that excuse me go ahead Rob let me clarify that because I can think of the reason why it would say that because you may not want to have this fund's investment at the vagaries of lay people who really don't understand how it works and you may want to protect the fund free fiduciary responsibility by removing yourself from that equation and leaving it with a bothered professional Trevor I agree with you but I'm thinking that it's enshrined in this document that who the professionals are is up to us as the board of trustees to decide and I'm looking at E and perhaps even Jkl that described that to delegate any ministerial powers and duties including but not limiting to the investment and reinvestment of any monies in the trust fund to any agent or employee engaged by them or to anyone or more of the trustees themselves so that's saying that if you wanted to be foolish you guys could try to invest yourself or you could find somebody you consider a financial professional to invest it for you but I'm not saying this is saying that it is the treasurer that decides who that financial professional is please correct me if I'm wrong I hope I'm not insulting you that I'm second guessing who you think it would go to but I'm just saying the way I read this that would be up to us to decide who it goes to, is that right? The way I read that, yeah it could be the way it was presented to me by the attorney is as the way it's done the easiest way to do it what others are doing is just having the treasurer continue with her job but that would be us we want the treasurer to decide who does it but we could vote to decide look, I've got this firm and this is how I invest my money and Kip has this person at Fidelity and we all compare notes and say are any of them better than who the treasurer uses? If I may I don't think that's either the intent or the spirit of the language for precisely that reason we would probably have a much lengthier conversation than we're having right now about who to designate our investment or financial advisor for this purpose I think the designation of the treasurer in this instance is perhaps a bit of a stretch but in the same manner that we delegate responsibilities to the superintendent on our behalf to operate the school district in this particular case it's common practice I'm hearing for school districts to designate the treasurer not as someone who makes the financial decisions but who identifies an even better, more suitable individual or organization to make those financial decisions for us so it's not at all unlike any other employee that the school committee is either directly or indirectly responsible for who we designate to perform certain tasks for us that's the way I see this is playing out so I think it might be helpful if we get some clarification around that language because I think it's not clear to people and I think we all have our own opinions about how best to go forward given that whoever's on the board now we have to build something for the future so we want someone who is expert and who does this for their work to be involved in making decisions versus us if we are in a position taking on a responsibility for investing in districts funds that's not my... we want the best person to do it the question is, is this language clear to how this decision takes place and it doesn't sound like it is so I think having the attorney tease out for us what does that mean what is the role of the treasurer if the treasurer is involved what does it mean for would be helpful to jump piece to this that answers some of these questions and that is the investment policy the investment policy is pretty much standard throughout the state at least I've looked at them from a dozen cities, towns school districts and they're pretty much the same wording, the same structure most of them look exactly the same some of them change the order of things, some of them are a little bit different but it's pretty much all the same stuff because there's two sections the first section is how do you invest short term stuff and it's a list of what's allowed by law and it's pretty prescribed and that's what we're actually doing now and the second section is how can you invest long term funds which are typically trust funds which we are not doing right now but it's also quite prescribed by state law so a lot of the how would you invest it where would you invest it and so forth is pretty much determined already by law so it's going to narrow the scope of the questioning although it doesn't take care of all the questions you have for sure but that's the other part but respectfully Maria this language is not confusing it's not that there's questions about it this language is literally saying something slightly different than what you guys are describing you guys are describing that the way it works is the treasurer does this and this language is saying the way it works is we decide who does it and normally that person is the trustee so I don't think this language needs to be changed I'm comfortable with being the person that decides to let the treasurer decide but I want to emphasize that that's not the way it has to go given the board of trustees the right and the privilege as being trustees to make that decision and if we so decide as a board that that's the the trustee and that's a decision we should make but it shouldn't be baked in a I don't think it's just my opinion that it shouldn't be baked in a cake that there's a board of trustees that gives all its power to the treasurer and there's no need to have a board of trustees to make decisions we've already written that the decisions are made by him so I don't I think this language is good I just I'm taking exception to how it's being characterized it's not unclear it's saying that we have the right to decide the trustee I mean the treasurer can do these things if I may I think as chair given the fact that there are two members who are not here this evening in the length of time that we have spent discussing this it's been a wonderful discussion very important discussion I think in light of the fact that this is a topic that will probably entail still more discussion and I do want to respect the absence of two members of our body who are not here to participate I'm going to ask Rob to come back on the 28th and with any suggested changes that you might have so that we can continue this conversation with what I hope will be a full complement of the committee I hope the committee will accept that move to a certain degree we're going over territory that we've already gone over and I'm not sure that's the best use of our time plus I really do want to respect the absence of two people and think that they could probably would probably make very important contributions to the conversation so I'm going to ask the committee to to stop the current conversation we'll continue this on the 28th Rob if you can join us with any changes that you feel might respond to some of the concerns then we can move forward and I think for purposes of expediency if we can put on the agenda both discussion and vote just to cover the possibility of a vote Rob? Yeah, first of all this has been a wonderful conversation exactly what I wanted to have happen tonight so thank you all Thank you Rob and please put your little ideas, thoughts, vignettes scenarios into an email send them to me and I'll run them by the attorney and see what he says we get more information the better the more we vet this thing and poke it and kick it around a little bit the better we're going to feel about it so please the sooner the better it sometimes takes a few days to get back and we want to have all this information before that next meeting so just keep that in mind but this has been a great discussion I want to thank you for it and take it to the next round I would ask first of all I would thank the members of the committee for their understanding of moving forward and also ask that you get any statements that you want to submit to Rob by a week from today that would give you a week to get things together for our next meeting on the 28th that'd be sufficient time if we could get things to him by a week from today which would be the 21st I think we can look forward to another stimulating conversation on the 28th about this thank you very much members of the committee thank you very much Rob for your very informed contributions thank you very much moving on if you note in your packet near the end there is a sheet which references something that I think every school committee looks forward to doing and that is acknowledging the exemplary service to the children of the district and in this particular case we have a motion regarding the awarding of clerical and media awards to two members of our clerical and media staff so prior to discussion as always I'm going to ask for someone to make a motion to have it seconded and then I'll entertain any comments or questions prior to the vote is there a motion Lawrence? in accordance with the unit B employee contract the school committee approves clerical media merit awards in the amount of $500 each for Susan Warren and Jane Fitzgerald thank you is there a second? second any seconds? is there any discussion? I would simply like to say congratulations congratulations I'm sorry I think that to be recognized by your colleagues is no higher honor than any educator to receive maybe the highest might be from students but to be recognized by your colleagues is truly an extraordinary accomplishment Annie? I actually sat with Debbie and Terry and read and went through all the recommendations and it was just it was so hard to pick it was great as someone who sits on school committee and we talk about all this up here to actually go into the schools and meet these people and be able to tell them about their award was really fun because Debbie makes it well played so thank you for all the support that they've given it's just been great thank you Trevor I just wanted to add my weight of congratulations to that I felt remiss for not saying something when you asked trying to keep up with my clerical duties and make sure that these things are in my calendar so let that be a little tip of the hat and a nod to the clerical staff amongst us that help keep everything organized I just wanted to add that I have a question do they receive any kind of other than our comments this evening will they receive anything more formally from the committee and if so what? Thanks at the award ceremony they will receive a certificate by their check and that's usually it but their names are called and they're not required and it is it's really a night that sort of makes all this hard work worth it, along with graduation I guess a couple of nights 6th grade graduation is fun too and that's one of them that I would encourage my colleagues to attend if you can and it also recognizes retirees that evening as well right, so talking about people who've given their good service to the district and to the children of the district it's an event that you really should put on your calendar and thank you Deb time frame for that? what time is the 7pm at the middle school cafeteria June 17th any other discussion? we have a motion on the floor unless we forget not hearing any, all those in favor of the motion as stated please signify by raising your hand all those opposed that carries unanimously thank you very very much next item on the agenda again very positive we don't do positive things contributions by generous people from the community I would entertain a motion from the committee to accept these very generous gifts Lawrence I move to accept $500 from Debra A. Ritzer for the Kingly Perry Award and $500 from David A. Perry for the Kingly Perry Award and $500 from Stephen and Brill Custeratus for the Kingly Perry Award and $500 from Regina and Daniel St. John for the Kingly Perry Award all equal in total to $2,000 they were second they were second any discussion? do I have a question if I may I'm embarrassed to indicate the state that I'm not sure I know who Kingly Perry is or was he okay any other comments? I was going to ask what is it what's the award and who gets it and what's it all about it goes to a student each year I do not remember off the top of my head what the award criteria is it's been several years since I sat on the group that works with those awards at all but I do believe it's to a senior in Debbie's defense after every graduation I believe it's in the bulletin there's usually almost a full page of scholarships and awards that seniors receive so your failure to remember once really almost a full page of scholarships and etc it's really noteworthy one of those many and a very generous set of contributions. Shabazz maybe important for the record given the donors continuing to contribute to this it's described as award the Kingsley A. Perry Award is awarded to a high school senior who is committed to furthering his, her education and who has demonstrated an exceptional interest and talent in the field of dramatic arts based on financial need it is given in recognition of a student's achievement in the dramatic arts and with a hope that their enthusiasm and talent will continue to enrich their own lives and the lives of those in the wider community. Thank you. That should be in the minutes. Any further discussion? All those in favor of accepting the gifts via the motion as stated please signify by raising your hand motion carries unanimously thank you very very much and thank you to the people who made these very generous donations moving on to the next item thank you Rob. Thank you Rob. What you have before you are two policies that have been kind of hanging out there for a while these are changes in additional language only to meet changed Massachusetts general laws and so that they are they broaden more inclusive policies than here to form I don't want to say it's modest changes I'm not insignificant but there's nothing else there's no other language other than the addition of the bold print language in both of these so I would entertain a motion to accept I'm sorry excuse me my apologies these are first reading I'm sorry first reading only are there any questions or comments about any of the items before you any of the two policies I I haven't compared the two but I'm understanding what you're saying is changes in language what are some of the changes they have to do with you know gender specificity or you know can you give me an overview of what was required to be changed I know I can read it with a fine tooth comb but you might know are you speaking about ACA yes it's just within bold print those are additions gender identity or sexual orientation gender identity or sexual orientation and the second paragraph is also simply an addition there have been no deletions revisions to policy ACA other than those additions and those additions are simply have been made to simply meet the standards set by the laws of the commonwealth any other comments or questions if not then these will come back on the 28th for second reading and vote correct yes thank you very very much as you'll know by his absence michael is not here this evening and I guess it's okay to inform the committee that shootsbury school school committee has reorganized michael is the new chair of the shootsbury committee as I speak there is not a member of the shootsbury school committee representing that body here on the region as of this moment so I will just give you a very quick update on the regional school district planning board there really isn't a whole lot to report other than the fact that there are numerous subcommittees that are working both independently and collectively to put together various pieces of the regional agreement the entire planning board will be meeting for an all day session on saturday june 1st to come together and to kind of appraise what we have at that point I have not had conversations with andy steinberg as I speak regarding anything more specific about the agenda for that date he's pretty busy with amherstown meeting but right now the june 1st date is sort of the deadline for all of these subcommittees to come together and see what we have and what we can put together I can tell you that the education subcommittee has been the recipients of a tremendous amount of work by both superintendent garrick and miss westmoreland who have worked on an education plan that is simply knocking socks off it's really an outstanding document but incomplete at the moment the governance committee continues to meet I understand the finance committee subcommittee is having some problems meeting but should be ready by the 1st and the other subcommittee that I'm aware of is the timeline subcommittee and I have an email out to one of the members of that committee regarding the logistics of november votes and when they will occur there will be meetings and that sort of thing but I haven't received a response yet so there's a lot happening but nothing really coming together just yet it's just sort of like the pot is boiling and we'll be ready to sit down for the 1st course on june 1st I think that's probably the best way to describe it comments or questions not hearing anything I will ask you to take a look at your calendar and this is a pretty important moment because I'm going to ask Superintendent Garrick to talk a little bit about some items that are coming up the end of this month and the month of june thank you so we have a fairly packed calendar which I apologize I want to make sure you get a revised copy of this too we have let's see we have on the 28th which is really the date that's been really revised quite a bit we will have the OPEB discussion and vote on that day we also will have a facilities update so Ron Bahonowitz will join us to share his work within facilities, transportation and overall our building usage and maintenance we also will have the second read of our policies and we will have a teaching and learning update where Rhonda will specifically speak about the middle school math and Mike of course the corral present to us and perform for us so they and really we should not miss that if you can make it that night because it's impressive and then Mike Morris is going to come and talk to us and remind us of the evaluation timeline at the last few meetings of our school year and we have a very tight timeline in terms of the superintendent evaluation process so again we're going to ask Mike to come to refresh our memory where we are in terms of process forms, paperwork requirements for the committee members how the process will play out at the end, how the information will be compiled and when it will be presented to the committee which the final end of the year will be on June 25th so Mike will come and lay that all out. We had a meeting today of our three chairs and we went through the timeline just to make sure we were staying on track as well as refreshing our memories of the new evaluation requirements for superintendents which is again different from what we've kind of sat within the past and it will be I'm sure slightly different again next year when some additional elements come out but we're on timeline and we're doing well but again next week Mike will help us out and I know did everyone have one of the binders if I could ask quickly remember where it had the district improvement plan and the rubrics for evaluation I think Kathleen we're going to want to get you on I think everyone else has one if you don't for some reason let me know because we'll want to make sure that you have that so that we can just make sure that we have all the applicable materials for people to review also we are looking at whether we want to use that date as the date for our retreat whether we want to do it at that same time so maybe we probably should at one of our upcoming meetings talk about the agenda for the retreat and some topics that might be of interest to the committee members so maybe we could even put that on can I on the 28th yes couple of quick things let me go from the last backwards I've already given Maria some suggestions for themes for the retreat that relate to the working and functioning of school committees I've already given her three or four themes that I suggested I would encourage you in the next two weeks to submit any suggestions that you might have for topics that we could explore during the retreat one of the reasons if not the reason why we're looking at the 25th is an assumption that once June is finished people begin to depart for various places if not the hammock in the backyard so it's probably going to be the 25th I didn't want to think about that moving backward regarding the evaluation and I know Kathleen you may not have a copy of it but the rest of you for very selfish reasons I would lead, encourage cajole whatever all of you to begin looking at the four standards and the associated elements and how you might begin to think about evaluating Maria Maria on those elements there are 42 total elements so there's a huge amount there to ponder and reflect upon and the reason why I ask you to think about it is because we are going to give you very, very strict non-negotiable timelines for submitting your evaluation so that I can then take it score it process it assimilate it and convert it into both a narrative if you will for the 25th so you're going to be giving some very strict timelines and I want to just forewarn you and they are not going to be non-negotiable so I'm going to ask you to start doing your homework now so that it doesn't all come down on you the night before and you have to pull it all nighter like you did last time you pulled it all nighter last night so just so that you know what's coming down this is one of those things that's pretty important at the top of our task list so please do your homework will the forms be the same the forms are different what the standards are the same the forms are the same that's within your that you were given this year yes and we are looking to make that a little bit more user friendly and putting that on survey monkeys so people can do that electronically which would also help calculate I'm not asking you to do it to submit it I'm just asking you to start thinking about it as I'm thinking about it you have the information within the binder and if you have and if you have questions about when you're looking at things and you want to ask questions do you have a call or Mike Morris who's been really involved in this process with our school district and other districts too you can feel free to access that information and Michael is very willing to help and certainly knows what he's doing so he can give you expert advice I have a question about the retreat as well that is does that mean that they would start at four like if we're thinking of scheduling excuse me like school committee starts at seven to six that's a good question I think ideally yes it would be something of some duration we'll work that one out and I know that we also probably want to get Kathleen information around the new member orientation piece too and whether that is just going to the MASC or doing another we can talk about that one too so you have all the info suggest topics for the retreat like what kinds of things do people talk about are you talking about you know educational content topics that sort of thing or are you talking about how we these topics have more to do with the inner workings of the committee our relationship with the I don't want to say the generic topics but they're topics relevant to the machinations of the school committee our relationship with the superintendent how we work together collaboratively, collegially or not how we can improve that one of the themes that I suggested has to do with policy development which is one of the most important tasks that we can engage in other than budget in evaluating the superintendent there was one other one there role of the school committee the relationship to the superintendent governance they really they really have to do with elevating the level of our functioning not that it's low but how can we improve I would like to suggest that we can add as a topic to the retreat some of our resources not a better use and I know I'm the center for collaborative education I just signed a warrant we pay money to but we barely use I like to have a conversation about how we can use them how we can bring them in the fall to share some of the things that we do with them and get a benefit and get some of the things that they do you know I've tried to start that conversation but haven't gotten very far I think we should talk about that at the retreat I'm glad you brought that up because that might be one other thing we need to do I hope we can do it by the 25th when some of the uncertainty about membership plays itself out we need to reorganize and so for example we need to identify perhaps new representatives to the collaborative negotiating team members policy committee subcommittee that kind of thing chair vice chair all of those things need to be reconsidered I hope no later than the 25th and hopefully by then actually she was putting Sheetsbury aside when do the other when does Palom reorganize? I don't think we put it on the agenda I think if I may I think Debbie mentioned today to talk about reorganizing at your next meeting which would be this 6th she hasn't crafted it yet she just mentioned it today when I saw her for the three chairs okay so there's going to be some uncertainty continuing for the next couple of meetings while Leverett we're meeting Thursday night the three of us to reorganize we're two people shy yeah we're one shy I think you have a right in now I think you have a right in your town moderator Daniel is on our school board on our school board is that what you said congratulations all this stuff happens so yes and the last thing I would say is we typically do not meet in the month of July as a board unless there are some extenuating circumstances and then we get back into our work heavily in August so just so everyone knows that picture are there any other items people wish to bring forward not hearing any I'll entertain a motion to adjourn I move to adjourn second second all those in favor please raise your hand we are adjourned thank you very much ladies and gentlemen see you in two weeks