 Okay, seeing a presence of a quorum, I'm going to call the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order at 6.01 p.m. Just a note that this meeting is recorded and being live broadcast by Amherst Media. Thank you, Amherst Media. First order of business is to approve minutes of March 11th, 2019. So I would give the committee a moment to review, which was already sent via email to you prior. But if you can take a moment to review it and note any comments or edits or questions. Mr. Nakajima. I guess since I liked the phrase, I'm going to edit in that in my comments after complimenting Ms. McDonald and Chair Ardonias for your wonderful work, I also noted that they were seeking consensus in many ways. Consensus is a process instead of a destination. Isn't the destination, it's a process. Ms. Westmoreland is busily taking note. Thank you, Mr. Nakajima. Any other edits or comments from the committee? If not, I will take a motion. Mr. Nakajima. Move to approve the minutes of March 11th, 2019. Thank you. We have a motion. Can we now get a second? Second. Ms. Spitzer, you get it. A second from Ms. Spitzer. All those in favor? Thank you very much. So we will approve those minutes with the edit noted by Mr. Nakajima. Moving on to the next item on the agenda is committee announcements and public comment. I don't know if the committee has any announcements they would like to make. Mr. Demling. Just a brief reminder to any parents who haven't already done so that the special education survey closes this Friday available online at arps.org. So if you are one of the 20% or odd parents whose child is receiving special ed services, our wonderful array of special ed services and the spirit of continuous improvement would love to get your feedback. It helps us improve and evolve and get better. So that ends on Friday. Great. Thank you very much. Dr. Morris. Thank you. The service actually extended to the 29th just to encourage. You got some feedback that people wanted a little more time given the busy time of year. People were away last week, some of them based on the university's break calendar. So it's extended to the 29th. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Everything else? I'm with you. And I'll make actually just a brief announcement that we Dr. Morris and myself presented to the town council last night on about the statement of interest applications that we this body actually approved the week prior for both Fort River and Wildwood elementary schools. And it was a very good meeting. It was very well attended by the public actually as well. We had some good questions from the council and looking forward to moving forward with their vote on April 1st. Okay. No further comments from the committee. I'm going to move to public comment. If anyone is here to make comments tonight, please come up to the microphone. You might have to press the button to turn it on and state your name and you've got three minutes. Nope. Just come up. There's one person standing up behind you, though. Press the button to see green light. Okay. Hi. My name is Laura Drucker. I am a parent of a kindergarten at Wildwood. And I'm speaking a little bit out of term because I want to I'm sort of giving a talk a little bit about the food service update. So it sounds seems a little awkward present talking now before the presentation. But I just wanted to express my gratitude and admiration for the hardworking farm to school team, of which I'm been very lucky to be a part of. I joined the group on the farm to school retreat that we took last fall that I think you got updated on in my capacity, both as a parent, but also as the sustainability director at Amherst College, for which that work includes supporting a farmed institution work. And we have our own farm on campus. And so we do a lot of this similar work of trying to get more local food into our dining facility, but also figure out ways to get students out into the field, out into nature and working with the food. What I've seen in my time with this team is just a whole lot of dedication and grit. And amazing ideas and vision of this team led significantly by Jen Reese and Leela and the garden education and curricular curriculum classroom teachers like Miss Lisa at Wildwood who bring the garden into their classroom with such excitement and Sasha Palmer Palmer chef Sam and her vision and their vision to increase local food. And importantly, participation in the food program which brings revenue and it can only help increase more local food. So something that may not be as well known is just the way that food is an amazing opportunity to build community and allow our diverse community in our schools to share their own cultures through food. Sasha's already doing amazing things here. Working together in a garden is also an amazing equalizer. We see this at college all the time we get groups of students out on the farm working together and all of a sudden they're talking and engaging in ways that they never get to do in the classroom or any really any other space on campus. And just from my conversations with this team, I'm seeing that that's already happening in our elementary schools as well. As a group, we have amazing ideas. We have some funding opportunities that will hopefully can allow us to continue to get started. But we are I think just getting started. So I'm looking forward to continue to working on working together and hopefully garnishing the support of the district, the school committee and the community at large to build a sustainable and fully funded school, farm to school program over time. Thank you very much. So just make sure you press the button there so that you can be heard. Thank you. All right. My name is Lisa Poirier. I work at Wildwood School as a kindergarten teacher. I have many, many years in the district. And I want to echo what Laura had to say about how exciting the food service program is. I wish you could have seen the food years ago when the carrots were gray. And I used to dare the kids to eat one. Now they're they're beautiful. I mean, they're fresh, good, delicious food. And Sasha is really transforming our nutrition, our food nutrition program in the district. So I feel very grateful to be on the farm to school team with Will here who's heading up the community piece of it. Jen Reese, our science coordinator who's working on the curriculum. And Sasha who's working on the cafeteria part. So it's classroom, cafeteria and community. And there are a lot of amazing ideas coming your way, hopefully soon. I also want to just take a moment to say that we had a pilot at the elementary schools breakfast in the classroom. And there's also something called breakfast after the bell. And that gives kids an opportunity who if you get on the bus and shoots very like my kids, we get on the bus at quarter seven. So they're eating breakfast really early and lunch comes pretty late. So if there was a grab and go like Sasha's, you know, thinking about and researching that would help kids get the energy and the food they need to be more available to learning. So thanks. Thank you very much. Any other public comments? Okay. I have a letter that was submitted by a community member who asked that I share this with the committee. And it's also regarding the food services program seems like it's a very popular topic tonight. To Superintendent Dr. Morris and food service director Miss Sasha Palmer, we're asking for your help with an issue of great importance to the Amherst Palom and regional school districts. We would like to have organic GMO free clean food menus only. Organic GMO free clean foods are important to all students because they help develop healthy minds and are noted for better behave students as well. In 2013, the Sausalito Marine Marine School District began a pilot program to make the switch to organic GMO free food and have repeatedly documented the program's success and cost savings. The results speak for themselves. Superintendent of Sausalito Marine City Council School District is quoted as saying since launching the pilot at Bayside MLK Academy in 2013, students are eating real food for breakfast and lunch. Discipline cases have dropped dramatically. Attendance has improved food waste is down and students and teachers sharing of meals has led to improved manners and open communication greatly enhancing the school community. Switching to this kind of food is also important for improving the health and well being of our children. Obesity is a growing problem among American students as many as one in five of us are already overweight. One in three young people will develop diabetes in their lifetime unless our diets and exercise patterns change. Our community has an opportunity to combat these epidemics by providing the best foods we can in our schools. Additionally, up to 50 million Americans are lactose intolerant. 90% of Asian Americans and 70% of Native Americans and people of African heritage have this normal condition. Providing vegan options like soy, rice, oat, hemp and coconut milk will meet the needs of lactose intolerant and students allergic to dairy. Providing organic GMO free and clean foods will satisfy the needs of every student every day. Finally, some members of our school community avoid eating school meals for ethical and religious reasons as well as individual taste preferences. Many more are skipping meats and dairy based foods for environmental and animal welfare reasons. An organic GMO free plant based menu will eliminate these concerns and allow all students to be fed properly. I and members of the region's school equity task force ask you to please work with our school committees, food services staff and finance director to ensure the funds to purchase helpful organic GMO free food and beverages. A helpful resource for more information is HealthySchoolLunches.org. Similarly, the conscious kitchen Judy Schills can help make the transition to serving our children the best food and the easy task. The Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine is a national organization that will work with you for free. PCRM has helped schools around the country and can help us by providing free professional advice and finding distributors, recipes, techniques and much more to reach the goal of becoming the second school district in the U.S. to go completely organic and GMO free. Thank you for your attention. Mary Luconka and she states on behalf of our school equity task force, although I do want to make a note that the school equity task force is a subcommittee of the regional school committee and has not actually endorsed this and plus this is the Amherst School Committee as this body already knows, so we do not typically endorse something that's been endorsed by that subcommittee. Okay, with that, I'm going to move us to the superintendent's update. Dr. Morris? Sure, so I'll be brief. I'm sorry it's oral, it's not written tonight. So tomorrow, and I'm unfortunately unable to attend, but Representative McGovern was invited by a Cork Farm first grader to come and talk about something that Cork Farm first grader really wanted to have be heard and work for this family to reach out and to everyone's surprise. Representative McGovern said, sure, I'd love to come. So, I think between 12 and 1 tomorrow, both meeting with that first grade student as well as touring the school. So we're very appreciative of our representatives, in this case U.S. representatives, showing a strong interest in education and particularly our public schools. As a follow-up to the ADA audit presentation that we talked about in this room, actually. We've had some weather-related issues with some of the meetings, but we've had three meetings for the public, as well as administrative staff with the consultants from KMA to start prioritizing different items. And what they are working on is two-fold. One is a prioritization, but also a color-coded categorization of items that can be done by our facility staff, if given time. Things like replacing signs. You know, we'll have to purchase signs, but that doesn't require any kind of deep contract with a consultant to do things that have, you know, reason of the more moderately priced things that would involve a contractor to help with, and then things that are big-ticket items financially that certainly would. And so they're both working on prioritization, but also the categorization, which, you know, we've seen some early drafts and offered feedback on, and I've found already really helpful to look through. So we'd like to bring that back at the April meeting for more discussion with you all. But I want to thank members of the public for coming, as well as our staff members, to talk about the lived experience in schools and particularly want to thank the principals who came and were able to describe for many families and many students what, you know, they hear on a regular basis around access. Two things related to kindergarten. So kindergarten registration starts tomorrow, so it's from 8 to 2, the next three more, three days I should say, at the middle school, at central office, and then also Tuesday, so it's Thursday night from 6 to 7, also in the same space. We also had a kindergarten registration event, see about two weeks ago, yeah, two weeks ago yesterday, at Fort Rivers Library, and it was a great event. We had a lot of, a lot of families, a lot of students, so it was like, really felt like kindergarten. It was great. And wide mix of future kindergarteners who wanted to be right with their parents, which makes sense, and those that were pretty happy exploring the studio space, as they say, of the large Fort River Library, so it was a great event and want to thank everyone who worked to put it on, and thank actually, well, it's a nice segue in a minute to the food service who catered the event and had really nice nutritious treats for everybody who was there, so thank you very much. We're also holding events more specifically around the dual language program, which was part of our event in several places around town, where it's more likely that families have expressed us that transportation challenges exist for themselves within apartment settings, so we've started those, and that'll continue over the next week or two. Today, yeah, so the last thing I think I want to share are the things we're already expressed by the committee members. Today, I was the commissioner of education hosted an event, this is the first time a commissioner's done something like this called Kairos, which is Greek, so the idea is that it's an opportune time in place, and really trying to think about the future of education in Massachusetts, so there was a large group, you know, I was at UMass, which was super convenient for me, less convenient as I heard grumbles from folks in the 495 and East area, but it was really focused on we've gotten as far as we can get in the standards movement, what's next, and how do we promote engaging instruction and how would that affect assessment, and it was a really successful day, I think in many ways. For the community, there was some state board members there, superintendents, and non-for-profit folks, folks who are in the unofficial K-12 world, so to speak, were also present, so just it was really nice event, I don't have a lot of take homes more than that, but it was really nice to hear the commissioner describe what he envisions the future, because when we talk, and you'll hear a little bit from Crocker Farmer Wildwood later about project-based learning and student engagement, being at the forefront, I heard that from the commissioner this morning, so I think it'll segue well when we get to the strategic planning work that's happening in our schools, and I think the other ones ahead of my list were already discussed, yeah. Thank you Dr. Morris, are there any questions or comments for Dr. Morris on the superintendent's update? Okay, thank you. Before we get too much further along on the agenda, I just wanted to make a note for the committee, we have on the agenda for tonight school committee meeting format, which is a topic that had come up previously, we actually have not had a chance, Dr. Morris and I and our vice chair to connect on this topic, so I would like to table this if we can for our next meeting. Thank you, I see nodding heads, so this will be tabled for our very next meeting of the Amherst School Committee. Okay, next item is food services update, which is very exciting. I have to say as soon as I walked into the room, I noticed the food over here, so I'm hoping at some point the food is also going to make an appearance. Dr. Morris, do you want to say anything? Yeah, I do, so I think a couple things that I want to share is I know this group's worked hard to narrow the presentation down to 15 minutes, and I'm going to cue, based on Ms. Palmer's recommendation, I'll cure it five minutes in one minute, because we're trying to, we could go on forever as I could in this introduction about the work that's going on in food services, so. Thank you, I appreciate the opportunity to stay on the agenda time. But I'll use one minute that's not part of your 15th of the group, just to note that what was spoken in public comment earlier is what I experience as well firsthand, so when we have events, when we have visitors in, we were really accustomed to farming that out to local vendors, and what we've been able to do is that in addition to the traditional food service, the catering part and the work that, you know, Ms. Malcolm who's here and Ms. Palmer have done this year has been tremendous and well appreciated. We had a RIAC meeting which is, you know, I've spoken about before, and we hosted the first one in the fall, and they were blown away by the food service department. They assumed it was, you know, some vendor in the area, and it was like, no, that was us. And personally, as Ms. Palmer knows, I eat school lunch multiple times a week, and I frankly didn't used to do that. And so I really appreciate all the hard work and the improvement that we've seen in the continued hard work that's dedication to the future, and I appreciate you bringing food and smoothies for us tonight, so I want to note that as well as someone who hasn't eaten much dinner yet, I'm deeply appreciative. But with that, I'll turn it over to the team. Corey, thank you so much for having us. It was such a pleasure bringing food to you. These items we actually sampled at our Breakfast in the Classroom pilot program that Chef Sam made. We have today Rosemary from Project Britain. She'll talk to you some more about Breakfast in the Classroom and what it looks like, why we're doing this. And our resident Chef Sam, who once you walk across the district, you'll hear kids talking about Chef Sam. So 2018-2019 school year started off with us having a summer food rock tour with congressman Jim McGovern. And that tour was to bring awareness to the summer program that we have. We expanded the summer program in 2018-2019 and is looking towards doing the same this coming summer. There are a number of things that is happening in our school district. We hosted the fair, we launched our new website and if you have kids in the elementary school, you had an experience. So please go to Amherstfood.com and browse our website. We have a farm to school page which we're working on. And I know I don't have enough time or a lot of time, but just a quick. Our website is focused on giving. We developed an interactive menu because we want to give parents and especially elementary parents and more control over what their kids eat or more information about what is in school meal. So parents can view or browse the nutrition information. Once you go on the website, you can see for those people who are counting calories can also count the calories. But the cool part of it is for kids with special meal accommodation, they are able to identify and eliminate those items that have any one of the major allergens. I've done a lot of the allergens, but not all. So for example, if a kid has a parent with a child that is gluten free, they can go in, select the menu and eliminate those items that are gluten. And the same for some of the unconventional ones like pork or so on. And it's available at Amherstfood.com. Also, it is available as a mobile app, so you can take it wherever you go. Or parents can take that wherever they go. We hope that people are using it because it's not just a website. It has a lot of information that nutrition information that parents can use. So we have been partnering with Project Bread since before I came the year before I came. And we are continuing that. Project Bread has a number of programs that they have sponsored. We have Rosemary who was very instrumental in helping us to pilot breakfast in the classroom. And she'll talk a little about what it is and where we're looking to go in the next school year. And Chef Sam, who does our taste testing, all the kids in Amherst school district know Chef Sam. And we have seen the value of having Chef Sam in schools because on those days when we are piloting those food or those menu items that Chef Sam create or those recipes, we have seen an increase in participation. And I'll turn it over to Chef Sam to quickly. Great. Thank you. Thanks, Sasha. So hi everyone. My name is Sam Eiklin, Chef Sam as the kids are saying these days. I'm the director of the chefs in schools program at Project Bread and have been working with Amherst schools since 2017. I'm in the district two days a week and I work on a rotation through the schools. They last about five to six weeks per school. So it's a two-part program. We're providing training to the staff through these recipes that are selected. Sasha and myself select them or we work to develop them. They're fresh. They incorporate scratch cooking techniques, more fresh fruits and vegetables in the dishes. They're also culturally relevant and culturally appropriate to the student body. And those recipes serve as a teaching framework for the staff. So we work on the recipes and then any skills within the recipes that we can work on or develop, we will. We'll learn about new ingredients that may be unfamiliar or less common in the school meal program. And then on that first day I take the recipe, the samples out into the cafeteria and the kids really love it. I mean if I invite you all to come and see a sample day one of these days because the kids get very excited, especially at the elementary level. The middle school and high school kids are excited too. They just do it their own way. You know, I set up a table in the cafeteria with a tablecloth and I wear a chef's code and offer the kids samples and they get to give me feedback through whatever age appropriate means. Sometimes I give them paper surveys, other times they're just little sticker charts. But the kids get really excited about the opportunity to share their thoughts. And then we use those, that feedback and the thoughts from the kids to either alter the recipes or just run them as they are on the menu at that second visit. So then the kids have now had this opportunity to try it. The staff have the training and then on that second day this is what Sasha's referring to where we see that the participation does increase around these meals that the kids have had a lot of opportunity to express their opinions and have buy-in. This is a rough sketch of the upcoming rotation. I have not made it to Wildwood just yet but that's starting next week and then I'll be there for a few weeks with Wildwood, Fort River, and Crocker Farm to round out the year. And I know that this isn't exactly in this school committee but I did manage to get to Pelham this year for the first time which was really wonderful because we did not have the opportunity to do that last year. So I've been in all the schools and Summit Academy as well. Yeah. Oh right. And we've got so the taste testing at the elementaries and then we're doing something at the Healthy Kids Healthy Program Summit that's organized by DESI coming up in May which is a partnership with Mass Farm to School and Project Bread and we're doing a culinary throw down basically where three districts are participating and they're going to bring their best farm to school side dishes and cook them for the audience and sample them and we've got a team coming from Crocker Farm which is really exciting so we're still selecting their recipe and then this summer I'll be spending some time in the district working on breakfast recipe development and hopefully recipes developing recipes that are going to work well in this model of either breakfast after the bell or breakfast in the classroom which I think is probably Rosemarie's cue. Yes. Yeah. Great. Yep. Thank you for the introduction. Yes. So good evening. As Sasha mentioned my name is Rosemarie Kayward and I am the Senior Outreach Coordinator for the Child Nutrition Outreach Program at Project Bread. So I began working with the district two years ago to explore introducing an alternative breakfast model and it's really taken shape with Sasha here within the last few months. So in recognizing that every student should have the opportunity to start their school day with a nutritious breakfast the food service department looking at the participation data across the district recognize that many students are missing breakfast and we know this true across the nation really and that breakfast in the cafeteria is hard to get to when you have limited time in the morning or arriving just before you have to get to the classroom. So in many ways traditional cafeteria breakfast just doesn't work. So breakfast in the classroom is one of three after the bell breakfast models that's been proven to increase participation. Makes it part of the day like school lunch. Makes it part of the day part of the schedule and really normalize it removes all the barriers that traditional cafeteria breakfast presents. So breakfast in the classroom is essentially after the instruction about rings breakfast will have already been delivered to the classroom and for the 15 minutes roughly students will start their day eating breakfast with some kind of facilitated learning with the teacher. And just to note back in 2015 the commissioner of the late commissioner of the Department of elementary and secondary education put out a policy guidance recognizing that the connection between eating breakfast and improved learning health and behavior for four students. So that he recognizes and put about a policy guidance showing this that yes we want to count the first 15 minutes of instructional time and allow kids to eat breakfast in the classroom. So for the past two months I've been working with Saucer and Georgia to introduce breakfast in the classroom to the elementary schools. The elementary schools were identified as the easiest way to introduce this model to the district. So we said that we piloted the breakfast program the breakfast in the classroom program throughout the week of national school breakfast week. We thought that that week would be a week when we can bring so much awareness to breakfast in the classroom. We piloted at Fort River all the classes at Fort River and we had representative coming in. We had Mike in his element reading to the kids and the representative Mindy Dom also participated. We saw a marked improvement or increase in participation over that pilot week. We compared to the week before when it was breakfast in the cafeteria we saw maybe a 45% increase in participation across most or all of the status free reduced and paid. So we see why this breakfast in the classroom is very important. We have what we're looking into the universal breakfast program that we're trying to and when we do have some time we want to sit down and iron out and show the district what that would mean. Breakfast the universal universally free breakfast program. And as Chef Sam mentioned we did receive a grand farm project bread and that is to improve the quality of the breakfast items that we are serving. So we are planning to incorporate the farm to school program utilizing local grown fresh food items or fresh products into our breakfast program as well as into the the lunch program. The farm to school we have started our farm to school work and a number of our farm to school team leaders are here. We have Jennifer Reese we have Will we've partnered with UMass Amherst College Smith College one of our team leader is from each of those universities and we think that that partnership has been great in the work that we are doing and we plan on doing moving forward. We are in the process of coming up with our action plan for the USDA grant that we received last year. And we were also invited to participate in the mass farm to institute which we are one of eight schools that was asked to go to a retreat in coming up with a plan an action plan and the opportunity to apply for grant funding through the Henry P. Kendall Foundation grant. We formed three teams the curriculum cafeteria and community team we think that the farm to school shouldn't compass everyone it is a community we believe that education the food that we eat and the community should be involved in food service. We will continue to a number of and while we're all new to the district is new to farm to school we're looking to we have a number of people reaching out to us because they see the work that we have been doing thanks to our team our teams we are invited to participate and present at the New England Farm to Institute Summit at UMass that will be on April 2019 we are in the process of applying for the Kendall grant which we're looking towards funding of almost a hundred thousand dollars hopefully we the team is working very hard so we are hoping that we can come up with some a number or figure close to to that and also just continue the work that we are doing with our USDA grant in developing a plan that will build a sustainable food program because we believe that farm to school is the backbone of the food service program and and moving forward I just want to say thanks to everybody I know our team teams have been working hard I see them at six seven six o'clock at night leaving their team meetings all the team volunteers we still have we still are seeking volunteers student volunteers to be a part of one of those teams okay thank you thank you miss Palmer and to all of you thank you so much for taking the time to come tonight this has been a program that we have all been very excited about for quite some time and it's wonderful to get these updates and to hear more about what you're up to especially when you have such innovative programs like the you know breakfast in the classroom but just all the work that you're doing with local communities farming communities and you know and with the schools themselves I'm just going to turn over to the the committee now to see if there's any questions or comments for our presenters or for Dr. Morris tonight on this topic miss Spitzer yes first of all thank you so much I really appreciate learning about this the work you're doing and I'm continually impressed I haven't even tasted the food yet I'm sure I will continue to be impressed after that I guess you know I'm really excited about the program and I have a couple questions about how we could even take it a step further if that's possible as somebody who loves to cook and you know as a college student was involved in cooking as a community you know co-housing or co-op you know I see other private schools having the ability to get kids involved in the actual process of cooking and is there any way we might be able to introduce this into the Amherst public schools and if there are barriers and just thinking you know we're about to fingers crossed you know have a new school project and what would we need to do to make it not just about farming which I think is really important but cooking is something that I'd like to think all of our kids and families can learn about and bring home because I think it's really important to have that to we get them for two meals out of the day if we could that third meals hopefully being prepared at home and how we can transmit those skills as well to the to the families and kids one of our one of our goal for the Kendall Grant is to hire an executive chef who would be helping to train and having training courses or classes to teach kids not just kids and partnering with Chef Sam for as long as we have him to develop and work with the curriculum team from the farm to school to bring though that kind of education into our food service program not just having that in the classroom but coming into the cafeteria participated in in cooking classes or demos and so on any other questions or comments from the committee Mr. Demling and then Mr. Nakajima yes so I'll echo the thanks at coming in this is there are so many threads of excitement here I'm I'm not going to pull on all of them it seems like you've had kind of a slow first year Sasha's you know maybe you can pick it up pick it up the next year I mean yes I do No, but you're all this is I mean we could have a two hour meeting just talking about all the details in this so but we won't yes or two hour comment I really like how you described as you evolve the farm to school program of how you want to emphasize the community connection when I talk to people in the community maybe don't have kids in school and are just saying oh and I talk about different initiatives one of the things that always puts a smile on people's faces is the farm to the school it just it just has such a resonance in this community and it's like it's the book in the plow right the book is the education the plow is the fact we have such fertile land and local food such an availability so yeah I would just encourage you to you know keep thinking along those lines it seems like you already are but that is it is such a an untapped potential I think of community pride in our schools the sort of question I had was so another programs with the breakfast in the classroom so the difference in the participation rates is really dramatic in those charts and I'm just wondering what financially the limiting factor is for us going forward because it's great to see those those you know those moments but is is there when we talk about maybe this is more of a shine question but in terms of like ongoing funding if you know you know the ideal for all children to have easy immediate access to breakfast is it is it really just a financial grant of limiting factor or what is it that limits us and I'm I'm sure Sean will jump being in the limiting but I think one of the the things is giving kids access to the breakfast and then we see the participation increase and one of the things that we're looking to do is the universally free breakfast program where all the kids come in and have a free breakfast it's accessible to them but if even if it's free and it's not at a time when they can have it there is not a competition when you have to choose between having breakfast or choose between playing with your friends on the playground and that seemed to be one of the factors once we once we give kids that opportunity to play and also give them the opportunity to go into their classroom socialize with their friends and have that breakfast we'll see the participation increase Dr. Morris did you want to add to that? Yeah so I think the other thing to add to what Ms. Palmer said is just the custodial implications which are very real and I don't want to minimize the excitement that Ms. Palmer had I share that excitement and it means that as compared to our current programming where the breakfast is in the cafeteria and from a waste management perspective you want to get that food out from rodents and you know all those kind of ideas so that creates a significantly higher challenge when there would be a Wildwood for instance 22 classrooms with lots of food waste by nine o'clock in the morning so some of the implications and I really appreciate Ms. Palmer I mean there was a site visit to East Long Meadow I want to say Yes so try to work out some of those details but some of it aren't actually just about the cost of the food it's actually about how to keep the school safe and healthy with the waste that naturally comes from the food so it's a complex set of processes and that's why I appreciate the site visit and getting that feedback principle went down pretty early on a Wednesday to East Long Meadow to learn from those how it's working there but I think that is one of the challenges is not so much in the food side it's what happens to the food at nine o'clock Mr. Nakajima huh you know it's funny I actually earlier when you were starting and talking about breakfast in the classroom I thought of this whole business because we've spent a lot of time this year talking about custodial maintenance issues particularly with the wildwood and for River to a lesser extent and I well thought about bringing up that question but I thought it would be such a bummer but I didn't want to because I thought I'd bring everyone down like how do you keep my also you know wrote inside of the classroom and stuff so I'm assuming you're going to figure that out and also by the way I don't think we I don't I didn't see the final PowerPoint distributed to us if we could get it it'd be awesome because I just some great other slides in there but like you described earlier the desire to get a grant for an executive chef who could do further work in the schools I'm just wondering if you have a couple other highlights of the farm to school work that you want to that you could share with the committee that would pick our interest so we have that we're planning to we're in the process of writing or or Kendall grant and one of the models that we're looking at or different teams have roles that they're doing and I know they're here and they it will be helpful for them to share that those team leads would be helpful for them to share their main focus I know the the garden and curriculum specialist Jennifer is happy to share some of those ideas that the curriculum and the community and the committee routine and I should say I know you're working on it so I sort of just meant if there were general ideas you were excited about that you know in Amherst yes one we are trying to build a business around farm to school so what we're hoping for is that the garden can produce some of the the school gardens can produce some of the food that we use in the cafeteria so they would grow a particular crop whether it's cultural they Leila or our garden specialist is working on growing one of my favorite crop Kalalu and we're trying to purchase those from the school garden and make it into a business so we have that kind of model in another in the regional district which we're trying to see and hopefully that curriculum team can help produce it they're working on specific crops that we can they're growing that would supply us with some of that local produce in our cafeteria we are working on we do collaborate with the garden program we have a a pizza we they they grow the produce and we use it until like a community me or the kids participate they'll last year they did green monster pizza which we are planning on growing those having the kids harvest it and having them cook it in the cafeteria respect Donald so thank you I was um I also want to thank you for the the event was it just last Friday I was I was lucky enough to come and and taste these tasty treats that you brought tonight but one of the things that really impressed me was not just the community that happens in the classroom when they're eating breakfast together but also the learning and I will never ever forget the look on the face of the boy when he learned what was in the green smoothie and I won't spoil it for because it gives them the learning of of nutrition and that things that they don't think could taste ever taste good actually can taste good and I think from the learning perspective of not just the you know being ready for learning because they actually have food in their dummies but also just learning about the nutrition and and that so I I'm really impressed with the work that you all are doing thank you well so I want to take a moment also to also think I you know I agree with a lot of the comments that have been made here I have I guess one comment and a couple of questions and my questions are probably mostly directed to Dr. Morris and to Mr. Mangano but the comment I guess is for everybody I was thinking about the the food waste implications as well and wondering if there's a way to and much the same way that we've been talking about incorporating students or bringing them into the process of growing their own food and cooking their own food if maybe we can also show them how to clean up after themselves right and make that a part of the learning experience you know because I think that a lot of times I know in our family this happens a lot where we have you know this almost this mentality of like you know you open a package you throw that away and you don't have to think about it ever again right but if it's your classroom and you're thinking about the impact of that that paper wrapping or that plastic wrapping and the crumbs that are falling to the floor and all that kind of thing that maybe we can think about that as a learning opportunity as well but as Mr. Nakajima said I'm sure I'm sure you guys will all figure that out so I guess my questions are I do want to hear a little bit more about the limiting factor quote unquote as Mr. Demling mentioned for increasing participation from a financial perspective because I do think that the financial impact of course is something that we you know we want to think about a little more carefully so Mr. Mangano I don't know if you want to address that or Dr. Morris Yeah so I'll address it for in regards to the breakfast so the universal breakfast is actually a really big opportunity for the finances so the models we've looked at actually have the potential to really increase revenues it was on one of the slides but because of time we kind of went quickly but you can see we can actually increase revenues up to 150% by doing the universal breakfast so it's not really a financial thing it's more of a logistics to try to work it out because it's such a big shift in our model but that's actually one of the future things we're excited about in terms of excuse me and boosting our revenues in the future and if we do that then that money can get put back into the system and allow us to do other things in the future increase the food quality do other new initiatives so the breakfast in the classroom is actually something we're looking at as a positive from the financial perspective and is that revenue increased due to the cost to families per meal is that what it is or so under this model breakfast would be free to all so it would actually reduce the cost to families the increase in revenues because we would project a pretty significant increase in participation by having it after the bell because it would be made available every day to all the students in the classroom and there's federal and state reimbursements for it for all those meals that we serve thank you that's what I was waiting for you to actually say out loud thank you very much yes there's money well and it makes it more you know it makes it definitely more valuable and feasible right for a program like this which is ultimately what we want you know we don't want to make money off of a program but if it can sustain itself and we can actually show that to the community then it makes sense right Mr. Demling did you want to yes it's real quick on that because that's a pretty amazing concept that by giving free charge breakfast to all would increase our revenue so how reliable is that money going forward year to year I mean I won't make any comment about you know federal stance towards you know social programs it reliable in terms of keeping pace with inflation you know I wouldn't bet on that but in terms of there being money for breakfast I think I mean that's sort of the cornerstone of the the USDA national school lunch program so I would expect that the money the reimbursement for lunches and for breakfast is going to be there going forward Dr. Morris yeah and just just to bolster what was being shared it was about a year ago I think that we actually had someone come in from the Greenfield public schools who you know went through this transition to be in provision too to look at our participation rates our poverty rates which is a factor in the reimbursement and to net out or to predict out what the implications would be so we do have some more detailed information about the implications for our district because we wanted to investigate it and but that could be an hour long conversation tonight because it actually you have to show an increase so you know there's some advantages of when you start doing that versus when you see the you know when this increase starts because it sets a rate that goes for years in the future but all that to say that I know that this team is closely watching that and and aware of the implications yeah and just to give you a quick example so our free and reduced lunch percentage in the district is between 40 and 50 percent our breakfast overall breakfast participation is only like 12 percent or 15 percent so we know just looking at students that can get food for free already there's a huge number of them that aren't for some reason either because there's not an opportunity or something so we view this as a way to a meal's out to those who have that benefit already and then also beyond that go to students that just aren't eating breakfast anyway so there's a there's a big market that we can serve by doing that great thank you and my other follow-up question was just about the implementation in the fall of 2019 so the 32nd answer is that is that set for implementation will that be promoted among parents and caregivers what what is the rollout look like for that so that we can look for it so I think the point that you raised earlier or was raised earlier about working out logistics particularly as food in classrooms given our experience last year I think we still have more work to do on that before we can kind of do a more complete rollout you know I know that you know particularly at wild would have been in touch with our pest management company and they'd like to see a little more time before we're having food in all classrooms every morning so I think that's the piece that we're sort of still working out the logistics of of how would that more to the mechanisms that would be in place so certainly when we're at that place to announce it you'll hear about it loud and clear great okay well we look forward to that update then and thank you so much for being here tonight and I'm assuming that the treats stay is that right yeah the the treats will stay and I'll just let you know what's in them so you can make informed choices about what you're eating and drinking so that's a that's an apple cinnamon muffin that is a berry blueberry peach and yogurt smoothie and then the green one this this one is a little bit different than the one I served at Fort River but it's the same concept it's pineapple apple green grapes celery and this one actually has baby kale in it but the one that I served at young kiddo had spinach in it and he I think he was into it I think he was okay thank you very much miss palmer and all of you thank you so much for coming tonight really appreciate it thank you okay mr. dumbling in the spirit of not wasting we have quite a treasure trove here it appears there's more than enough for everyone in the audience hey I would say so I think that if the the audience wants to help themselves there's there's plenty of treats here why don't we take a two minute recess so that because we lost our committee anyway let's take a two minute recess calling the meeting of the Amherst School Committee back to order after a very tasty little break that we took there thanks to the food services program at the Amherst Regional School District next item on the agenda is Crocker Farm and Wildwood strategic planning update and I must say that this is also another item on the agenda that I'm very much looking forward to we had a conversation well several conversations actually last year around our planning for the dual language program at Fort River about wanting to make sure that we also heard from Crocker Farm and Wildwood in terms of what the planning was there for their schools recognizing that we have some very special communities here in all three of our schools and we did not want to just focus on Fort River with its new dual language program but that we also wanted to make sure that Crocker Farm and Wildwood were getting their recognition and so with that Dr. Morris do you want to sort of bring up the committee to speed yeah so I'll do a quick introduction Mr. Shea is going to talk about Crocker Farm first and then Mr. Yaffe you'll talk about Wildwood and I think a common theme that you'll see even if you think about Ms. Chamberlain and what she's presented about Fort River has been yes it's been focused on dual language but really it's about student learning and how our students accessing high quality curricula being engaged in their work and how our schools moving forward this year what's a little different for this group is that they've been working with a different set of folks to help move them along and they have different teams in their school of staff members and community members they've been working throughout the year eventually to get you late mayor early June a draft of school improvement plans moving forward and so this is an update that I asked the principals to bring forward to share you know the work to date what's left where they're headed and to give you a flavor of what's to come at Crocker Farm and at Wildwood so with that I'll pass to Mr. Mr. Can you make sure that the light is on and the is it green? Yes. Yes. Perfect. Thank you. So someone was saying earlier as you know there was a question raised about the the there we go there was a question raised sorry I was light green sorry I was it was a different green there was a question raised about the participation rates for students in eating breakfast in the morning time so I can tell you that our breakfast room in the morning is packed but that doesn't mean to say the participation rates are high it also means that students who actually don't get free and reduced lunch our breakfast actually show up in the morning and want to buy our breakfast but here's the problem we have at our school is it it's a it's a good problem we have this fantastic playground our buses arrive at 8.25 in the morning and we go play it in the playground for about 20 minutes before teachers come and pick up students at 8.45 so invariably what happens is students have this little bit of an odd choice right do I play in the playground or do I go eat breakfast and so we're always encouraging kids to go eat breakfast but then we're also encouraging kids to play so if we get to a place where we can have this breakfast in the classrooms we will solve a fantastic dilemma for ourselves which is we're going to keep playing in the playground run around right and a sunny morning when it's maybe 25 degrees I would encourage you to come someday it's a thing of beauty you can close your eyes and just listen to kids playing it's wonderful they could probably then go inside and have their breakfast so we can get the two things done that we want to do in the morning play a little eat rather than have the choice so that's the reason not the main it's probably one of the reasons our numbers are a little funky and that kids are chosen to go shoot hoops run around play we really don't want that to be the choice do we we aren't both right so can we be greedy enough to have the two of them I think we would take two of them so that was last the last issue so as Mike said we are in the process of working with Dr. Kristen Rodriguez on our school improvement plan we've had a number of meetings since the last time we spoke and these meetings include upwards of 10 of our teachers and myself nine or 10 of our family members who come to meet in my rather small office we sort of congregate there and we've been working diligently I think since perhaps August we've we've probably two or three meetings since we last talked to you we've also taken some of the work back to our staff meeting time to work with our staff to to update staff but also to to help them with our work so tonight I was just going to see a couple of quick things about about the work and then perhaps you could ask a few questions I'm not quite sure and give you tons of answers but but I can I can just frame a few things one of the things that we're trying to do is that we're working hard to try to in some ways narrow the focus of all of the work that we're doing at our school so so perhaps and I sent you a couple of slides they weren't terribly specific but there was one slide for example that we sent you and it's some green writing on it where it really where it was referencing was there's lots of things that are happening in the building even as we speak so so we're not like a train sitting at the station right waiting to be for a whole bunch of coal to be dumped into the back of our trucks and for us to take off we're constantly in motion and there's lots of things that are happening even as as we speak so here's an example so one of the things that that we've realized in our school over the years is that we have this what's called a pre-referral process right so what that really means is that we're we have this process where you work with with teachers and counselors and speech and language people and various other people ELL teachers RTI teachers where we we work to try to figure out okay what are what are the the needs of this student and and we use this process a protocol to help figure out it's a it's a pre-referral process for special education and we came to realize over the last years that the process itself the protocol wasn't that strong it wasn't that good so we've actually been working with Katie Richardson and people from central office to help sort of solidifier process so as that we don't do this we don't over identify youngsters or perhaps students who are ELL students or working class students who are certainly over identified in the SE process so we're we're working with all our teachers to try and help educate our teachers in this pre-referral process so as that we actually sort of slow down the process and we don't jump into these referrals at such a fast rate so that's a little piece of work that we do with everyone in the school um there's lots of things happening so our math recovery stuff we talked about that last time we'll fit a woman come in this year our name's Jessica Minahan and she's been doing lots of work with us on anxiety and trauma with children so I tell you those couple of things because none of those things are going to go away we're going to continue to be working on initiatives even as we're working on our school improvement plan and Michael even agree with this and this is not like to pick on Mike or central office people but Mike and Marta and Fe and Doreen and various folks at central office they're always nicely in the process of coming to us with ideas that they want us to be thinking about in our school so that's not going to go away as well so we're not going to develop this plan and all of a sudden Mike and everyone say you guys are good we won't bother you for the next couple of years they're going to keep coming at us with new ideas that they want us to try out so what we're trying to do in this plan and um I thought about this when I was running earlier um about nine years ago I was involved in writing a plan Peter Demley was involved in this plan Mike Morris and what we did is we come up with these three or four goals and I can remember under the goals there was like 10 initiatives that we were working on and basically what we did is we sort of dumped all of the wonderful things we were working on in this plan and in some ways when I look back at it it was kind of good because we showed everyone what we were doing but I'm not sure it was leaning off to really say these are the three or four things we're committing to it we're working on all these other things but these are the collective pieces that we're working on so what we're trying to do right now is we're trying to sort of streamline this set of goals with some small initiatives that go with them three or four initiatives maybe three or four goals three or four initiatives and really as a collective in our school working those small pieces non-full well we're going to be continuing to work on other things as well if that makes sense and Mike I can't really think of other things but oh I can actually a math initiative we're going to be working on some math stuff the social studies frameworks have just changed in the state so people want us working on some social stuff stuff social study stuff I'm going to share with you in a minute I think the health curriculum in town K through 12 health curriculum needs a lot of work I shared with you a little piece that we're working on I can talk to that in a second so all of that's coming as well whether it makes any of your plan possibly not it doesn't mean you say we're not working on those things so our team of people have tried to narrow it down to three things that we're working on and we think we're on to something with the goals the initiatives will come later we haven't quite got to that phase we've got some of it but I don't want to show you all that with it I haven't shared it with our staff and our families but briefly three goals that we're working on so just a piece of paper here that came from my office so Mike mentioned this earlier engaged learning right and so I'll read it it's not terribly exciting so far but it says we will grow in our instructional practices to promote relevant and engaged learning and equitable access it's really about high quality instruction so this is one of the goalie areas that we feel that it's going to be part of our plan I think what will happen is there'll be a subset of initiatives small number that will come with this that will say this is what we're going to focus on a second big goal area that we think is really important is sorry for the it's just a piece of paper relationships and again it's up for change we will cultivate connections among students staff families and our community now it's going to be a little stronger than that when we get into what we're going to actually do but this was something that our teachers and our families who met when we said this is a really important piece for us we really truly believe that if we're going to get anywhere in terms of making sure that everyone in our school gets what they need and has access to the the relationship piece and we're pretty good at it but we want to get much better at it so this is going to be a goal area that we're going to be working on and we're going to figure it we're really starting to figure out some areas where we're going to hopefully excel the third piece is really around social emotional well-being of our students and I'll read it it says here we will foster students well-being to develop emotional strength and resilience and it says well-being at the bottom so might not be the most attractive stuff that you see but I think once we get to the place where you see what we're actually going to be doing I think you'll probably get a little bit more excited so again I think we we fed this stuff out through all of our staff and people get terribly excited and there's nothing in any of these three things that anyone could say these are bad things that you should be doing in school right I think this is all pretty good stuff so these are the goal areas we're going to start working a little bit on initiatives that go with them the last thing I just wanted to say and I sent all of you how you show up with the general public I'm not quite sure but just an example I sent to you recently or last week was that last year we realized after some consultation with a few parents that one of the pieces of our health curriculum and we don't really have a K through 12 health curriculum but one of the pieces that we do every years we do some work on puberty and sexuality and we realized that the work we were doing in grades five and six as much as it's only six or seven years old it was dreadfully outdated and not entirely relevant to the work that we do in our school right now so Tim Sheehan a number of our counselors Jen Smith our assistant principal several well-intentioned hardworking parents all got together over the course of six, eight weeks and they developed a set of lessons that we're going to actually implement in grades four, five and six I think we sent you maybe a brief little clip of what we're going to do we can actually show you the whole package at some point if you want to see it so we're going to teach three lessons in grades four three lessons in grades five and three lessons in grade six now what we could have done is we could have waited until folks from like a health curriculum unit group committee probably two three years down the line before we do all that got together and said let's improve this and we said no we have the possibilities to do this now and so the reason I shared with you with you is because I think what will happen is when we get to the part where we really get into your school improvement plan you'll see the potential we have in our building to actually do work that will have I think positive change for students so that was just a small example of something that we can do in a very short period of time I'm happy to report back at some point on how those health sexuality lessons go happy to share them with other schools as well because we think it's work that's very important so again I think we're a school that's trying to be a doing school an action school and anyway I'll stop because it bore realty deathless what I think thank you Mr. Shea really appreciate it I do want to pause here for a second to see if there's any additional comments by Dr. Morris or questions from the committee for Mr. Shea or Dr. Morris well I will say I just wanted to say thank you for sharing your thinking I also really appreciate sort of the critical self-assessment that's going on at Crocker Farm among your staff on all of these different pieces I think it's difficult at any stage for any team to be reflective and to think about the things that they're doing right but also things that they can improve upon so it really shows a lot of dedication and commitment to your students and your school community to be able to do that I think especially on the health curriculum I certainly share a lot of the concerns especially when they were highlighted in the way that they were and I believe that it's something that the school committee has actually addressed prior with questions related to the health curriculum more broadly so I'm glad to hear that this is you know coming up as something that as part of that self-assessment and steps to to move forward I also wanted to say I really appreciate the focus on the social emotional skills and well-being I believe and have mentioned this in other meetings prior to that this is where we can set ourselves apart I think from a lot of different school districts because this is an area where we have excelled for some time and thinking about our students holistically and not just academically and it brings such an incredible amount of value to the whole person the whole being and I think especially for students that may be struggling for students who are challenged at home environments or who have dealt with adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress that paying attention to how they are feeling and how that feeling those feelings manifest in their day-to-day lives is extremely important in order to make sure that we're seeing their both educational and more generally their other well-being so I really commend you for thinking about this and putting that into words I look forward to a more developed presentation at some point with you know some further thinking on how to how to realize those goals and the initiatives between beneath them because I I do think that you know in thinking about our individual schools having each school identify sort of their fort days if you will is really important to you know to ensure sort of a healthy community there but really you know again commend you Mr. Shea and your teachers your educators for thinking this all through and bringing this to us tonight and I think if I could just add that I think you know there's a lot more information I could share with you right now but I want to make sure we get that in front of all of our teachers before I bring it here right so I don't want to be sitting up here tonight and giving you like many more of the of the of the work below the goals but without having brought it to all of our teachers and all of our families you know so I'd like to do some of that first and then bring that back here if I can see you say this quick come back to the health curriculum piece what we're realizing is that there's information I think some of our youngsters need not when they're 14, 15, 16 but when they're 9, 10, 11 and 12 so that's for us the sort of impetus was to sort of get moving because we don't want to wait right it doesn't make any sense to wait to get information to kids when they really need it at a younger age two other quick things there was a theme about what is our identity or what does it mean to be in our school and I think what one of the things that we realized is that we didn't want to set up in the beginning and say this is our identity and these are all the things we're going to do we we're interested in sort of seeing how our identity evolves through the work that we're doing so we've got some sort of notion of has been this sort of community and I don't want to say community school but there is a notion of how community comes into the whole aspect of the stuff and I don't see that falling away what we're very interested in is how I see how that word evolves and how that sort of meaning evolves and the last thing I would just say is that teachers are going to do some of their own individual working ideas and we're not trying to make clones of everyone what we're really talking about in this school school improvement plan is what are the sort of collective action steps that all of us in our school are going to commit to people are going to still have their expertise and some of their specialties but we're looking at a small number of things that every single person in our building and all of our students will have access to all our families that will be part of some collective action steps is the piece that we're looking for thank you Mr. Nakajima yeah I think what you just did in sort of the summary did a wonderful job of bringing to a point something I was going to sort of grasp but complimenting what you're doing and it appears you're doing is I love the fact that you decided that instead of trying to create a plan that mirrored all the goals and objectives and activities of the school and sort of valued them and then tried to provide some measure of progress in those areas that instead you have the ambition of saying look we're going to win of this down there are going to be lots of important things to do but here we're going to prioritize so I think that's exactly right and I think also the challenge then and you were just summed it up better than I could have asked you the question or commented is how do you then create a dynamic in which everyone is genuinely and authentically participating in setting a you know a more focused set of goals and I think if it's done right and done well it's it's it I mean I'm looking forward to seeing the details too so I think the the the the goals or objectives you're setting the broader vision obviously resonates and feels good and sounds right I think when you bring it down to how you're going to be reflecting that back in specific initiatives like you did here with health is you know it'll be interesting to see because I think the sum of the value of it is probably greater than even just the individual elements even though the individual elements could be really critical the value to the community is all right I know I would just add briefly that including yourselves sitting up there and myself sitting here all of us have our own sort of individual talents and specialties and areas of like interest and passion and so we all want to maintain those things but when we're looking at this plan we want to think about what are collective sort of like interests and passions right and putting those all together for the for this one plan thank you Mr. Shea so I think I'll call up Mr. Yaffe and might take a minute just to get the flash drive loaded I'll come over and try to help with that okay just come up to the microphone and make sure that the button is pressed and that the bright green light is on we have to make a distinction we realized thank you Dr. Morris so as I'm listening to Derek I just one thing that first struck me that I want to say in the introduction is just how much we're in sync as the two schools and certainly Fort River Diane always likes to chime in and say yes we too over at Fort River and and I think what Derek was saying is so valid and true you know that we want to focus on things that are collectively there's a collective commitment among the Wildwood staff and community among their families and among the children and in doing so we've tried to really involve everybody as much as possible and as Derek was also saying focusing on a few things that we can just say yes this is who we are at Wildwood and similarly we've talked about how the identity that certain themes are emerging and I think you'll get a sense of that and we put together just a very simple simple slideshow and this is where we ended up so before we look at that I'm just going to give you a context and we're calling these the Wildwood pillars the foundations of our school and this started with at the beginning as we talked about a few months back surveying families at the open house and then online and then surveying our staff you know what do you love about Wildwood what do you feel what areas do you feel like we should improve and out of that emerged what we felt we categorized everything if you can imagine that was quite a daunting task into these five areas what really emerged though or what I would say is one of the things that really rang true for people about what they loved about Wildwood is is the sense of community as Derek was saying about Crocker I think there's that feeling in each of the schools that this is a community and that Wildwood is a welcoming community and that when you walk through the door no matter who you are where you're from what you love as we say to the children you can be that person at Wildwood that's what we aspire towards so that's the foundation and then what Chris is going to talk a little bit about the inquiry group process that we created out of these five pillars that emerge from everybody's feedback of what they felt were the most important parts about Wildwood yeah so after the stakeholders all weighed in and we collected all that data and then the school instructional leadership team looked at the data came up with these five broad areas and we decided to label them pillars Nick and I have talked quite a bit about how professional developments are really an opportunity to model best teaching practices and so we want kids to do inquiries and follow their interests and so we kind of tried to do that with the staff as well we divided into groups so each staff member got to choose what inquiry group they'd be a part of and then research something that they're interested in or want to learn more about so yeah so the members of the school yeah click yeah click okay so here they are Tim and so then we decided in terms of that modeling idea to use something that we started to learn about at all the schools or restorative circles and when we've done this with the staff it each time it's surprisingly powerful just bringing people together in a group of 10 or 12 in a circle and setting norms and just talking from the heart and listening deeply and so each like we say with children we believe in choice so each staff member chose what inquiry group and said why this is important and once people start to speak it was a very powerful experience and then they talked about what again what they what they hope for what does it look what would it look like if it was done well at our school and then to get concrete can you think of a time in your own practice as an educator where you felt you did curriculum design well or you felt you did social justice or equity well and then we talked also about what do you wonder what do you want to find out so led that to the question of what we're going to explore as in these small groups sure then we went to I believe statements and so people believe a lot of things we came up with really exhaustive lists the staff developed and then the job of each of the inquiry groups was to kind of funnel through those again categorize them come up with some basic themes that they saw within within each of the I believe statements and then draft a statement and we present and then we're kind of not there yet and we're not there yet but we are going to present we're in the in the process of developing statements that to then check in with everyone all the stakeholders make sure we all agree on this and then then continue with the process yeah and like when I heard Derek talk about that idea of this collective these are things that collectively we agree on that's what we hope to have so with this shared value statement around so one of the pillars is family partnership well this is going to be endorsed by the entire staff they're going to say yeah this is what we value with family partnership Nick can I jump in here yeah sure just to note that having been at Wildwood at the beginning and as one of these sessions that was using a circles model approach I think two things stood out to me one was the equitable participation so no matter if you're an extroverted staff member who is very comfortable talking group the structure of it meant that everyone had equal air time and that shifts dynamics when it shifts I mean just the other thing was Nick may remember this that I thought I was going to stay the whole time I opted not to stay for the whole faculty meeting because the conversations felt so intimate but actually I felt like my role would be it couldn't be an observer right there was no and I wasn't looking to be a participant but the level of dialogue was so rich and really felt to use that word again intimate that I opted to watch one or two for a couple minutes and then I said you know that this is I think I'm getting in the way I would get in the way as an observer because of that shared commitment to work collaboratively as a group and the shared participation of staff members so I just want to note that it really did feel different from other dialogues that either I've seen in faculty meetings and I appreciate the kind of approach of really getting everyone in the staff to be an equal participant in the work and I think those process benefits when we're talking about shared commitments at the end make a huge difference that every all staff members feel that they were and were actively a part of the creation exercise so I just want to note that yeah thanks that's that's so important and and then it's also it ties into saying we did this as a staff you can do it with your students you know and you'd have similar benefits and you'd be hearing voices that you don't normally hear in building community so I'll save the next part for the for the action steps because what this is saying really is that values are great but we're really what then matters is to have real change can we name specific behaviors that would make our values real so that's where we're at now yeah like six years ago we did a vision process and it kind of didn't have the teeth of the steps that Dr. Rodriguez has taken us through in terms of coming up with smart goals and we believed all these things but then we're you know what what's the concrete steps what's the concrete action so I really appreciate that in this process we're going to come to those and it may really make some commitments as a staff as a school so that's what Chris was just talking about and as Derek was talking about okay what can we really commit to there will be this individuality the creativity that takes place in every classroom but using the restorative the circles as an example so that's one of the best practices in trauma-sensitive schools so if you're at Wildwood is that something that you'll see some version of that in every classroom or you know that's so much more powerful then oh that's happening in that classroom but not in this classroom so that's what we're that's our next step is like under we're going to give you an example but under each pillar we have the shared value statement and then a plan of action and again just focusing on a few that we can all say yes we're going to do this so that's this was our task for the inquiry groups we've covered most of this the one part that it has a blue number for I'm not sure why but there it is because that's the part we didn't talk about we're at the point now where to really get full agreement and buy in we're going to check in now it's more than halfway through and say okay here's where we're at here's what each group each group will present and then get feedback from the full staff so this is an example we thought that of a shared vision statement that the this inquiry group came up with they haven't checked in with the whole staff yet to get it revised and whatnot but we thought it was a interesting statement it's all how do you you can start go ahead yeah yeah so we believe that a commitment to social justice needs to be integrated into all aspects of the school day in order to be effective we'll strive to make our school one where teachers and students bring a critical equity lens where it becomes clear that community members identities beliefs backgrounds and abilities are actively valued this means that all students should have equal access to learning and students and staff should experience equitable and considerate treatment from each other to reach these commitments we believe that staff need to engage in reflection with regard to our own biases and assumptions and or lack of knowledge about those who are different from us so like we said this is the value statement and then okay what are a few core practices and Dr. Rodriguez has outlined okay then you would go from there this is sort of giving you the sense of the initiative and then what would you go from there to say this is your smart goal and then what's your action plan to that's what each group this group also started to outline that and actually circles restorative practices were a part of that whoops so that's it presentation thank you so much to both of you for coming here tonight and for presenting this I'm just going to jump in very quickly with a few comments and I also just realized that we're running a little bit behind in our agenda tonight but that's okay because we had some very important presentations about what's going on in our schools so we thank you both for for coming I really just wanted to say I love the process that you've detailed for getting I guess picking the brains of your of your staff and educators to come up with this you know vision statement and just to get agreement and all the different areas and principles that you that you want to work towards it's just so you know refreshing to hear of a team that's working together in such a way and so you know that really jumps out I think in this whole process and the fact that you're working on getting specific steps together to come up with you know action steps and goals that's actually really really great I also just wanted to commend you for identifying social justice and equity as a top priority for Wildwood School and I know that this is true across our district this is you know those are values that we hold dear to us and when put into an actual strategic planning process it means that we're holding it sort of top of mind and creating that as a priority and it's just wonderful to hear both of you talking about this and the steps that you're taking to ensure that that actually continues as a you know as a central theme to the work that you're doing so I just want to take a moment to thank you for that I'm going to turn to the committee to see if there's any any you know brief comments or questions that you have for Mr. Yaffe or Mr. Eggmeyer Mr. Dunling I won't just say what she said but what she said you know I think it's that the emphasis of those values has been great but one thing I want to get like a bit of a clear sense of just so we can sort of set our expectations for the next few months is that so like with Fort River the dual language program is a fundamental curricular change right to the that affects the whole aspect of the school and what we've heard so far from in the planning stages for Crocker and Wildwood are you know the high level sort of visioning and values and then goals so do you think like Principal Yaffe this this will necessarily lead to a specific unifying curricular change like for example we've talked about project-based learning or self-directed learning there are other you know examples of this kind of major curricular shift that could happen in every classroom or is it more we've identified our values now we have a clear focus on what our efforts are and now there we're doing things more consistently I guess I'm just sort of I'm wondering what what the end looks like yeah I think I think this is a if this is an opportunity to really have that kind of fundamental shift and in the curriculum and how students learn and and you know both at Crocker and at Wildwood you notice student engagement was a pillar you know and so that's really where this journey started I would say and a half years ago looking at how can students be truly engaged and that led to student ownership of its of their own learning and that led to so it's I see a real through line there I think this is an opportunity to to create something that is a big shift in that regard and that project-based learning character development they're intertwined but how how can we have students and we have examples we have exemplars in all the schools where you would say yeah that's it that's what we're talking about we want to visit other schools that we feel or can show us some things about how they're they're they're they've made that kind of change so I think it I would say yes that is true and that's what that's what I would hope and want at Wildwood and and I know that similarly at Crocker farm that people really want our students to be fully engaged to be citizens of the world so it's tied into social justice to feel like they're making an impact on the world and that's the way to do it is like for them to undergo this process of inquiry and and have questions that they're asking that they want to pursue does that answer the question and not that this was missing from your answer Nick but I I do think the idea that a lot of the model schools were looking at like we went to some expeditionary learning schools the high tech high schools all spend some time with they really have served our underserved students which is real equity concern that I think this is not just project-based learning that is something that's great but it also has some real world implications in terms of how the achievement gap is close yeah and I think that that the thing you're talking about Peter that there's an article that I shared with staff which is going from the dessert project-based learning you know this type of learning going from the dessert to the main course so my goal would be to make this the main course at our schools because I believe in it I believe this is the way kids learn best great okay if there are no further comments or questions from the committee thank you so much again for your time tonight really appreciate it and I hope you can grab some treats on your way out we're being very magnanimous tonight with you know this thank you thank you all thank you okay the next item on the agenda is the FY20 budget vote we've had several meetings already reviewing upcoming year's budget and I know that Mr. Mangano has shared updates with us recently and it looks like he's got some slides ready for us yeah very few just a quick recap so quick recap the proposed budget is $23,838,854 which is the amount that was given as guidance from the finance committee in the fall it's a 2.6% increase over last year's budget and it currently includes $261,576 of net additions and that chart below is just something you've seen before which is the the increases in the level services budget over last year the primary change from the budget hearing to now is the addition of a 0.3 curriculum clerical position we talked a little bit about this on the region side but the the purpose of this addition is to allow the communications position that we're proposing to focus entirely on communications without this addition that position would have some curriculum duties but by adding this it allows that person to focus all on communications and this is the motion language there's the traditional top part which is to approve the budget for FY20 in the part below you've seen this in the region but not in Amherst before because we've included a contribution to the Special Ed Stabilization Fund there's this second piece that we explicitly vote that for the to the budget and I'm happy to answer any questions on the budget. Great so at this time if the committee has any questions or comments on the FY20 budget I will also accept a motion Mr. Demling I'm just a quick question I think I asked you this before but the 2.6 that's above the town's 2.5 guidance have we had discussions with the town and regards to how they're going to react to that so that is that is the 2.5 it came out a little bit higher this year because of the way the town does the adjustment for charter and choice tuition so in the past you know how sometimes it's been below 2.5 because our charter and choice has been growing because for the first time our charter and choice actually didn't grow it stayed flat it actually was slightly above the 2.5 so it's this is the number that they gave us based on the 2.5 percent across the board it's just it's the way that little calculation happens before they give us the number if that makes sense just to put a finer point out of the the town has approved then this this increase this is the number that they're using in their projections yep thank you Mr. Nakajima and move the Amherst School Committee adopt a budget of $23,838,854 with a fiscal year of 2020 for the Amherst Elementary Schools further voted that included within this budget proposal is a contribution of $50,000 the Special Education Stabilization Fund okay the motion has been moved do we have a second second any further questions or comments for Mr. Mangano or Dr. Morris all right all those in favor it is unanimous thank you very much I just want to say also this hasn't come up before but I want to thank you Mr. Mangano for all the work that you put into this and especially for creating that summary out live at the very beginning I really appreciate it thank you I actually hope that you know kidding aside for future years that we actually do incorporate that because we have it at our regional budget level I do feel like it helps to focus the discussion on where the areas of improvement or changes have taken place in the budget and we made such incredible investments this year on you know really important things including the dual language program and other things that we've talked about right in committee meetings you know throughout the year but to highlight that for the budget you know this is what I tell everybody our budget is actually how we create policy here on the school committee at the district level so it is you know arguably I think the most important document that we have and that we can share with the community and everything so if it can highlight the things that we've considered important and that's what we want to invest in all the better yeah now that it's in there it's there to stay awesome thank you so much Dr. Morris yeah and I think in particular as Amherst has had a change in government and you know on the regional side that meeting is coming up sooner because of timeliness of other four towns three towns but at the Amherst side it'll come up we have different people reading our documents so I think the executive summary plays a perhaps larger role now that our former governments changed and the town manager and the town council looking at it in a slightly different way than what our formal government was different so appreciate the suggestion appreciate Mr. Magano's work on that yeah yeah and as always on all the budgets if you have suggestions or feedback or anything you think could enhance the document get that to myself for Dr. Morris because we're always looking for new ideas thank you okay thank you very much next time on the agenda is the FY20 capital update Mr. Magano I think that's you again this I think will be a brief agenda item we just put it on here so Mr. Magano or certainly Ms. McDonald or Mr. Nakajima from JCPC just as that process has gone on we thought it would be wise to just have a placeholder for a brief update about how JCPC is going if there's any updates to be had yeah so we are just about done with the department hearings we have one more on Thursday and then the JCPC group is going to start prioritizing those as typical there are more requests than there is money so there's going to be some adjustment process to get to a balanced amount I think for the schools and Mr. Nakajima or Ms. McDonald can weigh in on this as well I think the most interesting discussion occurring is around the HVAC system so what we propose is the replacement of the HVAC system at Wildwood and Fort River $400,000 each some new information that Mr. Roy Clark the facility director brought to the last yeah the last JCPC meeting because there was a little bit of concern about are we going to put this amount of money into the buildings that they're going to be replaced in X number of years so he brought some information on the possibility of leasing portable chiller systems HVAC systems and so that's sort of a discussion we're having now is sort of the the viability of that the feasibility of doing that it's a really tough conversation to have because it's it's a lot of money we want to make sure there are no operational issues for kids you know like there was the summer and we want to use the money as wisely as we can so it's a this is one of those this kind of exemplifies those difficult conversations we have with the the new schools on the horizon sure and also as we've established I think in this committee the you know how important it is actually to make sure that we are taking care of these very immediate needs in our schools regardless of what happens with our application to the state for for aid and new buildings or renovations or anything like that Mr. Nakajima Ms. McDonald do you want to comment on the process so far yeah I was going to say I think that the big thing that the JCPC has done is wanted to kick the tires on that very question of how do we know that investments we're making are being prioritized in a way and thought through in a way in which if there's a new building in the near future hopefully that we we haven't spent money we didn't have to in that there's thinking going into that that the chiller example is a good one because that between Wildwood and Fort River there's $800,000 in there for chillers Mr. Roy Clark thought it would be around $50,000 to lease per year per chiller which means site preparation costs aside it might take you eight years to get to the point that you spent the amount of money you would buying it but and it was the things that Mr. Mugano is going to work through like how do you actually analyze that because he asked the perceptive question the other day that there's a resale value in chillers so that we might be able to actually sell it and net out some of the sunk costs for the investment and there's also a lot of other peculiarities around when how many months you have to run them how easy it to get one they're not you can't go to Costco or something or Walmart and get one off the shelf and so it's actually hard to get them and so figuring out how would you have the lead time to know that you can get the equipment in place and when it can be a matter of shutting down the school if it fails so so the cool thing if you want to call it that is the JCPC asks a ton of questions and really works through these questions and a great great detail but I but I think that because of that the sense that that the school district as well as our school committee is taking seriously obviously we all want to get into a new school but also taking seriously the things we need to do now to keep the buildings in good repair repair and safe I think they're getting a good sense of that yeah great Ms. McDonald is there anything you want to add okay well thank you both for serving on that subcommittee it's really valuable and helpful Mr. Demling did you have any comments just a quick question so we received a suggestion from community members to possibly add money to this this year's request to explore possible expansion of Crocker farm is one of the options for the reaching 600 I just didn't want to see if members from our committee that are on GCBC had thoughts of that or superintendent you go ahead so Mike my I appreciate the suggestion I appreciate people who are really trying to in my opinion ask good questions and be have the district as prepared as we can be if we have the good fortune of being invited into the MSBA process I think my challenge is I prioritize the needs that need to happen right now for our buildings that that those of you who watched the meeting last night we heard in great detail when I compare things that are could be necessary might be but it being integrated into a future process versus urgent needs right so you saw last night a public speaker use the kind of healthcare analogy of you know if you're in the emergency room what do you see first and so that sort of is my thinking so if if the town and JCPC were to say yeah we've got flexibility in funds you know do I think that's a bad idea I don't think it's a bad idea but when I compare it to chillers and that conversation that was just being talked about I think you know kids come first and for now we have the kids in the school right now that are in and staff and sometimes substandard situations and so until those things are addressed I can't think of adding for something else and that's not to say it's not a good idea it's not appreciated from my perspective but from a prioritization point of view for me it's can we take care of the things that we absolutely need to take care of right now and is there excess to do more than that and that's a question for JCPC not for me it's a question of priorities Mr. Nakajima and I I having looked into a little bit and I know Ms. McDonald as well I think it's actually a good idea to do in terms of some sort of assessment of the viability of expansion space at Crocker Farm and I think it would be worth doing I think I served on JCPC last year and so I've already been through the sort of ringer of this process of hearing about a number of things that are really valuable some of which I remember last year the fire department came forward with the desire for new Bluetooth walkie talkies that would be integrated into their helmets so that they wouldn't have to take their helmet off or and use a walkie talkie that's a like an old Motorola when they're in the middle of a fire emergency in a building and another setting so that you know the state of the art these days is you can communicate to back to the trucker to other people your fellow firefighters through Bluetooth it's not even really like state of the art technology it's been a few years but and I remember last year that was not one of the capital requests that was approved by the town jcpc and you can just immediately see what an urgent need that is so that the challenge you get to when the jcp is jcpc and the town manages recommendations are winnowing things down is that you have all of the things that we know we urgently need is a school district then we have all the things the other town departments need urgently and then you have all these sidewalks and roads they gotta fix and you only have a limited amount of money so the the point I'm making on this and I'm sorry for doing it long but this isn't if you're not at jcpc you don't necessarily get to see how the sausage is made in this regard that there are many really valuable requests that come forward that are perfectly worth doing that the town can't afford to do and has to prioritize and I would probably put this in that basket that if the money was available I think it would be a perfectly good thing to do particularly to sort of continue this collaborative consensus oriented dialogue we've talked about which I think we all value the challenge is I want the fire department to get their bluetooth headsets this year thank you miss mcdonald I'll echo a lot of what you've just said I won't say it again to time but this being my first time on jcpc I think it is absolutely true that at least we still have one more presentation tomorrow or Thursday but all of the requests are urgent all the requests are important and so it's not a question I also agree that this is a really interesting and good idea and it's something that we should do and I think the real the real question is where does it fall in our priorities as well as the overall town town priorities because everything I can't you know maybe there's a couple thousand that is probably you know easy to kick down the road and the questions it is absolutely true that jcpc asked a lot of really great questions and some the questions really are getting at not should you do this is this a bad idea or a good idea it's what is the implications if we don't do it this year what are the alternatives so the the leaser by question on the chillers is a really fascinating one but but that's the the type of question on a very large scale but that we're asking and getting asked on much smaller scales and I think that's that really valid question to ask about this and we I talked with the community member who brought it forward today and really tried to understand and this might be a question for you Dr. Morris is what is it something that can easily be folded in into into a the feasibility process assuming we get into the MSBA pipeline in December and is that in fact a delay in in sort of decision making if we wait and bring this forward a year from now I asked that question but also knowing that a big chunk of the ask and motivation I think this is my interpretation is putting our money where our mouth is that we are not sort of already closing the door on anything but a k through five option and I think that's a sort of a really valid ask of the committee Dr. Morris and then we're going to move on absolutely oh that's okay I'll be brief so I think three things one is I just want to say that I appreciate the community interest I mean if you think about our capital plan and how it's evolved even the last two months it's based on meetings with lots of people so we we talked about the last not the last meeting last meeting that wasn't about SOI about you know that Mr. Roy Clark and myself and Ms. Fay met with Wildwood faculty based on the air quality report that the our local association completed and we actually shifted some funds because ripping up carpets was one of the recommendations and after reading that we said yeah we need to do that and we need to change some things so we it is a flexible process and if this gets funded or not we want people to continue to offer feedback and continue to have ideas that they share with us because it's really valuable I think on the the question you're asking in my opinion it certainly could be folded into a feasibility study you know I think the delay in my opinion probably wouldn't be too great and that being said any delay is too long right you heard me say that last night and Mr. Mr. the chair say that last night so I appreciate that point of view but I don't think it would be a terribly long process to evaluate that option it would need to be evaluated very seriously so I'm the commitment is there to do that if we were fortunate to get invited in but I don't think it would slow down the process because it'd be a set of architects it'd be the MSP process you're having to look at multiple options even if we think we've looked at it before we're going to have to look at everything again because that's the nature of the the process don't make us go through so is it is it a good idea I think yeah it's a good idea I think it really comes to our priorities and needs you know as Mr. Nakajima said both within the schools but also across the town thank you Dr. Morris and thank you again Ms. McDonnell Mr. Nakajima for being a part of this and we look forward to the future updates on this on this topic moving us on to the next item on the agenda is school choice vote Dr. Morris so last month we had a school choice hearing can't remember if there was there wasn't a tremendous number of comments perhaps but the recommendation I made which continues today is to remain a school choice district to be clear we're not looking to expand our school choice program beyond the current where we are currently but we do anticipate particularly in this year of unusual kindergarten enrollment first time around for dual language to have the flexibility to fill seats by a school choice we believe would be kind of financially a good idea as well as educationally gives us some flexibility as we see how the enrollments play out so the recommendation would be for the Amherst public schools to vote to continue being a school choice district so Dr. Morris note that we don't have a we don't have any language for for this so we're going to wing it I guess if the committee is ready for a vote and anyone's feeling brave enough to to make a motion and of course I'll take any comments or questions for Dr. Morris too Dr. Morris just to clarify the state put out new guidance not maybe a month ago something like that where actually if you didn't vote you would by default sort of become a school choice district you sort of have to vote not to become a school choice district that being said I think an affirmative vote to continue being won is clarifying thank you Mr. Nakajima I move that the Amherst school district remain a school choice district for the 2019-2020 academic year thank you do I have a second second thank you Mr. Demling any further comments or questions all those in favor all right thank you very much just unanimous okay last item on the agenda is gifts and we don't have any gifts thank you Ms. Ms. Moorland okay school committee planning Dr. Morris you want to sure son next week we have a joint meeting so so it's become you know the beginning of the meeting is a joint meeting but I'm just going to say there is an Amherst school committee meeting next Tuesday night with two topics of the joint meeting the first is a the final report and presentation from the regional master you study it's a joint meeting because it talks about sixth grade so it allows Amherst school committee members and Pelham school committee members to ask questions with that mindset and the second is a follow-up that Mr. Sheen will do on the math the external math report which is 6 through 12 again for the same reason we made it a joint meeting so that committee members would be unable to have dialogue about the sixth grade implications of that and just a reminder that prior to that so last night at the town council meeting we received some friendly edits actually to the SOI as a statement of interest for the MSBA application and Dr. Morris is working with Mr. Roy Clark to make those edits we believe that they actually will help strengthen the applications so we wanted to share that with the committee and that of course will require a re-vote because we already voted on this item I will not be at the meeting next week on Tuesday I'll be actually out of town so I believe our vice chairs agreed to preside over that meeting and that vote but I just wanted to make sure the committee was aware of that as well any other items for our next next meeting? Yes. So April 23rd is the date of the next meeting because the April break it ends up being a little later than would typically so I think at that point we'll have a Fort River feasibility study final report we would like to offer dual language updates since the first kind of batch of enrollment and registration enrollment will have taken place we'd like to offer an ADA update because at that point the prioritization will be done I'm going to leave capital as a placeholder given that it's such a big topic and JCPC's work will probably likely be done at that point and it's a community we've talked about capital you know frankly all year long it seems like that would be important thing to keep on there and that's where I am so far I would also like to request that we just get an update on the facilities just you know maintenance and all those issues because it was such a big topic last fall and we haven't heard anything in a while from that if that's okay with you Dr. Morris okay great sounds like a full agenda Mr. Demling and just logistically so we'll probably have to have another one of those short before the regional Amherst only meetings after next Tuesday but before the 12th right to approve the minutes of the vote from next oh yeah Tuesday is that correct so this is a question do we need to approve the minutes prior to the submission of the SOIs Dr. Morris yep so I can check whether draft minutes are acceptable to the MSBA I'm trying to think back the other thing that people have done yeah I think they're accepted the other thing I know some communities do which would be a change of practice here perhaps is that that part of the meeting the minutes are drawn very quickly for the statement of interest and actually the last agenda item at the meeting is to approve the minutes of the meeting that has previously occurred because there's not likely to be tremendous amount of dialogue in that so it's just another way to perhaps prevent people from having to come back another time Ms. Westmoreland I'm looking at you are you game for that the furiously fast typing that that normally takes place Mr. Nakajima should be you literally mean that at let's say 545 in the evening we would have a meeting owned of Amherstown in late and then at 9 30 in the evening when we're done with the region we'd have another posted meeting of Amherstown that would come together and approve those minutes or is that not what you mean that is exactly what I mean yes yeah other communities have done it we don't need to but it's I think I wouldn't suggest it if I anticipated lots of dialogue at the meeting but you know the edits that were suggested last night frankly are strengthening in nature I don't think they'll be turn this amount of dialogue how about we just look into whether or not the draft minutes would be accepted and then we'll hold that in our backpockets just in case okay if there are no further comments or questions from the committee for the planning I will take a motion and move to adjourn thank you do I have a second second thank you all those in favor all right this meeting is adjourned thank you very much