 So, I'm calling the Amherst School Committee meeting starting at 7.07, calling it to order. First, I want you to just go through parts of the agenda and then we'll move on to approval of minutes. But, you know, so there's public comments, superintendent's update we'll deal with. The new and continuing business under that is FY13 budget guidelines, school choice, Amherst fees, these are a cracker farm preschool and school lunch, regionalization study conversation and then accept gifts. There are no subcommittee appointments and they will have school planning. Any additions? Anything else? Thank you. So we'll move on. Approval of minutes November 22nd and that was the joint meeting. I think we approve these at the regional meeting. You did. I would make a motion to approve these as amended at the regional committee. I forget what those amendments were. I think the amendments were on the October. Excuse me. Yes, doctor. Second. The discussion. All those in favor? So any public comments, if you want to make public comments, come to the table and identify yourself and please limit your public comments to no more than three minutes. All right. Why don't you come to, you got to come to that front table there. Good evening. I have about three items. Maybe I just finished on two. I don't know the one. I belong to a coalition. It's statewide. Whereas we are got together last year, last August. And we are looking, we are ready now to start putting some substance on the, what we're pursuing. And what we are pursuing is to attempt to change the University of Massachusetts as a, as understanding as an outpatient clinic. There is a federal law that you advertise as an outpatient clinic. You will have to bring anybody, Medicare, Massachusetts called Mass Health, people that are not have a private plan. The reason why I'm here tonight is to advise you. You're not going to decide this tonight. But it will be great to see we're going around different towns. But since I live in Hammers, I will be great for you as a body to have a discussion. Or we're asking you to attach your name to this, to this movement. We are consulting right now with the ACLU of Massachusetts. And they might be, might be able to set a class action suit. And have the University explain why they do not accept families and individuals with Mass Health or Medicare. So that's one of the items. So hopefully, I know that you put stuff on the record when you public comment. So that's something you'll decide. You decide, yes, to attach your name as a school committee body, fine. You don't decide to do it, fine too. But at least I think I bring it to your attention. I think it's a good cause. Not everybody has private plans. The other item that I want to bring in front of the committee is the one that I'm a little concerned as I've been hearing. I do receive the minutes about, I understand that there's a 48% student with free and reduced lunch. That's what I hear. That's what I've seen printed. And it just, also I'm hearing a lot about the so-called achievement gap that is happening. So one of the questions that I have is some of those, there is a 48% of free and reduced lunch. How many of those students are, let's say, are not achieving? I think it's a fair question. I think that is also something that I guess I remember. There's a question around here. We used to have this system called tracking and at the time the NAACP filed a suit. There was an agreement at the end of the suit that NAACP dropped the suit. But I do believe that we could bring it under the same precedent, the issue again. So I'm leaving this here. Someone would like to let us know or let me know how to reach me. And I think those are stuff that things that this committee should look into. And I'm totally confident that you guys are. And then the other final public that I have to make is the one that G. I have been hearing a lot and about the so-called robocalls. I've been in this town 30 years and actually some of you know my record. And I get robocalls. What I'm missing is the Spanish or other language robocalls. I think that in a community of this, of farmers, not everyone has computers, not everyone understand unfortunate English, although the kids do. And I would like to see you as a body, as a committee, address those things. As always, that has been missed. I believe there was a time that we used to have becoming a multicultural school system, bands. It is my understanding that it has been changed now to social justice for every kid with the same caveat of the bands. And I understood bands. What's going on now is not that. You cannot go against social justice. They come together if we have a social justice. So I just want to bring that to your attention. I understand again that when you bring something in public comment, you'll let me know what it is. And finally, in 2002, there was a ballot question in Massachusetts called ballot question number two. It was the eradication or transitional bilingual education. I just found out through some friends in Boston that there is a provision on that law that if you find or you can gather 20 parents on any school in Massachusetts since it was first under legislated language, that you could actually, through the law, create a bilingual class. I don't have the, I mean, you all have the resources. And the question is this. Is that stance? And is that is what it is? And 20 parents petition, you're born to a bilingual class. What will your position be? Since you all went, no, not you all, but this right now, I believe that it's into this English plus sort of thing by past action. I see the meetings and I read the thing. I wonder is, let's say tomorrow I bring 20 parents to this district and we want a bilingual class. How would you react to that? And that's all I have to say. Thank you. Thank you very much. Usually we don't respond. No, I know. But there's one piece of information, this public information that came out in the regional meeting on when the equity report was done by Martha Guevara, that I think that all of those information related to the demographics and the makeup of the schools, it's all available. And it actually should be online. Is that the report? I'm not sure if it's been posted. One from last week. One from last week. I'm not sure if it's up yet or not, but it will be. But it has a plethora. Well, I have not been following this since I left in a five. What I do would like to see on those items that I mentioned here tonight to be, let me know also that we know how to proceed. Thank you. Thank you very much. All right. Superintendent's update. Okay. Let's see. I think you have it in front of you. It's very brief tonight. I just wanted to mention the Amherst Education Foundation has a gift donation fundraiser happening right now, which they offer the opportunity for community members and to make a donation in the honor of a teacher. They've had some very positive feedback from this fundraising in the past and the funds that come in do affect and support students in Amherst, Pellum, Leverett, and Shooksbury. So this tax deductible donation can be made at the Amherst Education Foundation website. So I do want to mention that because they do a remarkable job for schools. Also, tomorrow night there is a Generations Together Cambodian Open House at Crocker Farm. It's for all preschool through grade 12 Cambodian families who are coming together in a multi-generational event, which will be student performances, as well as opportunities for parents and staff to talk about their children's educational experience in our schools. So we are hoping school committee members will come and join us at Crocker Farms from 6 o'clock to 8 o'clock. And I believe it's a potluck as well. Yeah. I mean, just to add to it, the PGOs from all the schools have provided money. And so many of the families were provided ingredients in our cooking. And there was a somewhat of a similar but probably not as comprehensive celebration last year. And it was an amazing event to go to. So we hope that you'll come and meet our families and be part of that celebration. Also, there's lots of going on this month in our schools, in the elementary schools. I just have created a blurb that talks about activities at Crocker Farm, like a geography bee that's happening in grades 4 through 6. So that is here. Also Fort River, a PGO, sponsored a successful Scholastic Book Fair, which I guess Jane Yolen, who's a popular children's author, was on hand. So all of the funding for these events was to support the Fort River Library. So we do want to acknowledge the work that the PGO at Fort River went above and beyond. So, but that is listed here for you and that's it for the updates for tonight. Any questions? One other update I want to add. On the 19th, which is Monday, the Crocker Farm, at Crocker Farm, there is a sort of certificate being given to students who participated. And the Junior Achievement Entrepreneurship Program. These are 4th, 5th, and 6th grade. This course was co-taught by myself and Donna Kelly. It was an extraordinary accomplishment. If you want to stop by, it's from 4. It starts at 3 and will go until 4. And the Junior Achievement People will be there, plus parents will be there. I know I will be there. It was an incredible experience. And one of the things that I learned from it is that I revisited my teaching career. And there's nothing like turning around and seeing, you know, 10, 11 kids riveted on you. Huge pressure. Riveted attention. Anyway. I know. I think you had a wonderful time. I did have a great time. It was for Charlie's equally as the kids. All right. FY13 Budget Guidelines. Now it should be on the table in front of you. And this is similar to what I sent out on the e-mail, except that I had a gremlin in my word process that it wouldn't let me do anything. But this is very much the same. And what we wanted to do tonight, go through this, and I'd like for us to discuss this. And then we need to vote on it and send it on its way to the administration. Can I ask a question? Yes. Can you remind me how we got to this draft, where this draft came from? All right. There are two, I think I thought I explained this. We had everyone, I had written everyone to e-mail me what your budget priorities were. All right. So I took all of the responses that I received and I put it into this format. And I explained I only did tier one and tier two. I didn't do anything else other than that. If you want to add another tier or break this down to other tiers, that's fine. This is a starting point as far as I'm concerned. Yes. Can I surprise you? It will not surprise me. I don't want more tiers. What? I don't want more tiers. Excellent. I like everything on here, but I like them all equally. I don't even see how I can differentiate between tier one and tier two on this one. I almost feel like we have one tier here. Because if I had to, I could parse some of tier one down and some of tier two up. But I almost feel like there's one tier here and we need to work on all of these things. And I don't see anything here that we can honestly say that we won't work on. Correct. And the tier two as it indicates, this is where tradeoffs may be required in order to fund. So we really want these. We're going to have to look at the budget very carefully and make some tradeoffs in order to have these things become a part of what we want the budget look like. Whereas tier one, those are things we definitely want to have happen. I hear you about that, but I also agree with Rob. I mean, you know, this is so in line with what our district improvement plan is. And it would be very hard to, I mean, it's going to be a difficult budget season. I understand that. And I hope that we work very hard and very carefully to try to sort of push our district improvement plan through our budget guidelines forward in the way that we would like. So I would have a very hard time parsing some of this stuff too. You know, I mean, maybe a little tweak here or tweak there, but from my perspective to work with the administrators around the budget, if people are comfortable with one, I mean, I think this does clearly lay out your priorities. And I feel like we could work within this even if it wasn't in tiers. So if it's the tiers that's kind of steps in the way we could, I think the spirit is very clear from the committee and your priorities. Yeah, and I agree with that. And if I absolutely had to have tiers, I would say that the item on tier two that starts with maintain instrumental music, classical music, art, P.E. library programs, I would kind of insist on being in tier one. But I'm okay with the superintendent's suggestion that we proceed with this as if they're homogeneous single tier. And I would agree with that. But just what I, that's what the caveat is that I know going forward and that we are going to have to look at this very carefully in terms of the upcoming budget. And we are going to have to make some choices. I believe these two tiers give us a way of looking at how to go about making those choices. All right. So can we have emotion on this? I'll move to approve the Amherst School Committee Budget Guidelines for Fiscal Year 2013 as presented here tonight. Second. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Gene Amherst. School choice. Good eye. Yes. In terms, thank you. In terms of school choice, we need to have, we typically have a discussion one meeting and then we go back for a vote the following meeting. We have a timeline I believe of, is it April that we have to have a decision made as to whether we are going to be a school choice district or not. Historically Amherst has not accepted school choice students. I'd like us to think about the possibility of accepting select numbers of students, small numbers of students. What I'd like to suggest is that if we accept so that we are a school choice district, when it comes down to the point of when we have our class sizes somewhat stable for next year and we have say two smaller classes where we want to, we can't really make them one class but we can break them into two and we would be able to accept some students. My opinion is that I think the revenue would be helpful to us. I know there's been a philosophical discussion of do we take funds from our neighbors or neighboring towns and I do feel that on a certain level. However, I do feel that the state has set up charter schools and choice and in our situation in Amherst, if kids are moving out we're losing funds but we do not have the capacity to fill that back in. So I'd like the committee to think about and maybe have some discussion around the possibility of us taking in some targeted school choice students for next year. If I look at projections, early projections and you look at the class configurations, which is extremely early, there's a potential of up to 40 students that could be filled into select spots. That's just with a very cursory look. But again, that number of students that we fill in would be a discussion that you would all have here with the class numbers. I just have a question. So you're suggesting that, for example, like if there's a kindergarten or first grade class of 23 or, you know, 23, 24 and you took some additional school choice kids then you could potentially make... I mean we could keep our numbers down in one way and that way by breaking into two smaller classes. I would say that it's kind of the opposite. So say we have 25, 26 kindergarten students, that's too many for a kindergarten class. So we're going to be forced in that circumstance to either split into two classrooms or relocate students to another school. We would then have the opportunity to accept kindergarten students to a healthy level and it would be... We'd have the classes in most cases anyway, so it would not be to incur additional expense, but it would be to... Does that make sense? Yes, yes, yes. So in our other circumstances, because we are not moving kids across schools in the upper grades, we may have a class in an upper grade that's very low that we feel like we could bulk up a little bit. Again, the point of what is too many would be a discussion that would come here. But I think to have that opportunity when our enrollment has been going down over time to maintain the things that we value in our school district, we know where we've been for the past six years in terms of cutting. I think it is another revenue source. Anyone else? Rob? Yeah, I'm in agreement with this and I'm in favor of this too. I think we're in a system that's been set up where many towns around us use school choice and for us to have that flexibility I think is important to Amherst. So if we can work within the margin, as Maria suggests, to not have to add an additional teacher, but to fill in spots where we already have a classroom. I think it's reasonable. I know there's been some philosophical opposition to it in the past, but I feel like if towns around us are doing it and there's pressure with kids going to charter school that it's something we need to consider. I would like to see this go forward in terms of a further discussion. Have the enrollment figures come in and projected enrollment figures come in so that we can know what that's going to look like going forward. One of the words that I have is once we accept those students there here and they will go through the system. So we have to not only think in terms of current terms, in terms of the students that we have, but also future as they go through the system. And I totally agree with that. Students are scrambling and families to have students come in seventh grade to our schools. We have multiple requests each year for the elementary school and we are able to accept students at the secondary level to round out. To round out classes and to maintain what we believe is an Amherst education. What are the things that we want to hold. So I know that it's a tough conversation, but I'd be happy to come back next month to our next meeting with some more information for us to look at and to consider. I agree with Rob and one of the things I like about it in particular is, you know, we have talked about needing to think of other ways to raise revenue. And this would certainly be something that is really viable. And I mean, I understand what you're saying, but I, you know, these are the kinds of things we need to start thinking about. Other towns aren't doing it in charter schools and so I think it makes sense. So if it's comfortable for the committee, we'll put it on our next meeting to come back up in front of you again. I would like to have a really full discussion and let's just have the discussion and then a vote once we have all the information before us. And again, what we're talking about is taking care of marginal costs in relationship to filling in students. We can do it inside of marginal cost. Then it works for everyone. But that needs to be determined by the numbers that are brought to us. We are not a community that is looking to balance our budget using school choice. So we're not hitting a tipping point, but if we vote to become a school choice community, we may choose just to accept five children. So it depends how deeply we go into accepting students as based on what's in front of us at that moment. So I would be happy to bring this back. Any further discussion? All right, thank you. All right, these are Amherst fees, Crocker Farm preschool and school lunch. This is on the region and we went through it anyway. So this is a rehash of that. And what I would like for us to do is to vote on this, unless people really want to continue the discussion of it. Joanne is here if there are questions specific to preschool just so that I know that that was an area that we didn't address fully last time. Information? Yes. I move that we accept the fees for preschool located at Crocker Farm going from $4.50 to $5.00 and school meal prices for lunch and breakfast going from $2.50 to $2.75 and breakfast $0.50 to $0.75. Second. And then just one thing I'd want to say is that I think it was mentioned at the regional meeting that we're still pretty low compared to other, you know, other preschools. But it was also mentioned that, you know, it's tough on people to go up too much in one year. So we're going up 10% this year. Yeah. And what I would say is let's go up 10% a year until we catch up to the other places. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Any additional positions? Study. And this was put on it because we felt that it was necessary for us just to talk about it. Even though it passed in town meeting and all the other town means have now brought into the school planning committee has been formed. Our representative is Catherine. So this is an opportunity for us to discuss this among ourselves. and knowing that this is now largely out of the hands of the school committee. I thought too it might be helpful for Katherine to talk a little bit about where you all are and then also if there are specific questions that the committee wants Katherine to bring that are right up front stated here are some things we really want you to explore. I mean clearly there's some straightforward questions we all hold but if committee members have, you know, specific questions so I don't. Yeah. We can be interesting to know where you are. So where we are now is that the other two members, Andy Steinberg and Alyssa Brewer, have been appointed and accepted and we are having our first meeting of the Amherst committee Thursday morning at nine o'clock in town hall, I think on the first floor meeting room. So it's an open public meeting, it's been posted. I believe the agenda's been posted and I think I'll know a lot more after that meeting, you know, we'll elect officers and talk about how we're going to proceed. I know that the other towns have also formed their committees but we have no date to meet with them. We're going to meet as an Amherst committee first. You being honest? So, you know, I think Maria's suggestion is a good one that if there are specific questions from the school committee that I can take to the meeting on Thursday. That I will do that, I should do that. Rob? Yeah, there was an issue of possible public forums raised at this committee and I believe it was raised at town meeting also and I guess I kind of want to get a sense of what our planning was or what we were foreseeing going forward with that. Well, so the committee's been charged with having six public meetings, two of which are public forums. So I'm imagining that on Thursday we will determine the schedule of that and determine the Amherst public forums. But yes, we have every intention of having them. I just don't know when they are. Anything else on this? We can move on then. Want to accept GIFs? Yeah, there are the GIFs. Yeah, where are they? GIFs? They're on the very back. I've got it. If you've got the Rob housing. I move to accept GIF from the Fort River Lab. It's my kid's school. Fort River Parent Council to help to fray costs to staff lounge renovations for a total of $1,500. Second. Any discussion? All those in favor? All right, there are no policies, all policies. Just as a reminder, our policies all come through the region. All of those were accepted last week. Subcommittee reports? Just to hand out summary notes from the BCG meetings of October 20th and November 30th, just so they have. Trying to do a better job of sharing the information back to the committees. Yeah, I think those are both yours. I have. Yeah. I'm kind of surprised there's actually nothing on these about the numbers, but basically I think it was at the October 20th meeting that the number of 2.8% is being suggested as what we can increase our budgets by. And where that comes from is roughly a 3.5% increase in property taxes that we generally get with the proposition 2.5, increase of 2.5 and roughly 1% in new growth. But then state aid is I think projected to go up by maybe 1%. So. How can you two, I think that they're basing it on. I believe I could be wrong on that one. So the mix of the two results in 2.8%. So that's where that comes from. That's how much we think revenue is gonna go up. So that's how much the budgets go up if you're not taking out a reserve or something like that. So that's the mark for all of the town departments to stay within a 2.8% and that was the preliminary guidance from the finance committee. I think that we need to be aware of the fact that 2.8 is not something that we can live with. That we are going to be looking at the budget and taking back to BCG something other than 2.8. That discussion will be held here as we go through the process and Rob and Maria bring forth more numbers. But preliminary, we are expecting that we will be beyond the 2.8. So we'll bring, I'm not sure if it's at the end of January in our terms of our budget timeline, some preliminary information to the committee about what a projection of 2.8 means for a gap for the school district because as I stated at BCG, the assumption that a 2.8% increase holds people or maintains departments and whole is not accurate for the schools when we are 80% staff just going up in terms of staff. I think it's well over 2.8% increase, nevermind health insurance and other costs that we need to account for. So we'll be bringing that to you so that we can see what the level of gap is at this moment. And we're very preliminary of course, looking at our projections, but we'll bring that to you very soon. And there is a gap. So when, I think the next time Amherst meets, we should have that. But there is a gap. Any other discussion questions? No, I'll just say that Joint Capital Planning Committee tends to be quiescent at this period but we'll ramp up again in January. Anyone have any issues to bring for capital for the elementary system? Thank you. Can I mention one other thing which is kind of around the capital? I think it was Steve who raised the issue before around the facilities issues, Wildwood, Fort River, what about renovations? And we did, and I'm not gonna get the language correct on this, but we went through the process for the middle school windows. You go in and you apply for funding. So we are initiating that request for Fort River and Wildwood. We don't have a strong feeling that we will receive the funding, but we're going to go through the process to hope to be able to look at some renovation if we rank high enough in the state's priority list. So I just wanted to let that be out there as well. Anything else? Upcoming calendar, unfortunately I left my calendar. Do you have any next? I didn't bring my calendar. That's all right, hi. How'd you have one there, Rick? We also, if I can mention, Berver, are you okay with me? I met with Superintendent's Planning Council today too, and we've kind of looked out past where we were scheduled to look at additional reports that we'd like to bring in front of the school committee. So I'm revising the schedule right now to share with Rick and Herb. I'm meeting with the chairs tomorrow afternoon. So we'll have some updated. I wanna have a facilities report. I'd like to have a technology report come in front of the committee. So we are adding additional body to that document for past January, February, March, April, because we're a little packed in there with the budget process. Definitely the next time FY13 budget and tiered instructional model is there. And we will also come back with school choice again at that time, so. So, Rick? Not necessarily for an agenda item or whatever, but one thing I'd really like us to do, if possible, in the district is to do more data analysis following up on what we were talking about today. Absolutely. We're on two things, MCAS scores and discipline data. If we can do some kind of really good statistical analysis of our data versus state data and national data for discipline, if it exists, but at least state data on the MCAS, because I don't have a good sense about where we are versus the state on these things. And also, historically, where are we going? Are we going up, going down? I mean, like in MCAS, I heard the other day that we have schools out of not making AYP, but I heard that 80% of Massachusetts schools aren't making AYP, but that doesn't really tell me anything because I don't know if that's good to be in the 80% or not. And so, I wish we could really, and the numbers are complicated with MCAS, but if we could find out the numbers that matter in the different subgroups and compare ourselves, that would be great. And if that requires outside horsepower, I would just get it. It's only a once a year thing. Right, I agree. If I can comment quickly that we did talk a little bit about kind of the analysis of data and trend data over time in comparison to our scores and our discipline numbers compared to the state and some other communities. And I think that may be a place where we ask someone to come in and do an analysis for us, given we have one person who kind of does the data work for the districts. But I do, I absolutely, I appreciate Rick's suggestion that we spoke about today and we'll look at that coming down and see when does it make sense to really have this data presentation. I also will talk to the chairs tomorrow just about the format of when we're bringing information forward to the committee. I wanna become probably clearer on when are we giving a comprehensive report and when is it more of a memo to the superintendent with presentation points. Like when we're sharing out verses, when do we want the committee to have some discussion and decision making. Because I'm trying, what I'm trying to do is manage the workload of staff and say when is it really important to have the comprehensive report and when is just too much information, too much information. So we're gonna try to, you know, I'll be asking for lots of feedback around what is helpful over the next few weeks so that we can get this down. So in terms of future gender items, school chip choice, the tiered instructional model and budget, it's always gonna be here. It's starting heavily. And I also would like to have Rhonda come before us. Yep. It would be good for her to talk about her work. Yeah, I'd be happy to have her come. You know, et cetera. That's great. And the other thing is in the equity report that was presented last week was an extraordinary document. And I went through it extensively. And there are items in there that we need to bring forward just for Amherst. Some of it refers exactly to what you're talking about. So the questions that I raised about, I raised about looking at subgroups within the subgroups and looking at them just as a standard group and what those numbers look like as opposed to comparing them with other groups. And it's something that we need to see. And I did write Maria and Martha in terms of listing out what I saw as the points that we needed to look at carefully and I asked them to prioritize. Because if you look at that report and I wanna bring, I won't go through it now. I would like for us to go through that report as it pertains to Amherst. That data, I would suggest that all of us go through that report again because there's some extraordinary data in there. And also the recommendations in summary section is rather illuminating. I also will be asking Martha to put the recommendations in a multi-year plan so that way people can know what will be addressed this year, what will be next year, what's the following year. Because clearly we will tackle things strategically how we, what we can manage year one, two, three. Right, and that's a good idea. Yeah. We need to look at. It's very transparent. It is just good to look at it because it is an incredible document. And I really appreciated the work that was put into it. And by prioritizing it, we can then look at what's gonna happen this year and next year. Such a consider a huge laundry list of things that need to be accomplished. Absolutely. Anything else to be added? Hey, I can't believe it. I know it's a beautiful thing. I'm going to take a motion for adjournment. I'll move. Second. Thank you. We're adjourned. All in favor? We're adjourned. Thank you. Thank you all.