 Okay, so seeing the presence of a quorum, I'm gonna call meeting of the Amherst School of County to order at 6.45 p.m. For those of you who have been sitting in the audience for the past 45 minutes, you really appreciate it. We had a Regional School Committee Executive Session just prior to this, so thank you for your patience. Tonight's agenda is pretty packed, but we're starting with approval of minutes of January 22nd, which was a joint session, and then also February 7th. So I will give the committee a moment to take a look at the minutes if they haven't already done so. It's again reminded of the incredible amount of work that goes into preparing these minutes on a regular basis, especially when we have so many meetings back to back. So thank you, Ms. Westman. So whenever the committee is ready, I will take a motion. I move to approve the minutes of January 22nd and February 27th. February 7th. 7th, sorry. Do I have a second? And actually, I'm sorry, Ms. McDonald. So we've got three sets of meetings minutes here. So we've got the joint session, which we participated in. So there was a meeting on the 22nd and it started at six o'clock. Then we moved to the Amherst School Committee at 7.30 and then it's so it's actually free. So I will amend my motion. I move to approve the minutes of our joint session on January 22nd with the regional committee, the Amherst committee meeting on January 22nd and the Amherst meeting on February 7th. Great. Do I have a second? Second. Thank you, Mr. Demling. Any comments, edits, questions? All those in favor? Can the public raise your hand? Great. Thank you. Unanimous. Okay. Next on the agenda, we have committee announcements. Do we have any announcements from the committee? Mr. Demling. So another meeting, another update on the national privatization war against public schools. I just wanted to give a brief shout out of support and approval to the West Virginia teachers who successfully enacted a strike to stop charter school legislation in their state. That was very nice to see. And on the heels of the Los Angeles strike, the Oakland, California teachers are now on strike. Again, at central issue there is privatization, a district that's gone 26% charter. And following the LA strike, there's now fast-tracked legislation in California to increase transparency for charter schools. So that's good. Less encouraging though are the proposed changes to the charter school reimbursement formula in our own state and Charlie Baker's H1 proposal. This doesn't change the funding formula at all to make it more equitable and it decreases the reimbursement to schools. And the real challenge here, I think strategically in terms of trying to defend public schools from privatizations, that the strategy is really to take advantage of all the attention, all the good attention, all the righteous attention on the foundation budget formula. So whenever you see updates and news articles about education reform in Massachusetts, it's about that funding battle, which is good. And this is just part of that bill that's sort of chugging along. So it's gonna be a challenge, I think, for schools to keep that on the forefront to make sure that that does not get passed as part of the overall budget bill. But something that we should be aware of as a committee and the public should be aware of as well. That's great, thank you, Mr. Dunley. And I know that Tracy Novak from the MASC has been on top of this for some time here, Massachusetts, has been sharing updates through social media and elsewhere. So she's our regional representative, which is just a great contact for this issue. Any other committee announcements? Okay, with that then I will open up public comment. We are in public comment period. If anyone wishes to make a comment, please come up to the microphone and state your name and you have three minutes. Okay, seeing no public comments, you will close public comment. Thank you, Mr. Lewis. We have our handy countdown clock over here, I guess we don't have to use it tonight. And with that, we'll move on to the superintendent's update. Sure, so I'm doing it orally again tonight. So just four or five things I wanna share. So in terms of legislative efforts, I shared at the region last night that I was one of the presenters in an event for superintendents in Hampshire and Franklin counties, talking about the impact of state funding formulas on Western Massachusetts schools in our area. I think I mentioned also that Friday there's another event of Connecticut Valley superintendent round table includes Hampton County as well. And Mr. Demling has agreed to join me as a school committee representative. So thank you at that meeting to communicate our needs to our local legislators. So thank you, Mr. Demling for making the time for that. A couple other things. So tomorrow, no, Thursday, excuse me, Ms. Cunningham was invited and the district was invited. The commissioner Riley is visiting UMass Amherst, a little flyer, if I don't want to say it, I didn't put him out to save trees, but he's doing something called Change the World Become a Teacher, recruiting a new generation of educators to reflect the energy, curiosity and diversity of public school students. So he's trying to do events at some of the university campuses. And so our district in Springfield were chosen to accompany him on this visit to talk to folks in Ms. Cunningham and Mr. Gordon who you met a couple months back are gonna represent the district at that event on Thursday afternoon at UMass, which is great. From it, follow up on the ADA audit presentation from last month, I think it was last month, three years have been scheduled with the consultant group to come in, CPAC's been notified as well as administrative leadership to work on how to prioritize that list. So those meetings are all in the next two and a half weeks. So we should be able to come back to you next month with some more concrete thoughts. I know we're talking about capital a little later tonight. It's still at the open placeholder level because we just need to schedule the meetings, but I think the first one actually is in within the next week. So they're gonna come back and work with us on how to do that and how to make a multi-year plan to address the accessibility needs in our buildings. The fourth thing was that, I know we're talking about this later, but just to quickly reference that I appreciate staff members who came to the MSPA Statement of Interest Listening sessions that we held. So we held three sessions, one at each of the three elementary schools. I thought the feedback was very helpful, and I'll share that feedback with Mr. Loog who's the facilitator so he can integrate that feedback into the final report. I appreciate Mr. Demling for showing up with the Crocker Farm session, which I thought was well attended and I thought the conversation was robust. And the last one is next week, I guess it's after we'll meet next Monday, but March 6th is something that started last year, which is having a kindergarten registration and information night. So not necessarily where you just go and register your child, it's actually with all three of our elementary principals and then we're inclusive of Pelham as well to share about our schools, what we offer and give families and children the opportunity to meet some of the leaders in their schools before they register and join us. There's really positive feedback last year from families we had about 65 people come last year. It's a little tight in the Crocker Farm library so Ms. Chamberlain is nice enough to be welcoming us to Fort Rivers Library, which is a little more spacious given the population that came last year. So we'll have an advertisement for that in the bullets in this week as well. I think that's my update for tonight. Thank you. Any questions for the superintendent? Okay. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Thank you. So the next item on the agenda is an issue that I wanted to raise with the committee and it's titled on the agenda length of school committee meetings per school committee policy, BEA. I've had a number of conversations I think with some individuals on this committee, also with community members and with Dr. Morris, with staff and in particular just in relation to the length of our committee meetings, many of which tend to go over their stated agenda ending times by quite a bit. And I think we all have sort of resigned ourselves to the fact that that's just kind of the way that it is. We sit down and we have to deal with a lot of really weighty topics. Oftentimes have a lot of really good conversation and discussion around these issues. But the reality is that there's a very important side effect that ends up happening. I think we have staff here that are here from early in the morning that are forced to stay, way past their normal end times. We have an impact on custodial staff. We also have an impact on the public that attends our meetings and of course on us, right? And so I think for all of those different reasons it's just been weighing on me for some time now and I wanted to bring it up to the committee because it was much to my surprise that we actually have a policy around this. And the three plus years that I've been on the committee, not once have I ever seen this policy or had it raised during a committee meeting. And so I thought this is probably an important time for us to bring this up, right? I think to both show lead by example about how we could actually hold more efficient and timely meetings, but also hopefully set the stage moving forward. I think for any future school committee members or school committees, but also future superintendents and staff, being able to set reasonable hours and times for our meetings actually makes a lot of sense, right? And I don't think we can argue much against it, although I'm happy to entertain any difference of opinions. But I guess I wanted to bring this to committee to just see what people's initial responses were. I don't know if you've had a chance to read the policy. And I have some ideas on how we might be able to help cut back on some of the longer meetings that we've had. But I just wanted to see your reactions and if people are willing to give it a shot. Mr. Dunling. I mean, I'm looking at 11, 27 of PM for the adjourn on the meetings. I don't know what you're talking about. Chair, I don't know. Yeah, I mean, it's one of those things. I think we've talked about this before. It's one of those symptoms of public service and school committee that it could just, it's an infinite well of opportunity. And the meetings, it's like nature abhors a vacuum, right? If we allow ourselves the possibility of going to 10 or 10, 30, 11, then we will go to 10, 10, and 30, 11. I think most of the time, it's not wasted time. I think it's quality, the conversations are good, you know, the input we're getting is good. It's just unbounded. So, yeah, I mean, a couple of things. I did like the technique in the policy of once you hit two and a half hours, that you actually have to have a motion to continue the next half hour. So it's not like, oh, you have to adjourn at two and a half hours, but I think that it's actually a good built-in reminder that, oh, you know what? We actually shouldn't be obligating us and the public and the staff to stay forever. You know, we ought to be being efficient. I think it's been hard the last couple of months given the extraordinary amount of additional meeting time that we've freely taken on for the building project. I mean, we knew that going in. We talked about that at the time, I think, in mid-December. And so that just is what it is, but I think that's kind of part of it. Personally, I would be more amenable to more frequent but shorter meetings. I find myself, after three hours, not nearly as effective a listener and an absorber of information as I think I should be. So it's like I would rather meet twice for two and a half to three hours than once for five to six hours. But yeah, I certainly think that it's something that we could do a better job harangling. And I think, honestly speaking, just going back and reviewing some of the video from our previous meetings, which I did in preparation for this conversation, we could probably all do a better job of being more efficient in how we deliver our remarks and how we have our questions. And I think even oftentimes we call on educators and staff to make presentations reminding that it's my job as a chair to help remind who's presenting and the committee when they've surpassed certain times so just so we can keep the conversation going and we're not getting stuck in one spot. But I do think that we can all do a better job of just being a little bit more disciplined around that and making sure that we're stating to that. Mr. Nakajima. Yeah, when we talked about this the other day, so what I'm gonna say, we'll stand familiar to you anyway, is I mean a couple of things. I mean one, you actually saw me do last night as trying to model this at the regional committee of asking what's the point of a particular, not that sounds wrong, what's the objective of a particular item on the agenda? What are we being asked to do that evening? And then focus, and then is, you know, how is this sequence within other activities or meetings? And then trying to discipline what we do around what's actually being asked of us at that particular moment. I wanna, I'm just saying from my view that is always a useful exercise because one of the biggest problems we have is we open up an item and it seems like we could almost, like the aperture is so wide, we could go anywhere with it. And the reality is frequently either it's a discrete presentation, it's an update on something, there's a specific vote that's being asked, or in fact there's no vote and we're actually gonna have another 15 minutes on it next meeting. And once we are aware of that structure, then I think we have to impose the discipline of saying, look, we only need 15 minutes to talk about this tonight. And if there's substantive work to be done that's gotta be contained, if there's a relevant subcommittee or maybe there should be a relevant subcommittee, they should be taking on the work of crafting and revising something or bringing it back. I also think that, and again you saw me do a little bit of this last night at another meeting where I'm using the actual parliamentary procedure to start saying, look, we're actually doing something here. So let's actually get the motion going, let's get the rules of debate going. I know that can feel sometimes it's artificial or formal or imposing but it actually has a really good rhythm to it of getting people to think, oh, that's right, we're doing this thing, we're on this topic, are my comments germane or are they concise? And I think, depending on what we do, I would be open to the eye. I mean, maybe, I don't know what this would be. It's like ending the filibuster in the US Senate. It could be like the third rail. We could have a clock or actually a structure for discussion where people are limited to a certain amount of time. I mean, I don't mean the public, I mean us. And we just, we go through it. And if we discover that we needed more time then we say, we ask ourselves, well, is this something we're supposed to do this meeting? Or, you know what I mean? We question what we're doing rather than just blowing it out for another hour. Yeah. I totally agree on that. One of the things that I've struggled with, frankly, when I first started on the school committee was understanding these agendas and what you just said about being more specific about what we're trying to talk about specifically around a topic that's listed on the agenda I think can help us a lot in focusing the conversation and deliberation that we have at these meetings. So, sabbatical vote. Well, unless you know the history or that's probably a bad example. But I don't know, I'll just stay with that one even though it's not a great example. But unless you have the history and know sort of the lingo and the abbreviation, so you're not gonna know what that means other than the roof at Fort River. Well, is it, what does that mean and what precisely are we going to be talking about? And I think sort of laying that out in the agenda up front can help focus us and keep us and not talk about the shingle over there that fell off, but we're talking about the project to replace it or something along those lines. It also can help the public and understanding sort of what we're going to be talking about so that they don't have to watch every single video to know and track what's happening across the time. I will say, I also, I think you said, Mr. Demling, that we have good conversations. So I don't want, that's my fear is I don't want the pendulum to swing all the other way. And I wonder if part of it is we're biting off more than we can chew in our agendas, right? We're, you know, you've given 10 minutes for this topic, but we've probably already eaten up eight of them. So, and yeah, not everybody's had a chance to weigh in. So I think, you know, being more realistic in our time setting on the agenda and prioritizing how many of those topics we try to address. And I totally agree with what you said, Mr. Demling, about more frequent shorter meetings is a lot easier to manage mentally and physically than, you know, these once a month or a couple of times a month, five hour marathons. And a lot easier from a family perspective so that, you know, future people wanting to join their run for school committee, it makes it something that's not as terrifying, frankly. Well, I think that there's also, you know, sort of process related issues in putting together some of these agendas, you know, so the five and a half hour meeting was also that it was a combined, you know, meeting between regional school committee and the Pellum, you know, and Amherst, right? So it wasn't all Amherst, you know, and I think this tends to be a long-winded group sometimes, right? Like there's, you know, there's probably things that we can handle a lot more quickly, but, you know, we feel the need to explain ourselves, you know, we kind of explain a lot, right? And so I think that there's elements of that too that we try to factor into the agenda to make sure that we are leaving enough time for substantive conversation, but, you know, maybe we have to do a better job of making sure we're not just going on just to hear ourselves talk, you know? I do think that I, you know, taking what has been said tonight can feel like I have enough permission at this point from the committee to move these agendas a lot more quickly and to move the conversations a lot more quickly and to really stick to some of these times too, right? Because if we have set something aside for 10 or 15 minutes, if we feel like we've hit that 15 minutes and we need more time, can easily check in with the group and say, do we still need, you know, do we need more time for those or do we have to bring it back to another meeting later on? Yes, Fitzgerald? Yeah, so I'm, I think I'm going to illustrate one of the things that happens is that sometimes if you wait a little bit to talk, then you end up with less times. I would also argue that I think we should try to make sure that the time to speak is evenly distributed amongst the members and it would be very in favor of using a clock to do that. And I'm sure I've been guilty of this on other topics of being the person to take the first lead and eating up on the time that we have in the year. And I'd also like to say that, and you know, I'm trying not to, you know, make this all about some of the challenges I've been facing with these long meetings as a new mom, but I know that other members of the community, other members of the staff have met some of these challenges and I know that sitting for this long is difficult overall, but it's particularly difficult for me right now as a nursing mother. So I think we either need to set a hard end time for this or work in a half an hour break to accommodate some of the needs of our school committee members. And if we can't do that, it's effectively shutting me out from participating in these meetings. And I would hate to tell somebody not to run for school committee because they're considering being a parent. So, but that's kind of how it's been experienced by me right now. And I know that other members of this staff, public, everybody's been having these challenges. So, and I'm sure that other people have other things that have gone in the way. So I don't want to get involved about that. But I think we either need to make sure we're held to these times. And I'm a little concerned if we have the vote and only one of us is experiencing one of these personal things, it could be difficult to, you're in the minority, so therefore how do you end up, how to accommodate the needs of the minority as well. Because I don't think we'll ever have a majority of us facing the same issue at the same time. So I don't know if that's something to think about, but as you think about it, I think it could be a host of things. I'm sure I'm not aware of all of the challenges that people face, but that's my personal experience. But Morris. Yeah, if I could just briefly jump in. I think one of the things in talking to my colleagues of similar split districts, by split district, I mean that everyone on this table, all of you are members of more than one school committee, is there's a natural propensity for what we jokingly call agenda creep. Because you do meet more often, you find more agenda items to add, whereas the majority, if it was one school committee across the state, the vast majority meet twice a month, pre-k to 12. And so they're sort of forced into making perhaps harder decisions about what gets on the agenda and what doesn't. Whereas the ability to have more meetings kind of allows for more agenda items to come up that just wouldn't be sort of possible or advisable if there was only two meetings a month. And so just something to think about that the multiple committee thing, it not only adds meetings, but it actually adds the capacity for longer meetings, even though you think it would go the opposite way. It's a really common occurrence. It'd be interesting when Tracy Novak and other MAAC members are fine, but from the superintendent lens, when I talk to others in similar boats, it's not an unusual occurrence that the outside perspective is, oh, there's three committees. You must have shorter meetings. You're only talking about pre-k to six. And the reality is not, it is actually often the opposite. So it's the problem you're all citing. I just wanna, I don't know if it makes it feel better or worse. It's not unique to our model. I think it's actually part and parcel of some of the challenges of having a school committee members on more than one school committee simultaneously. So how about this? So I think I'm hearing from all of you agreement that we should take some steps to try to fix this problem before it becomes a bigger problem and also to make sure we're not excluding people from this. I would propose that the superintendent, myself and perhaps our vice chair get together and think through some parameters and ensure that back with the committee of the next meeting. Does that make sense? Okay, great. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Hopefully we can get to a place where these meetings feel like they're operating much more smoothly. Okay, next item on the agenda is budget hearing. So I'm looking to Mr. Mangano. Thank you. So this is the second meeting in our budget process where we open it up to the public and get their thoughts. I'm gonna do a quick update on the budget which has changed a little bit since the last time and then Dr. Morris is gonna go over the proposed ads and reductions and then we'll open it up. Mr. Mangano, I'm just gonna pause you for a second. I'm not sure if everyone can hear you. I'm having difficulty, okay? Sorry, I'm a little sick. No, that's okay. Yeah, I just wanna make sure everyone can hear you. We're actually, I'm sorry, just to give a little context for the public. So do you wanna, just about how budget hearings work? Please go ahead. Yeah, sure. So we'll do the presentation. Yeah, Mr. Mangano and I will present a discussion from the committee and then if the public, it is another opportunity for the public to offer feedback and commentary. So it does get reopened up. So just if anyone's here and wanting to comment, there's that opportunity to come. Thank you. So much like the region presentation last night, the major change from the first time we presented the budget is the health insurance increase. So we were projecting a 6% increase in health insurance and the actual increase we got from Maya was a 0.6. So that was a very positive development for the budget. The proposed budget is still 23,838,854, which is the guidance that we receive from the finance committee at the time. It's an increase of 2.6% or 596,489. It includes net additions of 239,594, which we'll go through in a second. And the chart below similar to last time except the health insurance number, which just shows our level of service increases and decreases. The decrease for health insurance is a little greater because the premium increase came in lower. So I'm gonna turn it over to Dr. Morris who's gonna go through the additions and reductions. Sure, and I think I'll do the same thing as I did last night at the region, which I'll just briefly go over these themes and then get into the weeds of it so that the school committee and the community can have all they need to offer feedback. So we did look at this, I think similar to some of the other districts because we're having a particularly solid year. We're able to make some investments, but we also know that some of the health insurance savings is a one-time savings. So we're trying to be conscious that we don't anticipate having this strong a budget year annually. So we tried to make kind of logical investments, some that we would be long-term and some that we knew things that we need to do that we could do and do for a year and really solve some problems that we feel urgency around. So you can see they range from instructional materials and curriculum to more specific on English language education. We have a kind of significant amount of facilities. I want to be really clear, this is on the operational side. Later, we'll talk about the capital budget. This is actually on the operational side of facilities. So I just want to make that distinction, but I'm not bleeding into capital. This is actually on staffing. And also responding to our students' needs and incoming students as well. So the proposed additions, this is adding back. It's a small portion of the procurement officer. It was a budget cut last year with all that we're asking for on capital and hopefully receiving significant amount of from the town, just its support for the business office given the role that, given how much procurement there will be that we want to make sure Mr. Mangano has some relief from the amount of procurement work, which is kind of tedious, time-consuming work. So that's an small add. Communications support for central resources. This is adding back another budget cut in the past, clerical, additional clerical position. It'll do a couple of things. One will reorganize the entry, which we've got a lot of negative feedback on this year. We had to, because of a budget cut change where people check in in the office, it clarifies support for human resources to build their support and their responsiveness to staff members, which is critically important. And it also adds more support for communications more broadly. So adding the additional staff member allows us to reorganize and kind of more narrowly tailor roles in central office. School committee compensation. So this is part of the new charter is that school committee members, Amherst school committee members receive compensation. So this is adding it to the budget. Instructional material supplies, stipends and consultants. This was part of a budget reduction last year. And we've really been challenged by supporting the instructional materials our staff need. And so this is increasing that line back to exactly where it was. The next line is really looking at math, social studies, and health. So this is focusing on three areas where either because of a curricular change or a standard change as it relates to social studies and health based on what we know. We've talked about this a couple of times this year that the health curriculum is ill aligned with what the current needs that we students have. So this is kind of more in the category of one time costs that we want to build into the budget to really address some of these changing standards or changing curricula. Increase the FTE of the science garden teacher that's increasing a grade level. So right now it's at K to two and this is going up to third grade and integrating that curriculum. We need a little more time from the person who's currently on staff. Co-teaching stipends and professional development. That's an offset for reduction in a position related to this. So this is stipending teacher leaders who are currently expert co-teachers in our schools to take on more formal leadership structures and train their colleagues. To language materials, this has actually been talked about more than most other items. So I'm gonna, in the name of time, skip over ones we've talked about before. Math professional development, this is related to creating a temporary position for a staff member to be our six through 12 math support specialist for next year. Given the proposed changes, I know we'll talk about them later on the agenda but this is the Amherst portion of that role. English language education, the short story is the expectation for doing assessment, state run assessment, state required assessments has gotten to the place. We really need a teacher leader in each building to help manage that whole process. Right now it's diffuse and it's not functioning as efficiently and what that's meant is more days where kids are out of classrooms because we're not scheduling them as well and this is really tightening our process to support English language learners. The next one down is really with this need of increasing English language learners, software assessment and stipends for curriculum development we wanna improve our English language learner program and we need some support to do that. The next one down is to have a position of assistant facility director and that person's role would be a couple of things. One is to support and do offer training for the custodial staff to improve their methods and support their work. Also to support some of the HVAC and larger work that is being suggested in the capital plan. And this is really, you see it's a 1.0, most central office positions are shared between districts. What we're finding is that we are in reactive mode all the time with the state of our elementary buildings. We actually need to build some staff so we can be more proactive which our current staffing really doesn't allow for. Is it okay to go in or do you wanna? I guess one quick question, the assistant facility director is this somebody who would actually be doing some of the maintenance work themselves or would they just be in an administrative position? Not just, but you know. The answer is both. And because, and I wanna speak for Rupert, I know he's here, but because Rupert has an extensive HVAC background it might be the case and we've still have to work out all the details where Rupert himself might be a little more on the ground given his background and expertise and this person could do some of the ordering and some of the other work that Rupert that bogs down his time. But depends on the skill set of the person, right? Because Rupert has that skill set. The next one down is literally on the ground is the school year van driver to need, but someone, you know, our positions are generally part-time van driver, part-time maintenance and this would have, we'd be looking for someone with a specific HVAC experience because of the ongoing needs we have. Next one down is we have a student entering who's got needs that require a full-time nurse. That's what that is. The next one down is our after-school program. Sometimes we need more nursing coverage than we currently have. So even though it's after-school programs we still want to support the health needs of our students. Next one down is human resources, recruitment and stipends. I think I mentioned this earlier which is really to support their capacity. I think there's been a lot of feedback at multiple committee meetings to make sure that we increase their capacity of their staff to take on more of the efforts and this allows for more of that. Preschool, we spoke about this one, the dollar amounts changed. So this is planning and exploration to expand preschool. This is trying to collaborate with the local Head Start which is community action. It was $10,000 but actually the town has agreed and not agreed, they've offered to split the cost of that with us. So they're planning on proposing a $5,000 increment and that makes our increment go down and actually as I spoke about it last month we want to have this partnership with the town and I want to be very public. It wasn't an ask from me. It was actually Mr. Bachmann, the town manager saying, no, we should do this as a shared financial venture. It's a long-term shared financial interest. So that's why that number changed from what was originally proposed. Spanish courses, this is ongoing work that this year has been funded by the grant that we've received but it's continuing that work into the next year working with HCC, excuse me, Greenfield Community College. Next to you are CPAC and LPAC supplies which I think we spoke about last time. The next one down, we have a special education stabilization fund that was set up two years ago and because of our, this is a beneficial or positive financial year, it's actually a good year to put funds into that so that when the rainy days happen we have funds that we can use and this is for funds for when we have students who enter our district with unanticipated needs that require a financial investment that we don't have to go into reserves or some other fund. Special education, this is increasing the special education secretarial staff. We've looked at their workload and feel like we really need to increase that to support their work, to support special education families and staff. The next one down is we have part of this funded so it's a 0.5 but this makes a whole position for next year which is a bilingual special education teacher, specifically thinking about the dual language program and ensuring that we have services that can be delivered bilingually. There's a modest add to a communication budget based on feedback and things we've spoken about and a modest add to a school adjustment council position to make it a 1.0, it's currently a 0.7 position at Wildwood, so those are the ads. Can we pause for a second? So are there any questions on the committee about any of the additions that Dr. Morris has just reviewed? Nice, this is a logistical question. We don't have it in our paper copy, is it on the iPad as this presentation and so what's it called? It should be pushed to your iPad. It's page 36 of the packet, PDF. Okay, thank you, thank you. And it also should be the full document that you're also looking at. So for adjustments, staff turnover savings is just that we have staff retire and generally there's some cost savings the following year. Curriculum ELE, there's a bit of an increase just based, there's more, every couple of years we look at what percentage of English language learners are in each district and how much of the central office staff is it associated with them so it's a minor adjustment based on the Amherst public schools having a higher percentage of ELL students as compared to all three districts than it had previously. Human Resources, again, they've looked at their software programs and they don't need all the ones they have, so it's being more efficient with that, so there's some savings there. We looked at the Title I grant which is currently for both Amherst region has been put to only expend in Amherst historically and that's because we believe in early intervention and this positive fiscal year is shifting some of those grant funds to the middle school which we spoke about at the regional schools so this is an offset to that. So we're not losing any staffing at the elementary we're just taking on funding slightly more of the Title I funded, what is currently Title I funded intervention staff. These are specialists who work with regular education students who are, we want to support to be at grade level in reading and mathematics. We have two fewer classrooms, just basically we have a very large sixth grade so we don't anticipate as large a kindergarten coming in so that's just a natural attrition kind of thing. Health insurance is a reduction staff. This is just, Bill, I don't know if you want to. Yeah, it's just based on the overall reduction staff based on the classroom reduction and also the next one that Dr. Barnes will talk about is we're building some health insurance savings from fewer plans. And the last one is just that we have a number of students who in the current sixth grade who are entering middle school next year who require paraeducators to access the curriculum since those students are going the need and support will also head to the region. And budget reductions is the instructional coach that's around co-teaching which we're replacing with internal stipends. Wildwood's the paraeducator is to increase that school adjustment counselor to full-time. There's an offsetting reduction of paraeducator position at Wildwood so it's actually comes out cost neutral. And so I also think it's worth noting because there may be a concern about this that what happens to staff? That's a lot of paraeducator reductions and I'm glad Ms. Fay is here. So we've had initial conversations about making sure that it's not an overall reduction in paraeducators across the districts and so we've worked on having a flexible model where if there wasn't six or seven paraeducators who left the district for whatever reason because they want an advancement within the district outside it that we would make sure and ensure that none of those paraeducator positions or their seniority that they could look at the regional piece because it's not a licensure component there is the way there is with Uniday staff members. So while it looks like we're reducing paraeducator positions which is true in terms of the actual people behind that we're ensuring that everyone stays whole who's in good standing in the district. And so you could see to Mr. Rangano's point it actually ends up being a net reduction of 2.73 positions. That's why there's the health insurance increment and the total additions add up to about $240,000 this year. Mr. Nakajima, did you have a question? No. You gave him the luck, I wasn't sure. I had something on my mind I think you've already, it looks like the I guess what I was worried about not worried but just thinking about is this is a good year if next year wasn't a good year do you feel like the ads or things that are obviously not necessary but they can sort of be managed well enough and it doesn't to me I think the answer is already yes with the possible exception of the assistant facilities director where that's something where there's just such a need presumably you're making a statement that we just got to do this even though it's obviously a new position and that's a cost. Yeah and I had a similar question actually I guess phrased slightly differently which was what's the long term effect of these additions right because I think that you know moving staff even if we're not necessarily technically adding them or you know if there's just their job title is changing or their duties are changing once that position has been shifted over there's still that you know that job is still being done by somebody right so if that gets taken away because it's a tough budget year and we have to move them back to another location what happens? Yeah so I think you know we tried to look at some of these you know in terms of new curriculum materials and training we're looking at you know there's a couple that's an example of a one time cost we're not buying new health curriculum indefinitely and in terms of sixth grade math we're looking at that as you know some one time costs even the position that's supporting sixth through twelfth grade mathematics we're looking as a not a forever type of position so we did try to think of what we could do given the kind of awkward situation we're in that way and be able to do that when we talk about choice in a little bit you'll see that where our choice fund is very healthy so we do actually have a fair bit of there's some limit to how much choice we can bank for a rainy day but we do have a fair bit we're in the fiscally we're in pretty good shape around that we tried to be cautious about adding things that were needs and also being conscious we don't want to add things that we caught a year later and as best we could we tried to balance those items you know like for instance the preschools one that could that cost could expand right where this is a cost to study you know how the district could partner with Head Star to expand preschool access in town right I don't know what the resolution of that is but it could be the case that I come back a year from now and saying we figured out this model and here's the cost attached to it so we want to be very realistic about that scenario as well Any other questions for the superintendent? So just quickly so as Dr. Morris mentioned this proposed budget includes that a one-time contribution to the Specialized Stabilization Fund so that'll get the balance to about $200,000 which is what we'd like to sort of have as a sort of the carrying level going forward at the elementary level school choice fund supporting this budget is bound to $500,000 so it's below what we're expecting to bring in so it speaks to the flexibility that we'll have in the future with school choice as everyone's mentioned that it's a good year so the health insurance decrease which is making this a really good budget is not going to happen again so we do have to be mindful of that going forward and same thing the other thing making this budget year really positive is the Charter and Choice tuition that stayed level this year which made our increase from the town higher than in the past so that probably won't happen again won't happen the same way in the future so those are just things that were our considerations when we were developing the budget I think one more slide and then we can yep so again this is just, you've seen this before but it's updated for the new amount of choice that's supported in the operating budget so the green line is the fund balance and the school choice reserve fund the blue bar is what we're proposing to support the operating budget each year and the pink orange bar is the revenue coming into the fund so for FY20 you can see the revenue coming in is about 500, right now projected about 540,000 and what we're proposing to use is about 500,000 so the fund balance is growing a little bit that is it thank you Mr. Mangano any questions, comments, feedback from the committee before we open it up for the budget hearing? Mr. Demling? so Sean just having been through all of this and put all the details together we're going to be at this legislative thing on Friday talking about advocacy so I think I'd ask you this question before maybe a different meeting but in terms of like the big ticket items from state level funding that underfund our district like charter reimbursement, circuit breaker I'm spacing on two or three of the other ones but when you think about what are the things that most impact our district financially in terms of state level funding what are the things that are at the top of your list? yeah, so at the elementary level it's a little different than the region because the regional transportation piece doesn't come into play so I'd say again it's the charter chart tuition reimbursement aid it is the circuit breaker reimbursement chapter 70 minimum per pupil aid that we get that goes out to the districts that are affected by that and because it's the town sort of all those funds go into like a general pot that the town dishes out to everybody so really anything that improves the financial situation of the town is positive because that just means there's more in that pot that could potentially increase what the schools get but in terms of school specific ones those would be sort of the three big ones that are realistic I think any other questions or comments from the committee? Okay, so with that we are going to open it up the budget hearing if anyone has any comments from the public you are welcome to come to the microphone state your name and feel free to make your comments okay, so no comments for budget hearing is now closed thank you very much I appreciate it and folks are also welcome to send their thoughts and questions and comments via email to schoolcommitteeatarps.org if that is so preferred thank you very much Mr. Mangano and Dr. Morris so the next item on the agenda is capital planning so I'm not sure that that I think we have enough paper copies for everybody I'll see if I can do that let me introduce the topic so Robert Roy Clark's here and so what he did was take the what you saw at the previous meeting of the capital planning he's now a month in I think we decided today four weeks in to his role and he's done some additional analysis on the capital plan and kind of re-prioritized some things added some things and so he created a document that tries to highlight what's changed so it does look at that five-year capital plan like you've seen before but he tried to have a narrative component as well as kind of an Excel with highlighted cells component to share an update and want to share rationale do you want to hand those out now? yeah please because that way people can take a look yeah yeah I can just give me a couple yeah you don't have to yeah you can just stack it pass it around yeah thank you great yeah you can go yeah I'll come here I don't know if I've shown I don't know I think I'm logged in yeah so these were emailed to the committee earlier yep I'll see if I can get it on the screen and box hi everyone I'm Rupert Roy-Clar and so what I did was I took the most recent version that you had which was a January 11th version and looked a little bit at the timing there were a few items that I could revise to be smaller smaller capital costs there's some stuff that I thought we could put off a little while kind of spread things out a little bit better so what it was I wrote a narrative school by school and all school of the changes that I made from that time and attached to that you have two pages of spreadsheet which the yellow highlights are the changes that I did and then the blue highlights that are in that spreadsheet are items that have been taken out from the January 11th capital plan under the assumption that we would be winding down to one elementary school building instead of the two at Wellwood and Fort River so some kind of big ticket items like roofing and paving went back in not for the coming physical year but sometime in the next five years we're going to need to address those if we still have those buildings so that's the general overview to give you a little bit more detail we have some exterior door projects at Wellwood and Fort River and I felt that after we looked at the projects we could do it for less money so I reduced those also the unit event replacement in those two buildings actually in all three elementary schools I needed to reduce it turns out that there's going to be some complications in replacing unit events it's not something that's easy for us to do piecemeal spread out over time we need to make a real study to figure out how we can do it without disrupting the school terribly so I reduced this coming years capital ask to do a little bit of planning and push that reduction into the next year when hopefully we can start doing some of that replacement similarly with the drinking water outlet change in all those buildings I spread that out over three years slightly increasing the total ask but reducing it for the next year lastly one of the other important items is we had in the coming years capital plan replacing chillers in all three schools and after looking into it I feel that we could push off Crocker Farm at least one year to reduce the big impact next year so that gets pushed forward a year ideally we would like to replace Wildwood and Fort River next year if we can get the capital funds we definitely need to do Fort River as a top priority the Wildwood Chiller we had a lot of trouble with this past year we did some major repairs if we have to push that off a second year I think that's possible I'd rather get it taken care of sooner if I can and the other big item is I added $50,000 into the interior upgrades to try to take care of some of the air quality issues that have been coming up in some of the buildings there's some internal work that I need to do and that seemed like the best line to put it in for now so that's a quick overview maybe I should just open up for questions now anything you want to add Dr. Morris to this? no, well actually I shouldn't say no sorry this keeps on happening it's doing wrong here it's just this so I just want to appreciate Mr. Roy Clark's work on this and I think it's been helpful to have a fresh set of eyes take a look at what's possible I think the unit event not to belabor that point was really helpful for him to identify the challenges of replacing the unit events it's not like you can take one out and pop one back in just because of the way they're ducted it's the way that they're plumbed plumbed, thank you, I was close and so really taking a look before we ask for capital funds from the town because we know we're asking for a significant amount of money to be really clear on exactly what we can do this year and what we really need for further study for future years so I appreciate that lens because when JCPC is hearing all this I think it's a much more defensible position and I think we want to build credibility with town because if you look at the four years out there's no shortage of asks coming so I think the more we can have credibility and asking for detailed information and when we need more detailed information then the big ask saying that's what we're actually asking for it's kind of like the electrical piece as well I mean I connect those two items the unit events in electrical we know there's potentially problems and so we need funds to figure out what the problems are and how we're going to solve them before we ask for larger ticket items a couple of items that I sort of passed over we had a big ask for changing some jingle roof at Crocker Farm which was $200,000 next year we're really not having a lot of trouble with that so I want to push that replacing that section of the roof out several years to when we're addressing the whole roof and instead focus on the skylight issue so I cut that $200,000 in half I put it all in for this coming physical year but it is something I think that we could spread out over two years if we need to the other thing that I didn't mention to you is the EDA compliance simply out of $50,000 placeholder for this coming year and then nothing into the future so I thought we should at least put a $50,000 placeholder in every year until we get some more results from that study I think my last comment is just as a reminder as opposed to the regional committee this committee doesn't formally vote on the capital plan it goes to JCPC so any feedback would be welcomed but we're not looking for a formal vote because that's not the structure of this kind of request capital goes straight to JCPC Thank you Dr. Morris, I appreciate the clarification Any questions or comments from the committee? Mr. Demling? So welcome by the way Thank you very much It's great to have a facilities director again it's an exciting time to be one in Amherst? It is, it's been an exciting four weeks I'll tell you Do you like HVACs and one roof and you have a lot of good stuff to dig your teeth into I have to beg all my guys bring me into the into the mech room it's enough under the roof and down in the basement I want to see the stuff So my two questions are related to the HVAC replacements for Wildwood and Fort River and FY20 and the parking lot pave for Fort River and FY21 just because these near term big ticket items do relate so closely to the conversation about a potential new building which has its own conversational threads it helps for me to understand exactly when and why these things get sequenced so I think we heard before I want to attempt to paraphrase the technical explanation but I think we heard before that those two $400,000 for this upcoming FY20 for Wildwood and Fort River for the HVACs are necessary regardless of whether we have buildings coming in the next a new building that replaces both of those in the next five or six years Is that still your... not still your but is that also your opinion? Yes, that is my opinion the problems that we had at the beginning of the school year with Wildwood indicate how bad it is if we have a hot week and no chillers at all it was really unbearable and it's really not possible for folks to learn under those conditions And on the... thank you The parking lot paved for FY21 so there's a separate conversation about statement of interest in buildings and all that but is that an item that could potentially move and that we might not have to do at that level if we did anticipate that there was a decent chance of replacing the building in the next five years or so or is that $470 for the paving of the parking lot coming regardless of that scenario? I haven't studied the parking lot so I don't know if either of you guys have some information Mr. Mangano So that was one of the projects we did pull off when we did the hypothetical of if we have a new building in five or six years we could pull that off I think when it was put in it's because part of the parking lot is starting to erode essentially and it's going to keep getting worse but that is one of the projects we said if we know we're going to a new building we could push that off and try to live with it So part of this is I don't finish I just want to make sure that we have a chance for others Sure, I'll pause there Does anybody else in the committee have any questions or comments for Ms. Pitzer? Thanks again for putting all this together I don't know a lot about Univents but they keep coming up in the conversations about the conditions in our schools and so I guess I just wanted to understand whether or not I think it makes perfect sense to study something before you go about replacing it but it seems like these Univents were tied to the conditions in our schools and their need to be upgraded is urgent and that was the message I was getting and I again don't understand the technicalities of it but do we have any concerns about postponing the Univent replacement because it looks like that's what's happening here In terms of indoor air quality in my opinion the existence of Univents is not core we have other issues that are contributing more significantly specifically uncontrolled moisture when we've had roof leaks and some changes in how we keep and clean the building and keep it safe The Univent replacement is something that in my mind these are however many years old they are and they are due to have increased failure rates and so this is more of a preventative approach by planning ahead of time to replace them instead of having them fail and not being able to use a classroom until we can get parts in the date months to get parts The preventative approach is the way I see it and the previous plan was laid out to spread out that work over many many years not to do them all at once So I think putting off the first one of those by one year doesn't significantly change our risk exposure I just have a quick follow up I think one of the things that we had heard quite dramatically actually that the committee heard from educators earlier in the year was that there had been a couple of these units that had been sparking or at least one had sparked So I guess I'm pausing a little bit in response to your response to her question just if can we actually put something like that off I don't know what happened with the sparking I'm not familiar with that incident it sounds to me like a motor failed sort of part of our normal day-to-day life is components fail and we replace them I don't know if that answers your question Dr. Morris Can you share in a little more detail some of the thoughts you had about why studying the unit events might be helpful and some of the complications that you're replacing them some things that you've shared with me might help put a finer point on why you'd want to go about studying these before jumping in for sure So these units have pipes going to carry hot water in the winter and chilled water in the summer and those pipes run all over the building and generally don't have any shut off valves so you can isolate one part of the building so you end up shutting down the whole building draining it cutting in new valves refilling it getting the air so it becomes and a lot of the pipes have asbestos insulation so we have some tremendous abatement issues that we would have to deal with especially if we don't plan ahead so I really wouldn't want to start that project without knowing exactly where we needed to put valves and what abatement was involved and getting that organized to be done in a safe way But you're confident that it sounds like there's not any immediately dangerous or threatening issues with these Yes, absolutely I would not have changed the capital plan proposal if I didn't think that if I thought we were going to be in serious trouble I would have said double or triple the amount because we need to study and do the stuff It's great to hear you say that out loud Thank you Mr. Nakajima I think you might have answered it a second ago I was trying to figure out if you couldn't take some of the money to replace you in events in this coming year meaning if it only took four months to study it then you have quite a bit of a fiscal year left just take some of the money and start replacing them I think your answer is going to be that you can't do it that way because of the shutting in the system Shutting down the system Do you have not having kids and staff when you're cutting asbestos or something? Yes, yes, yes Just the other thing to note is if you look at year two of this plan there's an investment in an event so even though I think everyone's rightly noting it pushes it back, it actually accelerates if you think of the original plan it was 35 each year this one actually has 120 for Wildwood 155 at Fort River and I don't want to belabor the point so it actually has a more aggressive amount in FY21 instead of filtering them out that cost out over a longer period of time If we study it the next year's fiscal budget to study when would that mean the money would be spent to replace them does that mean it would be done the following summer or does that actually mean it would go to bid and be done the summer after that if we do a study we can figure out a way to do a big chunk of each building in a summer so that's why I have a larger amount the following year and I would we would only be able to do it during the summertime but you think not to put a fine point on it but what you mean that is next summer so if this summer is like three months from now you mean 15 months from now we would do a significant investment that's my intention yes, exactly thanks for clarifying that Mr. Denley did you have another question you wanted to ask or comment it was just about the parking lot paving that if we're in the exact same spot we are right now with regards to buildings a year from now we're having the exact same conversation and we're looking at the FY21 column and we have the parking lot in front of us and we have another statement of interest with the MSBA and we don't know whether we're going to get that until the end of 2020 do we then have to proceed regardless on the parking lot or is that yet another thing that we can you know it's I know it's a hard question but the portion back we're going to get is well tell me exactly what we're going to have to pay if we don't have any more certainty a year from now than what we do today it's my understanding that we can pour money into patching that will last for part of a year or maybe a year if we don't do a serious overhaul so long term it's more expensive to do patch after patch after patch much more dissatisfaction I imagine that we could if there was a good chance of an outcome changing the building that we could cut down that and do less of a good job to buy us a little bit more time is that your sense thank you so I think that you know one of the comments I had made a previous conversation back in January I guess now around the capital planning is that we are certainly hearing enough concern from the town from the community about making sure that we can justify all of these numbers right it's not to say that we're not justifying them but I think we have to provide strong evidence for how we came up with this you know and also that assuming we can't make any assumptions at this point about whether or not we will be accepted into the MSBA application this year it may be next year maybe five years from now right we have no idea in the meantime we understand we have these issues that we have to take care of so there's really this difficult tension that we're walking with right now on a daily basis I know Dr. Morris is and we all are and yet we still have to provide some assurance to our town leaders who will as Dr. Morris pointed out at the very beginning of this segment that you know we are not the ones who are actually voting on this money we're making a recommendation and kind of saying yes we agree with this or we have some concerns but we have to provide some assurance to our town leaders that this has been well researched and documented and you know is going to do the absolute best job we can with the limited resources that we have so I know there's been a lot of work put into this I feel like you know there is some there's enough difference from what we saw in January that it actually makes me a little nervous and I feel like and I totally understand why that might be and I think in the end it's probably a good thing we're coming down in some places where we're sort of being more thoughtful with I feel like we need to do a better job of documenting that and this memo actually starts that and lays it out but you know I think even just showing where we were before you know providing some references for where this information came from just writing a paper trail basically that helps the JCPC and then ultimately our town fund these projects because that's really what we want is we want them to fund this we want them to be able to say that and I feel like that's still kind of missing so I'm wondering if you know that Dr. Morris and yourself if you might be able to you know make this a little more robust to help show the thinking and where it came from before presenting it finally to JCPC does that make sense? I think it's an excellent suggestion thank you so just one comment I'd like to make one is there's what gets on the list you know our best understanding of what we need and when and then the price tag that goes on to it is our best estimate of that price tag if we guess wrong and we guess high the money gets allocated but then it goes back to the town if we guess wrong and we guess low then we have to come back and ask for more money and that's pretty awkward so there's a lot of pressure on us to guess high if the payments were guess high I had some higher guesses than maybe I wanted to make I don't know if this is reassuring or not but I feel comfortable having had some experience with some of the renovations here in the district over the past month and what those things cost it out at that we we could shave prices down where I did so it's based on the actual pricing experience in terms of the pricing in terms of what gets on some of it is based on our experience of where things are already failing and some of it is based on projections of expected lifespan of the equipment and those two things get mixed together and I can try to document that better but just for your own sake I wanted to try to clarify I appreciate that just some further documentation would really go a long way to further explain that and I think it's a really good idea and I think we can think about the reasonable size ticket items that are on here and just having a small paragraph of explanation for each one so that it kind of gets at what I understand you're saying which is some justification of where did the cost come from and what's the need so that it's not just oral explanation but actually there's some paper trail that goes along with it and in fact the process with the Joint Capital Planning Committee I don't have the initials fast enough involves more paperwork where there's more explanation going to go over to them already sure thank you very much okay moving as along we're at school choice hearing Dr. Morris do you want to introduce them so each district in Massachusetts has to have a school choice hearing so I would like to weigh in on whether we should in this case continue being a school choice district or not to clarify it means school choice students who are currently the district are guaranteed in the district regardless of this vote it's whether we would accept new school choice students for the next fiscal year I'll give you my two cents in school choice which is that for at the elementary level it fills empty seats in classrooms for instance grade level where there's 49 students in this district we wouldn't have class sizes of 24 and a half and we would have very small class sizes which is advantageous it's also very financially challenging and we want to be conscious of the funding that we do receive generous funding from the town of Amherst so in that scenario we have three classes it fills them out still well below the school committee guidelines so it's basically the cost that comes in from those students supplement the budget it's pretty cost effective that way and really what it does is keep our class sizes low it prevents us from having decisions other districts have about do you have a 24 person first grade class in this community I wouldn't support that I don't think the community would support that and really what it does is also it allows us to maintain full time specialists in terms of where the funds go how do we utilize them so we are very fortunate to have P.E. library and media center and technology teachers in each of our three elementary schools that just frankly wouldn't be possible if we were in a school choice district so it really supplements our ability to support the whole child and for that reason I would support continuing with school choice in the next fiscal year thank you any questions or comments for Dr. Morris about this topic okay thank you for your hearing so we'll go back through the motions that we did before if anyone is here to speak to this topic and would like to approach the committee you feel free to do so introduce yourself please I suspect most folks are here for something else tonight which is perfectly okay okay seeing no one approaching the microphone I will close the school choice hearing is there anything further from us we need Dr. Morris on this at this time we'll plan to go to the vote at the next meeting because the next meeting is going to be out maybe two after I think two or three meetings after sometime in March so in the meantime again if anyone has either here in the audience or who is watching online or afterwards if you have any comments on this topic for the school committee please feel free to email us at arts.org okay moving on to sabbatical vote in your packets you'll have a write-up from an educator here who has been requesting a sabbatical leave which is a policy here in the district and a pretty progressive one I think and a pretty great one educators to come back with information new ways of doing things from their experiences outside the school district Dr. Morris do you want to introduce this one please sure actually I wanted to first start by introducing the author Chris Hagemeyer is in the audience so thank you for coming and so the Gestalt is I want to I would recommend that the school committee supports this sabbatical request for three reasons the first is that when I'm looking at sabbatical the first my first order of business or analysis is it supporting the school or district improvement plan and so while while it's still getting doing some heavy lifting on their school improvement plan and continuing that work with Dr. Kristin Rodriguez this is very this work is very consistent with the direction that the team that's working on that is looking to go in so for me it's very consistent with where Wildwood is and frankly where our district is where we're looking for high high engagement in our curriculum and innovative teaching methods that support our students to be active in their learning the second is the second frame I have is what's the how high quality the experience will be so even if it's aligned if I don't my perception is not a high quality experience there'll be a lot of learning then it's great that it might be consistent but if it's not going to move the district forward then probably not worth doing high tech high is kind of nationally it is a nationally renowned set of schools in California for the previous building project the consultant who worked with us in the educational visioning was involved in that and I know that was very inspirational for many of the staff members who were part of that visioning process to hear from his experiences of a school district and they have middle school, elementary school and high schools in their network who are really thinking about schooling differently you know it's not just the technology it's actually the experiential learning you know I still remember this video I'm sure Mr. Eggamara does to you about high school students and creating a project about saving the bay this is in northern California and you know the work they did because they were so passionate about the experience they learned all that core content in the effort of making promotional videos and informing and educating the larger community to be able to impact the bay that they lived very close to also the high tech high has a network of schools serves a very diverse population that I think you know has some consistencies with our school district it's actually a higher poverty and higher percentage of English language learner population than our school district district goals around the achieving gap and the third is that what's the plan for distribution in other words so one person goes has this experience what's the impact on anything more than you know 20 some odd or 18 students the following school year and actually I want to compliment Mr. Eggamara who reached out to me and we had a lot of engagement on that topic because that was actually my initial concern when I received the initial sabbatical request and I compliment Mr. Eggamara who really adding in this last page in a smidge really about how this will happen because we know classroom teachers are incredibly busy they're teaching for 80% of the day the question is I think it would be great for your students for this teacher students but how is that going to inform a larger group than you know 20 students a year which is still wonderful but not really consistent with the language of sabbatical and I want to compliment Mr. Eggamara that they really create a robust plan for distribution and how could this work really inform not just those students but the entire school population how is it so consistent with the effort so for those three reasons I'm supporting and would encourage your acceptance of the sabbatical request and I'm here perhaps Mr. Eggamara might be here if there's questions that are relevant for him as well thank you and this is a vote actually of the school committee on this topic it is started with that I apologize any questions or comments for the superintendent or maybe perhaps even Mr. Eggamara Mr. Eggamara no sorry Mr. Domenico so there's a lot of reference to Wildwood's current either exploration or decision to sort of gear the school improvement plan to as a project-based model I know we had talked about eventually Fort River and Wildwood coming back and talking to us about their school focus it seems like well perhaps not complete the thematic direction of Wildwood if you know if this is reflective of that it's pretty strong is there anything we could hear about that at this point or maybe soon from Wildwood or we were planning to have them come back at the schools both Wildwood and Crocker come back in April because their last session with Dr. Rodriguez is March 10th I want to say to share where they are but I think perhaps it's reflected in Mr. Eggamara's document I want to speak for you so please come up and feel free to offer a divergent viewpoint is this has really been consistent with Wildwood has been working on prior to even this current effort so for instance I know Mr. Yaffe attended some professional development last week over the break around leading project in project-based learning schools it was a national conference that he attended this has been an ongoing set of conversations that have occurred at Wildwood Ron Berger who some of you may know is a leader of Expedition Learning who works in Amherst and lives in the area has been there multiple times so it's really consistent with the flow that's been heading in that direction and really the effort around strategic planning at the elementary level is codifying goals and strategies along that dimension Mr. Eggamara move to approve the sabbatical request as submitted thank you any further comments or questions all those in favor it's unanimous thank you very much thank you we'll start hearing back when you return okay moving on to the next item it's dual language enrollment and I'll encourage Ms. Richardson to come up and she brought a partner slash guest I'll let her do the introductions I think my framing is just that when this was presented last month there's a lot of feedback making it more clear more specific and so I want to compliment in my opinion Ms. Richardson has taken that feedback to heart and done a significant amount of editing to make it both a public facing document that people can understand but also one that really lays out more specifically what is involved in the process so really tonight is more just if there's additional feedback to share with Ms. Richardson after she introduces some of the changes briefly and her guest who's been supporting us not just in this but a large number of areas around dual language programming that we're happy to hear them and our meeting is March 6th so that's for all families but there's certainly going to be a dual language component so this is a really great opportunity if there's last feedback before we share this with the public on that date thank you thanks for having us so this is Maria Luisa de Cifano and I want to let you introduce yourself she carries a lot of hats I think and we're really excited to have her supporting this work hi I'm very happy to be here my name is Maria Luisa de Cifano I'm a faculty at University of Massachusetts my area of expertise is bilingual education I'm officially here as a faculty so teacher of teachers but also researcher in bilingual education at the same time I have to say that I'm a a mom of three years old four years old and maybe in the future I could attend the school so I'm so excited about this project my daughter is a trilingual Italian-Spanish English so I would love to have her in this type of program I'm also a board member of MABE the Malta State Association for bilingual education but the district has been seeing good work with impaired in a group team with the MABE and I think that I I'm really doing a great job in planning this new program and I'm also a language learner bilingual learner myself so I try to prepare my experience as a former teacher and researcher with my personal experience as well and I'm here to serve I'm here to support the district this new exciting project great thank you so we thought we'd have Maria Luisa here to introduce to you all and she's also done a lot of thinking with us about some of the specifics around enrollment and how do we think about making a program that's really strong in terms of the language background and the balance and all of those pieces and she's also working with us in terms of the UMass courses and some other areas so I guess I'm trying to remember I should have brought the older document to compare there's a lot more here but a couple of the key things I think we did change through a lot of conversations one was laying out four sort of enrollment groups so that you could see where the Fort River zoning impacted the groups and where the language background impacted the groups we did let's see what else just clarified a bunch of things gave more examples more numbers we did Dr. Morrison I discussed having a because we're really aiming to serve our Spanish speaking and bilingual families that we would do our best to outreach this spring but that if we didn't fill the number of seats that we're hoping to that we would hold some seats through August 1st in order to fill them with more of a wait list so that we could get that language balance that we're hoping for am I missing anything major? I think the other thing that I remember in the conversation is being really clear on what tool is being used for the lottery and being explicit about that so that was laid out to the point of including the actual web link of the tool that we'd plan to use not only would it be public but if people knew what tool we're using I think that was the thing I'm thinking of the feedback from last time we received some specific feedback around that as well I just want to say just to jump in here I think you know I really appreciate the way you laid out the four groups and the order upon which they would be I'm assuming this is a sequential order that's what the chart in the top says the order in which they would be invited to participate and just to read it out loud for the public and I think for anyone who's watching who may not have access to this document so group one is Fort River zoned Spanish speakers and bilingual students group two is Spanish speakers bilingual students zoned to attend Crocker farm or Wildwood group three is Fort River zoned English speakers and then group four is English speakers zoned to attend Crocker farm or Wildwood which again makes a lot of sense I think given the feedback that the committee provided at the last meeting I really appreciate that and then also just to put a fine point on it that this document states that on April 29th a lottery for groups one and two as the Spanish speakers across the district will be held and then after that point then the groups three and four would come in into the lottery so at this point I'm going to open it up to the committee if there are any questions or comments for Ms. Richardson or Dr. Morris Mr. Nakajima I was just going to say I really appreciate the thoroughness of which we are providing examples definitions breaking down the categories I mean I think that was certainly a lot of my feedback last time I think it really does answer I think a lot of what people are going to have is questions when they're saying I don't get how this works how do I figure this out without just coming to a session or making a phone call this is now a resource that's going to let people have that really solid starting point so thank you very much Ms. Richardson your hand just kind of nitpicky I appreciate all of the feedback but I'm just thinking with group three and four we're saying for river zoned English speakers now what if I'm bilingual Chinese English I think we should make sure it's inclusive unless they might think they're automatically group one otherwise I think the only other kind of general feedback I have is a question that I'm still having a little bit and isn't really on here is that since we've shown that these there's like a continuum of English and Spanish speaking I don't know if we may not want to answer this formally and leave room for us to determine that as we see who applies and who's interested in it but I think there is going to be some questioning about what makes me a Spanish speaker or bilingual student to cut what's the cutoff for these four groups it seems like there was a decision not to forgive me if I've missed it there might have been a decision not to include it and I'm assuming that's to give us the room to make that decision as we see who's interested is that right so we did mention specifically that the group for one and two would include Spanish speakers and bilingual families but we do really need to see what the enrollment what the pool is and the decisions based on what will be the best makeup of the class and the programs we had a lot of discussion on that very point so I'm glad you pointed it out in this public meeting because we spent more time on that Ms. Richards and I at least in our conversations I don't know about yours with others spent more time on that very question than anything else in the document that's either listed or not listed but at the end we really want to think about having a range not just a 50-50 but other researchers that we also want to make sure that out of the students who are identifying as Spanish speakers we also have some fluent Spanish speakers and then a range within that because it's not a binary system I mean they're bilingual or not and we want to make sure that continuum is represented equally across that grouping and so that's where it gets a little cumbersome to lay that out specifically until you know who the pool of students are that's a question on the sibling priority enrollment rule so one potential issue I can imagine being asked is so say your first child gets in in group 2 and then you have a younger child coming in if the Spanish speakers from Fort River fill up that year then your older child I'm sorry your younger child will not get into the program and so the same thing with if your first child gets into group 4 and then the English speakers fill up at Fort River then you're not your other child and it seems like I'm trying to think of it just from the point I'm thinking out loud here because it's a complicated question I think if I was a parent and I was really excited about this program I would have a real hard time making that commitment and we want people to stay in the program right knowing that there was some X percent of chance and if the program's really successful then you know kids at Fort River are going to want to do it but a chance maybe even a probability that I'm going to have a two zone family which might not be tenable and so I don't know how you've maybe sort of thought of that I mean I'm just thinking about this through this one. Yeah so I think for zone 2 just based on the size of the catchment area I'm not so concerned about that because it'd be it'd be unless and if demographic change we'll have to revisit it but it'd be unusual to have 20 Fort River zone Spanish speaker bilingual students so if you're at the top of zone 2 you're going to get into the program just mathematically it's just it's hard to imagine with our current demographics that that would be an issue. For zone 4 we had a lot of conversations about that I think that is a more realistic scenario where it could create a two school option and for us at the current moment we want to prioritize having the greatest number of Spanish speaking students in the program and it was hard to prioritize a English speaking student who doesn't live in the Fort River catchment area over a Fort River an English speaking student who doesn't live in the Fort River catchment area over an English speaking student who does live in that who lives across the street so that was really the conversation zone 2 I don't think it's an issue but I think that was where we we struggled you know to about zones 3 and 4 and how to prioritize that I'm not saying that as clearly as I'd like I don't know if Miss Richardson. No I think did that make sense? Yeah okay It made sense to me but I'm thinking about it a lot so the other piece that I would say is that we're on the front end we're going to have that issue with families splitting schools as well so that's something we have to think about regardless I think you know in talking to some families who have kids at proper front or at childhood already we're saying to them hey we think this is a great would you be interested in having your you know your kids come to the Fort River to language program that's a challenge we have to think about for them some families I've talked to have said as long as you're going to get the kids there you're going to provide the transportation that's fine I'm excited about the program right others won't feel that way they'll feel like it is too much of a split so but just thinking about how do we support families who are in that situation I think is going to happen as we start to recruit in general you know one thing that I think might be helpful just I was looking at the enrollment team paragraph here which describes the role of this group which would be convened to review applications and make enrollment determinations perhaps it's helpful to include here or whatever document ends up becoming the public facing document if it's not this that there will be periodic review right maybe an annual review of how this is working out for families I didn't see that well I mean I think at least where people's eyes will be trained to go looking for information specifically around enrollment I think we talked about it but I don't it's under the feedback section it says all families who participate in the letter will be serving about their experience based on this feedback as well as feedback well that's not exactly what I'm saying so I think that adding there maybe well perhaps I mean I would actually I would strongly consider adding it into the place again where people would be in the enrollment team section and possibly even sooner I think where will siblings have you might even repeated a couple of different times and only because again whatever becomes a public facing document that's what people will be referencing when they're looking for information to help decide whether or not they want to participate in the program you know so say something along the lines of having the school committee and the superintendent and the enrollment team whatever formula it is review this on an annual basis to you know understand whether or not this is working perhaps may not necessarily address exactly what Mr. Demling is raising which is a problem but at least you know can help people understand well maybe they'll think differently about this or there's a place for us to go if we're really concerned about this and we want to advocate on behalf of our family or something yeah Dr. Morris I think the other thing I wish I'd said at the beginning when Mr. Demling at first asked the question is some of the sibling piece came from a direct experience of districts so when we were in Harrisonburg for instance they were like be wary of sibling policies because really it eliminates the option for many families because you have enough siblings just the families that will be in there's enough siblings where actually you just get a small number of families who are populating the program and it doesn't actually have the reach that you'd want to have and also they felt like in many communities a lot of other communities have faced this it actually starts deteriorating the balance you want between Spanish speaking students and English speaking students so Lynn had a big article about this last year about I'm going to forget the title of it but it was essentially that dual language programs are a commodity and they're being hoarded by certain demographics that sometimes shift the intent of the program so I think some of this is based literally on feedback and Mabe I know has also shared some cautions with us about that and for me the viewpoint of for English speaking students is that to be in this program is a huge benefit and we want to spend it as you know share that benefit as readily as we can but I think keeping it more open has some benefits as well so that's our perspective Mr. Denley? Yes I think it's the last comment I'll make on the issue really briefly is that so it's actually something that we don't is not going to be in play this year because we don't have anybody in the language program right now so we actually do have a year to actively have this conversation and I would encourage us to because the particular issue we're talking about with regards to English speakers in Fort River versus English speakers outside of Fort River and who gets prioritized within that group that doesn't affect the balance issue that you just talked about and we say Fort River kids across the street I mean most Fort River kids who go to Fort River don't live across the street our enrollment zones are all over the place so I just think it's an active discussion that now that we've identified it as one of the more complex issues that thankfully we don't have to have solidified in a couple weeks we can continue to have the active discussion let's bring it back I think that makes a lot of sense Any other questions or comments for Ms. Richardson or Dr. Morris on this topic? Thank you very much I don't know also if it's worth mentioning you've asked for some info on outreach events and I can say that we have a bunch coming up in March so there is the garden event that's district-wide but we also have some specific events happening in different areas of the district that are reaching out to different communities I wonder if you could share that with the school committee perhaps with Ms. Westmoreland and that way we can help promote it as well Thank you very much Thank you for joining us Okay so the next item on the agenda is math report grade 6 and we had a little bit of a preview of this at the regional school committee last night Mrs. Midge so and I'll keep this brief I mean I think this is a conversation clearly we're going to have to come back to the larger conversation about mathematics the reason that I asked the chair to have this added is that conversation was very region-centric and it really wasn't around the recommendation that was made by math consultants about where the sixth graders are educated I think that we'll come back to naturally probably in April once another study is done and I'm not foreshadowing what we should do about that but I think there's a natural place for that conversation it's more just to say that we noted that there was a recommendation to change the math curriculum in sixth grade that was made and really to align our programming 6 through 12 and it's sort of with our current structure governance structure it's a little bit of an awkward conversation because sixth grades are located at least in districts I govern across districts that are not necessarily formally connected to the 7 through 12 model but the way that we viewed this the way that consultants did the work we asked them not to come back twice there wasn't a reasonable expectation is that the work that would be continuing would be 6 through 12 so that our sixth grade teachers would be actively engaged in that work there were some conversations specifically about perhaps having fewer sixth grade teachers teach mathematics so they could be a little more specialization for our background in mathematics instruction and we're actively looking about models it would be a little easier if we had classes having three classes in the sixth grade makes that or two actually makes that quite complicated of how to pull that off but we are actively having those conversations you know for me I'd like to bring this back I just wanted I didn't want to have this big report that referenced sixth grade one night and the next night not have any and I'm open to any questions about it but it was more just wanting to say that there was a recommendation made by math consultants to look at our sixth grade curriculum and scope and sequence and to further align with the regional schools I feel like this is a really really big topic it is yeah absolutely and I'm looking at how much time is given for it so yeah and I appreciate the superintendent bringing this to the committee's attention I think more formally and putting it on the agenda I do think that this is probably something that we want to bring back more substantive way with perhaps you know even some initial thoughts back from you you know and also from the principals and other educators you know I would I would definitely entertain any initial thoughts or reactions or directions along those lines from the committee you know but I don't think it makes a lot of sense was to dive deep into this conversation right now um but I do think you know maybe thinking about our agendas in the next couple of months how we might be able to bring this piece in more substantively would make a lot of sense so I agree and I think the other thing the other reason I wanted to have it on here tonight is that I referenced this report in the budget so just to be really clear of like why are you just doing this like 90 second you know um conversation that you know there was some budget implications you know in the curriculum material side but also on the staffing side that um I felt would be really awkward if I didn't say what I said and I'm open to any questions I agree with the chair's perspective that we want to do a more deep dive with Mr. Sheehan's back and we can do that but it just it felt weird not to at least have this as a place over. No I was just going to say um I would like urge us not to go too deep on this just because I'm opening pan to her in terms of all the implications that run from how your staffing math instruction in our elementary schools what the curriculum is onto moving sixth grade to middle school right I mean it runs the gamut and this could open up an awful lot I would much rather have you bring back a structured conversation on this topic that's organized where you've also had an opportunity to have outreach to all staff so that there's input and this feels really well integrated and organic and not something where we're just winging out there with whether they're wonderful ideas or not ideas that could feel really disruptive to a lot of people. Agreed. I think just from a moment like a staying on the theme of meta structure agenda kind of things I think the usefulness of having a joint meeting with the region is going to be helpful in this regard because from the region meeting it sounded like some of these suggestions could happen fairly quickly and if that happens there was an emphasis on aligning 6 to 8 and we only go up to 6 on this committee and so if we're talking about aligning 6 to 8 then we have to be talking with the region at the same time so I think that the urgency of that ratchets up a few notches and then the need to just make sure that we've discussed it thoroughly enough to hit whatever implementation schedule is going to be necessary. Just in general the notion of recommending moving 6 to the middle school sort of came out of left field and that so that again is something we've only ever heard from the building project standpoint but that sort of ratchets up that conversation a little bit as well. Yeah I would agree that I think it ratchets up in terms of just attention right. I still would urge I guess this committee and the superintendent to make sure that when we bite into the apple that we actually are biting into something that is fully thought through or at least you know vetted internally in the district among all the folks who really matter and to really start thinking through what some of those implications would be and then bring that back to the committee and maybe it's a joint meeting with the region and certainly talk with our chair to figure that out but it seems like at that point then we have something substantive to really discuss you know and make happen. I would second the request for a joint meeting because I sort of building on your observation Dr. Morris earlier about we have all these meetings because we have two separate structures and this is one topic and we shouldn't have separate conversations about it particularly if you know we're going to be hampered and not talking about sixth grade when the recommendation clearly does include sixth grade so I would strongly advocate for having a joint meeting to when Mr. Sheehan comes back with his blur. Thank you. Thank you very much. Next I'm on the agenda is MSBA Statement of Interest Process which has been taking over quite a bit of time. The community and this committee for some time now for a few weeks. I just very quickly before we jump in I just want to say we are, we've already scheduled the listening sessions for folks who may just be tuning in. We have two sessions scheduled tomorrow the 27th we have two more scheduled on Thursday the 28th and then we have two more scheduled on March 6 next week with a possible snow date of March 7th and so hopefully we will get good attendance there. I think a town council has been doing a really good job of you know helping to turn some constituents out we've heard from or I've heard from the town council president that all town council members will be attending at least a couple of the sessions many of them will be and many of them which is great. I know this committee also will be in attendance. We have purposefully attended these meetings as actual official school committee meetings or town council meetings because we are there mostly to listen so we will be there in listening form. We have a facilitator who will be you know managing the conversations he will introduce all of us he will introduce town council as well but there will be no formal speaking role for us and so I think that that's actually a good thing. We will probably all be heard off and into the different group discussions so we can actually dive in and hear what people are saying and participate in those conversations sort of one on one so you know I'm looking forward to it. I think hopefully the weather's not too bad tomorrow we're looking at if it's snow. We are on for tomorrow night if there's any questions. We are on for tomorrow night yes. Mr. Sullivan who's here earlier assured me that we would be fine it's light fluffy snow that's going because we're fine then I think we're fine. Excellent that's good to hear yes but I've been saying to people is there are no hazardous conditions so far so hopefully that's true. Mr. Nakajima I know this is obvious but I was just going to emphasize that not only do we not have a formal role but I know we all know this but we legally cannot offer our opinions like we're legally prescribed from doing so under pain of the Attorney General telling us we've done a bad thing so I know we have no formal role but we have no informal role either if you know what I mean like no matter what somebody says and how much you want to stand up and say something don't do it. It's against the law. Yeah. Just building on that because when you say participate it's participated by active listening. By active listening that's right. Although we did say before that the question made to one of us that we can answer and that's okay but we should not deliberate, we should not expand on it we should not share our opinions it is literally just a factual response to a question that's been posed to us and if it feels like something that is too big we can say to that person please bring it to a school committee meeting we will have a discussion around this and we will be capturing all of those questions so the facilitators actually have a group of people that will be there writing down all of the questions that we hear and so those will be reported back to us for us to respond to however we want to in public meetings. Dr. Morris is there anything else that you want to add at this time? I know we've talked about this before but there's at least one district I don't know if others that have been advertising the Crocker farm in particular event as a district meeting at the same start time as the listening session so I've just seen sort of exchanges about well I'll be there late and I think we need to be prepared that people are going to be walking in expecting that it's a district meeting at some point and because it's not being labeled as a listening session for the schools that's unfortunate I think I had a very clear conversation with the town council president who did share that with district counselors that these are not district council meetings that they were welcome to have a district council meeting on the same day either before or after but these are school committee meetings for the purpose of these listening sessions one thing we can definitely do is make sure the facilitator reminds people of that so even though unfortunately these may have been advertised differently we can certainly have a facilitator remind people that these are not district meetings topics will be discussed and also the district counselors don't have a role there at all great so I think that was pretty much it we just wanted to bring everyone up to speed and if there's any questions or comments I think the only thing I'll note and I think I've mentioned this before but I'm able to attend about half of the sessions there's other work commitments like visiting Leverett on if there's a night and things like that well I'm not bound in the same way elected officials are bound in terms of open meeting law I still see my role as pretty identical to what Mr. Donis shared if there's a factual question I'll give a clear factual answer if it's an opinion question that's really not the purpose it's really to listen I've talked a lot with the facilitator his recommendation and the experience that he has in meetings kind of conversations we got up in a discussion around a question being posed and then people getting drawn into what they believe or what they don't believe or any of that and he's actually I think very confident that he can manage that kind of conversation so I'm just thinking specifically about you coming into those sessions that there may be an expectation from some that are in attendance that you should be answering all the questions that are being posed and that's really not what these sessions are about so he and his work partner will be very clear about how this sessions are really just to capture those comments and questions and that again you may answer some very simple factual questions but that we're not going to get pulled into a long drawn out presentation great okay thank you so the next item on the agenda is the regionalization update so Mr. Dumling I'm going to look to you you're very busy as well yes absolutely so regionalization for all those who are watching the first time and entering this talk I'll give my standard 20 second introduction which is we are a pre-K to 6 district in Amherst that's a pre-K to 6 district in Pelham and the basic question is should we merge these two districts into one is that educationally and financially advisable for both towns that's what our board is exploring I think that's the shortest I've ever done that so that's that's what we're doing so update on that so our public outreach continues as we're working our way through the detailed issues and such so I'm actually giving a talk tomorrow at noon at the bank center the legal women voters has invited us to so thank you very much the excellent legal women voters Stan has invited us to appear on his byline episode so Emily Marriott who's the vice chair and representative from Pelham and myself will be recording that next week and that will be out sometime at the end of the month so it looks like you had a good time on that the other week Mr. Rosenberg is an absolute delight and a really great interviewer and so I'm really glad this show exists now that Amherst media put this together and that we have this resource in our community so that's one two is we got a fairly substantive update from our financial consultant last week and we are continuing to so this Friday morning is our next meeting we're reviewing the results there so I can give you a brief update on that but before I do I do want to forget we're trying to schedule a two towns meeting so essentially getting the select board finance committee and school committee from Pelham and the town council school committee and yes those two from Amherst together Saturday morning and the logistical tradition of the four towns meeting so that we basically present our work to date so far so more than an intro saying okay this is where we've got so far for pros and cons on school committee composition on the financial modeling this is you know the sort of completed exploration of that because there's a wealth of experience and knowledge of people who are serving on these boards and we want to make sure that before we present to the public and then make a recommendation that we leave no stone unturned that's obviously a huge logistical scheduling challenge that I reached out to the chairs including Mr. Donius about that I just want to get a sense from this committee about sort of timing so we were looking at I had proposed anywhere from mid-March to mid-April and the initial feedback I got from chairs was that closer to mid-April would be much preferable I'm seeing nodding heads is that okay so we're talking about the scheduling this Friday so we'll try and shore that up but that was my sense from other chairs and it looks like given everything else that's going on that would be good so the thumbnail sketch on the financial analysis so without giving you the whole blow-by-blow of all the details and spreadsheets just to bring you up to speed on that I'd given a brief update before where a financial consultant had basically modeled an assessment method of what would the savings be in the first fiscal year for Amherst and what would they be from Hellam and using the sort of standard issue vanilla model that most districts use which is essentially a five-year enrollment with or without some adjustment for transportation it didn't show any savings for Amherst it showed all the savings for for Hellam and so our basic question is is there an assessment method that will produce savings for both towns that's also explainable and reliable going forward and so the second iteration of that our consultant went back and looked at lots of different over a hundred different combinations of weighted variables of how you could potentially get to savings and we did get to one that had a weighted percentage of median income and five-year enrollment the board felt that it was so complicated to derive that that it wasn't justifiably explainable in any sense and the only real common sense explanation we could get to if someone asked us as well we did that so that we could get to savings there's no real originating justification for that and so we went through a third exercise that was presented last Wednesday on Thursday which is to start with your enrollment and then he's a factor called enrollment shares and this is after starting so the first year is assessment by agreement which is essentially we just agree that we split the savings that's how you establish your first year budget whatever increases come on the next year budget you then use the assessment formula for that so you sort of initiate the assessment and then go for go forward using that method just with enrollment shares it's simpler and it does produce the savings for both towns in the first year it seems quite sensitive to small changes in the next year so we looked at FY21 if making some assumptions about the increase in the budget and how many students from Pelham and how many students from Amherst Change and it varied the savings quite significantly and the combined savings here is not a tremendous amount so the between if you add up in the first year the transportation savings at 70% reimbursement which is a projection and the bonus aid it's $428,000 and if you take the bonus aid away it's about $375,000 so there's not a tremendous amount of wiggle room for that to be split and allocated and to change over time and still produce savings so we're talking about that on Friday seeing what we want to do for that this has been really sort of the key example that we've really dug into and said we want to make sure that we exhaust every avenue here and that we present to and get feedback from finance and selecting school boards about their thoughts on the matter people who have spent years thinking about these kinds of problems so I hope that's relatively clear on where we're at with that just a clarifying question when you're talking about savings I'm assuming it's about the operating budget and you didn't look at all the potential capital costs or savings when we talk about the assessment method we're talking about operational savings I guess I was trying to understand this conversation about savings is really just to get to a proper assessment method it's not to create a cost benefit analysis in terms of whether or not we should adopt regionalization it's more about just figuring out what type of assessment method you'd use so this particular subtopic is just about the assessment method is modeling that we're going through with our financial consultant more broadly though we're definitely looking at is it cost benefit analysis and one of the factors in that I think I mentioned before the MSBA gives you an excess of 6% reimbursement on new building projects if you're forming a new region one factor in potential savings we also we talked to the superintendent and the finance director about is there any cost savings from having one district given that we're already so joined with union 26 that we already share services we essentially concluded that no there's no real cost savings from sharing the services without union 26 just in one district the short answer to your question is yes we are looking at the broader question what's the broad cost benefit analysis and I assume that the two towns meeting this will be covered in some sort of presentation yes so my my intention is to not do just a one on one level intro because I think most people on these boards have that already and yet we don't want to say okay we're done we've decided here's our conclusion we've explored these branches there's really only half a dozen or so major issues but these are very long branches and say okay we've explored them here's the pros cons and what we've come to what do you think what's your feedback are the things that we're not looking at are we crazy to be continuing to explore this particular branch before we go to the public and present this quite complicated topic what's your sense and take because we're going to have to do that anyway it's just going to be easier to get everybody in the same room as supposed to doing six meetings and I think I would recommend having a brief presentation that definitely doesn't make too many assumptions but is not too weedy either so it's really just about the highlights of the questions that you've been trying to answer I would also encourage there to be a split time between the Pellum representatives and Amherst representatives on this committee just politically I think it's a smart move if you're going to be presenting to the two towns to have folks from both sides or both towns represented and to have those voices there pretty clearly but I do recommend also that before the two towns that there be materials shared with the committees so that we have some time to peruse some of that and bring the best kind of feedback we can bring to the meeting Mr. Nakajima The only thing that is if there are any I don't know how you've been organizing the work if there are any assumptions that you've made going into it that are sort of ground rules for your conversation and I'm just going to throw some out like a ground rule is Pellum Elementary School is a functioning elementary school will exist in perpetuity after the regionalization occurs and there's been no all out what Ms. Pister said if your scenario planning around facilities and operating you either are or you're not like eliminating Pellum-Ellum is one of your objectives in creating operational cost savings I mean I'm making that up because it's a lemonade for river but I'm just saying either you're going radical another real point of getting at is either you're going like every concepts open sort of a radical evaluation or in fact you've made which some could be very reasonable ground rules at the beginning saying look we're only entertaining this I mean Pellum said and I'm not going to pick on them Pellum said at the beginning as a ground rule we're only entertaining this conversation if we assume that for the most part Pellum-Ellum stays intact as a functioning thing now you either made that assumption or you didn't make that assumption I just think you should be transparent I don't know don't end up arguing about it unless we have to all right thank you that was a great update okay next item on the agenda is Fort River feasibility update yeah so yeah we'll think again so the the work continues to get to a final feasibility study document a public session that was on February 13th at the middle school that was moderately attended and had a bunch of questions there's a presentation from the design team and a lot of I think the bulk of the questions that came up were around how you make assumptions and how you model a zero energy building and then how do you understand site conditions and how do you explain site conditions and how do they affect feasibility of buildings those are the basic categories of issues that came up there's going to be another that was in the evening there's going to be another daytime session on March 4th at noon noon town hall in which there's going to be an identical presentation and just taking notes from people for whatever shows up as to the best of my knowledge those are the only public sessions we're going to have to get feedback on the the draft there's also going to be put to bed an independent cost estimator to evaluate cost estimates from the first cost estimator since the first cost estimator was a sub to the designer there's language in the warrant article that was approved by town meeting that suggested that there would be an independent cost estimator for it that should improve at least the quality of the estimates to come out of it the final study are we concerned about the quality that has been done so far no I mean I'm not I mean sorry I'm giving you my answer I think the committee is the committee the committee would look forward to getting another set of eyes on it honestly most of the most of the potential variability in cost estimates isn't going to come from whether or not the cost estimator did a good job or not is what the inputs go in so I'll give you an example of two examples based on the geotechnical analysis that was done the designer originally assumed they might have to put pilings down to the ground for a foundation on the site because of its general wetness I think Venice is really stupid but if you know Boston, think back then it's all on pilings and now they don't think they need it so if you did a new construction of a two-story addition you'd have to do some site mitigation around the wetness but you wouldn't need to do the pilings there's an assumption going into the original cost estimate that meant the new building new construction estimate was higher than it otherwise would be because it included that on the other side of it the the designers did not include any mitigation to the floor or structure of the existing buildings and the renovation partial demo run-out they've now said that they think you might know what this is I'm going to butcher it but there's something you drill holes and you inject some sort of substance into the ground that then solidifies and stabilizes it and they now need to do that so that wasn't included in the cost estimate either it's not like it's a bad estimate it's more a matter of some of those things need to be revised obviously if there's other things that come back that are different they'll come back there's still goals to get this report done by the end of April in that regard one of the questions that the committee had feasibility committee had was whether the school committee here the obligation of the feasibility is to come back with the final report and presentation from the designers the question is do you want a preview of the draft before it becomes final or do you have an opportunity to give feedback or do you want it at the end when the thing is done and I mean in an actual committee meeting because obviously you're all free to attend and if the chair said you wanted to read a draft I would make sure you had a draft for any other member I could tell you, I think for my preference I would rather have a final because I think that once I have any early drafts that's what becomes public information and public knowledge that gets shared out I'd rather have you know as close to perfect as we can be the public document that everyone starts working from but I don't know if the committee has different thoughts or opinions on that okay I will take that silence as strong guidance strong assertive guidance from the school committee so my only question though about having the second round of cost estimators is that adding cost to the feasibility study that was originally it was in the budget, okay who's in the budget Dr. Morris? my only addition to what was shared by Mr. Nakajima was that this early this afternoon I did a window into ARPS with Richard who is here and Jonathan Salvin who is the chair of the feasibility committee I thought it worked I thought it was an excellent I didn't have a large roll in it but I just thought it really clarified for people who are wondering what's the connection to a future MSPA project what's the value in doing this work I really think both Jonathan and Richard clarified in really close detail what the work was that happened and how it could then influence future work in the district and you know I was mostly in the role of interviewer but because I had the dual role I jumped in and shared some of my thoughts as well so that'll be available next week I'm not too embarrassed to say is there anything I just said that was wrong based on what you said? No, not at all I'm okay with that if I was I think the only thing that I heard from Richard which will be on TV next week is that he believes they'll be able to finish the report by the end of next month but other than that it was spot on but I think it really for some of the questions that I know you've been getting as committee members and I've been getting as superintendent I really think it's a good 28 minutes for viewing and Richard shares some of the images that you've all seen but I think also provides a context of how this would be useful no matter what process moves on from here because he's aware of the statement of interest process, he's aware of the listening sessions I haven't engaged him but he's just aware and he was able to speak to what are the implications and how could this data be used in the future whatever route we go so I thought it was really helpful Can you send us a link when that's live? I think I'll watch it and make sure I agree with you but it's helpful I would actually love to push it out for people to see it then that'd be great That was the goal that the three of us had when designing, because we collaboratively the right questions is really to show the value and again I'm self interested in this but I really think it came through Richard and Jonathan were really clear about their responses and I will absolutely share it with you Great, thank you Thank you Mr. Nakajima for the update That was really good Okay, so we have accept gifts, we have one gift it looks like and the back of our packets so I will take a motion if anyone wants to read the gift Mr. Powell I move that we accept the gift from the Fort River Parent Council number 2015 to support the Fort River for Art program in the amount of $100 Great, we have a motion, do we have a second? Thank you, all those in favor? Great, thank you very much Thank you to the Fort River Parent Council School committee planning So we have a meeting on Monday, March 4th which is six days from now primarily to talk about the statement of interest and review the feedback listening sessions, excuse me First round anyway? First round, yeah, because four of the six will be completed, thank you We also have just one minor topic We talked about a grant we got from DESI in collaboration with the Holyoke Public Schools around dual language programming and I feel like it would be a good thing for there to be a formal vote at the school committee to accept it because it's a grant that we're it's coming directly to us but we're actually owning it for both districts and that was the advice so we'll bring it next week and then we have to work on a date whether it's March 11th or whether it's a topic that perhaps precedes a regional meeting I'm saying this out loud, I have not talked to the regional chair because he's in a role as an Amber School committee member right now I'm not here about a formal vote but I do have a statement of interest forward so those are the two very specific meetings our next more traditional meeting is March 19th I have final budget vote school choice vote and actually I did have Crocker Farm Wildwood Shooting Planning because that actually is after the last session with Dr. Rodriguez so I misspoke earlier when I said it was in April those are the three primary topics I had And the ADA audit do we want to talk about that is it coming back next month? Yeah, I'm thinking the last session I'm going to put it on as a placeholder I get to work with the consultants about their timeline I think it's possible to do that on the 19th but it depends what the feedback they get and how quickly they can I can do a process update regardless I think that's a really good idea though And then we were also going to talk about just some basic parameters for school committee meetings just timing and all that kind of stuff I didn't have a meeting on my calendar from Monday is that Monday March 4th at 6 p.m. Yeah, I thought that went out but maybe not I think the draft went out so these are the meetings that were Dr. Morris had announced during the PowerPoint presentations around the SBA process so they weren't previous to that but in early January they were scheduled So we'll need to reschedule At least she was free That's a better response than I was concerned about it two seconds ago Mr. Jumling Meeting location I thought we could follow up on because we never made a set of a choice I was going to bring that up at the tail end of all this but we can talk about it now Okay, sure Yeah, so I think we just wanted to check in with the committee and see any reactions to having our meeting at Town Hall I think that was a difficult meeting because it was such a long meeting so hopefully we can separate those two things because the two were not necessarily part and parcel but just general environment what was your feeling being there Do we want to do it again? I actually liked the layout much better I could see everybody's faces without having to lean back because we were parked at that corner so I just found it weirdly more intimate than this environment for having conversations as a group and the chairs were more comfortable That's not a reason to move Mr. Jumling I thought it was a good length of meeting to put it through its paces a good taste of what it would be like Other than I might have to go to microphone class for a couple weeks to work that little button I liked it a lot more than I thought I thought I would and I actually got a chance to watch another meeting on the lives so the streaming and the video quality there is much improved so just in terms of being out there for the community transparency is really about ease of access anybody can walk in here but it's a lot easier to sit home and watch it and it's a lot easier to sit home and watch it on a really nice high quality video feed or on any device so that has a lot of appeal for me so I mean I would given that we're certainly not moving the region meetings anytime soon I would certainly be amenable to by default having our Amherst meetings there Just one question about parking both for us and for the public I think that's the only accessibility issue that I have with that building it's confusing some spots in Amherst are after 6 you have to pay and some end at 6 I don't know how town council deals with it That's a good point I think definitely something that I was thinking about that I was confused about I saw a couple of folks kind of go down the alleyway next to the town hall Is that a different parking it is It's a secret spot I think parking is definitely an issue potentially but at the same time I would also say parking here can sometimes be an issue because everyone likes to park right here in the fire lane it's always free it's true but it can get crowded sometimes depending on what's going on The flip side to that I don't disagree with the point at all is that in terms of bus routes and people who don't have their own transportation it's wildly better than this this is not an easy site to get to if you do not drive a car you're walking some distance in the winter I think you can look at it either way I think you're 100% right about the parking I don't want to pretend that this is the perfect venue in terms of access the community and frankly just in terms of people knowing where it is being downtown has some advantage of people generally knowing where a town hall if you have a young, like for an elementary meeting where is the high school even though we listed, thanks Mr. Smollin for doing that, side entrance we have actually a fair number of people despite how well we describe it like our attorney who was here earlier tonight who it takes a while and he was still on the wrong side of the building like three minutes late so I think it's less cut and dry for me about which is more accessible than another I'm wondering if the committee would be amenable to trying it out again having another meeting there as a school committee give it a shot, maybe a shorter meeting with our very strict rules in place for engagement if maybe that might work I see head nods okay, so we'll take a look and see if maybe you know, maybe even as soon as our next big meeting we can try that out going back to the thing on the agenda are we talking about doing math in April then? so one thing I'd like to follow up with the regional chair when he's in the role of regional chair is whether since that's on the agenda for the next regional meeting whether that could be the first item and perhaps made to be a joint item because Mr. Sheen will be back he's going to have a formal response and it's going to be inclusive of sixth grade so again, to the same point let's find out later catch up with the regional chair absolutely I think that would be a good choice and again, I think thinking about April probably is a good move yeah okay, all of that said, I will take a motion Mr. Nakajima, do I have a second? second all those in favor? we are adjourned I want to note that this meeting started 15 minutes late because of another meeting and we are 14 minutes late so we are one minute ahead of schedule we do