 Well, seeing a presence of a quorum of the Amherst School Committee, I'm calling this meeting to order at 6 o'clock on the dot on May 26th. And our first quarter item on the agenda is to approve our minutes from May 19th. Oh, I, before we go in. Okay, roll call vote and then also acknowledge that we are being recorded and live streamed on Amherst media. Thank you very much Amherst media and channel 15 and Amherst. And so we call it. Okay. Mr. Harrington. Thank you. Ms. Spitzer. Ms. Lord. Lord present. Mr. Demling. Deming present. And McDonald present. And we also have Dr. Morris on the line. And Amherst media. And so, moving on back to approving minutes of May 19th. Mr. Harrington, did anybody have any comments or edits that we can pass on to Seattle? Seeing none. Mr. Harrington, did you want to say something? I can't tell. No. Okay. Mr. Demling. I move to approve the minutes of May 19 2020. Move by Demling. I'll second that. Seconded by McDonald. Any further discussion? No. Seeing none. Mr. Demling. Ms. Lord. Lord I. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer I. Mr. Harrington. Passes. Oh, McDonald I. And so the minutes are approved. Five zero. And now we'll move on to public comment. And as a reminder. Public comment may be submitted either in written form, audio or visual file to. To email my email address, McDonald, a ARPS.org, or by leaving a voice message on our Google voice number. And we will play the recording or show the message. And we do have one comment that came in on our phone number. And so I will play that now. And this message is for the Amherst school committee, the elementary district. I wanted to second what Kerry Spitzer proposed at the last regional school committee meeting. Namely that repairs to ventilation systems in the schools be prioritized for capital funding. As Kerry mentioned, much of the recent writing and limiting COVID transmission indoors has referenced proper ventilation. But I feel strongly that any work needed to keep air flowing in classrooms and ensuring windows can open and have screens attached should be high priority. Therefore, I would urge you to ensure the funding for HVAC equipment replacement, a crop of farm and the other schools be included. And so the school committee representatives on JCPC to push for this. Many thanks. And as mentioned, that was the only comment that we received today. So we'll move on to a new and continuing business and our first item is the budget vote for fiscal year 21. So I'll start and turn to Dr. Slaughter. You're not going to see a lot of change from what was proposed previously. I think the only thing you'll see is that there was originally some funds that were planned to be designated to special ed stabilization account. So we're building in the more we learn about next fall, the more we realize having some contingencies of places going to be important. So it'll allow us to have a little more wiggle with additional costs that are certainly sure to come as we head towards fall. Other than that, there are no changes to the, what the budget has proposed for the operational budget, which is the only vote that's up. The only budget vote that we're asking for tonight. I don't know if Dr. Slaughter has any more that you'd like to add. And there is a motion. Let me see if I can pull that up. It's quite simply out. I can display it on the screen. If that'd be, if you'd prefer miss McDonald. Um, sure. Okay. Ms. Lloyd, did you have a question? Oh, I could make the motion. I could move. I can make the motion if you want. Okay. Okay. I moved to adopt a budget of 23,912,452 for fiscal year 2021 for the Amherst elementary schools. Move by Lord. There's second. Second. Move by Lord and seconded by Harrington. Are there, is there further discussion quest comments? Mr. So slightly off topic now that we're within the motion of the operational budget, but can you explain why we're not seeing a capital proposal tonight? Where we saw one last week. So I can jump in and. Um, actually, could I pause for a. Another topic. I think Mr. Meenow is. I guess here for the region meeting, which will start at 630. And there's an Amherst meeting at the same link that's happening beforehand. Yes. I noticed that you. So I think if you came back to the same link in 15 minutes, I think you'll be all set. We can't hear you because you're muted, Mr. Meenow. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I will leave. I just joined early because the last time I couldn't get in, I'll try again. Do you see it? Um, so, um, is it okay to answer the question now? Yes. To the chair or would you prefer I wait till after the operational. Oh. Yeah, let's, let's actually see if there's any other comments from the committee on the operational budget. And then we'll come back to that. Mr. Demling. Um, so can you explain again? Yeah. I think you mentioned this at, uh, another school committee meeting that we all sit on. Um, but there's a slight, um, difference in one of the budgets being slightly above. Level funded and the other one being slightly below and it works out in the wash. And it's due to a way that charter school reimbursements are accounted for. With the town. Could you just. Re clarify slash state that. Thanks. Uh, Dr. Slater, you like me to do that or you'd like to jump in? I'm fine either way. Go right ahead. Okay. So, uh, to make a rather long and fiscally complex story short. Uh, the Amherst, uh, municipal budget, um, takes on the charter school cost and then the Amherst, uh, elementary district reimburses the town for that cost. Um, and this year, because we had a decline in charter school students, um, we actually had a, uh, uh, 3% or 0.3, uh, increase to our budgets. Originally the budget guidance was 2.5% increase and ours was 2.8. Uh, and that was due to the lower than anticipated charter enrollment last year. Um, so where we landed with the town is because of, uh, multiple factors, including another, uh, educational budget that the town has to support. Uh, the town has worked with us so that the Amherst elementary school budget is slightly above level funded. And, um, I can say the regional budget is slightly below the way the assessments work out in the end. It works out, um, very essentially to be a wash from the town's perspective. Uh, but it's a really helpful difference for the Amherst elementary schools, um, to be slightly above level funded. I get that right, Doug. Okay. Mr. Demlin, did you have another? No, I was just saying, thank you. Is there any further discussion on the motion? Okay. Uh, seeing none, um, uh, Motion has been moved and seconded. Um, so we'll roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. McDonald's, aye. Uh, so the motion on the budget passes, uh, five to zero. So, uh, we can circle back to the question, um, the table about the capital budget. Sure. So in the capital budget, the way the process works is the staff here. Propose a capital budget and then it, it goes through the school committee representatives and the joint capital planning committee. Um, to, uh, talk about that with the other town departments, library, fire, police, um, to, to be involved in that. So if there is a discussion or report that a committee member wants to make, uh, based on conversations at JCPC, we certainly, and it fits with, uh, within the topic of FY 21 budget to have that conversation. But as opposed to at the regional level where the committee actually votes on a budget, uh, the Amherst elementary district does not vote on a capital budget. It's representatives bring the proposed capital budget to JCPC and, um, the attempt is for agreements to get hammered out at with that group for how the town will spend whatever capital allotment there, there is. Um, so, you know, I think for today's conversation, if there is a discussion or feedback that, um, JCPC representatives want to have, we certainly can do that, but, um, it's not something that's typically voted by school committee members. Um, but I, uh, that all being said, um, you know, the, neither Dr. Slaughter nor I or opposed to that conversation. Miss Spitzer. Yeah. So, um, both Peter and I were at the JCPC meeting and I, for one would love to not love, but I think it's necessary to have a conversation about that meeting. Um, and I'd like to bring everybody up to speed on, on how the JCPC meeting went, um, with the acknowledgement that it was, um, it was, um, um, So the meeting occurred last Wednesday and based on the feedback from that meeting, there will be another meeting, um, tomorrow night. And I believe it's starting at seven 15. It might be seven 30. I need to double check. Um, but so I'm going to, I'll give a quick update. And then I have a feeling Peter will probably want to, um, jump in. So I, we went into the meeting and obviously because of everything, you know, that we're not only in our community before more broadly, um, I know that we've all been instructed to kind of cut our capital budgets as, as much as possible. And so the town. Initial proposal that was shared with us at this meeting, and this was not at all final. It was, it was, they were seeking our feedback. And I think they, they hopefully heard our feedback, but what they did is they essentially kept, um, sidewalks and, um, um, they started to put, um, um, um, the, um, the city council's department of public works items flat. And then created, um, another fund for all of the other capital projects, potentially in the town and that was put at about $300,000. So, um, As a representative of the school, we were, uh, I think both Peter and I were quite concerned about this proposal, just knowing that in order for our schools to be safe for our caveat here is that there is some federal funding through the CARES Act that will be available for anything that we can say, I shouldn't say anything, but for items that are related to COVID-19. So potentially things like hand sanitizer or building plexiglass separations were needed, things like that. So in some regards, that's positive that it's not an unlimited pool of funds. So I do have some concern that we may need to even invest more than what might be coming down the pipeline through these grants. But I'm particularly concerned about some of the items that we need to invest in in our schools to keep them, because our buildings are so old, and because we need to make sure those buildings are in the best condition we possibly can. I feel really uncomfortable not doing some of the basic capital investments that I think we've identified as important. And what we discussed wasn't reflected in the capital budget in any way other than this $300,000 fund that was going to be spread across all of the other agencies and departments in the town. So that was concerning to me. So hopefully tomorrow we'll hear an update that has balanced out, I think, the priorities of the town so that schools and things like the fire department and police are also included. But I wanted to, and I'll let Peter add to that. And Mr. Demley. Yeah, so that's a very good summary. And yeah, I think Ms. Spitzer already mentioned this. But it was the initial proposal from the town manager and the finance director who's been on board for eight days. So they were taking feedback. And I think the concern that Ms. Spitzer expressed was it was universal on the part of all the members of JCPC. The other couple of logistic things that we're concerning is that that additional resource fund of $300 something thousand was originally envisioned as as things come up over the course of the fiscal year that are COVID related, the schools and other departments would come and then ask for that money. Whereas we already know that we have must-haves that we absolutely need to do now. And we also know that some of these items, if we don't do them now, aren't going to get done. For example, if we want to spend anything to shore up the Fort River Roof, that's not something we can do in the middle of the school year. And I mean, so just going down on the, we had that $220,000 capital proposal last week of those four different items. And so what Ms. Spitzer and I were expressing and others were expressing for their own departments is if this really is an absolute must-have related to safety or security, COVID, and you have to invest in it now, we need to know. So that's why I think in her summary email, Ms. Shown, who's the chair of JCPC, said that the time was going to go back to department officials. So it was going to follow up with school officials about, OK, what are your priority items that you need to know? So that we can take those four originally proposed items and also talk about other feedback. Because there's been other conversations about the Fort River Roof. We just heard a public comment about the Crocker Farm HVAC. And for me personally, I feel like in order to make an informed recommendation to the town council, I feel like I need a conversation of this group. By this group, I mean the school committee and Dr. Slaughter, Dr. Morris, maybe Mr. Roy Clark, about what is now that home down, we know we have to have it before we go to the slush fund list. And the further complication is that this JCPC meeting is happening 24 hours from now. And our JCPC's charge is to complete its work before June 1. So we're trying to work with the process. But I got the sense that even after tomorrow night, it wouldn't be out of place for a department like the school committee to express, OK, we understand this is the plan. That being said, we have A, B, and C that at a bare minimum, we feel like we need to fund for this fiscal year. So that's where we sort of left it. Dr. Morris? Yeah. So I had a conversation with Mr. Bacham in a minute. I think the hard thing for us, and I'll talk about this more next week when we meet, is that we're going to figure out what school is going to look like. It's not like what it used to look like. We'll just figure out how we're going to use our buildings. There are some known costs that, again, I'm not going to get to put the cart in front of the horse, but I talked to Mr. Bacham about, literally, this afternoon that we're going to need to do, that they're not on our capital list, because our capital list wasn't making an assumption that there was going to be a pandemic as we built it in. And so we've received no guidance from, we received CDC guidance a week ago and no guidance from DESI. So the number of variables is right, and I agree with Mr. Demling's point that we can put forward what we think. But in terms of the evolving nature of how to open school, we're not going to have answers to that by next Monday or Tuesday, whatever the first is. It's not going to happen. And so I expressed that to Mr. Bacham, and I think he's understanding, and I think the committee and the community will understand that we haven't received all the guidance we would need to make accurate decisions about capital needs for next year. There are some things we know we're going to have to do. You mentioned a couple, but even how we're going to do them, that's going to be an evolving process. And there's some larger items than the ones you mentioned that we're going to have to do as well. So I felt reassured in my conversation, this is not to suggest that Ms. Bitzer, Mr. Demling or the committee shouldn't advocate for things in the capital list, but I do think I've been with Dr. Slaughter or Mr. Roy Clark itemizing some things that are not so small ticket items that we're going to need to have in place by fall if we expect students to return in the fall. I don't know how to, if that's helpful or not, but it is, I did want to express to the committee that I think town staff know that this is an evolving situation. Everyone's committed on the town that I've heard to making sure students return. And there's some acknowledgement that we're not going to have all the answers in five days. We haven't received the guidance we would need to even begin to have that level of confidence in exactly what needs to be done. But that you're right, there are some things that we know are going to need to be done and receive some assurance about that. Ms. Bitzer? Yeah, and I think this will be telling tomorrow is that, I mean, the fact that 300,000 was the entire amount for the full town was what was pregnant. Primarily most concerning, it's not a question of whether or not the town's dedicated to helping the schools and making sure that they can open, but I think the scale was concerning. And it felt quite unbalanced. So hopefully we'll get to some good news that we can report back next week in terms of shifting kind of in the scales between our roads and sidewalks, which I believe are incredibly important, but I also believe in all the other items on the capital plan are also valued. Yeah, and I want to support Ms. Spitzer's point in that all of our, I mean, I'll just be blunt, 95% of our attention from a capital side will be one of the things we need to do to open schools next year. And so it becomes easy to forget the maintenance things that if we don't do them two years from now, they become larger problems or six months from now, if we've forgotten about them, they become larger problems. So nothing I was saying was trying to disagree with Mr. Demling or yourself, I was really talking about the additional costs that the schools are gonna have to bear given CDC guidance, which again, I'll get much more detail about next week and I don't wanna start previewing parts of that because it's not ready to go and I don't think that's wise. But I do think it's important that that's not all we do because our buildings are old and having nothing to do with COVID-19, they're still in need of repair and we'll pay a larger price down the road if we're not taking care of the maintenance things along the way. I think we've seen that frankly in our schools. Yeah. This is all great conversation. I don't wanna close it, but because we know we have another meeting next week, wondering if we can sort of wrap this up so that we can keep moving and be done in time for another meeting that's happening in the same room. Is it, are folks okay with moving on? So our next item is our, the superintendent evaluation timeline approval. So Carrie, we haven't connected but would you, are you interested in teeing this up for the committee? Sure. So I think I've been previewing this in our last meeting. So I have been in touch with Sasha to hopefully get the instrument ready soon. We need to have a vote in order to postpone the evaluation past June 1st is my understanding. I don't, I wasn't going to make a motion for specific date unless, can we, do you have? Yeah, I'll call on you. Could you bring up the, we don't have the agenda here. We have, we originally had proposed June 16th, our June 16th meeting for artifacts and June 18th for the evaluation submission so all of us to have completed the evaluation and with a vote on June 30th. I might propose that we push out the artifacts presentation a little bit further but potentially to the June 30th meeting. Dr. Morris. Yeah, I mean, certainly this is the committee's will but my recommendation for consideration anyway is if you're going to take a vote tonight and I agree with Ms. Spitzer that I think that's wise not tying it to a specific date tonight giving Ms. Spitzer more time to work with Ms. Figueroa on the tool and let that drive the process. I do also have a feeling that after next week's meeting the conversation is going to be about fall going to consume a lot of our time, energy and focus. So I'm open, as I said before I'm open to what the committee wants but I do think maybe a more general vote and to be reconsidered once Ms. Spitzer has more time and the committee can think a little bit more about it might be warranted or wise. Mr. Demling. I move to postpone the completion of the superintendent evaluation until a later date to be determined. Moved by Demling and I'll second that seconded by McDonald. Is there any further discussion? Seeing none. Dr. Morris, are you amenable to that proposal? Yeah. Okay. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. And McDonald, aye. We had a warrants report on the agenda and I don't believe we have or I have any to report because I don't believe that I've signed any in the since the last meeting. So, and we just talked about agenda planning. We have a meeting TBD the week of next week, tentatively June 3rd is what we have that miraculously just showed up in the document. And then our meeting on and that the focus of that will be fall 2020 planning and then June 16th we have our COVID-19 school update school building committee representative. I'm guessing that's a discussion or Dr. Morris. Yeah. So it's at that point there'll need to be an appointment of a school committee member. And so it's required to be on the school building committee and it can be appointed by the chair or it could be vote but by July 1st the committee needs to be formed. So the time manager asked me to add that to an agenda so that he has who from the school committee will be on the building committee ahead of time. Great. Okay. Any further discussion on agendas meetings? Ms. Spitzer, do you want to make a motion? I do. I move to adjourn. Lord second. Move by Spitzer and seconded by Lord. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Hello. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. And McDonald, aye. We are adjourned. Okay. So seeing a presence of a quorum, I'm calling this meeting of the regional school committee to order at 641 PM and we are now all here. So I will call roll call. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Let me get more present. Mr. Harrington. Mr. Harrington, present. Ms. Lord. Lord, present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, present. Mr. Menino. Menino, present. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, present. Ms. Dancer. Dancer, present. And Ms. Segar. Segar, present. And McDonald, present. We'll leave that as all of us, right? Yes. We also have Emily Gribko here, our student representative, welcome. And also joining us is Dr. Slaughter and Dr. Morris. And we are being live streamed. Thank you to Amherst Media on channel 15. And we are being recorded and it will be available on Amherst Media afterward. So our first order tonight is to approve our minutes from May 14th. Did anyone have any, I'll give a moment just to really refresh and review quickly, but anybody has any comments, just raise your hand. There was a place near the end where I think it said Mr. Segar. I'm trying to find the, yes, under number seven, accept gifts. Oh yeah, Ms. Segar. Ms. Smitzer, you had a comment? So on section E where it reads approve warrants, it just, it seems like there's some words missing. It says these warrants have been approved and we are from Ms. Smitzer about what was approved. I think it must be like we heard from Ms. Smitzer. Yeah, Ms. Segar. On the under section A about the FY21 budget presentation and hearing at the end of the page in the paragraph, the last paragraph, six lines down, it says, Ms. Segar said that coming, that this coming year, a leverage is increasing their budget and therefore the 40K range is. I believe what happened there is I asked Dr. Morris or Dr. Slaughter what the difference was for a leverage. So it was a question. Any further edits? Mr. Demling. I moved to approve the minutes of May 14th, 2020. Mr. Harrington. Yeah, no, in section A, it's like real small, but one, two, three, four, at the end of the page. Moved by Demling, seconded by Harrington. Is there any further discussion, Mr. Harrington? There we go. There's a hyphen in the Rory. It should be Mr. Rory Gaspardt, not Mr. Rory Garpardt. I would accept a friendly amendment to have it be moved as amended by Mr. Harrington. Motion is amended and seconded. Okay, roll call vote on the amended motion. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Monino. Monino, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. And Ms. Seeger. Seeger, aye. And McDonald, aye. And the motion carries a nine to zero. And now we move on to public comment. And we do have one public comment that came in over the phone. So I will play that. Ms. Spitzer said as their last regional school committee meeting, namely that repairs to ventilation systems in the schools should be prioritized for capital spending. As Carrie mentioned, much of the recent writing on limiting COVID transmission indoors has referenced proper ventilation. And so I feel strongly that any work needed to keep air flowing in classrooms and ensuring windows can open and have screens attached should be high priority. Therefore, I would urge you to ensure the funding for the high school exhaust fund and applicable HVAC work on some of the category and tip be included. And for the school committee representatives on JCPC to push for this. Thank you. That is the lone public comment that we received today. And just as a reminder for the public, we accept public comment via email and that may be email or an audio or video recording and by phone voice message at the number that is listed on our agendas. So long as we receive them by 3 p.m., we will either display or play them back. Are there any committee announcements? Mr. Demley? Yeah, I just wanted to give another plug again for Amherst Education Foundation and their fundraising efforts. As mentioned before, they're not gonna be able to do their spring gallon. So one of their big fundraising pushes is the stars in our schools where you can make a donation in the, in honor of, in the name of a teacher. And it really has a nice impact on the staff. I just want to read a brief part of the quote that they have shared from Anne White, a music teacher from Fort River, who says, I've had the good fortune to be honored by parents and members of the Amherst community through the stars in our schools donations to AEF. When making their donations, parents and relatives have commented specifically that they see their children singing with joy and self-confidence and that they have an appreciation for music of different world cultures. It's deeply satisfying to know that what we do in the schools gets carried out into the community. I just thought it was really nice that, you know, we could, is an opportunity not only to support an organization that supports our schools, but to have that human connection, which is obviously a lot harder to come by, you know, during this time. So just another plug for all the great work that AEF does for us. Thank you. And Mr. Denley. Oh, sorry, Mr. Harrington. Thank you, Mr. Denley. And now Mr. Harrington. Right, I just kind of wanted to, I didn't mean for it to flow like this, but I kind of wanted to recognize the passing of AEF board member and Amherst educator, Susan Kennedy Marks. I just figured we should acknowledge that publicly. Oh my God. Yeah, and I think I'll just say, I'll have a lot more to share about that at the next meeting and more acknowledgement once I have more permission to speak on the topic. But I appreciate Mr. Harrington bringing it up. And I think when we get to our meeting next week, it'll be a joint meeting. And I think at that point, I'll likely be able to comment more openly about that. Mr. Menino. When did Susan pass? So again, I'm gonna ask just because of respect for the family that we not go into more details than what Mr. Harrington shared. Reasonable question. Well, love person in our community and did tremendous work. And again, I think by next week, I'll be able to say what I'd like to say now, but I'm trying to respect the process and grieving folks. So people could hold on that. We'll get together next week and I'd do quite well and I'd like to share more information. At that point. Any other announcements? Moving on. Actually, I'm not sure if this is the right spot, but we do want to make a slight agenda change to move things around because one member needs to leave has a conflict later on. So we are going to, with the committee's permission, move the budget FY21 budget vote and assessment method vote to be number one on our new and continuing business item. And the item F, the bus contract vote, will be second. And then we'll continue back, go back to the COVID-19 school update and continue through the rest of the agenda in order. Everybody, does that work for everybody? I'm seeing nodding heads. Wonderful, thank you. Okay, so Dr. Morris. I'll be very brief, especially given that for the update. So just really two things I'd like to share. One is just an appreciation for Amherst media. They're helping out this week with the high school graduation and they're gonna be out there on a very hot day for a long period of time, filming lots of different things, students, families, speeches by Ms. McDowell on behalf of the school committee and a number of others in indoor space. So I just really wanna thank Amherst media. We thought about how to honor and recognize the graduates and got their feedback, it was critical and all these situations, everything's happening faster than anyone can keep up with it and we really appreciate Amherst media's support and professionalism in jumping in. So I wanna publicly acknowledge that. The only other update that's not related to something on the agenda is that we'll have a decision on middle school principal, the result of the middle school principal search later this week. But I really do wanna take the time to acknowledge and thank Dr. Joseph Smith and Ms. Rebecca Sweetman for jumping in to two year interim roles and really transitioning the school and all their hard work, dedication and problem solving to move the school forward is greatly appreciated and they just wanted to say that publicly as we start transitioning to thinking about fall in particular, we'll start that next week. I didn't wanna get ahead of ourselves and not acknowledge the work that Dr. Smith and Ms. Sweetman did over the last two years at the middle school and that's my update for tonight. Thank you and so moving along a cheers update, I don't have anything more to update at this point. So we'll move on to our budget and operation capital and assessment method vote. Turn it back over to you. Sure and so you won't see tremendous differences from the last budget. The only difference was that you'll see is in the last budget, we did have some funds going to special ed stabilization fund and we pulled those out and put them in to increase the amount of state revenue loss we're anticipating based on the longer it goes the less confidence there is right now in a federal relief package that would support states. I wanna be really honest that we're budgeting as best we can based on what our local legislators are telling us and we don't really know what the future holds. One of my colleagues in Pittsfield came out and talked about what would be the impact if there was a 10 or 15% reduction in chapter 70 in state aid. We very easily would be back at this table with more significant other things to talk about but I know the towns have requested to have this information as soon as possible to plan for 10 meetings and town council and Amherst and we're making our best guess on what this will look like but the reality is the legislators aren't giving us much information. So you could see that in the budget that's being recommended, we have close to $300,000 in reductions of state aid at a 10% number that number more or less triples in that vicinity and we're having different conversations. So we've heard different things from different legislators to be very candid with you and I think that's because it's an evolving situation not because they're disagreeing, it's just hard to track especially as they're not meeting live and in person. So this is what we think we can propose at a level funded budget which is requested by the towns. I think we're recommending that we stay with the 45% method. That's why there's not another vote on that. You already voted that in March and we would anticipate that's our recommendation as we stay at that. But particularly at the regional level as opposed to the municipal budgets when there's a cut of state aid it doesn't go through an intermediary it goes directly to the district and I think the other caveat I wanna offer is because we won't have an approved budget by all four towns by June 1st. Later this week, Dr. Slaughter will be submitting an acknowledgement to DESI because they are mandating that any district without an approved budget by each of the towns has to let DESI know so they can get ready to apply a one 12th budget if needed. We're hoping that all the towns will support this budget. I think it's a tough budget for us to pass especially given the number of unknowns we had as we head into next year. I think it's a reasonable budget if there really are catastrophic changes to what we were hearing from legislators about cuts we'll have to come back. But I do think it's as fiscal responsible as we can be given the number of unknowns we have to come. But I think just the one changes reduction of special ed stabilization fund donation that donation but what we plan for put that into anticipated state revenue losses wouldn't inform you about the June 1st deadline from DESI we will have to submit that later this week. And just really the uncertainty in the state budget and how at the regional level as opposed to municipal budget it directly affects the finances of the district. So those were the three updates Dr. Slaughter I don't know if there's anything you'd like to add. Any questions from the committee? Mr. Demling. So two questions. One, do we have indication from the elected officials of the four towns that the 45% method that we discussed last time that the committee seemed to be in agreement with continuing to propose is an acceptable level. I think part of our thinking was that if we proposed the same that was the method that had received tentative agreement from elected officials that that would be the likely outcome. And then the second question is on the HVAC Summit Academy and PIP item. I do really appreciate the additional page of content that was asked for last time from a few members about the additional descriptions on the capital plan modifications. It's good to see the description in the exhaust fan item not that it doesn't have to be done because otherwise it wouldn't have been on the list in the first place but the air quality in the building is not impacted by replacement of the fans. If you could, my question though is on the Summit Academy of PIP items could you clarify but what it means that the remodeling of space has resulted in poor climate control? Not being an HVAC expert I don't really understand what that means. And I don't wanna delve into a nine layer scientific analysis of impact but obviously we're thinking about COVID and health. And so if you could just speak to that because that's an item got crossed up. So spoke with Mr. Roy Clark about this at the other day a little bit and really by virtue of how they sort of repartition the rooms and the spaces in that section of the high school. I think their expectations back when they did that work was that the heating, cooling and all those spaces would be fine. They found by virtue of being in those spaces it's not fine. And so there are rooms that are really too warm and really too cold. And so it's sort of poorly moderated relative to what they'd like to have in that area. And I think if we were able to take on a next project that would probably be number one. It does require some significant redesigned engineering of space and construction work to move duct work and that sort of thing to balance out the heating and cooling in those spaces. I think the air quality question is it's fine. I think it's, they can be uncomfortable at times. I don't think it's and obviously as soon as we can fix it we would like to just because the space has become much more functional or more highly functional if they're properly controlled for temperature. Mr. Deming. Yeah, thank you for that. I think it just underscores how painful this how to the bone we are cutting the capital request to know that we have kids that are and teachers working in uncomfortable spaces and that we're not going to be able to do anything about it and also knowing what FY 22 is likely to throw our way. That's really painful. But I mean, I understand that it's that increases our capital. It would, if we added it, we would increase our capital request to the four towns by like 30 or 40%. So I understand that. And if I could just get a short answer to the what do we expect the reception to be for the 45% method? Could actually, yeah, just comment on the capital. I think the other thing that's a little different in region than it is in some municipal districts is that each of the municipalities get funds, receive funds from the CARES Act for COVID related items. But because the region is not a municipal or it sort of is a municipality, we're not, we can't, no one funded us for the CARES Act. So the reason that stays in as opposed to municipal districts where we'll be just kind of flow through the towns is because we will have to request those funds. Now likely those funds that each town contribute to that are reimbursable via the CARES Act. But I just, I do wanna note that we have to request it very formally in the region because we are not part of the municipal government. Sorry to throw you. I know Mr. Deming had a different question, but I thought it was worth sharing that even though that is a capital expense, that expense is likely to be funded for each town share via the CARES Act, not through their capital budget. Ms. Spitzer, Dr. Slaughter, did you have a follow up to that? The one quick thing I will point out just the mechanics of how the capital works is that typically we approve it now. It doesn't actually hit the books for folks for a full year because it's borrowing. So we would borrow it next year and then would actually be in the data assessment to the districts, I mean to the member town. So this is actually in viewing this list is thinking about what's going to hit the books in fiscal 22 for the communities. The sort of data assessment for fiscal 21 is fixed by the borrowing we did this spring. So those numbers are already in place, obviously not anticipating the situations happen, but also recognize we've already borrowed that money. So those debts will be due. So I just wanna paint that picture as far as some of the thinking around choices in the limitation on capitalists is that we expect fiscal 22 to be as difficult, if not more so than this year and that we're trying to sort of moderate the data assessment to the communities. Ms. Spitzer. So I'm gonna try not to talk too much about another committee I sit on, but for the other committee, we've got kind of a council that we can go to to ask for additional funds. And I'm just thinking if this 75,000 proves to be too low or the HVAC exhaust system or the exhaust fans do fail next year, what mechanism do we have to make improvements that are required, either for COVID related reasons or because some mechanism in our school needs immediate repair. Dr. Sutter, yeah. So one of the things we typically do and traditionally did before we started a more significant capital planning process in the region was to use operating budget funds for those purposes. Obviously, as we're discussing the operating budgets going to be very tight next year. So the opportunity for that is gonna be very lean. The other option we have if we need additional revenue would be to seek permission from you as a regional school committee and then subsequently permission from each of the member towns to have authorization to do additional borrowing at some point. So that's really our recourse. So when we, particularly for debt authorization if the towns don't have an issue with it and they take no action, then it happens. It's if they wish to vote on it and potentially vote no on it, then they have to actually call a town meeting. If we were mid fiscal year, something arose, we had communication with each of the select boards and communities and they were for lack of a term comfortable with some additional borrowing. If they took no action upon the notice that were required to give, then it would just become a bill they would have to pay which would be in fiscal 22 or 23 depending on how late in the year we would do that borrowing but that's sort of the mechanics of how it works. But I mean, typically we offer this up in the spring so it can be part of the annual town meeting for the communities that can actually take an affirmative vote. They're not required to. Ms. Pitzer? I guess I just want to follow up on that and say that I'm not proposing this but I am still slightly uncomfortable with the fact that we really don't know what next year is going to look like. We haven't gotten the guidance from Desi. We haven't gotten the guidance at all from the federal government in terms of what is school going to look like next year and there's no doubt that's going to impact our budget, including our capital budget and our operating budget. So I'm hopeful we won't need to ask for more money but I think it's very likely that we may need to follow those paths that you just laid out. Questions or comments from the committee? So we have, oh, Mr. Deming. Yeah, I don't mean to belabor the point but I just wanted to get like a brief answer on what is our expected reception or is there no update on what we expect the four towns to receive the same 45% assessment of that proposal? If there have been any conversations since we last discussed this in the region. Dr. Meis? I can say it's been communicated, sent to folks in Leverett, for instance, today who are asking about it. Thanks, Ms. Seager, for your work there. Been shared with the Amherst. I can say confidently that Amherst is in their guidelines with the number that's consistent with the 45 degree method. I don't know if Dr. Slaughter has more to share in terms of your conversations in Pellum or if anyone has, it looks like Mr. Sullivan shoots very but the thing that I've heard more than the method this time around is the dollar amount just because I think the change in everyone's reality has shifted the focus at least temporarily perhaps, from assessment method to being able to fund the budget. That's anecdotal, I can't extrapolate that much from it but I've gotten more questions on the total dollar amount and less on the assessment method as compared to typical budget cycles. I don't know if Dr. Slaughter is more to add. Dr. Slaughter? Just that I've communicated with the Finance Committee in Pellum, the chair of the Finance Committee in Pellum to share with them what you have tonight in front of you as far as the budget for fiscal 21 and I've shared similar information with the folks in Shutesbury. They posed a few questions last week as well. Again, I think everybody's trying to sort of wrap their head around what little information they have and so I think to Dr. Morris's point, it's more about sort of dollar amount as opposed to assessment method has been the questions I've gotten as well and just can we kind of get there? I think that we'll probably go back to conversations about assessment method a little later but not right now. I don't know any more detail on what actual thinking people have. Is there any further questions or comments? So we do have some official motion language that's included in our packet. So we will need to go through each one of these one by one if we are ready for a motion. Thank you, Dr. Morris. Except now I can't see everybody. So if somebody has a motion, I would suggest you just speak. Oh, there we go. Does everybody have a motion? Just means reading this language Allison? Yes. Okay. I move that we adopt a budget of 32,145,531 dollars. For fiscal year 2021, for the Amherst-Pellum Regional School District and to a number of towns according to the method approved in the amendment voted three, 10, 2020 as follows. Amherst, 16,404, you know, 16,404,120 dollars. Pellum, 891,934 dollars. Leverett, 1,473,177 dollars. And Schuetz buried 1,675,873 dollars. Moved by Stanser, second. Second. Seconded by Demling. And this vote requires a two-thirds majority. I'm starting with Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Stanser. Oh, sorry, Ms. Seager. Seager, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Mr. Manino. Manino, aye. And McDonald's, aye. The motion passes nine to zero. And now we have a next vote on debt authorization. Oh, Dr. Slaughter. Sorry for the delay there. So I believe it's the modification of debt authorization. I just wanna preface this a little bit. This is a technical fix. So these authorizations were granted, I think, two fiscal years ago at least. And so one project came in a little under budget, this is not changing the total amount of debt that was authorized, changing the purpose for which we can use the debt is all we're doing here. And so it's a technical fix to sort of dot i's and cross t from a legal standpoint. So that's the purpose of that motion on modification of debt authorization. Any questions? Would someone like to read the motion? Mr. Demling. I move that in accordance with MGL chapter 44, section 20, the $5,000 unexpected, unexpended balance of funds borrowed to pay costs of the middle school roof repairs, which amount is no longer needed to complete the project for which it was initially borrowed, is hereby appropriated by this school committee to pay additional costs of summit accounting relocation renovation, including the payment of any and all costs incidental and related there too. Second. Thank you. Moved by Demling and seconded by Spitzer. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll vote. And this one also requires a two thirds majority. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Segar. Segar, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Mr. Manino. Manino, aye. And McDonald, aye. So the motion passes nine to zero. And next we have another motion regarding rescinding of previous capital planned bond authorization. Do you have a preface for that, Ms. Dr. Slaughter? I do. Well not required. The previous authorization that we gave for a list of, I think it was 11 or maybe 12 items in our March meeting for the closure of school, authorized $425,000. And then of course, as I spoke earlier process wise, basically 68 o'clock starts for the member towns to say no. And of course that clock expired. We checked with our council relative to borrowing and they said, yeah, the rules didn't change relative to this. So effectively you've got authorization. Just thinking that we don't want to put communities in uncomfortable situation relative to the authorized debt. Authorized debt is not the same as actually borrowed money but it's pretty close from the standpoint of bonding agencies and capacity to borrow and things like that. So what we have here is a motion to rescind that vote and then subsequently we will basically authorize a new capital plan bond authorization, which is obviously decidedly more modest in its scope. And then we'll send out notice to the communities relative to that newer one after the fact. But it's just those sort of freeze of that authorization doesn't leave it sort of committed by the four member communities. So would somebody like to read this motion? Ms. Spitzer. I moved that the school district committee votes to rescind the forms of 25,000 voted at a meeting held on March 10th, 2020. Moved by Spitzer. I second. Seconded by Ms. Dancer. Any further discussion? Seeing none, we'll roll call vote and I'll go in a backwards order. Mr. Menino. Menino aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. Ms. Seager. Seager aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. Ms. Dancer. Dancer aye. And McDonald's aye. So the motion to rescind previous capital bond authorization is passes nine to zero. Now we have a very long motion to authorize the new capital plan bond. Would somebody like to read that motion? I will give it a try. I move that the district hereby appropriates the sum of $115,000 for the purpose of paying costs of the following projects, including the payment of all costs incidental or related there too. One, renovations of the walk-in cooler and freezer at the high school and the amount of $25,000. Two, grounds improvements at the high school and the amount of $15,000. And three, district-wide COVID-19 related equipment and material needs in the amount of $75,000 said some to be expended at the direction of the regional school district committee. To meet this appropriation, the district treasurer is authorized to borrow said 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, plus any such a 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 be borrowed to pay such costs by a like amount. Further that within 48 hours from the date on which this vote is adopted, the secretary B and hereby is instructed to notify the board of select men and town council 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 in a newspaper circulating in the district. Shoot. I say. Thank you. Moved by Stanser seconded by Spitzer. Is there any further discussion on this? Seeing none, I move to roll call vote. Ms. Stanser. Stanser aye. Ms. Spitzer. Mr. Aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Mr. Manino. Manino aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Ms. Seger. Seger aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. Thank you. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. And McDonald aye. The motion passes unanimously nine to zero. And I should have stated it required, it also required a two thirds majority, which we have. And finally, a final motion on the addition of student activity accounts. Dr. Slaughter. Again, a little bit of housekeeping, we would have taken care of this in March. These are two different organizations that normally you would have been in the schedule of student activities accounts in the fall when you approve those. They got overlooked. They have some income that needs to go into their sort of slice of the student activity. So this authorization allows those accounts to be set up properly. Pretty straightforward thing. Okay. Mr. Demling. I moved to approve the addition to the student activity accounts of the class of 2023 and middle school team midnight accounts. Lord second. Moved by Demling and seconded by Lord. Any further discussion? Seeing none. Ms. Stanser. Stanser aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer aye. Ms. Lord. Lord aye. Mr. Menino. Menino aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington aye. Ms. Segar. Segar aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan aye. Mr. Demling. Demling aye. And McDonald aye. The motion passes nine to zero. And I believe that's our final motion related to that or final vote related to budget and assessment method. Great. So now as discussed before, we're going to move to item F on our agenda, which is the bus contract vote. And I'll turn that over to Dr. Morris or Dr. Slaughter to introduce. I could do a little bit, but this was a bus contract that we discussed and it didn't get approved because of everything that happened. And again, kind of got lost in the early days of the closure and the things that come. Nothing changed in the bus contract, but it does require a vote of the school committee because it at least has the potential to go beyond three years and based on state law, any contract that goes beyond that time length requires a school committee vote. Maybe it's worth just mentioning that it's a three year contract with a two year kicker that's at the district's discretion. So what we would plan to do is to bring this contract up for years four and five and to make sure that the school committee at that point wanted to extend it but because as the potential to extend beyond three years, we thought it was wise to, it might actually play out that way. So get a vote on the front end seemed warranted just as a review for those who weren't on the committee. In the past, we penned five star bid on, well, both actually bid on this and five star had the low bid and met all the technical requirements for all the routes. So we'd be going from two external vendors to one external vendor. I want to be really clear that's no negative statement towards Kosmaskus. They've been really strong partner with us for many years but the bid contracts to go the way the state law goes and the low bidder as long as they meet the requirements with the bid. In this year, it was five star for both the Amherst and Pellum routes as well as the Shootsbury and Leveret routes and that's the broad summary of the bus contract that we're asking you to approve tonight for the next, starting in the next fiscal year. Are there any questions? Ms. Seager. I'm curious of how much input you get from Leveret and Shootsbury in regards to changes like this and I just can imagine getting used to having a set of people doing the bus routes for you. This is gonna be a change for our districts, obviously and I'm just curious of what sort of input the two towns have. Dr. Slaughter, do you wanna weigh in on that? Some of this occurred before you were in your role so I know it's a little bit awkward but I know Mr. Mangano did connect with Shootsbury and Leveret and their finance director along the way. I don't know if you have more that you wanna add Dr. Slaughter, more specific than that. Just a small amount if that's all right. You know, I think the idea is that we, you know, what's the bid goes out for or the solicitation for bids goes out. It's a bit of a feta complete as far as what it looks like and how it's structured but nonetheless in that process, getting the bid constructed for release is one that we wanna try to have and have it be a cooperative process and I wasn't part of that Mr. Mangano was but I believe he reached out and was connected and took advice from the various partners with us regarding that as well as how we, you know, share those costs across the communities. Any other questions, Ms. Dancer? I'm wondering if things don't go as they would have before the pandemic when school starts again, what happens, will there be conversation with the bus company about that and is there the possibility for any kind of having to any kind of agreement with them like we did for this last period of time? Short answer is yes. There will be differences in the fall, one way or the other things will not, transportation will not function as it has typically. That's a broad conversation we'll have. Again, I don't wanna, I know you're being asked to approve a contract this week. It's a conversation we'll have next week given CDC guidance about buses and transportation. I think it would likely the process would play out very similarly. But it's sort of a more complex conversation, frankly than the spring because the spring was about closure. Next year might, there's a whole range of options that might involve different bus routes or different number of students on a bus or different cleaning mechanisms that are going to be required and maintenance of buses. So the long, the short story is yes, absolutely. It's a very similar contract to what we had which allowed for negotiations when these situations came up. I think we're actually fortunate we have the contract that was written prior to this playing out because there's, I think it's more advantageous to the district than if it allowed for, frankly, more protections for the, for bus companies when they were making their bids for the scenario that was unanticipated. So I think that's as much as I can say right now. Any other comment or question? I don't think we have specific motion language on this one. So if anybody would like to make a motion. Mr. Demling. I move to approve the five-star transportation contract as presented. I'll second. Moved by Demling and seconded by Seger. Any further discussion? Seeing none, move to a roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Seger. Seger, aye. Mr. Herrington. Herrington, aye. Mr. Menino. Menino, aye. Ms. Lorde. Lorde, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, aye. And McDonald, aye. And the motion passes unanimously, nine to zero. I'm changing up the order just to keep everybody on their toes. Great. So now moving back to the order on our agenda, we're moving back to item A on our published agenda. And this is the COVID-19 school update from Dr. Morse. You're muted. Sorry about that, I realized it. Nice people at Google told me. And I'll be very brief because we're going to spend a lot of time on this next week. So I think the three things I want to share is one, there's an art show that's usually done publicly in the spring featuring the work of our high school students. That's going to be done virtually, but I'll send out information to the whole community about that tomorrow. But people are continuing to find ways where student work can be exhibited in really unique and wonderful ways. And I played the music last time, but I just want to highlight the work of our educators to be inventive in this very, very difficult time to be connecting with kids. The second thing I'd like to share is that we've had just incredible conversations with the fall planning groups. I sat in on a distance learning group at the secondary level, couple of the other groups working on one working on facilities, couple working on other things. And so people are actively doing work to come up with guiding principles. And I want to thank, it's over 100 staff members who are contributing to one group or another. We did create a group that's specifically focused on preschool, I'll explain why in a second, and then as well as one looking at specialized programs because those felt like the deeper we got into them, the more they needed to be unique conversations. The third is that if you drive around town, particularly around the town common, you'll see some wonderful signs all around in our communities for the graduates. The staff put them and found graduates including our school choice students who don't live in our four communities. Full of heart, this seems like a very competitive select board race in Shootsbury, Mr. Sullivan, but you drive around Shootsbury, you'll see a fair number of Amherst High School graduate signs as well, adding to that landscape of science that's all over the town of Shootsbury. But downtown there's individual signs with individual students' faces on them. And it's just been really nice in the town of Amherst has been very wonderful in allowing us to use some of the common area space that we have. The third thing I'd like to share sort of crosses over into kind of third and fourth in some ways, the CDC last week, a week ago offered a 60 page or so document. Four pages were dedicated to schools about reopening. And next Wednesday night, we'll have a joint school committee meeting to an Amherst Pelham in the region where we'll dig into that document and the relevant parts and talk about the implications for fall. That's a little different than the guiding document. I'll be really candid. We haven't received guidance from Desi yet. They're grouped and start meeting till about two or three weeks ago, the 27 person committee. And so, well, I'd rather in some ways wait to receive it. I think what we've found, and this isn't a criticism of Desi, it's just a capacity issue that everyone's facing. We can't wait forever to start having conversations about fall and particularly want to start having those conversations while staff are still at work this spring. And so, you're not gonna get a recommendation from me necessarily, but it is gonna be a compilation of our teams thinking about what are potential options for fall. I do wanna say that I've contacted Ms. Colkeen, Superintendent Colkeen of Union 28, and we're talking later this week because we do wanna approach that, but we are thinking of an original approach to at least thinking about options. And I will say that it will be, it may be startling to people what the CDC guidance says and the implications. I don't wanna preview it too much, but I can't say that enough because the short story is it won't be school as normal. No option will involve school as normal as we think about fall. So, another question I got recently is are we gonna take the CDC guidance seriously? And the answer to that is yes, that's the CDC guidance has been criticized a lot in education circles because it doesn't seem like, the criticism is it doesn't seem like they've been in a school. But I don't think that's their job. Like our job is to take that guidance, look at options and say, what can we do, what can't we do? And we'll have some forced choices that the committees and people like myself have never had to make before about how to approach this. And I sort of referenced it earlier, I'll probably reference it again. That conversation is gonna be a multimedia conversation. I do think the amount of planning that administrative staff as well as teaching staff will have to do to prepare for whatever model we do. It is like we've never seen before over a three month period. And so I think it behooves us to start that conversation. I'd love to just be able to blame something on Desi and wait till it comes out and say that I don't actually think that's in our students' best interest, I think it's in our students' best interest that started gauging the committee and the community on what are potential options so people can weigh in and narrow our choices down. But again, it'll be a sobering meeting, I think for people to really take a look at both what we're able to do and frankly what we're not able to do. And it'll really be, there's a really good article I saw recently and a couple of you actually, multiple people pointed me to it, but just talked about we're all, everyone in the community is gonna have some shared sacrifice to make the operation work, work best for students. And the reason it's a joint meeting is I think we need to actually think about this in a K-12 context and not in a just regional context because that collaboration and sharing of resources is gonna have to be thought about in a multi-district context. It's gonna be a little complicated for us, but I'd rather be complicated and awkward and us move forward than avoid the conversation until an external body who doesn't understand what a three-district K-12 organization looks like and four or five district, if you include Shoot, Spare, and Leverett, those school committees has to have. So that's long-winded, but I did wanna preview that a little bit for you for next week. And we're working really hard to get a document that makes sense to the committee, makes sense to the community. I'm sorry, I'm just tickled to see in Mr. Sullivan's talk and work on it with you. And I think the last thing that I'll share is just where we are nearing towards the end of the year sounds, it feels weird because this time doesn't operate. I think everyone in every profession and every industry recognizes that time operates really differently now than it did two and a half months ago. But I really wanna thank our staff for stepping up in all sorts of different ways to make this whole thing work. One of the best conversation I had all day was with this distance learning, it was a team of secondary educators from the region. We're talking about, it was just simple prompt, what's worked well this spring? What would we wanna rethink? And the thing that worked well and the thing we'll have to rethink before in any kind of distance environment for next year is frankly that people had relationships with their students that were built up over at least six, seven month period of time. And so that sustained some of the distance learning. And I think one of the things that we'll have to think about regardless of our setting, regardless of whether it's in-person distance or some hybrid next year, regardless of physical use of buildings is that our students aren't going to be returning with those physical, those personal relationships with their instructors intact in the same way. And that's gonna be a large variable for us to be thinking about how do we approach in the fall? Because it's gonna be a very different dynamic that way. Sorry, that was long, I said it was gonna be quick, I lied. But it'll be much more long-winded next week, I'll put it that way. But I think it is gonna be a meeting probably people wanna tune in and watch and get a sense of what fall could look like and what choices we really have to make and what choices are essentially made from us from our public health perspective. And that's gonna be really difficult and different. Mr. Manino. Next week's meeting is Tuesday or Wednesday? It's Wednesday. I think there will be a, you don't have a quorum of pellum. So I think there will be a brief pellum meeting before that instead of that Thursday meeting as originally scheduled. But I'm meeting with Ms. Hall tomorrow morning and we'll get it out by the afternoon just so everyone has it on their calendars. But Wednesday. Mr. Demling. Yeah, I just wanna say briefly, I appreciate the schedule that you're taking with this. I think it's the right move to go ahead prior to Jesse's guidance. I mean, I really don't, we batch Jesse all the time for a number of different things. And I mean, at the end of the day, this is kind of a political power call at the state level. And I mean, you know, Jesse's headed by the Education and Commissioner and an Education Commissioner who I have criticism of but isn't in my view really the state political power player. It's really the governor and the ed secretary about how soon they want to take the lead on this. And they're not. So, you know, I think this is the right call. I also think it's the right call to talk about what you referenced as startling possibilities as soon as possible. I think the bigger the change and the bigger the idea there's always this tension, right? Between wanting to say it early so they can get people's reaction and feedback but not wanting to do it too early when people might assume that an idea is already baked and so how do you balance that? And I think in this case, you know, some of these ideas, and I don't know what you're talking about, but I've experienced the acclimation process of enough of this aspect of the COVID-19 experience enough to know that some of these things take time to marinate on. You know, you're gonna hear it for the first time and you just have to sit with it before you then come back to it. And so I expect a lot of listening on our part next week and I think it's good to be able to advertise and share this with the community. But, you know, this isn't not exactly, we don't know, this may change, you know, but we are coming to the community with ideas that are not fully formed yet because we want people to get a sense of what is possible. I think that's the honest, most transparent way to do it. So I appreciate the tact you're taking with that. And I will second everything that Mr. Demling just said about sort of the timing and the attack and the approach on this too. Dr. Morse. Yeah, just about thank you for that. And yeah, I think I drew the short lot of our Western mass group. And I think it just, I just got scheduled first, but I think there's some benefit to that as well. The last thing is just speaking of desi, that desi, as of when this meeting started, I haven't checked my email since, has still not made a determination about whether in school, summer school services can begin. They did say you can contact your local public health department on Friday. They told us that in the morning. We contacted the Amherst health department on Friday afternoon, looking at the CDC guidance, the health department, the director wrote a letter which was shared with the school committee that given that summer school would start, more or less five weeks from now, we don't have enough time to implement the CDC guidance to get the materials, PPE, all that stuff that's recommended. And she strongly recommended us not having summer programming in the building. As such, we'll be, we are transitioning, which is what we were anticipating to having summer school be virtual. We're offering it to all students with, typically it was for special education students who were, could show that there was regression over the summer. We're actually offering it to all special education students at the regional, at the regional level, because we know that accessing virtual learning has been more of a challenge for some students and others. Not everyone has to build themselves of it, but we're offering it to all students in a virtual context. But I think it really gets to some of the urgency I feel to come out with larger kind of pieces of implications because I'll just, again, I'm not out to bash desi, it's not my goal. It's really a capacity question. I agree with Mr. Demling's assessment of where, who makes which decisions, but do not have a decision on May 26th about whether summer school can start given the amount of planning that would be needed to allow students to be in summer school in this context, essentially makes a decision for us. And it is one of the challenges that we're facing is we don't, if we allow, if we're passive in this moment, we put a lot of families and a lot of staff through incredible amount of stress that seems unwarranted. And I think it will be more challenging for the general conversation about fall, just engaging it earlier, setting broad parameters, talking about broad implications. We're not gonna disregard the CDC guidance no matter what desi says, just to be very blunt about it. Desi says disregard it. I'm gonna have a hard time disregarding CDC guidance on public health. And so we're gonna jump in and we'll see where we land with how that conversations go. And that's my update. Are there any questions? I mean, also, I don't wanna call you out, but Ms. Grubko, if you have any questions or comments, you're welcome to share them. Everybody just raises their hand when they wanna speak. So I won't put you on the spot that I'll keep an eye on in case I see you coming up. I have one question and I don't, we may have talked about it, so I apologize if we've talked about this before, but programs such as like the VELA program at the middle school, are those, are there plans for some remote options similar to that for those students? Cause those aren't all special ed students. No, VELA, right. VELA is an after-school program at our middle school. It's run through collaboration with the collaboration, collaborative for educational services over in Northampton. And they actually similar to us, well, not similar analogous in some ways to special ed, they are running a virtual summer program and they're opening it up for all students so that the access point are greater because some of the odd benefits, I guess, of the virtual environment is the limitation of number of students gets a little bit easier in some ways. So that program is happening, but it's happening in a virtual context. Same with our credit recovery system for the high school. Great, thank you. Any other questions? Seeing none. Okay, great. And so we'll move on to the next item, which is a consideration of the vote for the draft resolution for the increased federal funding. And this is Mr. Deming. I don't know if you want to, if you had any intentions to introduce this, but we reviewed this document at our last meeting. This is, Mr. Deming drafted this based on a similar resolution that the Boston School Committee had drafted and voted on. And it was adjusted, amended with our data and our particular district information and characteristics. So we reviewed it last at our last meeting and we all wanted time to be able to read it ahead of time because it had only gotten into our packet that day. So I don't know if there's anything more that you want to add right now, Mr. Deming. No, it's unchanged since the last time it was presented at our last meeting. I don't see it in the current packet, so I can't display it, but it is unchanged. So we can either vote it without it being in the packet or we can, I'm assuming next meeting is gonna be packed. So I don't know if we want to add it to that agenda, but whatever the committee is comfortable with. How do folks feel about, I'm trying to see if I can find the last one quickly. Dr. Morris can display it, great, thank you. So while Dr. Morris is doing that, I could just do the 10 second recap, which is, this is essentially calling for another very large funding bill for public schools, given that what's already been allocated is around 10 to 13 billion from the federal level and what is really needed based on the Great Recession as kind of a benchmark and also based on what many educational organizations are asking for is more around 200 billion. And if we leave schools out to drive, then that's really leaving frontline education, service and employment providers that are essential to our community. And we should not do that. So calling for the federal funding. And our reps are all on board, our federal level reps are all on board with this, which is great. And hopefully we'll see a big visible battle across the country for this, but we don't know. So this is kind of that big shoe that if it drops it would be great. So. Dr. Morris, you're muted. Sorry about that. One thing I learned in a session I was in last week with someone who did a little analysis is compared to the Great Recession, which gave K-12 plus higher ed adjusted for inflation about $130 billion. So far we're under 30 in terms of what's been approved for K-12 plus higher ed. And obviously this fiscal crisis looms much larger, frankly, than the Great Recession did. So I just wanna support Mr. Demling's point about the need for this. And if you look at research on the Great Recession, even with that funding, we saw a reduction in spending, particularly in districts that spend, they're more reliant on state and federal aid. And we saw reduced results in those communities and those communities have higher percentages of low-income students as well as higher communities or higher percentages of students of color. So I think in addition to anything that would do for the Amherst public schools, which is significant, also thinking about the educational debt piece and what the potential for this to be just incredibly wide in the educational debt challenges that we face, not just in Amherst and the four towns, but also across the country. So I just wanna lend my voice of strong support for Mr. Demling, Mr. Demling worked on. Great. So, unless somebody else would like to move or any further discussion. Nope. So I'll make a motion to approve and sign the, this resolution and submit this resolution for increased federal funding to sign it and submit it to our state representatives in Washington. Second. Moved by McDonald and seconded by Menino. Further discussion? Dr. Morris. Again, not to belabor the point, but I wonder, and I don't think it needs to be voted by the committee, but if the chair or the author want the district to send it out to anyone else, the press, the other MASC, anybody like that? We'll just take direction from either the chair or the chair and the author of this. We're happy to facilitate it being sent out to maybe more committees and other people may pay attention to the good work that potentially gets voted on in a second. So we're happy to help. Great. Thank you. Okay. Mr. Demling. Demling, hi. Mr. Menino. Menino, hi. Mr. Spitzer. Spitzer, hi. Mr. Sullivan. Hello, and hi. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, hi. Ms. Lord. Lord, hi. Ms. Stanser. Stanser, hi. McDonald's, hi. And Ms. Seeker, abstained, or I should say not present, not abstain. Great. So Mr. Demling, why don't we follow up after this meeting about how we want to proceed with where we want to send this? Okay. Thank you, everybody. Warrant's report. I'll turn it over to Ms. Spitzer. Do you, if you have any warrants to report? I do, I signed to this afternoon. So I authorized my signature by signature to pay a bills in the amount of $744,802.08 for a warrant dated May 27th, 2020. In addition, I authorized by my signature to pay bills in the amount of $629,971.64, which was completely for general fund expenses. And that warrant was dated, I already gave the date, sorry, it was May 14th, 2020. And I signed back today, May 26th. Those are the only two I believe. Thank you. And now we'll move on to the next item, which is our superintendent instrument and timeline vote. And I believe based on an earlier conversation, what we'd like to do tonight is simply vote to have a, or discuss and vote for a later date to be determined for our superintendent evaluation. I don't know, Ms. Spitzer, would you like to add anything? Sure, so just to update the committee, I'm in the process of working with the administrative team to have the instrument finalized. Hopefully it'll be, I have a feeling it might happen after Wednesday after graduation. But in the meantime, because the contract states that we will complete the evaluation prior to June 1st and with everything that's happened, that's clearly not gonna happen. So we're just asking for a vote to postpone the evaluation to later this summer. Is there any questions from anybody in the committee? Ms. Stanton? Sure. So just to make sure I understand, so you simply need a vote to say we're going to do it after June 1st. We aren't setting a particular date at this point. That is correct. Any other questions? And I'm gonna do the formality. Dr. Morris, are you amenable to this approach to this timeline? Yes. Great. Somebody wanna make a motion? Ms. Stanton? I move that we postpone the superintendent evaluation deadline for sometime after June 1st. I'll second that. Moved by Stancer and seconded by McDonald. Any further discussion? Mr. Demling? Demling, aye. Mr. Manino? Manino, aye. Ms. Spitzer? Spitzer, aye. Mr. Sullivan? Sullivan, aye. Mr. Harrington? Ms. Lourd? Ms. Lourd? Lourd, aye. Ms. Stanser? Stanser, aye. McDonald, aye. And Seeger, not present. That the motion passes 8-0 and 1, not present. Having to do math at the end of a long meeting is challenging. Okay, next on our agenda is agenda planning. So as mentioned, we are going to be meeting again next Wednesday to begin our planning for fall 2020. Do you have our table handy, Dr. Morris, that you could share? So a single agenda item meeting next week, and then we meet again on June 9th. Can you explain what SOA plan is, Dr. Morris? Sure, that's the Student Opportunity Act. So the legislature pushed back the date. The Student Opportunity Act plan needs to be voted to June 15th. My understanding is they're gonna push it back later, but this is a caveat or a placeholder in case they don't push it back. I think they're gonna have to push everything back because the Student Opportunity Act dictated you'd have to say how you'd spend the additional money that was coming in. Bluntly, I don't think there's additional money coming in. So I think there's some conversations about what they're even gonna do with that, but I just don't wanna forget about it in case the legislation doesn't change fast enough, which we've seen some examples of that will fulfill the contractual pieces. The draft is already done. It's been sitting for two months, but I think we won't actually have to do that, but I don't wanna forget about it and then be caught without it being submitted on time or adding a last-minute meeting just so we do it. And is the FY21 budget, is that? I think that that was on there just for an update based on how things are going at the towns and when town meetings are planned. Not necessarily for the actual budget. The budget was voted tonight, but if there's any questions that come up from the towns, we typically, at the regional level, try to have a meeting before town meetings so that everybody is on the same page and if there is some information that needs to be presented, that we have a plan for that and I think town meetings in all three of the towns are gonna be different this year. So I think it's just, it's worthy to, again, at least have a conversation so that the regional committee can be organized before votes are taken in each member town. Great. And then lastly, we've added also for June 9th, introduction of our discussion on whether we want to consider later start times as we're looking at what fall 2020 and beyond we'll be looking like is there, do we want to sort of add this and include this in our committee work and discussions? So that before the summer planning is sort of the idea here to get that, have the committee address that. This is something that we've talked about in past meetings and have put on our list of possible things that we wanted to talk about. So placing that placeholder right here too, at least come back at that and see if this is something that we want to consider as a committee. I think the only thing that'll be added need to be added and we'll just, I'll, Ms. Pettano and I wait for Ms. Spitzer's lead it's just superintendent evaluation and we'll just, we'll map that out once we have more information. Yeah, but we can easily add that whenever. Correct, good, thank you. Mr. Denley. Yeah, so I did see the items on there that had the artifacts on the 23rd and then the instrument due three days later in the middle of the week. I thought that that might be kind of pushing it. And that was, yeah, we should probably like just put sort of take them off for now. I just wanted to make sure. Yeah, that was, that was me trying to figure out how we could possibly squeeze it in by June 30th. And, and I think by do that exercise shows the absurdity of trying to get it done. That's right. Any other comments? Ms. Stanser. I have a question, which is, are we going to have additional meetings during the summer this year in light of the planning for the fall? We, that's a great question. And I think we haven't made that decision. And I'm wondering Dr. Morris that that might be something that we can add to our agenda for next week once we know sort of more of what's ahead of us in terms of planning for the fall. Yeah, I think there's four parts to next week's meeting. The first part's going to be just a quick update on distance learning, both how it's gone locally and what the research base would say. The second part's going to be about CDC guidance and implications for the elementary, middle school and high school. The third part's going to be given that guidance and what we know about distance learning. What are potential options for fall 2020? And the fourth part's going to be how do we engage the public, communicate? What additional information do you need? What information can you offer us? So we have some direction because it's way too big a pot or kettle to have everything ready for, you're not going to see a plan next week. You're going to see models. And that model's almost a too strong a word. And so part of that last step's going to be what does the administration and staff do? But also how do we continue to engage? I don't see it being something resolved incredibly soon. I would anticipate there being a need for more regular summer meetings than what has happened in the past. But I think that fourth part of next week's meeting after the long, pretty lengthy presentations and question and answer will be where do we want to go from here? And I mean the collective way to be very candid with the school committee of the administration but where does the community, how do we do that? Because I think something you've heard me say before is there's two things here. There's public health and there's public confidence. One is clearly more important than the other but I think in the overall scheme of things but they're both equally important of how do we make decisions and how are people feeling to feel comfortable thinking about fall? And I will just, and again, I don't want to overdo this but the decisions that we collectively and not just people on this call but the collectively in the community are gonna have to make are ones we haven't had to consider before. And so I think that's gonna need time to marinate. That's gonna be people are gonna ask questions, it's gonna make all of us think about things differently and it's not gonna be an easy fix or quick. That's the obvious best option even if we do have an obvious fixed option how to implement it's gonna be its whole nother layer. So I can't imagine going through summer without having some regularity of meetings because I do think it's really important that you as elected officials of the four communities and the staff are continuing to talk about this in public continuing to answer questions and continue to refine what's gonna be the best possible solution given the context. And that's really the way I frame it the best possible solution. It's not gonna be the best solution, it's not out there. Thank you. I'm very dour today, sorry about that but it's the nature of being honest about where we are and what we're thinking about. Any other questions and agendas? I just have a comment. So I started to look at that draft from the Maryland schools and it really brought home to me how broad and how serious this whole thing is. Yeah. So that document is a draft document but it's available on a public website about Maryland's fall reentry plans. And I think what'll be even more what'll reemphasize that point so to speak next week is when you start taking a broad document like that and trying to localize it in a three district organization with buildings that have some structural issues the layers of complication get very real very quickly but I do feel to the points earlier I don't wanna belabor this but you know, cause originally Ms. McDonald, Ms. Hall and I were actually talking about doing this week and with the budget votes and just my capacity of wanting to do this well I just didn't feel like I could do it but I'm feeling urgency to start talking about this in public and with the committee because there's some things we actually know now that the CDC has issued their guidance and I think the sooner we engage in that and educate the community the more informed our discussions will be over time I think the longer we wait I think people may not be aware of some of the specificity of the CDC guidance and we wanna get that out as soon as possible as awkward and painful as it's gonna be I usually am a very happy person by the way I usually am like, you know, this is not my normal I think you all have known me well long enough to know that I tend to be a half glass glass glass half full kind of person but you know, I think the thing that makes me feel confident is we're working through it together and that's what we're gonna do and if there's anything I know about crises it takes collaboration and communications in the community to make best possible solutions so we'll get at it. Mr. Minio, did you have something? No, except I said that if the glass is half empty it's half empty. Well, we do have, you'll have a chance to sort of turn your glass half full into glass full tomorrow with graduation so that will be moving on. Okay, great. So moving right along, we have some gifts to accept. Mr. Minio, would you like to read the gifts? Okay, but somebody's blocking the top line. I would like to present the following donations listed below for your approval. The beneficiaries and the descriptions are as follows donor Barbara James Pistang number 1790 to support the Amherst Regional High School Arms Ultimate Scholarship $1,000, Subtotal $1,000. In compliance with state regulations regarding the receipt of gifts I suggest that the Amherst Pellum Regional School Committee officially accept these donations at its next schedule meeting grant. Project RED number 100165 to support COVID rapid response total $2,000, Subtotal $2,000. So I move that we accept the gifts as presented by Mr. Minio. Second. Second by, what was that, Ms. Dancer? Yeah, moved by McDonald's, second by Dancer. Any discussion? Seeing none, Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. Sorry, moving to a roll call vote with Ms. Lord saying aye. Mr. Harrington. Mr. Sullivan. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Dancer. Stancer, aye. Mr. Minio. Minino, aye. And McDonald's, aye. Passes eight to zero. Okay, moving on, we caught up all of our last time. Mr. Demling. Move to adjourn. Second. Moved by Demling, second by Spitzer. There's no discussion. We'll move to a roll call vote. Mr. Minino. Minino, aye. Ms. Dancer. Stancer, aye. Mr. Demling. Demling, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. Mr. Sullivan. Sullivan, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Lord. Lord, aye. And McDonald, aye. We are adjourned. Thank you very much. Thank you, Amherst Media.