 And also, seeing a presence of a quorum, call the Amherst School Committee to order at 6.31 PM. So we have a packed agenda tonight, and it's divided into two sections. The first is, as you just noted, a joint meeting with the Amherst School Committee. And so for the purposes of that meeting, which includes a math update, as well as a discussion and vote on collaborative or educational services expansion, we are entertaining a public comment section. Of our agenda. So if anyone has a public comment pertaining to that portion of the agenda, we welcome you to come forward to the microphone now, you know, three minutes to speak. As is often noted, oh, by the way, we're being recorded for later, right? Yep, and this is the last meeting that will be recorded. They're trying to, trying out this streaming tonight. And thanks to Amherst Media, the town of Amherst and RIS department, our next meeting will be live broadcast. Okay, I just wanted to make a note that- As Jeff said, we're in the bottom of the night. That's awesome. We're supposed to point out that it's being taped and it'll be future broadcasts, and it will. And with that, I'm gonna close public comment period with the note again that we welcome your emails and letters, as well as future comments at the moment. So the first item of business is the math update. Do you want to introduce? I do. So we spent a significant amount of time last winter and spring. We had an external math report that was completed. We've taken action steps on a number of those items and it was on multiple agendas last year. And we thought now that we're into November and nearing the, you know, beyond the quarter mark that we, the committee and the community would get an update about how the change is going. And I appreciate the committees agreeing to do a joint meeting for this purpose, as well as one other, because when we talk about implementation grade six through 12, doing a presentation in just grade six without the larger context just didn't make a lot of sense when we talked it through at the science level. And so this focus, tonight's focus will be particularly around the implementation of new math curricula at those grade levels six through 12. And our presenter tonight is going to be Jeff Friedman. And as you remember last year in the math plan, we ended the budget. We added a position, a temporary position to facilitate the implementation of the curriculum and other items as it relates to math for the school year. And Jeff's been, I want to publicly say has been amazingly present in the schools ranging from the elementary schools to the middle school and the high school. Jeff has been a math teacher at our high school for some time, but has made really strong connections with the teachers implementing the new curriculum, has offered feedback, support, has been in classrooms, has jumped into teaching, including some sixth grade, which is not necessarily your background experience, but has been greatly appreciated by staff. So with that, I'll turn it over to Jeff who's gonna walk us through some of the highlights of the implementation and then take questions afterwards. So I want to acknowledge that Tim Sheehan's here as well, but Jeff will be the main course tonight on math. I don't need to adjust this, probably. Can you hear me? I guess, yeah, so teachers tend to be pretty loquacious. So I know I'm, I've got a timekeeper here for 10 minutes. So I don't know if we get lights or anything like that. It'll be natural things, yes. So anyway, so I've been teaching math at the high school for 20 years here. And I've really taught all the courses, pretty much pre-algebra through calculus. I taught one of the calculus courses last year. I also taught IMP for 14 years. So I've got a lot of experience in sort of both of those pathways. Before that, I taught in Northampton, I taught math and science. And before that, I was an engineer out in California. So I love the teaching and learning of mathematics. And I want to say thank you to Mike and Tim, Jane Mutey, Tiffany Tividow, and Mickey Grimacki who sort of brought this position to my attention and have been supporting me and giving me counsel. Because it's really, it's a new position as such. I look to these folks for guidance along the way at every turn. So I want to just give you a little bit of background and I guess, yeah, you can look into your place. So three main things that my job entails is supporting, as Mike said, supporting teachers in their classrooms with implementing open up resources, which is in the sixth grade, four different elementary schools and in seventh and eighth at the middle school and then CPM, college prep math, at the high school. So I'm in and out of lots of different classrooms in lots of ways supporting that. I'll give you three specific anecdotes in a moment. And then vertical alignment, which is really so that kids have continuity in the content of what they're experiencing over the grades. As well as in the pedagogy in the teaching practices and what's expected of them that's presented by teachers. And then a family engagement, how to facilitate timely, relevant information going to parents and opening avenue for two-way conversations, because parents are partners in this. So three little anecdotes. I'll start with family engagement. So the elementary schools have math nights. At least three of the elementary schools that we're working with have math nights, family math nights, where kids are engaging in mathematics, fun games and puzzles and whatnot. So I thought, wouldn't it be wonderful to have some high school students representing sort of the diversity of who we are in Amherst there. So I've been going around just this last few days to a bunch of classrooms and throwing a little sales pitch. And I've already got eight kids already, girls and boys of diversity, students of color and Caucasian students who are gonna be helping out next Thursday night at Crocker Farm School. And what I said to the kids in the appeal was that, so I have a girl in front of me who's a ninth grader and I said, imagine a second grade girl at Crocker who's playing a game with you and she sees this high school girl who's engaged in mathematics and having a great time with it and she's a second grader and she's thinking about looking up to this kid. And vice versa for the high school kids to be able to kind of engage younger kids in what they're doing. So I think that's really cool. That's just a tangible thing. One of the things that I've been doing a lot is working at the middle school in trying to clarify and fully understand and help communicate out to parents and the kids. Sort of what are your choices? Cause when you get into middle school, you have a choice in seventh grade. Do you continue with what's called math seven or do you step up to math seven flex? And what does that entail and how does that work and what are the ramifications for your sort of paths through school? And sort of trying to clarify some things with the middle school folks. Another example is working, I've worked with a couple of high school teachers that I've been maybe about a dozen classrooms. High school teachers, one that I was working with a couple of weeks ago was really on sort of I spent three days in her classroom getting to know the kids and the curriculum and her style and then put the question to her, what do you want me to look at? What do you want me to focus on? And then, and it takes something of the teachers to commit some time, but she and I met then the next day during 10 minutes of her prep period to sort of talk about what she was gonna do and then we processed it afterwards. So it's sort of a variety of things that I'm doing. And they're all in, you know, the overall goal of to sort of work toward student achievement. So quick little model here, the way I think about student growth and achievement is you all and Mike have invested a lot of money in two new curricula and all the sort of support and professional development. Curriculum is a really important part. The teachers and the fabulous teachers that are in district are key part. The district and its support of these endeavors key. Pure culture in classrooms is a key part of what makes students grow and achieve. Parents and guardians are allies. We want to work with them. And then the students themselves, their growth and their kind of being able to reflect on their own mathematics and the things where they've stumbled and things where they're growing. So I just think curriculum is an important piece, a vital piece of it, but there are some other vital pieces too. Everything that we're trying to do is rooted in something that Tim had us work through, which was terrific last year. I call it a very much a living document. It's our vision and core commitments for math education. And I'll just read one thing. We aspire to create classrooms and schools where all students have access to a high quality engaging math program. So in the core commitments are really what students, teachers, parents and guardians in the district, all sort of what stake they have in and how they play a role in student success. So that's sort of a document that guides my work. And I say it's a living document because I think it's something where we can critically look at it and say, oh, we need to tweak that and make it really relevant. So quick update, there's been various professional development endeavors in the summer that the sixth through eighth grade teachers did some work with open up resources with facilitated by some outside folks and time to meet and plan for transition. At the high school, we have a CPM trainer. So somebody who's an experienced math teacher who's working with lots of schools in Massachusetts, she came in, well, two of them came in a couple times. We just had a training the other day and we get another training as well as two classroom visits from that person. And we also had a joint meeting of the middle and high school, which I think should happen more often. And then ongoing PD, I'm providing support. We've got some ongoing workshops with the CPM trainer. And then we're trying to tap into, I've talked with leaders from various other districts, including locally and in the Boston area, who are also in early years of implementation of these curricula, some with more experience, and some really maybe only in their second or third year. So trying to tap into doing simple things like Zoom conferences or phone calls or emails or Facebook connections, because there's resources out there for teachers to support their work. So critical thing that's happening at the middle school is a new position this year, occupied by one teacher and he is working really in three things, helping to support teachers in the implementation of new curricula. So working with them inside and outside of the classrooms. A second thing is identifying students who need additional support to be successful. Intervention, very much like sort of various models of intervention that they do in the middle school, but finding it's critical in the middle, sorry, in elementary schools, finding it's critical in the middle school, and then based upon identifying those students, those students meet with him every other day in addition to their regular math class to just provide that added support. Previewing ideas, reviewing things, filling in gaps. That's really powerful. There's some additional needs there as well. And here's the last thing, and I know Mike has given Tim and me some directive in this area, but how do you evaluate the success of something new like a curriculum or curricula? And that's, you know, you can look at hard data, but that takes time, you know, it takes time to implement these programs. And you can also find out sort of anecdotally what's going on. And we can also do surveys and whatnot. We haven't done any formal surveys of teachers, students, or parents and guardians, but certainly that's something that we will be looking into and thinking about how to do that in meaningful ways. But just some qualitative feedback. This is from, you know, a sixth grade teacher, a seventh grade teacher, two high school teachers. Here are some things here. And I'll just read a couple of them from elementary level and sixth grade. Students love the program. They say it's better than what they've been used to. It's structured to support growing competence. It's very well scaffolded in sixth grade. And I spent a couple of weeks in a sixth grade classroom. There's engaging in real life problems. End of unit projects are thoughtful. Lessons in homework have a predictable structure. One of the things powerful that's happening at the high school is that the book looks very mathy. And also parents and students can go when they do homework. The homework problems are online. Hints are online. And answers are online. And that's sort of a double-edged sword, I will say. I think it's fantastic. You know, I talked to my daughter who's a tenth grade and she said, yeah, it's useful. But you also want to, as educators, you want to teach kids how to use a resource like that wisely. You know, some kids will click, click, click, and write down what they see and other kids will be a little more judicious about that. And we want our kids to learn how to learn. And if the homework help, those tips are really helpful for them, fantastic. But we want to avoid kids sort of abusing that as a resource. And then some challenges. A lot of teachers I'm talking with, especially when you teach a new curriculum and some of you are educators. You know, the first time through, trying to live up to, oh, the curriculum says you can do that in 45 minutes and you're finding, oh, I need 55 minutes or something. Pacing is something that's gonna just take time. And it's beautiful, I was talking with a teacher in the other day who was looking at, not undermining anything, but just really focusing in on what's the big idea and how do I orchestrate together time, this is in sixth grade, and then time where kids are working in groups or individually and she can get around to kids. So that takes some orchestration, it takes time with the curriculum. There's also just some little nitpicky things that some of the workbooks, there might be a question on the bottom of a page and kids are like, where are the triangles? And then they have to turn the page to find. So, you know, those are minor things and I think we'll get in communication with the publisher and say, hey, are you gonna come up with a new workbook? These are not edible workbooks. What do you call it, workbooks that the students use and then they... Consumable. Consumable. Consumable. Please cut that. Yeah, so, and another critical thing, which is time immemorial. I mean, I've been here 20 years and that last point is finding and making time, and I look to our leadership in that regard, to really, you know, and there's some structural things and schedules that make, you know, given common planning time and whatnot, but that's something to continue to dig at, finding time for you two or teaching the same course for you to have that time to collaborate. So, so that is, let me just see, I don't think there's anything else. But yeah, so thank you. I'm happy to answer questions and if I can't answer them, I'll write them down and get back to you, so. Great, are there questions in that committee? Mr. Bunch? Yeah, it's not a quite, well, I have a comment on the question. Yeah. I worked with you for, what, 10 or 15 years. It was a long time, no, I can hear you. I continue to admire and respect your professionalism. And tonight I think you've done an excellent job of demonstrating your commitment to kids, your commitment to mathematics and your commitment to making sure that this conceptual framework works. And so I wanna thank you for that. I appreciate it, thank you. My question is, related to the challenges, can you identify specifics that you would need from administrators to begin to address those challenges? Are you looking at a particular one? All of them. So suppose teachers, the seventh grade teachers, I mean, this is hypothetical, but suppose seventh grade teachers had some additional time where they could look together and it's hard when you haven't taught, when you have lots of experience, the teachers are really savvy and experienced, if you haven't taught the curriculum, to work through it and do that sort of backwards design now that we understand the whole unit. A unit might take 20 days or something and to have that time and to look at the sort of end of unit assessment and then think backwards, how do we, how do we implement this in ways that are gonna work with our kids? Cause you take a curriculum and you make it work for the kids in front of you. And so I think that's a piece of it is finding and making that time. And I gotta say, they're dedicated folks and all, in my role, once, where I'm step removed from the classroom, I quickly lose that palpable daily rhythm, like on a Sunday when I'm thick into planning and all, it's a different role. And so I need to be just conscious of that folks have limited time. They have so much on their plate, but I would say finding some deliberate time in there. And I don't know if that's on early release days, there's sort of certain structured things. You know, I think, dare I say, and I know Tim and I are talking about this, I think more so than any sort of like formal professional development, getting in external folks to tell us how to do things. I think if you two are teaching the same course, finding more concrete time to look at what you're doing in this first year, that would be, that's a long way of saying, making time for teachers. Yeah. What about? But if you have other ideas, I'd love to hear them. I wish I did. I'm just, you know, mathematics has had kind of an interesting history in the district. Yeah. And I would like to see this be sustained over a period of time longer than other programs have. And so I guess my next quit, my last question, I'll let you go. No, it's good. Is what are the budgetary requirements to keep this sustainable? Do you have enough resources now? What? I have, when you say budgetary, I mean, I would have to defer to you guys. I have no idea of the budget time. This is in the program. You know, these folks have made an investment in me as a teacher. I'm not teaching any of my own classes this year. That's a big investment. I bought curricula, but. And you have enough time to do that. Say that again? You have enough time to do your work. Yeah, I mean, but you know, my personal work? Yeah. Yeah, sure. But you know, if you're a creative, fabulous educator, you look at that list and, you know, and I talk with my colleagues, especially Jane Muti, I'm talking with her today, is really within each of those three sort of bins, there's a world of things that could happen. And it's figuring out what are the, you know, gonna get the most bang for the buck, so to speak. You know, so, but I think there's a whole world of opportunity inside of each of those. I'll give you one concrete example. I've been in the district for 20 years and I know when I taught honors geometry and college prep geometry, which I taught for 15 years or something like that. Love those courses. And I love what I was doing in IMP as well. But when I emailed out to parents, I emailed out to all parents once a week, BCC to parents, sort of telling them about something that we were doing that week to sort of create a little hook for them to maybe talk with their high school kids, if their kids are willing to engage. And I'd hear back from lots of the honors geometry parents, not many of the CP. This is not a judgment. This is not a judgment. But I hear, you know, that there are folks in the community who have resources and have facility in connecting with teachers and the community who I hear from. And there are lots of other parents and community members that I wanna hear more from as an educator. So in the whole family engagement arena, I think there's huge potential. I initiated a meeting I'm gonna meet with Marta Guevara next week in her crew to think about how do we engage families, all families in mathematics, even with the very young kids. And you can imagine where that might go. But I see that, you know, I'm also working on setting up some space on the ARPs website for mathematics. But any of these things that we set up, I'm really conscious and wanna be cognizant of is everybody gaining access. You know what I mean? It's a bigger conversation than this moment. But does that answer your, you know, it, okay. Thank you very much. Yeah, so, thanks for asking that. So, keep going around, and thank you so much. Thank you, that was really interesting. I have a seventh grader and ninth grader, so I experienced the transition very directly. And from our family perspective, I would say it was very smooth. My kids barely noticed any difference. I don't know that they would have noticed otherwise. But one thing that, it's sort of a comment and a question in building on the discussion that you just finished about engaging with families is, in the transition, particularly from the eighth grade to the ninth grade, we had had a lot of information about the progression and sort of what is the pathway for IMP. Yeah. And I know we switched very, very quickly, but we didn't have that same kind of information for the new curriculum. For eighth grade. The grade into ninth grade into high school. Oh, your kid's a ninth grader, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Interesting, okay, yeah. Good to know. And so when, and the way the school year ended, it was, we'll tell you where, we're still working on math placements and we'll tell you what courses your student will be assigned to. And then we got the schedule and we didn't get any context for sort of how that fits into the curriculum. Good point, duly noted. Yeah, duly. And so I think, you know, because I felt very well informed about the IMP progression that similar level of information and pathway and would have been really, really helpful. And it's not too late, because I think it still would be helpful to have that information and help families understand where their child is being placed and what their next step could be or should be. Totally makes sense. And apropos to that is sort of when we sent out an email to, and letter from the middle school to all seventh grade parents and guardians, we sort of had a sort of a sequence, a chart of sequence that included the middle school and the high school, which hadn't happened in the past. So, you know, and so that at least parents and their kids can kind of see pathways, you know, and how you can find your way into what you want to do, but duly noted, duly noted. So I appreciate that you said it's not too late. No, it's not. We're working on a sixth, you know, communicating with all sixth grade parents right now. So that's really helpful. Mr. Manila. Mr. McDonald mentioned placement. Is that the same thing as tracking? And if you do, what kind of factors do you use to place a kid in the variance class or a lower class? That's a great question. That's a big question. I know. Yeah, no, I appreciate it. So suffice it to say this is something that, you know, I've been 20 years in my microcosm and I'm given the luxury and the liberty of sort of zooming out. So right now I'm meeting with, for example, all the seventh and eighth grade teachers around the courses at the middle school. But I would say it's not tracking. I would say the goal has been, as I understand, and I'm getting a history of this from various folks over the last, you know, five to 10 years, is two words, access and equity that should a district like ours have this split that happens in seventh grade that your child may step up to flex and her child may choose to stay in math seven, both excellent courses with excellent teachers. And, but if your child later on decides, you know what, they're more mature, kids' brains developmentally get more mature and able to sort of do the abstraction that we do in algebra. Your kid has a path to step up. So we wanna continuously support and challenge our kids. You know, so how that happens, you know, there's lots of interplay there. So, and if your kid finds, oh my gosh, that really challenging sort of more honors level work is just too much for me to add that he or she can move, it can move either way. What I'm interested in is we aspire to have that. So it's not like you jump into one track and you're there for life. But how does that work practically speaking? What are the practical realities of kids making that movement in either direction? And I think, you know, one thing I love about teaching in this district is people genuinely teachers deeply care about all students. Whether the structure of things lives up to our aspirations is something that we gotta keep chipping away at. But, you know, I think, you know, my hope is, and I've certainly seen it over the years, the kids, the idea that anywhere between seventh grade and Miss Beauty has really tried to carve out ways, seven through 10th grade, seven, eight, nine, four years where kids can have a chance to step up when they developmentally are ready for it. But that also presumes, and this comes back to a resource issue, that hey, what about if I'm a kid, I'm in seventh grade and I kind of feel pretty good about the math, but I'm still a little anxious. I wanna step up to seventh flex if there's support, if there's additional support for me, terrific. If there isn't support, and that support could be a class or an elective or something like that. If there's support for me, then we're gonna help those kids make that leap. You know, so there's resources associated with it, and I'm talking for longer than I need to, but it's a great question. It's a great question. So I wanna get a couple more questions in from the committee. Oh, okay. Mr. Demling, Ms. Adonias, and then Mr. Sullivan. So building on that theme a little bit, I'm curious if you could talk a little bit more detail about when that initial conversation of, when students first get onboarded into deciding either between seventh and seventh flex on the geometry finalist portfolio. It seems like this really key pivot point, and you talked to it a little bit before about, some parents are just naturally more asking questions and informed about the options and some parents aren't as informed. And we want to, this is one of the first things I engaged with in the district, like seven years ago when we first designed flex with Ian Stiff and all that. One of the toughest nuts to crack design-wise was you want to offer kids the opportunity or the intervention that they need immediately. And yet you don't want that to be too much of a pass-fail, high stakes SAT kind of a moment. You don't want it to be a more gradual introduction. And so we talked a lot about how that comes down to parent communication and that we wanted to get away from this one letter that you get sometime in the spring that all of a sudden this is where you're going. So I don't know if you could talk a little bit about what the current thinking is, what we're doing now and what teachers are saying. Yeah, again, we're not in silos here, but I'm in 20 years at the high school and I'm still getting to know the middle school more and more even though my three kids went through the middle school and so I should have some familiarity. And I think here's a concrete answer to that, which is that the seventh grade teachers all emailed out to all seventh grade parents with certain different sort of boilerplate messages. Your kid clearly shows, it's really excited about mathematics. He or she has been doing all the challenge work. We recommend this course. And then there's sort of a dialogue. The ideal is it, and also in the class that I was working with, the teacher met with every kid individually about, we had a little survey that they filled out so the kid had a little bit of a stake. And again, they're seventh graders. How do they know that much? Some kids said no, I don't want to. And then through sort of the praise and the documentation of what they've done, you know what, we want you to step up and parents are like, great. And in other cases, it's not appropriate, but so we reached out and we don't hear back from every parent. So that's a tangible place where, and parents are deluged with stuff. And there are lots of reasons why. So I'm interested in ways to make sure that every parent and kid that we as a team have that conversation. That's hard. When you have the teacher I was working with has 80 kids. So you look at sort of their track record and what they've done, but it's not a perfect system. That's one reason why I'm spending time with the middle school, kind of looking at what is our aspiration? I appreciate the way Mike put it. What do we aspire to as a district? And then what are we actually doing? So I don't know if that, you know, but I also want to apropo to what you said, is that we know that, you know, once you make a decision, the hope is in a truly caring, committed community and district like this is that, hey, if I'm not taking that more challenging course, maybe next year I can. And that becomes, you know, it becomes a little more difficult. It also becomes a commitment, a choice, like if I say, hey, your son could do this in eighth grade, son or daughter, I don't know, but they're gonna need to have this, they're gonna get the benefit of this additional support class, but that means sort of digging into some of the other options they have at the middle school. And so that's a choice. And some kids are like, I don't want to give up my, that sort of, I don't know what they call it at the middle school, some of those electives and some of those other, you know, I don't want to give up, Miss, the drama teacher, forgot her name. Miss Boniface. Yeah, Miss Boniface, wonderful class, you know, so their choices, but I hear what you're saying is, how do we ensure that parents, student and teacher really have that conversation at that point, but also along the way? So yeah. Yeah, and I know we're running low on time, but I wanted to just add something that was before the ad to Mr. Freeman said, but also that predated him in this role, which is that there was a time, recent time in the district where those decisions and those choices were made at the end of sixth grade. And we've shifted that as you are noting to, after the first quarter of seventh grade, because what we found is sixth grade teachers were in a very awkward position of talking to students about that because they weren't literally teaching the same, in some ways the same curriculum, and they weren't well informed enough because they're focused on being elementary school teachers to be offered authentic guidance to students and to families. And so one of the concepts or one of the rationales for moving into the first quarter of seventh grade, it gives every student an opportunity to be in a middle school math classroom. It allows for relationships to form between teachers who would literally be teaching both the flex and the math seven course. And so that those conversations that Mr. Freeman talked about can be much more informed and much more supportive to families and students in making that decision. And the word I'd use, and it used a slightly different one, but is coaching, that some students may need to be coached, that they do have the requisite skills and encouraged to take part in that. It was really hard to ask sixth grade teachers across four different districts and six different schools to be able to do that effectively and consistently. And frankly, it was just not possible. So that was another structural shift along that same dimension. So we had two more questions. Mr. Sardonius and Mr. Sullivan. I will try to keep this brief, but thank you. I will take notes. Thank you for taking the time to walk us through some of the work that's been going on here. And it made me happy to hear that you are gonna be meeting with Dr. Guevara to discuss how to engage families. One of the issues that I've raised with Mr. Sheehan before and also with Dr. Morris has been the findings of the report that was done a couple of years ago now, a math study that led to the working group which found that there was an achievement gap among Latino students in particular. And as we know, a lot of these gaps actually start from elementary school age, right? And one of the reasons why we're having a joint meeting tonight is so that we can think about how to improve the experience for students going from the elementary schools into their middle and high schools. So I guess my question to you is I'm hearing a lot about reaching out to parents, trying to engage them, bring them into the fold, if you will, to help strengthen their kids' experience and their students' experience in the schools. But I was wondering if you could just spend a couple of minutes describing how you see the work of this program specifically focused on improving the achievement gap there, appealing directly to the parents and caregivers of students who need perhaps that extra help. And if there are any specific areas where you anticipate perhaps even more intensive attention or resources that we can be helpful in providing, does that make sense? Yeah, so a couple of things. One is I'm trained in middle school and high school mathematics and science. So in my role as sort of six through 12, although I'd like to think that it's all interrelated. So I can't necessarily, you know, certainly from my own experience over the years, it very much is a K-12 thing, you know, because some kids have, you know, I'm gonna put it starkly in the same way that you walk into some people's homes and apartments and there might be very few books. And you go into other people's homes and apartments and there's just teeming with books. Some homes have no games or puzzles and some have tons of games and puzzles. I don't mean to put it so sort of simply and starkly, but I think it starts very, very young. And so, you know, my interest in reaching out to Ms. Guevara was that they have just this wealth of experience with how to reach all parents and parents who, me even though I've been tried to be delivered, it's 20 years as a high school teacher that I haven't been able to reach. And so looking forward to their ideas, but you know, I think I've been working with the registrar here to get statistics and they would not surprise you or me sort of what the sort of makeup is of, you know, sort of the flex class versus the non-flex class or the honors algebra and grade eight versus the regular algebra and split along sort of Caucasian versus students of color split along full lunch versus free and reduced lunch. That's a really stark difference. Free and reduced kids may be, you know, 40% of, and I don't have the statistics while they're in my binder, but 40% of the eighth graders, but in the honors eighth grade math, they're 8% of the kids in there. You know, so there are those statistics which I don't think would surprise any of us and this is a broad societal thing, but what can we do in this fabulous place called Amherst? At every, my interest is in every step of the way, K-12, where are there places where we can do a little bit better? I don't know enough about early childhood education to sort of speak to the, you know, the K through, K through five. And I'd sort of defer to other folks who are much more schooled in that, but yeah. So I don't know if that quite, I don't have a lot of specific ideas yet, although I'm sure we could come up with some, you know, yeah. I think it's just, it's an area where we certainly wanna get some answers. Yeah, definitely. And address that sooner rather than later because again, I think given the work of, you know, the working group as well as the conversations we've had here on both committees actually, clearly this is an issue that needs to be addressed, you know, very soon. And hopefully you're the person to do that. Well, can I give one other specific anecdote? And this, you know, if I'm getting anybody in trouble here, my apologies. But so there used to be a class. So imagine you have a son or daughter who's in seventh grade and you're like, gosh, with some support, he really could do that math flex. There used to be a class that was eliminated a couple years ago, and I'm not exactly sure why I'm not privy to that information, that supported those kids to go, to get that extra help that they needed. Because where do you, how do you distinguish in seventh grade between a kid who should go into that class in that class? Well, there's some obvious measures, but there are other sort of more intangibles and other things that was some support. And I'm not questioning anybody's integrity, but I do wonder, what happened to that course that used to be there? It's not there now, and various people at the middle school have said, gosh, it would be fabulous to have that course to really support all those kids, including kids who historically haven't been in that. It's addressing this, I wouldn't say achievement gap as much sort of opportunity gap, but so their concrete place is all along the way, but I really appreciate you asking about that. That is important to me, really important. I wanna get in, we're almost out of time, so I wanna get in, Mr. Sullivan. I think I was way over. So I'm very excited we're not discussing the problem of the week anymore. Yeah. All right. So I'll give you a problem of the week afterwards and start solving it, but you might get distracted. No. Definitely get distracted. So my question is, what sort of feedback is the math department getting from the special ed teachers in the liaison as to how the students are acclimating to college prep math? Great, I don't have an answer to that. I honestly don't know. It's a great question and duly noted. And again, at this point, it would be in that sort of qualitative anecdotal. That's a great question. I'm glad you asked it. I don't know, but it's on my agenda for tomorrow. This answer wants to ask a question. Sorry, I just thought of something I would like to ask. So there's a lot of conversation about them moving kids up and supporting them and I think that's all great. But what are you doing for the students who are not going to go up? Are they feeling supported as well? Are they feeling alienated or less than? And what, if anything, can you do about that if that's the case? That's the million dollar question. Because that's all for me in my own endeavor to understand the issues as part of my conversation at the middle school is yeah, your child, so we don't want it to be a have and have not situation. Whenever you split kids up, though, there's that dynamic. And I've always rationalized in the 20 years that I've been here that I love about this is that I'm gonna bring my best 100% to my honors class and to my non honors class and support every kid where they are in their own path. Because it's not a race, it's not a race. We wanna meet you where you are and be slightly above, you know, but there's lots of supports for kids, but there are also lots of challenges there. I mean, I certainly at the high school, there's all kinds of resources to help support kids. But we need to meet those kids' needs as well. I mean, I don't have a whole lot of concrete things that I can say right at the moment. That's all right. I'm glad you asked it. And observations. Yeah, no, yeah. We're gonna revisit this topic, and I think already based on the conversation we have had, this is something that come sometime after January. We're gonna wanna throw this on the agenda again, welcome you back. And maybe even brainstorm from the committee some questions in advance so that when you come in, you'll actually know in advance some of the questions that people are gonna wanna know. I'm not asking for a response. And I'm gonna give you a last word if you want one. I think given time, I'll wait till that January session, but thank you. You're very welcome, thank you very much. Thank you and thank you for your excellent questions and interest in what we're doing. Appreciate it. Thank you. Madam Chair. So I guess I'm on for the next item. So the next item on the agenda is Collaborative for Educational Services Expansion. And I just wanna give a very special welcome to Mr. Deal who's here from the Collaborative for Educational Services and they are a wonderful partner of our schools and our districts. And as a representative from the Amherst Regional School Committee, I serve on the board. And I'm happy to have Mr. Deal here. And we are here as a reminder for those who may not have been present at our last meeting or who may be watching at home. We are as members of the Collaborative being asked to approve, which is part of just the bylaws, right? The laws of the Collaborative approve the application by Gateway Regional and Worthington School Districts to be added to the Collaborative. So bylaw, whenever a school district wants to be added to the Collaborative, each and every member committee from the different districts has to approve that request. So hopefully only two thirds have to approve it but I'll have to board with you. Okay, so there, thank you very much for the correction. So I'm gonna turn it over to Mr. Deal and let's start to morris if there's anything else that you wanna add to that. Thank you very much. So I also want to take the opportunity to say a little bit about the Collaborative hence the folders. I've been in education for 40 minimum years and you learn early in education, you have to develop plan B and C in your back pocket. So I'm gonna go with plan C, which is most of my information will be in this packet and not verbal or move things along quickly. The Collaborative has a couple of buildings in Northampton as you know and a couple of schools and programs. So we actually are a Collaborative of 36 school districts and so the Collaborative is the districts and we just happen to be a central point that organizes things every half. And I wanna say first of all that Dr. Morris has been a terrific collaborator, a partner, a friend, a co-thinker with me on a number of different areas and I really appreciate all of your support and effort. And then a couple of you are either members of the board or have been past members. So in a sense, is our donors, I'm sorry, and a wonderful member of the board. I really appreciate all your service. And Mr. Sullivan, thank you as well. And my good friend Kip Ponch over here was a board member when I first started as the executive director and back in the saddle. Good to see you as well. So very quickly, I don't tell you what's in this folder, then we'll go on to the boat part of it in order to keep within the timeframe. So if you don't know the Collaborative, I put a few things in here to give you some familiarity with it. The first thing is our mission, core statement, core values. We really focus on providing all kinds of services and programs for children, youth, and families, especially those placed at risk of failure. The second thing in your packet is our five-year strategic plan. And I want to point out quickly the four goals. The first one is serving member district needs. So that's our very first goal. And so we continually try to get information from our board, your superintendents, and the people we work with in terms of what the needs are, district, and then try to meet those. The second goal is to have great services for children, youth, and families, the special education program, that the school program is on that area. The third goal is to develop exemplary educators through licensure, PD, and so on, and lastly to support innovation in our districts. So you can look at that in your leisure. The next piece is this services overview. And in here, if you don't live Collaborative, it talks about all the different services we provide. And they divide up into a couple of different areas. But most importantly, what goes with that is this colorful sheet, which I want to turn more of your attention to. So this grid is something that we put together pretty much annually. All of our member districts, you'll find all 36 districts on here. And on the left-hand side are our different services we provide, special education, professional development, research evaluation, and so on. And then you have Xs next to all the services that your district uses. So if you look on the Hampshire County side, your districts are the first three. And you can see there's an awful lot of Xs in those areas. We work a lot with Amherst, we're very pleased about that. Amherst works with us a lot. And I think across the board we're able to provide a lot of services for Amherst Regional and Pellum. So we're very pleased about that. So you can look at this in your leisure. Moving pretty quickly. While you do that, I just want to note whether intentional or unintentional for Amherst Regional, one thing that I'll be coming back at the next meeting and talking about is the Spiffy Coalition Prevention Needs Assessment Survey has two Xs. Maybe that's because we're utilizing a lot of your services. No, no, no, not so. But it'd be appropriate one way or the other, because in some of the work that I'll be sharing out around vaping prevention and substance abuse prevention, the collaborative has been a critical partner and continued partnership on that to truly make a difference in our prevention approaches, so I like the two Xs. That's all I was saying. OK, two Xs is good. There are PD calendars after that in case you want to see that. And then I want to turn your attention to the Brown or Bofford, whatever they're called, Pages, which is more detail about our services to Amherst Regional and Pellum. So dividing it out in these different areas, we actually have more detail here about our PD services directly on site, as well as our special education services. You're part of our Title III consortium, 3LL, part of our cooperative purchasing program. Do a lot with early childhood in Amherst. Mike mentioned our SPIFI Coalition on the second page, a lot around that. After school programs, you have a exemplary program at the high school that we help run. And the end has a lot about SPIFI and our healthy families. So as Mike mentioned, there's a PNAS survey that was recently completed, and I guess it's going to be presented here soon. And that's an important part of the service we provide. So that's a pretty quick overview. And I just want to see if anyone has any questions about that really fast overview. Most of you already know the collaborative, but those of you who don't, if you have questions about that. Great. OK. So let me turn the attention then to the vote that we would like you to have. The collaborative agreement was signed in 2004. It was a state requirement. They pretty much laid out what had to be in it. And so all of our member districts at the time, 36 of them signed the agreement. It went then to the Board of Education for their signature, et cetera. And part of the collaborative agreement gives a way to make new amendments. It turned out to be more convoluted than one would expect, but not unlike typical education stuff, as you know. So we had two different districts who approached us last year to become members of the collaborative. That's Gateway Regional and Worthington. And there's the last two districts in Franklin, New Hampshire County to be members. So if they join, if they're approved for membership, they'll make a complete complement of all the districts in the two counties. That's pretty much our catchment area. So we want to have a vote on that, and I want to put in a couple of things in the articles that you're actually agreeing to. So if you have the articles in front of you, on the very first page, you probably use it in color, but you have Gateway Regional and Worthington mentioned in the first paragraph. And then the second paragraph talks about having two-thirds members approval. This is a change in the bylaws. The bylaws, before, said everybody had to approve it. And that's a heavy lift, of course. So this is one change in the collaborative regulations on the fourth page, I believe. While you're doing that, just for people viewing, you know, either the committee members, but also people of the packet, it is the top of the document that's being referenced as agreement of a collaborative for educational services, formerly known as Hampshire Educational Collaborative, and there is some shading that's in here. Oh, there's shading, okay, good, good, good, good. Yeah, yeah, I just wanted to make sure. One day we'll drop the formerly Hampshire Shades Collaborative also. So on the fourth page, enlargement of the board, this is another change which is we're happy about, but it's not that major. Originally, the collaborative agreement said the Department of Education, let me check the orientation, would appoint a voting member to our board, which we kind of didn't necessarily like that much, but it turns out, Desi had no capacity to send 25 of their members out to the collaborative. So they decided to drop it, instead of we have a liaison at Desi, who's a really good liaison, helps us a great deal. So that's a change. The next change is on page nine. It changes twice. This change is that in the past, the agreement said that we would give a surcharge for non-member districts of no more than 20%. And the board requested we raise that to 25%, as he said, okay, so it's now an agreement to approve. This helps underwrite and support our member. About half of our business come from non-members, and they pay 25% more than members do for the surfaces, which allows us to keep costs a little bit lower for member districts. So it's a benefit of membership. And it's one reason, of course, why Gateway and Ruellington won three members. So two different places that occurs changes just the percentage we're able to surcharge. And lastly is on page 14, which is the effective part, when this will be effective, and the statement about they will become members upon this. So basically we need two thirds of our school districts to school committees to approve this, and then it goes to DESI, this has been a long process. It's been to DESI several times, et cetera. So we're in the final stretch, and we wanted to do it by January 31st, effective time for the commissioner. They'll approve it for their membership next year. So I'm making the rounds of school committees. And I just wanna say, my final word is, it is such a pleasure, and I always have a little bit of a chill when I meet with school committees across the board. They're all different, but every one of them is made up of folks like you who are citizens. You give up your own time, you run for office, you really are dedicated to having excellent outcome for the kids in Amherst Pellum, in Amherst Regional. And it's such a dedicated work that you do, and I think it goes unsung. So I'd like to sing it, because I really value the work that you do on behalf of children, youth, and families. So thank you very much for that. And I think on your agenda, you have the actual vote that we want. We do just wanted to quickly see if anyone had any questions for you before we entertain a motion. Seeing no questions, I'd entertain a motion. We should you do entertain a motion. You started this. I will entertain a motion. Actually, you need to do for the university committee. Yes, that's true for both committees. So for the Amherst School Committee, if anyone wants to make a motion and the language is on the agenda. Mr. Nakajima. I move for the Amherst School Committee to approve September 25th, 2019, revised an amendment agreement of the Collaborative for Educational Services. Okay, we have a motion. Do we have a second? We have a motion and a second. Any further discussion or questions? All those in favor from the Amherst School Committee. Please raise your hand. Any nays? Nope, we have unanimous. Thank you very much. I would add a similar motion for the regional school committee. For the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee to approve the September 25th, 2019, revised an amendment agreement of the Collaborative for Educational Services. Is there a second? Second. Move and seconded by Donald Stanser. All those in favor, any debate, seeing no debate. All those in favor of the motion signify. Carries unanimous. Thank you, congratulations. Thank you very much. And this is for our signature. And there are, how many committees listed on here? We have 36 committees listed on here. You can visit the committees to defend you. I don't know why you didn't just go out before we go on. What number are these two? We actually up to 18 here have already voted on Stanser, which is good, that's tough. Was it the 12th? It was the 12th. And I would just ask as the signature's taking place, if you could loop back when you get to all 36 just so I can report back to these bodies that we've met at. Thank you all very much. Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming out. You're up next. So that concludes the business of the Amherst School Committee tonight. And I will take a motion. Mr. Dunlop. I move to adjourn the Amherst School Committee. Okay, we have a motion to adjourn. We have a second. All those in favor? And we are adjourned. Okay, the next item of business for the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee is approval of the minutes of October 29th, 2019. We want people to have a chance to take a look at them and we'll see if they have any edits. Do I have one? Yes. It's under item number six about the transportation and under A, transportation, the first sentence says Ms. Hanser asked a question. I did not, someone else did, but I don't know who it was. Anyone remember asking that question? Striking a cord with anyone, is that it? It was a big moment, but it was a big moment. I was just gonna say I think that was me. Okay, so that's Mr. Pellum. Other other minutes? Yes. So at the end of section five subcommittee updates, it looks like we have a hanging sentence. The policy subcommittee is meeting November 11th to continue the work on the policies discussed last week. There's no punctuation at the end, so it's not clear if the sentence was intended to be finished there or if it was just cut off. It seems like it might be. I think that's the end of the sentence. It seems like it wants to be. It seems like it wants to be. Okay. Other edits? I would actually say at the end of item four, chairs update, the comment I remember making in the very last sentence was actually about the fact that the person who was making the complaints was also going further and identifying personnel by name that they wish to have fired and other personnel by name that they wish to be hired in their place, and that if that were public, the community wouldn't be supportive. Anything further? I'll entertain a motion to approve as amended otherwise. So moved. Is there a second? Okay. All those in favor, signify I have eight for raising their hand. Okay, that's eight of us. Are there a nays or are there extensions? Mr. Demling abstains. Okay. Thank you very much. Moving forward on the agenda, we have committee announcements, announcements from school committee members, and also public comment, are there any announcements from school committee members? Seeing none, by the way, do you have that little counter? Can you get it? I can, it'll take me. I just have a feeling we might have some public comments. No, I should have thought of that earlier, I apologize. There's some, just for people's patience, there's something we tend to do is to put on a timer, because as we say, people have up to three minutes to talk, we've then have general assent that if you've been given three minutes that you can see the three minutes, we can see the three minutes. In the past, there's been sometimes a disagreement with our whether we've counted correctly, hang tight for two seconds. Sure. I think they're asleep or something, or? I think it's, yes. That's a bummer. I'll do that 90 seconds. Okay. 90 seconds, that's half of a whole public comment. It's one way to time it. That's, you could tease the chairs update. I could tease the chairs update. The chairs update's gonna continue a conversation we started last week during the chairs update around challenging messages that members of the staff and the community members, that's about as much teasing as I was planning on doing, but it will in fact continue that. Oh, it's personal account. It's Mike Morris' account, it's not a tenor account. There we are. So as people come forward, you don't have to raise your hand, you can just come forward to the microphone. They'll, you'll have up to three minutes to speak, and please identify yourself when you do. It's funny, usually we're like, it's like right on top of these things. Nobody comment on, ideally you won't comment on this, right? I mean, we're, we're getting organized. Okay, cool. Anyone wanna make a public comment? Please, if you do, please come forward to the microphone and offering your name and offer your comment. I won't see it over three minutes waiting, so if anyone's feeling shy, they should come forward. Nope, people don't always like going first, but I have a feeling someone's gonna have to take that pleasure if they wanna speak. Okay, no one's coming forward. All right, now we're gonna close public comment. Again, as we've said before, there are other ways you can get a hold of us by snail mail, by email, and we welcome that. So the next item, sorry for all that work, Mike. But it was, theoretically, there was someone who was gonna come forward. We were gonna be ready for them. So superintendent's update is next, Dr. Morris. Sure, so most, but not all of this is in the packet. I know it's a pretty thick packet today, and I'm gonna keep it brief again because of the length of the meeting. So last Tuesday, a go today, we had what I felt like was an outstanding all-star professional development day. The afternoon isn't the schools, but the morning is a district-wide day that includes paraeducators, professional educators, administrators, custodial staff, food service staff, many different staff members. And I wanna thank Tim Sheehan, but stuck around for me to acknowledge his work, as well as during Cunningham, a whole host of people who contributed to making the morning particularly powerful. You can see the set of workshops is behind, kind of the brief information I'm having. And you can see the range of social justice offers, the third year in a row that we've done this similar model. I think also worthy of thanks are our staff members. Most of these sessions, you'll notice, were led by current staff members. So we do have some folks come in from the outside, but the majority are colleagues of the people taking these particular courses. We had excellent keynote speaker, Elijah, who spoke about his experience very openly about being an immigrant, identifying as black, being transgender, and how the intersectionality of all those has influenced his experience. He's from the Boston area, went to the Boston, went to public schools there, and he's a college student. He spoke last year at the Mass Glistening Conference, which was here, so he was familiar with the high school version, so he was familiar with the area a bit, but was able to talk about what made a difference for him, both positively and negatively, about his experience. And he then led some breakout sessions that were more smaller groups, so that there was a lot more interaction. He titled them Transgender 101 and 201. But you can see the range of offerings was outstanding. I was able to pop into just about every one of these. There were some that were in a circle format where walking in the middle would have ruined the nature of the session. And I think, as noted, the respondents rated the morning session at a one to five scale, being high and one being low, as a 4.4, which is a pretty high rating for professional development more generally, and I think it was because of the direct impact on the students. So thanks to all who worked on that, and I was just glad to be a part of it. One, a couple more updates. One is just athletics, just in who we had the steward here, but just want to continue to update you that we've had an incredibly successful fall season. The girls' cost country won Western Massachusetts championships. We have the boys' soccer tomorrow night in very frigid weather, but they will still play soccer. I feel for them. I think it's gonna be like 18 degrees or something at game time, because in the evening. In the Western Mass semifinals against Love Low, they're the second ranked team in Western Massachusetts. And on Saturday, the boys' football team will be in their division championship, I guess, once in Brentfield. So there are many other sports that have had banner seasons. I just want to highlight those three, but really, really phenomenal outcomes. So thanks to all the coaches, and the steward, Mr. Jones, and primarily the student athletes who are involved. I also want to give some of a brief update about something that happened last year. So last week, the district sent out a release with information about an incident that occurred last spring with the boys' ultimate Frisbee team, or ultimate team, excuse me. And I wanted to update the committee and the community because some reporting in the local media has come out, so I thought it was worthwhile to share more details than perhaps that statement had. So last spring, a report came to us about an incident that occurred in an off-campus party that involved students from the boys' high school ultimate team. And the report centered around the actions of students in attempting to face jerseys of a rival team. In doing so, the reports indicated the team members made very poor decisions throughout that evening. Given the reports, the school and district staff members began investigating. They offered interviews to all students who were reported to be at the party and or participated in this action. At the same time, the high school also contacted the police department, the DA's office and DCF so that the independent investigations could occur parallel to the district's process. This is standard operating protocol. I want to be really clear about that. When we receive reports that are reportable, our obligation is to report them and very frankly, other agencies do their own independent investigations that are really different than what we do. And they're not particularly by coordinated. I mean, we're not communicating back and forth often because we're not a law enforcement agency. They're looking at very different lines and how they do it and they're gonna approach it very differently. After their investigation, the Amherst police let us know that no crime, sexual or otherwise had been committed from their viewpoint and from, excuse me, as a result of their investigation and from their viewpoint, the case was closed. So they communicated that as the district's and the school's investigation was ongoing. The school's investigation found significant conduct of becoming of student athletes. After all of the investigations were complete, the school significantly, the school, the high school took significant actions based on this conduct. These actions included reducing significantly the 2020 season for the boys' ultimate team, eliminating the ability for recently graduated students involved in the incident to connect and be partnering with the current team and mandating a program that'll occur this spring in lieu of the missed tournaments because of the shortened season to ensure that the culture of the team is positive, that the accountability is enforced, and that restoration of relationships between players, coaches and families is achieved. It's worth noting that these consequences were greater than any other Amherst regional high school athletic team has faced in recent memory because of the conduct that was discovered as a result of the investigation. As a side note, there was a headline last week on Mass Live that wrote an article about that that was factually incorrect. It stated that students at our high school were disciplined following hazing of an unconscious student. The school's nor the police's investigation found evidence consistent with this claim. After discussions with the newspaper, which I greatly appreciate in the last couple of days, they've edited the title of the article to be consistent with the finding of those, the investigations that occurred from both the police department and the district. And so I think to summarize, I compliment the high school for the way they approach the investigation. They approached it with authenticity to try to understand what happened. I think the police, as far as I can tell, and I'm not an evaluator of their investigation, but they did their due diligence and they reported to us their findings. And I think while it was a significant consequence, it was consistent with the evidence that the high school found in their investigation. And I think it's important to bring up, particularly as the Mass Live article had the title itself was era in facts. So I wanted to bring that here because I know it's been the topic of discussion, particularly as that article, since that article came out of what happened. I will say that this has been a challenge for us at the district because we generally frown on sharing information about student misconduct or consequences with the public because our main focus is on student privacy. And our goal is for students to be, even if students make mistakes and students made mistakes in this instance, that we're supporting them to learn from those mistakes. And so I know that one or two people have inquired, why didn't we publicize this spring? And we generally aren't in the business of publicizing student misconduct and consequences for that reason exactly. Given the reporting in a public newspaper of this, a couple of public newspapers, particularly one, and the Mass Live reporter in fairness, she knows exactly what I'm saying tonight. There's no mistake, you know, I was cumulative because I want to be fully transparent with them. They're good partners with us in general in terms of reporting our newspaper. So this is not an attempt to dismiss or denigrate a newspaper, but there was a mistake made. That we, you know, I felt it was important to share this level of detail, which a little more than we typically would share because of the reporting and because of some of the public dialogue that's occurred. I want to really also compliment the school and the coach for taking this incredibly seriously, working over the summer beyond the school hours to try to restore the relationships. And that's the way we approach things in the district. Yes, there will be natural consequences for behaviors and conduct that's inappropriate. And our goal is that we restore those relationships and work together so that our students and our community can come together and have the best experience possible. So I did feel like it was important, given the articles that were published and in the press to be able to share with the committee and the community kind of the snapshot again of what happened and the way we approached it and how we're moving forward to support students, families and the community in the future. So I think that's all I was going to share. Great, thank you Superintendent. And I'm guessing given the circumstances, there is a very limited number of questions you want to entertain for many members of the committee to give an opportunity to the committee that if they have anything they want to have to fall off. And our Lord knows that they want to know more about professional development day, sort of a different topic. They are able to do so. Okay, thank you very much. Thank you. Dr. Morris. So I'm sort of following on in a way from the item that Dr. Morris just talked about. And last week we had, was it last week? Two weeks ago. Two weeks ago, feels like yesterday. We had kind of, we had a lengthy discussion about some of the emails that members of the district have been getting. I'd point out that even last week, the superintendent received yet another email, this one offering to negotiate with the superintendent from an individual in the public who's suggesting that the boiling point had been getting high enough. I'm paraphrasing, I'm not quoting, that there's an opportunity for you to sit down and try to negotiate, it wasn't clear to me, negotiate toward what end. But I also would say that a lot of, I appreciate the superintendent offering two observations about this question of what happened with the ultimate team. One, that for a number of very good reasons, the district isn't in the habit of delving into broad public discussions about instance, this involves our students. And one, and that two, you cooperated fully with the district attorney, with the police department and they concluded their investigation, seemingly appropriately, but the point is, it's their job to do it and you didn't impede them in doing so. The intersection, excuse me, between these two topics is that the same person who, Chrissy Ryan, who was pushing the emails on a number of staff members, is also the same person who, through an independent website, has been flogging the story, that all sorts of wrongdoings were happening related to not just the incident, but particularly the management or handling of it or questions of any particular undue influence or behavior by anybody. And so I'm just pointing that out because I think there's an intersection between the kind of harassment we're talking about or bullying that we're talking about previously, and of which I said there are many more examples. And the way in which this other incident was discussed, including the way in which it came to be handled in the media and reported in the media in ways that, as Dr. Morris just pointed out, were fundamentally inaccurate in terms of what actually occurred. And I don't know how that intersects with the offer to negotiate with you, but really, to me, I would offer to people to take this thing as one piece. I'm particularly bothered by this, I'm bothered by this on every level. I think I hopefully made that very clear a couple of weeks ago. And lots of people have been targeted by Ms. Ryan or by students. And it's been very painful and very difficult and very challenging. For me, I'm not psyched about the fact that I was the target of some of these comments this past week, and because it was on Facebook, I feel the need to respond to it. So this past, and by the way, it was also in my duties as chair. So in an odd way, the attack actually intersects with the chair's report. What happened to the chair last week when it wasn't out of meeting? This happened at a report last week. A former member of the committee, Vera Duamini Cage, posted on Facebook about the ultimate incident and allegations that it was mishandled. And in the course of this, which luckily for me, I was tagged in it, so I actually have a copy of the post that I was able to print out afterwards, regardless of whether it's still on. And in it, there is a section that has quotation marks around it, so I don't know, it's not attributed to anyone, so I'm attributing it to Ms. Cage. If it tracks back to Ms. Ryan's website, I haven't looked. And it says, Superintendent Michael Morris, Amherst Polymer Regional School Committee Chair, Eric Nakajima, Amherst Police Chief, Scott Livingstone, and Northwestern District Attorney, David Sullivan, are great examples of white men upholding the underpinnings of rape culture and white privilege by not effectively coming and decisively coming to the defense of a defenseless, inebriated child. So there's an enormous amount wrong with that statement, and Dr. Morris covered most of it a moment ago substantively in terms of the fact of the incident. Just for my own sake, I'd point out that I'm not actually a decision maker or involved in any aspect of the investigation or the decision making around how this incident is pursued either by the police or by the district. And so I'll leave it to Dr. Morris or others to defend their own reputations, but I'm profoundly offended that anyone would think, especially entirely unsubstantiated, that I would support a culture of sexual assault or rape or violence towards anybody. And it's profoundly offensive to me. Curiously, Ms. Dominique Cage is actually a commissioner, in fact, treasurer of the Asian American Commission, which is an official state body, I believe administratively housed within the office of the treasurer, which has the mission of supporting and advancing the interests of Asian American residents of our community. Therefore, to me, it's profoundly ironic and extraordinarily disappointing that Ms. Dominique Cage, in that quote that she propagated on Facebook, also referred to me as white. I mean, I imagine white privilege could probably be transferred as a sort of Marxian class analysis around advantage, and I don't really care, I don't give a damn. The reality is when my parents got married, it was illegal for them to be married in states around which they lived as a young couple. When I was growing up, including here in Amherst, being a minority was a profoundly challenging thing to be, and being a biracial minority, being somebody who is in fact half European and half Japanese American, in terms of ethnic background, was profoundly isolating, because if anyone has any memory if they're around back then. America's pretty racist now, but it was very racist in terms of its social practices back then. And being on the early edge of being a biracial child and a product of a biracial couple was an extraordinarily isolating experience. Most people would eradicate and deny my European American background and ask me when I came to this country. They would only see my dad in me, who I'm profoundly proud of, but honestly in a community in which you looked around and you saw Catholics and Lutherans and Irish Americans, it's hard, I mean, people that don't remember it and don't know are too young, it's hard to exaggerate how tribalized and Balkanized our society was back then, including here in Amherst. And I will tell you, it was somebody who didn't belong in any group and wasn't accepted fully in any group. It was personally wounding. So to see a commissioner on the Asian American Commission for the state choosing to eradicate and deny my heritage, eradicate and deny me, eradicate and deny my parents is one of the most profoundly vile things that I've experienced. I think I'm owed an apology for it, but more importantly, I honestly think that when we're coming together as a group, when we're coming together to try to figure out how we serve the students of the district in the best way possible, there's an under, in the staff, helping all of you do your work. There's an underpinning of decency, there are norms of civility and reciprocity, of empathy that are required to do our work because everything's difficult, nothing is easy and every argument poses more challenges. If we cannot find that decency within us and find the tools of communication to reach out to people who are different than us, to people whose experience we don't know and we can't touch, then as adults in particular for this room, we will never be able to advance our district in the way that every child in every family deserves. That's what this is about. When we talk about the incivility, when we talk about the harassment, we are not simply talking, we are talking in a microcosm about people having a hard time getting up and going to work and doing what they do, but in a broader sense, it impedes our ability to work as a team, to overcome differences, to find solutions and serve the people of this community and the children of our districts. So that's it. Subcommittee updates. Any subcommittee updates? Is there none? Just a quick one to say that I have offered the chair of this committee as well as the chair of the Amherst Media Board, or the president of the Amherst Media Board, my resignation and effective immediately have stepped down from the board of Amherst Media to do in large part to something that Mr. Nakajima just talked about a moment ago and Dr. Morris also talked about recently. I won't go into any details over this meeting. I don't think it bears repeating necessarily, but I am very disappointed in the direction of some of our community members and feel that I can't in good conscience continue on that board, given some of the things that I've heard. So I just wanted to share that with this committee. Any other subcommittee updates? Normally I'm the one who lightens the mood, by the way, at the meeting, so I'm not even going to do that right now, so I apologize. Okay, new and continuing business, policy GICFB, a second reading impossible vote. Is that gone? So I skipped the subcommittee update because we're diving right into our work, but the policy subcommittee met yesterday evening to review this. When we read JICFB, which is our anti-bullying policy at the region meeting two weeks ago, we had no notes or comment and nobody's contacted us since then. So we actually didn't make any further revisions to the policy since the last time, since our first reading. And just a reminder for everybody that this anti-bullying policy is being updated based on changes to mass general law and no other changes have been made. So these, the changes in here were based on recommendation from council and as a reminder, because it's not clear in this printout where the change was, it's under retaliation. The second paragraph that begins with consistent with NGO, et cetera. Just that paragraph is new. And I believe that was the only change. Right. Are there questions about the policy or any comments? Otherwise I'll entertain a motion. So moved. I need a motion. Sorry, just read it out that it's about or something if you want. I'm gonna move on, that's all. Yeah. Are you moving, the approval of policy JICFB? I move to accept to vote to approve policy JICFB. So moved by Fox, is there a second? Second. Second by Stanser. Yes, Mr. Williams. Just one minor edit under the paragraph for retaliation, that new paragraph that was changed there. The last sentence that reads, begins that line orientation mental physical development or sensory disability or bi-association of the person who has one or more of these characteristics. I was just wondering if we could spell out the number one. Just to make it easier to read that way. Accepted as a friendly amendment, I assume. So the move on the second paragraph. Yes. It apparently is. Thank you. Anything further? Seeing nothing, all those in favor? Signify, they're raising their hands. Carries unanimously. Thank you. Hey. So moving on, we discussed at length the pending new policy, anti-harassment policy at our committee meeting, subcommittee meeting last night. And hot off the presses, but not in our packet, we've got new feedback from council that I won't read in its entirety, but I'll talk to. So in the packets, the advice from council to the Pelham School Committee on the policy that they've drafted was to build in a distinction and separation between harassment that is of protected classes and is legally, and then separately, the higher standard, which is what we're aiming to build into our policy, have that as either a separate policy or a separate section within the overarching anti-harassment policy. So this version that's in our packets is that revision that has that sort of higher standard as they phrased it is bad behavior, but not illegal behavior is what is in that section B. What I've done here is you'll see the lines in the left margin are the new content that was added since the version we reviewed two weeks ago. I think we talked about two weeks ago that we wanted, there was question about spelling out some examples of conduct versus just leaving it as a definition. That was also advice of council and that is now in this version of it. And the reporting of prohibited conduct was also cleaned up a little bit to make it not as repetitive as it was in the original version. So places where the action, the reporting was the same for different situations, they combined that. So again, that's marked in the left margin. And then there was an important ad right before on the third page right before section B. The statement about each employee is personally responsible for ensuring that their conduct is not harassing, et cetera. So that was again added. And I'll try to read some of that. I skim this really quickly to see what were the key differences in this, literally that I received at 5.30 tonight from what's in our packet. And it really comes to that definition of harassment. So we talked at our last meeting about that definition on page one in the middle of the page under prohibited conduct that says a hostile environment under the policy is one in which the victim subjectively views the conduct as harassment and the conduct is objectively seen severe or pervasive enough that a reasonable person would agree that it is harassment. And Mark Terry's concern was on that reasonable person which notably is part of what we actually liked about that statement, that his concern is that we would be pitting ourselves against people and saying that they're actually unreasonable. So his new version, marked up version, has more specificity around the definition of harassment that eliminates that reasonableness, but leaves it more, so I can read at least one sentence that I thought that was harassment on the basis of a protected class as a form of behavior that adversely affects the employment and or educational environment state and federal law prohibits such behavior. The district condemns and prohibits such unlawful behavior. And then continues and lists that the types of behavior that would be sort of included but not limited to definitions of harassment. So I think for tonight, have conversation on the revision that we have here in our packet and know that between now and the next policies of committee meeting which is December 3rd at 5.30, we will continue to work with both Pelham and Mark Terry to sort of round out this definition of harassment. And then what it will come to is a decision by us about as long as we are sort of within law, but maybe uncomfortably beyond that in terms of our higher level, but still sort of within law, is that where we as a committee want to go or do we want to stick narrowly to the precise language that our attorney has given us? I hope. Are there? I want to Steven or Kerry if you want to add anything. I know. Nope. That's a lot to chew on. Yes, it is. The, here's your hand up. Yes. Cool. Quick question. So under the proposed revised language from the attorney, I thought I heard you say something in reference to protected class. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. I was curious about that because I think that one of the reasons why the language that we currently have here in this version was being so seriously considered was because it wasn't just specifically about protected classes, right? It was a much more broad net, if you will, so that it could cover all staff and students and not just those who would technically fall under protected classes. Correct. And that is exactly it. So we've separated out section A is just the protected class harassment and then section B, the Higher Standard of Conduct, includes other sort of non-protected classes. Okay, so that's, I guess, I'm sorry, my question wasn't very well formulated, but I guess I'm looking for reflection of this language that was currently in this section to be in section B so that there is that broad level of protection afforded to all staff, all students, regardless of whether they're in protected class. Does that make sense? Meaning the definition of prohibited conduct. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Well, yeah, and I think the challenge of it is the question of, are parts A and parts B viewed as being severable in the sense that you have A, which is bounded within A, and then B, this Higher Standard, is sort of a note off to itself. Because if it is, then it means that there's sort of not terribly well-defined sidebar that says we're gonna have clear guidelines to protect the classes, but then when we're dealing with exactly the kind of conduct we're talking about more generally right now, we're sort of asking for a Higher Standard, but we're not actually giving guidance on what the policy would be. Is that building off of your thought? Absolutely. Okay, cool, that's fun. Anyone else, I told you we'd be fine here. Anyone else have other comments? Can I just restate what I'm hearing? Yes. So there's a desire to add in that sort of level of specificity of defining harassing conduct in section B as well as in section A. Is that, wait, from my perspective, yes. Okay, thank you. Yes, I would agree. Are there other coming ways we're gonna get another read? Are there other comments or feedback? Dr. Morris. I'll just share, it's not feedback on specific language, but something I shared in Pelham as well last Thursday that I know increasingly I'm getting inquiries from staff and I wanna be explicit on not talking about administrative staff on this policy and where it is and where things are going. And I told some people this morning that I would be clear to share that for our teachers and our staff members, they are feeling like a policy such as the one that's being debated will be a significant statement to them about the commitments of the district to ensure their work environment that ensures their well-being. I'm not saying this very clearly, I apologize, but and so I think they're really, what I heard was really appreciative of the work and they also wanna get to, you'd like to see a place in the near future where there's affirmative statements made via policy about their right to come into work and feel like their well-being is taken care of. And it's not that they, we're always gonna make every staff member happy, but it's not that bad, but just a protection against harassment and that many staff members are feeling, it's really important to them. And so I just wanted to share kind of, based on my conversations that people are tracking this very closely and very interested to see what the result is, but not as much perhaps in the details that committee's talking about, but as a more general statement towards staff members working in the district, what can we guarantee them a workplace free of? So I wanted to communicate that. I wish I was more articulate, but that's where I am. I don't know if we're, we think we're on track, we might still be able to bring this back for a read and a vote in our next meeting. I would think so. I mean, we'll know better in, once we as a subcommittee have been able to go through the recommendations from, the latest recommendations from council. I'm talking also with Ms. Hall from Pelham, to make sure that we're in sync and thinking about things and not that we have to have the identically worded policy, but to share learnings back and forth. So I think we can tentatively plan for that and we'll know more after the third. I think one of the key things, and this may be in the coordination between you, Ms. Hall and Mark Terry, is making sure we can get of what might otherwise be called a final version out to the committee early enough that they can really read through it thoroughly before we get to the meeting. Wish me no? The sooner, the better. Yeah, exactly. Exactly, because then we'll really be able to, and actually you have a meeting set on December 3rd? December 3rd, so. So even cooler, because if you get it back even sooner, then we can, people can show up to that meeting and give your feedback. Okay, I guess we'll move on. We have like an incredibly long agenda. For those people like watching a football game and you're like, how many hours is this thing? We're like, we're barely to half done. Although I think a lot of the more weighty discussions might actually be done at this point. Next, new and continuing business, closed region revolving funds. What am I talking about? This is like the coolest item we have. What's going on? Hello, how are you? Sean McAnon, Director of Finance. So this is one of my first topics tonight, closed region revolving funds. Quick recap of what revolving funds are. They're special purpose funds that bring in money for a particular purpose, such as athletics or food services. And they carry over from year to year. So if they earn any money, after you take out the expenses, those balances carry over. And so we have a number of them at the region. You guys watching everybody leave behind me? Is that what you're doing? I'm looking at you. Okay, just making sure. All right, yeah, they did, okay. Trying to lighten the moods. So we have a few in the region that have balances that they've either been inactive for a couple of years or we've eliminated the program. So I don't anticipate that those balances will be used. And so what we do in that circumstance is you take a vote and you close them out to the general fund and then eventually they go into our E&D. So the money doesn't disappear, just gets closed out to where you can then appropriate it for something else in the future. So the three specific funds in this case are in your packet. The first one is something that's been there forever that I don't really know where the original source of funds came from, but it hasn't been used in many years. And it's a revolving fund called GIF Student Assistance. It was probably set up with a very good purpose at one point but now we have GIF funds that have sort of replaced that and this fund hasn't been used or requested in several years. The second one is our insurance revolving fund. So when we have insurance claims, the claim money goes into a fund and then we use that money to repair, replace, whatever the insurance claim was for. And there must have been a few claims going back several years that the full amount of the money wasn't used for whatever it was and so there's a residual balance there. And then the last one is Child Study Revolving and that was the preschool program at the high school of that is where Summit Academy currently is. And so the total of those three funds is $10,349.17 that I would ask you to vote to close out. Okay, are there questions, just to let you know, are those people, maybe you skipped off the front page, an item 6C that is also on motion listed for somebody to read at some point? But are there any questions from committee members? Just answer. What happens to this money? So when you vote, this money will go into the region's general fund or revenue, miscellaneous revenue and then it'll be beyond what we budgeted for this year because we weren't planning on this. And so at the end of the year, we'll go into access and efficiency which is the region's reserve fund. Okay, thank you. And again, so then when we do the budget process, you can appropriate from there. I move to transfer balances of inactive revolving funds in the attached list to the general fund as described and presented by our finance director. It's been moved, is there a second? Second. Seconded. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor, signify the reverse of your hand and carries your name. So the second item I have tonight is the rescinding of unused debt authorizations. And this one I'm actually gonna ask you not to vote. Sorry, I'm not gonna fill you in on this before, but I think it's good to fill you in on but I thought we spoke with our financial advisor I think it was Friday afternoon after this was already prepared. And she actually advised that it's something that we do eventually, but we wait until these banticipation notes are completely repaid before you rescind the debt. But I will give you a quick summary of what this is. So whenever you authorize debt for our capital plans, the total amount that you authorize is an official thing. It's our authorized debt. When we go to do the projects, we don't always use all of it because it was an estimate of what we thought we would need. And many times it's sort of the higher end of what we thought we would need. And so when we borrow less, the difference between what you authorize and what we borrowed is authorized but unissued debt. And it's a number that we have to report to the DOR every year when we do our debt statements. And at some point you should go, the district should go in and rescind that authorized but unissued debt to kind of clean our books up. And basically all these projects that I would have had to do that tonight for are all projects that are completed. And they're all completed but we haven't finished paying the note back. And so our financial advisor has asked that has recommended that we wait until we pay that back. Somewhat silly question, if it's authorized, could you use the debt and spend it on something? Well we can only spend it on what was the purpose of what you authorized it for. So when you authorize the debt, you authorize it for specific projects. And so it's only for those specific projects. I'm just trying to look for operative on somewhere. Not in this case. So again, if there's any questions, happy to answer them but in the, you'll see in the summary sheet that's a snapshot of one of the reports we file with the state. So you can see the three highlighted ones are the ones that eventually we'll bring back to you to rescind. Can I ask a question? Yeah. What about authorization of stabilization funds? Different agenda item, but different unrelated in some ways. Yeah, and not appearing on our agenda. It's not. No. Is this the item I? Stabilization funds. Oh! It's a really long agenda. I know it's funny because in our packet it comes next. Well, because there's not handouts for the things in between. It's more, those are more discussion items. But for now on, I'll put a little. The capital plans in between. I'm not dissing how this is organized. Yeah. I'm gonna stop now. I can't argue with this. I just have a sort of a related question. It's not directly related to unissued debt authorization, but I guess along similar lines, I've heard from community members questions in the past about if we authorized, let's say, a operational expense, you know, a line item for a new position, and that position doesn't materialize for whatever reason, what happens to that money that was authorized for that? Does it get reabsorbed into the general fund or does it go someplace else? It seems like we have this protocol for approving debt, if so to speak, to the district that isn't used, but I would assume that operational expenses are sort of following the same model. Yeah, they're a little different. So it's part of the general fund budget that you vote. So if a new position is approved, but we can't find someone to fill it, and it stays empty the whole year, either the money will stay in that line item, and if it's unspent, then again it would close out to our reserve fund, or the funds, if there's a decision made at some point that we're not gonna find somebody for this, we have another need somewhere else in the operating budget, it can be transferred to that other purpose. So if we were last year, we did some transfers from payroll to different sort, some different places, that would be an example of how it would be done. So we have a couple positions like that that we're still actively trying to fill, but if at a certain point we decide we can't fill it, either those funds can be there to offset other areas in payroll that we are over budget, and they can just kind of be there to offset it, or if we want to transfer out of payroll, we would bring that request to you all as part of the quarterly budget report. Okay, thank you. Can I ask you to clarify another, common, I think, problem with conception? When you're talking about rescinding data authorizations, oftentimes I've heard people say, if we didn't spend, and I'm not asking a different question than whether it was authorized, if we didn't spend a half million dollars on the roof, then I can't believe you're sitting on that money, we should use it for something else. And am I wrong to say that for the capital programs, it isn't like we borrow a ton of money, whatever is authorized, have it sitting in suitcases in a drawer somewhere, or in a bank, and then spend it when we feel we want to, I'm being too glib, how do we feel like it? But the point is, if it's never used, it's never actually borrowed. Now that's exactly right, that's actually common misconception with town of Amherst, JCPC as well, when they see big projects. If it's a borrowing, which most of our capital projects are borrowings, we typically borrow once we know the exact cost of the project, and it's actually related to one of the next agendas that you'll come up to when we have to amend one of our data authorizations, but we only borrow for once we know what the price is gonna be, so we don't have a bunch of excess borrowings because we don't wanna pay the interest, quite frankly, once you borrow it, you're starting to pay interest on that, and so you don't wanna do that. So each project is new, not only for the authorizations, but also because you're fitting out a borrowing capacity all the rest of that kind of stuff. Yep, absolutely. Cool. Let's move on, where do you wanna go? My choice. Let's do the next one, which is capital plan review. Okay. So Morris, Mr. Roy Clark, the facility director and I have taken, put together our first draft of this. I'm sorry, there's a little too cross talk on our part. I'm sorry. That's all right. Even on the chair. Good question. So the first page in your capital plan is sort of the summary sheet. So the total draft request at this point is for $497,000, and I'll go through what's included in that number. 357,000 is for building type projects, and 140,000 for grounds. And of that amount below, you'll see how we propose to finance it. So 450,000 would be from borrowings, like we just discussed upon anticipation notes, and then 47,000 would be from special revenue funds, which I'll explain more about that. Go to the next page. This is our 10-year capital plan. I'm gonna focus on FY21, but if you have questions on anywhere on here. The first project we're proposing is replacement of exhaust fans for BCD and E-wings. These are fans that pull air from the building so that the fresh air can come in and it's sort of a cycle of fresh air. At least Wings, BC and D, are the main Wings where a lot of the classrooms are in this building. Wasn't quite sure where Wenge is, but Dr. Morse might know, I'm not sure. Wenge, I'm not sure where that is in the high school, if that's on the far end. Far, so. This project's been on the plan for quite a while, and this is just the year that it came up. The next one is a newer project, air conditioning of Summon Academy and PIP. So these are both programs that have summer programs, so they're here in July and August. Both are newer spaces that were designed maybe with air conditioning in mind, but the air conditioning wasn't ever put in. And so this money would go to find some sort of air conditioning solution for these two programs. Both are special education programs. The next one is a new project as well that we sort of have accelerated a little bit, and that's Girls Locker Room renovation. So we've had a large Girls Locker Room project on the plan for a while. We chipped away at some of that this past year with new lockers in the section and some painting, and what we wanna do is actually now get a designer to come in and help us get a cost estimate for what the rest of the project's gonna maybe come in at, and that's gonna be replacing the showers and other part, like more structural improvements to the Girls Locker Room, and we wanna get a better cost estimate for that. So this money would come in to help us sort of come for the plan and estimate the cost. How do I read that it looks like you're scheduling this project, you're doing the design now, or next year, and you're booking the actual renovation in FY26? Right, so FY26 is where that project has been. What our thought is, and we can discuss this as we format the plan, is that was sort of a really broad estimate when it was first developed, and we wanna get a more specific design and proposal so that if it comes in less expensive, maybe we can accelerate that and move it closer to where we are today. So the first, again, that could move up until we come up with a plan and know exactly what that cost estimate is. We're not quite sure where we would move it up to, but it's gonna stand the plan. No more leaks? I know you have questions, that's why I like to. I don't know about leaks, I hope not, I don't know. So that's at the high school building. We'll go to the middle school. $10,000 for pool infrastructure improvements. Again, this would be, this comes from the pool revolving fund that you recently looked at all the license information on. It's gonna bring in some more money this year, and that money would go to help maintain the infrastructure of the pool. One of the things we wanna put in there is like a more advanced management system of chemicals so the DPW can monitor them remotely and be more responsive to when we need to put more chemicals in the pool. There's also some other infrastructure improvements we need to make. And then the next one is $100,000 for the AC chillers at the middle school. So the chillers at the middle school are actually older than the chillers that you've heard about at Fort River and Wildwood. We've had better luck with them as far as I know they haven't been any major issues, but they're getting to that point. So this work would be partially engineering work. It would also be to look at if there's other things we can do to those chillers to extend their life into the future. If I could add just one of the things we're noticing now with the life of them is that it works really differently in different parts of the building, which is a huge sense of, a huge source of frustration, understandably so that you'll go in some rooms and on a hot day they're still, it's brisk, you know, and other rooms that are literally two doors down and they're incredibly uncomfortable and not great learning spaces when it's hot. And I think when you have chillers and a building that's this old without major renovation, this kind of thing happens and it's trying to address the variability that we see upstairs where in the, most of the middle school classrooms, vast majority are upstairs. And it's literally walking one room to the next. It feels like a different climate zone and we need to address that. The next, just a question, is the high school air conditioned? Partially. There's not like a single air conditioning system for the high school. I think there's- Are classrooms air conditioned? Most of them are not, right? It depends on which classroom we are, so the- Because I was the teacher and when it got hot in the room, learning stopped. Yeah, so there are some rooms that are in some rooms that are not. It depends what floor you're on and what section of the building. The next three or four are all district-wide projects, so the next three are new. So solar PV design study. So we've been talking a lot about solar in the middle school room, parking lot canopies at the high school. And what we thought is it may be time to have a more comprehensive design or a proposal with an expert around solar and what we should be considering. We also wanted to consider maybe ground mounted solar at the middle school as opposed to roof mounted solar because of the cost of the roof mounted solar. And so we wanted to at least start some sort of feasibility exploratory type study with somebody who's an expert in that to give us some options and maybe point us in the right direction because there's a lot of different streams and trying to coordinate those streams so we're heading the right way. ADA improvements, we had an ADA study and so in response to the ADA study we should now have some ongoing amount to address some of those things. And there may be bigger projects that come up at some point but we wanted to get on the plan for now at least a baseline level of funding that we're gonna use to address what we can in that study. Asbestos abatement management sort of a similar thing. Should have been a capital plan probably longer ago. Most buildings built in the area have some asbestos management issues and so we wanted a repeating amount to work on those throughout the years we go forward. And then we have two more years of the Summit Academy debt obligation that we agreed to refund the town, FY21 and FY22. It's according to a schedule that we did upon with them many years ago. And then at the middle school, so now we're into grounds. So at the middle school we put $50,000 in. This is also a new one for ground improvements. How does school or high school? High school. We may make it district, but for right now the focus when we talked about it was at the high school. It's intended to do a few things. The first one is when we put Summit in, we had the intent of removing the modular that's at the end of that hallway but ran out of funding to do so. And so we might use some of that funding to finish removing that modular which is sort of ground related because it just kind of juts out and takes up space. And then some of this money would also be used to finish landscaping around Summit Academy. So the interior work was done but a lot of the exterior work was not. And there's actually, you'll probably hear at some point there's a project that we got a grant from a company to help do some of the landscaping design and things like that. And then the bulk or the rest of it would be used for some of the things we've heard about in the past, more grass seed, some contracted services to repair parts of the field, air rating, just general initiatives we can do to improve the conditions of the field on an ongoing basis. After that is, so the one thing we wanted to do last year with some of the available funds that we just weren't able to do timing wise was address the two parking lots. So at the high school, this backend of the parking lot over there is in rough shape. And so we got a quote from the DPW through their paving contractor to totally tear up that back road and repave it and regrade it and fix that. And that would be $30,000 and we proposed that be paid for out of the parking lot revolving fund that students who pay fees, that's really what it's for is to maintain a good parking lot for them. And then the middle school, we got a similar proposal for the lot for sort of district offices to tear up part of it that's really bad and then the rest of it seal and get some more life out of that parking lot because we have terrible pothole issues every year that parking lot and no major work has been done in a while. And that is it for the capital plan. Right, are there questions? George? I'm going to the ADA and the asbestos. Are we currently up to speed with the ADA requirements? So we had a study done this spring by an outside group that specializes in that and they went through all our buildings and sort of noted the major areas where we can make improvements and they gave us an itemized list with some broad cost estimates. So we have an up-to-date study of all our buildings of sort of where the concerns are. So these are improvements and in addition to what we already- There are areas that are currently sort of less than we would want, right? Okay. And asbestos, seeing a 10-year plan for revolving asbestos, is that because we have so much asbestos around? So just 20,000 doesn't actually get you very much when it comes to asbestos removal. It's one of those areas where kind of like paving roads, where you're always surprised at how little you get for how much it costs. So it's more, there's every three years there's some expensive, more broad reporting requirements that we have to do where we have to bring an outside contractor to do some stuff with us. And then in general, there's always sort of trouble areas that we want to work on when we can during summer, mainly during summer is when we can tackle it because the building has to be cleared out. So it's more of just an ongoing to address the areas that we need. Again, if we didn't have an area, we wouldn't use the money that year. But my guess is at least for the short term, we would always have things to work on. Thank you. We're undoubtedly gonna have another meeting at some point, not this in the future, that's less financially oriented and more sort of capital planning oriented. And it'd be great in that meeting to have some kind of discussion about what we're talking about more specifically, just because I think whenever you use the words as best as, or frankly, for that matter, ADA, either one or brought up, there are always gonna be members of the public who are like, hold on a second, what's going on? And so it would be very welcome. I don't mean by you. No, no, no. I'm just saying it'd be welcome. Yeah, Mr. Roy Clark wanted to come tonight, but we've decided that there'd probably be a better time where we can dive into it. No, I think the division of labor is better to go through it the way you are and then people can get another dive at a different point. And eventually this all becomes part of a narrative that does exactly what he's just said, which has a more descriptive specificity around each project. And then also, I gotta double check the date, but it's coming up soon. We have a budget and finance subcommittee which is focused around capital planning where we invited some town officials to come and hear some of these, some of our preliminary thoughts on the capital plan and get their feedback as well. Right now, could you remind the members of the committee when the date is? Are you on that committee? Yeah. Yes, once I double check on my own calendar that day, I will send it out to the committee, as well as anybody else who wants to go. I'll try first. Yes, that's all that rings out. Dr. Morris? I just wanted to note, I know we'll get to this later, but it's gonna be late, that at the last meeting about athletic fields, there was a request for the district, or maybe two meetings ago, to come back with a plan of how to approach the feasibility. So we'll come back in December 10th with that, but since we're talking capital, and exclusively not talking about that, it's because we're formulating a plan that wouldn't be on this capital plan document right now of how to get a feasibility study kickstarted. Mr. Nell? That was exactly my question, thank you. Wow, look at that. You know, if we do it this way, everything will be much more concise. What do you think Mr. Dany's one? I guess that's not gonna work. So I'm just looking at the funding sources, financing, of course, being what most of us turn to, when we don't have access cash in hand to pay for various projects, but the proposed $450,000 sort of sits smack in the middle of a couple of other very high amounts. And I'm not saying that they're not justified, but I'm just wondering how your department keeps track of where we are in financing for these different projects, and if there's any opportunity to consolidate some of these, you know, renegotiate, sort of if you can just walk us through that process a little bit. Yeah, so we have a master schedule of all our projects because we're a region, we also have that master schedule have to keep track of how those projects are divvied out to the towns, because ultimately other project you approve for debt, we then assess to the towns as a separate capital assessment, separate from the operating budget that you do. And so we track that out over several years when we authorize new projects, we factor that in. A couple of years ago at the capital planning forum that we just spoke about, we modeled what approval of the field project would look like and what the impact of the roof project, because we haven't seen the roof yet because we didn't get into MSBA, but that's also a big ticket item. And so the reality is it does increase the capital assessment quite a bit for the towns. It's sort of at a lower point historically because we don't have any big projects right now, we're sort of doing these middle, medium-sized projects. The large renovation of the high school was paid off a couple of years ago. So it is gonna be something that we're gonna have to work out of the towns that if we wanna maintain these buildings, which are all 1960s, 70s, the investment capital is gonna have to steadily increase. And we tried to, one thing we've been trying to do by paying off the bans as opposed to bonding for everything. In the past, we used to do bond anticipation notes and then at a certain point we would lump it all together and do a bond. And the towns wouldn't actually pay for it until we did the bond. And what that did is we would have debt payments that would go like this, and then bond and go like this, and bond and go like this. Now with the bans, we can kind of keep it a little more even because we don't have any large projects in those bans. So we've been able to keep it pretty steady the last few years and at least for some of these smaller projects we can keep doing that. So our goal is to keep it level and just prepare the towns when we're gonna see some of the spikes for these bigger projects. That's a very helpful explanation. Thank you. Thank you. Just very briefly, I think the other thing to note is if we look at the current year's capital plan, there's $3 million for a roof that since we didn't get into the MSPA we're not currently taking advantage of or utilizing. And so I think that'll be some ongoing conversation with the four towns and we get to the four town meeting and beyond about kind of what's the forecast on that and what we plan to do. But I think that's a really big number that was approved that we have yet to take action on. It's authorized but unissued. Thank you. Which will be important to have, Mr. Sullivan. Girls' locker room renovation. Yes, sir. How does it stand in comparison to the boys' locker room renovation? I'm not a facility expert. In terms of timing when they were done, the boys were done first, just in terms of time. So that's the board stand. The boys' locker room though, that's done, right? It was done, I wanna say 2014-ish was when it was on the capital plan. So all these projects are sort of, most of them are where they've been slot on the capital plan for when it, since the capital plan was first created back in around 2012 was sort of when we put the comprehensive capital plan together. So we did, like I said before, we did invest about $15,000 in the girls' locker in this past spring. And that's really why I wanted to do this study is to have some cost estimates. So if we have another good year, a budget year, if there's things we can chip away at in the spring to make immediate impacts, we can. And then if there's bigger ticket items that we have to borrow for, we can try to accelerate those. So it's possible then the 350 figure you have there? I mean, first off, that could be wrong. Right, it's a, yeah. But besides that, it might, that might not be the right way to look at it. It might actually be like 100,000 or something significant. And then like four $30,000 projects. Yeah. That you could chunk out at different points. Yep, yeah, no, there's definitely, if you know the girls' locker room, there's three sort of sections to it. In the middle section is the section that we sort of addressed a little bit. And the first section is the section that needs the most work. That's where the showers are. The plumbing needs a lot of work. The showers need to be made into individual showers. And then there's some removal of some really old type, like shoe type lockers or cubbies that need to be ripped out just to make it more of a space that can be utilized. So there's a way to do it. I mean, especially Mr. Sullivan has very helpfully brought this subject up. Every, the entire time I've been on school, and I'm sure it's been much longer than that. If there's a way to sort of dummy numbers to suggest we're actually gonna move up our investment in the girls' locker room, I think that might be nice. Yeah, absolutely. Both to achieve, but also them to show people that we're gonna make some effort to do that. Yeah, absolutely. And that's, again, why we bring this to you all, so that we can also get a sense of your priorities in conjunction with the facility director sort of recommendations about what he sees as the highest importance. We also want to hear from you on those things. Mr. Franchis, do you have something else? Yeah, just quickly. Both the boys and the girls' locker rooms, have they been renovated to accommodate trans students? That, I don't know the answer to it. I have to come back to you on that one. I remember a discussion about that way back in the day that there was some thinking about, and I wasn't sure if that elevated up to, you have to do it. I mean, I think more of the focus has been on bathrooms, but that's something we can come back to. I'm not 100% sure. Just bring it back. Yeah, yeah. Write the question down and bring it back. Is there anything else on this item from the committee right now, because otherwise we're gonna move forward? Okay, we're gonna move forward. Since I have no idea what some of you are doing, because it's apparently they're numbered in different ways than the fact it says. What are we on next? So this next one is actually Ms. Dancer. Oh, right. We're gonna report out the warrants that she signed. And we also need to identify some of the new payroll. Keep it in mind that sort of a work in progress. So I have gone in every Friday and signed warrants. I've coordinated that with Kathy Vassallo. And so I've signed three warrants, October 31st, November 1st, and November 8th. And I can give you the totals for the various big categories. So in the general fund, that's a total of $1,054,901.36. The revolving fund is $7,404. Other fund is $146,581.62. And the grant fund is $9,574.99. You're welcome. So when you joined the committee, do you remember you did a declaration? I did, and that's why the second thing is on here. So I might check with the council and determine that I cannot sign payroll warrants because my son works at the middle school. Right. So someone else is going to have to do that. So we need someone else to be who's willing to go in and sign the payroll review and sign, obviously, and then report out on it. Are there any volunteers to do that function? Question? Yes. Rather than division of labor, why just not have one person do all of it? I don't want to take your job away from you, but I'm willing to do it. It's crazy to have two people do this. That was not an offer we anticipated. I mean, it was hard enough to get this answer to volunteer last time. So it's fine with me. Do you mean you accept the offer? I accept the offer. I offered because we're generally around. We don't do a lot of traveling, but at that point, we didn't know this other issue. That was great of you to do so. OK, so we move at the committee at that point, Mr. Funch, to review and sign a warrants on behalf of the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee and report back to this committee regularly with the results. I've just moved it. Is there a second? It's been seconded by Mr. Medina. Any further discussion? Seeing none, all those? I would make one point, which is I would check and find out, well, I've been going every week because there have been warrants every week. I don't know if the payroll is a weekly warrant or if it's, I was wondering if it was every other week. So it's Friday, the best day to come in? Normally, yes. This week, if it's possible to come in tomorrow or Thursday, it'd be better. We have a couple things that are happening this weekend that we would like to be able to pay. I would like to hear that. I'll usually let you know. If we have any type of expenditure where it's like a field trip where they need to check with them when they go, they're usually special. They don't happen on and off. They're usually special. But we happen to have one this weekend. OK, thank you. So I want to, can we vote? Sure. Oh, yeah. OK, all those. I'm sorry, I just have a quick question. And I just, I thought I had heard at some point, and this is, please excuse me, Mr. Fonch, but I just thought I remember there being a conversation about you were serving as a substitute at some point. And I'm not sure. I'm no longer a substitute. OK, I just wanted to check on that. Thank you. All those in favor of the motion? It carries unanimously. Thank you, Mr. Fonch. Thanks, Ms. Tanser. And I believe the previous motion, which designated Nespitzer as an alternate, is still in effect. Next. All right, the next one is for fast readers, whoever can do that. So this is a debt authorization that this committee undertook for the FY19 capital plan, so it would have been back in 2018. And the language that was used to authorize this debt, even though these projects already have been done, they were most of them were done last summer, the Department of Revenue didn't like our language. Same language that they have approved for like three or four consecutive years prior. And they decided this year that they did not like the language. There was one specific sentence that really was unrelated to the projects that they didn't like. And so they wouldn't therefore approve our language. And it caused us some issues with borrowing. We were able to borrow still, but we want to be able to borrow the way we normally do with the DOR. And in order to do so, we need to amend the language to something that they will approve. And so basically, there was one sentence that was struck. And I'll just tell you what that sentence is. So really, all of our capital plan votes from FY 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19 had a sentence in that said, the director of finance may allocate or may shift funds between projects, as long as all the projects are able to be completed. We had that put in because before we had that language, there was a year where we had one project come in way under budget, and then we had another project come in way over budget. And the project that came in way over budget, we had to find money in the operating budget because we weren't able to shift the funds between the two. And it seemed silly that we had this borrowing, but we couldn't shift the funds. And so we put that sentence in to allow us to do so, and it worked. But this past year, according to the DOR, they changed their attorneys who interpret legal things for the department, and they decided they didn't like that sentence. And so that's what this vote is. It's amending the debt authorization vote to remove that sentence so that when we go out to do our roll over, our bond anticipation notes, we can do it the normal way we have always done with the Department of Revenue. That's your question? Yeah. If that circumstance occurred, is it possible for the committee at that point to amend to allow the authorizations to money to move? You mean if we had one come in under and one come in? Or are we condemning ourselves to take out of operating? There may be a way we can do it. The problem is, with any of our debt authorization votes, there's extra rules around it. So even with this one, for example, which is just an amendment, we still have to do these rules, the post and advertisement within 10 days. We have to allow 60 days for our town meeting to be held, to vote up or down on it. And so we might be able to do something like that, depending on how significant it was. We just would have to allow enough time for it to go through, essentially. Does that put a lot of pressure to overestimate rather than underestimate? Yeah. And there might be ways. I've talked to our financial advisor and bond counsel. Bond counsel, they help us draft this stuff. I was a little annoyed because I felt like we try to be transparent with this and list out individual projects and what we think they're going to cost. There may be a way where we just put a lump number and not list out the individual projects and what they cost. And then that way it covers all the projects, and then we want to have this issue. Again, I don't think that's necessarily as transparent as the way we've been doing it, where we try to. But my point is there may be ways to structure the vote that gives us more flexibility, but we'll make sure the DOR improves it before we bring that to you. So we need to do this for housekeeping and for the DOR projects. Anyone feel like reading this? Anyone willing to? Oh, Mr. Dibble, thank you. Is this two motions, by the way, or is it just a long one? It's a long one. OK. I move that the district hereby amend the vote of the school committee at a meeting held in March 12, 2018, for the purpose of paying costs in the amount of $32,000 for the following projects, including payment of all costs incidental or related there, too. One, building use study in the amount of $90,000. Two, roof repairs for the middle school in the amount of $20,000. Three, replacement of the middle school boiler in the amount of $115,004, summit academy relocation renovation costs in the amount of $97,000, said some to be expended at the direction of the regional school district school committee. To meet this appropriation, the district treasurer is authorized to borrow a set amount under and pursuant to chapter 71, section 16D, of the general laws and the district agreement as amended or pursuant to any other enabling authority. Any premium received upon the sale of any bonds or notes approved by this vote, lest any premium applied to the payment of the costs of issuance of such bonds or notes may be applied to the payment of costs approved by this vote in accordance with chapter 44, section 20 of the general laws, thereby reducing the amount authorized to pay such costs by a like amount. I further move that within 48 hours from the date on which this vote is adopted, that the secretary be, and hereby is instructed to notify the Board of Selectment of each of the member towns of this district in writing as to the amount and general purposes of the debt herein authorized, as required by chapter 71, section 16D of the general laws and by the district agreement. In addition, the committee shall cause the same information to be published within 10 days after such authorization as a paid notice and a newspaper circulating in the district. Moved by Mr. Demmel, is there a second? Second. Second by Adonis. Any further questions? Seeing none, all those in favor of the motion is read, signify, carries unanimously. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Demmel. Lunch debt gifts, explore methods for applying donations to overdue balances and offer guidance to district staff for implementation. Yes, so we have now several donations at the region from a frequent participant in our schools, Mary Lou Vero, who has made several donations $15 each, but I think it's over $100 now in total that she's donated. She was the first one to really get this started. And so the purpose of these donations were to offset lunch debt that has accrued in the district. Several other communities have had similar initiatives undertaken, and so it was really nice to get that started. And then we had a different person make a donation in Amher. So now in both districts, we have these funds set up that have been accruing whenever donations are made, there's a fund set up to store it. And so the key thing is I think it's a good thing. We should advocate, try to, this is a good thing to fundraise around, many communities do it. But the other piece is how do we apply those donations when they come in? There's different ways we could think about it. I think I emailed the committee at one point a few different ways. I did reach out to Ms. Farrow to ask her what her preference was, and I'll fill you in on that. And I don't know if you have to vote necessarily, but really just looking for sort of your general feedback on it. So the three ways that I had sent out were the first ways we could apply this debt or that these funds proportionally to all the outstanding debt. Really low impact, because it's probably like gonna be a 15 cents a student or something. And a lot of manual work, so I would not recommend that. And Ms. Farrow agreed with that. The second way is to apply it to some of our highest overdue balances and sort of maybe consider it to be the greatest need is potentially, you don't know for sure, but potentially. And that would be sort of more simpler. And Ms. Farrow was okay with that option. And then the third option, and there may be others, I'm open to others. The third option was keep that fund as sort of the reserve for which families can request waivers of their balances. Right now, when we send out those overdue notices, periodically, several times people will email back and say, you know, I have a financial hardship, I'd like to reduce my request a waiver of my overdue balance and some portion. And we could use that as sort of that reserve to do that. If we were to do that option, which isn't a bad idea, we would maybe have to come up with some sort of formal documentation process so that it's consistent going forward. And Ms. Farrow was okay with that third option as well. So sort of three different ways to think about it. And there could be other ones and looking for your thoughts on it. Do you have any, Mr. Gellner? I don't know if you know this or have this with you, but what is the average or typical size of overdue balances? I don't know about average, but the overall was in the 50 to $60,000 range. If you look at K through 12 for all of our districts and because the problem is it accumulates from the time someone's in kindergarten and potentially till they're in 12th grade if there's no payment. Some of the balances can get quite large, but I can bring back sort of- You didn't mean to say individual families? No, no, not individual families. And in aggregate, all students, all students. We have some expensive lunches. I mean, even if that is between the second grade and two months. We have some expensive lunches, which- You're too much of that. So in aggregate, but I can bring back some metrics on averages that's helpful and sort of like high, low kind of thing. Teenage adults or anything. So, Dennis? I actually, just for what it's worth, I think that that third option seems to get at the, you know, the intent of something like this. And I think that I especially like the idea of offering that as a fundraising opportunity for families. You know, I would imagine some of our PGOs, you know, individuals in the community might be interested in fundraising and donating to funds like this for both districts. I also think that we might consider perhaps at some point matching some of these donations. You know, even though I recognize that year to year that there is, you know, a significant balance that gets carried forward. A lot of times I think we've also realized that, you know, just given the research and the conversations that we've had with community members that when parents and caregivers don't pay off their balances, it's typically because there is some severe hardship. I think either, you know, it's either ignorance, people don't realize that they've got so much money that they owe. Or, you know, sort of keep forgetting to do it because there's actual hardship. And I'm more interested in the folks who are experiencing that severe hardship. And again, you know, just thinking, I think, for something for the district at some point to consider is would it make both financial and educational sense for us to consider, you know, any donations that are made to these balances for the district to help fund some of that or offset some of that? I think it shows an incredible amount of empathy for families and what they're experiencing also helps us meet our educational outcomes recognizing how important it is for students to have good nutrition especially if they don't have it at home. So I know that there have been several school districts around the country that have eliminated debt completely for all students regardless of their ability to pay and have begun doing things like that to help offset costs that may accumulate in the future. So even though I can't, you know, I think a good conscience given our budget and economy recommend that we would eliminate all school debt. That's not what I'm saying or lunch debt rather. I think it's worth exploring ways that we can help mitigate some of that burden on families in our community. Yeah, I would agree with that sentiment. I also like the idea of the waiver, the option to request a waiver or to waive some or all the balance to be a really well-known kind of process. I mean, I think, you know, the cynical way to look at this is like, oh, if we're really transparent and communicative that you can just request a waiver or part of your balance, then people will take advantage of it. And I mean, to that I would say there's no possible way that the schools or the school community could ever get into arbitrating whether someone is actually in need or not and the amount of a balance is not always indicative of need. You can have a very small balance. It's a very large hardship. And I mean, for my own two cents, I think that even if there were cases of individuals taking advantage of the system, I think that would be a small price to pay to have a really transparent open system says, you know, now's the time when you share that you may need a partial waiver, then those waivers come in. We have some amount of funds that can offset that for gifts, possibly through matching funds and those get distributed. And through that, we chunk it off and always making improvements to that kind of process. I really like the idea of having kind of a really conscious, defined, structured way where the school committee, the public, and parents are working together for a more efficient way to handle it. I think it's the, it's a logical extension of how we restructure food's collections policy already in which I know the district has been doing more outreach to parents and guardians in trying to really engage them. But the reality is, if for some reason a family, well, for the obvious reason, is that income, the family isn't deemed eligible for free lunch, then there's got to be, I mean, even if they are, they may carry a balance. I mean, the question is, what do you do with the balance? But then, particularly if they're not, but there is some sort of felt hardship, which can easily happen. There ought to be some mechanism to try to be able to work with the families. And so the extent that we don't have that now, we need it. I think it's a great idea. Ms. McDonald, and then Mr. Manino. So building on that, on the comments of Mr. Demling and thinking about the process, this is sort of why I asked the question about what's the average balance size for a family? Because I do worry about, I think a process and a structure needs to be defined ahead of time because when those invoices go out or the notices go out about an overdue balance, you don't want to make it first come first serve. And if the first person's balance eats up the entire gift versus somebody else, you might have gotten three people's entire balances covered, right? So I think defining that is really important, making that transparent. On the flip side, I also wonder if we're starting, we'd be veering uncomfortably into an area of picking and choosing whose balances get waived and whose doesn't. And I'm not sure we have the structure to help the district decide who gets, right? So if the request for waivers comes in and it's larger than the balance that you have available from GIFs to cover that, how do you choose? So I do, I see what I was talking about. I do really like the idea of coming up with a line item in our operating budget to cover that. And maybe that's the approach that we take is that as a district, we start setting aside funds in our balance, in our budget every year to start chipping away. 50,000 is a lot of money, but over the space of maybe five years, chipping away a little bit at it, just like we do at Asbestos, it might be just as impactful. No, I think that's right. And I think maybe the first thing we could try to do is maybe set a goal for a certain amount to raise so that we're not, we don't wanna start it when we have very little. We don't wanna get to a certain amount. And then, and while we're doing that, formalize all these procedures that we're talking about. And then we hit that goal, sort of implement once we feel like we have a safe amount where we can really honor, we don't wanna put it out there and then not be able to honor it. I don't know who you wanna work with on this, but I think the point is the next thing to do is to come up with a real program. They can answer all these questions, but also then comes up with a line item target. Who else wants to speak? So Mr. Manino and then Ms. Bitzer. I'm just thinking about timing. The Jones Library is a fine waiver, whatever, I can't think of the name. A fine, they forgive this a period, like a month or something like that. So everybody knows when to apply for the waiver. Well, so the way it's worked sort of to now, which has not been super formal, is every time we send out an email notification, there's a blurb there where people have financial hardship they can reach out. So we'd probably continue to do that with a link. In terms of fundraising, another thing I was thinking of is there's Valley Gives Day every year. This would be a good Valley Gives initiative to consider this year. Ms. Bitzer. So I just have a very simple question. Forgive me, because I don't personally watch school lunch, but I do know when I look, sizable fee just to be able to preload your kids. With my school box, yeah. Yeah, so do kids ever get a balance based on those, could that be contributing to the debt that kids are experiencing? Because that seems like kind of a, if there's any way we can reduce that fee for kids, it just seems kind of like a, not going towards something tangible. So I typically, when people ask how they can prepay, I tell them about my school books, but I also tell them there's a fee associated with it. And they can also prepay by just mailing a check to the food service department. And then there's no fee, I mean, except for postage. Or they can send the money in with their student, depending on what age, you know, they can prepay at the register. So they don't have to use the my school books where there's a fee associated with it. It's an option. Super convenient. Yeah, it's convenient. It's an option. So expensive. You know, typically if you're putting money on your account, you're prepaying sort of the account. So in that circumstance, it wouldn't necessarily be adding to debt, but you could theoretically be paying off debt, paying off an overdue balance through my school books as well, which in that case, you'd kind of be paying a fee in order to pay off. So again, there's ways around it, but the pay off. It also seems like sometimes you incurred debt because you forget to send your kid into school, whereas if you had the convenience of being able to prepay, you might avoid some of that debt. So it just seems like, just something to think about in the- And we could try to find other convenient, maybe more convenient ways for prepaying. Again, we keep my school books as an option, but we don't necessarily push it. I know if you, it sounds like if you need- Yeah, I've got good direction. Engagement, you can contact, or is it the committee might do a little bit of help. Now we go back to authorization of stable fund, stabilization fund expense. Home stretch, so- The item that was in your pocket. Yes. So this is another sort of housekeeping thing, but I'll give you the background. So every year that the district has a stabilization fund specifically set up for capital. It's there as an emergency fund in case something breaks down. It can also be there to put money in in anticipation of capital expenditures. Two or three times now in the last few years, we've actually put money into the stabilization fund in anticipation of the field project. We put, I think, 70,000 in one year. This most recent year, we had 60,000 in the budget to build it up. That stabilization fund is also used to pay the Summit Academy debt that was in the capital plan. That was a little Revolving Fund shading. And so it's used to pay those payments back. And then it's also used to pay any interest on our bond anticipation notes. So there's a little snapshot. There's a description of what I'm asking to authorize, which is a maximum of $15,335.85 in interest on bond anticipation notes and $7,383 of principal and interest payments on the Summit Academy debt for a total expenditure for FY 20 of $22,713.85. So that's what you'd be authorizing. The snapshot below shows you the beginning balance in that capital stabilization fund, the revenues that are projected to go into it, earnings on investments, and the general fund contribution this year, those expenditures I just described, and then the ending balance. And I'd say a maximum of $15,000 for the bond anticipation notes because some of the interest on these bond anticipation notes will be actually getting data assessments from the towns to pay, and so that won't come out of the stabilization fund. It'll just be whatever's left over. So it'll be something less than that. Any questions? That's a good question. Any questions? There, yes, no. There's a motion under aye. Somebody would like to offer it. I move to approve FY 20 expenditures from the stabilization fund as shown in the attached summary. Moved by McDonald. Is there a second? Second. Second by your done. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none, all those in favor. So if I have a resume in hand, motion carries your name. Thank you. Thank you very much for your time. 20, 20, 20. You could easily skip your words over this. 20, 20, 20, 21, school year calendar. Still a little back to the future-ish, doesn't it? So there were three options that are in the packet. They were presented, developed, and in collaboration with Debbie Smorlin in her role, as well as Mick O'Connor as the president of the APEA, the Amherst Palms Educator Association, and they were shared with the APEA membership as an aside, or not an aside, as a note, the APEA contract includes that the APEA membership needs to approve any year where the start date for teachers is before September 1st. So in other words, we always have to include an option that has a start date for teachers of September 1st. So also worth noting that this next year has the latest possible Labor Day. So it looks very different than the last few years, just when Labor Day is and when the year would start. So there were three options presented, and I got feedback and met with Mr. O'Connor today, and the option, it was very narrow. Usually there's an overwhelming vote, and this year was the opposite. But the second draft, which on the top says Amherst Palms, in the Amherst Palms Regional Calendar 831-20 draft, was the narrow victor in terms of the APEA vote. They had a high turnout in terms of their votes. I typically am pretty agnostic as it relates to differences between the calendars. I want to note for the public that it is a later start of school than we've had the last couple, and again, that's because of the Labor Day. It essentially keeps, maintains the same calendar we've had where the first day of school is the Wednesday before Labor Day, which next year would be September 2nd for students in grades one through 12, could have guarded preschool a little later. So it does maintain that consistency, but it's going to feel later. It is literally six days later than it was this year because of the change in Labor Day when Labor Day sits. Pretty much everything else is pretty constant for what we've had in the past few years, except for that factor. So the way we typically do this is bring this for discussion for the school committee, and then a vote for the committee in December. I want to note also that for those of you who may be newer to the committee, more typically this was voted in the spring, and it's been greatly appreciated by members of the staff in the community that the committee now takes this on before the end of the calendar year for people to do all sorts of planning. It also has some really positive implications for our facility staff who do, and our IS staff or IT staff, they do a tremendous amount of work over the summer and knowing how many weeks they have has large implications for capital projects. And those folks are actually really happy about the later start of school, because of another week to do their work they need to do, although they know the following summer probably is gonna have the opposite problem. So this is not a vote for this evening. Are there any questions or comments? Well, what was the narrow number two for AP, for the union preference? I couldn't hear you. What was the narrow, you said it was a narrow preference. What was the number, do you know what the number two preference was? Of the three options? My assumption from my conversation, although I can't cite this specifically, was the third option, the 827 draft. I think there was broad concern from what I heard about the starting on 9-1 draft just because the end of the school year would go until June 28th with five snow days. And so I think it was this, in the pack of the second and third draft were the most popular options. Further questions or comments? Otherwise we shall move on. This is always like a secret reveal at the end. Do we have any gifts? I do not believe so, unless they were in the packet that Ms. Dancer has, I did not see them. I didn't see anything. So I'm gonna assume that we don't. Cool, all right. So then this I think is our last ad. So for the next, I guess I wanna talk through December 10th and then the 11th, 12th for the next meeting. We have a robust agenda as well. At least if there are new high school courses then they need to be discussed based on our timeline. Policies come back and I just listed those two. One is the anti-harassment. Another one is one that I've talked about with the chair and I hope it's okay to say that last year I made a commitment or made a statement that we were no longer gonna use mass core and there was a question of as to how based on the feedback that I'd received from the community and I think separate from the larger issue of mass core I think it's related but not the same is can we have a policy that sets a minimum wage for contractors to be consistent with prevailing wage or the minimum wage in the Commonwealth? And so that certainly could be thought of in the context of mass core but I think it's more generally the right thing to at least consider how to do that. That's true, although my view of also it is that if since we're gonna have some transition on the school committee toward the end of the year my view is if we're going, if the committee is interested in addressing this issue and I think narrowly defined the question was essentially adopting the prevailing minimum wage for the adult, for the working age population in the state there's gotta be a better phrasing than that but essentially it's something like that because you can't be clever because if you're clever then technically the mass core wages are legal, right? So you can't, so that would actually be effectively the minimum wage in the state would be what the mass core folks are getting, the inmates. So my point is I thought that if the committee was interested then this committee should try to resolve that question. We can't get tested like they do no matter. Yes, Mr. Stanzer. Can you tell me what, is it mass core? How do you spell it? Is it an acronym? What is it? M-A-S-S-C-O-R, it's undoubtedly an acronym because everything a state does is. But basically what it is is there's a program within the state prisons that provides services essentially to the general population through contracts through state contracting using inmate labor. Okay. And they don't pay anything close to what is the prevailing minimum wage in the state. And although people may have opinions about the question of whether we should or shouldn't hire folks who are incarcerated to do the work and whether that's exploitative, the simple way to resolve the question so that we're never doing it again and we're on record would be adopting the prevailing general minimum wage as a minimum standard for any contractor. Okay, thank you. And that would resolve the question thoroughly. So we'd come back about athletic fields and a capital process to get that kick started, calendar vote, HR and diversity PD update. Budget guidance, wellness approach and update, SCTF goals and budget guidance. I want to look at Mr. Donas to make sure I captured that accurately. Thank you. Warrant review and then this will be a couple of days, three days after the Fortown meeting which is on December 7th. So some debriefing of where we are with regional assessment. We could also push that off the last question if we don't have to but we polled people and neither date was perfect but December 11th and 12th worked for certainly a quorum of the school committee, both worked for, or either worked for a quorum of the school committee but I don't know if we wanted to make a decision on that or where we are with that piece and whether we want to put some of the budget guidance and other budget items in that meeting since it's exclusively focused on that topic. I do have a question. So I read somewhere that the new member of the school committee won't be seated until January but should that person be able to participate in this meeting about budgets? I think it was anticipated they'd be invited. Okay. I mean, we're not gonna vote. I don't think we'd be voting anything in the meeting anyway so. Right. We could accord the liberties. It's informational. Participation without stepover, stepping any boundaries in that regard. So you want to just make a decision right now on a date? I think it'd be beneficial in the near future if we did and if we could do it while everyone's here that might be the best. I'm trying to remember. What was the maximum number we got for either the 11th or the 12th? I think one was seven and one was eight but some of it depending on the timing of the meeting it was a little fuzzy. We had seven for both. Sorry, I'm trying not to disclose. Sorry to laugh. I, wouldn't you normally say then go with eight if the time is works right? And if the default is seven, then flip a coin. We didn't get responses from every single one. No, but actually let me ask a different question. I think I know the answer. Is it the same person who can't make both meetings? I don't believe so. Good. So this is just a good back to what I just said a second ago. If you can get a meeting date that has eight members instead of seven, go with that. And if you can't literally flip a coin. Heads is one date, tails is another. I'm not gonna say one committee member is more important than another. So let's go with the 12th then because that was the most desirable for the largest number of people. Okay. Yeah. Yes, Ms. Kelly. Our committee planning, we had a really good presentation on the transportation analysis recently that directly relates to our more general inquiry into later start times. Yeah. So I think it would prove us to get that back on some meeting agenda later start times. And just basically, you know, where we're all at with that. Okay. Is it okay if it's not the 10th? Yeah. Okay. Why are there 27 things already? Okay. Why, yes, Mr. Reverend Mitteres. Okay, we got that. And then we talked earlier about Mike for a note later in the year, we're gonna wanna find another time to talk about math. About late January. Yeah, and then capital again. Mm-hmm. Yep. Anything else for folks? As you recall, there is always an open door to offer other items on the agenda. Yes, please. I'm sorry, I think we're gonna talk about procedures for subcommittee members to get their items onto the calendar. Absolutely. So I don't know if that should be a topic on the 10th, but I think it would be nice to start with just standardizing what we're talking about. Yes. Those important tasks. Right. So for the committee's benefit, we don't, and I think I'm right about this, we don't have any sort of standard operating procedures or sort of essentially like instructions, like how to, that standardizes how we ensure we go through the process of appropriately finding a date, posting it, getting agendas set and distributed, what the template is for the agendas, and all that kind of stuff. I mean, that, soup the nuts, all the things we do, which are burdensome but significant for any subcommittee, and we should do that. No one's disappointed. For getting the subcommittee scheduled or on the full committee agenda. Well, both. I mean, if you go soup to nuts on that, you'd start with the process of literally getting it, getting the subcommittee meeting done and established and done properly. But if you go to the backside of that process, it would be, well, now we've worked on something and we wanted to make sure we can schedule it properly to get on the agenda. So I think it means all this. I just, I'm wondering if we could even take it a step further. I think having a substantive conversation just about subcommittees in general at this committee level would make a lot of sense, both about how membership and chairs and all of that is established. I think every subcommittee seems to have its own way of doing things. And it would be helpful, you know, I think for future school committees to just have that kind of guidance written down to explain what that process is. And I think similarly also just to think about how the subcommittee is held accountable by the regional school committee and how it reports its work to the committee and to the public. So I don't know what that would look like exactly, except to say that maybe a more substantive conversation where you could examine all those different pieces of the subcommittee work, how it works. And I've raised this before too, I think sometimes too for a time-strapped committee, we have a lot of subcommittees, right? And so there's that piece of the conversation as well. How do we juggle or balance our responsibilities and duties? But I feel like it's been a big enough piece of the work that we do, that it merits its own agenda item in the future meeting. Mr. Spitzer, does that capture? Yeah, that goes above and beyond with it. I think all those issues are important. Great, we'll take it on. Yeah, and we could flop offline on this, but I just wonder if MASC might have some guidance or thoughts that we could, or templates even that we could work from as it relates to the questions that you cited. This committee's not feeling like it's invent, you know, that we could find some models that are working in other communities. Well, we've done that all of a step. I mean, I'm gonna show you right here too. Okay, great, anyone wanna make a motion to adjourn? Oh, I move. I move. Mr. Spitzer, seconded by Manino, I take it. Please. Okay, all those in favor, second. Motion carries unanimously with a stretch from Dr. Moss. Please.