 Good evening. It is Tuesday, July 28th, and this is a joint meeting of the Town Council and the Amherst School Committee. We are here for the purposes of hearing and discussing the Crocker Farm School expansion report. So let me just begin by saying we are allowed to meet remotely based on Governor Baker's March 12th order suspending certain provisions of the open meeting law, General Law 30A paragraph 20. This allows us to meet virtually and both as a town council and as a school committee. The sole purpose of this meeting, as I mentioned before, is for the report and any public comment will be arranged. I will call upon each counselor by name and at that time they should unmute their mic and say present. That will indicate that they can hear me and we can hear them and then please remember to mute your mic again after saying present. This is how we will conduct counselor comments and other comments throughout the agenda. So let me begin. Shalini Balmilne is going to be late. She informed me of that. Alyssa Brewer? Present. Pat DeAngeles? Present. Darcy DeMont? Present. Lynn Grishma is present. Present. Dorothy Pam? Present. Evan Ross? It was just another meeting with Evan. He should be here in a second depending on traffic. Thank you, Steve. I appreciate that. George Ryan? I'm here. Kathy Shane? Here. Steve Schreiber? Here. Andy Steinberg? Here. And I know that Sarah Schwartz is absent today. Okay. So we do expect to be joined by Evan Ross and Alyssa Balmilne. I'm sorry. Evan, thank you. Okay. We are now going to, I'm now going to call the meeting to order officially. And the time is 733. And that's the meeting of the council. And now I'm going to turn it over to Alyssa McDonald, who will do the same with school committee and make sure that all the members of the school committee can hear and be heard. Thank you. And so I do see a presence of a quorum of the emmer school committee. So I will take a roll call attendance. Mr. Demling. Demling present. Mr. Harrington. Harrington present. Ms. Lord. Lord present. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer present. And McDonald present. We are now to order at 734. Thank you. Along with the town manager, Paul Bachman, we do expect to be joined later by the super kind of schools, Mike Morris. And we do have Cockroach farm principle, Derek Shea with us. I want to make sure that both Paul and Derek can hear me, Paul. Yes. And Derek. Yes. Thank you. And Mike's not there yet. I can't see you in this huge spread, but thanks, Mike. I now want to make sure that all the presenters can hear me and we can hear them. Jesse sailor. Yes. And is Miranda Balkan arrived. Miranda Balkan. I'm sorry. No, not at this point. Okay. And then Richard Kopeck is with us as well. Is that correct? That's correct. Thank you. Thank you. And finally, we have, we want to recognize the other members of the Cockroach farm school expansion committee have joined us this evening. They are Maria Kopecky and Tony Cunningham. Ben Harrington, who's here also as a school board member, but is assistant facilities director. And the other are the others I've already recognized. And that's Mike Morris and Derek Shea. This meeting includes audio video and is available. Through Amherst media. It is also being recorded. There is no chat room for the meeting. If you have technical issues, please let Athena know. And to make a comment, ask a question. Please click the raise hand button. And I will decide how to address the situation. Discussion may be suspended while we address technical issues. And the minutes will note. If a disconnection occurs. Athena, but we'll be monitoring. The connections. So I just want to briefly mention. That on the official agenda that is posted on the town. Website. You'll see the announcements of all the various meetings coming up of the town. Council. And on the school committee website, you can see the same. So we're going to go immediately to our presentation. This preliminary feasibility study was recommended by way of a citizen's. Request to the joint capital planning committee. Which then recommended. Manager for inclusion. In the FY 20 capital plan. The town manager. Can't brought that to the town council who also approved it. In June of 2019. The purpose of the study. Was to estimate the useful life of the current building. Conduct a feasibility study of possible additions. And modifications to the school in light of possible. District reconfiguration. We will start with a presentation. Then follow with council and school committee questions. And if time permits, we will ask for public comment. But only pertaining to the study as it is presented. So with that, I'm going to call on Jesse sailor. Thank you. I see. I believe you're doing your own slides. Yes, I'm going to share my screen. Can you see my screen? Yeah. Okay. Wonderful. Hello everyone. My name is Jesse sailor. I'm the project manager at TSKP studio. I've been working with Richard civic. Who's been introduced the principal in charge of the project. Last summer, Richard and I presented. An extensive feasibility study on the project. And so in this study of the Crocker farm school, we've been able to build on our knowledge of your town. And of your school system. And so that, that was an advantage. We also had wonderful and truly dedicated collaborators on the feasibility study working committee. We have three residents and three district representatives. The study really began in February and completed in June. And this group kept at it despite the COVID-19 pandemic. Which I think is admirable. I should also mention that due to the timing of the pandemic, this study does not attempt to predict or anticipate. Changes in educational delivery or enrollment that may result in response to the pandemic. And so I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. So this is based on the project. Projects and guidelines that were in place prior to the pandemic. Because that's what we had at the time. So why did this study, why look at Crocker farm. You may be wondering, isn't Crocker farm. In the best shape of the three elementary schools we have. That's, that's something I, I would expect to hear. And after looking at Fort river and Crocker farm, And after looking at Fort River and Crocker Farm, we would agree that Crocker is in better shape than Fort River, but what is the condition of the building really? We see inevitable facility improvements in the near horizon. We see educational needs that are currently not being met and we're gonna go through those with you in the study. Another understandable question is something like, shouldn't we be focused on Fort River and Wildwood consolidation project? Is this study distracting us? And I know from experience that there's a tendency in a public forum to build support through sort of putting the blinders on the squeakiest wheel that's going to get the grease, that sort of phenomenon. But by studying all three schools, I think you have the information you need to make a broad and holistic district-wide plan for your elementary schools. And I think that's really a primary goal of this report. We're filling in the Crocker Farm part, but we know there are other studies of Fort River and Wildwood that you have and you can pull from. And we've found very practical considerations that will affect Crocker Farm from consolidating Fort River and Wildwood. Enrollments at Crocker Farm will be affected in nearly all the scenarios we looked at. Also, there's the possibility of sixth grade moving to the middle school. So we wanted to look at that as part of this study to understand how Crocker Farm would be affected. So let's start looking at the condition of the building. The roof, good place to start. There have been some roof leaks lately. I think there's recent money been allocated towards skylight replacement to address those leaks as well. But the reality is the roof was put on with the renovation and back in 2002, it's coming to the end of its serviceable lifetime. So we would recommend that as part of a Crocker Farm project, it be replaced. It also gives us a chance to increase the thickness in the roof and improve the thermal performance of the building envelope. The insulation thickness is currently three inches and could be doubled. That's what we see these days. Photovoltaic readiness could be enhanced by redoing the roof, providing pathways for future photovoltaic panels, for example. Security, school security standards have evolved in the last decade, certainly since the renovation was completed. With the current main entrance design, visitors can move unrestricted right into the building. That's not what we're designing these days. These days, like the diagram in the upper left, we are corralling visitors and forcing them into the administration area and then allowing them into the building to make sure everyone is checked. And that could easily be done at Crocker Farm. Crocker Farm also has the gym and the cafeteria. Identified here in the floor plans, basically in the center of the building and surrounded by educational academic classrooms. This means that when they're used by the public after hours, these spaces require that the entire building be open to the public. That's something we try to avoid in school design. We try to zone these spaces to limit the public's access after hours. And then finally, you have a lot of first floor windows in the classrooms, which is a wonderful thing in terms of education, but from a security point of view, should probably be addressed by adding a security film to slow down in intrusion. And so that's what we would recommend be included in this project. Mechanical is always something we look at. The unit ventilators in the classrooms are in need of a replacement. They're coming to the end of their serviceable lifetime. They're relatively loud and they don't handle moisture control. As they get to the end of their life, the dampers start to get stuck. And so their purpose to bring in fresh air starts to be compromised. And so we recommend replacing them with an electric split type system. The current boilers are in good shape and they'll go for a number of years longer, but they are fossil fuel sourced. And so we're proposing systems in this report that are electric and are forward thinking, but we are not proposing to replace the boilers because they have more life in them. The air conditioning is not provided currently in the gym and the cafeteria. So as we need to replace the chiller in this project, we can also extend it and provide air conditioning in those spaces. And also roof mounted exhaust fans are in bad shape and should be replaced in the next few years. So we'd recommend doing that as part of this project. So we're picking off pieces of the mechanical system that need to be replaced. Much of it is in good shape and can remain. Also ADA non-compliance issues. There was a report done by Kessler McGinnis Associates prior to the feasibility study that we're drawing on. There are a number of items. Some were funding for some of them was approved just this year. And we've tried to just focus our estimates on those items that are not addressed in this year's funding. Classroom entry doors lack clearance. The classroom sinks lack clearances below them. Toilet room accessibility is often something we see here. It just seems to be grab bar movements. So it's not too troublesome in terms of cost. The courtyards are inaccessible. We need accessible paths to the play areas. Some have it, some don't. So all of these items are rolled up into our cost estimates which we'll go through later. Currently there's also unmet educational needs. Sorry, I'll just hit on a few of these. The gym is really about half the size you would have at an elementary school these days. It only provides one teaching space which is difficult for scheduling. And so we typically would see two teaching spaces. Let's see. The pre-K specialists such as speech and OTPT lack space near the pre-K classrooms. And their spaces are actually on another floor. So we shouldn't be asking students with reduced mobility to go to another floor for therapy. But with the way the building is currently laid out that's kind of the best we can do. And so that's something that really needs to be addressed. Classroom educational space is compromised. It's reduced somewhat right now by the storage in the classroom in grades one through five. We can make those classrooms bigger and more functional just by putting the storage in the hall. So that's something we've included as a recommendation as an educational improvement. And then small group instruction often gets pushed out into the corridor at Crocker Farm which can be distracting. The study looks at creating small group instruction rooms which are acoustically separated and not distracting. So I'm not gonna go through all of these but that gives you a sense of kind of educational needs we have. So this study looks at how Crocker will be adapted to support changing enrollments in conjunction with superintendent and the New England School Development Council enrollment projections. We anticipate a certain number of students in the K through six grade range over the next 10 years in Amherst and that's 1,020 as given in the table on the left. Or if we look at the K through five cohort assuming the sixth grade moves to the middle school that number reduces down to 840 students. So then the study figures how many different ways what would be the breakdown of these students between the two schools between Crocker Farm and the Consolidated School? And we kind of pick the most obvious scenarios that stand out. We have five of them actually. And trying to go through this rather quickly. The largest K six possible enrollment at the Consolidated School is the first one that's 600 students. And so then the remaining students end up at the Crocker Farm School. We have two scenarios, two and three, which look at dividing the students up evenly between the two schools. It also divides up the pre-K program in the special education program. This is the district wide special education programs. And so in the K six cohort, that's actually the largest enrollment that we look at at Crocker Farm when they're divided equally. We also have our scenario four, which is very similar to scenario one. It's actually fewer K through six students at the Consolidated School, but it's an even four sections per grade. And so this breaks up nicely into the dual language program, which would take two sections per grade. And this would allow two non-dual language sections to be at the Consolidated School. And I think that's somewhat an ideal situation. This pushes a few more students over to Crocker Farm, but it's one we wanted to look at because it was ideal. And then finally scenario five is our only scenario that does not increase the number of students that are at Crocker Farm now. And the reason we can do this in scenario five is while we build a larger Consolidated School, but scenario five is another one of those scenarios in which the sixth grade has moved to the middle school. So when that happens, the number of students allows for fewer students to be at Crocker Farm than all the other scenarios. We also developed a range of addition options or approaches to the existing building, building wide options. It's easiest to identify them through the size of the addition. Option A is this color, it's right here. It's sort of the middle-sized addition, if you will. It accommodates an enrollment increase, but not a large enrollment increase, which is option B, and that's all this blue, this larger footprint here. Whereas option C is this smaller pink addition, it doesn't accommodate any enrollment increase, but it does address educational and facility needs. So it deals with the gym. It provides a new gym, even though you're not taking on additional students in option C. And finally, option D doesn't have an addition, doesn't show up here. It's really just a base repair option. It's looking at the cost to address facility needs alone, and it's not getting into educational needs and improvements required for educational requirements. Now we've considered that there's flexibility within these options. You may be wondering why we have five enrollment scenarios, but only three options. And that's because we found that we were able to accommodate three of the enrollment scenarios with option A, for example. This is a diagram that shows how we would modify our diagram of enrollment scenario one in option A addition to accommodate enrollment scenario three. And by swapping out the uses of some of these classrooms, changing the names basically, we're able to accommodate scenario three with the same footprint and floor plan that was accommodating scenario one. And so we thought this is a way of starting that you could have some flexibility in your building to be able to accommodate different populations. We know the reality is that school populations change over time. Well, if option A accommodates three, option B, which is the large addition, of course, accommodates more. I don't hear you, Bob. I'm gonna get all of you. Whereas option C, which has no increase enrollment, it's a smaller building altogether. It just accommodates the current enrollment of the Crocker Farm School. So there may be some advantage in building a slightly larger building if it provides flexibility, such as option A. All right, so here we have site plans of the options. We just wanna show you that we looked at how the site is impacted as part of the study. In all the options, you'll see where we're building the addition at the southeast end of the building. It's a new gym in all options and then some support spaces, classroom spaces. We're also reconfiguring where the gym used to be to create classroom spaces. And we also have these configurations for small group instruction rooms, which we'll talk about in a minute. So that's the building part. As it relates to the site, we looked at parking capacities for the school and we looked at the increased number of buses and vans that would be required depending on the enrollment scenario that we were looking at. And we found that the parking capacity was sufficient to support these increases in enrollment, which in most cases are relatively modest increases. We also found that the bus queuing space that's at the school right now is sufficient to accommodate the additional buses. If we look at option B, which is the largest enrollment increase and this is our largest addition, we realized that there was a potential improvement to the kind of operations of the existing school that relieved some of the pressure on the main entry of the school in terms of vehicular movements and actually freed up parking space in a way. And so we wanted to make that suggestion. It's something that would be studied further, but the suggestion was to have the buses and vans actually come in via the Shays Street entry and use what appears to be a kind of bus loop here, which is currently just used for parent drop-off in the morning, I believe. And by doing that, you pull a lot of the congestion away from the front of the school and you could potentially have visitor spaces up in front where you kind of expect them to be, but they're not there now because they get sort of locked in by the buses at drop-off and pick-off time. So that seemed like a potential interesting study. And finally, option C is many of the same solutions as option A. It's actually a little bit smaller than option A in terms of parking and vehicular use. So it works well. We also developed detailed space allocation plans as part of the study. I won't go through every room with you, but we did actually develop lists of every single room for all of these enrollment scenarios and we developed floor plans of where they would all fit. I say this so that you have some comfort in knowing that the gross square footages that we developed for the Crocker Farm options are based in reality there's something that we've worked out that is a basis for these gross square footages. It's not just a spreadsheet design. We also looked at a sub-option, which I mentioned earlier, the question of small group instruction and how it's handled. We weren't sure that this was like 100% something that you'd find completely necessary. We weren't sure if you, we don't think you have this in any of your schools right now, in fact, I know you don't, but would you be putting this into your new school? It is something we're seeing a lot in 21st century education. And we found we could accommodate it by reconfiguring the classrooms, the partitions in the corner of the classrooms to create a small group instruction room, which is accessed by each classroom, which is adjacent to it. So it's basically shared and the two classrooms would need to kind of coordinate on their use of this room, but it was an option that we thought would, you might be interested in it. It's forward thinking. Just a minute, Mike wants to end up and I wondered if he had a comment he wanted to make here. Yeah, so we do have those rooms in Pelham, which is not a district that you've been to, but it is a district that I'm superintendent of as well. And so we are very familiar with the structure of those and also how we might integrate use between two rooms. So thank you for that. I just wanted to let the community know we do have an example within our districts and we do make good use of that room. So I appreciate you including it. Thank you. Yes, we did include the cost for this, but we also made sure to itemize it, which is given there. Okay, so the cost summary. The study outlined a scope of work for each Crocker Farm building option and estimates were developed for each building option. And so they're given here in this column. And we can see that the cost for base repair at the very bottom was $9.25 million. So that's a pretty good cost considering that the cost to do the addition and meet your educational and facility needs double that 20 million, 750,000. Or if we were to make the larger addition, it's 27 million. So there's a pretty good jump up to make the larger addition. For the consolidated school, this study relies on our work from the Fort River study, specifically our option A, we developed for Fort River as well as option C for the addition renovation. The slide reports the cost to Amherst anticipating that the MSBA will participate in the project cost. The actual project cost of the consolidated school in our study ranges from $64 to $75 million. So this slide is just reporting the cost to town. This is taking out the MSBA's participation in the consolidated school. So finally, in the column on the far right, you can see the combined cost showing the cost to town for the Crocker Farm project plus the consolidated school as a new or Adreno. And so, sorry. We can see that of the enrollment scenarios we looked at one, two and four are pre-K to six enrollment scenarios. So these are more students in the combined two schools and have higher costs. Of the three of them, we see that option two, which is the idea of splitting evenly between the two schools has the highest cost of all. And this sort of makes sense. You're building more at Crocker Farm and you don't have state participation or we're assuming you don't have state participation in the Crocker Farm at this point. And so that's gonna drive up those costs a little bit higher. Whereas options three and five are looking at the use of the middle school for sixth grade. So these are just pre-K through five options. And these are lower. We're looking at about $11 million lower in general if that decision is made. And then if we compare three and five, we can see that three, which splits evenly between Crocker Farm and the consolidated school is coming in a little bit higher than five, which is a scenario which keeps Crocker Farm with the enrollment that it currently has but still meets the educational and facility needs at Crocker Farm. So that's our cost summary. We're gonna have some questions there. We can come back to it. These are the, this is the design team. I'm wrapping up here. Again, it was TSKP Studio. We worked with our professional cost estimators at A.M. Pogarty, our MEP engineers at Kola Ronin. The study pulls from another study done by Kristen Hayes consulting of the early childhood program in school, in your district. And it also pulls from the accessibility report done by Kessler McGuinness Associates. All right. Why don't you take the slides down but be prepared to pull them back up if there's questions regarding certain slides? Sure. And so we're going to move now to questions from questions or comments from the school committee and the town council. And Peter Demling, you have your hand up. Yes, thank you. So I think you have it up. But if not, if you could pull the cost summary slide up. So first of all, thank you. I appreciate you taking the time to do this. So one quick question and then a general comment. So I appreciate you getting the slides this morning. If there's also a report that goes with this, that would be good. It would have been good to have before this so that we could dive into it and ask further questions. My main concerns with this slide. So the purpose of this study, as I understood it was to a feasibility study of the Crocker Farm, of expanding Crocker Farm, not to estimate what the eventual cost of the not even yet begun MSBA project for a building project to replace Fort River and Wildwood. That building committee has not even been formed yet. Its work will be ongoing for a number of years. It will eventually produce cost estimates after many public input sessions, after very careful planning. And it will be a very considered careful process because once those numbers are public, it will become the basis for speculating about debt exclusion overrides. And you're probably aware it was a very difficult process that failed in our town a number of years ago. So with this being a public document, with now numbers attached to consolidated costs to town, it's very difficult. And we had the town council president read the purpose of the study. And it was very clear of what the scope of the study was. And I'm sure this was met as very sincerely just to be helpful. But the study you mentioned that Fort River Feasibility Study was very narrowly focused on Fort River Feasibility. And it was very much decoupled from what the current MSBA process was. And as a school committee member, I'm very sensitive to accepting reports which we then own as a committee, which had the numbers attached to them, which we are then bound to then explain to the public. So I would ask, if you do have a report that you're gonna submit to us in a document, that we would wanna first also all this red and orange, that kind of stuff would have to be removed first in my view. Pat, the Angeles, you have your hand up. Thank you. I wanna thank the committee for working on this, but it sounds to me like what happened is that the committee began to look at these projects in a whole and that what the amount of money should not be removed from the report. It's very important. I think it gives us some real insight into what are some possibilities. It also seems to me that however long it's gonna take to decide about Fort River Wildwood and make that construction happen, Crocker Farm needs work now. And so why are we gonna not deal with the money and not look at these things together? I think Peter's view is rather limited. Let me take some other accounts for our school committee comments before we come back to Peter. Are there any other comments this time from people, questions? Yes, Darcy. Sorry. I would just say that I really appreciate this study, especially being a counselor from district five. I think that there's a feeling that Crocker Farm might, when we have the consolidated school, that there may be a feeling in town that the students going to the consolidated school have a bright shiny school with everything great and that then the Crocker Farm students will be the second class. But so I like that there is this study that allows us to look at sort of equalizing services between the new consolidated school and Crocker Farm and bringing Crocker Farm up to speed on the HVAC system. And I really appreciate that you've looked into the roof and trying to, you know, just looking at how it could possibly be solar ready, how we could possibly not use fossil fuels. I think that all of that is really good and looking at all the different options. I personally, you know, have taught a lot in my career and I was almost every school I was at was K through five. So the moving kids to sixth grade, moving the sixth grade to the middle school doesn't, you know, it seems like it's a natural answer to some of our financial issues here around the school. I just have one question and that is, I just wondered if Jesse could mention anything about the experience of your firm with net zero buildings. Sure, sure. Net zero is something that we're increasingly doing in our practice with public elementary schools. We actually have four on the boards right now in Connecticut. And that's something that has really come about in just the last year, year and a half that net zero has moved to public schools. So in general, in terms of sustainability, I think our firm has always been a leader. We did the first, I believe, lead silver school building in the state of Connecticut. So going way back. And so we hope that these net zero projects that we're working on will become some of the first net zero schools in the state of Connecticut. I don't believe there is one right now. Thank you for that. Kathy, Shane. Yes, I'm looking for the unmute button. Unmuted. I'd like to understand the options a little bit better. So Crocker currently has pre-K in it. And so if I look at option five where the sixth grade has moved up, how many are in, I looked up the number. So I think I know the answer, but how many are in the K through five group? So the 435 is the entire Crocker, correct? So subtracting out pre-K, because one of the insights I think this is giving us is that if the sixth grade moves up, Crocker has room for more K through fivers. It's absorbing another 60 or so kids because their sixth grade has moved. So that, but that, so the, I'm just trying to do, how many other kids do we have to have? And if we don't move them up, Crocker has to get a lot bigger, I think is what this also says, because if we're not gonna build another school that's bigger than 600, so the playing off between them, but that option five, if Crocker's not getting any bigger, it's housing, am I looking at it's housing 360, you know, the Crocker formula seed, the vertical column says K through six, but the horizontal says K through five. So I think- I'm sorry, that may be confusing, the hope was- So 360 is the number of kids in K through five? Correct. And so what I do is I subtract that 360 from 840 to see how much, how many have to be in the other school? And so over here, 480, yep. Okay. So it's, we've been just seeing these kinds of numbers where that's not, Crocker's not getting any bigger. And then you've given us some numbers, if we just fix Crocker, the basic repairs were at 9 million, if we address some of the educational issues, we jump up with the gym and ADA. So I think it's very useful to be bouncing because I hadn't been thinking of a new school in the under 500 range. I've always been thinking of it as 600. Right. But we can't get to 600 unless the sixth grade moves up. So it would have to move up out of Crocker also is what I think your numbers are. Unless we want to build a new school that has excess capacity for growth, you know, that we don't want to bet that we're always going to be at the current size. So I'm reading these correctly then. Yeah. And did you, at all, I mean, I know you weren't asked to do this, but if we were reconfiguring Crocker and there was any thought of the pre-K would be better in another place. Does the pre-K not being in Crocker, does it free up two or three classrooms worth of K through fivers or K through sixers? It could. And it's true. We don't have a scenario that removes pre-K from Crocker, but we did in the report address the potential for those classrooms to be converted to higher grade use. The space of those classrooms is sufficient. Their full classroom size is actually a little bit larger, but it's some of the built-in furnishings that are targeted towards a pre-K student age that would need to be modified to make that conversion. But no, it totally could happen. And you could increase the number of K through six students at Crocker Farm by doing that by moving pre-K to another site. In all of our scenarios, we kept pre-K in one of the two schools. There could be another place that it goes perhaps, or maybe it just moves to the consolidated school. That's another option. Okay, so personally, I find it useful to see the consolidated school as what happens as Crocker gets bigger or to the other. But thank you for that, because the costs are somewhat daunting unless someone tells us that MSBA is willing to consider the cost of renovating, bringing, repairing Crocker and participate with us. It's not a small margin on the school that we're committed to doing or moving forward. So thank you. Moving on. Dorothy? I have a couple of points. First, the inner classes. I see in the drawings that maybe it's the words courtyard. Those classrooms have no fresh air on either side, is that correct? And you were going to somehow provide fresh air by making courtyards? I didn't see that in the text, but I knew that that was a problem. And some of the drawings have a little white spaces. Are those actual open to the air? Yes, the courtyards exist in the Crocker Farm School now. Okay. So at those courtyards, we're not changing the configuration. When you talk about fresh air issues, it could be that the unit ventilators provided to the rooms at those courtyards are in need of repair. I'm not sure. I'm not aware of fresh air issues, particularly around the classrooms around the courtyards. I thought there was supposed to be a one window to the outside in every classroom. Is that not so? Yes. And these courtyards are large enough to allow for daylight and some views. These are much larger than the very small light shaft courtyards that we have at the Fort River School. Let's see if we have a photograph of I think the ADA slide had one. And so here's a picture of what the courtyard at Crocker Farm looks like. And so we're continuing to use those as part of our renovation approach. There are the music room and the art room currently in border, the courtyards. We are moving general education classrooms. Let me go back. Sorry. Hang on. We are moving general education classrooms to the perimeter where we can. But in some cases, we are still using interior courtyards for general education classrooms to get light and views. I think it's just the difference in the size of the courtyard. If you were to put the Fort River courtyard in the floor plan, it's only the corner of this courtyard. And so it's not really a space you could ever enter and it really doesn't provide very much light. Because I know it wasn't your task to be dealing with COVID-19, but my mind is there. And so some of my comments are, I think what I like about net zero is that when we worry about heating costs, we build for compact buildings. And I don't think we want compact buildings. I think we want more space, more air. And so net zero would make that seem a little bit less difficult. And I mean, fresh air and circulation is really at a premium. So that it's really crossing my mind that wouldn't, if we are ever gonna get our public schools, elementary schools open for in-person education that maybe we should have three small elementary schools. Do you have any other questions, Dorothy? No. Allison. Thank you. Thank you. This was a helpful presentation. And it's great to see the results after. I know you've been working on this for a while, even in the pandemic. I have a question on the enrollment scenarios first and then another sort of comment. So the first question is, I find the enrollment scenarios one through five a little confusing. And I'm not sure which one sort of is current as sort of a benchmark because I feel like every one of them is shifting. There's no common thread. So I'm not sure if you can point to one that sort of is closest to current that does not consider sort of the moving students from a consolidated school over to Crocker Farm. Would that be your scenario five where you said you're just adding a new gym? Is that how I should interpret that? I think that is, that's correct. So the current use of Crocker Farm is reflected here with the exception of this being a K through five cohort, currently you have K through six at Crocker Farm but you have approximately 360 K through six students and you have the capacity for 75 pre-K students although you actually are running populations a little bit less in that category. So your current population of the Crocker Farm schools is right around 400, a little bit over 400 because you have fewer pre-K and a little fewer K through six than perhaps the capacity of the school allows. So said another way, scenario five has students leaving Crocker Farm and new students coming into Crocker Farm. Is that? Right, because you're putting the sixth grade into the middle school, you're then bringing in other K through five students to fill those spaces. Thank you. So I wanna come back to the cost estimations. And so while I absolutely agree that it's important to look at the cost scenarios for this within the scope of all of the costs and capital costs that we're going to be facing as a district and as a town but I don't agree that it belongs in this report because this report is specifically about the expansion of the properties study on Crocker Farm. We didn't look at all the other potential costs in our facing our school district in our town when we looked at the Fort River Feasibility Study. And these are already old numbers. And I do agree with Mr. Deming's comment that this doesn't reflect necessarily what we're actually going to be looking at and comparing and having to evaluate when we do get to that point. So while it's helpful and important to keep that in mind I disagree that it should be included in this report for exactly the reasons that Mr. Deming said because it suggests that these costs have been things that have been studied and included in this particular study and report. So if folks feel strongly that it should be in there I would say take this table and put it in as an appendix and sort of reference oh by the way here's what we studied when we did the Fort River Feasibility Study but keep this graph and this table completely clean as to exactly what the scope of work for this particular study was so that we have something clean that we can sort of reference as we go forward. It's going to get super, super confusing to compare and contrast all the different enrollment scenarios that are behind these numbers that you're showing as the consolidated cost to town because that's not included in this report. So it's without including the entire report altogether which doesn't make sense because that's not what this particular study group was for. I would advocate very, very strongly for including just a cost summary table that includes just the Crocker Farm study that you have conducted here. Cause we're making way too many assumptions on all of the other configurations and discussions and decisions that have yet to even be made on a consolidated project. Steve Schroding. Hi Jesse, hi Richard. So my question actually Dorothy Pam hit on part of my question. So COVID-19, so this presentation is happening. We don't know the beginning, the end, the middle of COVID-19. So ADA for example changed everything it changed the way that we perceive space lots of spaces like bathrooms and hallways and so spaces between desks became bigger. And so what we know now is that it's very difficult to reoccupy a lot of, you know, existing schools because of the social distancing, social distancing rules. So really it's more of a statement than a question but really the question is it's hard to look at the occupancy numbers in the middle of a pandemic because we don't know how this will settle down. So we don't know if we'll end up with billing codes or school billing standards that now require greater per square, student per square foot, bigger classrooms. Dorothy had mentioned some interesting things like more safe spaces or ability to isolate parts of schools. So I'm just curious if, you know, in your own work and I'm sure that you're, I imagine that you're involved in helping districts reoccupy schools. I'm just curious if you have any insights. And so part of, while I have the floor, I'm like the William Barr hearings today. While I have the floor, now I forgot what I was gonna say. If you could just go with that question. Sure. Are you asking for us to respond at this time? Yeah, just as to whether or not what your gut feeling is how this might all change. And actually I know what I was gonna say is that we don't know if this is the last pandemic in a hundred years or the last pandemic in two years. Quite right. I will share with you what conversations we've had with other districts and what other consultants are doing. We're working with Kolaron and engineers. They are constantly being asked by other school districts what should they do? And they've been looking at different kinds of features in the air systems that they've been proposing in existing schools that want to address COVID-19, such as ultraviolet treatment of air that moves through the ductwork or what they do is they use a polarizing technique, putting electrostatic charges on the filters and on the air so that the particles are much more attracted to the filtration components of a duct. We've also been looking at is it possible to do bathrooms that are touchless? Bathrooms that don't have doors, for example, have just blind entrances, so you don't. Similar to what you see in airports and we've even contacted Asa Abloy, the hardware manufacturer, to see what they've been developing to create door hardware that you don't need to use your hand to open that you could use either a foot pedal or something like that. So we don't know the answer yet. We do know that a lot of clever people are looking at it. We've talked to food service people who have said that they predict that food will be pre-packaged so that children can pick up packaged food and they don't have to go through the line and exposed that way. I don't have the answer, Steve. I really don't, but it's something that we're all very conscious of. I will share with you as we get more information. I don't know, Jesse, if you can add to what I've just said. No, I think that was a good summary. Thank you, Richard. I'm moving back to questions about this study, Mandy Jo. Thank you. I have two questions. The first one is with the enrollment scenarios. I am still slightly confused when I do the numbers. 1020 and 840, minusing one grade is getting rid of 180 students. Yet when I do the averages for those each numbers, the K5 average per grade is 140 and the K6 average per grade is 145. So I'm not quite understanding why the difference between K6 and K5 enrollments is 180. And if it really is a 140 per grade, you know, that scenario five has 120 spots in theory available in that consolidated school. Can you, you know, so my question is, how did you get to those numbers? And would it really be possible with keeping Crocker Farm at that 360 students given some of these numbers to, it would be a really full school, but is it really out of the question that you can do K6 without a large expansion sort of under that scenario five, but be K6 and take the consolidated school to 600? And then my next question is on the, to follow up from Darcy Dumont's question, on the numbers, the cost estimates, we have a net zero bylaw in town that new construction has to be net zero. Do these projected cost estimates for scenarios one to five, I guess it's A, B, and C include net zero for that addition in terms of cost? I'll take the second question first. Yes, the additions are estimated as being net zero. So we've included the cost of the photovoltaics as well as energy reducing measures, higher performing thermal envelopes, some of the things that we are typically looking at in our net zero buildings. So that's a affirmative yes. Now back to the first question, which it felt actually like a few questions. The first question I heard was about K6 versus K5 and whether the 840 and 1020 are in fact the right numbers. And without digging into this with you in too much detail, I think it may be helpful to point out that that may not even help. All I can say is we worked with the NASDAQ projections on this and I do think it works out, but I can't support that. So then the second part of that question was with regard to the 360 K through five students and could you repeat that second part of the question for me? Yeah, so the question was with the scenario five says K5, 840 students, so you only put 480 in the consolidated school, which in theory, given the MSBA process that we're in could be a school we set up at max of 600 students, that's 120 more students. Given the estimate you've done for an 840 K5 enrollment, that's 140 students per grade. That leaves us with that scenario five if we were to make it K6 without room for 20 students over the course of one grade. So my question was, is it really impossible to do a non-expansion cracker farm and still put K6 in there? Understanding that they would be really full schools, but is it actually impossible or could it be done? I understand because you're working with a lower student population in K through six based on the K through five student population per year, I see. Well, it's true. If the student population of K through six were less than 1,020, it would open up some options. Now that's not consistent with what we are taking from NASDAQ and what we've confirmed with the superintendent's office. But if that were the case, if you had fewer K through six students, then it would open up the possibility perhaps of doing 600 at the consolidated school and 360 at cracker farm for a total of 960 students. That's 60 less. And then you could keep K through six at both schools. But if we work with the NASDAQ productions, we end up with a higher total of K6 students and it just won't fit. So 60 students is significant space requirement. And so we've definitely followed the projections in this study anyways. Andy Steinberg. Thank you. First, I wanna just comment that this has really been a very valuable study because we need to understand even if we're not gonna do anything to add to buildings, what the condition of our buildings is and what we need to reserve for future maintenance and renovation expenses. So this has been credibly valuable on multiple levels. Kamen was made earlier about wishing that the cost numbers weren't in there for all pieces to it, but I do have to remind everybody that this is opposed to the document now for this meeting, the horse is out of the barn. So we need, and it is valuable information. And it's only a question of whether additional pieces can be added that give a context, but it's important that because in the end as a community, we're going to have to make a decision as to what is the most cost effective approach to take in dealing with what choices we have. Getting to my one question though, under all these various scenarios that you have put forward, can all of them be done without closing the school for a period, is the, are we gonna have to also deal with a swing space issue because the school would have to be closed for a period? Okay, good question. I didn't mention that, but yes, we have included cost and time in the construction schedule to allow the construction of the addition and the reconfiguration of the interiors of Crocker Farm to be, to happen while the school is occupied and functioning as an elementary school. So our thinking is that you do not need outside swing space to make these projects happen. Thank you, Andy. I really appreciate that question since we know from another project we're looking at that there is swing space needed. I wanna just go back to this issue of cost and I understand the hesitancy and the feelings of people about that. And if the compromise is that it's put in an appendix, that's fine. The reality is this presentation is already a matter of public record. Having said that, I'm just gonna say, I've been involved with at least two other building projects in Amherst where there's costs floating out there. And it's dangerous, but it's also educational because it gives you some overall sense. And from a standpoint of the council, when we have to look at all the pieces of the puzzle and all of the demands on capital including the potential of repair, even if we do not, it is often extremely helpful to have some sense of cost. And so it is what it is. And in the final report, I hear from the school committee that they would like to have the cost portion of that one page make sure that it's an as an appendix only, but I just wanna put it out there that I've never seen a study yet where you haven't had some kind of cost estimates. And the one here does go the next step to actually looking at it in relationship to what we might be doing with another school. But the reality is the more we push these projects out the more they're all gonna cost. So costs are just there. We don't know what they are until we really get down schematic design and design build. So it is what it is. With that, Alyssa, I haven't called on you yet. Why don't I go ahead and ask a few questions? Thank you. So it's not to repeat, but speaking of context, the slide provided associated with the assumption on what MSBA would pay isn't even explained as to what percentage you're expecting MSBA would pay. So to publish a slide without that you believe includes an MSBA investment without any indication of what percentage you think that is and why that would be true is not helpful. I'm assuming that our financial investment in this study as a town included not only the meetings but also an actual work product. 18 slides, four of which are identical except for different photos with the same text is not to me what that work product is. So I was hoping that at the beginning of this we were going to get an explanation of why this is all we had in our packet and why we don't have an actual written report. Perhaps there was a miscommunication at some level but it's really kind of incomprehensible to me that we were provided just this limited information and not any sort of written report that would in fact add a lot of that context to the conversation. Obviously you had a huge number, significant number of meetings with a lot of input and we would be able to interpret this better had we had additional information. So I suppose my real question beyond my frustration is what our next steps are as to what that written report looks like, whether the information shifted to an appendix, the fact that some things need to be clarified, the fact that we literally are putting something out to the public that has no baseline of what our current enrollment is that you have to make subtractions in hopes of getting to that point is frustrating and obviously could be addressed in that final report. So what are our next steps? I think I'd want to either ask the consultants that or Paul or Mike. We do respond. We have written a report. It's quite long, 300 pages or so. I'm not sure why it was not distributed to the committees prior. I don't think that falls on us but it doesn't really matter. I think it was distributed. Let's see, what else? Going through the consolidated school was part of the RFP that was given to us initially to develop cost estimates for that school as well as Crocker Farm. So that's why you see them here. In the report, it is more than just the one pager. It goes through how we develop the estimates. There are space summaries for the consolidated school for all five enrollment scenarios. So we've developed every room for each of these different student populations. And we've also explained the MSBA participation, the different reimbursement rates, the different effective reimbursement rates once you take into account the various incentives that are part of the MSBA reimbursement process. So all of that in this presentation is just rolled up in the very last slide. But it is all given in the report for review. One next step is that they will be made available to everybody on both the school committee and the town council. Wherever that report resides. So I'm back to, are there any other counselors that have not asked questions because I'll then start back to others. Kathy Shang, you have your hand up. Am I on mute? Yes. Okay. I had a question I meant to ask the first time around on the cubbies, moving them out to give the classroom more space. I just, the comfort level of kids putting stuff away in their own cubby in their classroom, it feels like home in a closet. When cubbies are out in the hallway, do you have to do something to protect them in any way that you go out to get your shoes and your shoes aren't in your box anymore or things like that? So I understand it's a space issue. And someone told me that one of the reasons we've been and Mike will be able to weigh in on this, we were having to move some classrooms for COVID reasons up to the middle school out of Crocker because we can't reconfigure the classrooms. And part of it is where the cubbies are, that we can't divide up the space. So just so it was, Dorothy's question was about light and air and was would everything have a window? Mine is if you move them on the outside, do little kids still feel like they've got their space? Does that work? And are the Crocker Farm hallways wide enough that that wouldn't make really narrow corridors? So it's just a space because you said you didn't have to reconfigure everything. So it was a question about, it's a pretty narrow question. And I just have to say that I do like that what you've done in the whole report and look forward to the 300 pages because I had to do some guesstimates as I was looking at slides because I looked up what Crocker's actual enrollment is. So just making sure people have those baselines. I think it's, you've done an amazing amount of work for I think we didn't pay you an amazing amount of money. So, or maybe from your view it is on the look. So my question was about the little cubbies. Sure, thank you. Right, so the cubbies after early childhood, pre-K kindergarten would stay. Those ages, I think your point about having your space, having your things in the classroom, being able to monitor, have the teachers be able to monitor the students accessing it is really the way to go. And also those rooms tend to be larger to begin with. But having them in grades one through five or one through six, sorry. It is sort of a flexibility infringement, as you mentioned. They're just taking up space that you can't use for anything else. So if they were moved to the corridor as we proposed, we would typically use more of a locker as opposed to an open cubby. And so this particular in the upper grades is already setting that transition that you're going to move to at middle school and can extend all the way down to grades one and two. We see that as well. Sometimes grades one and two have cubbies in the classroom, frankly. We can see those grades go either way. And each district seems to set their preference and I think either one can work, frankly. We have looked at the width of the corridors and they do allow for the lockers, which take a foot from the overall width, but they're wide enough that it will work. Thank you. That was helpful, especially the thing that you could do one thing for the really youngest children and something for the older, different for the older. Thank you. Tim, when you have your hand up. Yeah, so just to kind of finish maybe the thread on the cost estimates, if you could flip back to that slide. The reason why I'm harping on this point is that we're going to get angry emails about this because there's a lot of community disagreement about what to do about the building and the project and how much it's going to cost. And people have opinions about this, which is fine and it's good. But our job as public officials is to be accurate shepherds of this information. And so when we have studies, we need to make sure they're in scope and we need to make sure that the information we present is clear. And so when we refer people to information, we can say this is what this information is and it's not clear what this information is. And so I think if there is a report that's going to be available and made publicly available, maybe the chairs of the council and school committee could work to ensure that when this cost of what consolidated means, whether that refers to an estimate that you came up with or the Fort River Feasibility Study or some combination of the two of what that means and how you derived it so that it's absolutely clear what that is would be helpful and whose opinion or not it was would be good and then it is what it is and people can draw their own conclusions. Because it feels like I'm being very negative on the estimate and honestly I agree with a lot of the comments that this is very interesting and useful and helpful and thought provoking information. It's just that in this context, I find it very problematic because it's a primary source piece of information that people are then going to refer to and it becomes problematic because it then becomes a foundation piece in a larger conversation. So that's all. But I feel like if it can have its proper context as explained and I trust the chairs of our two bodies to help facilitate that for the future information foundation, that's really all I need. So thank you. Harry Spitzer, you were your hand up for the first time. I thank you. I'd also like to express my gratitude for this report but also some confusion about some of the numbers. If we could go back to the enrollment scenarios, I just wanted to and I apologize. We've all been like going through a lot of other intense conversations about other topics. And so I'm trying to get back into that piece of my brain that had to do with the statement of interest and the MSBA process. But I just want to clarify something. So there's no option here and there may be and I just want to clarify the reason for this for having a grade range of K through five with 600 kids total in the consolidated school. And I really apologize if I forgot something but I was looking back at the statement of interest and I think that we said we would do one elementary school with approximately 600 students in grades K through five or six but it didn't say whether or not that number and somebody on the school committee or Dr. Morris please jump in to correct me because it's late and I could have forgotten this. But did we have a cap on the consolidated school that fluctuated with the grade range in our elementary schools? And if not, why, I think it might be interesting to, if we're trying to get all the information and realize you can't go back and do this but I'm just trying to understand why we wouldn't have looked at that option. Again, Morris is his hand up. Yeah, I just, I think that's a good question for me to jump in on. Certainly Jesse or Richard can jump in but I think this is a good place for me to jump in and I apologize. So you're right, the statement of interest did indicate a school of no larger than 600 students. And one of the options was moving the sixth graders to the middle school to achieve that end. Another option was expanding Cracker Farm to get to that end. And so I think you're right for how you're saying that and I see in scenario one that we do have 600 students in the consolidated rural school and Jesse or Richard correct me if I'm reading that chart wrong but I think I'm reading it right. And I think the other range of estimates were for different scenarios that could occur based on a fifth grade moved up. So there was no scenario in the statement of interest that indicated the school would be 600 students and multiple things would happen. In other words, sixth grade moved to the middle school and Cracker Farm would expand. I'm not saying they can't happen but we didn't commit to that. It was a range of options to look at how one might get there. And so I just wanted to make that clear that that scenario was looked at by the CSKP folks and that's option one there. I think the other, you know, this goes back to perhaps I was something at the end of Alyssa's question. This information is incredibly useful for me is one of the things that I have to do in the next couple of days, frankly is submit to the MSBA a number of enrollment scenarios that we may choose to study. So, you know, this information Mike, you just from and certainly 600 students is gonna be one of the scenarios that we're going to study because we committed to it. It's in the statement of interest. There's no surprise there. One is gonna be a much smaller one of just what Fort River would be if nothing else changed as we have to and we know what that size is. And, you know, then some other scenarios this team worked on are helpful in that regard but hopefully that answers at least some of your question, Ms. Spitzer. I just thought, you know, I didn't wanna put TSKP in the spot of describing something that I felt like I was responsible for. There's one more counselor's hand up and then I wanna make sure that if other people who are on the study committee would like to make any additional comments, we wanna make sure we hear from them. So Dorothy. Okay, so my interests are really primarily about the safety of the students. And one of the things that was discussed in this report was increases to security and some of it were some ideas that were new to me to do with window film. And so what I thought I'd like to be a good idea if they could explain the changes in the plan, which are focused at security of the students in the building. Okay. Back a couple of slides, do you wanna do that, Jesse? Yeah, here we go. There were three items that we presented sort of the biggest three items relative to security. The first one recognizes that the main entrance here has a traditional vestibule and then no control, no separate doors. And to access the administration, you have to get through that vestibule and then go in this door to the front desk and sign in. And this is something that we've been moving away from in terms of secure school design. You can see here's that same vestibule on a diagram. What we really wanna see is you forced into the administration area to sign in. We don't wanna allow people come through these open doors and just run right into the school. And so it involves adding a set of doors and a partition here. And so that's something we would include in the project or we recommend including as part of this study. That's one item. The second item was the gym and the cafeteria access. We see these spaces used after hours by the community. Sometimes Parks and Rec is running basketball in the gym or you know you're programming better than I do. But the issue is that once you let people into these spaces after hours, who's checking to make sure that they've not gone into a space they're not supposed to be. So it's preferable to have these after-hours spaces all zoned in one area of the floor plan with a set of doors that you can keep shut. So that's part of why we're moving the gym over by the media center so that we can get the cafeteria gym and media center all in one zone of the building and that we can control access to the academic parts of the building. And that zoning of the building is a good thing in terms of security. And then finally to get to your question, all of the classrooms of course have daylight and views and windows. And so these windows could allow for an intruder who could break the glass and build that way to delay the amount of time it takes to enter the building through the windows. We could apply a security film which would cause the glass to stay intact even though it's broken. And so a intruder could eventually break through it by hitting it over and over but it would take more time and the idea is to slow down intruder. So the film makes the glass intrusion resistant. That's my explanation. Thank you, Mandy Jo. Yes, thank you. I hope this is a quick question. Going back to the enrollment sizes and classroom sizes can you tell me what classroom sizes were assumed for each of these classrooms, how many students would be in it to get to the enrollment for each school and whether that classroom size is what is recommended by MSBA or whether it's smaller? That's a good question. The way the enrollments work is we're dividing the number of students that were given in the projection. But I think you're asking about the size of the options actually because we're talking about a certain amount of space required as the enrollment increases. And that is driven by a certain number of students per classroom. We've been working with 20 students per classroom for Amherst for both this study and the Fort River study. This results in additional classrooms to what the MSBA would recommend. The MSBA guidelines vary with the number of students per classroom. It's like 18 for kindergarten, but then it goes up to like 24 for the upper elementary grades. And so the reason that we end up with more classrooms for Amherst than the MSBA guideline is that, I believe it's a combination of your classroom policy, your teacher union contract. And it's also good practice for a district to target smaller numbers of students per classroom. So that said, the actual size of the classrooms that we're looking at is right in line with the MSBA guideline. And MSBA won't let you go below a certain threshold 900 square feet. And we're looking at a little bit over 900 square feet for the Crocker Farm classroom. So they meet the guideline, they work. Yeah, so I guess my question was towards the number of students per classroom. So you did answer that question. If it sounds like it was targeted at 20, whether or not that's what our school committee's guidelines are. And I guess I'm not sure we can answer this question. Is that what we would target? Would we ignore the school committee guidelines when we target for planning, building new schools? Like, I guess the question would be if the building committee decides to use the target numbers for the school committee instead of the MSBA numbers that would result in a larger school with less reimbursement too? Correct. And we've calculated that that way. So we've tried to take the information that we were given. I see Superintendent Adams hand up, so I'll stop in just a second. We've tried to take that information and build it right into the options and the reimbursement percentage projections. Mike, Superintendent Morris. Yeah, I just wanted to say that there's a school committee in their policy handbook, which is accessible online. They have class size guidelines at the elementary level and this is what we're talking about at the elementary level. And at the primary grade level, at the intermediate grade level and the upper grade levels, right now our class size is, at least last year was 19.1. So, 20 is a good estimate for where we are. And that is based on that when we went through the process the last time. We're not the only district with class size guidelines that are lower than the MSBA. I think, Jesse, you correct me if I'm wrong, but I think they more or less estimate a 25 or some number in the mid-20s and they acknowledge that many districts will require that goes on in terms of reimbursement and spaces and where there are allowances and it's not cut and dry and I appreciate Jesse's term estimate because I think that is an estimate because having lived through it, you don't always know exactly the percentage of the front end, but I think there's a reasonable range that one can take some steps to assume, but I think it gets, and I don't wanna wade into the whole financial discussion that people were having before both ways, but I think it's capital E estimate, right? But it is based on school committee policy that's been longstanding on class size in the district and MSB is aware of that and works with you on that. Okay, I wanna make sure that we check back and see whether any of the other members of the committee, Derek, Maria Capecchi or Tony are Ben. We haven't heard from you. Anything else that either any of you would like to add? Maria, please go ahead. Thank you. So I wanna answer a couple of questions that were asked. Kerry was wondering about if the consolidated school was 600 kids and it was K through five, what would that do to Crocker? Well, it would mean a 240 student school, which would mean two classes per grade at Crocker, which is very small compared to what we now have and it would bring into questions about how to distribute district wide special ed and so on. And so that was not something that was pursued. There have been some questions about the numbers that we've gotten. And I think Jesse did point out that this was all derived from the Fort River Feasibility Study, which did an extensive analysis of a range of different enrollment options. If you'll recall that looked at options that were 315, 360, 420 and 460 students and from that you can extrapolate and we also did extensive space summaries, which were reviewed with the district to determine what would be the square footage and what would the size of the different schools be to complement what would have to be at Crocker Farm in a two school system. So that is where those numbers came from. Likewise, with the Fort River Feasibility Study, which I did serve on, we did an extensive analysis of the MSBA reimbursement and that was brought into this study and we used a modest number, not even for MSBA reimbursement, how you do things will determine the final number that you get for reimbursement and we did study that. And we used a mid range number for that final table because we didn't want to give something that was too generous or too low. So that's where those numbers were all derived. So I think that the main point that I'd like to talk about with this study is that when Tony and I proposed this, we knew that we had to find out, we were going to find out what was going to happen for one half of a two school system, but we didn't have any information on Crocker and that's what we have now. We have a good understanding about the needs of the facilities and I think we have a much better understanding about the educational needs, which aren't currently being met. So even in scenario five, I just want to point out that it may be approximately the same number of kids. It's actually a scenario five is a little bit larger than what's currently at Crocker Farm. It's that the current building is not meeting those educational needs. And that's information we have now and what we can do with these different scenarios and these different building options is to understand what it would be to provide parity to all elementary school kids in the town, both from an educational and resource standpoint, accessibility, security, and that's what this study aimed to do. And it offers a variety of building options and a variety of enrollment pairings for us to consider. And the cost estimates for those projects have to be taken together. This is going to be a full elementary school system and we need to know what that's gonna cost for all our elementary school students. Thank you, Maria. Anybody else from the committee? Yes, Peter, you have your hand up, not from the committee, but from the school committee. Just briefly that I appreciate the study, but that I don't think it was in scope to determine whether Crocker Farm is meeting the educational needs. And I don't think that it's messed the bar to make a conclusion that it's not meeting the educational needs of our students. Thank you for your comment. There any, Derek, yes, please. Yeah, I'll just be very brief. I appreciate everyone taking the time to study this, to think about this. Let me just say something quickly about Crocker Farm, because I've had the good fortune again to work for the schools for almost 24 years and I've been 11 years at Crocker Farm. We have a beautiful school. We have a wonderful staff. We have a fabulous community. Last year, we had 416 students on the property, probably around a hundred. I know this sounds a pretty high number, but anywhere from probably 90 to a hundred different staff working in the property every day. It's a pretty tight fit when you get that fairly large number of young people and adults working in the building. I forget who it was. It said something earlier. Perhaps it was Darcy, but I apologize if I got it wrong here, but someone had said earlier that they were a tad worried about this notion of Crocker Farm becoming like a second-class citizen type thing. And as someone who perhaps as a young kid was a bit of a second-class citizen, it won't happen. It's not gonna happen like, I know maybe it's bold at night to say something about that, but we've certainly, and Mike was the principal before I was the principal there, we've assembled a very strong, high-quality group of teachers at Crocker Farm and we continue to hire really good people. So as a principal, I would like to see a few improvements and there's nothing wrong with making things better because I think we are doing a tremendous job of meeting the needs of our students. But I do think that whatever happens in the line, Crocker Farm will continue to remain relevant. I mean, I hope they continue to be, if Mike allows it, to be the principal for a little bit longer and I fully intend for us to stay highly relevant in the whole conversation. So I appreciate everyone taking the time tonight to be thinking about us. Thanks, Derek. Ben, you have your hand up, please. Yeah, so I kind of wanted to weigh in because I kind of have to comment as two separate entities tonight. So I kind of want to identify that right now I'm speaking as a school committee member for the first part of this comment and the second part will be as a member of this particular committee. So I just kind of wanted to weigh in on the cost estimates and I kind of wanted to keep focus again on that word that it's an estimate. And so when we're looking at the estimates from this project as compared to a previous study involving an elementary school, it kind of just gives us a bigger picture of what to expect, not an exact picture. These aren't the exact numbers that we're going to be dealing with at the end. Right, so I kind of feel like the comparison actually is relatively useful there. And I would just add that it's probably important to highlight the individual numbers, right? How much it's going to cost for each scenario and so on and so forth. And so from my day job perspective, I just want to say that this was a great experience in terms of being able to understand the overall picture in a very in-depth sort of way and kind of there are elements of this that are going to help guide us in terms of continually improving and maintaining Cracker Farm. And it also gives us a sense of what we could look what we could potentially see as some costs and some possibilities down the road if we are going to actually improve the overall quality and conditions of the school in terms of like a renovation or something like that. Thanks, it's interesting to have both your perspectives. Any other comments from the committee? We have very few people in the audience. I am going to ask if there's anybody who would like to make a public comment at this time. Okay, I'm not seeing anybody. Then in that case, I'm going to wrap this up since we really estimated that it would only be about an hour and a half. I want to thank the committee, especially because you did this study under very unusual circumstances. I look forward to the 300 pages. I don't promise to read every page, but I'll get to them. But much more importantly, this came as a citizen, a resident request to JCPC. And the school district may have had it in its mind, but we grasped it and we ran with it. And the good news is we now have a picture of all three of our elementary schools. And so as we go forward into this next phase of planning our new elementary world, we're Amherst. This study kind of completes the group. And we want to thank all of you that worked very, very hard on this committee. And we're glad we could join together this evening to hear the report. So with that, I'm going to ask Alice and we don't vote to adjourn. So we just, I just declare adjourned, but go ahead, Alice, and do whatever you do. Yeah, well, I'll move to adjourn the Amherst School Committee. Is there a second? Second. Sorry, was that Ms. Lorde? And Spitzer. So whichever one you want. I'm moved by McDonald's, second by Lorde. Roll call vote. Mr. Demling. Mr. Demling, aye. Mr. Harrington. Harrington, aye. Ms. Lorde. Lorde, aye. Ms. Spitzer. Spitzer, aye. And McDonald's, aye. We're adjourned. Thank you. And the time is adjourned. Enjoy your evening. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.