 Who's the I am the host. Okay. It was recording. We have a couple of members in the audience. Okay. So I'm Kathy Shane and I am chair of the elementary school building committee and I'm going to call this meeting to order at 732. I'm going to call this meeting to order at 732. And I'm going to call this meeting to order at 732. Per suant to governor Baker's orders. This meeting is being held with remote participation and virtually. And we will. Put up the zoom connection for those of you who are listening. I want to call on the people. On the committee to make sure they can hear me. And it's in effect a roll call. So I'm just going to call on the order. And I'm going to call the board to order. And I'm going to be able to do that. And I'm going to be able to do that here. So I'll do. In the order of pictures on my screen. Paul Bachman present. Dwayne Chambl. President. Anthony Delaney. President. Steve Schreiber. Here. Mike Morris. Here. It's John Mcnano. Yeah. Allison. Hello. And Jonathan Salbon and Rupert. I'm calling the meeting to order and I'm not sure who I can put the agenda up. It would be useful to me if someone else could put it up so I can continue to watch faces, but does anyone else have the agenda? Because I do have it available in seeing no volunteer. I can do accounting. Anthony, thank you. If I can find my there. And can you make it just a little bit larger? Thanks, Anthony. I also, Anthony, are you a willing volunteer for minutes for today? Also, we do have a minutes discussion later on the agenda, but I just wanted to make. I I can be I at this point, maybe we should just assume it. Um, I want to point out, if we do do a rotating minutes, take this won't be forever. This will only be until the OPM is selected. And generally, the OPM starts taking minutes at that point. So it's not a it's not a lifetime commitment to other people want if we start rotating this. Well, I think we'll have a brief discussion on minutes later. But if you're willing to do it today, let's be that way. So the agenda is up on the screen. Um, as I think most people know, if not everyone, we did get a letter back from MSBA with enrollment and we have signed the letter. So we have a certified enrollment and the first item on the agenda is going to be Mike explaining the contents of that and any discussion about it. And then the next item, and we talked about it in December is forming a subcommittee for selection of OPM because we're now in the next phase of moving forward. Both what is what does that subcommittee do some sense of timeline? How many people and first a discussion of what it is and then volunteers and then a group discussion of values that we want to look for in an OPM that would inform the draft request for proposals and selection criteria. And you can see the rest committee minutes. So I just want to right now, public comments are put at the end. I think I'll leave them there for today, but I would like a quick discussion of the committee at the end, whether we'd rather move public comments to the beginning of the meeting and we have some public here. We can they can make a comment on that as well. We when we seek public comments, it's not a back and forth. We're just going to be asking for comments and we will take them. So I think with that, Mike, I'd like to just turn it over for you to talk about the enrollment certification we received and its implications for us moving forward. Sure. Thank you, Kathy. Thanks for everyone being here bright and early. See how to do this succinctly, but clearly that's my goal. And so basically the way the enrollment certification process works is districts can request multiple enrollments to study and MSBA takes that into account and then offers enrollments that can be studied. And so in this particular instance, and I apologize. Some of you may have heard this before because I spoke about it last week at a school committee meeting on behalf of the district. I requested three enrollments. The first enrollment was 420 students at a K to 6 school just, you know, just dealing with the Fort River School. The second and the 420 was based on the current common aunties to a language program and then having one monolingual class as it aged up through sixth grade. That's if you think of three classes per grade level and seven grade levels. That's 21 classrooms times 20 students, which is roughly our average. And you get 420 students. The second enrollment that was requested was 520 student. School and this would have replaced Fort River and Wildwood. So we've moved to a two school district as opposed to a three school district. It assumed that there would be a construction progress process project on the town, the town funded construction project that would have expanded Crocker Farm School. And, you know, I think we could I landed at 521 could have landed other, but it would have to relatively even side schools. Something I shared with someone who asked is that, you know, evenly sized schools are theoretical construct. It's not the reality. If you think of Wildwood and Fort River, those are literally evenly sized, you know, built schools for even populations. And they've rarely had the same population throughout time. And actually it's Waxon and Waynesville. Fort River was a lot larger in recent years. Wildwood's been a lot larger. So, so, you know, I just have to take the evenly sized pieces with a grain of salt, but it would add to more similarly sized schools. And the last one is would have been the 600 student K to 5 consolidated school. So taking Wildwood and Fort River offline and having the sixth grade move to the middle school. And so those were requested, you know, we had multiple conversations. Paul Bachoma was involved in the planning department because they had a lot of questions about future growth in the town because they're trying to take that into account as they think about this. And then at the end, you know, what we received back was two enrollments that we were permitted to study and they neither were exactly what we requested. And I think I can walk walk folks through and Kathy and Paul certainly can jump in in terms of the conference call that we shared on this topic with MSBA. The two top two enrollments they certified for us were 320 students K to 6 at Fort River. The reason they felt 320 was a better number than 420. Not better was the number they were willing to certify was that they look at district wide capacity enrollment. So the fact that we have a dual language program is they care about it. But that's something that sorted out in the feasibility study, what you do programmatically. This is purely about capacity. And they looked at our expected student enrollment and they looked at the capacity of all three of our elementary schools. They concluded that 420 students was too large. We would have excess space, excess classrooms in the district. And on a factual basis, I will say, you know, I understand where they're coming from. It does create some programmatic challenges for us. But again, that's as they emphasize, that's what you do in feasibility when you're writing an educational plan. But they express multiple times that they are they are have to be respectful and conscious that they have many districts in the pipeline, many districts trying to get in and they can't approve a project that builds excess capacity for one district when other districts don't have that opportunity. So that's how they landed at 320. It wasn't a knock against a dual language program. They actually are quite fond of that and interested in that. But they can't utilize that to build five more classrooms, essentially, than what would be required from a district wide capacity perspective. The second enrollment they certified was 575 students for K-5 school that would take Fort River and Wildwood offline and so that we would end up with two schools. So one distinction is in option A, we still have three elementary schools in Amherst and option B, we have two elementary schools in Amherst. And, you know, basically the difference in 575 and 600 was how they looked at our enrollments over time and projected enrollment. It wasn't, you know, they came up with a lower number at first, actually. And then we discussed it, we discussed our class size policy, which is quite a bit lower than the average in Massachusetts. Our elementary classes are fewer students than the average elementary class in Massachusetts, and that has implications for a building project. And I want to thank them for being flexible and understanding that our local policies of the elementary school committee dictate class size policy that is different from their norm. So that's how we landed at 575. In terms of the middle option, they expressed really clearly that if we wanted, if we being the town wants to do something about Crocker Farm, that that's the town's discretion. But at this point, they're ready to roll. They've been in the process with us, they're back in the process with us. And if we're not sure, and by not sure, they mean don't have in Crocker Farm's case committed funds and a decision made that there's an expansion, then we should drop out of the program and reapply when we have all of our ducks in a row and all of our commitments made on that one in terms of six weeks in the middle school. They're aware that that's a vote of two committees that doesn't require funding. We shared all of our external reports with them, the Crocker Farm expansion report and renovation, the Fort River process. Obviously, they had the Wildwood, all those reports on hand, as well as our looking at six weeks in the middle school report. So they had all the information that we had to give. They know we're well positioned in terms of information. I think they equipped that we have more information than almost any other district they've ever worked with, who's at this stage in the process. And that's a good thing, right? That's going to help us as we move forward. So that was the rationale for approving only two enrollments and at the numbers they stated. At that point, the chair of the school committee, the president of the town council, myself signed off on the enrollment. It's not really a negotiation at that point in time. It was one additional document that we had to just say how we were going to, you know, that we had approved the the town had approved the funding for the feasibility and just, you know, a rough ratio of how we anticipated being spent between the OPM, the designer and some other costs. And the really good news from my perspective is we got a confirming email. I think it was yesterday, Kathy. It's been it's been the fact as Wednesday morning is surprising to me. So but we got a letter that confirmed that we are slated to be everything's off to MSBA legal and we are slated to be on the February 11th board meeting to fingers crossed invited into the feasibility study, which is a good thing. The last thing I think I'll share as an update and I'll stop and take questions or comments is that at that board meeting, I know I'll attend. I think Kathy, you know, said that she would attend and perhaps others will as well, it's a virtual meeting, so it makes it quite easy to attend. And assuming a positive vote of that meeting, Kathy and I will have an orientation and policy is able on the next phase in terms of designer OPM selection, designer selection. And they said, based on their process and their timeline, we should anticipate a June or July finalization of hiring an owner project manager. So in their timeline, that's what it takes. They did and we'll talk about this because it's on the agenda. They did encourage us to start that process in the way that Kathy has designed the agenda so that we're ready to go because everything needs to be submitted weeks ahead of not just MSBA board meetings, but for their, you know, their support in terms of that selection. So I think we're well poised to keep on hitting the milestones we need to keep hitting to be on track for this process. And, you know, I think that's as quick a summary as I could do of all that information. So I apologize. It's not maybe the most exciting, but hopefully I hit all the key points. And if Kathy and Paul had other things to share from when we met with the MSBA about the enrollment certification, but that that's looking back at my notes, that's what I've got. Paul, do you have anything you want to add? I think that was a really good summary. I think they were they're very supportive of they know the building. They know Fort River, they understand the needs. They're very supportive of the process. They wanted us to succeed, which was very and they saw themselves as partners with us. But that being said, they also recognize their larger responsibility to the Commonwealth and all the other schools that are, you know, in the district that are in their line waiting for fun. So I think I think the town is well positioned, as Mike said, to move forward. And I think they they work in a very deliberate process and they give you your dates well in advance. And if we have the opportunity to hit those dates. And so it's good to see these states laid out going forward and what we have and when we'll hit their meeting dates. They only meet every other month. So if we miss a meeting date, it's a it's a problem for us. So we don't want to do that. Yeah, the only I just would add two other things we heard on the call. We asked Mike asked any advice or coaching advice going forward. And the one answer was communicate every step of the way. So one of my questions for today is should we the committee, should the school committee, should the council put out some brief statement about the enrollment? You know, the decision and I have to write something up for the council. So it could be as part of the council report, but just so townwide, people know that the the ball is starting to roll, you know, and this is and these are the implications that that was one. And then when Mike said the June or July us moving with OPM, they gave us it wasn't just a little bit in advance, but I think, you know, to be on the agenda for June, we have to be ready by the end of March or, you know, in an end of April for July. So it means we need to be very focused on the OPM process of getting. Getting that process moving and doing it efficiently if we want to make the June or July decision thing. You know, so I was to me, it was like, whoa, they when they say a few weeks before, they didn't mean like, you know, two weeks before they meant really before to get on their agenda. So those were the two other things. And we did push pretty hard about on the three models that Mike had submitted. And their answers were, as he said, you know, if we had put money on the table for Crocker expansion, then then yes. But if we're not ready to do something, they would be asking us to come back. Similarly, you know, on a couple other questions that we had. So so they not just were they were totally enthusiastic. They were cheerleaders. You know, you're going to have a new school. This is wonderful. You know, we're here to help you. So it was green lights on folks, Mike. Yep, just to clarify one thing I think they were saying, and I think I should have said it earlier that the OPM doesn't go back to the full board. It goes to something called an OPM review panel. It's the same idea. They don't meet all the time. They're not on the beck and call. They meet on every, you know, I don't know exactly how often, but with regularity. But if anyone's looking at board dates, that's the wrong dates to be looking for. It's it's I think it's literally called the OPM review panel. And so, you know, those are certainly open meetings, but that's the what we need to hit is the dates for that group. And I can read them out loud. Actually, I have them here. If it's actually, you know what might be helpful is I think I'm allowed. Am I allowed to share my screen on this one? I think so, as long as whoever's host allows us. See if it lets me. Yeah, I'm going to share my screen. It may be hard to read, but I'll email when this meeting ends, I'll email this data because it actually lays out the June and July dates and exactly what submissions need to be when. So let me. Yep, you're doing it. Is that a large enough for people to be able to read? You can adjust your people can adjust their own screens. OK. But, you know, when they're talking about June or July, it means the add in if we want to hit June, which I'm always pushing for the sooner. Right. You know, that means add in the register, March 25th, you know, appears on the 31st, applications due by April, received the MSPA by May, the full package by May 26. And having gone through this before, it's, you know, I think we want to be ahead of those dates because the tail end of those can get, you know, challenging in terms of scheduling the interviews and all that. But, you know, this document probably lays out the dates that we need to hit to check off the boxes so that we could be in June or July for that review panel. I hope that's helpful. Yeah, that's very helpful, Mike. And if you send it to me, we can make sure we both post it and everyone has it. We are starting as every I think everyone here knows there is now a web page. It will get more organized once OPM comes on with lots of sections. But we're posting all of this material in packets, Paul. So two things, one on that one, I think we should say decide today what what meeting we are targeting as a committee. We should say we want to hit the June meeting and then start to talk about what does it mean to get there. And then secondly, in terms of your communication piece, Kathy, I think you're absolutely right. I mean, if you are going to draft up something for the council, we can take that and we can put that out through the town and answer the school communication networks so everybody can hear it. So I think if you want to take that first crack at it, if you're planning on doing that anyway, that might be a good first step. And I would I'm planning on making sure I share the draft so that it uses the words that all of us can be using, you know, and be careful about it to be both careful, but also clear, you know, so people don't read in between the line something that's not there. All right. So I think does it make sense to choose a date? The meeting we want to end, I think that to me it does. Mike, anyone else? I just want to give people I said a awful lot in the beginning and we never we all just had a lot to share. I just want to make sure that the committee has a chance to ask questions, go backwards and ask any questions on stuff I said. I think I agree with Paul's your suggestion about drafting something. Kathy, thank you for doing that. And Paul's about choosing a date, but I just want to make sure if there's questions in the committee, they get an opportunity to. Thank you, Mike. Talk about stuff that's not just those two things. Thank you for a very gentle, but clear reminder. So I'm looking at all the faces. You know, I think we're small enough, Jonathan, just raise your hand this way rather than the hand thing. Jonathan. Unmute myself. I just just for clarity, Mike, what was the grade configuration on the the larger population that we're permitted to to study? So it was. Yep. So it's K to five on the larger population and K to six on the Fort River, only 320 students. And I think just to highlight that this came up at a Amherst School Committee meeting last night, or the joint part, I forget it was there were multiple parts of my school committee life last night. But you know, I think, you know, trying to think of how to engage people on that particular question, whether that sits in this body or that body or some combined body or between the Amherst and the region is something that we'll have to sort through over the next few weeks. Other questions, comments? I'm not seeing anything. So I know I actually didn't watch the first school committee, Mike, when you presented this, but the school committee members quickly jumped to that and said, oh, so this means, you know, if we're if we're down to two schools, if we're going to do just two rather than three, it means the sixth grade is moving. We better folk, we should be starting to focus on that. So it is, it has a clear curriculum implication. Anyone else? So I guess, so let's go, the next item is to talk about the formation of a subcommittee that would be part of the OPM selection and Paul's and timeline. So Paul's suggestion that we aim for June, which would mean that the paperwork on this has to be in no later than March 25th, according to what Mike just, is everyone comfortable and is that it set, trying to set that as the goal? Yeah, I don't see anyone going, no. I mean, it's a tight goal, clearly, because we're not going to be invited. The invited in happens on February 11th. And meanwhile, Anthony is starting to draft everything. You know, but we're not, yeah. Anthony. This is a much, selecting an OPM for this is much simpler than when we tried to do the feasibility study at Ford River. It's a very defined document. We're really just filling in blanks. So assembling the RFS, the request for services, will not be an arduous process for us. Mike. And I'm glad to hear that. I think just the one thing to be aware of is anything that gets done in this process needs to be vetted and approved by MSBA. So whatever timeline you see there, you have to back up and what's maybe not as explicit in that timeline is that it needs to be submitted. MSBA legal needs to take a look before it ever hits the central registry or whatever it's called, Anthony, sorry. I'm not, as you know, as you've learned well, I'm not well versed in procurement jargon. But just, I think just, I'm glad to hear that because I do know that there's going to be a delay on the other end because anything we do along that step needs to get the check from Boston there before it goes out. Casey, do you want to say a little bit about the role of the OPM or subcommittee to do the OPM because the next step after that role is looking for volunteers to be on it? You know, it's a subcommittee of our committee that would be not just working with the RFS, but also I'm assuming doing, to extend, we do background references, you know, finding out about the entities that submit pieces would be doing that. So you want to talk a little bit about that, Mike, Anthony, anyone who's been through this before? Anthony, did you want to start or would you like me to start? Yeah, so the first role of such a subcommittee would be to work with me on actually drafting the request for services, which again is mostly a fill-in-the-blanks exercise. I'd be looking for people to fill in background information on the goals of the process and perhaps why we are looking for certain specific things unique to this district and maybe a little bit of history on previous projects because I only came in after the Fort River individual project started. So that's not a very arduous thing, although at least some people on the subcommittee should probably have some specific knowledge there. After that, yeah, we get into interviewing the OPM. Our people currently, is MSBA still having people travel for that, Mike, or that's all remote right now? So we can probably assume it will still be remote. We won't have to travel to Boston for those things. And yeah, doing reference checks that could be delegated to one person that could be split up among multiple people. I think that's the main stuff on my end. Anything else, Mike? Mike? Yeah, so I'll send over a document to you to Kathy, the chair of the committee. It's pretty dense from MSBA, but it's about the process as well. And I think a couple of things to back up was what Anthony said, why do we need an OPM? The OPM is a support for the town and the committee throughout the rest of the process. So whether or not literally building the building, they are essentially the vetting agency that's going to be able to do that. Essentially the vetting agency that we have to control costs to make sure the products that we're receiving is good, as Anthony noted, to lovingly take notes. So it's no longer Anthony or someone else's responsibility, but there are go-to people and it's a really critical role in my experience. So the short story is Anthony will do a lot of the front-end piece with the OPM. It does need to be advertised in central registry for at least two weeks. We may want to do it more than that. That'll be a decision that we want to talk about. In typical times, there'd be an informational meeting and a site inspection. We might just be an informational meeting for interested vendors. Sean, you were involved in that last time. We had pretty good turnout last time with people who want to know more about the project. They want to understand what the goals of this committee and the town are so that when they're doing their applications more or less, they're providing their documents. They're really clear on what the aims are and what we're looking for. Which really dovetails the next agenda point, Cathy, but I think that's why it's so critical that on the front-end, we're clear on what we value and what we're looking for so that we're being transparent about that with the potential vendors. Once we get those, we'll take all available information into account. There's a ranking process for people who are on that subcommittee that is short-listing. Each of the short-listed respondents are invited for a presentation interview, by that subcommittee, and you're looking for can they do the job? Can they meet the schedule? Do they have the key personnel to be able to do that? There's a reference check process at the tail end of that. All the references need to be checked for everyone who you interview. It's not just, I like this person, I'm only going to check references for that person. Again, it's very, very formal structured process, as Anthony described. And then the short-listed candidates would be ranked. So you're ranking all the people who apply. You're interviewing the people who you short-list. You do references for all those people. There's rankings for those people. You need to retain those because they may be requested by the MSVA. You need to have a rationale for why you ranked them the way you did. Again, there's a lot of forms and a lot of those pieces. And then it goes to, as I said, the MSVA's owner project manager review panel. And you do have to justify why it is that you're choosing the vendor if you want to. And then you have to come to a contract agreement based on fees. And so it is a cumbersome process. We're so lucky to have Anthony here to walk us through the technical parts of it. And so it's a lot of work. And for me, in my opinion, it's really important work because it will directly influence the entire rest of the project, including parts of the project I haven't been to, but talking to my colleagues who have, through construction and commissioning and all those pieces. So it's a little bit of a slog, to be honest with you. But if we do this right and get the right vendor, the rest of the process will work much more smoothly. Sorry for, again, being long-winded this morning, but I just want to make sure I'm given the lay of the land. So what is the time commitment that you anticipate for people who are going to volunteer to serve on this group? And once they make a decision on an OPM or a group of three OPMs, do they come back to this full, the entire body to say here's what we want and then it goes to the MSBA from this body? Do you want to take that, Anthony? So the time commitment for the drafting of the RFS, I would think would only amount to three or four hours, probably one or two subcommittee meetings where we actually review it and then probably a fair bit of, okay, can you draft this part? Can you supply some language for this? So I would think five or six hours grand total. That might be two, that might be two more than that might be high. Then in terms of interviews, that's probably a day or maybe two half days depending on scheduling, I would think. Then however long it takes to actually finalize a list. So a couple more subcommittee meetings there. So yeah, so the actual selection is probably it'll be spread out, but it would probably be the equivalent of a couple, two, three days, I would think. That's basically what it was on Fort River. Mike? Yeah, I'm sorry, I don't follow people. No, no, no, no. I'll take it wherever it comes from. No, I would guess in my head about 20 hours, right? For Anthony, he can read, get these proposals and probably roll through them because he's used to this process for people like me. When I got, last time when we got proposals, whether it was this or the designer, they're pretty lengthy. They're not like a two-page resume, right? And so, I don't know, Sean was also in that role last time. It took a lot of time to read through those. I think I agree with everything Anthony said on the other parts, but I don't wanna minimize how much, if we get eight applications, for me, it wasn't like I could read them in 10 minutes and know what I was talking about. It really had to dig in. I see Sean has his hand up as well. I see Sean. Yeah, I'd say it's probably a pretty busy couple of weeks when you're reading the proposals and then when you're doing the interviews, Mike's right, the proposals for both the OPM and the designer can be pretty lengthy. And it's important to have a good sense of how you're going to rank them because when you're reading through these, they all pretty much say the same thing and you're trying to piece out what separates one OPM from another OPM. And what you're really looking for is, did they read what you said and are they being responsive to what the district is looking for? Some people will submit cookie cutter proposals that are just standard and others you'll be able to tell that they really took time to understand the district and the community. But it is sort of a time consuming process to piece that out because they're all very colorful, they're all very nice and professional and you're really sort of looking for like the little teeny details that you can kind of justify your ranking based on those. So it's a little arduous to me to do that part of it. I agree. I did forget how much reading there is. That is definitely true. So I have a question shown because I haven't been through this process but I have been through on behalf of a federal government on a grant selection and where they were big grants on ranking, we often had pre-decided on some ranking criteria and even given it points. So it was a reader's guide then to reading the application, did it have this or that and very well done. So have you done anything like that or is it more a verbal what you're looking for? So normal procurements are like that. Anthony, is that something that's already set in the RFS, what the criteria will be? It is already set and it is largely predefined what the criteria are. I could... I could show it if we wanted. That's not your main to this particular discussion but yeah, it's defined. I totally agree. I mean, it was just really useful to have that when reading something. So as you said, look beyond the boilerplate for what someone said. So anyone else a question on what this subgroup does? Paul. So the question does it come back to the full body before it goes to MSBA or not? My recollection is yes. And even if it doesn't technically lead to which MSBA will brief Kathy and myself on, I believe it should. I don't think there's anything that precludes it but Sean, do you remember from last time I felt like it did come back? I thought we brought back the... So my recollection unless it's changed which it could have changed there's sort of a narrative that you have to complete that shows your process, how many you received, how many you shortlisted, the rankings and I think you mostly just bring back the shortlist and that's what the OPM review board sort of looks at. And then there's some sort of back and forth process I have to refresh my memory around the negotiation of it because I think we set a fee of the double check and then there's a little bit of a negotiation around that. So yeah, I believe it does come back to this commit. This group first before it goes off to the MSBA just to take a look and we can explain where the subcommittee can explain how they got to that shortlist. I also think even if that isn't a required step I think it's an important step because our meetings will be posted in advance so we need to set up a meeting to make sure that happens and that'll be the broader public knowing that we're getting to that point and there are 13 of us. So it's also just a healthy weighing in. Yeah, Paul? The subcommittee means are public meetings as well. No, I know they're public. I'm just saying that it means that you don't have to go to every meeting of the subcommittee to know that it's going to come back to this meeting. I mean, there are some people that actually, I think love to watch all the meetings that we're doing on committees, but there are others that would like some readers guide to tune in for this one. It's a biggie or no, I realize everything is public and it's really been very helpful for those of you who haven't seen it with Zoom, the town has been really quite fast in getting faster on posting the Zoom videos. So if you couldn't be to a particular meeting, you can watch it and it's happening for any of our public meetings that are held under Zoom. So I think with that background, it's people volunteering to be on the subcommittee. And what I heard is we need, ideally we need Anthony on it, but we need someone who's been through this before so that history section and Mike. So just on the kinds of people we need. And then I'm just going to ask for who would like to be on it. I'm going to be volunteering to be on it because I think I need to go through this step. So I'm assuming I will be on it in some way. This Duane, yeah, I would definitely like to be on it, you know, fully immersed in the project. And it seems like this is going to be a big piece of it. So I want to jump right into it and jump into the fire. Okay, Steve's hand was up also. I just... I wasn't sure if I was supposed to use a digital hand, but I'll volunteer. I would like to be part of this if that's possible. Okay, I saw Paul, you put your hand... Jonathan, hand is up. I'm just looking, I'm looking around. Yeah, I'll do it. I just want to say, I definitely do not want to be on it. Jonathan. Sorry, got to unmute myself. I certainly am glad to participate. I can bring some of the history, at least about the last project. And I certainly have been on the opposite side of the procurement process. And that might or might not be helpful, but I'm also willing to step aside for new folks if the larger group wants different folks. So I'm looking at Mike and Sean, just on a, you went through it with the Wildwood Project and then you've been sort of the long history of immersed on elementary schools. Would you want to be serving on this, Mike, or is that added to a workload that already is a big workload? Yeah, I mean, I wanted to make sure there was someone from the schools on there. The fact that Dwayne, thank you Dwayne, volunteered for that. I shift my opinion, because Dwayne is 100% trust him to bring the best interest of the schools forward. But I think your point about past history is okay. So I don't know how Sean feels about this. I'm not his supervisor, so I will not jump in at any point to pressure Sean, but I think the point's well taken about having some history, but the flip side of that is also true, that maybe it's better to have some people who weren't part of the prior process to have a fresh eye, because likely a lot of the same people will reapply. I think that there's a finite number of OPMs in the area, finite number of OPMs who are gonna apply for a project in Western Massachusetts. So I could look at that question either way, but certainly if the committee feels like I need to be, or should be that I'll do it, but having Dwayne involved makes me feel more relaxed, and I know that was coming. So thank you, Dwayne. So right now I have Dwayne, Steve, Jonathan, Kathy, Anthony, which is one, two, three, four, five people. And we're a group of 13. So five is a good number. Sean is raising his hand and Anthony is raising, it's Sean first than Anthony. Yeah, I was gonna just say, I think that's a good number. I don't think you'd wanna go much bigger than that. And I'm fully confident in Anthony to kind of guide the procurement side of it. The history I think is most important for filling out the RFS narrative, which he'll get a lot of that information from the schools anyway. And I can certainly help work with him if there's any questions about what happened last time, but I think that's a good number. Okay, so I think we have our subcommittee, unless any other hands going up, it's actually the fact that there weren't 13 pictures on this, I can kind of scan it to see hands, which is good. So I think that Paul, yeah. I was just gonna say, if you needed someone else from the schools or Sean or who's been through it before, I was thinking, Kathy, you could serve sort of ex-Ethico, just as chair, be at all the, so that's just another option, but it becomes a very large group then, so. I don't know, what's the optimal number for the subcommittee group? I think we did three last time, it was my recollection from the last time we did this, but it's also, I don't think five is noticeably different. We had five on the Fort River one and that worked fine. So we weren't selecting an OPM, we were selecting a designer, but that worked fine. That's all. Okay, to the extent there's a section that you want other readers of some, for the RFS to read it, I'm sure we will share, so school committee, this doesn't have to be only this closed out in a huddle and at the end of it you see the results. So on terms of values, I wanted to open it up for a discussion of the types of values, skills, experience, Paul, yeah. Should we make a motion on this committee? Okay, so sure, we can, this is good. Keep Kathy in a more formal. Okay, so I will make a motion that we form a subcommittee for the OPM selection that includes, and I'll do the last names later, so I don't have to do Dwayne, Steve, Jonathan, Kathy, and Anthony. Is there a second to the motion? Second. I guess I need to, I should do a roll call vote since we can't just do a show of hands, correct? You should, yes. Okay, so I will go, are there any further comments or discussion? Okay, then I will go through the screens as I see them, Paul. Yes. Kathy's the yes, Dwayne? Yes. Anthony? Aye. Steve? Yes. Mike? Yes. Sean? Yes. Jonathan? Yes. Rupert? Yes. Ben? Yes. The motion passes unanimously of the one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine people who are here. So there are several absents. We will do this formally in the minutes to show who voted and who was not here at the committee. Okay. Steve? So can I ask a question now that we have, I guess, an official subcommittee? What happens if we're contacted by, directly by potential applicants? So people that we think might be putting themselves forward. Mike? This will happen throughout the process. Like, you know, like there'll be, you know, construction professionals, all that. My advice would be that all communication to potential vendors go through the chair. And everything's, I don't mean to add work to your plate, Kathy, but I think if there's one central person who's doing any communicating, which is probably not that much in this particular instance, but that it all filters to the chair so we don't have people doing side communication with vendors outside the process. So that'd be my recommendation for the group. Anthony? I would volunteer to be the person that that communication goes through. I'm actually already getting a fair number of emails from OPMs. And currently I'm just telling them to watch the committee page. But since I'll be the person posting the documents and I'll know where to direct people, I might suggest that that goes to me. I think that's good. And then, you know, to the extent anything comes directly to me as chair, I will just say I'm copying Anthony because he's handling all of these. So I can do something short and very short and sweet to indicate that it didn't go into a black hole. Okay. So any other questions before we talk about values? I'm not seeing anything. Okay. Any thoughts on the value discussion? I'm gonna share a screen because I jotted down some notes last night. Let me make sure I, here we go. And this is meant to be super rough draft. And I'll make it as big. Is that big enough so people can see it? Yes. Okay. So I just, this was off the top of my own head. I shared it with Mike. He said, looks about right. I've made one comment that I wasn't quite sure how I should change, but I changed it a little bit with this comment, but I'll just go through the 10 or a bit is strong experience that we wanna know that they've had a lot of experience for school building projects, including recent elementary schools. Ideally, since we're gonna do a zero net energy that they at least know what that is. Experience with MSBA, strong references, I think goes without saying, but I'd like to make sure we check through multiple layers of experience having worked with them. The excellent communication skills. I think it's both listening well and communicating clearly with us and with the public, but knowing something about their style, their methods of communication would be good, and a little and willing to able to push back. I didn't know how to write this, but I don't, I think if there are competing ideas or alternative ways of going about things, they need to flush that out and explain consequences so that they don't just go with the flow, but they can be, wait a minute, do you really wanna do this and talk back to us as needed? Well-organized and flexible, with time to support the committee, they're gonna be doing creating website material for us to provide easy access, set in here clear timelines. And then the last, but I shouldn't say least is some that they believe in public engagement, that they really have a strong commitment to outreach public at key junctures, and any materials they've used are clear, and I find some are better than others. That was just, those were six larger value aptarotes that occurred to me. So I'm willing to add, subtract, do anything, but this was, I thought instead of having a blank slate, something to work off, it would be great. Anthony. Would you like me to share the default criteria in the MSBA's OPM selection? I'm sure. So maybe first get any reaction to this, or maybe do that, Anthony, and then Steve. Yeah. I was gonna comment on yours, but whatever order you wanna do. Well, would it be, let me ask the committee, would it be helpful to see the default having just more or less, this is clearly not rocket science of what I did? Keep that in your memory. You wanna see? Let's look, Anthony, look at the default. So do I stop share or does that? I think I can just take over. Let's see. 25th amendment. Yeah. Oh. No, not that. It's the wrong word. It says milk eggs. New share. Got too many windows open. There it is. Okay. So the MSBA form has minimum criteria and then comparative criteria. So the minimum is laid out first and they have to designate a project director who is a registered architect with the Commonwealth who has at least five years experience or seven years experience in construction and supervision of construction. And then the real meat of it is the comparative criteria. Anthony, can you just explain the difference between minimum and comparative real quick for people on the committee? So the minimum criteria will be, if they don't meet it, then we basically can't consider them. If they don't have the regular, whatever we said as a minimum, the required experience, then it's don't pass go. We don't really consider them further. There's not really any discussion or weighing them. They're not qualified. So they're not considered further. Whereas evaluation criteria are comparative and they'd be weighed. Firm A has more experience but does a lot of change orders. Firm B is less experienced but has higher review scores from previous projects. So it's not a simple thumbs up, thumbs down on the evaluation criteria. And the evaluation criteria are past performance, including completion time, dollar value and number of change orders, safety finds their relationship with both the owner and the contractors and the MSBA. Thorough knowledge of building code, ADA and other local regulations. Thorough knowledge of procurement laws including construction management at risk if we go that way. Description of their management approach, the qualifications of the people they identify as key personnel and how much time they are devoting to the project and their experience, their capacity to take on the project and relevant skills, their ability to, so their other workload and whether they'd be able to take on this project in addition to their current familiarity with green building codes such as lead or other or chips or other experience with the life cycle cost analysis, cost estimating and value of engineering. Their stability, we would probably add criteria regarding zero energy experience and other things. But that is the default setup in a blank request for services. Sean, and Jonathan next, yeah. Anthony, you may have mentioned this but I was reading and it kind of reminded me that an important piece of this will be waiting all of those, you know, determining what's the most important and sort of prioritizing that, it's not super intuitive, you know, what's the most important so you really kind of got to go through each one of them and kind of think about your values for the OPM. Yeah. Jonathan, you had your hand up. Yeah, my question's more to what extent does the process allow us to edit or add to that list, Anthony? Or are we, is that a basic setup that comes with the approval process from the state? We, so the instructions part of the form says, owners should designate points to each criteria enlisted below, doesn't, I don't see specific instructions on adding them but I believe with MSBA's approval, we can add evaluation criteria. I guess I would have to double check on that but I believe we can, it would be surprising to me if we couldn't add certain evaluation criteria that are not very specific to our needs, like especially zero energy is the big one for me. Right, that's the one I'm thinking about and how to frame that and how to get, make sure we're getting applicants that have as much experience in that as possible. Thank you. Any other, Steve, you had your hand up when my... It's back up, it's back up. Yeah, okay. And I guess one concern is always to have criteria be so specific that you'll have a pool of zero or a pool of one. Like in other words, experience with net zero, elementary schools in Massachusetts, et cetera, et cetera, all of a sudden gets you into a tiny pool. But the other question I have is I didn't see anything about minority businesses or women owned businesses. Was that in the criteria, you're going through quickly and I couldn't see if that was a criteria that we can or should use. So I do not believe that is in the default setup. It is not, okay, there is, there are state regulations on women and minority on businesses for the construction end, but I don't believe on the OPM or even the designer side. I believe it is, it is something we could add. I believe that's not an uncommon addition. I would be, I for one would be in favor of adding that as a criteria to use. As would I, the state has made a concerted effort in recent years and particularly over the last six to nine months to increase the participation of minority and women owned businesses. Paul? So I agree with those things. I saw, I think what we're saying, I think we went to call out explicitly the net zero designer, whether they have experience or not, but just a commitment to that in there and, and then I also think it's important. Well, this is not, I don't, I think that's the state, you know, MSBA is such a structured process. We're going to use their criteria. We understand that they've thought they've done this a million times, but I think what we're trying to do is articulate the values that we're bringing to it and the priorities. I think Jonathan and Steve had, had the minority women owned businesses one. I think we, we also talked about the net zero one. I also think it's really important in terms of, in terms of high value is working with the, the key contact for the town. And usually that, if that's a facilities manager or the, you know, whoever it is, whoever it's going to be on our, on our side, staff-wise as they start to go through the process. That relationship is really pivotal. Oh, one last thing. I also think in this day and age, we want someone who's very committed to and has a robust online interactive ability to interact with the public because that's not something that would have been pre-thought of, but that's going to be the world that we're living in for the next year probably. So somebody who has some tools in their toolkit that can actually energize public communication on this. Steve. So if we can tinker with the state or the, I'm sorry, the MSBA boilerplate, the minimum requirement, they gave a choice of a registered architect slash engineer or someone with experience. I would prefer to draw the bar higher so that it's an architect or engineer because I can't cease. And I don't, you know, I have not worked with OPMs that much, but I can't envision a process where the project director is not one of those two in particular because they will be in a way directing people who are architects and engineers and in order to have street creds, they would have to have, you know, at least that same, you know, that same education experience. Anthony. That might be statutory, but I will look at that. Okay. Those years might be in statute, but I'll check that. Rupert. Well, I really like this discussion. I wanna say that I really believe that the subcommittee will do a great job prioritizing things, but I would like, I would hope that the subcommittee will heavily wait experience working with MSBA in the past because that's gonna be really key to guiding us and the project through. Okay. I think unless I'm seeing other hands, I'm taking notes, Anthony's a minute taken and we'll have a recording. I think this covered a lot of basis and rather than taking everybody's time once this meeting ends, I'll search for meeting dates for the subcommittee so that we can start to meet now to be ready for the February 11th. And as people saw on the agenda, the next, our next meeting is February 17th as a full committee. And that will be after MSBA's meeting on February 11th. So we will have some work to be done by the subcommittee before then. The next item on the agenda of people, I'm just looking around and people are moving on. I just want a really quick discussion on minutes. If Anthony is willing to continue to be the minute takeer until we get our OPM, that would be great. But we have two sets of draft minutes and we're gonna get a third for our other meeting. We need to decide on a process of reviewing those. If one possible way to expedite it instead of taking meeting time is, and we've done this in the finance committee is to designate a reader of the draft and give them the authority to approve it where anyone who sees something in the minutes that they would like to edit sends it in. And if we wanna go that route, I'm hesitant to do this, but I volunteer to be a reader. And I'm a quick and fast reader. So it would mean that you just send, the draft will get posted. And so you'll have it in your packets and you'll have an opportunity to comment on it. And then I'll just move from draft to final unless there's a big question. Paul? I highly recommend that and move that Kathy be the final arbiter of minutes. Okay, there's a motion on the floor does, maybe you can just do it by a show of hands. Everyone okay with that process? So we don't have to take meeting time. Okay, next, I think, I'm conscious of time, yeah, Anthony? So according to that packet we got when we started as a committee that had, that so you've been selected to be a committee member in Amherst, every committee has to either designate a revolving secretary or make someone secretary. So if that's true, I will nominate myself as recording secretary for the committee. And I second that nomination or I make a motion that we nominate Anthony to be our secretary. Is everyone comfortable with that? Yes, I think so. Thank you, Anthony, over and above. So on the agenda, the next would be opening it up for public comments. We do have participants, let me just see. We have five attendees, anyone who would like to make, I see one hand, I'm not the host for this meeting. So Arina, I see two hands, there are two people with hands up. So someone else would have to promote them. Okay, I think Irina, if you unmute yourself, I think you have been brought into the meeting and we're, and again, on public comments, we will listen to you rather than responding, but we will make a note of your comments. Hi, my name is Irina Lujovna. I was in the four river school building committee and the sixth grade reconfiguration on other committees. I have a question about the enrollment. The 575 is conditioned to move in the sixth grade to the middle school. That report hasn't been presented, it was part of that committee, there was no outreach, there was, there's not a final report. So what happens if it's voted down or is it a mute, at this point it's gonna be a mute process in the sense that if we go with the 575, it has to be approved unless if it's, so the question is, I'm thinking that's not, if not Crocker Farms needs to be expanded and we have to allocate funding for Crocker Farm. If it's voted down, if not the other alternative is the 320. So I want to know what's the committee gonna be doing regarding this and how I'm gonna tackle this because we haven't, the report is not out, it hasn't been outreach. And it wasn't, yes, let's do it, it was we should present person counts and then there are several votes that needs to go ahead before it's been approved to move to the sixth grade or is it gonna be made just, it's gonna put in pressure. I think that vote should have happened before presented the enrollment now is too late and we know this year has been weird but at this point, everything is conditioned on that vote for the 575 or extra funding for Crocker Farm for an expansion for Crocker Farm because otherwise the students don't fit. So that was my comment. Okay, so I think we all heard that comment and I'm gonna leave it to Mike working with the school committee to get back to you, Irina, rather than have- With right now, but we have taken your comment. Thank you very much. Thank you. That we have another hand up, Tony Cunningham. Okay, Tony, you can unmute, you've been brought in to our world. Thank you. My name's Tony Cunningham. Like Irina, I've served on some of the studies that have led up to this point, including the sixth grade advisory board and the Crocker Farm study. And I wanted to thank Kathy for bringing up the point from the MSBA about how important communication is. I think that's vital at this point. And I just reviewed some of the engagement, the engagement document that was developed for the Fort River study. And I understand that once the OPM is on board that they will manage the public engagement, but that's six months out. So for the next six months, it's on the building committee to make sure the public is brought along. And some of the points that were developed during the Fort River study were the website, which you mentioned already, having all materials that are considered and produced and those submitted to the MSBA clearly organized on there and easy to find. Having an email address so people can send questions. I know Kathy has a Amherst am a address, but is there going to be a address for the building committee? So people can target questions that are meant for this process. Press releases. So there hasn't been anything other than mentioned at the school committee meetings at the last two school committee meetings. There hasn't been anything in the press about this yet. So people don't know at least in the bulletin and the Gazette, they don't know that we're basically down to either sixth grade moves or we have three schools and the size of school that's been approved by the MSBA for a K6 does not fit the program we have in it right now. So they're really not realistic options or good options at this point. I mean, not that the 575 is a bad option, but it's not much of a choice. So making that clear to the community at this point and then op ed. So last time around in the Fort River study, both the school committee chairs had op eds in the papers. This time, perhaps you can consider joint op eds between the building committee and the school committee so that you're addressing the curriculum implications as well as the facility and building implications that are under the purview of the building committee. And then finally, the videos of these meetings have been very slow to get posted. This is the first time I set an alarm. So I would get up at 730 to tune in. The other three meetings, I had to wait for them to be posted and I had to chase them down with the town staff in order to get them posted, all three of them. The third meeting took almost a month before it was online. So it's not accessible to the community easily to find out what you're discussing. So basically to reiterate what the MSBA told you and what Councillor Shane brought up at the beginning of the meeting is that communication is your responsibility until the opm is on board. And so to try to put some time and effort into that whether it's an item on the agenda to make sure you're covering all bases, figuring out how to reach different parts of the community that might not speak English, that might not be tuning in, that might not be reading the bulletin. You would now have those Sufa signs. Could you put something on the Sufa sign to advertise to the people walking by downtown that this is going on? And just the key milestones that are coming up just to allow people to feel like they're brought along and they're not told what the solution is in six months time or whenever that sixth grade decision is. I mean, we'll know what the building is gonna look like once that sixth grade decision is made. So anyway, I thank you for your work and thank you for getting up so early to have these meetings. And I'm hoping this is a very successful process. Thank you for your comments, Tony. And we are taking notes and it will be captured. I think I don't see any other hands up in the audience. So I think we are coming to the close. There are no matters that weren't anticipated by the chair. It looks to me like there will be some in the future, but right now I don't have any. So I wanna take an opportunity for anyone to make any other comments. Jonathan was just adjusting his glasses as I do all the time. I'm just looking for any other final comments, reminding everyone that the next meeting of this committee is February 17th at 730 in the morning. And we will probably once the subcommittee meets, we'll get out to you how often we're gonna be meeting our best guess of how often the full committee will need to meet in March, April, to get something more, are we going to more than once a month? There'll be a subcommittee meeting, but we'll get some more formalized structure of meetings we've right now we're on once a month. Any final comments? I don't see any. I wanna thank everyone from getting up this early in the morning. I am an early riser, so it fits me, but if this were my daughter, she would not be a happy camper. So thank you all very much. We are at the beginning of a process that will produce a school for the community if we are successful, not just for the committee. Thank you all, those of you who volunteer for this subcommittee. I look forward to working with everybody. Have a nice day. I think we are adjourned. I'm just gonna do it by hands.