 calling the meeting of the Amherst School Committee to order and this is also a joint meeting with our Amherst Town Council so President Griezmer and at this point we will call the meeting of the Town Council to order. Thank you very much. Thank you all for being here tonight and to our Town Council for being here with us to hear this very important report. Just for those watching at home this meeting is being recorded and live broadcast by Amherst Media. I've also been asked to announce that we have a new minute taker. Welcome Cielo and to ask committee members and counselors to please identify yourselves when speaking for the benefit of the minutes if you don't mind. So the first order of business I'm actually going to ask that we move the approval of minutes of August 20th to with the school committee's permission to the actual school committee meeting after the Town Council adjourns. I see nodding heads. Okay thank you very much. So that'll allow us to move into the Fort River Feasibility Study Report which I think is sort of the main reason why many folks are here tonight especially in our audience. I want to thank the Fort River Feasibility Study Building Committee chair and our architects from TSKP for being here tonight. I also just want to make a quick rearrangement of our agenda for tonight as well. We have currently listed that we would have public comment as a first item under the Amherst School Committee and understanding how important this topic is for a lot of community members in particular but also to give an opportunity for the Feasibility Study Building Committee to speak if they would so like. I would like to offer a brief public comment period on the item after the presentation and after the committee and the council have had an opportunity to ask their questions and have a discussion if that is okay with the Town Council and with our school committee. That is acceptable to the Town Council. Thank you. Thank you. And I see nodding heads in our school committee. So we will have a brief public comment period immediately after. So with that I just wanted to again thank the Fort River Feasibility Study Building Committee for their hard work on answering these questions. These are questions that have been raised a couple of years ago in the community about whether or not we could build on the Fort River, the current Fort River Elementary School site. And it was a request that was put by the school committee to Town Meeting at the time to appropriate the funds for this Feasibility Study. And so we are really grateful that this study has been done and that has been presented in the way that it has. This committee has done an incredible job with that. I want to thank Chair Salvin for stepping in and leading the conversation. They've been said fast. They've been thorough. We really appreciate the care and dedication that's been shown on this. And as a reminder to folks who have been following along on this topic, the Amherst School Committee heard a brief summary of this report a few months ago. It was just part of a milestone of understanding kind of where we were, but have waited for the committee and the NTSKP to finalize the details and prepare a public report, which was part of their state admission. So I just wanted to remind folks also before we begin that while we don't have a planned project yet, and there's no votes that are planned on this item tonight, this report will be helpful to the Town Council and the community when we receive state funding and are ready to move forward with either a renovation or a new building project. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Chair Salvin. I don't know if there's anything that you want to say or President Griezmer. Let me also say we thank the committee that did this. It's a very, very significant piece of work and provides a lot of rich information that I think we can all use going forward, particularly because you also dealt with the zero energy building issues, which is something that I know several of us are quite interested in in terms of how we implement that in this town. I will remind the council, we are also not making a vote. We are doing this because we felt it was only appropriate for us to hear this report if the school committee had already heard it or to hear it jointly with the school committee. We hope we can find more ways to better utilize everybody's time in these kinds of meetings. We look forward to this. Thank you. Thank you, President Griezmer. Chair Salvin, would you like to just, I'm sorry, a reminder to please make sure that the mic is on so you have to make sure that the bright green light is on. So just press the button. There we go. Okay, thank you. I'd like to introduce our design team, which is a walk to the back. This is Richard Sipic from TSKP and Jesse Saylor, TSKP. They've done a wonderful job working with us over the course of for them about a year and a half. And for the committee itself, almost two years now. So with that, I will let them take on the task of making the presentation this evening. Okay. And just a reminder to please make sure that your mic is on as well. Thank you. So I'm going to before you begin, I just wanted to say for the both the council and the committee that we we have a lot of slides in this deck, and we don't have a lot of time on this item for the agenda. We tried to make enough time so that we could hear the presentation, but also to allow enough time for the council and the committee to ask their questions and to have a discussion. So with that in mind, just turn that over to you. Thank you very much for the record. My name is Richard Sipic. I'm a registered architect in Massachusetts, as well as in Connecticut with me as my associate, Jesse Saylor. He's also a registered architect. We are office is we have offices in Hartford and in Boston. The two of us happen to be from the Hartford office. However, both of us have had MSBA experience MSBA meeting the Massachusetts School Building Authority. That's the agency that funds school projects in Massachusetts. Although this is not an MSBA project. Nevertheless, it comes into play when we talk about net costs to the town. So we're pleased to submit to the committee this evening. Our full and final feasibility study. The document looks like this. It's about 600 pages. We gave, I believe, three copies to the chairman of the committee. He will have them available for the public at certain locations. And I believe the committee will also have electronic version of the report available. It will be posted on a website and that link will be provided by the committee. Yes, there's quite a number of slides here. I will try to move quickly through them. I will try to make the point succinctly. And then we can certainly answer any questions. If I have to come back to a slide, we can certainly do that. So quite a number of people were involved in the in this study. As you can see, this slide shows members of the feasibility committee. And it included also Dr. Morris, superintendent of Amherst public schools. We also have included quite a number of consultants, as you can see on this slide. In addition to our firm, which is an architectural firm, we also had a sustainability consultant, independent cost estimator, a mechanical engineer who went through the existing Fort River School structural engineers who evaluated site and civil engineers. On top of that, the town had other studies that were done, which we have incorporated into the study as an appendix for the public to be able to review. And that material was prepared by a geotechnical engineer who evaluated the site from a structural standpoint and the ground standpoint. Also, we had an accessibility report and ADA compliance report that was done. A site survey was done. There was an industrial hygienist involved who evaluated the air quality, a roofing consultant who evaluated the condition of the existing roof. Oh, and by the way, another independent cost estimator because we wanted to make sure that there were two estimates that were done and that we were able to reconcile those costs. That reconciliation is now part of the report. Basically, there were two questions we tried to answer in this report. The first question that we kept hearing is this site buildable? You will see by the end of this report that, yes, the site is buildable. The second question is a little bit more complicated. What are the options? There are many options. And the factors that contribute to those options are the population that you anticipate, the kinds of activities on the site, what kind of energy systems you want to use. All of those factors were taken into account. And so we ended up with quite a number of options as you will be able to see in a few minutes. This is the site of the existing Fort River School. The north direction is to the left. At the bottom of the slide is southeast street. At the top of the slide, you see a wooded area, a wetland area, the Fort River itself, which runs north-south inside those woods. But I would like you to keep an eye on that ball field that's located just below the tree area. I'm going to go to the next slide, which is a diagram that illustrates the flood zone in this region. Now, when we did the investigation, we found that a portion of the site is in the flood zone. However, according to mapping information in the town, that flood zone needs to be remapped and it needs to be confirmed. We believe that the flood zone has changed. If you look at that tan area in that diagram, you can see that the right now is a baseball field in that location. That has not been wetlands or flood zone in many, many years because of the change in the topography. So there has been mapping that has been done redefining the flood zone and right now that flood zone should follow that tree line. That is in process right now. Our study was based on the assumption that that flood zone will be corrected. Now, one of the things that came up in earlier presentations before the public was the comment that there's no point in building on the site. The site school building was built on a swamp. It's not a swamp. Historically, this was farmland. It has changed over time. But it is possible to build on the site. And when we first looked at the site, we knew that it was in a riverbed area, but that didn't frighten us. We've built buildings in riverbed areas before. There are techniques that can be used. You can even use caissons if necessary or pilings if necessary to build a building in a riverbed area. So the geotechnical information became critical. And the results of that information, the geotechnical investigation was that you don't even need piles or caissons. It's very easy to build on the site using conventional spread footings. In fact, the existing building, which has been here since 1972, is built on conventional spread footings. It's not unusual foundations. The same technique can be used for a one-story building going forward. A two-story building may require some additional reinforcement of the ground, and that's achievable, and that's incorporated into the costs in the option that looked at a two-story variation in this study. If you look at the details that we were able to obtain, there are record drawings of the existing building. That diagram on the left is an excerpt from the original drawings. You can see that these are just conventional spread footings. They're four feet deep. You can see that there's slab with compacted gravel underneath it. What's interesting here for us was that there was no vapor barrier installed under the slab in the existing building. That's not unusual. This was 1972 for heaven's sakes. That's not what we would do today. Today, we would definitely build nonpermeable membrane under such a slab, and we would do other things as well. We would do curtain drains around the foundation of the building to make sure that there's proper drainage. There has been discussion in the public about, well, there's moisture migrating through the slab, coming through the slab and causing a problem. That if you look at boxes that were stored on the slab in the existing building, you can see there's moisture underneath the boxes. I'm not so sure. Remember that the building is also not ventilated and that this diagram illustrates very inexpensive, cheap construction that did not include insulation underneath the slab. So there's a thermal bridge there. You have a very cold slab and in humid conditions, you can have condensation on the surface of the floor. Consequently, I believe that it's very likely that it's not moisture migrating through the slab, but rather it's condensation occurring on the concrete slab. That will not occur in a new building that is properly ventilated. This chart on the right shows the issues that we identified, such as low bearing pressure. And if there's a cost premium for building a two-story building, which is the case in one of our options, option A, yes, that can be achieved. There's a $624,000 premium associated with that and that's a matter of reinforcing the soils with using the proper kinds of epoxies or cements or grouts or option B. A portion of option B is a two-story addition, so there would be a $304,000, almost a $305,000 premium associated with that. But other kinds of construction activity, there's no premium associated with that. Upgrading the underslab, rich harder. There's a $2 to $5 square foot premium, as you can see here, not a premium for surface water control or additional reinforcement for concrete walks. So those kinds of things are already incorporated into the costs. From a structural geological standpoint, the site is quite buildable. How big should the building be? Well, that's a function of how many pupils you put into it. And so after some discussion with the Feasibility Committee and in consultation with the superintendent, we came up with this range of population, anywhere from 315 to 420 pupils in the grade ranges of K through 6. We also talked as one possible variation, adding pre-K pupils to the mix. This chart represents that range as well, 45 full-time equivalents. In other words, you could have half-day pupils. If you factor in those half-days and then translate that to full-time equivalents, those additional 45 pupils would end up with a maximum population of 465. So how do you determine the size of the building based upon the population of 465? There are rules of thumb that you can use. There are guidelines that you can use. We chose to use the guidelines that are published by MSBA. Again, it's not an MSBA project, but it's a reasonable guideline to use. And later on, that's a factor when you consider the net cost to the town. So what does MSBA say? MSBA says a population of 465 could justify a school size of 72,742 square feet. However, in our study, we're recommending a building of 85,000 square feet. And the reason that we're recommending a larger square footage is because Amherst has classroom guidelines that are progressive. They have a smaller population per classroom as opposed to MSBA's guidelines, which is more like 25 pupils per classroom. So in order to accommodate that kind of progressive population per grade, per classroom, you need more square footage. In addition to that, we talked about including in the Fort River plan district special ed spaces such as Ames Building Blocks, that amounts to roughly 5,900 square feet, plus some administrative space for pre-K as well. So those are the numbers that have to be added to the 72,742 that the MSBA guidelines say. That's how we came up with the 85,000 square feet. In discussions with the feasibility study, there were certain things that needed to be included in the project. The committee wanted to make sure that we planned a facility that had natural light in all of the classrooms, for example, had good air quality ventilation, good acoustics, and so on. You can see the list here, including all of those lists, list of items including proper security features. So we tried to plan all of the options to make sure that these non-negotiable items were included. Now I'm going to share with you six options, A, B, C, D, E, and F. F is the only option that does not address these non-negotiables. F was used as a base example. In other words, if we just fixed the building and meet code, what would that cost? And it was important for us to have that base example to compare with the others. We also looked at variables in terms of different kinds of HVAC systems. So if you look at this chart on the left-hand side, you can see HVAC system one, HVAC system two, and so on all the way down to HVAC system six. These are the two-effect costs. HVAC system six was used across the board in every variable because it's the most conventional system. You can always do upgrades, and we can talk about that, but this was the most conventional, easy to maintain system. It's the lowest initial cost. Again, it was to establish a baseline for the purpose of comparing each of the options. So as you can see, we've had roughly 145 variables or 145 variations. We chose to focus on in column A, you see there 51. That represents $51 million of construction cost alone. On top of the construction cost, we would have to add soft costs such as furniture and equipment, contingency, design fees, engineering, and so on. So right off the bat, you can see that option A, which is a new building, is $51 million for new construction. And all of these dollars represent the fall of 2020, the year 2020. Again, that's a baseline. If you delay the project a year, you would have to add 4% per year. That's the agreed upon rate of inflation for construction dollars that was agreed upon by both estimators. We can come back to this later. If we compare options A through F, you can see this summarizes the difference. A is a new building of 85,000 square feet. Remember that was our goal. Option B is a two-story addition of 87,000 square feet. It's a little bit bigger in square footage because it's a less efficient layout. We are using existing footprint. And the percentages that you see at the bottom, you can see 100% new building, 50% new building, 29% new, et cetera. This summarizes the six mechanical systems that we were talking about. It's important to point out that option number six is an air-cooled electric system. In fact, all of these options except for D and E are all electric systems because we have a net zero bylaw. So the only way to achieve that is through electric and avoid the use of any kind of natural gas. Let's talk about net zero energy. So in the fall of 2017, the town adopted a net zero bylaw and it was amended in 2018. What net zero says is that if you are going to use public funding, you need to build a building that achieves net zero, which in other words means when the building's energy demand can be satisfied by renewable energy systems. Typically, that would mean a photovoltaic system, a solar system on the site. And so that's what we examined. Now, when you evaluate the consumption of energy in a building, you have to take everything into account, heating, cooling, ventilation, and so on. And you have to factor in energy losses through walls, ceilings, windows, et cetera. And energy use in a building is measured in something called energy use intensity, EUI. And that is expressed in kilobtus per square foot per year. This is technical jargon. But basically, for people who are really into this technical jargon, if you do some research, you'll find out that you can convert energy into a common term rather than BTUs or calories or other kinds of calculations, you can make them all common to convert them into one type of unit. So that's what KBTU per square foot per year. So a building that has an energy use intensity of 50 uses 50 KBTU per square foot per year. You multiply that by the number of square footage, and then you can convert that into the total. KBTU, you can use that to determine how much oil is needed if that's what you're going to use or electricity if that's what you're going to use. I don't want to belabor it, we can continue this a little bit later in the conversation. Your net zero bylaw doesn't specifically say a building of energy use intensity of 50, which by the way, building code does require. So we would have to do that anyway. This chart illustrates at the top that box you can see energy use intensity of 50. The characteristics in that building is that you can use the building all year long, including summer programs, you can air condition that building, you can use double glazed windows, low e coding, those are ratings represent installation ratings in the wall and the roof, and you can use a VAV system for your mechanical system, you can achieve that and meet your net zero goals. What if you improve that? Oh, I'm sorry. So if you can get enough photo voltaics on your site to satisfy the electrical and power consumption needs of that building, then you've achieved net zero. If you do certain other things and reduce the energy use intensity to a less intensive building, you don't need as many photovoltaic panels, you can reduce the number of photovoltaic panels. So how do you do that? Well, perhaps your summer program doesn't run all summer. Maybe it's only for part of the building. That would be one strategy take to take to reduce the energy consumption. Perhaps you adjust your thermostat so that during the summer you have 77 to 78 degrees, winter 68 degrees, maybe you go to triple glazing. Maybe you put radiant flooring on the ground floor. That helps you to reduce the thermostats and not have to heat the air as much. But those kinds of features in a building of that intensity cost money. So we'll talk about money a little bit later. How does that compare when you look at now photovoltaic systems? Remember, energy use intensity of 50 to achieve net zero on a project such as this, we would have to put photovoltaic systems on the site and on the roof of the building, the proposed new building, as you can see in this diagram. All the pink represents photovoltaic panels on the site. And the tan area in this diagram represents the footprint of a two-story building, the total of which is 85,000 square feet. And the cost associated with installing those photovoltaic systems is approximately 6.4 million. That's roughly 10% of the total project cost of such a project. What if you do some improvements to that building and reduce the energy use intensity? You can reduce the number of photovoltaic systems as you can see in this chart. You don't have to nearly do as much on the ground for photovoltaics. However, you're spending more money on the envelope of the building. You're increasing the cost of HVAC systems so that the net zero premium associated with the building of this energy use intensity is roughly $7.7 million. That's the premium associated with the net zero for buildings of different kinds of use. So far so good. We can come back a little bit later. We've factored into our cost estimate these kinds of energy use intensity, 30, for the buildings that you'll see a little bit later. There's additional insulation thickness to achieve, EUI 30, additional slab on grade, et cetera. As you can see here, additional solar shading devices on the windows. That's all factored in. So let's very quickly go through the options. Option A is a 100% new building. This diagram represents how much space it would take up on the site. This footprint would be placed just to the south of the existing building. It could be placed without disrupting the existing school. This is a comparison of the footprint. The existing Fort River School is a tan area. And this is drawn to scale. The building on the right is an 85,000 square foot two-story building. And that could be built adjacent to the Fort River School while Fort River School is still occupied. Option B, which is 50% new and 50% renovated. This would be a two-story addition, again, on the south side of the building. And then we would remove a portion of the existing Fort River School. And we would also open up that central area of the building. If you visit the building now, you'll see that the building has the media center, the library right in the center. And remember, one of the goals of the Feasibility Committee was let's get natural light into all of the classrooms. And so what we did is we recommended that we remove that media center, place it elsewhere in the addition of the proposed new building, and then get daylight into each and every space within the footprint of the building. That's achievable. So the tan area represents areas of the building that would be removed. And the gray would be renovated. The blue is new. This is option B. Option C, which is 29% new, places a new footprint of the building on the north side of the building. We wanted to see how that might play out. This is actually a very difficult portion of the site, but it is achievable. It's because it's very narrow. The amount of room available is narrow. But again, it's achievable using the same strategy, removing the media center in the middle of the building, the existing building, and adding to the north. Option C, which is only 18% new. These are additions in blue and renovations of the existing building. Again, similar strategy. Option E, an addition primarily for the pre-K wing only and renovation of the existing building. Okay, so constructing such a building while the existing building is operational, is achievable, the amount of time it would take will vary. So this diagram illustrates that in option A, which is building a new building, you don't disrupt the existing population, just build a new building when you're finished, move everyone in, and then demolish the old building and finish the site work. That still takes the least amount of time, 22 months. The longest duration is in options D and E, because we would need to grab portions of the existing building and we renovate it as we go around, we would move people into new portions and then create space as we, that renovation is done, that would take quite a bit more time, 36 months as opposed to 22. And those, that means that there's a greater duration of construction that's taken into account in the cost estimates. This chart illustrates the total project costs, including all soft costs, all furniture and equipment, all of the phasing, et cetera, and this works out to be, as you can see, option A, approximately 63 million, down to 47 million for option E. 28 doesn't really satisfy educational requirements. It just meets code. One more factor that we talked about with the feasibility committee. All of the numbers I've shown you so far are using the construction manager method of construction. What about general contractor method of construction? MSBA has done an extensive study of this, and there was a time when MSBA encouraged the use of construction managers. They've revised their policy now. In fact, they used to offer an incentive, a reimbursement incentive, a greater share of state money. If you use the construction management method, they've changed that policy now, they don't offer an incentive, and they have found that general contractor method is actually less expensive. So that $63 million that I just showed you, that could become $57 million under option A, using the general contractor method. Now, I don't recommend general contractor method for each option. The only one that makes sense, quite frankly, in my opinion, is option A, because it's an entirely new building that does not disrupt the existing population. You need a construction manager present on the site to be able to phase the project, to work with the school administration and school personnel, to make sure that you're not disrupting the activity on the site. So that takes a little bit more coordination, and it takes a little bit more money, quite frankly. So option A, this chart shows that there are two variations for option A, construction manager method or the general contractor method. Remember the $63 million that we showed for option A, that could become $57 million if you use general contractor. All the other options remain using the construction manager method. We'll talk about the net cost. That total project cost, I was just quoting, is a total gross cost of the project. So MSBA also offers an incentive to achieve LEED certified or Northeast Collaborative High Performance School verified energy saving measures. If you incorporate those in the building, you get an additional 2% reimbursement. So let's look at the total reimbursement rates for that MSBA would offer. We were estimating that the total reimbursement would be 64%. However, there would be additional incentives, as you can see by this chart. So there would be for energy efficiency 2% for options A, B, and C. And so if you look at this chart, you can see that the net cost to the Amherst for option A could be either $35 to $39 million or $29 to $33 million using a general contractor method. And those ranges are pretty self-explanatory. So the effective reimbursement rate you can see at the bottom. So are these costs out of line? Seems awfully expensive. So what we did as we compared this estimate with other projects that were done in Massachusetts using MSBA, and these are some comparable projects that were done recently. You can see in the column on the extreme right, the construction costs per square foot, that range. And on the bottom, you can see our estimate for construction costs using either energy use intensity 30, which is the more expensive version, or energy use intensity 50, which is the less expensive version. Is that out of line? I don't believe it is, especially when you realize that those costs include the net zero premiums that I just mentioned. All of the other schools up above were not net zero buildings. We were asked at the last presentation that we had made, what about energy utility costs? What about carbon emissions? Can you look at that, please? So we did. And so this chart illustrates, we just chose three options, A, C, and E, just to give you some feel for utility costs per year, as well as the carbon emissions for each of these options. So under option A, you can see we are projecting that utility costs per year would be 40 to $50,000 per year. So over 10 years that would be $400 to $500,000. And so let's talk a little bit about carbon emissions. So you'll see scope one, scope two, scope three. Well, what does that mean? Well, scope one are carbon emissions that are released by fuels that you're using. So in the case of option A, there would be zero carbon emissions because remember, it's all electric and all of that is generated on site. Scope number two are carbon emissions that are associated with the delivery of energy. So for instance, if you're using natural gas, which we would be using in some of the options like option E, or in the case of option C, where we don't have enough photovoltaic panels because your net zero bylaw says only new construction needs to be net zero. So now if you're doing a project that is new construction as well as renovation work, only the new portion would need to meet the net zero requirement. And so you could still use, for example, existing boilers in the renovation portion, which are relatively new, which are natural gas powered. It doesn't make sense to throw them away. Well, that depends upon your decision, but it would make sense to incorporate them if costs were the primary factor. Then there's carbon emissions associated with that. Can I butt in here? Of course. Only options D and E assume the reuse of the existing boilers, which are in good shape, but they're natural gas and fossil fuel burning. And so scope one has to do with burning fossil fuels on site. So only option E has carbon emissions for using the existing boilers. Option C does have scope two carbon emissions. Option C is an all electric building similar to option A. It is a renovated building. So those renovated areas are not offset by solar panels because they do not have to meet net zero. Only the new construction areas need to be offset by solar panels. Well, if they're not offset, then they're using electricity from the grid. Scope two carbon emissions has to do with carbon used to generate the electricity that's used on site. So if the power plant is burning natural gas to create electricity and it's being used on site by the building, that gets tracked as scope two carbon emissions. That's why option C has some. I'm glad you're here. You're welcome. And scope three has to do with carbon that's embedded in the construction material. So some materials are more energy intensive to fabricate. And in the case of option A, you can see that it's all new material. So there's obviously more energy or carbon emissions associated with building those materials. But over a 10 year period, it's the least because there's no ongoing scope one and scope two carbon emissions associated with that. Okay, so in conclusion, is the site buildable? Yes, it is. I don't think there's any question in our mind that you can build a building on this site and you can expand the existing building. The second question, what are the options? Well, as you can see, there are many options. And if you just want to look at the gross cost, it ranges anywhere from 47 to 66 million gross cost. Or if you look at net cost to Amherst, anywhere from $19 to $37 million, again, $2020. So at this point, I'd be happy to try to answer any questions. Thank you very much. So at this point, we are going to open it up to the council, town council and school committee for questions. Again, a reminder that we are trying to get through an agenda with a lot of other items. So definitely ask the questions that you want to ask or need to ask. But we also know that there are other options available for follow up conversations later on. And of course, once we actually have a project in place, there will be plenty of time to discuss a lot of these different options because there's a lot of information here. So just a show of hands if anybody wants to make any comments, we can also go around the room. Mr. Dumling. Okay, and just a reminder, please to announce your name and for the minutes, Peter Dunling School Committee. So just keeping this as short as possible to send technical questions about some of the data. So how not being a hydrologist myself, how reliable are floodplain maps and groundwater conditions when projecting into the next 50 years? Like if we're going to build a new or substantially renovated building, we want it to last. And the reason I ask is because I'm thinking about FEMA maps, you know, but estimate a flood once every 100 years on a 100 year floodplain based on current and past weather conditions. And not to get into a whole climate change discussion here, but there's a lot of, you know, strongly held belief that weather in the next 50 years is going to be substantially wetter in a more hostile. And so, you know, what can we really rely on in terms of what that data currently shows us? And the other question is, how reliably do these estimates scale up with particularly with regards to cost and carbon emissions? And the reason I ask that is that we submitted a statement of interest to the MSBA with a compromise framework supported unanimously by the Town Council and the School Committee for one building of 600 students to take care of both Fort River and Wildwood. And this study was limited to buildings of the current enrollment size, so 465. And so is it as easy as looking at that chart and increasing those numbers by 30 percent to get from 465 to 600? Is it better than that? Is it different when you look at cost and carbon? So those are my two basic questions. Sure. So you can do the carbon question. But I'll try to answer the flood map. The FEMA maps are historical information and they're based upon aerial information. They actually have to be verified in the field. They have to be surveyed and they have an actual topographic map. Accurate topographic information has to be provided in order for them to be updated. And the information that we were able to obtain from the FEMA maps is that it's clearly outdated. I can't remember what year they were done, but they're old. So they do need to be updated. That's why I showed you that map. And they are subject to change. Over time, they are subject to change as the surrounding flood plain may change, development occurs. They are subject to change. And so any kind of substantial development in the flood plain does need to take into account the big picture. And we've had those done in larger scale projects. But that I think is beyond the scope of this. It's difficult for me to predict the future. But there is a trend. And I think you are aware of that trend. And so we need to be very conservative when we're planning expansion of this facility. Anyway, I hope that answers. I honestly believe that there is an uproar on the site to stay out of this flood plain for the foreseeable future. Jesse? Sure. We want to speak to carbon. So if you're doing a new building, you're really just looking at the embodied carbon because you don't have any scope one or scope two. And for the purposes of this study, we've worked with a square foot benchmark or rule of thumb. So that would be very scalable. So I think you could take the new square footage of the new building, let's say it's 22,000 square feet more, which we estimated in the report for 600 population, and just prorate the carbon up for the embodied. As for the other two, if you're looking at a renovation, then those came from energy analysis that were done based on the renovated areas in the project. So I'd have to think harder to see if those are truly scalable. They're a little more complicated. And then the question was, does the cost scale up? I think it does. So a 600 pupil population, I think you could, for the purpose of your quick analysis, you can scale up. You can adjust that proportionally. Probably the cost per square foot drops a little bit as the building area goes up, generally speaking. But for broad brush analysis, you can quickly achieve just by portion. I think that's doable. Now, I do want to make one other observation about carbon emissions. Our study was limited to this site only. So if you are considering other sites, you would probably need to take transportation into account to really get a measure of carbon emissions, depending upon where the site is located, that could be a factor. Any other questions from town council? Yes. I'm Cathy Shane. I'm on the town council. I'm just going to follow up with a couple technical and your reports terrific. So it probably says somewhere in there, but I couldn't find the pages where it might say it. So when you've shown us the diagrams that go A through the E or the renovation, my understanding is you use 465 all the way through. So you picked one size. So if I keep it at 465, what I want to know is the plus having pre or not having pre-K other than student size, is there more square footage needed for 45 pre-K students than there would be for 45 elementary? So roughly, is there a quick algorithm that says you could have the same 465, but if it was all K through 6, it would be X percent smaller just because 45 of them would be a different clearly sized child. Well, that is true that the square foot per student is higher for early childhood for pre-K than it is for K through 5, and it's actually higher for kindergarten than it is for 5 or 6. But I think if you, I can't quickly tell you, unfortunately, how much less the building would be if it was K through 6 at 465. Okay, because that's a good answer. I mean, I can see as you go into building sizes. And then the second question is you were going through the EUI 50 and the EUI 30 and showing some of the elements. I've been in several buildings with radiant floors and they really make for an amazing atmosphere. So I was wondering, you've got them listed on the chart as if they came in packages, but I assume you could say we want kind of EUI 50, but we want a radiant floor. And let me just continue. If you wanted that, does that make it harder to do in a renovated building as opposed to a new building? I mean, how do you get that underneath an existing building? So is some of your decision on where you're starting going to restrict you on what you can and can't do? So I'll start with that last first. So yes, in a renovated scenario, it would be very difficult to get a good radiant floor. It's easier to do in new construction. There are techniques you could use, but it does involve at least trenching concrete in order to achieve the kind of radiant flooring that you want to do at a minimum. It's possible maybe to add a layer of concrete, but then you get into accessibility and being able to raise the flooring up to a level that meets that elevation. So yes, it's possible to add radiant flooring to EUI 50. Should you want to do that? That's just an additional cost you would have. But by all means, you should do that. We've done it many, many times. We should probably add the caveat to those groups, EUI 30 and EUI 50, that they were sort of just general, we called them recipes at the time. Just general items you might think of as being attached to each energy performance. So we were not necessarily saying that these are the decisions you would need to make to get to that. So they weren't bundles per se. They were just here some pieces. Yeah. Thanks. Yes. The kinds of things you would think of to achieve a higher performance. Dorothy Pam, member of the town council. Well, I was very excited to see the implications of the EU30 building because I've been excited about geothermal being put into large projects. And I like the idea of the way the building would be heated. I can't stand over air conditioned buildings. I think it makes people sick. But the idea of removing the humidity from the air and keeping it at a reasonable temperature sounds really nice. I like radiant floors and you showed that the cost savings are really great over time. So I think that's been very useful for us as we go forward in thinking about what we're going to do when we find out what we can do. Any other questions from the council? Ms. Spitzer, did you have a question? Ms. Spitzer and the Ms. Hannake. Sorry, just one quick question. Thank you very much for the report. I'm sorry. My name's Carrie Spitzer. I'm with the Emmer School Committee. These options show large changes to the fields and the other areas surrounding the building. And I'm just wondering if those costs were included in the estimates or if they would be in addition. Those costs were included. Yes. So I'm Mandy Joe Hannake for the Emmer's Town Council. I'm going to try and get it all out. So the PV panels, I know you said and the net zero bylaw says that if a fully renovated build, if it's renovated, you don't need to add net zero. So you don't necessarily need PV panels. So you looked at systems and didn't cost them out. But I was reading, you know, as the Town Council gets towards 100% renewable throughout, even if the net zero doesn't require it, we might still want cost estimates. So I was concerned option, I guess it's E3 or all the E options pretty much are renovation only, especially if you don't put pre-K in that building, which means no net zero under the bylaw. But I was concerned that the roof itself from the roof report says that PV panels can't go on that roof if it's unless you add even more cost on. So how does that, you know, how much did you cost estimate how much cost adding PV panels to the roof of the current building would be to be able to make it net zero even on the renovated portion? And if so, how much would that add into renovating that roof to add the structural support since it wouldn't go there? And then the next one is with the subsystem, you talked about the flooring, the slab. And in a renovation, how do you add in the moisture barrier to control for the air handling that you said you don't think is contributed by water coming up, but by just condensation and all that? How do you do that on the renovated side so that we don't continue to have what people are saying are moisture problems in a renovated building? Because you can't go, I'm assuming you can't go in and add a moisture barrier under a slab that already exists. No, you can't. So I'll take a piece of it and then Jesse will take the remainder. So trying to correct a condensation problem should be addressed with ventilation. I mean, the existing building is not well ventilated at all. So just moving air and removing the humidity and then using dehumidification system will help a lot. I really think that the problem is really a condensation problem. A new building would have a proper vapor barrier as well. It's that's very difficult to do in a renovation project. It's extremely expensive. You'd be tearing out slabs and putting a membrane underneath. The best that you can do in a renovation is add coating to the slab itself to prevent any possible moisture migration from coming through. That's the best that you can do. And so that's there are some costs associated with that, but you're not going to eliminate it completely, eliminate that possibility completely like you can with a true vapor barrier underneath it. Yes. So you're asking about the renovation options and going to 100% renewable, which was which is not part of our study. In looking at renovation options, we were in part probably because we have experiences public school architects were always looking for the most cost effective approaches and renovation is cost effective to a point. If it needs to be brought to 100% renewable, the ability to get the renovation options to the same level of energy efficiency as a new construction will likely make it cost more in general. And so at the time that wasn't a requirement, so we definitely made the renovations as cost effective as possible within the current constraints. You also brought up the question of whether the roof can handle PV panels. We actually do show PV panels on the roof. It's limited in area. We worked with the structural engineer who had reviewed the roof and found that well, it's not true that it's completely unable to accept solar panels, but it was only, I'm going to say 15% that it could actually support without major roof restructuring. And at that point, we'd be losing cost effectiveness in our approach to renovation. So we stuck with that. We put up what we could on the renovated roof. Yes, Ms. Grisbier. Let me just let me just make sure I've led you a spur of town council. Let me just make sure I understand this. If we as a town choose the option of partially new and partial renovation, and then we as a town committed to climate change say, oh, but now we want to make that section of the building that is a renovated set part, we want to have that be as close to zero energy as possible. You're saying the building would probably cost more than if we just tore down the whole thing and built a new building? And let me be clear, we did not study that. And so I would expect it would cost more than the renovation options that we've included here. I can say that much. Can I add to that as well? One of the things we discovered is the floor to roof structure height is very low in the existing building. So adding things like ductwork for ventilation purposes will be challenging in a renovation project. So I can't give you the figures tonight, but Instinct tells me you're better off not doing that. I'm actually quite familiar with the school my son went there. The the other question is really isn't the I'm very concerned about the moisture issue. And I'm even more concerned when you say you think that's it. It seems to me there must be a way to cordon off a piece of the building, try, you know, something with it, more ventilation, more air conditioning, or more whatever. And see whether or not it can be corrected that way because I can tell you right now I sure hope we don't build a building and find out you're wrong. If we build a new building I assure you it'll be done correctly. An old building. But we didn't have the means quite frankly to do any kind of extensive testing or set up a procedure to cordon off a building to actually measure. I'm basing my judgment on many years of experience and from my own observations of what's going on in the building. Yes, Mr. Goldman. Shalini Behal Meln, town council. So continuing with the moisture issue. I just wanted a clarification because I've suffered with this in my personal construction. There's a difference between damp proofing and water proofing and so what you have mentioned here is not damp proofing but it is water proofing. Okay, unfortunately these terms are thrown around a lot by people. So water proofing literally is swimming pool waterproofing. It doesn't prevent any moisture from getting, not only moisture but any water from penetrating at all. And we've done buildings like that. We've even done green roofs that are completely waterproof. That's different than damp proofing. Damp proofing is applying a coating that if you, if the hydrostatic pressure gets high enough, can penetrate the damp proofing. And that's typically done on basement walls, on the exterior walls of basements just to help keep the basements dry. What I was talking about when I met vapor barrier is a membrane that truly is vapor proof. Now people use the term vapor barrier quite loosely. A true, a true vapor barrier is a barrier that is, has a rating of less than I think point one perm or there's a technical term used for that but it literally does not allow any vapor at all. And typically those kinds of membranes have some sort of metallic component to it. It's not just cheap plastic. So to get a true vapor barrier you'd have to get good quality material that has at least some sort of metallic composition to it. My understanding then from what you're saying is that vapor barrier is better than damp proofing. Yes. And the other question is if the water level rises will the vapor barrier prevent water from entering and going through the building? If the groundwater? Yeah. Or the water table or if, yeah. Yes, it would prevent it. Ms. Brewer and then I'm hoping we can wrap up the conversation. So this, as part of our environmental, oh, Alyssa Brewer, thank you, counsel. As part of our environmental sensitivity beyond our base requirements of our net zero by law, some other people have touched on aspects of this. Reuse of buildings is really important to us but at the same time this isn't a historic building. It wasn't built to last 100 years. It's, I'll leave it at that. But how, so how given that? How accurate are the renovation incentive points you've given us in terms of are they a judgment call or exact formula? Because my concern is that up until this point I've never believed that renovation would provide us with the same quality of experience for the students and the staff moving forward. But I do notice that renovations assume to significantly improve our effective reimbursement rate and that's going to speak to some people because it's an expensive project. So give me a little insight, one, as to if there is an exact formula that MSBA just says if you do this you will get that as opposed to, well, the maximum points are this and maybe we'll get them and maybe we won't. And then secondarily, based on your years of experience as you've mentioned several times, renovation versus new building associated with this type of building as opposed to say one of our hundred year old historic buildings that used to be a school. So as to the method of costing, remember these studies were done at the feasibility level. So we don't have full plans and facts that these projects have not been bid out with guaranteed prices from bidders. So the best that you can do in this scenario is use professional cost estimators who are independent. We told them do your own cost estimating, we don't want to influence you. On top of that, the feasibility committee decided that it would hire yet another cost estimator that would be working directly for the feasibility committee and that that estimator came up with numbers. There were some differences, some were higher, some were lower and then there was a reconciliation between those two independent estimators. So what you have in the estimate is the reconciliation, the agreed upon number that both estimators felt were quite reasonable. The actual estimates, the independent estimates were quite close, they were within 10% of each other, which at the feasibility level is very, very close. With regard to MSBA incentives, I won't go back, but the primary differentiator between the renovations and new constructions with incentives is the amount of renovated square footage, which relates directly to a percentage incentive. And so you could see it increases the more we're renovating. And I think that's a pretty straightforward calculation just on the percentage of the building that's renovated. So I think that's pretty easy to predict. Was the question about the educational quality in a renovation as well? Right, so we did and we didn't actually present them in this presentation, we could have made it longer. We worked out layouts for all the renovation options to ensure that we had daylighting to each of the classrooms to reach all those non-negotiables we talked about. And so from an educational programming point of view, we're achieving a lot of the targets of 21st century schools in that. One of the things perhaps we struggled with was grouping classrooms. We were able in the new construction to group classrooms into suites around the dual language program in a unique and in specific way that in working with the renovation we had to work somewhat with the layout that was there. And so this is something I think every community deals with when they make this decision versus new versus renovation as to what their threshold is for working with the existing building and what their goals are educationally. So if there are no further burning questions from the council or the committee, I would like to open us up to public comment, brief public comment. And I know that the team from TSKP has offered to stick around to help answer any questions that come from the community. Again, given the fact that we have other items on the agenda and I know that the town council probably wants to move on at some point, I'm going to open it up for about 10 minutes and then if there are any further questions or comments from public, we can definitely take those in a normal fashion. So if that works, I'm going to ask our team from TSKP if you don't mind, this is actually our public comment space. And so if anyone wishes to make a public comment, please come up to the microphone and you have three minutes and please state your name. Press the button please. Make sure it's lit. Okay. I'm a member of the school building committee. I wanted to make a comment regarding how to scale up the number from 465 high up. So if you look into the report, you have time, there's a space summary. You can go afterwards. In here states that for classrooms for brick in the garden are 1100 square footage. Those are three classrooms that accounted in the space. Those account for the 45 students, whereas a classroom for one through six is 900 square footage. So three classrooms at the 1100 square foot is 3300 square foot. If you add the coordination room is another 300. So now you're at 3600 square footage. That doesn't take into account the specialized rooms dedicated for the pre-k, but if you just take the space of the classrooms plus the administration that's 36 square foot, that's about four classrooms, one through six. So that's instead of 45 kids, pre-k, that's 80 kids on the norms here on one through six. There's other spaces that would be transferable. So I didn't include it, but it's over 80 students one through six that can be added in the same layer. Thank you. Any other comments from the public? Our questions. Please come up to the mic. It's just a little question, I think, but I'm wondering, especially given all the things about renovations and given the fact that the building that would be renovated is already kind of a mess. I would want to know if whatever contingency is built in, in the new building, there should be a much bigger contingency built into any of the renovation suggestions. And I haven't looked at this, but I would hope that that's the case. And I'm asking if it is. Thank you. Dr. Morris, did you want to make a comment? Although you're not really a member of the public, but I can wait till then. I just didn't want to. Okay, let's finish up public comment. That's what I was. If there are any other members of the public that would like to make a comment, please feel free to do so. If not, I'm going to close public comment. Okay. Seeing no other comments, Dr. Morris, did you want to speak to an item on this? Just very briefly, I want to offer my thanks and appreciation and gratitude to both TSKP studio as well as the building, the feasibility committee for incredible amount of work. So two years ago, just to frame it, you know, spring of 2017, we're in a place where we just had incredible amounts of questions and some of them were answered tonight. So I really sincerely want to offer my thanks, appreciation to the committee to chair Salvin and our team of architects. I think there's something that's a bit sobering as well, looking at the information. I mean, one might think the numbers of the costs are sobering, but I think the other thing that's sobering is the need of the schools to be either renovated or replaced, and then the number of decisions between hopefully December 11 when we get into MSBA and when we have a renovated or replaced building. And so I'm much happier that we have their sobering moment now. I think that's incredibly useful to our community that were that for me, at least from my perspective, we're having this moment instead of getting into a process and perhaps not having these additional information, but also knowing the roadmap ahead is going to have lots of turns and lots of different opinions as we talked about tonight. And there's no building on tap for further discussion, yet the conversation that I was just a witness to around net zero for renovation is one of many, many things and decisions to be made. So I remain hopeful that our community can come together, figure out what we want and come and figure out what we need, what our students and staff need. And I think the committee, as well as the architects have done great service to in that effort. So I just wanted to offer thanks and gratitude. Thank you, Dr. Morris. And I think you echo the feelings of a lot of the committee members that I've spoken with. And I know I've heard this community as well and I see some nodding heads in the council. So a big thank you again to Chair Salvin for leading this group through this exploration and also for all the community members who participated in this committee. You've provided valuable information for the community. And also to our architects from TSKP, thank you again for taking the time not only to work on this feasibility study, but also to present to us tonight and previously. This document, which is the actual feasibility study, will be, there's a copy that's going to be available at the Jones Library. Is that correct? And so it can be found there if any members of the public want to find it. We also have a copy with us, which I will give in the hands of Dr. Morris in case, since we, the school committee does not have an actual office or presence in case the public wants to access that. But also there are link, there is a link available from what I understand on the for the feasibility study building committee is website. So if members of the public want to access the full report, they can do so on their website. And with that, I'm going to hand it over to President Griezmer to do what she does. Oh, Ms. Brewer, I'm sorry. So, Alyssa Brewer, Town Council, I was just going to ask that before we leave, which we all would love to do so you can move on with your next topic, is if you could frame for us a little bit and for the community, what you perceive to be next steps? Are we just be sit with this and say, isn't that interesting? And we go and read more of it because it's also available in tonight's Town Council Packet, just like you have it linked. And we're just waiting for December 11th. Or how does it affect the conversations we have between now and December 11th? What do we do with this? Well, it's a very good question. I think we've addressed that question previously at Town Meeting when we requested the funding initially and also in subsequent meetings that we've had. At this point, we don't have a project in place. And so the questions that have been answered through this feasibility study are information that we are going to use in the event of an actual project. As I think most of the community knows, if not the entire community at this point, we filed applications for MSBA funding earlier this year with the Town Council's support, unanimous support. And so we are waiting for a response from the state on funding for a new building project. We should hear in the beginning of December, there will be a school committee meeting scheduled at that time once we receive word back from the state on what their determination is. And hopefully at that point, this feasibility study, if the application is approved, this feasibility study then will provide the information that we will need to move forward on a project. And if that application is denied, then this study will sit tight until we are ready to use it. But again, this information is provided very valuable answers to a lot of the questions that have been circulating for a number of years now about the Fort River site. And so it's information that hopefully the Town Council and the community itself can use for a future project. President Griezmer. Right. At this point, the Town Council is adjourned. So I'm going to suggest that we take a short recess, three minutes perhaps, so that we can say goodbye to the Town Council and school committee can re-adjourn. It's not as much as you think. It's not as much as you think. But it is, it is a craft. It's like a million dollars but I'm getting tired of growing here at the top of my head. It's all in here. Yeah. Yeah. I didn't, I wouldn't know how to do it. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to work with you. Thank you. On your jazz and on your time. You still need to ride home? Yeah. Six hundred and forty-five phases. Right. But now I'm trying to It really gives it a sense that their concerns and feelings are irrational, when in fact they find that. You guys found that it was simply a pixel, but it wasn't even going deep in it. Yes, there's no reason for people to be blind with the light's bluster. I'm not sure what I wanted to say, but also one of the things I wanted to say was in my college. I wanted to share with my colleagues that there was actually a discussion. Because it means that he isn't actually more aggressive than simply, you know, if he is mentally a general heart. It's not going to deter him. And I don't think it's unbearable that you're blind. He's being actually blind. Yeah, it's going to be a big event, and I agree with that. I've never been blind before. So you're going to say you're blind. Yeah. Right. And I think we're talking about whatever it is. You know what? Yeah. You're right. And now you're blind. So shoot me off. I'm going to work with you. Are you in the process? Right. You've been thrown for. Right. He's blind. Yeah. He looks like he's pretty blind. Where's the last time off? Where do you go? Where do you go? Right. Yeah. I'm tempted. Right. No, I know. I'm just, I'm just thanking you for your tireless hours of. 23 months exactly. October 7th. I know, I know it's a job. But the point is you went above and beyond. Okay. So I'm going to open the meeting back up at 7. 38 PM. Thank you everyone for allowing us at recess. And first item on the agenda, which we just revised with our previous joint meeting is to approve the minutes of August 20th. So I'm going to give committee a moment to take a quick look. This was emailed to the committee. Previously. Last week. Mr. Deming. One edit on three a. The fourth paragraph from the end. Second sentence. Mr. Deming wants to know if some of the items listed would increase work life for staff slash teachers. If I recall, it was increased quality of work. Life. I'm sorry, Mr. Deming. Can you please clarify where you're looking? Three a. Okay. I think these items are numbered are slightly off. So that's another edit. Actually. Before a. Okay. Facilities and fields update. Thank you. So can you please? Sure. Yeah. So fourth paragraph from the end. Mr. Deming wanted to know if some of the items listed would increase work life for staff teachers. I recall increased quality of work life. Quality of. So that's one edit that was been suggested. Any other edits from the committee? Mr. Nakajima. This is in section three. Superintendent's update. The. One, two, three, fourth paragraph in. It's a simple sentence. Nakajima also had a question regarding admin week. The. The. The question was what were the notable. Insights or. Outcomes from that week. Thank you, Mr. Nakajima. Has that edit been captured? Thank you. Any other. Edits or comments from the committee? If not, I will take a motion. Mr. Nakajima. I moved to approve the minutes of August 20, 2019. As amended. We have a motion. Do we have a second? Second. Thank you. All those in favor. We have. Four in favor and any nays. Any abstentions. Ms. Spitzer abstains. Okay. So moving on. Next item on the agenda is. Committee announcements. Do we have any announcements from the committee tonight? Seeing none. We're going to move us along. And I will open the public comment period again, just in case anybody had other comments that were related to other items on the agenda that were not previously covered. So we have no public comments at this time. So we are closing public comments. Thank you. Next time on the agenda is superintendent's update. Dr. Morris. Sure. And the updates in the packet, if you're looking for it. Last Wednesday, as was rather reported and communicated, there was a van accident that ended up with the fatality of a pedestrian. And while no students or staff members were injured in the accident, I just would want to offer a moment of silence that anytime there's a loss of life of anyone in our community. And I think that was a solid moment. And so if we could, before I go on further, if we could just take a moment to recognize that fact, just a little more details on the school side of that, that we did have meetings to share general information about the incident that afternoon on the 11th. Counseling services were made available both to the facilities maintenance transportation group as well as to Crocker farm staff members. And we talked a lot about how to process the information because we knew there would be wide media reporting and we wanted to work with students in developmentally appropriate ways as they came with information. We didn't see it as our need to share with students, but we knew that students would be riding the bus in the morning and regardless of their grade level, they might hear some things. They might hear some things at home. So that was some of the work we did as well. All Crocker farm families did receive information about the incident that afternoon. For the students who were on the van, did not witness the accident. But we still reached out to those families, both for informational purposes to offer counseling services that the students did later on, perhaps recognize about the accident and to make sure that we were prepared for them the next day with what their feelings and emotions were coming back into school. We completed an after action review process to look over and we did a pretty much a minute by minute, especially for the first half hour of that minute by minute account of what happened, what was the communication, what information flowed where so that we can make our systems better. In this particular instance, the communication flow worked pretty well. That being said, we wanted to be aware and thought of what if other scenarios had played out in this instance, what would have been different and how can we improve our internal and external communication as well as safety planning. And so Mr. Smorlin and her role has been working on revising some communication flow chart information because while it didn't impact this particular event, we're using this event to ensure that other events, if they're sadly happened in the future, they were well prepared for. So we're trying to take care of everybody as well as improve what we do. I do want to comment that the Amherst and State Police Department, the Amherst Fire Department, the staff from the Northwestern District Attorney's Office, all of them were on site and all of them, in terms of the communication with those other agencies has been fantastic up until, I mean, including today where I got some information that was some additional communication from the local police department. We typically interact with all those agencies simultaneously and the fact of being witnessed and being present for that and continuing to be, they've really shown a great sensitivity and care for incredibly challenging situation for all involved. So I just want to publicly share my thanks for all those groups. Dr. Morris, if I can interrupt for just a second. I just also wanted to raise that the feedback that I've received from Town Councilor and several community members to thank the district also for the swift response and for handling this matter, you know, as delicately as it was handled, but also from all accounts that I've heard, it sounds like the information that was shared with the community, with parents, the timing of it, all of those things were deeply appreciated by the community. And so I just want to, you know, extend that feedback to you personally, because I know that you were on site, but also I think to staff and administrators, you know, Mr. Shea and others who were there also on site for a very long time, immediately responded with a letter that was sent home to, you know, parents and caregivers and all the multiple staff who were involved and available on hand, you know, not just for the students who were on the van, but also other students in school and other staff. So really want to commend your team for the quick response. This is a tragedy that I think has been heartfelt by a lot of people in the community. And just having, you know, people who are capable and who are dealing with it the way that they're supposed to is, you know, people are grateful for that. Thank you very much. And I think you're right to comment on the people, you know, both the staff members at Crocker Farm, Ms. Cunningham, who took the lead on providing counseling services for the adults. Dr. Brady was really working with Mr. Shea and Ms. Smith. This is in principle on the student front and Mrs. Moreland, who is managing the communication throughout the whole day from the moment that we received word of the accident to the last email communication of the day. She was managing that both internally, externally in pretty remarkable ways. So thank you for noting that. One more positive note. Monday is the Puerto Rico Day celebration. I know we've talked about it at another committee that you all sit on, but it's coming up this Monday, 12.30 at Town Hall. I won't go into more detail, because I think I've mentioned it before, but just anyone here is welcome. And Chair Ardonias actually will be speaking on behalf of the Amherst School Committee at the event. So thank you again, Mr. Ardonias did that last year and was greatly appreciated by the community. So thank you. This is just to plug, I know we'll talk about calendar later, but this issue around school choice that was dropped in our laps early May last year with school choice students no longer, our new school choice students no longer flowing to the regional schools automatically as they had in my conversations with our local legislators. They've reminded me that, well, it occurred too late for the legislative cycle last year. We don't want to let that happen again based on just inertia and the number of things that we're managing. So just a placeholder. Caminante's program is off to a very strong start. And the first of several parent guardian information sessions will be held tomorrow night with childcare provided. And the idea is that children would have an activity and the adults can go off and ask questions and learn more about the program their children are having. So it's a nice model of making sure that childcare or other things like that aren't barriers for families to come in and be connected with both their colleagues, colleague parents as well as the staff members. You can see the opens house dates for Wildwood Fort River and Crocker Farm. I think I'll briefly note one question I get a lot is why don't we all do them on the same night? So there's two answers. One's a little more pressing than the other, but we do have families who have children at both elementary schools because one child is in a specialized program, the other is not. If you go way back historically, even seven, eight years ago, we did have all the open houses or curriculum nights on the same night, which made some families have to choose one school versus another. And so we don't want to do that, so that's why they're on other nights. I also hear it's easier to get childcare when the whole town was doing open house on one night for the elementary schools. It created log jam. The first one's certainly more important, but we have actually gotten feedback on the second one as well. Now that students come, that's probably less of an issue, but it still may be an issue for some. Gardening updates, so Jennifer Reese, who's our Science and Garden coordinator, was awarded a teacher champion award from Project Bread. And I want to thank Ms. Reese for all of her work as we expand the garden program to a new grade level each year, and it's a lot of people interested in that, both in and outside our community. And Chef Sam and Farmer Lila, as the students call her, they're a great work. One of the nice things at Crocker Farm that last Wednesday was that students couldn't go outside for recess because the scene of the accident was too visible, and the number of emergency personnel or responders was high. But she happened to be there, and actually from the back, from where the gardens are at Crocker Farm, students were able to go outside and do gardening. I'll just say the juxtaposition was striking because Mr. Shane and I walked outside to make sure that if students went out to garden, they couldn't see the accident scene, and for students to go outside on a day like that and do that was just wonderful. And that's just a small window into their work, but one that's etched in my mind at the moment. So the Great Span Advisory Board, setting the educational viability of having sixth grade students educated at the middle school will have its first fall meeting on Monday. Ooh, the agenda did not get... Oh, no, it did get attached on the next page. I'm sorry. And so at the next meeting, I think tentatively I'd love to give a more full update of where that process is and how the work is going. Second to last, second to last one printed, but I have one more I want to share. There were report card visions last spring and summer. I came to teachers under the leadership of curriculum coordinator Tim Sheehan, met to review and align the elementary report cards with the revised state standards. The report cards hadn't been revised in my 19 years in the district. And so you can imagine that the standards have went through many versions since then. We had a couple grade levels pilot some variations on that and get feedback last year. There was one grade level at Wildwood, two grade levels at Wildwood that were involved in that work. And now going to each school, two I think are done, and two we include Pelham in this work, to go to get additional feedback. So for families and guardians, they will see new report cards that both are connected to the academic standards in Massachusetts to give better feedback to families and also have a better accessibility quotient, as we say, our current ones. We get a lot of feedback, but there's a lot of ratings and families don't always have a great sense of what they're doing. And so I'm really excited about that work and that's something certainly we could bring back as well later in the year. And lastly, I think last month I talked a little bit about the UMass following up on the UMass the Donahue Institute study from last year and students in taxes-empt housing. So I had that meeting in the summer. The town manager updated about a week ago the town council that they're still in negotiations. This is not a tremendous amount to share, but it's not a significant resolution yet. I'm hoping, certainly, before the budget cycle starts in December and January, we have a little better sense of what the implications might be for us as that process resolves, but I'll just keep the committee updated. The town manager is very good at keeping me updated on that and I know it's of high interest to the committee. There's a lot of conversation over many, many years, actually, on this topic, but right now it's part of a larger negotiation that's not complete. I'm going to ask Dr. McAjima and Ms. Spitzer and Mr. Dumbling. Yeah, I just wanted to ask if I'm coming up. This is the last time we met, I think we talked a lot about enrollment and I just wanted to know if there was any update to that. Sure, there is. So we're at 39 students in the program. So each class has 11 students who are self-identified as English-speaking as we discussed and one class has nine and one class has eight students who are either Spanish-speaking or self-identified as bilingual. So we're pretty pleased with those percentages for the first year in. Again, 17 of 18 families who identified as having children who are either bilingual or Spanish-speaking are part of the program, so from a percentage that's frankly above what we thought we'd hit and so we're really pleased with the work of Ms. Richardson, Ms. Chamberlain and staff members who did all that outreach. So that's where the numbers sit at the moment. I'm sorry, does this relate directly to the... Okay, so Ms. McDonald. My question actually was also about the Comanantes program but more actually the kindergarten cohort at Fort River that's not part of the Comanantes program. I've heard sort of different commons about the size of that and composition of that group so I was wondering if we tonight and ongoing if we can have updates of that and how they're building community with that group as well. Sure, so there's 14 students in that cohort and if you go all the way back to when we started talking about this the recommendation from other districts is to keep the English language cohort smaller and so we were successful in doing that. Fort River did a great job this summer of having multiple events both formal and informal for kindergarten families to get together so there were formal ones, there were two, there was one in the early maybe it was late June, early July, I think it was late June where staff members of all three classes were present, there was food and there were a number of activities that were done and they also had the PGO thank you to the Fort River PGO had an event right before school started and in between were a number of informal events which was really neat that the school set up just times where there wouldn't be other people on the playground so there weren't staff members that didn't involve a lot of coordination and there weren't families to get together here's three times, we'll make sure that we've reserved the playground space so to speak and so all of those events were not specific to the coming odd days program that were connected to it and so I think that was really important and I want to compliment the staff there for being very intentional about that focus I did meet with the staff I had one of the meetings that we've talked about before doing Make Us Better Meetings so just any staff member could come and tell what are your concerns what are ideas to make us better as an organization so we happen to be at Fort River I think last week and so I think students are feeling connected recessed, launched to the places where students are often served bus that's another big one those students are integrated into that piece so I'm not hearing much of concerns about that I think one of the pieces of feedback I heard from multiple staff members because they know over time it's likely that things will evil out so right now we're 14 versus 19 and 20 it's significantly fewer students in that cohort versus the other two Ms. Spitzer and then Mr. Jemling Thank you so I'm aware that this Friday is a climate strike and I was just wondering excuse me whether or not the Amherst public schools had any position on clearly we're talking about maybe the oldest would be sixth graders so I'm not expecting them to go out and strike on their own but do you have any plans on how you're going to handle the climate strike on Friday nice and my personal position is New York City schools are excusing I'm wondering if we might do something similar obviously younger children will need to have their parents with them but I'm just curious about what our response is Dr. Morris so our general policy is when families call in and let us know why children aren't there there's a state defined list of excuse and unexcused absences to date the state has not expressed an opinion about providing more flexibility about unexcused versus unexcused absences to be very candid with you at the elementary level it's relatively low stakes for the vast majority of students whether it's unexcused or excused at the level where there's credits the implications are much greater so for instance if a sixth grade student misses school on Friday it's not like they're having to make up course credits based on a program of studies so I think the scale is quite different at the elementary level more importantly I think from my perspective is that I know the schools are integrating and many of the schools are integrating lessons around the climate and what we can do to support being around for a little longer than perhaps it looks like it might be into that day so that there's instructional implications much more so than kind of the strike parts of it but certainly I know there are buses to Boston leaving from our community where there's a big event planned and I won't be shocked if elementary students are on that bus with their families but I think that's all I have to share at the elementary level Mr. Demling the grade span advisory committee can you talk about the composition of that committee I'm particularly curious if we were able to get representation from all of the if I'm counting correctly six elementary schools that could potentially feed sixth grade and if we were able to have CPEC representation so you're taxing me at the moment I'll tell you better on Monday but I know we do have representation for at least one of our member towns that I'm not superintendent of we did outreach to both Schutzberg and Leverett I think we were successful in one of those districts not the other we do have representation staff and families from the Amherst schools and from Pelham school as well but I believe there might be one district where despite the efforts of that superintendent and me we weren't able to get representation CPEC so I'm just trying to think if someone's officially there as a representative of CPEC or you know so that's sorry I guess my group has met since June and it's not fixed but what I can do is share the list of the members and their sort of associations electronically with you before the end of the week I apologize I don't have that fresh in my head just to add to that I think it would make a lot of sense for us to extend an invitation to CPEC formally and to maybe put out a call to the community to have them participate this is an important question that they should definitely be at the table or at least parents and caregivers of children's special needs in the districts should you know be participating in actively I also wondering if we could do the same thing with the member towns I don't know what steps have been taken so far you mentioned being in contact with superintendents and other districts but it might you know really make sense to kind of put out the call for folks more broadly yeah so I'm sorry I wasn't clear so we did put out that did go out from Sheetsbury Leverett Hellam and Amherst to all families and all staff members last year when the group was forming and we did talk to CPEC about it I just I'm a little cautious to say they're officially a CPEC rep or right so I just I'm sure I don't want to say it out loud but I can follow up with that electronically that'd be great thank you okay if there are no further questions or comments for a superintendent on his update thank you Dr. Morris for that so the next item on the agenda under new and continuing business is capital request process so this item is on the agenda because we have several big capital expenditures no secret on the horizon and with the new charter there's a different pipeline than we used to have with town meeting so for example through the new charter members of the public can request spending on a specific item related to the schools and bypass the school committee so we end up playing catch up after the fact it's a great democratic process but can make us appear out of touch and get ahead of our planning and discussions for capital projects so I had gotten together with Dr. Morris to think about how we might be able to raise this formally during our meeting and discuss it with all of you tonight I wanted to bring it to you so that we could initiate a conversation about the best way to move forward with this and one idea that I wanted to share with you is that perhaps we might have one member of the school committee to serve as a regular liaison with the town perhaps the town council but also just more broadly with the town to keep us surprised of requests like these in the future and to make sure the school committee is in alignment with other town leaders this would involve regular reporting to the school committee at every meeting and notifying the school committee chair and superintendent of pending requests that impact our decision making and budgets and that we should be on our agenda for discussion and even votes the liaison a quick note liaison would have a different role than our current school committee members who serve on JCPC and Mr. Nakajima and Ms. McDonald have done a great job with that but that's an infrequently meeting body it doesn't meet on a regular basis it gets called as needed the liaison would figure out sort of the best schedule the best approach to do this but again the idea is to have regularly scheduled conversations here in the school committee so that we can be made aware of items that are making their way through the pipeline and then we can coordinate with the town to figure out from their end the best way to make this connection work from their end so perhaps they would want to have a liaison that they appoint as well to meet with someone from the school committee and again just to reiterate Dr. Morris meets with our town manager and he says we do have various points of contact it's not like we exist in a vacuum and we don't have regular conversation but just trying to formalize some sort of process because I know community members have been frustrated that we haven't picked things up quickly enough and again I think there's a shift in the way that things move through pipeline and because we have these other mechanisms now by which the community can bring requests and the town council can even initiate requests it's not the way that we typically have done things so with that Dr. Morris I don't know if there's anything else that you want to add before I open it up to the committee for thoughts or feedback Mr. Nakajima? So I just have a couple of thoughts I mean one is that my observation from being a JCPC for two years is that there are that typically when you have an issue that comes up before town councilors finance committee in the town that in which they're obviously their role is to make a decision around the sequencing and authorization of spending but they don't have the programmatic role of deciding what's in the best education of interest so I was using that example of education but the reality is that I could have talked about libraries and everything would have been exactly the same and we could move to talk about recreational fields and areas and then it would be as we've described it earlier almost like a black hole where it's not really clear whose responsibility is to think creatively about this work and so I mentioned that because I mean you may already know this this may be something I'm saying out loud that you'd say like yeah I already know this but I think the town would welcome more regular access and by the town I mean town hall staff and also the town council because it can be hard obviously the superintendent plays his role or his or her role as a person but that's a bounded role and so I think also what it does is then as a putting the superintendent in a position where he may have to be fielding questions that are essentially policy and political in nature and not sure what to do with it in particular how to sequence it so my point is I think this is welcome as I I guess we didn't discuss in this meeting because it hadn't happened the last time we had one of our meetings but there was a joint JCPC finance committee meeting that was held like two weeks ago and it was held at the request and it ended up a quorum of the town council ended up showing up and the concern was trying to figure out how to get a better handle on a process for discussing the capital budget for major mostly the major items but actually the major items then bleed into the smaller items because if you spend all the money you possibly need to on all the big stuff then you have no money for the small stuff so figuring out that balance and trying to figure out the sequencing and stuff was the topic of discussion and I think it was meaningful also that in this case the meeting happened in fall because the best of my knowledge JCPC's like never met during the fall ever it always meets like right after January and goes through like a hard press of meetings in the spring but before it used to be town presenting town meeting capital budget town manager in town meeting what I don't know is to what extent JCPC is going to end up playing more of an integrative role underneath the town council I think that's certainly possible and so the only thing I would wonder about is unless the chair is going to play the liaison role which they of course could it would make, procedurally that makes sense unless someone else designated it would make sense to me that if we have two members of the committee who are otherwise appointed to JCPC that one of them be the person who is the liaison because otherwise the idea that you'd have a quorum of different members of the committee all nominally kicking around town talking about capital projects sounds unwieldy so that would be those are just my initial thoughts but part of the reason I know I love a lot of framing but one was because Ms. McDonald and I hadn't had a chance to give an update on what happened but now that I think about it we could have done that during committee announcements if we considered those like subcommittee announcements or whatever appointment announcements but also there's act, the point is there's action going on and I think that action comes in response to both what you said that there seems like more buzz around how to engage citizens around capital projects and also the fact that a lot of decisions are going to have to be made and a lot of them are going to be down a sequence in all timeline to figure out what we're going to do right and I appreciate those thoughts Mr. Nakajima and that's exactly the thinking behind all of this is that we have so many projects that are coming up and that we see a need to systematize or formalize the reporting back to this committee because getting things on the agenda as all of you know is how we end up having our discussions and arriving at decisions about things that we're going to support or if we need to move it off to another committee or another part of town government so I appreciate those thoughts any other thoughts from the committee on this topic Mr. Demling So it's an interesting concept a liaison to the town council and possibly also the complimentary town council liaison to the school committee and certainly these large capital projects are the ones that are it's the area of our intersect that has the spotlight at the moment and probably will have the spotlight for the next couple of years at least but there's other areas as well budget and other issues that come up and I think the best way to approach implementing something like this is not to get too structured and formalized from the get go again as Mr. Nakajima was speaking I think a regular report out from JCPC from JCPC reps even if it's just opportunistic under subcommittee updates that's always an agenda item like we have the region I think would be really helpful and then I think we could explore the idea and maybe this is a conversation we have with the town council about just a generalized liaison to the town council and generalized liaison to the school committee maybe and maybe the only commitment of these two individuals would be you meet once a month it's a heads up for two groups that are really heads down almost all the time we have so much that we are focusing on at a really deep level I'll be honest I really don't have a lot of clicks to watch town council meetings but I'm really interested in what's going on there's only so much bandwidth on the day so it would be great if once a meeting during subcommittee updates one of us said hey here's two minutes on what's going on with town council and from a school committee intersect perspective I think that could be helpful and the town council might appreciate that as well from us and not just hearing from us when it comes to budget or the aberrant capital item that happens to catch buds Mr. McDonald I'll just echo what Mr. Nakajima said that I think it makes the most sense that either one or both of us sort of serve as that liaison rather than creating another workflow in another role in another you know that meetings that have to happen and I love the idea of just making a regular agenda item for an update on whatever particularly because it looks like JCPC is going to be meeting on a more maybe not year round but more frequently than in past years I was hoping that Ms. McDonald would also agree with Mr. Nakajima because I think it makes a lot of sense and it sounds to me like maybe one of you might be interested in volunteering to serve this role and I yeah I think that you know given also the background that both of you have in participating in those JCPC meetings it would also make sense for that reason for one of you to serve that role is there any other comments or you don't have to but I'd just like to echo that I agree I mean one thought is that it's a lot to try to pay attention to everything that's happening on a town council so are we going to really limit this to the capital projects and if so I think it's a lot to ask I'm just thinking that it might be easier to just ask for a person on the town council to let us know any time the capital budget comes up and we would do the same for them I'm just trying to think of the work board and that's going to put on somebody who's on the who takes on this role because with the JCPC it was one meeting you needed to attend to and now is it going to be every agenda for the town council meetings like how are we going to get notified when we need to kind of have a heads up that this might impact you and could we in some way lean on either the council members themselves or some supportive staff there to help us do that work because I wouldn't personally want to ask any one of us to have to pay attention to every single town council meeting because of what Mr. Demling said but it's a lot that we already have on our place and I guess it's where the brass taxes right like you get to the point where those details come up you know I think from my thinking and this is again the reason for bringing it to the committee the idea is not that you would have necessarily somebody paying attention to every item issue that the town council deals with because like you said there are a lot of items and instead to really just formalize what is sort of standard procedure now you know we will update each other as needed you know and whether superintendent is talking to town manager or you know occasionally I will be in touch with president of the town council if there's an issue that's coming up that we need to just you know make sure that people know about but you know it feels a little ad hoc and formalizing it in some way means hopefully that things don't fall through the cracks but I agree with you that we don't want to add an owner as burden if you know if we could set something up that allows for just a quick you know meeting or perhaps even just an email exchange of you know sharing hey these are a list of topics that we've discussed that we think will impact or that we really need the school committee to engage on and vice versa that that could work Mr. Nakajima did you have something? Yeah I was going to add to that a couple things I mean one I think as members of the JCPC we've already had outreach members of the town council who've essentially been using us as members of that committee in lieu of any like identified process to talk about capital projects and so I think that's already happening and so sort of acknowledging that it's happening and also I don't want to say validating in any funny way but sort of like saying if you have that conversation you can have that conversation and then say well here's our process here's when we have our next meeting it didn't advise the chair and bring it back to the meeting makes more sense than having sort of an ad hoc flow even from the other side of like you know when I had the outreach about a capital issue it was sort of like well I talked to you because you're on JCPC but you know what I mean like I didn't even know if I should be but what the heck I called you and I'm like alright and I felt the same way sort of like alright well I'll listen and the other thing is I actually think that the sense I got from the meeting the other day is there are going to be either town council as a whole discussions, finance committee discussions or even just sort of ad hoc people, counselors like sitting at home and thinking about the capital budget in like super active ways over the next 12 to 18 months in ways that if the school committee is in fact not actively trying to reach out but not necessarily find out what's on your agenda next week but more like what are you guys doing how are you thinking about this how are you getting organized then I mean I'll be honest I mentioned this at a different committee around the different committees capital needs that's still educational but if we're not engaged in these conversations and able to bring them back and usefully engage the school committee on them we're going to get lost in the shuffle not because anyone means it to happen it's a crusher of pressure to try to figure out how to get a sense of our capital budget and move things forward that's the feeling I got from the JCPZ meeting and the counselors have so much work to do in such a crusher of meetings that without anyone ever intending it to happen we could find ourselves a week or two behind events before anyone thinks oh wait a minute we've got to get you up to speed on this I'm sorry and so I think it's actually to me less about what's on the agenda next week than trying to have a better handle on how is the town council planning the stuff how are they thinking about it how are they thinking of the next eight weeks and then how do we make sure our committees properly engage great so I'm hearing more or less a consensus that this is a good idea do one of you want to volunteer to play this role let's put you on the spot but I'm putting you on the spot Mr. Nakajima great so if that's if the committee agrees well Mr. Nakajima you will serve as our liaison to town government town council for the purposes of capital projects and to keep us updated and what I would like to do then is on future agendas every agenda is to add a capital projects update and then you know understanding that that may also be other items that you know the school committee needs to be apprised of great we needed to say that on microphone yes thank you very much I'm hopeful that this can help improve the experience for all of us and also for our community so that they are not continuously frustrated by our lack of communication okay so moving us along to the next item on the agenda is a Crocker farm expansion study and we just identified this is a topic the superintendent was going to give a quick update but I just wanted to stress that this is an item that was formally brought forth to the JCPC and the town by members of the community in March so much sort of what we were just talking about and subsequently recommended and voted on by the JCPC and town council this summer so the school committee's involvement was actually formally requested at our public meeting last month when we had you know the people who had actually applied initially to be done appear before us and request our help so Dr. Morris has since been in touch with the town's procurement officer who has prepared a draft timeline and proposed action plan which was circulated to the committee as part of our packet this past week and it's for information and feedback so with that Dr. Morris I just wanted to clarify this is just an update there's no vote from us tonight or anything like that it's basically just information here to answer any questions from the committee as well Mr. Delaney if you want to come to the front please so very briefly Ted manager and I asked Mr. Delaney to draft an expansion feasibility study proposed timeline and this is looking about the potential of it what it would take both financially and what it would look like architecturally if Karkafarm was expanded as part of as an offset perhaps the USDA proposal if you remember last year this is one of the potential options that I presented to the committee and the community is a ways to get to 600 students for a newer renovated school and so I want to thank Mr. Delaney for his work on this you may note when the timeline when the study is published one of the requests that was made over the summer was for me to reach out to the MSBA and inform them that the study was funded by the town in terms of when completion would be helpful well actually there was two questions I apologize one was should we get this should we try to get the study done before the MSBA makes a decision would it have any impact or bearing on the MSBA's decision of accepting the town into the study in December and if the answer was no to that question when would be a good time to complete the study and so the answer was no that it would not have a bearing on the MSBA's acceptance or lack thereof of our statement of interest so the need to have it done in December from the MSBA's point of view it was a non-issue for them no impact however they did think it would be they advised us it would be wise if we were going to do this project to have it completed by the about three months after acceptance based on their process as we're looking at that point you're looking at enrollments and enrollment studies so this would be a very useful way of looking out like the backwards design philosophy of like when do you need it done and let's go backwards and make sure all the steps are in place so that we hit our benchmark on our goal and so I think Mr. Delaney can walk the committee through briefly what's on the piece it's in the packet the timeline that he has and answer any questions you might have on the procurement side but thank you so it's Anthony Delaney procurement officer for the town of Amherst line we don't actually have a procurement ready to go or anything but we've started so we would need to draft the RFQ in conformance with Mass General Law Chapter 7C which will be done internally probably myself Sean Mangano other stakeholders we would look to have that ready over the coming weeks and I didn't bring the actual piece of paper in front of me but we would publish the notice of that in the central register in the what first week of November is that what I put down published the RFQ first in the middle of October October 17th give three weeks for responses from vendors November 7th evaluate the qualifications over the next week conduct interviews the week after arrive at a contract award by the beginning of December and then the vendor would do their work in coordination with school staff to program this expanded Crocker Farm and then actually to create a study and with a goal of publishing by March 1st so not a lot of details there I guess but that would be the step by step thank you Mr. Delaney so I don't know if there's if the committee has any questions or comments for either Mr. Delaney or Dr. Morris or even for following up with the town Mr. Demling so thank you for coming Mr. Delaney how do you estimate the how long the study will take we Dr. Morris and I basically work backwards based on how long it took to do the Fort River study honestly with Fort River we spent a little over two months doing the programming for a much more involved project so we thought that we could probably work out the programming in the course of about a month in this case the actual study design for Fort River took a very long time because they had to keep working with the committee and the committee had to get together and every step of the way this study wouldn't be directed by a committee but by school staff we think that actually designing it would get out a lot quicker and we think a couple months is pretty reasonable Dr. Morris so the comparison and more analogous process that we considered was the regional level looking at the master regional master facility use study where there was school staff meetings with the designers there was a group of community members who offered multiple and multiple sessions of feedback along the process so that's a better comparison both financially and the depth of it we're looking at many more options it wasn't just one school we're looking at right so we're looking at both sixth grade to the middle school as well as seventh and eighth grade to the high school so it was more complex and this is substantively less complex that way looking at one building, one expansion and the number of students is a little more stable with multiple versions of the other project and I thought that project worked well in terms of gathering community input but yet coming up with a product in pretty expedited format so we looked at that, scaled back from there to what this could be if we use the same format and I don't mean simple in terms of it's easy but the lower number of variables in this project is compared to that one so that's how we sort of scaled the timeline and I wasn't involved in that project so that was mostly from Dr. Morse. Thank you Dr. Morse. Ms. McDonald? I think you just answered my question but I'll ask it anyway so you mentioned that this would be similar to the approach that you took for the middle school facility study so rather than having a building committee like we did with Fort River there would be an advisory group for getting sort of weighing and soliciting community input and feedback along the way that would be engaged at that point. Exactly. And approximately when would that sort of group be convened? I guess that sort of depends so there needs to be a group of people that evaluate the designers the town manager will decide who that is I anticipate some of those people would probably continue on but the formation of that group would really be advisory to the school so that would kind of be in your core. If we follow the same format we did have a small group of staff members and town manager I have not it's his decision and I'm speaking in hypothetical terms because that's actually where we are not because I'm being coy or something so but in the prior project that referenced the regional master use study there was a team most of the staff members I wasn't on it who evaluated and town and school staff members who evaluated the proposals and after the designers were on board that's when the community got involved so if you're looking at contract award and we get building programming, study design and published study that's the time frame where in the prior study it was the town manager will have to weigh who he wants on the RFQ review and interviews of qualifications but certainly I can speak for him on that front but certainly I can speak on the bottom three parts of this timeline there would definitely be the advisory board involved so just to clarify Dr. Mara so you're saying that the town manager would actually be in charge of deciding on the RFQ development which is the request for proposals and then move through the publishing of that creating the qualifications that would be due up until the part where the contract is awarded that's correct and then it would become more of a school driven process at that point any other questions from the committee? Ms. Bitzer? I had similar questions to Alice and I think it's really important that we do start engaging with the community and not because just because this will be a larger piece if we're lucky enough to get into the MSBA process and I think it's really important we start getting community feedback on this process as soon as possible just anticipating that this is the beginning hopefully of a road towards a new school or a renovated school so it seems kind of late that we're getting involved getting the community involved and it sounds like specifically the schools involved so is there any so it sounds like you're right now in communication with the town manager expressing that to him and reiterating that again Mr. Nakajima? I guess I'll add two things one by the way this is a great example of the previous discussion we had but how complicated capital projects and procurements are seriously this is an example of like you think jurisdictionally who's in charge of what and you're like oh my god how complicated but anyways setting that aside I'm going to echo something just because one of my concerns for why I was pleased to see us getting the ball rolling relatively soon on getting this procurement out is that there needs to be a kind of an understanding and a comfort level in my view anyways in the public around what we're doing with this and what we're not doing with this and it's a little bit like you know the reality is the chair could have given like a much longer answer than I wanted to so the question that came up in the previous section of the meeting about like so how does this report fit with everything else going on it's like there's a short version which you gave a thorough and short answer and then there was like a longer answer that could have gone on for like a half an hour like how it could fit in potentially and so my point being simply is that I felt strongly that when we get to December 11th if we're in the program and fortunate enough to be chosen I think it's really understand where we're going and what we're doing and then frankly what we're doing with all these bits of information that we're developing kind of what we're not doing with them right and and so part of that getting the community involved earlier on some level is part of that familiarization process that allows people to get comfortable with oh I get what you're doing so and so again that other group's going to be doing this other thing with this information or whatever as well as providing whatever people want to put it Mr. Demling So that's a comment and kind of a question to the committee so I just want to acknowledge that so the two driving points about the factor into when this study ought to start and how long it will take the does it affect our current or future statement of interest chances and and how long will it take when it's still kicked off I want to acknowledge that there's disagreement about those two points that may not be much disagreement here but there is in the public and you know I think that that's okay I think you know this is one of I think if we're fortunate enough to get at the MSBA process one of many hurdles that we're going to have to jump over as a community and that we people who want this project want both of these buildings taken care of as soon as possible will disagree about how we get there you know we might all be on team get it done but I don't agree about you know the logistics and I think that's that's an expected part of the process and so that's what we're dealing with now the procedural thing I'm a little confused about is if we're not voting on this tonight then when do we vote on it and if I take the implication before that this is really the town manager's call then this is an open meeting discussion shall we just express our preferences one way or the other now so we know where we're at if we don't express a preference then this entire schedule can't really kick off because I mean the first date is September so that's just an open question just a question of clarification Mr. Demling preference for what exactly so whether we should do this do this study I mean we haven't really talked about it one way or the other as to whether this is an example of getting the previous gender item where it's there the money's there and the committee has not formally weighed in one way or another Dr. Morris did you weigh in so actually I have some things to say but I think it was a question of the committee and I don't want to perhaps be ahead of the committee in responding to Mr. Demling's question so there was definitely a question in there I mean there was there was multiple questions I guess the point is but I want to separate out the procedural questions from sort of the policy related ones the procedural the procedural question is is this in fact ever going to be a vote before this committee or if we or if once we weigh in on what we're saying tonight is in fact that likely and this is a yes I don't want to say yes or no like I'm demanding a yes or no answer what I'm saying is I think this is actually a binary question either it is coming back to the committee for some kind of approval to vote or in fact some combination of view in the town manager and Mr. Delaney will move forward on some schedule or another sure thank you that I can answer so this money was approved by the town for us to move forward with well it wasn't requested by the school committee for the Amherst public schools there's a JCPC process that plays out that there's representation on and so the money's approved so at this point it's a you know actually not to get into the weeds of the of it but the town manager does is a chief procurement officer for the town of Amherst and so there isn't a school committee vote that is required or requested about whether the study happens or not certainly opinions are valid but I want to be clear that I'm not coming nor is Mr. Delaney asking for funding the funding is there it was approved so we're following through on the capital item capital request that was approved by JCPC and eventually approved as part of the budget the capital part of the project last year so I don't want to sound insensitive to the committee members or try to stifle dialogue and I think that's why I was a little hesitant to respond right away but I think to answer the question definitively it's not looking for a vote of the school committee because the money's appropriated and the staff will be fulfilling that appropriated task Ms. McDonald I don't need to take a formal vote so I think then the question is do we want to semi-formal take a vote of a resolution to support this process I think that's more sort of where Mr. Delaney was heading it's like if we don't have to approve the capital request because it's already approved do we want as a committee to endorse or support this project and sort of take a more formal stance on that versus what I understand to be very much informal support of this process so I think that's a question for the committee to answer you know I think as Dr. Morris explained from my perspective at this point the money is already appropriated and so it's a matter of I guess our informal endorsement of this process having this conversation having this discussion we're offering feedback on what the process should be I think given the model that Dr. Morris raised before which is a master facilities use study you know that is something in similar fashion that if we do endorse that approach that even if we have earlier community involvement it's not something that we would take a formal vote on per se if the committee wills it so we can certainly draft a resolution if you feel like we need to do that I'm not necessarily getting the sense that that's necessary but perhaps other people feel differently Mr. Nakajima so now I want to get back to it's not exactly the second question Mr. Tumling raised but I'm going to offer a variation on it because this issue this project or potential project came up as a citizen petition during the JCPC process which is a conversation for another day that it's an it's an interesting and good way of involving the public but it's also sort of an odd animal or odd duck in that it exists orthogonal to all the departments that exist in town so even just as an example not this year but last year there were requests for major capital projects to improve our streets and sidewalks and the question at that point came up of well how does this relate to the transportation advisory committee that the town has that's been developed to develop provide input and engagement to DPW and at the time being the answer was there was no involvement connection and so it just sort of sat even if the ideas were good ideas they sort of sat out there as sort of odd things and creatures and so the discomfort we may be feeling around this is a man I don't know what the value is in me devalutating it but like it's perfectly reasonable to feel uncomfortable about this and we're not going to be the first committee or department to feel uncomfortable about that of the town and it was a decision bluntly before I was ever on the JCPC it was a decision to JCPC to say we would love to welcome the citizen petitions and then we'll figure out what to do with them later essentially and this is where we're sitting but Dr. Morris the question I had for you I was McDonald and I were sitting on JCPC and I know engaged you on this topic at the time my understanding was that you said at the time that a study that includes facts essentially as you envision being included in this report would be necessary to be included in the work of a building committee if we're accepted in so at the time being my understanding was that it was less an issue of whether we needed to understand the expandability of Crocker which you at the time being said you thought we did need to know that then the timing of the item or do we need to do it now or could we do it later and I don't know if I'm misremembering that's my recollection of what you said that is accurate Mr. Demling the way I see it at the moment is this schedule starts in September we don't have another meeting scheduled until October I believe so if we don't somehow express the committee's will tonight then this schedule as presented doesn't happen and if this process is going to happen I like this schedule because it ends on March 1st that seems like well in advance of what however far ahead any screamingly fast school building committee could get if we get accepted in December 11th and so I think one way or another we ought to express our informal view on it from my own part the way I've always calculated this is I don't see that it impacts our statement of interest chances and so I wasn't I didn't see the urgency of getting this done before statement of interest decision so I don't think that if it starts in December it's going to delay the building process I'm no expert I know there's different opinions that's just my take therefore this sort of hits all those bullets and it takes care of it yes it does feel a little weird because we're in a new process and so if I were to design this all from scratch I think I would probably have the interactions of JCPC and the town council and the citizens petitions and so I don't think we'll be all be different but it's not this is what is in front of us and the fact is we'll leave this item and we don't act on it but it's essentially not going to happen as laid out so I would be comfortable with informally endorsing this tonight Thank you Mr. Dumling and I just as a comment to the committee there was a reason why we sequenced the conversation the way that we did right it was the capital request process sort of naming that and then this conversation immediately following was to highlight and really bring home what's happening and how this can skew a lot of the action that we would normally take and I completely agree I think that in the best of circumstances we would have this would have been something that the school committee would have initiated it would have gone to the town council would have gone to JCPC for discussion and for approval and we haven't gone through that process this is the very first time we are going through this process where citizens petition is bringing this around again very democratic process it makes a lot of sense but it just means that we're doing a lot of backtracking and trying to figure out how we adapt our approach to this so again the lack of a formal vote quote unquote does not mean that we can't endorse it and that's why we brought it for discussion tonight that was my interest in having that conversation I think clarifying that this is a draft timeline Mr. Delaney is what I heard and so I think these are just dates that have been put to paper so that we have something to bounce ideas off of and work around that said we still have the urgency to move quickly and so I also am in agreement with the way that things have been laid out here and also in agreement with the idea that the community should be engaged a lot more soon than perhaps in previous practice just because we all know that the conversations around our elementary schools and the building project and this is all connected I've been saying this for a couple years now these things are all connected so having the community engaged sooner rather than later on all steps of this is critically important to make sure that people feel like they're being brought along and not being left out of any questions or anything like that so I think from my perspective I would appreciate the town manager and perhaps Mr. Delaney you know thinking about an approach that allows us to engage the community and there's nothing stopping us the school committee from doing that you know alongside parallel process to this but it would be great to formalize that as we think through what the next steps will be Mr. Nakajima I move that the Amherst School Committee endorse the draft timeline and propose process for the Crocker farm expansion feasibility study with the added provision that the school committee encourages the superintendent and the town manager to work with the committee to develop aggressive or encourage expansive public engagement community engagement throughout this process beginning as early as is feasible okay we have a motion do we have a second? Second. Ms. McDonald second so just you know a reminder again that we had said that this would not be a vote tonight so if the committee is ready to actually vote on this it's not our sort of ideal practice there is precedent we have done this before and I appreciate the sentiment going behind it but I just wanted to note that this is not typically how we want to handle things and I think you know moving forward we have to make sure that we are being clear with the community when we are planning on taking votes around issues because it matters any questions or comments before we take the vote okay so we have a motion it's been seconded all those in favor it is unanimous thank you thank you Mr. Delaney so just very quickly before we move on to the next item so we had a conversation a few meetings ago last academic year to be exact that if we hit the two and a half hour mark on our meetings that we would take a vote and this is per policy and I can't remember the name of the policy but it was something that we all agreed we would do to try to keep our committee meetings in check so to be respectful of that process and that vote we have a committee that is now the two and a half hour mark and so I will take a motion to extend this meeting as needed Mr. Demling I move to extend our meeting for 30 minutes we have a motion do we have a second second thank you Ms. Spitzer any comments from the committee all those in favor of extending our meeting for 30 minutes it is unanimous thank you okay next item on the agenda is a facilities update Dr. Morris I'll keep this brief so Mr. Roy Clark was here last month we talked about him coming back from our thorough update next month but I'll just do a quick review of what's happened in the last few weeks so from a staffing perspective we've hired two more van drivers we are actively searching for a placement of electrician it is a very tight market for electricians as noted and so we'll continue searching and the assistant facilities director whose primary role is to help with capital projects it's a significant part of that role because we know there are a significant number of them it's posted we have applicants in that process that interview process will be happening soon to get that person on boarded we wanted to make sure we had the sufficient pool for selection and mine and Mr. Roy Clark's we do so we talked about that this week and we'll move forward with that very soon so just click update on some current topics so we had some issues with bees the summer and fall we did work with our contractor who came out including the vice president who is the head of this particular wing of Minuteman one of the challenges that we face in public schools and particularly public schools is we can't use the same materials to fight pests as one would use in your home there's laws and really has to be truly an emergency to be around those laws if we so chose we did not choose to do it and we wouldn't have had the kind of qualifications that we would need to so we use a lot of botanical substances as opposed to what might happen in your home if you call the vendor but we are in much better shape I was at Parker farm a bunch of time last week both planned and unplanned as I noted before and every time we went upstairs to the areas where there had been issues as of last Thursday in our situation we also had a problem at Wildwood the same treatment was done and we've heard the situation has improved that was external that wasn't inside the building some of the projects we've been working on is the therapeutic spaces both at Fort River and Parker farm padding has been installed to make sure all students and staff members are kept safe on the back you can see some pictures of the Parker farm interior courtyard some of the 8080 work that happened so this is by the preschool we had basically ways that that internal courtyard was not accessible for students who had challenges with mobility or adults so it's clean restored and shifted so that there's not a step anymore so that all of our preschool students as well as others but primarily it's preschool students who use that courtyard now have access we're still going to capital we're still short one square bus my understanding is before we met today there was a vote of the town council to reassign transportation capital items that passed and we'll take that next step to instead of replacing a nine year old bus's engine purchase a new bus to move forward Parker farm roof this is just an update obviously this one because it's changed might more further communication down the road but we talked about the skylight issues in the past and in conversations with the company the replacement gaskets are no longer available so we're going to have to just replace the full skylights for that we're trying to get cost and whether that means we have to request again because we don't have enough funds to do the full project this year because it's a larger project that's why we're working with the company to understand it but we did the investigatory work and based on when they were built in 2002 and some slight irregularities with the shape of the sizing of them they weren't like your stock whatever the stock size of skylight windows we're not able to get the replacement parts we'll have to replace the full kit and caboodle the temporary chiller Fort River's piping work is all done the same company was at Wildwood Wednesday, Thursday, Friday last week putting the piping in there for the temporary chillers some point soon we'll get to the time of year where we don't need the temporary chillers and we'll return them and so it's a seasonal rental it's not like they're all winter and come late April we'll have them come back so knock on wood but so far the rooftop units are functioning much better with the improvements that were made last year on both sites but the piping is there again fully there at Fort River almost all there at Wildwood so that if there was a need a failure of the cooling system that the units could just be simply hooked up and ready to go the TAG electrical program we talked about last year around the certifications so we're working to initiate the study of that and looking for procurement on that and we're continuing to work on solutions and pricing with priorities mitigating the ADA pieces working with the DPW to be very blunt with you some of this work was scheduled for last week and didn't happen because of the accident so it really slowed us down on some of these fronts based on the shared staffing between transportation and maintenance and that's the update great thank you Dr. Morris any questions for Dr. Morris on this item any of the issues mentioned okay so moving along again just to highlight for the committee and for the public who may be watching the facilities update is one of those regular items that we have on our agenda just to make sure that we are keeping abreast of things that are being done in the schools in response to community concerns that were raised last year and also the superintendent has been overseeing next item on the agenda is superintendent goals not at all a weighty topic thank you for the feedback last time that was really useful for me so I think I'll just read through them and provide a bit of context and then open up for discussion and again if there's some wording changes that people want it's fine to wait till October to approve them if there's not a vote tonight as long as I have a sense that the general direction is consistent with the committee certainly I'm open to feedback that might not involve a vote tonight but if there's a vote tonight that's all the better so the first one is through collaboration with the town of Amherst and community action head start develop multiple models for increasing preschool access for Amherst children in time for consideration during the FY school and town budget process that was a budget add last year to complete this study and that is actively being worked on as of today conversations with the town and consulted to work on that second one make effective practice progress in the capital plan project slated for a year develop a multi-year proposal that takes into account the ADA study completed in the spring 2019 and if accepted into MSPA core process begin the process in that process made perhaps with broad communication and engagement third goal make effective progress in school improved plans at each site with evidence of the impact of the plans and any necessary course corrections made based on data collected throughout the process and that has a lot to do with my supervision of schools and principals I'm very blunt about it to make a connection to some of the commentary from last time successfully implement the coming out this program at Fort River and have a program evaluation completed and articulate a plan for any adjustments necessary for the 2021 school year not just because we're expanding to a second grade level but because this is our first go round and as well as things will go we'd be I think foolhardy not to consider what we can do better next year with just the team that's working on it and finally develop a wellness framework to guide the process of engaging different stakeholder groups develop action plans and begin implementation to improve students experience I struggled with the language on this one I think that's clear even in my description of it particularly at the elementary level I think wellness you can pick out specific pieces like you talk about homework and that's something that was a goal a couple years ago that we worked on but what I'm thinking is more necessary and I use the word framework intentionally here is how do we actually think and talk about framework and how does it fit into everything we do it can't be the add-on like yeah we'll squeeze more time for health classes that third grade has to be how we approach our critical work of educating children so for me anytime I got more specific on the wording ended up being really unhappy that it felt like another thing instead of that how do we integrate that wellness into the work that we do in schools so it may not be perfect and I'm open to very very feedback but I at least wanted to explain why it perhaps feels more vague than the other ones is because I think it is more the umbrella is bigger on that one than it is across the board but and the standards the appropriate standards are listed a relevant standards are listed below and all four standard categories are included in the specific elements from the standard document that's it thank you dr. Morris so I want to hear from the committee I think you know again this is a discussion possible vote and I just want to make sure that you know we hear from everyone we've had a couple of conversations already around the goals for the superintendent but I'm going to actually go around the room here and I will start with you miss Spitzer and feel if you don't have any comments feel free to skip yourself but yeah I just want to say you know I wasn't at the first meeting of the year so this is the first time that I've had a chance to comment on the the goals so I guess my only comment is it seems like a lot and I I don't know if this is already been through a prioritization like happened at the regional level but I think all of these are important so I'd be really hard pressed to tell you which one to take off the list so and I do like the way you're talking about wellness as a framework rather than a specific program or item that you'd be adding to the school year so I just want to offer my general support for these so in the interest of time I'm going to break with my usual protocol and actually give you some feedback now as we go around the room and actually I think I appreciate your taking the feedback that we gave you during the last meeting and I think that you know having the way that you've laid these out all makes sense I actually do think that you know specificity around wellness is important and so my only comment is actually just if we can you know have you add perhaps after the engaging different stakeholder groups specific mention of how this gets brought into the curriculum you know brought to parent and caregiver you know attention or engagement so that there is some language there that shows for the school committee who will be evaluating you but also for the community about how we're evaluating this you know because I agree with you it's a huge topic and there's so many different pieces that can fall under it that said there has to be something that you're focusing on that can help us help you better support you so you know I think mentioning like I said curriculum you know parent engagement in addition to you know the beginning of the implementation to prove students experience and the engaging different stakeholder groups makes a lot of sense to me thank you Thank you so in general I like the goals there are a couple things one in another district anyways we've talked a lot and called out social justice anti-racism or anti-oppression sort of objectives that we have or alternatively more positive way of raising it is ways in which we try to embrace and mirror the diversity and celebrate the diversity of our community and our student body and I don't know that you need to change any of these but I just sort of wanted to say out loud and once we're done if you want to reflect on it at all that to me a preschool agenda capital agenda most specifically the preschool the school improvement plans common entice and wellness all have really clear intersections and capital this too but they all have really they have really specific clear intersections with social justice and economic opportunity related priorities that we have and I don't know whether you should call it out or not but my point is what I would hate to have happen is somebody to read these goals and say boy this committee usually talks an awful lot about these things they seem to be silent here and I don't know if there's a way to call that out without deluding them unnecessarily since I as I said I think they're very clearly here the other thing I'd say is when we went through the school improvement plans this is obviously true for common entice but when through the school improvement plans last spring or early summer there was a lot of discussion within the components of those strategies about wellness and about integrating wellness within instructional settings, classroom settings school settings and so I don't know how you're thinking about number five exactly but when you were starting to talk about it being sort of an integrative approach into the school as it exists now I heard echoes to what the building leaders were saying the members of the educational teams were saying back to you and so again once my colleagues are done do you have any thoughts about that intersection I'd just appreciate it I also like the goals two comments so one on the capital plan if accepted at the MSBA begin the process of broad community communication engagement yes definitely I'd also like for you to be taking some leadership of next steps if we don't get into the MSBA process you know I think we've all re-emphasized many times that it's no guarantee even having put our best foot forward with the town council there's no guarantee we get in and so I think without having the discussion here it begs the question well what happens if we don't get in the next year and do we just keep doing that or does a point come where we have to really consider some serious alternatives a very serious discussion indeed with the school committee in the town but I would want you to be the one that starts that discussion with the school committee to the degree we want to engage in that the other comment on the wellness framework I'm glad to see it in here it's really interesting about whether increased specificity is good or not at this stage because I don't know how you feel about it I want to have some really interesting conversations with like your principals and other educators but wellness as an emerging really high level theme in education is just that it's an emerging but very important theme that touches a lot of different things and so of course you don't want this to be so generic and abstract that you don't do anything about it but you also don't want it to be so focused and specific that it's too tactical right it's too rudimentary strategic so I'm really interested to see where you go with this to see what degree you can engage your principals, your assistant principals have them engage their teachers we have a lot of new staff a lot of new leadership in the district who may be able to weigh in on that so I have the advantage of going last which means I don't have to take up a lot of time because a lot of great things have already been said so I will just echo I think that I strongly echo Mr. Dumblings point about the capital goal number two is sort of tweaking that to sort of address what are we going to do with or without MSBA acceptance and then also the way you described as you were speaking to goal number five was very different than how I understood what I read here so I think I echo what everybody else has said and maybe sort of figuring out a way to phrase that in a way that you described it verbally about the integrated into the entire I literally wrote how we educate children and if that sort of is part of the school improvement plans or needs to be a separate goal I'm not really quite sure but I think the way you described that was a lot more inspiring and specific than what's written here Thank you. Dr. Morris Briefly respond so I'll just go in order just for the sake of my notes so Mr. Spitzer's point about it's a lot I mean I think one thing that I am noting and I spoke about this one of the other committees is that more than any of the year that I've done this with three committees the goals are aligned to different elements and they're not you know some years we've had goals that were consistent with all three of the districts I work for and so it is a bit of a concern of when we get to artifact time and evaluation time what that actually looks like both for me frankly and producing it but also for committee members we're going to be looking through lots of different elements that they didn't previously have to both from a you know just scale but also just literally like how many documents can you look at at once so I do have some concerns and I share it and at the same time I don't really have a great alternative right now because I think all this stuff is really all the items are really important so I think more conversation about and one of my committees is talking about do we do evaluations all at the same time this year so in the past has been a general interest in doing that I can say this here that Pelham is looking to perhaps do it quite a bit earlier because of their election cycle then perhaps the Amherst School Committee would have to do their evaluation based on the election cycle now in Amherst so I think perhaps when there's evaluation subcommittees do some work it'd be it'd be good to check in with all three committees because I think the scale does feel different this year because of the level of the number of elements that are hit by all three committees is significantly larger than in past years I think some other comments you know what do we do if we don't get in in terms of the MSPA is a really helpful frame I tend to be a glass half-full person that's I think pretty clear and so thanks for bringing me back down to reality I liked where I was a little better but I think the realism is I think that's right we just have to be planned for both situations I think that's right spot on I think in terms of the wellness and the pre-school improvement plans I think that is true it's in them and I think there are parts of wellness that we need to take a district-wide look at so I think both things are sort of true on that and thinking about how to call out kind of social equity in the goals is a good reminder for me I mean I think even the first one when we talk about increasing pre-school access for children I was sending an email to a bunch of staff members we're going to be part of that when someone's on late in a couple weeks and one of the things I noted was for staff members who may not have been tracking school committee meetings I needed to go back to we don't currently have universal pre-school access in this community it's a major issue you all deal with it all the time and so this is an effort to explore what's possible and I think some of that language is literally I wrote this afternoon could be integrated in here without huge effort and kind of remind a lay person looking at it that why we're doing what we're doing so I think there's other things I could say by the name of time I'll leave them so I guess what I'd propose is that I feel like I've clear direction from the committee in terms of the goals being good areas to study and I can make some edits and come back in October for a formal vote taken in the feedback I heard tonight that makes sense to me if it makes sense to the committee I think having you revise you know based on the feedback that you received tonight the feedback was comprehensive enough where a vote tonight does not make sense so we will add this to the agenda for October 15th and come to a vote then thank you Dr. Morris and thank the committee for your comments next item on the agenda is school committee goals calendar and agenda items and you should have what looks like a calendar that was included in your packet there are some items that have already been prefilled and I think much similar to what many with the committee members will recognize used in another district another committee we wanted to go through this calendar you know fairly quickly I think especially tonight given in the interest of time but just make sure that we're highlighting the items that we should be prepared to discuss just for our October 15th meeting to bring the committee's attention the things that I've heard so far are obviously superintendent goals vote but also the Crocker Farm update I think just to hear where we are from the town and the conversations that Dr. Morris is going to be having with them the facilities item which is something that we typically talk about an update on coming on this and then also just to better understand what's happening the balance of student body which is another you know related piece that I heard that the great span advisory update and a capital project update from our new liaison and that already is a very full issue but I think just to highlight the committee other items that we have discussed as being of interest to the committee in hearing fairly soon one is math program update breakfast after the bell and homelessness also has been brought up so where we put those items in the next you know several months worth of meetings is really what we want to try to figure out another couple of items that I wanted to bring up for the committee is for November 19th meeting and then I will shut up and let other people talk is our budget planning just conversations around the departure of our finance director you know I think we want to start that conversation sooner rather than later waiting you know and then I think the capital project update again will be another item that we definitely want to bring up in November 19th so with that I just want to bring that up for you know sort of open up for the committee if there's additional items or issues that you want to raise or if there are any questions that you have about some of the pre-filled items here Ms. Spitzer so before this meeting there was a meeting of the budget subcommittee on which I am a member and Sean Mondano has shared with us the fiscal year 2021 budget development calendar draft so I now have at least early draft of all of the budget items I don't know if it's worth me listing them but I could share with you the items that are not on the document that was in our packet but that are on the budget calendar if that's useful Dr. Morris yeah Mr. Mondano what he's done since the last regional meeting and we didn't get to or he didn't get around to doing this and this is he's updated the full calendar with all those items so I mean certainly you could but I think what I plan to do is share this one like I have done the region with Mr. Mondano and have him fill in what's on your document so that it aligns to what's here I think I have that so if I can make a suggestion maybe we have that conversation at our next meeting that would be great thank you Mr. Nakajima yeah I guess it's probably more of a question than anything else for and oddly enough it has a point of intersection with the previous coming around budget process is if there are substantive program areas where we think we could potentially have an impact on budget I'd love to talk to them talk about them as early on the calendar as possible so just for an example if there's something you think we needed to do to superintendent to do breakfast after the bell I'd want to talk about that like on November 19th there's something so that we could have an understanding when we're thinking about budget early on what we've learned about it and so we could understand we could give a signal to you about how much we want to prioritize that or not depending on what you tell us and that may be true for common entes it may be true for even the other school improvement plans I don't know but I guess that's not feedback we can get tonight but I guess even as soon as next meeting I would love for you to look through the goals and understand where they intersect with this calendar and then as you're thinking about things that intersect with things that we're interested in that could have a budget impact how do we front load that on our calendar so that because what I really don't like doing is I don't like talking about investments in budget under the gun when we're having to like we've got to approve a budget and make a decision around some new program area not that you've done that a lot but I'm just saying thanks thank you Mr. Nakajima Miss McDonald I think maybe you've already mentioned it and I missed it so I apologize but for either October or November or maybe both I think some conversation about community outreach and community engagement around the capital spending would be well timed so that we're having that conversation well before we get into Crocker Farm expansion study well before we get to the December meeting and going back to comments made earlier about is there a way that we can start that process earlier so I think October feels like a good time for that I can't remember what else you had on that meeting obviously the January meeting will have reorganization and the middle grade span advisory board is going to be wrapping up in January so probably that February meeting would be a report out on that and then I wonder if that meeting or an earlier meeting might be an appropriate one to have a conversation about what are we going to do with it when we get that right like I'm on that board and it's not clear to me what the process would be once we have that report so maybe sort of knowing what that road map looks like and either ahead of that meeting or as part of that meeting would be helpful Thank you Dr. Morris The weeds of Ms. McDonald's point because I don't want to deviate but I do think one of the challenges of that particular timeline and process is it'll go back to the region which is where it originated so I just I don't want to get too much into it and we can follow up offline but Let's not get into that here, yeah Thank you So just very quickly bring to the committee's attention it is 9.14 so one minute shy of our 30 minute expansion that we had just added we voted on just a little while ago so I don't know if the committee wants to take another vote I know this is so technical but you know I think it's important Mr. Demling I move to extend our meeting it's not going to have 30 minutes We have a motion to extend for 30 minutes do we have a second Yes reluctantly Mr. Nakajima it's been moved and seconded Any questions, comments, amendments All those in favor of extending the meeting for 30 minutes Okay, we have Ms. McDonald to do vote in favor Yes, okay So we have four in favor Any against And one against So that passes we are voting to extend for 30 minutes and I'm hopeful that we can finish before that Mr. Demling I just real quick on the calendar I really like Mr. Nakajima's suggestion about taking the goals and sprinkling in topics pre-scheduling them it would definitely be unfortunate if every one of these five didn't get something more than a superintendent's update at some point over the calendar year plus one breakfast after the bell I understand that timing when that is going to be most effective we have new leadership in that position we have to figure out what the implementation is it has facilities repercussions I think that's a pretty high priority and not to put too much more on your plate but I would like this year for us to have even just a brief discussion about at the elementary level what we're doing to support students to feel supported and accepted with their own gender identity this is an issue that I think typically we think of as more than older student issue but I don't think it's just a middle school in fact one of our principals spoke about this during one of the student improvement plans or a different item I can't remember which but I would love that to get on Dr. Morris just brief and explicit that's part of the focus on wellness for all students that's a subset of students that we think data would suggest we particularly need to focus on as it relates to wellness part and parcel of that so absolutely thank you and I think this was also a conversation we had at our last meeting that I had raised okay so we've got a lot of items on the docket for this upcoming year which is as it should be I would like to propose that Dr. Morris and I sit down and go through some of these things that have been proposed tonight and come back at our next meeting with another draft of this and of course this is a living document changing throughout the year but at the very least this gives us something to focus on for the next couple of meetings and I especially appreciate comments about thinking about our budget planning process and making sure that all the items that we're talking about and this is similar to what we've done in previous years where we've had programs common present to the school committee it was in that vein of thinking so I think it will make sense for us to do okay thank you so moving us along we have gifts Dr. Morris thank you okay so if anyone wants to make a motion to accept the gifts I move that we accept the following gifts from Amherst education foundation number 1579 to support making history project in the amount of $7,000 and from Amherst education foundation also 1579 to support the greater library access project in the amount of $3,477 for a total of $10,477 thank you we have a motion do we have a second a second thank you Ms. Spitzer any comments from the committee all those in favor of the motion it is unanimous thank you very much and thank you to the Amherst education foundation for your generous donations Mr. Nakajima I move to adjourn okay we have a motion to adjourn do we have a second second Ms. Spitzer has it all those in favor of adjourning great thank you very much in less than five minutes do we have any nays abstentions Mr. Demling thank you everyone