Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. This meeting is being livereamed by Chelsea Tele media and posted to the CPS website for interested community members to access and watch. Inerson public
participation will be taking place tonight in accordance with the Chelton school committee public participation policy. Anyone speaking tonight during the public input portion of meeting is notified the superintendent's office the desire to speak and provided with these guidelines. upon request written comments received no later than 12 p.m.
on the date of the meeting will also be read and made part of the record of the meeting during a se second public comment session. So, welcome to this meeting of the cha school committee. Uh the first order of business is to approve the minutes from our meeting on April 29th.
April 29th. All those in favor? I I have zero. All right. Next up, we'll hear from our student representatives. All right. So, first I want to clarify that uh the senior survivors is not a school sanctioned event. I thought it was and then I saw the rules and it is not. So,
I'm very sorry, but at the same time, there are a lot of school sanctioned event for the seniors coming up. One of them being the senior barbecue on May 23rd from 11 PM no and I'm lost. Oh, it's also their
last day. Uh the following Wednesday is prom, which is at the Double Tree Hilton in Manchester. And the after prom will be from 11:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. That's the time I messed up. Um thank you all who have uh donated and volunteered and there still is opportunity to do that if you haven't already. Friday is the
banquet at um Westford Regency and Saturday, June 7th, is the graduation at the Song Center at 400 p.m. And this past Friday and Saturday was um CHS Theater Guild had their first ever cabaret which featured a senior number,
live pit, dance numbers, and solos. And what I think is most importantly, tomorrow at 5:00 at Simmonian Stadium, the CHS rugby team is going against another undefeated team, Malden Catholic, for their senior night. Get it. Sorry. I was You guys got to crush
it. See, nobody else is excited about rugby. Everybody got to go. Yeah. Okay. So, senior senior Dean Selena, who's a mass Massachusetts CPA, the certified public accountant student ambassador and is also a student at or is also part of the
business innovation pathways here at the high school, hosted an event in the career center with Miss Cunningham for students who are interested in learning more about the field of accounting. And Dean brought in CPAs from EJ Callahan to share their expertise and help students build resumes. And then last week,
district attorney Marian Ryan hosted the empowered girls conference and invited 12 um Chumsler High School junior girls who who went and they listened to women influencers who made impacts in their field and made change and they talked and the girls talked to women like Christina Rex who's a Babson
entrepreneur and power empower women's hockey league vice president and foreign affairs officer that worked with Camala Harris. And then this past Earth Day, we had our ecology club and the football team clean up the outside of CHS. And congratulations to junior Gabel Gray for
finishing fifth at the pen realized and he threw 187 ft. And congratulations to senior Thomas Brown on being selected as one of the Boston Globes 2024 2025 winter um wrestling athletes of the year. Great. I thought you were going to
clap for that. I was looking. All right. Any other good news to share? Yeah. So, just some bit a bit of good news is it's teacher appreciation week as well as nurses appreciation week. There are many emails that are going around with all sorts of fun treats the PTO's have been putting together for everybody. Um, it's great
when you get to go around to the schools and partake in them because get a little ice cream here, get a cookie over there. It's all, you know, good fun. But thank you to everybody and everything that they do. One week is not enough to appreciate everybody, but at least there is something out there for them every single day to have a little fun. All
right. Anybody else have anything else to share? Okay, move on. Um, it doesn't look like we have any public comment, so we'll move to new business. And we have a couple presentations. Great. Yes, we have two presentations this evening. We're going to start off with um Stephanie Quinn, who's here. She's the
department coordinator for history and social sciences for the Chser Public Schools. She's going to go through her program and give you some updates about and highlights about what's happening in that department. Go ahead, Stephanie. Welcome. Hello, everyone. Thank you. Uh, thanks for inviting us here tonight. I'm excited to kind of talk to you about
what we've been doing in our department, our department over the last year, give you some updates, but I think that the majority of the presentation is going to focus on uh past, present, and future. So, we're going to be looking ahead to some of the activities that will be coming up or ideas that we have
generated for uh the celebration of America 250 as well. So, keeping that in mind, we're going to move forward. Um, some of the items I'm going to talk about tonight include our investigating history curriculum, uh, the civics projects and civics MCCAST, which our
eighth graders are going to be taking in just a couple weeks. Uh, different programming opportunities that we've had, we've created at the high school um, in order to really prepare students for now and in the future as they look towards their potential careers. Uh we'll talk about student and community
engagement because we have one of the most active and involved communities I have ever witnessed. It's amazing how many people are willing to come in and talk to our students, work with our students, support our students in a variety of ways. Uh we'll talk a little bit about preparing for the 250
celebration and then some ideas for our fourth grade families who um may want to look to travel this summer because there are some programs that they can take advantage of as a result of being um just completing their fourth grade year. So we'll start with investigating
history. Uh, investigating history is a curriculum that is created or has been created by uh, a number of uh, a number of um, educational community uh, sorry a number of different
educational uh, directors as well as DESIE. So, this was a collaboration with uh all kinds of people, but primarily Jesse has put this out the last few years and created an OEER. So, I know we love um all of our
our acronyms, right? But an OEER is um an educational resource that is open. It's an open educational resource. So, it's free. Um it's a digital so that we have access to it. Um and our teachers have begun to utilize this curriculum in
grades five, six, and seven over the last couple years. Uh it's been a slow roll out so that we all feel comfortable with the material and the resources, but it's been going very well. And I think the students are finding the curriculum and the activities um really engaging.
Students have the opportunity to really dive into primary sources and secondary sources. They are presented with crit um engaging questions, intriguing questions at the beginning of every unit um and in a lot of the lessons so that they have the opportunity to really think about
about history and make connections between events in their past and even in their current lives. So we really want students to start thinking historically and this is one of the ways in which we've been able to do that. Um, so we're really additionally shifting a lot of
the emphasis of the workload too from the teacher delivering the information to the student gathering the information. Um, giving students an opportunity to build their own questions as well. Um, a lot of these skills are
going to be essential for them as they move up through their career in education and certainly as Lana can attest to just in our AP research as well where the students have the opportunity to come up with their own individual questions and determine what
evidence is important to include and what evidence isn't important to include and what um resources are valuable, what resources maybe we should stay away from. So there's all kinds of skills that we are going to see in those higher
level senior courses that we're trying to build those skills in ele uh middle and uh elementary school too. And we'll talk about the elementary in a minute. Um so primarily we've been doing this in grades five, six, and seven. So I've given a little bit of insight over the last couple years about what we've been
doing. Um we when the state first released it uh the the curriculum we had access to it. We looked at it as a department. We started poking around with different activities and extracting different activities so that teachers could feel
comfortable with trying um just try a lesson just try an activity. Uh nothing was mandated but it was encouraged to try things out to see how they went in the classroom and provide feedback and get feedback from the students as well. And I think that was a critical component of it. Um when I would walk
into classrooms to do observations, it was really great to see a lot of investigating history already happening just in that first year because once someone once a teacher started with an activity, the students really engaged with the material and with the lesson and with the idea that they got to think
about history and that they were doing history rather than just having it be told to them. um that engagement really encouraged others to start trying it as well and to including more lessons. So as a department we've really worked hard
over the last two years now to build real capacity around utilizing the units of instruction. So most in gram map um that kind of guides our practice but we're not getting rid of some of the stuff that we had done before. Right? So
this is not a complete overhaul of our curriculum. What it is is blending a lot of the investigating history components with inquiry pedagogy activities that we were already doing. So, we're making sure that we're staying true to the concepts that we want. We want kids
engaging. We want them to be questioning. We want them to be looking at resources. Um, and so we're not just 100% doing everything that uh investigated investigating history has laid out for us. We're doing some of the stuff that teachers are really
passionate about and keeping and we work on that together as a department. Uh we also did unit two this year as a department and so next year our goal is to kind of hone in on units three and four. Uh and I think one of the classes has a unit five as well. So it it's a
work in progress, but Desi has been great about actually making this available to everyone. um doing pilot versions of it themselves and ga gaining and garnering feedback from everyone who has been utilizing it. And there's
opportunity for teachers to say uh you know if a link isn't working they can put that information out there. Jesse typically will fix that. Um and they work each summer to also refine the curriculum to make sure that is reflective of the feedback that they're getting from the actual practical
application of the curriculum in the classroom. So there are hundreds if not thousands of kids um teachers who are actually implementing this curriculum across the state and have the opportunity to provide that feedback and um and enjoy history like enjoy learning
history. We want them to have fun and we want them to be engaging with it. So just looking ahead which is you know part of what we're trying to do here um this this curriculum is is moving down to grades three and four. We're not in a situation yet where it's readily
available. In fact, the pilot version of it isn't even released yet and won't be until this summer. And that's only the pilot version of the curriculum. So, they're going to be looking to release the version um a a more complete
curriculum the following summer. So, summer of 2026. So, we'll just start poking around. But with grades three and four, clearly we have a number of other issues and curriculum that we need to deal with. And so that will be a discussion uh about how we um how we
proceed, what we'd like to do, what we'd like to move forward with. So that that obviously takes more than just me having that conversation since those um wonderful teachers in grades three and four get to teach just about everything to those students. So we'll look forward to that. But I did include the links in
the slideshow for you as well if you wanted to learn more about investigating history. Uh I think there's a lot of great resources available out there. So civics um just a friendly reminder it is civics
action project uh season. That's what we like to call it. CAP season. Um and so that means that we have about 800 students in our school. So our eighth graders and our 11th graders who are going to investigate topics of interest
primarily in the local community but also at the state and federal well level as well. Um, so we try to communicate this out to our community at large through town uh to town hall to central administration to let them know that students may be reaching out because
they're doing that research um in order to gain access and information about what's going on in their community. So, we appreciate anyone who does provide feedback and I know that timing is um is a challenge and uh we hope our teachers are working really hard particularly at
the eighth grade level to make sure that it's um if students are focused on the same topic that no one's getting 800 emails um that we're we're trying really hard to facilitate that communication piece. Students are also told that
sometimes people are really busy because they have very important jobs and they may not always get back to you. But we want students to learn how to communicate with adults. We want students to learn how to learn about their community and so we feel that the research portion of this project is
really really essential. It's something that they need to do. Um so those are going to be presented in their classrooms. students will be presenting them at the end of usually like right at the end of the school year. So sometime
around mid June. Um every student has the opportunity to present. We encourage our teachers to and the students to invite um other teachers that may have helped them with the project or um other administrators uh to come in to those classroom presentations too because we
want students to feel really comfortable presenting. they become, you know, mini experts in their study hopefully. So, we want them to feel comfortable and confident and the more they do something, the better they get at it. So, being having that opportunity to present is really
important. Um, oh, I'm just going to go back to civics, too. Sorry. Maybe. There we go. Um, just to give everyone the heads up that on May 20th, our eighth graders are going to be taking the civics MCCAST exam. Uh, so there are two components, two parts to that. civic
SEMCcast exam. Last year it was a a pilot um and so we had our students taking it but we didn't get much data or information from it. This year um all the students are going to be taking it. We should get some more information but
it's still um technically kind of a pilot and uh but we do hope to get some more information about uh the information and the learning that the students took away from the from the course in 8th grade this year. The one portion of the exam is typical multiple
choice. It's very similar setup to the English exam. So students will be very comfortable with the formatting of it. Um it is all online. And the second portion is a a state task, state performance task. So there's a couple components to that where the students
are looking at primary and secondary sources and they're responding um in paragraph form or in um some of the you know Q&A that is typical on the English exam. So students will have an
opportunity to really demonstrate what they know. Uh they've all been told that it's going to be on topic four which is on the rights and responsibilities of a citizen. So that's essentially why we do this course in eighth grade. Uh so that students can grasp that concept. So I'm
hoping that we'll get some really good information from that about how our students are doing. Uh they did release sample local tasks for each of the seven units of instruction in civics uh for the eighth grade curriculum. So our our teachers have had an opportunity to
embed those practices. So students have been doing a lot of this practice all along throughout the school year. So they should be in good shape. So um exploring careers at the high school, kind of shifting back up towards the high school. Um we've been working with Middle Sex Community
College for the last few years to really develop more of a um clear path for students who are interested in exploring criminal and social justice uh beyond the high school. Uh we have a very popular criminal justice course and a
lot of our students um regardless in grades 10 through 12 are have or will be taking that course which is great. But we've also been able to forge some good partnerships with the Chancellor Police Department as well and some local attorneys uh that provide us um provide
our students with real opportunities to kind of see how things happen outside of the high school. So just yesterday, our students walked across the field and they spent um a few hours over at the police department, got a tour of it, uh learned a bit about the practices and
the daily experiences of those police officers and how to become a police officer. So there's um also opportunities where they members of the department will come in and talk to the class as well too. So we try to engage as much as possible.
Um, Middle Sex Community College allows us to teach our criminal justice course at four dual enrollment credit for students. Um, and then we offer a variety of courses as well that allow them to um, move towards a degree in CJ. They wouldn't be able to finish at High
School, but they certainly could move off and metriculate to MCC or another school and be at another state school and be able to carry those credits in. Um, we think it's really important for the kids to not only learn kind of what they like, but what they don't like,
too. So, if a student goes in and takes that criminal justice course and says, "This isn't for me." That's okay. We we would like them to figure out what they like and what they don't like as early as possible. Um, I think that helps when they're making those decisions about
what they're going to do after high school. um the Mass Bar Association too. I just wanted to highlight that our our mock trial attorneys uh that come in and have been uh helping out with our mock trial program. Every single year, Mr. Cole has
a number of attorneys that he works with uh that provide feedback and mentoring for our our students in that program. And it's it's great. We really have one of the most supportive communities. um teachers in most of my electives have multiple community members coming in uh
each year in order to present to the students. And I think this gives students a really great idea uh that they have the opportunity to see that connection between what they're learning in the classroom and how it might help them later on. And uh some more highlights because
this kind of links right to what we've just been talking about with our with our programs, our mock trials. So, I just want to highlight a few of our teams that are associated with the social science department. So, we have our mock trial program. They had another great successful year. Like I said, Mr. Cole's really done a great job about
inviting those individuals in to support uh the students as they learn all about the courtroom. Um, and I just wanted to give a a shout out because we have a number of students who are um working at working with attorneys as part of their internship, the senior internship program. And I've been getting feedback
from some of those attorneys. um that judges are commenting when the students are in the courtroom. Uh that they're so incredibly impressed with Chamsford High School students, their etiquette, their courtroom decorum. It's just been like that positive feedback wasn't even no
one was asking for it and it was just um being bestowed upon the students um and being shared with the the school community too. So that that's really great. Um I always love to hear that the international relations club is pictured right there. They uh at the model UN
competition at UMass LOL just a few weeks ago, they took best delegation um which is an outstanding um outstanding award. We also had three individuals um or two students earned outstanding delegate awards and three
students placed third in their respective roles. This is fantastic. Misto who's a member of our department has also been working with that model UN group or the international relations group for a while and that's that's their big event uh towards the end of the year. Um and our speech and debate
team has had a really successful year continues to be successful year after year. We've had u machine from the English department has been helping out. Mr. Zope started helping out again. He took a little break. Now I think he's kind of finding his way back into it. And then at the beginning of the year, I
was helping out too because it really is a team effort to keep these kids going. Um, the two individuals highlighted there are Clara Vascoa and Sophia Roy. I'm sure you've heard their names before. Um, Sophia is currently ranked
seventh in the country in speech and debate. Um, as of the last time I had a chance to look. uh and she just most recently placed first at the Mass State Speech and Debate League tournament uh in both oratory and informative
speaking. And I believe she might be the first student who uh came in first in two different um two different competitions. Um and uh Clara uh came in third in poetry and six in
pros. I know Lana's been successful at some of the um experiences too at some of the tournaments this year as well. So, just giving a shout out to all these students and then their um their adviserss as well because it takes a significant amount of
work. So, looking ahead, um I don't know if anyone knows, but it's a pretty exciting year. It's uh uh getting into our 250th. Um, I'm pretty partial to that being a bicesentennial baby. So, I
I know I Yep. Yep. It's It's amazing. Um, good timing. Um, so I did link in some resources because I figured if this went out to the community that the community would have the opportunity to check out some things. The Massachusetts 250 website, there are already plenty of
events that are happening. Certainly with um the events in Lexington in April of 1775, no 2025, um there's lots of exciting stuff that's going to be planned throughout the summer, too. So, I wanted to link that for the community because I think it's important to enjoy these kind of unique
opportunities that we have um this summer. I wanted to encourage people to uh link on the take a tour of our historic sites. Um, we actually have our third grade classrooms do this in the classroom. So, so they have the opportunity when they first come into
third grade, they get to learn all about the town of Chumsford. Um, and the historical society had built this great website uh with some of the major images um in historic sites in Chelmsford. And so we actually use that in the classroom. But if families want to do that, too, that would be fantastic. And
then have an opportunity to walk around our historic district. That would be great. It'd be so fun. And then the kids coming into third grade would really have that opportunity to connect. And you know, they could do this multiple times. You could do it any year. It does not have to be third grade. Um I linked in a counselor historical society too.
We started uh reaching out to them to see if we could do some planning and some um activities and professional development potentially with the historical society. So we've started working on that. Um they put me in touch with some individuals uh that I think this will have some good good activities to do with. And I just wanted to also
give a shout out to Debbie Tivera at the Garrison House. Um, every year she has since the curriculum changed, we moved the town of Chumsford to third grade. And so she's been hosting um our
students in third grade, all volunteer, all her work, all her time. It's just absolutely amazing. Our students get to go there in um in the fall. They have a chance to walk through the garrison house and the buildings and the barn and learn all about it. The kids are so
inquisitive. They really enjoy it. Um and then in the spring she does this for a lot of other schools as well. But she does this all volunteer for the town of Chelms and I think that's a tremendous um gift that we have. So uh when the Garrison House is open, I would
encourage people to go and check it out. Um you know take advantage of what you have in your community. It's really important to do that. The last slide here that I have is talking about um how I want to encourage our fourth grade families to take
advantage of this parks program. So students who complete their fourth grade year have the opportunity to get a free national park pass for their family. Uh this is a program that's been going on for a long time and I've had it posted on our website. In fact, we my family
took advantage of it probably eight years ago now. Um, and it was one of the most fun summers that we ever had. Uh, driving across country and hitting 13 national parks in a tiny little camper. Maybe don't do that, but I would
definitely encourage you. I did mark all the um local areas, the Massachusetts, New England, um, New Hampshire, and Maine, uh, areas that you could go visit for free. And, uh, and click on that link. you'll you'll have the opportunity to sign up. It'll
tell you exactly how to do it and what to do with the um what to do with the pass and where to present it, but your entire like family in your car should be able to get into those national parks for free. And it's awesome. What a great place. We have so much history here and I really want students and families and
our community to take advantage of it as much as possible. So, that concludes my presentation looking at the past, what we're doing right now and in the future. Um, and I included all my contact information if anybody has any additional questions. Okay. Anybody have
any questions? Yeah. Um, more kind of a response rather than questions. First of all, I when my son was in fourth grade, we totally did the Every Kid Outdoors program and strongly recommended actually third grade parents
should know that starting September of when your child September 1st of when your child enters fourth grade, you're eligible to apply for it. So, doesn't have to wait till summer and we did a long April break trip to the National Parks in the Southwest using it. So, um but I was just going to say um I really
appreciated this overview. I um was really excited to see that Chumsford has been using the investigating history curriculum through my day job. I've gotten a chance to partner with Desi and get a lot of insight into what's happening in classrooms across Massachusetts with investigating
history. and I've been really excited seeing um the great like inquiry based work that that includes. So um I'm thrilled um that that's being integrated into our programming. Um and I have heard good things from people doing the
third and fourth grade pilots in some towns. So I'm excited to see what comes out of that and what pieces might be integrated into the curriculum here in town. Um so yeah, clearly there's a lot happening and thank you for uh all the hard work. Thank you. I just want to say
quickly, um, this is an incredible program. There's so much to it. Uh, and I just want to focus on one thing, two things actually. I love that we're working within the 250th. I think that's really interesting and there's a lot of history in Chsford. I think most even a lot of residents don't understand how historic this town really is. And I am
really pleased to see that you're teaching people about their rights. I think it is a really timely uh point in our history to for kids to be learning that and and at this age is really um especially. So, I just want to say thank you for your work. Thank you. Okay. Anybody have other questions?
All right. Well, thank you very much. That was very Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you, Stephanie. Um so, next up as we transition, we have um Dr. Da Mahoney. She is our new world language department coordinator and cultural exchange. Thank you. We're very happy that she's here. I'm very happy that
she's here. This is her debut presentation, so go easy on her. Okay. Thank you so much for having me. Um so, I as Dr. Dr. Hirs mentioned I am the world language coordinator uh world language and cultural exchange coordinator for the challenge
for this year um this is a perfect time of year because we are now at the point where we are seeing successes and awards and recognitions. So the first thing I want to talk about is the Massachusetts seal of biiteracy. Uh the state seal of
biiteracy has been around since 2017 and Chelmsford has been consistent and supporting this uh this wonderful opportunity for our students that highlight student language success and homes home language success.
Um the three main awards that we offer for the SEAL uh state seal of um by literacy are the language opportunity coalition achievement award which is um awarded to students who've earned an um demonstrated an intermediate mid or
above proficiency in their language as well as um a a high enough score on the ELA MCCAST. the Massachusetts Seal of Biiteracy, which is an intermediate high on proficiency testing, as well as a 472
or higher on ELA, MCCAST, and then the Seal with Distinction, which is an advanced low proficiency. And the thing to note with the um seal with distinction is that that is essentially demonstrating that students have
functional language skills at a professional level. They can use their language in the workplace. Um, and we have several students earning that. Um, with that in mind, this year we tested 70 students using the STAMP test, which is a specific proficiency test.
Proficiency tests aren't a pass fail. They just measure what a student can do. So, a student could take a proficiency test every single year if they were so inclined and they would see growth over time. And so the nice thing with proficiency uh models is that you can
say okay well I see that I am good at like I'm very good at this skill but I need to develop more sentence structure or I need to start building up to paragraphs or start using more past and present and future tenses. So there's a clear sequence in language um
acquisition and we can show our students where they are at so they start to own their own language learning. Um we administered over 70 stamp stamp tests this year. Um six students were testing in more than one language which um tells us that they're bringing their home
languages with them to John public schools. We tested in 10 languages this year and students in both grades 11 and 12 tested. Additional students qualify for any of the three awards through AP testing. Although most of our students
don't take AP tests until this week uh next week for languages. So we don't get the scores until after graduation. These awards are um eligible to be awarded retroactively. So when the AP scores come out in July, I'll be looking and um
awarding this these um recognitions retroactively, which is a great benefit for students, especially as they start to look further in the future. It's not just about college acceptances, but it could be any kind of career acceptance afterwards or future study after an
undergraduate uh experience. Proficiency, keep using that word proficiency. What is that? It's about what students can do with language. So, it's very functional. It's about using language in context. Um, as I mentioned, Chford has
been involved with the seal of biiteracy for a number of years. So just to give that context um over the um past several years we've had um last year 68 students testing with 26 awards. This year we have 70 students testing and um actually
the number of awards has gone up. It's more than 25 now. Our scores are coming in uh a little bit peacemail right now because we're waiting each domain comes in a little bit more slowly. Um, so I think we're up to 26 or 27
awards for this year. And what's exciting is that next year you're going to see we already have um, let me see 21 students have already earned some of the awards for next year's graduating class. So that means that we will if we have
students testing next year as seniors, we will have a larger number um, of award winners than we do this year. This year the languages represented um by our Chford High School students include American Sign Language, Arabic, French, Hindi, Canada, Mandarin, uh Mandarin,
Portuguese, Spanish, Telugu, and Vietnamese. And there were other express interests in language um that we just didn't move forward with this year, but we can certainly pursue in the future. Uh this year, class of 2025, and I think you'll hear more about this later, we
have um now we are up to oh, let me double check my numbers. We have 13 language opportunity coalition achievement awards. We have 11 students earning the seal of biiteracy and three the seal with distinction. Um which is very exciting.
Um, and for the class of 2026, we've already got five students for um, the language opportunity coalition achievement award, 12 for the seal of biiteracy and four with the seal with distinction. One thing to know about the
seal and the seal with distinction is that most Massachusetts state um, colleges and community colleges offer um, up to 12 credits for students who earn the seal of biiteracy. So, they come in with 12 credits to use towards
their future uh degree and 16 credits for the seal with distinction, which is an amazing preol opportunity to set themselves up really strongly for the future. For example, if a student were interested in studying international relations, they could come in with 16
credits and already um advance past some of the basic classes at a state school. So that's a really um powerful um motivation and encouragement for our students. Um so what is proficiency? I
mentioned this before is learning to use the language. It's a focus on what students can do with language. And where that's important for us and our families, our community is to know that students should expect to be using language up to 90% of the time in their classes. And that's something that we
look for when we go into our teachers classrooms is teachers using language and students using language all the time. Um we have lots of resources that are comprehensible and that means that language is at a level that students are at and maybe a little bit higher than
their current um demand or their current expectation. We don't expect them to be reading native sources from day one, but we expect to have sources that they can start to engage with and build with and grow with and then lots and lots of language input. So, that's why it's so
important to have such highly qualified teachers in our department, which we're fortunate to have. Um, as part of that, there's been the district has been generous with um providing us with some really strong resources that can support that
comprehensible input. um with some with a textbook that's really benefiting us with um lots of video audio and video resources, things that are um recorded at n by native speakers for students to grow at that proficiency level. Lots of
novels and resources that students can add to their um so we can build up reading skills. um and paper books so that students are not just on their laptops but reading books at their level. um on paper. Um and then as part of our
resource, we have uh an app that's built into the textbook series called New Lang, which is similar in some ways to what Duolingo we used to be, right? But it allows our students to develop the skills in the scope and sequence of our
textbook, but using a lot of apps and um games that can help support their language learning. All of our teachers are working to implement uh proficiency models. It's a work in progress. This is not an overnight process, but each teacher is
moving towards the goals of increasing the amount of language and proficiency in our classes. One exciting so my my lovely my job title is world language and cultural exchange op uh coordinator. And so I have to proudly say that we have just completed several wonderful cultural
exchange opportunities under the leadership of some of the teachers both at uh Chsford High School and at McCarthy Middle School. Um in the fall in October of last year we had guests from Lar Roelle France who visited us um
for a week exchange a week-long exchange. Uh we had uh 14 students and they visited a number of tourist sites, visited our schools, uh learned a lot about Massachusetts, the history that Miss Quinn was just mentioning. Um we also were fortunate to be at uh the
establishment on the night that we had that amazing solar um northern lights display and the students were so excited to see that which is why I had to include that in our picture. Um subsequently our own
students traveled to Lease Florence um over April vacation um where they had an immersion experience studying French and visiting sites there. At the same time we had a Panama and Costa Rica trip with
um 35 students traveling to both Panama and Costa Rica having adventures. I I couldn't pick which sloth picture was the best. Um, but everyone who shared pictures with me shared pictures of of the sloths, including one that was just
hanging out outside the hotel door. Um, yeah. Yeah, that's my my big regret in not going to Panama and Costa Rica is missing out on seeing a sloth outside my hotel door. Um but wonderful opportunities for the students and our
chaperons to experience the culture and the envir um the ecological um the rainforest and the environment in Panama and Costa Rica. You can see the rainforest. They did some whitewater
rafting uh zipline tours. Um all sorts of wonderful opportunities there. And then just this past weekend, and these pictures had to be shared with you before uh they got much further than the border, but the Quebec the eighth
grade French trip to Quebec had uh 35 students traveling to Quebec City. Uh so I don't have all the fun and exciting pictures because they hadn't happened yet, but now I could share them with you for next year. Um and that was a wonderful opportunity. I've gotten
wonderful feedback about such a truly informative Quebeca tour guide who really knew so much and provided the our students with opportunities that some of our chaprons had never been able to do before. So that's an exciting addition um to that.
Um we have also had the opportunity to have representatives from CIE which is a global um intern organization that has spoke they've spoken with our students some of our students and most of our teachers
about language opportunities that are for individual students and we have three students who have been selected to travel this summer and um have been awarded some scholarship money to travel to have language opportunity experiences
which is really exciting. CIE provides uh a substantial amount of scholarship to students looking to travel and as more students from Chelmsford engage will have more opportunities in the future. So that's a really great possib possibility so that students are not
just traveling with uh school trips but sometimes we'll have choices with other languages. So, for example, if we have a student who's interested in Mandarin, they might be able to travel to Taiwan or to China to work on their Mandarin
and study um in a home language or to gain skills in a language that they've never had before that we can't offer as a district. So, that's an exciting addition. Um this coming June, we'll be having a panel of interpreters coming
from American Sign Language. I think we sometimes focus on our international travel and our cultural opportunities for our spoken languages, but ASL um the uh deaf community is a vibrant um
and really complex community. And so our ASL students are um going to have interpreters come in learning about deaf culture and a presentation on what they can do with future ASL study. Um, along the same lines, I mentioned that we did
stamp testing. This past Friday, we had 30 students in ASL testing in stamp, which is a remarkable thing to to observe. Um, while 30 people are signing at the same time in silence, um, it is
for those of us who've proctored tests for many years and you hear the noises and hums and hms and haws and all of that. And none of that happens when you have 30 students signing at the same time um lining the um hallways of our performing arts center so they have
enough space to do the signing. It was really remarkable. So I'm looking forward to hearing how our students did um including and one of our students this year who's earned the seal of biiteracy with distinction is earning that in ASL. So that says quite a bit about the success of Miss Fitzgibbons
and her ASL program because she's really made that come to life. Um in the spring we were um several of our department members participated by hosting um fullbrite visiting scholars as in um partnership
with UMass LOL. Uh specifically in our classrooms we had teachers from Ukraine, Argentina, Turkey and Malawi. That was a wonderful opportunity that was repeated over several weeks. So the students got to know the teachers and the teachers got to know our school and our
students. Um in the uh fe December February winter over winter this year we um hosted Lonur or which was in partnership with L club Rishelu of Lel um forgive me my French accent's not
great. Um but the Chsford High School hosted uh students in this public speaking event with students from Chsford Tukbury and Westford and the winner um from Westford Academy advanced to the regional competition in Nashville
and New Hampshire. Um and we now have world language honor societies in all three of our languages. So we have students uh last year we only inducted students in Spanish and French. This year we are inducting students on all three
languages. Uh 83 students have been invited to apply and the applications came in over the weekend. So I'm sure we'll have numbers for that uh very soon. Students must have a 90% or higher in three consecutive years of the same language. So that's puts a lot of
pressure on students. Students have to work really hard to achieve um that level of language success in their classes. The World Language Honor Society participates in community service events um such as raising money
um for um community programs or as well as supporting um participation of their pro of the in the world language honor society itself to help pay for dues and so on. Um they have had monthly meetings to plan plan events and they have made
videos to inform the middle school students specifically the students. Oh my computer the screen. There we go. There we go. Um videos to inform particularly the Parker Middle School students who are going to be choosing their language for the very first time
this year. Um they helps to inform them on what to expect in language learning and what they might want to think about as they make that choice. And what's next for our department? We are going to continue promoting the seal of biiteracy. Um this year as part of um
in my role as world language coordinator I've been participating in DESIE workshops and a world language advisory team where we analyze some of the data from a ver from a number of districts and I'm hoping to be able to convert that um work with the data and with
DESIE to support accessing um some grant money to further provide further access to world language um students. participating in the seal of bi literacy and taking the stamp test. Um we have students enrolling for an exchange trip
to Spain for April of next year. We're going to be continuing to implement our our resources to build proficiency into our language classrooms, including more comprehensible novels and um more access to proficiency
um resources through our textbook. And then we'll be over time um I've been working on updating the website which is a a work in progress of course um but as we do that you'll be seeing that there will be updates to curriculum maps and the scope and sequence of our source of
our courses as we um develop our um develop those materials in coalition with the use of our new textbooks. So so thank you very much for having me and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Anybody have any questions?
Thanks for um a great overview. Um and I I would love to know a little bit more about um the the move towards kind of a proficiency based approach and I'm curious if that is used in placement for students because I know there may be some students with who come into our
schools with some level of proficiency in Spanish or or French or I guess potentially even ASL. um and you know how it's used at that incoming level. I know you talked about it being used as we look at um the acquisition of the
skills and and look at the seals of biiteracy and things like that. But so the stamp test itself is is a fairly lengthy exam. So, um there are districts that I know that use the stamp test, for example, in 8th grade to uh ensure
proper placement going into 9th grade, um and at the high school level, that's really with so much testing happening and the eighth grade level, that's not really the most ideal spot I in my mind. Um but there are a number of students in fact uh for scheduling for next year we
had a handful of students who asked to essentially do a proficiency test and so we would use a kind of um open question. The prompts are often very general and then it's what students can do with that prompt. And that has encouraged a few
students to be placed at a level that's more suitable to their experience whether they've had a number of years of language from another district, whether they're coming in with language skills from home language. Um, most of the time we don't since we only offer only uh
offer French, Spanish, and ASL, we don't have as many students placing out or moving into different levels with proficiency models. Um, if we had if we offered far more languages, which I can't imagine how we could figure out, but Hindi for example, there are a
number of students with a broad range of skills there, Portuguese as well. Um those are the kinds of things if they're bringing their home language that proficiency task could really give us a lot more information. Um but yes, we are using uh proficiency type
questions. Um imagine a question like um what is something that you can do to help out around the house? A very basic response would be, you know, a very novice response, but you could expand on that at quite leng at quite a bit of length um depending on how you could use
language. And so that one prompt could be used for any level of student to understand where they're at with language. Thank you. I have I have one more question and it is um you mentioned as I would have inferred that you know we we
aren't necessarily able to teach beyond a few languages within our district just based on numbers and budget and everything else. Have we ever looked at I know you're sort of new to the department, but in your knowledge, have we ever looked at online courses or
other sort of competency based courses for students who would like to pursue a language that is not currently offered by the district itself. So, I can't really speak to the history on that. Um, but I can say in my experience, a lot of those online programs are uh only really
as effective as a student's personal motivation. Ex as as a student's own personal motivation. I would be concerned that offering something like that where there isn't that onetoone that connection with a teacher, connection with peers, language learning
is inherently social. So, a lot of those programs, you might learn a lot of vocabulary, you might learn a few essential skills, but unless you're truly motivated to look for community and connection um with other learners of that language, it's really difficult to
have success. Um, and when I've had students who've needed to do that for a variety of reasons, it's been a very difficult task um, to take on an online language program and be successful with real language learning. That's a real difference between proficiency and kind
of for those of us who maybe took languages a few years ago, um, the older models were very much about memorizing a lot of words. You'd memorize phrases, you'd conjugate verbs, and you could be successful, but you couldn't necessarily use language. Um, you might be able to
conjugate a verb seven different ways, but you may not be able to order in a restaurant. And so, the shift here is to make it much more practical and usable, which is an important skill for language acquisition. Um, but that's not as
effective with some of those online programs. Yeah. No, I definitely I having experience learning a language through like Babel, I get it. It it's not as comprehensive or effective. I was thinking more of I've heard of some districts partnering with like virtual high schools where there are interactive
online courses taught by educators and I didn't know if that is something we had ever looked at. I'll just jump in here because I've had the experience with it. We do have an online platform called Egenuity. leads through imagine learning and um one of the couple of things you have with it is that there's no you need somebody on the other end to be doing
the speaking and listening piece. So the students can go and do that but they would need to be an educator on the other end. The other thing about those programs is yes you can pay for them to have an educator on the other end but they're quite expensive really. It's a per student price. Got it. So for us to
have that it's almost um more expensive than the cost of our teacher. Okay. Okay. Okay. So, never mind on that. But I'm just curious because I have heard of it and I was curious if that's something we lived down. John, you had something that Yeah, just real quick. Uh first, um I just quick question for you guys. When
did we bring in ASL? Didn't we didn't always have it? Very recent. Five years ago. We're in year one, two, three. This is our fifth year with I want to say so I was around before that and I remember the experience of parents that wanted ASL and they really really came out and
they advocated for it and um just looking at the numbers of people that are using ASL as a as a as a platform to be able to get this literacy I think is incredible. I think there's a little bit of probably motiv I mean they probably could have been proficient before but now they have something that says it
which is motivating for colleges and it's a piece of paper that is important uh and it's something you really have to work hard to get and there's so many good things in the presentation but I'm going to focus on that and just say that the numbers look amazing the the number of people that are enrolling and going through this process and testing is
amazing and I'm really glad to see that ASL support really take off that's really big deal for a lot of people thank you it's a very exciting program we have a lot of students who are very motivated to do it. Um the thing that is worth noting is that um there is a a very well-known learning curve with
languages. Most of our students who are testing in uh spoken languages u whether it's French or Spanish or their home languages have had several several more years of language. ASL is a harder language to learn. It's more complex language. Um and the grammar and culture
is really different. So students who can earn the seal of biiteracy in ASL after only three years of instruction, that's a really remarkable thing to note. Um whereas most of our students earning the seal in French and Spanish have had four, five, six years of language and in
home languages, um they've perhaps been speaking or learning that language their whole life. So it's really some an impressive thing. And I just wanted to say one more thing. when you said they were testing and it's dead silent in a room, I would I would literally just be like, "All these people hate me because nobody's talking." So, it would play off
all of my insecurities. Nobody's talking to me. So, thank you for Susan and Maria. Yeah, just quick question. So, what grade does does the language start? Is it seventh or eth? So, we start French and Spanish in seventh grade and that's why our students will be choosing at the end of their sixth grade year.
And then students have the opportunity again at the high school to either switch languages or add a or take ASL in place of French or Spanish. Okay. So they would start with French or Spanish, but then if they want ASL, that's a switch later. Exactly. Yeah. I'm really
glad they have ASL. I've taken lots and lots and lots of community college courses, but I would have given anything to have learned it earlier in high school. So good. I love it. Um, couple of things. one. It was really interesting to see that now you also
have to have a certain score on the um ELMCAST. So the so the seal of literacy has always required the ELAC cast. Good. So even though it's going away as a graduation requirement is not going away and that's a super important thing that
our students and community members need to know that the MCCAST, the ELA MCAST provides a lot of data to the district. It gives a lot of information about how our students are doing, but also it's a criteria for things such as the CELA by literacy, such as the atom scholarships
to the Massachusetts uh to UMass schools. So, MCCAST carries with it more than just the graduation requirement and that's that's always been part of the seal of biiteracy. I'm really glad to see that because I really think it is important. I mean, English is my second
language, not my first. And I think it's really great that you have to be proficient not only in that second language but also in your first language or vice versa. Exactly. And that's an essential piece of the seal. Great. Um
the another question for you have we ever explored doing some kind of exchange program for a ASL or is there such a thing? So, we don't have an exchange, but we are working uh it's probably at least a year or two down the road of doing some cultural trips. Um
there is a there's New York deaf theater. So, I've been looking into doing opportunities there and also of I would like to coordinate with Miss Fitzgibbons to coordinate an ASL trip to uh Galidet University so that students could be fully immersed in the language
program there. um things like going to a Starbucks where there there are no speaking people. Yeah, it's a pretty powerful experience for our ASL students. So that brings me to my comment on the overall programs that you
presented on which is I am so happy to see culture be central and key to your language program to our language programs here. uh because I think going forward it's going to be very easy to just get an AI interpreter but you
cannot get an interpreter that understands the culture. It is just key. So thank you. I was really really happy to see that. Thank you. I two of my sons happened to have gone to RIT where National Technical
Institute for the Deaf partners with them and all four years they were there everything at that school incorporated ASL and deaf culture into it and all the stores and the restaurants had a lot of people employed who used ASL. So it was I mean that's another opportunity for
kids to go to a campus like that where it's deeply embedded in the campus life. Exactly. So those are those are things that we're looking at so that all of our languages, all of our students have opportunities to explore their cultures. Great. Right. Anybody else? Great. Well,
thank you very much. Great job. First presentation you did. Thank you so much. All right. Have a good night. Thank you. It's kind of you. Oh, okay. I guess I'm just going to keep talking tonight because that's really what I do best. Um I'm just following up. I'm just going to piggyback on um Dr. Mimon's presentation
just last year at this time. She just happened to be here to present because she wasn't here last year. You had me. Um I just wanted to make sure that we had a chance to just recognize the students that are receiving the seal by literacy for the class of 2025. I don't know if any new students for the class
of 2025 should be on this list because these tests are coming in. So if there is a missing name, we will obviously add it to our major list. But I thought it would be important to see that um who is receiving the seal of literacy recipients um that actually receiving those u that
seal in. So this is our regular seal of biiteracy award recipients which is great. So they have the one, two, three, four, five languages that you'll see um for the distinction. As Dr. Mahoney said there was three students um and three of them are one is in ASL, one's in Spanish
and one in Vietnamese. And lastly, these are the students that are receiving the Massachusetts Language Opportunity Coalition Achievement Award. So very very proud of all of them. Congratulations to the class of 2025. You'll see them um at graduation. We'll
have everything on to their diplomas and we're just you know very happy for these students. This is something that they can you know what is the Canada? What is that language of? I'm going to defer to Dr. Mahoney. Do you know anything about this language? Because I not I've kind of given up my role as world this year,
but that's why I have her here. She's an expert. Um the Canada and Telugu are uh two languages from India. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Great. Okay. Great. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. Thanks.
That was great. Okay. Uh, next thing is just um update on the I'm going to give you a quick update on the Parker Middle School uh building and kind of where we're at. Let me just switch over my Thank you very much, guys. Thank you. Good evening. So, if you remember from
last week kind of did a quick update. So, this is sort of the presentation that we part of the even we got um building committee just kind of really the timeline thing is you know I'll just get on a couple of quick things. So, um you have 13 member uh school building
committee member um panel is is up there. Uh good representation from the town, from the schools, um community members covering a lot of different facets um that are going to kind of guide and oversee the um the work. It's a group that's going to begin to meet uh monthly um here. We did decide that all
of our meetings are going to be televised. So community members if they can't uh come they certainly can um watch a meeting to follow up and it's going to be a good record of all of the different actions that have actually uh transpired. So the first uh piece of the work when we getting into the
feasibility uh study was to bring an owners project manager or an OPM on board. Um we had solicited for an OPM. We received 12 proposals from very qualified firms. We um shortlisted and invited four of those firms in for interviews and ultimately after the
interviews uh the interview committee recommended to the full committee going with left field. Left field is the name of the um owners project manager firm. Um that was approved by the full school building committee and so that paperwork was then uh sent down to the mass school building authority of the MSBA. So the
next step in the process is next Monday at 2 o'clock we have what's called an OPM panel review meeting. So, um, representatives from the district, the town, and left field, um, will be on one of the OPM panel meeting agendas to talk a little bit about our project, their approach, answer some questions the OPM
panel members may have, and it's anticipated then that the MSBA will approve um, Left Field being OPM, and within a day or two of that meeting, they'll send us a letter to that effect, which then allows the town to sign off on the contract with um, Left Field, and then the work commences. Um, so this
should actually go pretty quickly. Uh the contract has already been it's a standard contract document. It's already been vetted, approved, and signed by left field. Um so it's with manager Cohen at this point. Once we get the letter from the MSBA again, we're anticipating midweek we will sign that and then shift into the next most
important um aspect of the work, which is selecting a designer or someone who is actually going to be kind of the architectural firm to put the school uh plans together. So this is a little bit of a different process. Um, left field at this point will step in and kind of manage the day-to-day functions of the
project for the town and the schools with us giving them advice along the way. Um, but they are uh preparing the request for services or the RFS document to bring on a designer. So, uh, once again, contracts are signed or whatnot, we will issue the request for services
for design firms who may be interested. But instead of a local panel like us actually reviewing the proposals and making a selection, this is a project a process that's much more uh MSBA controlled. So the MSBA actually has a
13 member um designer selection panel. Um the district, which is the county and the schools get to put three members on that uh panel for the discussion and then a minimum of nine total members is required for a quorum. So, uh, myself,
uh, Mr. King, and, uh, Mr. Cohen will be the three members representing the town and the schools in this panel, and we'll be having at least six, if not the full complement of the 13, uh, folks from the MSBA looking at all the different proposals and ultimately shortlisting,
you know, one, two or three firms to come before that panel for review and interview. And then ultimately we'll be selecting um with this particular group the designer for the project and then that will come back to the um school building committee for the Parker school. We'll let the uh school
committee know about it and the town know about it. We'll execute contracts and then we'll be on our um way. This is just the composition of the 13 members from the MSBA. There are a combination of you know MSBA staff and different industry uh professionals and their various um trades.
If all goes well, we will likely be slated for either July 29th, August 12th, or August 26th to bring that'll be the designer selection panel meeting dates that we'll have to go forward. Um, we're minimally going to have to go forward at two of those dates. So, the first date when we get together, we'll
be reviewing all the applications and kind of shortlisting and then we'll be inviting the groups to come in and make a presentation at that follow-up meeting. But the hope at this point is to by the end of the summer have the designer on board. So when we hit the ground running for the start of the school year right in September after
Labor Day, we're really looking at the three different options that we have before us. And just to refresh everyone's memory, the three options are to build um again you have to look at different options, but one of them would be just a two grade level school continuing the grade five six model that
we currently have. A section option would be to add a grade level. So to pull the elementary grade level four up into this new building and have a grade four, five, six configuration or the third option would be um to merge McCarthy and Parker back together in a
new building and have it be 5678 um all four grade levels. Um the second two options, the 456 or the 5678 help the district with regard to our enrollment concerns because it's providing some extra swing space and classroom space particularly at the
elementary grade levels. So, we're trying to do the very most we can with one project to accomplish a lot of uh tasks. But those are the three options we're going to look at. And uh this slide is just to um as much as we've been putting a ton of time and effort into this, we're still very much at the
beginning. So, we're still only halfway through module two uh which is uh kind of darkened up there on the screen forming the project team. You know, we know locally who's going to be involved. We now have the OPM as of Monday. Hopefully, we'll be on board. We'll get the designer on board by the end of the summer. And then we'll be switching into
module three, which is the feasibility study. And that's when a lot of the work is going to begin at the school level with uh staff and parents and community members to talk about the three different options, what we'd like to see in our education program, what we like about what we're currently offering at the middle school level, what we might
like to tweak or amend in a new building project. So, um that's when all of this will begin. This is a very high level uh timeline that basically again shows us on the very left side of the screen where you are here. Um and this is basically going to be a five-year uh
project with if everything goes uh well and according to plan, we have all these different milestones, but we potentially looking at a new building project um being completed during the spring of spring and summer of 2030. So again, about five years out from where we are.
um just shorter because we're going to have to break this up into chunks to really kind of manage some of this work. This screen uh tries to do that a little bit and it's just going to look between now and uh the holidays or now and the end of the the calendar year. Um again, OPM is on board, designer will be on
board by the end of the summer and then we have to uh provide some preliminary design program um to the desi. So we have to give them our different options and let them know what we're really interested in looking at. Um, at the very bottom of your screen, Desi, uh, not Desi, MSBA requires you to actually
look at just a code upgrade to each of the buildings. It makes you look at what an addition or renovation of the current space is, and it makes you look at a new school. So, we're going to have to look at all of these different options and then hopefully by the um again the end of the calendar year, the end of um
December of 25, start to narrow this scope down so that when we hit um January of 26, we've really identified the one of the three options that we want to look at, either the 56, the 456, or the 5 to8. Um, we have to again kind
of more fully blow out a mini schematic design of what the code upgrade would be, what the ad rena would be, and what a new building project would be to make sure that we're actually making, you know, financially sound decisions and the theuh programs that we're putting forward are all in alignment so that by
the end of that calendar year, the end of December of 26, we actually have uh the schematic design of the selection uh that we want to move forward with completed and to the MSBA. And then obviously from there we would have to come back to the town, get different approvals and look at about a year's
work before we can actually um go out to bid to start around the spring of 27 with construction on the building which would then um I'm sorry 28 the spring of 28 and then uh three years later in the spring of summer of 2030 is when the new
building would be ready. So that's just kind of a quick high level for for individuals who maybe didn't watch the school building committee. I would highly recommend when you have some downtime to just watch those videos. I think you'd find it interesting. You can definitely kind of keep in the loop as to what's happening. Um I'll continue to break it down periodically at school
committee meetings to just kind of keep it fresh. But um we're in a good shape. We're actually on target OPM on board. Design it by the end of the summer. Work to start heavily once the school year begins. Great work. Great work by the subcommittee too. Thank you guys. Thank
you, Dennis. Yeah. Yeah. And how does that now involve Johanna's role more? How what's the impact? Do you get involved as the uh business and finance director in this
whole process? Yes, I'm part of the committee that And you're so happy. I am. It's an exciting project and a lot of people don't get to participate even in their whole career to do that. So, it's exciting. And then
um I'll get more involved with if they need some help in procurement and then also with the um the reimbursement rate that you know making sure okay we submit everything to the town uh nice and neatly for them to pay and then for the
town to get reimbured. So I think those are my three main areas. Yeah. And this is something that's doable with the current staff we have and so on in that office? Yeah, it's a lot of work. I don't want to downplay it at all. I mean, it's a lot of work for anyone who's involved with the process because
as we're not even fully into it yet, but as you get into it, um, you know, it's a daily at some levels interactions with the the OPM. The OPM's role is to basically be kind of like the day-to-day eyes and ears and and kind of work on the project, but we have to give um kind
of advice and feedback because ultimately they're only as good as the information that they have to work with. So, we have to kind of be on top of this. But um no, I'll obviously be very involved in this. Um Joanna will because again, we want this to be uh functional for the schools and for the town. Um
reimbursements are going to be key, making sure because this is big money, so we need to make sure that you know when we're spending money, we're getting reimbured timely. Um the MSBA can be tricky to work with as far as making sure you have all your documentation in order. Um you know, we have some experience doing that. So I think that's certainly going to help on the town
side. We're going to have to integrate with and coordinate with um you know Christine Clancy and DPW as well as um Darene the town um accountant is going to have to help with the processing. We'll have a separate uh call with the OPM um left field to kind of talk about it's called Propay is the whole process
and accounting system that we use with the MSBA. So we'll all get on board with that. It is going to be a lot of work. I think it's manageable. Um it's very interesting and I personally find fun um work to be doing when you're doing a school construction project. Um so I'm looking forward to it. you know, I do enjoy doing it, but um it's going to be
a lot to juggle. And one more thing that's I mean, looking at this 2030, it's amazing. I mean, there's still quite a few years to go here before we actually have um a welcome
into the new building ceremony uh going on. So, of course, I am more and more worried and I don't know how everybody else is thinking about what they're you're thinking about this, but this big
project on Princeton that all comes live into occupancies very likely in 2025 from the schedule that we got. So if is what committee, what group, what part of our strategic plan and so
on is working on um possibilities of how we're going to incorporate these number of students into our elementary uh and middle schools. I know the high school has room, right? I think the
we're all a little nervous, not know exactly what but the numbers are are falling. I think we do have to wait a little bit to figure out um exactly how many um children or students you know will be actually residing in the development. Um I forwarded an email
that indicated that basically going to start to um bring people in in three different phases. The first phase is actually the spring time frame. Bless you when a um section of the housing is going to be available and then I believe it's July and it's August. but they should be fully um you know leasing
those properties by the end of the summer, early fall at the latest. Um we're watching closely because we know the address um to see if people end up coming to us to enroll their children, but we don't know if it's going to be um a particular number. We don't know how many kids would necessarily be coming.
We only have the projections that were done originally with the project. We don't have any way of guessing or knowing what grade levels kids may be in when they get there. So, you know, if we ended up getting, let's just say, 20 kids, you know, yeah, we we'd have a problem. If they were all 202 grade kids
that were all going to go to one building, but if it was 20 kids and it was a couple here and a couple of this grade level, a couple this grade level, it may not have as big of an impact on us. Um, I think at this point, we just have to kind of watch to see what's actually happening with the enrollment. Um, you know, again, we could we have
capacity at the high school. That's not a significant issue. you know, if we're talking um a dozen or you know, a couple dozen elementary age children, but they're actually spread through different grade levels, then um you know, I think Carrington Harrington can accommodate that. The middle school
Parker is going to be tight. Parker is going to be the tightest next year. The fifth grade is actually their biggest class, so there's obviously not a lot of room there. Um seventh and eighth grade at McCarthy have a little bit more room because of the way we're doing the scheduling now and the five sections. So the headc counts are down a little bit
per um per room. So we have capacity there, but we really just have to see where the kids come from. Um we we'd have to react quickly if something ever happened. I'll keep this group informed as you know enrollment begins or if we're seeing numbers come from that development. I think we would want to
try to manage it within our existing um construct for the time being. If we ever again did see, say at the elementary level that there were just a tremendous amount of kids coming in for particular grade levels, we'd have to quickly make the decision about enrollment and do we consider I'd mentioned previously, do we
consider maybe enrolling a particular address just at a different elementary school because again, South Row has capacity. So, you know, would we think about maybe doing um doing that? But I really just have to get a sense of where the numbers are going to come from and how many and to see how manageable it's going to be just on our own or if we're
going to need to make that kind of a decision. But um I will watch it. I'll report back to you as um the spring progresses and um we'll we'll make some decisions on the fly if we need to. Mhm. So is that kind of decision something that I mean ideally you would want that
kind of decision to happen before a school year starts but say it was the end of October and we realized the numbers were just too high for a school like Carrington to accommodate. Is that something at that point in the school year we could make that change for
reassigning a school to a different No. I mean once once we year started No. Once we assign a child to a school, we would keep them at that school. Yeah, but I mean that address would maybe some subsequent kids then end up going even if you kept it the way they're doing
this. I mean, again, none of this is perfect, but but the way they're doing this in phasing. Um I think we're going to get um an indication of what the numbers might look like after they do the first phase in April, uh April, early May. Um so that's going to give us some sense of what might come in phases
two and three. if once we enrolled let's say phase one because again if they're doing this all at the same time fortunately kind of for us we'd be hit with a lot of enrollments all at the same time it's not going to be kind of like leaking in from from time to time um we may have to look and say you know
we don't have enough capacity to enroll phase two and three I don't know exactly how the way the properties are set up out there but we might have to say all right if you reside at uh phase two properties in these addresses um you're actually going to be designated to go to South Row as oosed opposed to going to
Harrington or may have to get to phase three. We might be able to do the first two or three. Now, it wouldn't be quite as clean, but we might actually just have to take um certain pieces of the property and say, you know, here's here's we're going to reszone you at the time, but I'll know better when people
actually start to to register. Okay. I have a question back on the on the original Parker School. So, if you're not done with this one, finish this. So, just one more question. Yeah. when you sent the, you know, the breakdown of the potent when they're going to start to um
occupy. I I don't remember in this project how many of these were apartments and how many of these were actual residences that are being sold. There's it's my understanding nothing is being sold. This this is all like
leased. These are all lease properties. These are all leased properties. I'm 99% sure this is going to be completely Some are town homes this year. Yes. Well, some are town at least town home. I'm sorry. I wasn't sure the date. This is the former West Campus. Yeah. No, no, I remember now. Yeah. But no, it's my understanding nothing is purchased. Like
nothing is sold. The website certainly implies it's all leases. Yeah, they're all leased. It's just some of them like when you drive in on the left, they look more like town homes. So, but there's all going to be rentals. Rent Well, yes, but leases. Not like monthto months, but I think they'd be like annual sales. So
it makes it even more transitory from from his first your email. The first phase is 10 town houses and 51 apartments, right? We may not get as many kids with 51 though. I mean, there's a lot to Yeah. Yeah. It's a lot of configurations. Yeah. We'll figure out you have studios, one and two
bedrooms. Yeah. Um again, typically you don't see a lot of kids coming out of studio and one-bedroom apartments. typically um you know two bedrooms certainly if you ever got threes and more but I think we just have to wait till we see some of the enrollments and again we can gauge a little bit based on
the first year when that comes Dennis I don't have it up is it April and May um May 2025 May so I mean it'll be already May yeah so it'll be end of May 2025 it's got when they start you know signing leases but we'll get a a much better sense I think before we leave for
the summer um and we can have that conversation I can certainly keep you updated thank you All right, getting back to the building project. You had a question? Yeah, I'm just kind of the process. Um, I know part of the preliminary design program is educational visioning and programming
and and to me that part's really important, but obviously finances have to rule it. How does that balance really work with looking at just what something costs based on educational programming and our vision
for like that um four to six for instance? How does that how do we kind of help to steer it toward what educationally and for the town make more sense as opposed to just being costbased? Well, one of the key steps we have to do
first is call it the education program. like we have to basically craft um almost like a proposal or you know a uh statement of kind of what's important to the town, what's important to our um schools, what type of programs are we currently offering at Parker. You know
it's a two grade level school but we're offering our academic program. Um we have space set aside for um arts and music and band and things like that. So we have to designate that. We have special programming in the school for um um special populations, whether it be
like um students on the autism spectrum or life skills, things along those lines. So, we need to basically say what we're currently using in that building, how it ties to um what we want to do as a community in the years going forward because we don't want to just do a replica um of what we currently have.
But we need to kind of make that case in our education program. But we will get feedback from again staff, students, the public to figure out exactly what we want to put in there. The MSBA when it comes to like the the funding piece, the three things we know is obviously the
least expensive option, however expensive it is, is going to be the two grade level. The most expensive is going to be the four grade level and the sweet spot in the middle is going to be the three grade level just because of the cost of construction. But the MSBA actually has certain parameters that they put on um you know for the
enrollment that we're trying to to match or to marry um like how many classrooms you would have for general ed, what are the size of the classrooms, everything in construction works off of square footage costs and things along those lines. So it'll all kind of marry each other when we look at our three
different options and you look at like MSBA costs for square footage and number of rooms and spaces and what's allowable, what's not allowable. we could come up and say, you know what, we really want to have this particular program or this particular room. If that happens to not be um something that the
MSBA will participate in, then that's just something we have to think about. We can build that, but we're not going to get reimbursed for that. And that happens often times in in school projects, too. There might be a space where we really say we really want that, but um an example may be the the TV
studio like Challenia is currently a pocker. It's using the space. It's really not part of the regular program during the day. So the MSBA may come back and say you certainly can build a TV studio in your school, but if you do, the square footage associated with that
TV studio is not reimburseable, right? So that's going to then cost you X. And they help you kind of figure that out. And as a community, we've got to come back and say, you know, is it important to us for this amount of money to actually have that be in there? or when it comes to this is going to be the cost for the two grade level, three grade level, four grade level, is it worth a
little bit extra cost upfront because we're going to do the three grade level and it's going to help with our enrollment issues at the elementary level over the next 20 years. And that's going to mean that we can build the building and then not have to immediately jump in and build say an elementary school. So those are the the conversations we're going to have to
have, but it's all based on the education program that you put together to sell basically to the MSBA. Okay. So there's there's still a lot of um value put into the the vision for the programming. Oh, absolutely. Because I see there's a lot of architects on that
panel, but there's also a lot of staff members who also hopefully will also look at it from the what's educationally stand that panel is only to select the designer. Right? That's their only role and then they're done. We never go back to them again. So once we have the designer on board, we then have an OPM
under contract. We have a designer under contract and then they're just working with us. they don't go back to the MSBA. They help us prepare all of our documents because we do have to do the like schematic design, things like that for the MSBA, but um you don't have to go back to that panel again. You're
going back to the MSBA board. Just a quick question. Are we also going to be evaluating like energy on this? So like thermal because like thermal is only good when you're building a building, but it it reduces cost forever, right? So just stuff like that is going to come into Yeah. like to
retrofit a building with something like that, but you still have to prove it out because they're going to say, you know, yes, you could do geothermal, but it's going to cost you this on this renovation ad type thing. If it were brand new construction, right? Here's what it's going to cost. Yes, it's more than natural gas, but as a community, do
you want to look at the payoff over 20 years or not? they going to make you go through all those scenarios cuz I think that'll help when we get to like town meeting and stuff like how so a newer building reduces spending by this much and you know if we're being more efficient and spending less money on water and this and that it all does really add up and I want to make sure
that we're also really sound on our reasoning beyond just what it costs and I think we're going to have experts that have they have experts that come in for the design team that are going to be like experts on educational space and like yeah Bill Rick I think they did Bill Rick high the well the OPM
Leftfield. Yeah, Leftfield was the OPM for Bara. They're the OPM for Tingsboro right now. They just did a school in Grten as well as an elementary school. But um yes, they have educational consultants. The designer is the one that carries the big ones though. So they have the the people that are going to help with the facilitation of the
different meetings and things. Um but yeah, we have to look at it all and I think the one takeaway would be like whenever we present publicly whatever our preferred option is that we have vetted every single possibility that that a resident doesn't stand up and say they may not agree with everything but they don't stand up and say hey did you
think about and we hadn't thought about right so we want to make sure we're going through everything and we can make the argument as to why we're actually doing what we're doing. So on the quality of education component, you know, or the use for educational purposes, what does the building
committee then do? Do you create a subcommittee or do you uh add some members? Well, they go through the whole from community and so on who uh can give more input. That'll be to which one? Uh for the education you building out the educ that'll be part of design design.
Well, that'll Yeah, I mean those will be like um do you remember when we did the um facilities work a few years back and we had like a lot of community sessions and like that's going to be facilitated by the design group, right? So, they're going to then basically be bringing back the the information to the OPM, the
designer and the group. They will be making presentations to the school committee as well. So, like you will get presentations and opportunity for like input and to give your advice to different things. you typically like when we do kind of whittle it down to you know of the three options here's the one we want to go with traditionally
they do ask the school committee do you have a preference you know because the school building committee the 13 members ultimately needs to make a decision but they usually like to have the school committee weigh in to say this is what we think is actually the most educationally sound this is what's going to kind of work for our community but
hopefully you would have all been part of that process leading right up to that okay I feel confident about that yeah it's going to be very inclusive now you mentioned the public input. So once we have the D is that going to start in the fall that so that's where we're going to get involved as a committee, right? So
that's when we're going to have to have those public forums and and host those public forums just in time for Dennis to run for re-election next year. Thanks. I'm really excited for that phase right after Labor Day. Yeah. Yeah. I'm excited for that phase of the work. And I, you
know, you mentioned they're going to ask for our weighin on the best model. I I want to make sure some of those community fora happen before we're asked to weigh in because I want to hear what across Chelmsford this fall that we're going to start this it has to like right
after Labor Day we're going to be hitting this hot. So in terms of timeline those forums happen before we select the model that because they're getting they're getting input right all all along the way. So we come we come back for the next school year we're going to start you know that work you
know yeah by the end of June by the end of next school year my you know I think what they would say as well is like we're going to basically have the preferred solution that we want to go with because we're then going to have to take that fall to be like preparing everything right or MSBA so u by
December by the end of the calendar year I see us basically um identifying like the the pros and cons of the ad renos of the different options, you know, the um I'm sorry, what was it? Just a code upgrade and then say a new school project. This is
all going to play out by then. Great. With honing into that one solution which we're ultimately going to want to go in. And I'm sorry to get like really nitty-gritty, but in in these cost comparisons and programmatic design comparisons and all of that, is there
going to necess I would think there would be necessarily be a look at the impact on the other buildings in the community and what work may need to be done to them. So for example, if the 5 to8 option were to happen, I imagine the
assumption would be that McCarthy would then potentially become an elementary space, which would incur costs because right now it is not set up to be an elementary space. Is that sort of calculation part of this the alternatives that are played out? So
the only when it comes to actual like money out the door that people would be like voting on for this purpose the only project that's at play is the Parker project. So if at the end of this project let's say you did do the 5 to8 right the current parker has to come offline under any scenario the current
parker is coming offline but in scenario three the 5 to8 McCarthy becomes open. So for MSBA purposes MSBA is not touching McCarthy. So, what we'd have to do is actually figure if that happened, that building would basically be turned back over to the town, let's say empty,
right? Um, we would have to I mean, maybe the designer would help a little bit or the OPM could potentially help with some um costs, but we would probably look back to our own facilities plans because like we've already had the electrical and the um you know, all the infrastructure, the roofs and stuff like
that updated. So we kind of know like what money you'd have to put into McCarthy, but it's not going to be like a significant like they're not going to have the same level of analysis for what happens to McCarthy because this is really only considering I I understand that and I'm thinking,
you know, as we look at the the four through six option, the advantage of Yeah, you're only serving three grades rather than four, but the advantage of that is that alleviates the elementary schools without the need to change the configuration or design of an existing building. Um,
so leaving out whatever considerations come in programmatically about a layout, to me, it feels like there's just a huge cost to then the McCarthy side of it that wouldn't be factored into the way that we'd be having these conversations.
Mhm. Um, I just want to make sure that it's not simply a a cost alternative analysis because I think we know that the costs are sometimes more than maybe what MSBA is going to be looking at, right? Yeah. And we can definitely stress that and I'm
sure it can be identified as cost. I just don't know exact like how exact it would be. like they actually have cost estimators on board who are going to be doing all the projections for all of the Parker project, but it might be um more ballpark type ideas when it comes to like what reuse of McCarthy might
entail. Okay. Another aspect of the design part too is we have to pick a location. You know, we have to look at different locations and all the plus and minuses of those too. So, could be Parker Field, could be High School Field, you know, we don't we don't know. How cool is all this though? I mean, how interesting for a school committee? It's exciting. M the community will be
involved. I think all those costs will get worked out. I think whatever we have to do with whatever grade configuration we choose, it is a really neat thing that we get to do and like I think some of us been working on it for like eight years now. Like so um it's good to actually see all this happening. But I do think they'll come back with great
answers and any questions we have they'll be really keen on answering. Yeah. Yeah. They're a good group. Yep. And again, they can come periodically just do a presentation to the school committee to keep you in the loop on things if you want to. Yep. It's great.
Great. Thank you. You are welcome. Okay. Out of the finances. Yeah. So, this is actually just the second set of um a few additional recommendations for one-time purchasing. We had brought the first larger list to you back in uh March, and those were
approved and are underway. Um, we still have some projects that we're trying to finalize quotes for and things along those lines. Um, we have a second smaller batch that add up to 270,000 that are before you tonight for approval. We'll likely have a follow-up
uh smaller batch again before the end of the year. Um but these are six or seven additional one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight additional uh projects related to um some upgrades we would like to make within the um the schools. Uh I gladly
do you want me to run you through them or do you want to just see if you have any questions? Anybody have any question? I don't know if anybody's looked at the projects. Anybody have any questions on any of them? Let's give us like a high level. I mean sure. Um, so like the first one at center school, this is something um kind of aesthetically we're trying to do is um
and we usually do these um kind of school by school, but the curtains, the the window shades in all of the classrooms and calf and things like that kind of they're in disrepair. So um once and for all we like to go through that entire school this summer and have them all be uh be replaced. So that was the
first one. And that's so worth it because I can tell you one side of that hallway bakes. Yeah. Yes. when the sun comes in then so you need good shades. Yeah. Um the second item was just um Bill Silva working with um the high
school Tom Peterson and group about doing an upgrade to the sound system at the high school. Um yeah, it's needed. It's needed. Um the next one is just a smaller one for the Blackbox Theater purchasing a new uh conductor podium
with um conductor stand. The wood shop. The fourth one is the wood shop in the high school is going to have uh some new staff next year and be used for multiple purposes. So, they're looking to, you know, completely vacate the space, just do a cosmetic paint job, floors, walls,
uh ceilings. Um they want to purchase a new uh table saw with some better safety features on it uh for that space. Again, just for the glad to see the stop safety feature on it. Yeah. Yeah. So, that we've been fortunate, but you know, when those kind of things exist, it's nice to
have. Um, so we'd like to add that. You ever want to feel free to print these larger or I should bring my reading glasses. Bring your computer. You can expand it. You can make it bigger. I usually have it digital like and I'm like I know zoom.
No, it's going a few times. A new uh new digital piano at uh McCarthy for work within the music program. um a smaller one just Parker um speaker sound system for the chorus room and two
water filling stations at um South Row. They have a couple now where they kind of fill the bottle under them. Yeah. Um so we're just looking to buy two of those because there are two bubblers that don't have them and uh buy two of them so that they have the water filling station. DPW from the town will install them. We just physically have to buy the unit. So those are the items. I
certainly approve of doing that with the water filling. Is that something we're doing at all of the schools? Do they all have those water bottle filling stations yet or are we working school by school? I I honestly don't know. Um so it's not that we're working school by school. I just happen to know that for whatever
reason South Row has some and they're trying to add to the other ones. I will pay more attention when I'm walking through the other elementary schools to kind of see what they have. I honestly haven't um haven't noticed, but I'll look when I'm in the buildings to just see what they currently have. Um I just happen to know like I said at South Row
for whatever reason there are some and they're looking to um to round out and have a couple different parts. So the requests come from the building level. Yes. So these are Yeah. Whenever these one time requests like we don't do it in isolation. So we ask the building admin, we ask the department coordinators um to speak with their staff and bring forward
recommendations. So and then we help them vet them out and get pricing and things like that. But these have come as requests from the schools. All right. Question modules the new modules have them. So yeah I Just curious. So, any questions on the list? Great list. All right. Off the
list, we still looking to prepay some tuition when all is said and done, too. Oh, yes. Okay. I just Yeah. No, no, we haven't forgotten about that. Um, yeah. Kind of again that three-pronged approach, but towards the end of June, we'll basically um come into a number um which think is going to be that million
and a halfish range. Um actually, we might even have something sooner than that. Okay. Talking to Amy Reese. um she's working on that now. Okay. Like what could we um you know there's rules around those how much you can prepay and so she's
quantifying that based on her students and all that. So we should okay we'll be in good shape to good because that's been a good strategy for us. Yeah. But we'll do that again. Yeah. That's definitely a part of it. All right. So um can I have a motion on these items?
Okay. So, um, I move that we, okay, excuse me, that we approve the FY2025 local operating budget transfers totaling I'm at that one, right?
270,49 for the Chumsford public schools as presented. Second. Um, okay. So, we have a motion. We have a second. Any questions? All the account transfers are right there on your sheet. So, Mhm. as presented. So, do you want
me to go through it? Nope. That's fine. Um, all right. So, we'll take a vote. Uh, Susan I, Diana, I, John, I, Maria, I I Great. Thank you. We're going to get working on those. Okay, great. Uh, last tonight we just had um, and we didn't originally. I was going to say I
didn't see them. Yes. Actually, snuck one in. All right. Uh, there was one field trip request that came in late. This is Chumsford High School, the Best Buddies program. um would like to go up to the Silven Knights baseball game uh in Nashville, New Hampshire. It's on May 28th. Thank you very much. I move that
we approve the Char High School Best Buddies program Silver Nights Baseball Game Nashville, New Hampshire on May 28th, 2025. Second. Second. All right. All those in favor? I I Oh, great. Thank
you. That's fine. Right. Uh anybody have liazison reports? I have one. Um, the South Row PTO met last night. Um, and there's as always a whole lot
happening. Um, a topic was some of the end of the year um, moving on ceremonies because um, as we have heard, this is a particularly large fourth grade class. They're rethinking the way they are approaching the moving on ceremony. They
cannot physically hold it in the uh in the usual space indoors. So, they are turning it into a picnic and hoping for no rain. Um but they're kind of seeing the pos positive possibilities of having a big group that kind of necessitates
them to get creative and move a lot of the fourth grade um end of the year activities into new spaces. Um they um also talked really highly about the April PD focused um on sort of affinity topic interests. So um things
around fading tier 2 supports the foundations program um and AI in general which they noted is is going to be a cross district priority next year. Um and um finally just hearing positive
things about um the new MCCAST platform going off pretty well um in their early days using it which I've also heard from Parker and McCarthy. Great. Susan, you had something? No. Okay. I have a couple of things. First of all, recycle day
apparently was an huge turnout. Huge huge huge where there was a lot of backup. So, um in the in the in the road, but uh that's amazing. Uh and that involves McCarthy and Central School.
And then, um CHS thereafter prom, which is the big event that CHS PTO runs, is going to be at the Elks Club this year, not at the senior center. And uh the collection bins are out for the folks
who are donating. Usually parents and so on donate um gift cards and also items, food items for the event. So those bins are out and they um are going to do their fundraiser, their big fundraiser,
I believe in September at the beginning of the calendar year next year. Great. For this. Oh, I I did hear that. Yes. Yes. Hi, John. You said nothing. Nope. I just had alumni associate met last night. Uh um and they're in the process of
updating their website, which is a good thing if you ever been on the website. Um they're trying to streamline the process of um nominating people for Hall of Fame. Um used to be a fairly lengthy process. They're trying to make that a little bit easier. Um speak of the Hall of Fame, they're going to try to rework the ceremony. uh what used to be a very
formal dinner uh presentation and they're trying to do something a little bit less formal in the pack followed by something at a local restaurant. So I think that's kind of a good idea to kind of move along with the times. And finally, they have uh their big event is their annual scholarship award ceremony
is going to be on May the 20th, which unfortunately is our next school committee meeting. So we won't be able to attend, but uh they have all these scholarships ready to pass out. They're going to send out some emails to kids and hopefully it'll be a great event. So wonderful all that stuff. All right.
Anybody have any new items? I had two things. One is I I noticed on the district website in social media we're doing a survey of parents is um is that we do that normally and who who gets that information. What do we do with that information? We um so this is part of
um strategic plan but part of using like that panorama platform. So it's a way we do student surveys. Yeah. Right now we're doing staff surveys and then family surveys so that we can get some feedback about the district and things that we can do in order to make our goals for next year as well. Have we
done this in the past or Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So, this is um we we've probably done it. This is our third year. We've done it different ways before, but like using panorama, this would be our third year using and so is that information we can see at some point look at the results of Yeah, you can see like the overview of it and that's something that we'll use when we
have our um meetings with the DM group. as far as strategic areas we can report out on and that will probably be what will be presented when we they come on the 17th of June. Yes. Second meeting in June. All right. The only other thing is is there any update on where we are with the new
graduation requirement? Is is that just No, we're trying to get through the class of 202. I know that our sense is like you have to remember the class of 2026 is kind of in the same boat as the class of 2025, right? because they so um we're probably going to see
maybe more of a repeat performance, but the governor has put together that um working group of educators. So, I'd like to see how that pans out. This still gives us another year if we decide to go with what we did for the class of 2025 for 2026. You know, great. we have a little bit of
breathing room, but it would be also great to find out what kind of information is coming from both the governor's office and department of education on this because there is supposed to be some type of graduation requirement moving forward um a competency determination for those other classes. So before we start making
decisions on our current sophomores and above, we we should find out what direction they'd like us to go in. Okay. in our current scenes, we were able to deal with all those moving the current seniors because we, if you remember, we defaulted back to um kind of like the COVID protocols when MCCAST wasn't
administered and that it was partially administered. Um a lot of kids did it online, even at home. We're relying on the approved coursework from the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, and we still have that. We still have the course codes for that. So, we're very confident in our program
of studies at the high school. So, I think that's like a good route. um for at least the upcoming class and then let's see what they have what they come out with for moving forward for competence determination for the classes beyond the class of 2026. Okay, great. A
question um for the funding at the from the federal level for title one and for uh the food programs, anything any impact at all or are we steady and go? Everything's been good for
2026. We'll know this summer. Okay. Um we just filed our intent to participate so they know and then we'll get our allocations um soon. Okay. Thank you. Typically by the end of July, mid July
is typically when they All right. My only other question is Lana is next meeting your next last meeting or Okay. So next meeting is Okay. Yeah. I'm going to be so sad. We are too. Hey, I've been trying to get out here for 9ine years. I get it. So, we're going to miss you on
He'll be here next time. Patrick was mentioning last meeting that there were elections going on. Yeah. I wonder who the very lucky person will be. Be hard to replace, you know. No, I'll be sad. I get like emotional randomly. So, if I cry, be ready. Okay. Wait till you see us. We'll be ready for the graduation
with you. Yes. Okay. Um, we don't have any other public comments. Excuse me. I do have one more thing about um new new sorry items. I did see that in this um week's commissioner's weekly report from Desi that there was a suggestion that
districts start to implement um teacher signing days just the way that they have signing days and they give recognition to students when they commit to playing sports at a specific college. they are um suggesting that schools recognize
graduating seniors who intend to pursue a career in education. So I'd just like to hear in the future if that might be something we might want to start consider doing. Does do that? Um so any of the students that have taken coursework um towards that or have intent to do that. They have a signing
day for those students for future teachers. Oh, good. Okay. I saw that in the newsletter. I thought that's wonderful. I think they really stress it out at the awards, the senior awards. Well, yeah, the senior awards, they receive awards for, you know, going into education. It's like that. I know what she's talking about the signing like
where they have the banner behind them and they sign off on that. So, we do have a a little ceremony for that. Glad to hear that. All right. I'll take a motion to adjourn. Oh, I move that we adjourn. I second. All in favor? I Thank you, Vice
President J. Would you mind?