with liberty and justice for all thank you all set okay this meeting is being live streamed by Chelsea tele media and posted CPS website for interested community members to access and watch inerson public participation will be taking place
tonight in accordance with the Chelms School Committee public participation policy anyone speaking tonight during the public public input portion of this meeting is notified the superintendent's office of their desire to speak and be provided with these guidelines upon request written comments received no later than 12 p.m on the day of this
meeting will also be read and made part of the record of the meeting during the second public comment session welcome to this meeting of the ch school committee our first order for business is to approve the minutes from our meeting on March 25th yeah i make a motion that we approve the
minutes of the school committee meeting of March 25th 2025 i'll second which of you did it i I'll Diana all right any corrections on the minutes all those in favor of
approval i was zero all right um next up our student representative hi everyone so I think it was two weeks ago um CHS students had the opportunity to watch Hunter and Cameron Flores the sober truth this presentation was centered
around the dangers of gateway drugs and it was shown through camp and hunter's firsthand experiences they have been through in their lives and they both were brothers was very moving then there was another presentation it was last Tuesday um where students were given another opportunity to listen to Katie
Greer as she talked about online health and safety and I wasn't there for that because last Monday was the senior's first day of internship um so those the seniors that signed up to participate in it um started off their internship and I'm doing mine at a law firm right now
and it's going well and um the Chumsford High School Model United Nations Club sent 12 delegates to the 3-day UMass Low Model UN conference and they were awarded with top honors by being named the UML MUN best delegation of 2025 then
the Chumsford High School Symphony Band was awarded gold at the Massachusetts Instrument in Instrumental and Coral Conductors Association and then the Middle Eastern Association Club and Muslim Association Club hosted a henna night on Friday March 21st with henna food music and Turkish coffee looked
like lots of fun and um today was the career breakfast for the juniors at CHS students had the opportunity to interact with many different individuals with many different skills on jobs they are interested in so I think that went well from what I heard great lots of good news thank you oh and today is um winter
sports awards which Patrick is at right now so congrats to all the winter athletes great any other good news yeah so um we are in the fourth term or third trimester if you're an elementary school teacher so that's great news to the home stress and we have um school vacation
week starting next week don't forget actually it starts this Friday because there's no school on Friday um and um Dr and I were able to stop by that um Eid celebration was it a week and a half ago or last week um down at the um Chumsford Community Arts Center so it was very
nice to be there and um be able to spend a little bit of time great anybody else have any good news they want to share okay all right uh we don't have anybody for public comment so we'll move on to new business i'll turn the meeting over to Superintendent Lang we will um thank
you so for the viewing audience um every time we have an election in town which is obviously the first meeting in um um Tuesday the first Tuesday in April we uh reorganize the various boards so uh the school committee needs to select a chair a vice chair and a secretary to um serve
for this next coming year and I usually step in um to take the nominations for the chair and then once the chair is elected we'll turn the rest of the meeting over to the um to the chair to conduct to select a vice chair and a secretary so at this point um I would open up nominations if someone would
like to nominate someone to serve as the chair of the school committee for the next uh year okay um I nominate um Dennis King to continue as the chair i second are there any other
nominations all right with a um nomination in a second um actually for Do we do roll call i think we do i think we do um so we'll do a roll call um Susan yes Diane i Maria yes and Dennis sure congratulations so Dennis will be the chair and I will
now turn it back over all right now we'll take um All right next up we have vice chair any nominations for vice chair i nominate Maria Santos to continue as vice chair thank you all right i second that all right any other
nominations right we will vote susan I hang Ria i I Maria congratulations thank you Vice Chair all right and then finally we need to nominate a secretary any nominations which one of them wants it i think Diana
Diana wants I would like to nominate Da for the position of secretary and she's done a very good job all right i will second that all right any other nominations okay susan I diana I ria I I
Great all right so that we have the gang back together again great all right um next up then we have uh Chipsson yeah we have a couple of presentations tonight um and I very much appreciate Robin and Megan's understanding because we bumped this meeting a week so um these should be
extra good presentations because you got a week to uh to practice i'll actually I'll invite Megan Mcgherk who is our preschool coordinator over at CHIPS and Robin Adams I'm not sure if you want to come up together or separately however you decide to do it is our coordinator of community
education programs okay so Megan we will turn over to you and hear a little bit about CHIPS thank you so much for having me i'm the coordinator at CHIPS um so just a little bit about CHIPS at a glance we have eight classrooms in our program um five
of them are inclusive they're half-day sessions so that's 10 sessions of inclusive preschool um two of them are intensive classrooms they have ABA based instruction for um children whose disabilities require that um they're substantially separate classrooms and
then we have one that's kind of a blend of inclusive and intensive where children spend part of the day in an inclusive environment and then are able to extend some or all of their days to receive specialized instruction in a small group with an ABA base we have
over 190 students enrolled right now um most students attend two three or four half days per week um depending on for our gen pop students what their families select and for our students on IEPs it's determined by their IEP team based on kind of their level of need and what
services they need to receive so our five inclusive classrooms are a mix of typically developing students and students who have identified disabilities um we have communication and motor support embedded into all of our classrooms our speech therapists occupational therapists and
physical therapists spend time in all of the classrooms every week they're half-day sessions so they're two and a half hours um and there's two three and four day options that families can choose [Music] from um our intensive classrooms are
substantially separate they're for um students who require a higher level of support these are students who have identified disabilities um again we build the communication and motor support into the program um the therapists deliver most of the services in those classrooms rather than taking
the children out um and then there are halfday and extended day options depending on um the child's level of need and the determination that their IEP team makes for [Music] them and then our inclusive intensive classroom um this provides an
opportunity for our students to um have time and inclusion with additional support for students who require it again we embed that motor and communication support right in throughout the day um so that there's carryover um part of this every student's day is an inclusive classroom
and an inclusive environment and part is substantially separate um so some children will come say four inclusive days a week and extend two days to have some um specialized instruction in a small group for some kids it's more like four and four it really depends um on
the IEP team's decision um based on level of need um so our related services and supports as I mentioned um they're provided to students on IEPs as determined by the IEP team we deliver the services in the
classroom whenever possible um and our related service providers consult regularly with the classroom teachers to ensure carryover of skills um a great thing about having the related service providers in our program is that all of our students benefit from it rather they whether they're getting services on an
IEP or they're just there as a gen uh genop student um they're getting that extra communication support that extra motor support um which is a really nice benefit to our program um our curriculum is languagerich uh sensory friendly
environment um we have developmentally appropriate curriculum that's aligned with the district's elementary curriculum we use foundations um in the classroom as appropriate um depending on the age of the students for a lot of them it's just exposure to the language um and the method but some of our students who are moving on to
kindergarten are really ready for more of that instruction um we use Fountain and Panel classroom so we have a lot of that really nice literature um and the same program that's then carried over um when they go to kindergarten and we have a standardsbased report card for both our three and four-year-olds based on
the Massachusetts curriculum framework standards for preschool oops and these are just some pictures because they're so much fun um so this is um our space week it's one of our themed hallways we do um a few themed hallways throughout the year space week
is one of them um one of our teachers Lauren Nicolosi has really taken the lead on this and our ocean hallway which you'll see in a minute um so all of the classrooms have time in the space hallway there's a lot of activities set up um that are sensory friendly um and
give the students a really fun chance to learn about outer space um we also have an under the sea week this is under the sea um again um a themed hallway that everyone participates in all of the teachers kind of decorate their bulletin boards and base their um classroom
instruction around kind of um ocean and sea creatures for those couple of weeks um and the hallways decorated kids get to swim in the ocean do some sensory and motor activities out there um and I thought I had added a winter wonderland slide but I might have sent
you not the updated version Dr lang i apologize if that's Yes I I didn't we also have I'm going to go back for a minute we also have a winter wonderland hallway not picture you got to see that picture in our packet oh okay so maybe I sent you two versions okay um but Winter Wonderland is actually a themed hallway
that our PTO does so we have PTO volunteers come in decorate the hallway um make it a winter wonderland so school committee members you can see that in your packet um and they um started doing that a couple years ago um because their children enjoyed um space week and under
the sea so much they wanted to add um another themed hallway without putting more extra work on um on the staff and it's been really great um and then we have touch a truck which is so much fun and um the PTO also organizes this enrichment where we have um lots of
trucks from you know DPW fire department police department officer Azie joins us um and the kids get to climb in them touch them pretend to drive them um it's so much fun last year it rained the we have it at the end of the year um so as you can see it was a rainy day but that
didn't stop anyone we still had a great time um the kids loved it um and it's it's just a lot of fun and then we have started something new this year partway through the year um called book of the month to kind of build on um the classrooms doing more kind of common
activities um the PTO's also helped us out with this by getting by getting some banners for the hallway um these are the books that we have done so far um and one of the best parts of book of the month is that I get to go in and read the book of the month to all of the classrooms um which is so much fun um to
go in and see all the kids now every time I walk in they're like "Do you have a story for us?" Um so that's been a lot of fun um and something we hope to continue and expand on next year i think that's the end yes any questions
for Megan is can I that 190 enrollment is that like something it's growing or how is compared to last year so compared to I actually looked back at my presentation from last year it's a slightly smaller enrollment last year we sent quite a few kids to kindergarten um
last year but it since um I've been the coordinator it definitely has expanded um we've kind of um reorganized a little so that we're able to accommodate more children both um typically developing students and to accommodate more children on IEPs so it it definitely has
grown um we're very fortunate that we're able to fill all our um gen pop spots um most years or we have very few openings so it's very popular um and you know we have I think a really good reputation in town and people
um um always like to sign up for us you do it has a very nice reputation thank you thank you yeah any other questions um not a question but just a comment just so people know so I'm the liazison
to the um PTO and I'll report on that later during the liaison part but I just want to let people know that I've really observed what a great job you do kind of pairing what your staff does and what your parents do and all the parent volunteer things and you managed to
merge those really really well to get great parent participation and involvement in it i think I've really seen some nice things thank you so much appreciate that i think I would like to say our PTO is small but mighty they do they really they're a small group but they do a lot for us um they they
organize a lot of things and they partner really well with our staff we're very fortunate okay great well thank you very much thank you you have Robin Adams who's our director of community education hello thank you tonight thank you for having us um so
I'm going to talk about a quick overview about community ed um you know was me and I were laughing that people always confuse who is chips who is community ed so I'm going to talk a little bit about that and focus on the preschool but community education does a lot of different programs in town so we offer early childhood which is the preschool
at the high school and at the Westlands that we share with Megan we have extended day we have adults education summer programs trips and enrichment so we kind of educate everybody in the town um so for our evening classes that falls
under adult ed but we also have children's courses so I just highlighted a few of them we have adult um art crafts cooking we do trips which just came through a new company this year that we're offering some new trips for a lot of our seniors in the community like to go on those um technology classes
from basic to advanced technology lessons online learning languages we have um one of the big hits has been um sign language we have some really popular students who've been in on level three and four now they go every year they meet outside of the class and they
become their own community finance and estate planning health and wellness and then for our children a lot of the same things but geared down for our children so fitness cooking yoga education music lessons we try and really offer something for all interests of all ages
for our evening classes adult education has a huge um increase on fitness classes this year we find everything we offer is getting gobbled up by the community so we do pound which is a a fitness class where there's weighted drumsticks that you
drum and do things like that on a mat zumba Zumba toning we have strength training ballroom dancing line dancing Pilates um that's just a few of them but and really if you're looking for anything fitness we're your we're your
place we often do it the same night that we're doing the cooking classes so it's a little challenging if you're in the gym and you come out and you smell the cooking class which is what happens a lot um extend day is a huge part of our program a part of what community education is we're at many of the schools
um and these are just a few of the quick pictures so extended day really covers all the elementary schools and then Parker Middle School and we have crafts we have special guests come in we have yoga we have the bookmobile come in we want to really offer as much activities
for those children because a lot of our students come before school go to school all day come to after school till 6:00 so we want to make sure that they're getting all the experiences that they're doing some fun gym games that they're playing with their friends that they're having organized activity and non-organized activity um similar that you could if you were in your own
neighborhood if you were playing you know back when we were young and play outside we really try and model our programs to give the kids the choices of what they really want to do um some of our sites and this goes to the supervisors of the sites and the staff have done a bunch of pro projects
this year giving back so they've done cards and gift bags to the senior center and the meals on wheels that they do or the delivery meal system um on the right is a card for Juny um that you know passed away from center school they did the scarecrow contest and all the kids
did their their thumb prints and made a ladybug in honor of of their classmate that passed away um so really I just wanted to put that on to honor the staff and the supervisors because these are the things that they do on their own they go above and beyond what I ever ask of them and it it blows me away when I
get sent a picture or card of what they're doing um it's pretty special for our pre-teens and teens at extended day we have it at Parker Middle School it's been really nice for us since we've you know reorganized the middle schools because all the fifth and sixth graders are together so they're
not busing over from McCarthy which makes drop off easier for us or you know attendance for the kids that if they were clubs at McCarthy before and came later it was a little more challenging so they're all at Parker they come down we do a lot less structured activity because they are older so you know this
day they were doing oldfashioned board games that one of the staff brought in teach them how to play risk and battleships some games that they haven't really played for a while and um we let them have a lot of time to socialize with each other and go outside and do the gaga ball pit again letting them grow up and letting them you know have
more ownership of what they're doing with their time after school we do yoga as well there so back to the preschool and the cute the cutest kids in the community um our littlest students in the town so we have children ages 18 months to five we
have students at the Wesland School as well as the site that's at the high school Lions Pride North we use the same curriculum as the Chilure public schools for enrichment activities um that's one quick picture of the fire department coming in we have a STEM classroom where we have a STEM educator who's part of my
staff and she'll do hands-on lessons throughout the week for each class they go and visit and use materials in there so these were some some fun ones and just I love watching their faces you know this is the age where they don't even know how much they're learning but you know they just see a pumpkin throwing up green goo but they're
learning about you know chemicals and reactions and mixing colors and um some fantastic things in that classroom this one I want to bring to light because again toddlers I think a lot of people say "Oh it's daycare they just play." This was a theme that the teachers did again on their own beyond
anything I've asked that's an ice augur where they're going ice fishing and the girl on the left they're fishing you know with their fish they caught and cooking in the frying pan in the middle and then on the right they're catching the fish these these children are two years old and they are learning so much because the teachers just love them they love what they do they love being
educators and you know I you know whenever I hear you guys are babysitting or it's daycare I get frustrated because I'm like there's so much more you know we really say we're a school for young children and we start at our you know youngest toddler room and this was just such a prime example of what all the classrooms are doing but uh the ice
auger blew me away i'm like who thought of that like that was pretty clever um this was a preschool classroom again learning through fun gingerbread theme where they're doing numbers in their gingerbread house and the sensory and the dramatic play areas doing counting um just having a great time and getting
exposed to so many different things the goats how can you not love the goats so uh we had the goats come visit us they're going to Lions Pride North in the spring um just for an enrichment and then on the left we have our yoga that's our toddler one class so they are actually in yoga poses they may
just look like they're bending but that is yoga and on the right we had our puppets um a puppeteer come in and they got to use the puppets for the last 15 minutes which was the highlight of the whole the whole presentation for them school age options we talked a little bit about before and after school we have vacation weeks we have
Summerfest and Summer Quest i always feel a little guilty because when we come to this presentation most are filled so Summerfest and Quest are both filled for the summer so if you're interested for next year um we book early but we'll be opening for before and after school care in I believe June this year so for people who are watching
the community that also fills up quickly so some of our highlights for the year um we increased adult education our cafeteria was repainted and is beautiful we have brand new tables uh which looks really nice our programs filled up within
minutes again it's a great thing for me it's challenging for the community but we really work hard to keep our prices really affordable so um for the quality we offer our our programs fill within minutes it's an online system and they just they book um we have been cooking hot lunches again back since our kitchen
was redone so our students have loved that we were able to work with Nancy and adapt our food so it's more preschool friendly that you know we're we're doing some unique food items there she's helped guide us we're doing autopay which is going to be huge for families who come to it um our software wasn't capable of doing that before so parents
had to each month go in and click in and um we've worked with our software company to make it that it can be autopay which will be very nice and then the yoga and we have a new tennis pro which we were looking for so that has been secured and he'll be starting tennis lessons this summer and hopefully through the
fall and that is it so and how cute is he i I had to put him somewhere in the slideshow any questions or great Diana um I'm always very impressed by the breadth of um everything that's offered and my family has directly
benefited from many of these things so thank you i did have a couple of questions that come up frequently when I hear from parents um so uh one of them was always going to be when is booking for extended day next year but I also specifically hear a lot of concerns
about the process for booking and several people have asked me um if there's a reason why there isn't kind of an a first round of it for returners to to like basically secure the same spots
for the following year before there's an open call and a system that can sometimes mean families get one day but not another and things like that for the extended day programming yeah we always try and find a way to make it equitable for everybody um I don't know i I'm
always open to suggestions and we've talked about it because I feel no matter what we do people feel like they can't get in and that's one of the hard things if if we did that and say a family member was sick last year and didn't get booked and then they never get the chance because we give it to the continuing people I don't know if that's
the most equitable way either it's it's hard we've talked about doing a lottery and I kind of go back and forth about that because I don't know i don't know a solution i'm open to to feedback truly from the group because I would like to make it that as many people are as happy
as possible um but there's no real win when when we're just we're filling so quickly like what what's the normal enrollment then you say you filled was that 100 students or so extended day is 500 students and we fill that okay extend
day usually takes a day to fill but summerfest where we had 130 students a day filled within 15 minutes lion's Pride fills within seven minutes typically um they people will take the day off of work they have their husband and wife on two different computers i mean it's it's a competitive getting
Taylor Swift tickets yeah it is it's competitive and and I will say the one thing that's difficult is siblings our software does not have the capability of putting all siblings in together and that I think is one of the biggest things that I'll say we still struggle with how to get them all in so if a family's there and it's one person
and gets puts their son in and has a daughter by the time they go to put the daughter in that that might be filled cuz somebody else down the street is putting their child in so that is something that we struggle with so we do try and help those families with the weight list when the weight list opens up if families drop getting siblings in
um but yeah it's it's a challenge because I would love to take more kids it's it's a yeah I mean I would say the the two things I hear most frequently and I have personally experienced has been the difficulty when somebody might
get like one of the days they've asked for and none of the other days and that feeling of like I don't want to lose this one day but I know I need five days and then I'm holding up a spot that somebody else might need and so those sorts of things and I don't know if there's a way
to set up the system so that it sort of does all or nothing if that's what parents opt for i don't know if that's an option um but that might free up some of that confusion um cuz there would be some parents who would say I'll take any day I get and other parents who would
check the box of I want every day or this isn't going to work for my family and I don't know the other thing I've heard is consistently around the struggle with families having to register in the middle of the workday or what for many I know people work different hours but what for many people
I personally was literally like in the middle of a meeting that I was facilitating and having to like click the box to register so I don't know if there is a way to make it over a period of time or to have half and half with
two different you know half of the openings for a certain time and half of the openings for another i don't know what the right answer is but if there's any way it can be made to be a little bit more accessible to families who work during traditional daytime hours that would be my one
suggestion okay yeah to to respond to that the reason we do it when we do it we used to do it at 7 in the morning so parents could do it before they got to work i think we even started at 600 our software company is not open then they're across the country so when we did have a technical issue we had no support so we this was like four years
ago i probably talked about one of these meetings because it was it was challenging we had to shut down the system it actually blocked their software through the whole country because we had such an in input of people yeah i mean it was a big thing um so we have to do it in a time where they're open and we're open so if
parents are having struggles um they can call us and that leaves the middle of the day i don't I don't have a great solution for that i agree because it's hard and like I said parents will tell me they're like I took the day off or I'm going in late i reid my schedule which is not what we want um online was
supposed to be easier we used to do paper forms and parents would line up outside the door it was open at 9:00 we would take forms at 9:00 and 90% of the wives sent their husbands at 5 in the morning or 4 in the morning they all line up around Comemed when I first started and they would be outside the building so I feel like we've improved
but um it's still not perfect and there's just such a demand that um we always trying to make it better we're trying every year so I appreciate be clear i know it's in demand because it's a great program right but I um I do I mean I personally last year
experienced for the first time my child who I desperately needed in one day not getting into the day that I needed him and eventually he did get off the weight list so I was I was glad that a few weeks later that was resolved but it was my first time experiencing that and it gave me empathy for some of the families
who really did have to patch together care sometimes until October when a spot might open up right um and so I I would love I don't know i don't know what the right solution is but I would definitely um love if there was just some
exploration of what whatever options might be to make it easier for families since the people who use the extended day program are inevitably families who need the care during the workday so that usually means they're working yeah always absolutely and we're working with
our software company they are the most popular company we've researched all different ones um but they're a growing company and I think we use our software in a more advanced way than a lot of other districts do because a lot of districts only allow 5 days 3 days or two days you know Tuesday Thursday Monday Wednesday Friday and by us having
the flexibility it the software isn't designed for that so we've been working with them a lot and they are improving and one of the things we did talk about was increasing the capability so we don't have as many people on the wait list um cuz quickly to expand on that the way the software works and the most they can do is if our maximum we can
take on Friday is four 40 kids because we have four staff we have to cap all five days of 40 initially and then the kids on Monday even if we have seven staff have to go on the weight list we have to move them off the weight list so it's it's not ideal for us it's not ideal for parents we are actively working with trying to do it a different
way this year um but every year we get a little growth from the company and they improve their their system that makes it better for us but so I appreciate the feedback that we are trying yeah no I I recognize that it's not really a critique it's more just like thinking
creatively around what I know are perpetual challenges yes absolutely wow any other questions or comments or if you can talk a little bit about how community is funded so we're self-funded
we're we're a self-funded program so all of our our programs are self- sustaining with the income that parents pay for it okay it's not grants or anything like that right that's amazing it's really just it's a it's one of our revolving funds and they
take in obviously different amounts of revenue for the different programs but they're able to offset the salaries and the benefits and any of the costs for like equipment and supplies right from the revolving fund yeah so it's in order to be able to
expand space limitations and all of these other things is what causes us to not be able to expand yeah for summer spacing with the air conditioning um having a summer program with air conditioning is very beneficial so we use all the rooms that have air conditioning our school and for the
school year it's staffing getting staffing for before and after school care is challenging it's a challenging shift from 7 to 9 or 3 to 6 so as soon as we get staff in we bring more people off the wait list and we we keep bringing them in all year but that's that's what stops us from
Wow around the air conditioning point that's a great point um is if there were more air condition if there were more air conditioned rooms with the capacity increase or is there a staffing limitation as well for summer it's a little bit of both um in the
entire school is not air conditioned at Westlands you know the gym is not and the outdoors obviously in the calf so we have them go to an outside spot and then an indoor spot so there's a balance of both okay right any other questions
right all right thank you very much great information you both for your presentation good luck with your summer fest and summer quest thank you [Music] all right uh kindergarten yeah joanna do you want to share the um reminder about
the upcoming kindergarten registration okay uh thank you so we had um we're going to have another date u May 7th here from 9 to 6 for our third kindergarten registration day the other
two dates are at the end of January families um can sign up it's on an appointment basis it's about 15 minutes and they can come in um and meet with their future school clerk and register their student and just bring everything
in uh that's in required in the packet and then we'll get a better sense of our complete uh kindergarten numbers for next school year how are the numbers looking from the first two uh I think they'll look pretty steady as
other years um one of them's I think a little bit higher yeah um it's but you you never know like and then hopefully more families will come in May u rather than wait till August okay um and they
can come anytime too and meet with Jane our central registar but it's just nice to do it kind of these one big day registrations so maybe by the second meeting in May we'll have an idea of where we're at and what that Yeah we can give you like an update um and we
usually uh in June before we kind of leave for the summer um share like what the numbers are because obviously our kindergartens are based on primarily having four teachers at each grade level but there's been years where we've had to add a fifth um so we usually do that obviously as soon as the numbers warrant it but um after we do this last
registration sometime in May we will look to see if there's any early adjustments that have to be made um so we can bring that to you right right anything else in kindergarten okay right thank you right here you go with the big one yeah this
is always my favorite one i actually think this should fall under good news um but you know we've already passed that part of the agenda so I'm sure you all remember voting on this current year um calendar back in um 2023 but on December 20th 2023 is when you voted
this current year schedule um I'm sorry um calendar so um typically what happens we have to offer 180 school days and schools by regulation have to build in five days for any type of uh school closure whether it's inclement weather if you're in Chsford sometimes we don't
have electricity all of those good things that happen and it gets a little tricky about calling the last day of school because if you have not used all of your days you are still required to use them if something were to happen so as we all know it snowed on um Saturday thank goodness not on um on Friday but
we have only used one non-school day and that was back in February so we technically have four more days so tenatively we can give a last day of school for students and for staff however if for some reason we needed to close school those days would change and
and it's not until June 1st that we would not have to make up those days so anything that happens between now and May 31st we would then have to adjust this calendar however we're feeling very confident it was a beautiful day today yesterday um not so much on Saturday so
if all goes well and we don't have to call any more days the last day for students would be June 17th it's a half day for students full day for our staff and the last day for our staff would be Wednesday June 18th and that is a half day for staff so cross your fingers only
go good weather keep the electricity on no you know wind storms tornadoes all of those things out there that could possibly close down a school first year in what three years we haven't had to add one for biome yeah Bay has reversed sorry sorry by Don't jinx them they're
in good shape reversed the curse couple of years now running so we're in good shape so can I ask a question relatedly um I know we we've already approved the calendar for next year um it is nowhere to be found on the website and that is the second thing I get a lot of
questions about i cannot find it on the website let's put it that way next year's calendar i find this year's very easily it should be the tab to the right it It's may not be intuitive so when you click on the tab for this current school years um because that comes up first that's that prompts you first to the
right there should be a tab yep okay i see it yeah it just doesn't the first one jumps out at you i think what a lot of people were doing because I tried doing the same thing they were doing is googling 2526 academic calendar chford and it does not
come up when you do that i can see it on the website if you go directly though i think some I'm not sure in Dr lang's newsletter but I I feel like it might be like way at the you know buried at the bottom um and I know that some of the schools try to have a separate tab for it but I could you know let them know to
make sure that there's a next year's tab so another way for them to access it instead of trying to find it on the website great but the best way to do it is just click to the right all right any other questions on that comments on last day cross our fingers
cross our fingers all right okay uh budget report yep joanna has a third quarter financials so in the packet is the third quarter financials so there's a memo there is the year-to- date budget report there is
a grant and revolving fund summary and then there's the student activity account balances for the high school and both middle schools um some of this will be pretty familiar to you because um we just had the budget projection
um discussion and meeting so not too much has changed since that which was like a month ago so this is about our $73.88 million local operating budget a few of the variances um I'm just going
to highlight some of the were favorable um for the year some of the um variances are going to look different than the second quarter report because as part of our budget projection you had approved
some budget transfers of these favorable balances to reallocate those funds for the one-time purchases classroom teacher category is still favorable by 34,121 and again just as a reminder we
had transferred some of this money out at the uh end of March meeting so that's been reflected in this third quarter report the main reason that category is still favorable is
um the if a teacher is hired at less than master step three that's a favorable balance the same is true with the specialist teachers category that's still favorable by
$144,897 for the same reasons um the other category that's still favorable is our medical and health services and part of that is because um
newly hired RN was um hired at less than budget and then the mental health service cost contracted services from Caros Solus and Cartwheel was funded from the last year of the ESR3 grant
which ended in um September one area that's unfavorable right now is our transportation costs and we've talked about this before it's unfavorable by $127,689 u mainly because of additional
specialed in district and out of district transportation and then an area that's tough to um forecast is the homeless transportation um budget our employee separation cost
category is favorable by 86,761 and that's for the retirement incentives so um last year we were able to pay the retirement incentive in June which was fiscal 24 rather than July
which is fiscal 25 so that's why that um category has remained favorable and our out of district tuitions um this is this chart has been updated because we did make the journal
entry to transfer some of the actual expenditures over to the circuit breaker fund and so right now the category is favorable by 1.3 million and that money's um it's favorable because we
prepaid tuitions last fiscal 25 tuitions at the end of fiscal 24 so the second chart is probably more helpful overall the tuitions um are
actually a little higher than when what was budgeted even when you factor in the prepaid Overall um our tuitions were forecasting to be about 7.2 million this year and once
you do the offset to circuit breaker and the valley collaborative credit and back out the tuition the prepaid tuitions um we're estimating we're going to be favorable by about 1.4 million and this will likely come in a future meeting to
recommend we prepay some fiscal 26 tuitions in fiscal 25 now in the in the memo it has a 1.3 favorable and then the chart is 1.4 is just is I'm holding a a placeholder a
little bit um oh it's um because we haven't taken all of the Valley Collaborative credit yet okay in the actuals okay um when you come in to sign the warrant you'll see that again we at
the end of the um March reports we still had about 85,000 to go and so once you see that go through it should get a little closer okay and then the last chart is um just an update on where we're at with school
choice revolving fund we don't use it to fund special ed tuitions this year it's being used to fund the onetoone commute com um computer initiative and um we're expecting that balance to um be
at about 2.8 8 million at the end of this fiscal year any questions on the local budget yes no thank you um the next page is um the grant and revolving
funds for the quarter um the very top are the um the carryover grants and then the new entitlement grants for fiscal 25 the lower section on page one is some
of the private grants and circuit breakers in there just the circuit breaker money comes quarterly and of course the third quarter funds came like April 2nd so it's not in this particular quarterly report but it's on
schedule and then the last page are the revolving funds such as school nutrition athletics community ed and all of those there are no deficit balances just question we we recently got some
money from the builder over at West Campus what account did that end up going into so what were the the money was $180,000 came from the developer who's developing 255 Princeton Street they sent more than 180,000 but
the school department's portion for the agreement is 180,000 the town also received funds for transportation remedi um things like that i'm not sure exactly what their number is but there's two numbers uh after talking to the town accountant uh we are putting it in a
gift and donation account it's not on here yet because the money was deposited in the bank April 1st so that wasn't the March report but I'm going to add a line under um 503 is our regular gift and donations and I'll label it it's gonna
have its own account number in um the ledger okay and we'll just call it you know Princeton okay whatever so everybody can see that 180,000 great and there's no um it's not time bound there's no end date of when you have to
spend the funds any questions on grants or revolving funds i have a question about that last is that a one-time payment for that from that Princeton for development department yes it's my understanding it
is it was part of the um when the Treml group was going through all their different agreements with the town um to secure that property um the town was asked to bring forward any kind of extraordinary costs that might come uh from that i know on the school side we talked a little bit about we had to do
an enrollment projection there was a cost associated with that that was going to originally cost somewhere like in the $40 to $60,000 range and we wanted to make sure any of those immediate costs would be covered um and this was something Maria actually mentioned at the time too once we actually start enrolling kids from the school there's
going to be other costs to us and they could come up mid year so even outside of like a regular traditional budget where it can be planned for what could we do to kind of mitigate some of those expenses we may have to add a bus we may have to add you know a teacher or something like that because again we don't know what grade levels the kids will be coming in or what schools they
necessarily would be going to so in the end um the group ended up um agreeing to provide the school under kind of the school committee's control $180,000 that would cover the cost of any of those kind of short-term things on the town side there was there was some type of a traffic study that had to
be done there were other things that um that they needed to have covered so that's why the check was larger but the school uh committee basically has $180,000 at its disposal to use in the future as kids start to go to that property however we would need it um the the cost just needs to be somewhat
associated with the education of those kids as they come into the system and where they end up going um but that'll be nice and as Joanner indicated it'll just sit in one of the kind of special grant accounts um we haven't started enrolling yet so we don't know exactly when that will happen next school year I would think i wouldn't anticipate it
being sometime in the summer or fall as um as they start to lease out those properties we'll monitor it very closely but um at least we do have that little bit of a um you know kind of an emergency fund to help us uh short term uh as things come up do we have any idea
of how many units have already been built and how many will come online and whether they're single bedroom twobedroom what they are i don't I don't know like the phasing of what's like available now or even going to be coming up first um in the agreement I just
don't have it off top of my head it talked about how many um studio one two-bedroom units there were i just don't recall off the top of my head but um I have to say I think it's going to be opening at about the same time you know I don't think this is at this point
like two or three years down the line or it's going to be that staggered i think with probably within you know six months or a year's time the properties are going to become um available and probably filled i'll email you if you'd like um and just give you like the actual number of units and anticipated
um when they're going to be coming online i just don't have it off the top of my head yeah because they pro they probably have they know when the occupancies are going to be issued so no no I'm sure they do i just don't remember what it was i can wonderful and if they were to come online say over the
summer do we have the capacity at say the Harrington where it' be elementary kid would go to absorb 10 kids 15 kids yeah it all just depends honestly um in the end like they're unlikely to all be like at the same school at the same
grade so yes we'd be able to absorb um kids here and there yeah I don't think we're going to get to the point where it's going to be you know 50 or 75 or 100 kids all coming or certainly not all coming at the same grade level like we have plenty of capacity at the high school if they happen to be older kids um you know our middle schools are going
to be a little bit tighter our elementary schools are going to be a little bit tighter um a couple of kids here and there per grade level is not going to throw things off my bigger concern is going to be if we ever saw um like a number of kids coming predominantly at the elementary school level then no Harrington would have an
issue with that we would have to kind of figure out what to do with that that's what we had kind of talked to 1.2 too that even as they're starting to enroll we may need to you know kind of annex that property and think about having the kids go to a different school um like South Row has more capacity than
Harrington does um we could have a bus pickup because they're going to have to be bust anyway based on proximity we could have a bus pickup and go right down Route Three to South Row as opposed to cutting through town to Harrington so we are kind of doing some scenario planning it's all just going to matter on kind of where they come from and
again if it's a handful of kids at a grade level it's not going to throw us off but if it ever ended up being you know huge numbers which I truly don't think is going to happen but if it ended up being big numbers we would have to adjust okay but I'll I'll email you the uh the total
in the end um number of units and then also the phase opening of when they anticipate great right just one of the unrevolving um turf fields uh how are we doing like we so um there's a couple uh
people who rented in the fall who still need to pay and um Dan's doing his best to collect and I'll step in um if and
when needed and then um he will we'll just start up for the spring and then that gets um build in the I think around June because we try to get it in before the end of the fiscal year if we can and
but sometimes it spills over so we paid off the notes in those fields right for the school department side so now we're just accumulating the fees that's right to reserve for if we have to redo the turf or Right and we do pay for um the like a maintenance okay annual
maintenance we share the cost with the town to do things to maintain the fields to extend their life okay what do we think we have left on those lifetime wise it's coming up sooner than you would think so I I think it was like
2012ish when they went in we kind of fortunate we had a couple of down years with co that they didn't have a lot of play time but um the from what I understand the um the turf at McCarthy is um probably a needed replacement before the turf in the stadium largely
because this turf in the stadium although it gets a lot of high school use it's more protected from kind of community use if you do walk through town you see just a lot of people playing on the field at McCarthy so it just it's taking more of a beating um what we're going to So I would to be
honest with you we have it inspected every year it gets tested every year to make sure that it's uh meets all of our insurance requirements and it still does but I would think we're probably two or three years out from having to do uh something at least at McCarthy and then the high school field will not be that farther along it is not going to be as
um big of a project as it was to originally put them in because all the site work has been done all the drainage is already in ground you're basically rolling they call it a carpet but you're rolling up the carpet and you're putting down a new carpet so it's not going to be quite as um big of a project as it
was the first time we would actually probably um look to see if there's any economy or scale of doing them at the same time because if you have a company out here to actually do all the the work that's involved there may be a little bit of savings there and if it was going to be a situation where you had to replace one one year and one the next
year you know it might just make sense to do that but um it's something that's on our list it's on the town's capital list so we have that that we track um but I'm gonna say within two or three years we're probably going to have to move on McCarthy followed shortly thereafter by the high school and the originally uh they were anticipating
like a 10-year um um kind of use and we're um we're at that you know we're actually we're over that 10 years but we kind of um were fortunate that they didn't get heavy use during CO so we had a couple of years that were off okay thank you uh the maintenance plan which we do
Joanna mentioned um charge our portion to that fund certainly helps to keep the the playing surfaces you know clean and orderly and um um helps with the compaction of the different material that they use so that's helping us to extend the life thank you
and then the last report is the balances of the student activity accounts so the high school is at uh 257,000 the McCarthy is at 36,000 and the Parker is at 67,000 and then you
can see all the uh clubs or teams underneath um in the detail on each page right any questions on the activity counts okay right well thank you very much
thank you thank you Joanna uh next report before you this evening number six is the personnel report um and this is just some of the detail of the hiring uh that we're still actually doing a little bit of hiring to replace individuals as they uh leave so this is still current year hiring um we
had a few pair of professionals hired at different schools under the new hires and then we did have a handful of resignations as well and this is all happening um during the current year um we are well underway for the hiring for the fall so you're going to start to see effective dates of the end of August
those are going to be all the new staff that are going to be joining us but this is the detail of transactions uh people who um were hired and then resigned for the month of March given what's going on at some districts that there have been some layoffs and so
on are you finding it that there's more people out there looking for work or um is it a bigger pool i have to say it honestly depends on the job so like what we're seeing is um for some of the um more general positions like if we don't
have any we really only had one elementary school say like a third or fourth grade position we're kind of going back to the to the precoid days where you may have you know 40 to 60 candidates for a job which is great to be able to pull from so that's excellent but when you get into some of the
specialty positions we're still having a hard time getting a good crowd of applicants so um we have we're having a difficult time or we are with um like say some of the specialty special ed positions like the languagebased position we um created McCarthy um
they're only looking at I think two or three applicants so it's really you got to kind of seize quickly and see if you've got a candidate there to be able to move on um you know the world language positions whether they're French or Spanish those are still very hard to um to fill
um again the general special ed positions we're getting a decent pool of candidates for but some of the specialty ones like we have a strive position at South Row so that's a little bit harder to uh to fill so I'm not overly surprised i mean the pool is definitely better than it was two years ago but for
those specialty jobs there's still you know we we have to make sure we're going to the job fairs we have to make sure that we're reaching out to the colleges to get the kids as they're coming out of their programs to really see us as a venue to um to come work in um so that work is happening okay um we're
certainly ahead of the curve when it comes to the other Marramac Valley communities and the hiring so I think like um logistically in our area we're doing well and as you mentioned uh you know we are seeing a good number of applicants from the districts who are
laying off staff so um you know most notably around us recently is like North Andover we had a um a number of applicants come from North Andover so um they tend to be applicants who um probably have least seniority in their districts so they're the first to be
laid off but oftentimes they're an attractive pool because they're um they're younger they're coming out of colleges they're you know recently trained um and they have a little bit of classroom experience as well so um not necessarily a bad story for us a bad story for the other districts who can't
maintain them but um all in all I'm I'm fairly happy with where we are that's great all right any other questions on personnel right moving along moving on um next before you I put together a draft
meeting schedule for uh the coming school year which will start well technically the fiscal year July 1st um right through the following June 30th so on the schedule just make a couple of notes for you um consistently the last few years and I did this in this schedule as well the um the February and
April school vacation weeks would normally fall on the second um I'm sorry the third Monday of the month so we bumped those to the fourth I'm sorry I didn't say Monday Tuesday uh Monday of the month i know you know what I mean so um and that's worked out well for the budget hearing in February because we
usually do the recommend recommended budget the first meeting then you have plenty of time to review it and we come back to that meeting um April as well would be um uh fine the in April on the 1st we have to move
because we have uh the election that day to the second Tuesday which is fine and that actually helps us spread out the month of April having it be the second and the fourth after the break um November is a tough one for us next year so um what I actually recommended you do in November is uh just schedule for the
time being one meeting and if we ever needed to add a meeting for any kind of business purpose we could but the first Tuesday in November is election day so we can't meet that day the second Tuesday in November is Veterans Day so that's a holiday and we can't meet on the holiday and then we'd obviously be
meeting the third but the fourth one would be the Tuesday before Thanksgiving and that's already just a short week so for scheduling purposes and I even looked at what we normally have on the agenda those days unless we had something urgent like business-wise which we could always just schedule a special meeting I think we'd be fine
getting through November with just the uh the one meeting date scheduled um and those are really the only um the only changes we had to the uh to the calendar for you to consider can I ask so in general I think I don't have any complaints about the schedule
i'm curious if there's logic for why in March we didn't move the meetings each to be one week later because that would enable us to have more even spacing so if you look at like March is meeting right now so February 24th
um March 3rd is the immediate week following mhm and if we moved that instead to be March 10th and then the second meeting to be March 24th March 31st is a Tuesday so we would skip that week and that would put us at an even
cadence to then do April 7th is there I'm just curious if there's a benefit to spacing them like that so that we're not having a couple of backtoback ones but instead really it's every other week right i I have one concern about that though for people who
like to keep track of and watch school committee if almost always it's the first and the third we're only disrupting it a few times if the more we add to disrupt that the more we're confusing people who are might be viewers and there are people who are
regular viewers there are a lot of people that actually watch um it's really twofold one was that just to kind of keep the first and third the other thing was when we do move uh people are kind of used to us moving around the vacation weeks that makes sense but when we move on the other ones it does affect
the other boards that meet on those days because there is again a viewing audience at home that watches another particular meeting say at this time so we just try not to conflict and then the only other thing I would say about the march it just happens to be the five Tuesdays this year so that that kind of worked out but if we ever weren't done
the budget deliberations at the last meeting in February usually we try to we always kind of have a rain date or a snow date to come in that first meeting in March to do it it just then would kind of delay by another week maybe going to fin so that's why we just typically have
kept the um um the first meeting in in March okay i was just making sure there would be no problem with us going for example March 17th to April 7th which is a 3-week gap are there usually issues if there's a
three-week gap between meetings i guess there's been a couple it Well it happens it happens like twice a year because of the way the five Tuesdays fall but um No i mean if we haven't really had to have a business meeting too we certainly could just schedule another meeting but this just keeps more of the traditional
schedule going okay largely for the um for the viewing audience and things like that can you have it that's fine with me it was a point of curiosity i'm not particularly concerned what's that elections what's what what elections april 7th yeah do you have a school committee scheduled no you can
have a school committee on the same day as election day i thought we said the first was the election day when we talked that's a Wednesday isn't the election day it was on the Okay was it yeah i just want to make sure that we don't have if we're going to change it we didn't change it which day might conflict with an election april 7th it
that's an election it's the first Tuesday of the month oh it is the first time oh I thought there was some note about that in here yeah remember we talked about that i'm in 2026 right it's going to be April 7th i've also moved the first meeting in April's the
second Tuesday so okay yeah that's right though april 7th is the first Tuesday so we have an election oh it is so we have to go the second and the fourth we don't have an election which is fine right sorry i I may have actually just said it in my memo but not reflected it on the
um the chat that's what happened you put it in the memo but the date that's in the list should be the 14th and 28th you'd have to do 14th 20 because 21 is school vacation i already did that so instead of April 7th it would be
April 14th april 14th that's fine but there has to be one yeah yeah um so that must have been my error because I made them I made the re u the note of it in the memo pot but I didn't carry it down below so um if you'd entertain just accepting it with the um
the edit of moving the April 7th to April 14th I would adjust the uh schedule before we post it okay that sounds fine to me any other thoughts you can see we're just doing one July as usual which is good yeah we only do one in July and then again I
think there's five Tuesdays um this coming July um yes there are so the recommendation was to go um on the actually on the 22nd which is the fourth one um two reasons
on that one we actually have our um superintendent conference the week of the 14th so it'll be difficult for um for us to have a meeting on the 15th it also gives us an extra week to just work on our end of the year close out of accounts and reporting and things like that um and it still gives us an extra week in between getting that meeting on
the 5th going so um that was the recommendation for the for the 22nd whatever makes Joanna's job easier to recover from um bring as much as I can preliminary in June so that the July will just
hopefully be just a readout okay great all right any other thoughts on the calendar okay I'll take a motion with the I move that we um accept the school committee calendar for the 20 2526
school year um for the school committee meetings as amended i'll second great okay any other thoughts or questions all those in favor i I'll get that amended i'll get it posted
up to the site and I'll put that in the dropbox just so you have it for your own scheduling okay all right the other thing we put on there is our currently on assignments uh to see if anybody wants any changes or they happy with what they have any thoughts questions
I'm personally happy with my liaison assignments but I can be flexible if somebody would like to make a change any other Well hold off to to vote on it because John's not here but I just want to you know might as well put it out here if if you look at it or want to
look at it a little closer and then there's something that pops out and you're like you know I'd really like to to do that then then let me know and we can uh discuss at the next meeting right so this is what we have currently have but you know if you're looking and say you know I I'd really like to be on the
I don't know the finance committee thing or whatever you know whatever you think you're okay with your assignments i I I'm very flexible well not really physical but I'm flexible with this can't touch my toes but I can I can switch meetings but yeah no just Yeah
just if you want to email me um Okay i want to talk to John about the um Chsford High School PTO say what yeah yeah so we'll wait till John gets here to make a vote so but this is what we have currently okay all right uh Valley Collaborative I
believe is next yeah so we have the report that uh Dr chris Scott shared with us on the Valley Collaborative business this is their third quarter report um it just contains their spring newsletter their third quarter financial memo and then their treasur's report
from uh March 2024 um and there's a little bit of an update with regard to fiscal 26 uh budget and tuition rates this is a packet that they send us quarterly that as a member district uh we're required to put on one of our school committee agendas and then have the school committee vote to um
acknowledge receipt of the report okay any questions or thoughts on the valley collaborative so what happens or when are we notified of the amount and what happens with the reimbursement to the districts for the
overt tuition so um couple different things on that we actually we had a board meeting last Thursday and we approved a preliminary um million dollars like a minimum million dollars going back to districts um so there was an actual allocation of
that like Chelsea's portion off the top of my head I want to say it was about $180,000 was that million um and then we're not going to know the final number until the fall because June 30th has to close they've got to go through their audit to try to figure out exactly how much the excess um revenue that they
have is um and then the board has to vote and we usually do that I want to say in October so we would vote to accept the audits we would vote to accept the final allocation of funds and anything above that million would get voted back to the districts and then we would find out so for right now I want to say it's ballpark kind of guaranteed
180 we had budgeted 300 um and we'll kind of figure out how close we're going to be to that um again like probably in October and we had done 300 last year and Joanna do you know that I know you had it in your report but I just don't have in front of me what was the actual number of the credit this year 294
okay okay so I mean it came in within $10,000 of that amount but um that will get certified sometime in the fall okay thank you anybody else i just wanted to say congratulations i saw the the little thing in the newsletter about the six
audits they're all exemplary on all those audits those are they really those are those are you know I know from having some a little experience over there that you know that's a nervous time for them with having the audits and people come in and check things so to get six audits like that that's that's pretty pretty impressive yeah and I mean
it's certainly there's always like a financial component to them but there's even a programmatic component which is very uh strenuous to have to go through when you're doing licensing and things like that with the state um so no they they've really done a very nice job at um at Valley
i've heard a couple of people who have uh family members in the Valley Collaborative and they can only say great things about it mhm so I have never heard a bad comment on it while I've been on the school committee no I I We have a number of our students that
attend various programs that they offer that are excellent there's adult programming as well and um really just um excellent excellent staff excellent students and young adults in the programs um it's it's very wellrun seems we're fortunate because
that is one of the collaboratives in the state that's actually fiscally solvent you know there are a lot of collaborives that are really struggling financially so not only do you have a school budget that might be tight but we're really responsible for making sure the collaborative um stays financially intact as well so that if a
collaborative doesn't districts sometimes have to actually vote to um expend money their collaboratives so that's like an extra you know kind of financial burden on districts but we haven't had to worry about that ironically they've been doing um so well they've been giving money back to us that's great amazing so that's good do
we have to vote to accept this as a report yeah you need to at least vote to accept um you vote to accept that you've um received the report you're not technically voting to authorize or anything you're voting to receive the report okay um I move that we uh accept
the quarterly reports on the collaborative business for FY25 third quarter as presented second right all those in favor i thank you very much lastly field trips
yeah we have a number of field trips you can either take them individually or collectively i'll run through them real quick for you um this is the first one is McCarthy Middle School the eighth grade uh class trip to Mel's Funway in Lichfield New Hampshire again as we're going through these um these happen to
just be day trips but they are out of state so that's why you're approving them and then we have the number of field trips that are all the community ed field trips so the first one is Summerfest um on July 31st going to Canibby Lake in Salem New Hampshire and then the next batch are all summer quest
this is the one that's more field trip driven so uh we have a trip to Canoby Lake on July 10 24 and August 6th i'm going to Stevens Park and Chunky Cinema in Manchester on July 14th uh going to Seven Rivers Paddling on July 16th
that's in Portsouth New Hampshire uh the Oceanarium on July 22nd in Hampton New Hampshire and then uh back to Mel's Funway on July 23rd which is in Lfield New Hampshire all right why don't we do the McCarthy one separate and then we'll do all the community ed ones okay
i make I move that we approve the field trip um McCarthy Middle School 8th grade students June 12th 2025 Mel's Funway in Lichfield New Hampshire i'll second okay all those in favor i I Okay and I think
we can just group all the community ed yes i move that we approve the field trips uh numbered through through seven on the approval of field trips request form um for community education
program for July 31st uh all the way through I don't know what it is July I think that's the last date as presented in July and August of 2025 right okay so all those in we need a
second i'm sorry i will second okay all those in favor of community ed program field trips i was zero new Hampshire is getting a lot of business from us all the fun stuff's up there i guess it is a lot of fun stuff all right uh question
related to field trips just a very quick one is the Is there still a plan for the eighth graders to go to Quebec yes that was approved yes they did i remember saying actually they did put it was a few meetings ago
no I know we voted on it i didn't know if plans had shifted i have not heard anything about the plans shifting i'm assuming that I have heard some districts have not been able to continue with plans to go to Canada so I was just curious oh not because of the old district but because of the because of just political situation at the border
and things like that i haven't heard of anything i haven't heard from the coordinator i think she would have got in touch with me okay i'll double check though if I can find something I'll let you know that's a good question i didn't even think of that no i mean our students are leaving for Costa Rica this week too i think they'll probably just plan to spend longer at the border than
they maybe otherwise would have all right anything else on field trips all right any liaison reports i do yeah okay i have a few um first I've been liaison to the town strategic
plan steering committee we had our final meeting tonight and the strategic plan is complete um it was presented to the select board last night um we just reviewed it and made some edits at our final meeting today and it will be
briefly presented at town meeting at the end of the month and then it will be available on the town website and our town manager and his staff and departments will begin the implementation phase so you can be looking um for seeing that um at as I
said at town meeting and on the town website so So for us as a committee that means we're going to have a meeting with a select board this coming year is that what it is so there is
a um objective that the town government and the school department will collaborate more and that will be done by having a semianual meeting twice a year meetings with the superintendent
and the school committee meeting with the town manager and the select board to just review progress toward each other's um strategic plans and see if there's any way to make recommendations or help each other out for the betterment of the
town as a whole that's the proposal i do not know i would imagine the town manager and the superintendent will uh communicate when that will happen okay this does won't actually be implemented
um until sometime in 2026 okay the plan itself because they still have to go through the the implementation process with the town manager um but the steering committee to produce the plan has completed its job
well thank you for serving on that i know those it was interesting it was good to hear viewpoints from um a lot of different people in town either on different boards or committees or just community members um so I learned a lot of things about say conservation in town
there were a few people who were really interested in a lot of the green initiatives and some of those things so it was a great learning process for me and I think the group as a whole worked really well together um and the plan has similar to the school's strategic plan
it has measurable performance um objectives action you know items some of the original things we saw in the proposal from the company that we worked with some of the plans they done in other towns didn't have action items
they had more general goals but we were really insistent that we wanted specific objectives with action items um and this will have that so I think for the town it's good that there are very specific things that will need to be done now so
do they end up talking at all about um like are they going to do excuse me like a progress monitoring piece like we're doing with any kind of outside group not with the outside group the outside group is still going to meet with the town manager they've got some tools okay templates and things but they're not
going to stay on to facilitate for that process it's going to be the town manager um and his staff okay will be responsible but there is a recommended schedule for different uh stakeholders um on how often they
would meet present to the select board things like that so that there is a schedule to kind of keep them on a timeline but no assistance from the consulting group at that at that point um Susan I think that I felt like I I
was part of it because of your reporting and what you how you handled it so I really really want to thank you for doing that you're welcome appreciate it no I think it was a good thing for the town because there was nothing to pull all the different town staff members and
committees together with one umbrella because there are a lot of master plans and implementation plans and all different departments throughout the town but nothing's been there to pull them together and this hopefully will help that be accomplished great all
right then I had Harrington meeting last week tell you these PTOs are busy in a really great way so they have a lot of um events coming up there's a dine to donate night coming up on May 19th at the
establishment there um a lot of great things going on with their fourth grade community for the end of the year there's going to be a readathon coming up and Harrington School is choosing to change tweak it a little bit um to
emphasize the reading part of it it it is a fundraiser kids will be asked to do pledges but there's now an opportunity for kids to be entered into raffles for prizes simply by participation they really want to emphasize the reading not the money part of it it's still a
fundraiser but this way kids who can't get as many pledges still have the motivation to participate and read because they know they can win some of the prizes without having to bring money in and I think that's just a nice focus um to encourage the reading part of
it harington School's calendar raffle fundraiser is ongoing there's a someone draw new to win prizes every single day the month of April they raised $10,020 through that calendar raffle so
that's great um and they are ready to have a slate of officers for next year um they're working on filling they need a teacher appreciation coordinator they need a secretary they need a treasurer so if anyone watching really wants to
get involved in Harington PTO please step up uh last night I went to the um CHIPS PTO meeting we heard um from them tonight about a lot of the types of things they're doing and as I said their
PTO and their teachers work together so well in kind of planning things out even right down to spirit days you know that that the PTO gets really involved in helping choose what days will be different themes they do a really wonderful job um at that
one thing that was interesting that was reported about that um and Maria you may end up reporting about this that the council of Chelmsford schools so all the PTOs participate by sending people to the council of chsford schools meeting
are really really pushing for better communication they're really urging the PTO's to have better communication in two ways one is that PTO's will communicate with each other for more efficiency Sometimes they might be able to get better pricing if three schools are doing a Roller Kingdom event maybe
they can get better pricing by booking them together so they're really encouraging PTO's to communicate with each other but they're also encouraging um PTO's through their school newsletters to share a lot more about
what it is that PTO's do and how they give back to the school so that families can really hear about fundraising efforts and exactly what all that money is being spent on so I for chips for instance um Megan is going to start
adding how the money from the PTO fundraisers helps the school into her regular newsletters and emails just to get the word out better to people so that's good news that only helps everyone all right that's the major things annie everything yeah I have a
few um sorry um so I got to hear about South Row Parker and McCarthy over the past week or so um I heard at each uh from each school that the MCCAST has gone well so far so that is good news
and it sounds like there are comparatively low absence rates which is which is a good thing a lot of them are talking about how few students needed to do makeups um at SRO in particular where I met with them on the 7th um their multicultural
fest was a big success and I will not list everything they talked about that they've been doing as Susan said very busy times at these PTOs um lots of events um a couple of specific things to name um they are
assembling a committee to plan what to do with that $20,000 windfall they got from um that uh person who did box um box tops and so they are um trying to
assemble a committee that represents you know a wide array of members of the community to make a decision about something that will meet the school's needs but be you know interesting and creative use for those funds um let's see so that was the big thing
at South Row at McCarthy um they are in the middle of planning grade six move ups and also special activities for their eighth graders so sort of looking at both sides of the school in that sense um another interesting thing is
they are bringing a book fair to McCarthy for the first time in a while there was some uncertainty about how popular it would be um but they felt like they really wanted to encourage the reading and get students in so they're trying it out at Parker um they talked
about how well the STEM fair went it was the first one in a while at um Parker and it was very popular they anticipate even more interest next year um as someone who was there it was jam-packed and there were great projects really a wide diversity of project ideas um so
very exciting um it's the start of the fourth term um and as we heard earlier uh high schoolers have started their internships and there are 18 CHS students interning at
Parker and that is going well students seem to really like having teens um supporting them and being part of their school um there is a spring panorama survey happening Thursday and um or maybe it
was last Thursday some point recently and there's going to be new uh grade level socials coming up and then the big thing at Parker that they're trying to do is this big fest called we are Parker um on the 11th of June it's going to
involve food trucks representing um kind of the culinary interests of different um cultures and communities that go to Parker there's going to be a cabaret there's going to be outdoor games and the idea is to get as many of the community together outdoors when the
weather is nice it's wonderful so for me the update from center the next big uh event is jointly done with McCarthy the signs are up it's May 3rd and that's recycled junk day
quote unquote um and it's become really more than anything a community event so May 3rd um they're looking for a couple of people to help um still volunteer so they're they asked for that um the way central does it they don't meet every
single month so this is just a short update uh for the high school they have their big event coming up which will be the after prom and usually around couple hundred students participate with their
guests um and this I believe they've now decided they've made a decision that they're going to do their big tournament fundraiser at the beginning of the year instead of running it for this year to support the after prom this year so beginning of next year they'll have that
pickle ball uh tournament coming up okay so we can all look for that uh council of schools gave us an update but the update is basically about um how many attendees there were in of parents uh in the evening it was like 15
parents attended uh they gave a couple of items but we'll share this with you at the next meeting because we need to kind of digest a couple of things that were said here okay yep good all right um I intended to go to
the finance committee meeting with the superintendent the other day but I was not able to attend but I did watch them on TV did a very nice job presenting the budget to the the finance committee and they were very um open to to it's always a good group yeah so we we go just as um matter of kind of presenting our
overall budget um talk a little bit about some of the um cost drivers and things like that like the town does um ultimately the school committee has the line item autonomy and authority over the budget um but we go to town meeting you know they always ask for recommendation from the select board and
the fincom and the school committee so um it's a good relationship we have with them yep and then we had our uh school building committee meeting uh a few weeks ago uh we officially approved Leftfield I believe it is left field is our project manager so we're going to be meeting with them again next week and they're going to do a little
presentation of the kind of work they're going to do um in terms of helping us hire a designer and beginning to get the word out to the community and you know really starting to to get going on the project so yeah the next Thursday's meeting is actually going to be a big one so even if you're I know like Dennis
is the leazison to the group but if you have a chance to watch the meeting um it left field is going to walk us through kind of their whole approach to managing this project timelines um who's involved designer selection i'm going to guess it's going to be about an hour and 15 minutes to an hour and a half it is
going to be televised um or taped so you can go and watch it it's a week from Thursday um Oh so it's in the middle of vacation yeah it's in the middle of vacation week six six o'clock i'll be back home again uh well I may need some addition but it's going to be taped so
even just in your downtime um it's going to be just a very informative meeting to I think uh introduce you to the left field team again like their approach how we're going to um go through our project so that'll be a big one looking forward to that so yes having just come out of um the the the
elections I think that the sense I got was that the town truly does want a lot of people in the town do want to see a new building um which I felt really good about hearing that they know they
understand and they see the need for it and what it brings to the town yeah let's hope they keep keep that that's what I That was my sense absolutely yeah all right um anyone have any new items i just want to go over so our next
meeting is the 29th mhm the day before is the first meeting of night of town meeting right so we that's usually we go there as we're going to present the budget and the capital budget all that so that will be the the Monday at
7:30 okay 7:30 town meeting and then our meeting would be Tuesday the 29th um the way this superintendent is going to schedule a fairly light meeting so we can have an executive session towards the end of that and talk about some things that we need to talk about okay yeah so can I ask a question about town
meeting do we have an agenda yet for when the topics will be discussed that directly connect to the school committee it be the warrant it's the warrant so basically we're usually first night beginning so we should basically be that that Monday night
um that will be the budget that will be the capital plan all of those items um there's a couple of other war articles that I'm kind of watching that aren't really directly related to schools but I think that are going to be later on like there is an article that
talks about um lighting in town and um I don't again I'm trying to follow it and get caught up on it now but I just don't know how like um school facility lighting would be impacted and things like that like our fields and stuff so I'm I'm just kind of perusing the warrant article to see what's not
specifically us like all of our items direct items are the first night and typically it happens early on um that first night under the reports of the the committees um Pat Maloney who's the chair of the school building committee will provide a little update on the school building project um so most of our stuff is really that first night but
I just want to look and kind of gauge to see when other items that might touch on schools um would be coming up okay thank you all right anybody have anything else all right i don't see any emails or any other comments so I will take a
motion to adjurnn i move that we adjourn i'll second okay all those in favor I zero all right thank you thank you