to call the joint school committee to order and could I have each chair call their committee to order please weightley calls our meeting to order all right so we'll go in reverse order sunderland next
area online li is online okay deerfield call for the order at 6:05 elaine you're online yep conway to order at 60 thank you and going backwards in
frontier frontier uh to order at 605 excellent um so the first order of business is to reorganize and to select a chair of the union 38 and as we for those watching those part of this process the 38 chair runs the joint
meetings that we have together so um taking nominations for chair i nominate Carrie i'll second all right we got a first and second for Carrie any other nominations seeing none anybody online you're going to have to speak up if you
uh want to jump in or raise your hand by pressing the hand button um anybody online any other nominations seeing none I'll close nominations all those in favor for Carrie to be chair
i and then online Deian Phil Elaine Bill thank you so I will hand the meeting over to Carrie carrie you're going to need a vice chair and a secretary all righty thank you everyone uh call for nominations for vice chair you can
nominate yourself if anyone's interested who was it we have not had a vice chair formally in a while i nominate Jess as vice chair i'll second it if she wants
okay any other nominations all right all in favor then online yes bill yes bill yes damian you want to put your hand up yes thank you thank you uh now for secretary we have not actually had a formal secretary for
a while uh recently the secretary of frontier has done minutes for these meetings he was not available tonight when I realized that I reached out to a few people and just to make sure someone would be lined up and he volunteered to take minutes but if anyone else would like a chance to be secretary you may i
so I call for nominations for a secretary second it thank you any other nominations do you have All right all in favor all right and now I you know I missed
Amanda and Lu they were off my screen i changed my screen so I can see them so um those in favor for the secretary Amanda yes lu you had my hand was up a second ago yes bill yes bill yes deian
yes and Elaine yes and can I just get Amanda and Lua your votes for chair and vice chair were you in favor of those yes okay i'm sorry I missed you on that okay thank you uh before we move on I
just have a couple notes I want to make uh couple changes to the agenda um public comment was not printed on the agenda but we will have a public comment period um we'll do it right after this or after the we'll do it after we review the minutes uh so up early on um I would
like to propose a tweak to the agenda under new business uh I would like to propose that the strategic plan presentation and professional development plan plan presentation come first before the school committee professional development and update on legislation uh in the interest of just getting our guests out of here and not
have to wait for us if there's no objection to that we'll do that uh I would like to propose for voting tonight that we vote by committee the calendars we have to vote by committee anyway um but if it works for everyone I
will just call a vote by committee look for a first and second and a vote for by committee rather than handing it off uh and also I just want to point out that uh this is a big meeting and we have uh some exciting things we're talking about uh and there's a lot of
voices here everyone's voice is important we want to hear everyone but in the interest of keeping things moving we will have a chance for each of us to talk about these things in our individual meetings so if you have a question or comment just keep in mind the time and we don't want to be here all
night maybe you don't okay those are my comments uh all right next up we are uh reviewing and approving the minutes of April 9th 2024 and September 11th 2024 so moved secondar
off one of those from a year ago and I also noticed that it says that Conway does not have a quorum at the beginning and they they did i I recall we started without a quorum but then there by the time we voted there wasn't enough so yeah I remember approve the
minutes with those adjustments anything else all right we had a motion in a second um we should probably motion to accept the minutes with the changes so move i'll second that
all right all in favor online phil yes yes bill yes lua yes deian yes and Elaine yes all right now we'll open the floor for public comment if there's anyone who want to speak I'm not seeing anyone in the room
or in the online hands hold on we need you for your presentation you should watch your phone all right okay so next up we have uh a presentation on regionalization i'm going to let Darius introduce this all
right so you know we've been talking about um as we went through this year and through the and through past years we've talked about regionalization talking about the unique dynamics of this district and the difficulty of five school committees and just this the just what you're seeing tonight and this is
orchestrated in calm times with calm people um and so you know our attorney Russell Duprey who's with sitting next to me here those who haven't met him before um has done uh regional agreements um in situations like ours
and I thought it would be great to have him come and explain what could be done um his present he'll give a presentation and then a lot time for answering questions we're not deciding tonight anything so anybody's watching or has concerns about that we are looking to
get more information we'll go into our May meetings and as our smaller committees discuss if this is something we want to pursue i I I kind of imagine how to go after that we'd have the chairs maybe get together after that May meetings to decide is this something we want to put on our agenda of work for
next year um but really I'm jumping ahead because I don't know anything that Russ has to say i've just given he's just given me examples and Sarah's going to get you a water Russ right i can see she's good like that um I think I'm gonna grab one of those candies too we
got the candies down this side of the table got candies and so they probably should share the other side of the table so that is the uh if Russ survives here um that's kind of the ideas behind it if you have questions or comments concerns just
certainly bring them up but I hand it over to your school attorney Russ hello everybody uh so our firm represents around 70 school systems all over the state we represent a lot of regions and
we also represent a lot of regions that are like you that are kind of hybrid regions so the statute is really envisions a prek to 12 region that said a lot of places over the years have have done what you did which is
regionalize just at the high school level so Mohawk is that way you're that way silver Lake out on the Southshore is that way quite a few districts are like that um and historically it's
been very difficult to get a region to go prek to 12 for a variety of reasons but one of them one of the big ones is that the elementarymentaries are often funded at different levels um and it's
been major roadblock to changing regions because of that because when you go to a region the state had always said you basically have to fund the same you can't have one elementary school that has a different funding rate than a different school in the same district
so over time myself and Mars the Mass Association of Regional School Committees we kept pushing the state and saying "If you want us to try and regionalize," and I'll get into some of the reasons why sometimes regionalization makes sense doesn't
always make sense but a lot of times it does um we need more flexibility on how we set up the budget sections of these regional agreements so they finally allowed us to come up with this new system to allow for the
budgets to be different at the elementary level the first time we did it was Mount Greylock so Williams and Williamstown and Lanesboro are the two members they've always been a high school region but at the
elementary level they were separate so we set up a new regional agreement where we took essentially we created cost centers because Williams College donates a lot of money to Williamstown Elementary so their funding rate is just
different you know dramatically different um and so we set up these cost centers so that Williamstown could continue their um higher level of funding and Lanesboro can continue the funding that they were
able to um to meet from a taxpayer perspective in Lansboro so basically the way it works is the elementary well the school committee members from Lansboro vote on the elementary budget first for their
building only and then the Williamstown members do the same thing for the Williamstown Elementary then they take those two budgets they put it together the high school budget and that whole budget gets voted by the entire committee and then that one number goes
off to the towns but through that process each town is essentially still maintaining control over the LAR elementary budget now technically speaking at the um the full school committee vote you
know they could decide to do something different potentially but the way we set it up there's really no reason for them to because the assessment is sent out by town so it's one number that goes out but the assessments are still kind of blockaded so you have your assessment
part your portion related to elementary relates to your elementary not the other one so anyway that that's there's the bottom line is there's a way to make the language work so that that can happen i did the same thing in Berlin Boilston so
that one was also just a high school region they voted to go prek to 12 and I think both systems they've been you know happy with it as far as I've heard for both um so I think the what you'd see as a
difference is you wouldn't have all these separate elementaryaries you would just have I mean committees you'd only have one regional school committee body so you wouldn't need a union anymore you wouldn't have all the elementary school committees you would just have one body
that one body would vote on everything you'd have one set of um reporting to the state one budget um but like I said you'd have the cough center so technically it's like you have three budgets all in one but at the end
of the day you just vote on the one budget when it gets combined at the end that is um from an efficiency point of view it's way better that way you don't have as many night meetings um you don't have as
many contract negotiations like like right now we're going through union 38 negotiations where they're also doing frontier negotiations you wouldn't have to do that anymore it would all be combined into one union contract for teachers one union contract for support
um basically all the work that you have now for central office and for you as committee members and really for the unions too i mean it's the more work for everybody the way it is set up right now so it can work there's lots of places
that do it the way you do it now it's just not the most efficient way to do it as far as cost savings there isn't my experience has been if your number one goal is to save money regionalization is not going to
cost you money you know but it's not going to save you millions of dollars either it's it's more efficiency making the educational product more similar for all your kids um it means that central
office can focus probably more on education than they do now because right now like if you triple the number of budgets you're you have all the meetings you have all the reporting you're definitely going to have less time for the educational side of things
so that's a real benefit i think I think the cost savings really the cost savings occur when you close buildings and that's not regionalization or not that's just that's the way to save money typically but in most regional agreements I have
there's some language that says you can't really close elementary buildings unless the town involved agrees there's a process you can write it any way you want it in regional agreements to make it really easy or really hard or impossible really um that would be up to all the committees to
decide and sometimes that's a roadblock to full regionalization people are worried that their elementary might close you can write an agreement where it's really not possible unless your town agrees to it i do recommend that you don't make it impossible to do it
because realistically sometimes it's very obvious a building may need to close in certain circumstances i'm not saying that's your circumstance but I've seen it over the years um but most regional agreements make it pretty difficult to do it you know
unless the town involved wants to do it um so anyway all the typical things that could be an issue to regionalization we could work on to come up with language to make everybody more comfortable with how how difficult or how easy it is to
do certain things under the agreement um you would get regional transportation reimbursement at the elementary level so that's where you kind of get a cost savings the cost um the additional cost sometimes is that
the contracts if they're not very similar on the salary side which we've made them more similar over the years so they're not like real far apart like they were you know years ago um health insurance might be different so you have to look at that cost so basically if you
if you went down this road where you think about changing the regional agreement you would want to look at you do a cost analysis to see what it costs what it saves um you would have a group formed from all the different towns to talk about you know how comfortable are
you with cost centers for elementaryaries is that enough or not do you still want to keep your elementary school committee me you know members and um committee separate or not how difficult should it be to close a building like all those things would be
on the table as discussion items and you'd have to figure out what the towns are most comfortable with and really what all you can all of you can live with so any regional agreement is going to result in some compromise just like your high school
regional agreement results in compromise but I do think my experience has been like Silver Lake's a good example their administration central office administration I think the only person that's still there from like three or
three to five years ago is just the superintendent everybody else has left and and I there's lots of reasons for that but I will say in most regions that I work with where they're set up this way there's a lot of turnover because if
I'm a superintendent looking for a job and I can come here but I have the elementary budgets and the regional budget I have to you know deal with I got to submit all the state reports multiple times i have to go to many more
night meetings that is not a very attractive job for most central office administrators now I'm not saying I mean all these districts have people running them and then and you know they're happy doing so but if you
have like let's say Darius leaves and you had to post normally it's going to create a situation where you're probably going to pay more to get somebody to come here because it's just a lot more work um and I think I think the other factor is beyond more work it's also you're
kind of focusing on the administrative stuff only because that's all you have time to do and some people don't want to do that you know they'd prefer to be really focusing on curriculum and moving the district forward and on the educational side so so that's kind of
like really big picture as far as the timeline this is not like a we talk about this for three months and all of a sudden you have a region it would take you know quite a bit of time to go through figuring out what you want your regional agreement to sit to say how
it's set up what the language says in all these different areas and then we have to work with DESIE so DESIE um I work with them all the time on regions and regional agreements i always have them involved all the way through the process so every
time we come up with a new draft I send it to them make sure they're okay with it and then because at the end the commissioner has to approve your regional agreement so that way I know it's kind of pre-approved so by that time you go to your towns and say "Okay town meeting here's the regional
agreement." They vote it then it goes to the commissioner they have to approve it and then it's finalized and they need all of this before December 1 because your chapter 70 monies will change so they don't allow you to do that for July 1 unless it's in by December 1 which means you
know this isn't something that would happen for July 1 of 2026 it would be at least a year beyond that um if not further out than that but we kind of wanted to just bring it up as this is something you could do i wouldn't have even brought it up to you
at all if the state hadn't agreed to change things the way Mount Greylock did it in Berlin Boilston but now because of that change it starts to make more sense for a lot of places because you still maintain some autonomy at the elementary level especially with funding um so
anybody have any questions about any of that or comments what looks different one of the other ideas that we were throwing around in the early stages is that creating two districts an elementary and a secondary that might be just thoughts on a there's
a part that there may be a better appetite to that because it's the focus on elementary the union is the same currently you're reducing it doesn't go the full way transition and I I it was just one of those things like there was talk about doing it maybe too much to do
the the too much for people to bite off that way i don't know any thoughts on that or have you seen where they've had this kind of or is everybody just kind of so Mohawk has a region at the elementary level but it doesn't include all the towns it's
just Charlemont and Holly um and then they have the high school region i don't in my opinion I don't think that's a great route i mean it's possible it would save you some time it would be somewhat more efficient but not a lot
more efficient and I was I can create those cost centers at the elementary level in this like the new prek to 12 region i'm not sure I could get Desi to agree in a
regular region to do that because they're probably gonna tell me I should be setting up that as one budget for the elementaryaries so you might actually lose some flexibility doing it that way but I've never I haven't done that yet the other thing is
Desi would really push for preK to 12 so if I went in with that option it would probably require it would require special legislation so all these um split regions there like Mohawk had special legislation years ago to allow
for that because that's not the way the statute reads the statute reads like K to 12 region but through special legislation you can do it the way you do it now I just don't think it would really I guess it would be somewhat better but it wouldn't
be you know it'd be a lot of work it's a lot of work to get a regional agreement passed it's a lot of work to for everybody whoever's on that subcommittee you're going to have a lot of meetings about talking about what you can live with what your town wants uh
what you think would pass and I think if you went halfway one I'm not sure everybody would be really happy with it at the end of the day and two I'd worry about the flexibility with the budget that means all four towns to approve it
before it could be finalized if one town didn't approve it it couldn't go through is that right yeah I would say so um I'd have to look at your regional agreement so it would be an amendment to your regional agreement because but because it's such a major change where we're
adding I'd have to look to see but I would say practically speaking yeah it would have to be every town um I do have a couple places where they're talking about like there's one town that doesn't want to do it so some places are talking about well let's
become a prek to 12 region with every town that's willing to do it and that one town will remain just a member at the high school level that's not great either i mean you're better off and I would much prefer to get all the towns on board
equally um I mean like your elementary union contracts are all the same that's not typical like most places in a region like this you would have like Mohawk is this way that Hollow contract's different rose contracts different you
know they all have their own union contracts yours happen to be identical so that actually makes it easier because you know Conway and Deerfield and Sunderland they're all the same at the elementary level um so there's certain certain things about the way you're set up that would actually probably make it
easier to do it um and part of it is cuz your towns seem to get along pretty well there's a lot of places where that's not true you know so I think you could look at this i mean like I said this is a year or two out at least but
it's probably worth looking at because I do think you could there's certain aspects to what I'm talking about that I think really would help improve your school system um but there may be some things like there might be some things that are just dealers for some of the towns and that's fine but I don't think
it does any harm to look at it and see you know does this make sense for you or not phil I see you've had your hand up you can go Phil hang on Phil we're not hearing you sorry Phil we can't hear what you're
saying hold on a sec what's that hey um Bill can you since I see your face can you unmute and speak to see if it's on our end or Phil's end we did hear this one very quietly from the speaker
okay is there a volume knob on the speaker itself yeah there is we're working on it Phil thank you for your patience questions from the general public go ahead and try again Phil no not working hang
on again Phil what's that yeah we heard the other um could I have another member of our committee speak who's online
lane was coming through lane was coming through shel are you listening are you there someone Billy will quietly you're quietly question my understanding that um if you regionalize basically no union staff
members could take a pay cut we'd have to update the pay scales and the stipens and all the benefits packages to the highest that is currently available which if we're not able to consolidate services actually would cost us quite a bit of money right so the way it would
Yes within a contract round so it wouldn't have to be like day one but they all have to eventually move on to the same scale so contract would be three years and I think
um usually what happens is you place people on the scale so that it's closest to what they're making now so it's not like you have to go let's say you're on step seven now at the elementary and step seven at the high school which I don't think is the
case but let's say that was $10,000 more so you might not go from step seven to step seven you might go from seven to five but um we would do an analysis not me but somebody um would do an analysis
of what is the cost because you have to look at retirey insurance regular employee insurance and then your union contracts those are the biggest drivers or we can't hear Shelly right so it's going
to be Shelly if I can't hear response uh no i I There's also like the Abrams group does it there's You could contract with Mars um they have people that can do it for you or I mean I think your central office could probably do it too
shelley has a lot of this already um in her spreadsheets so So they can hear each other fine offline but people who are listening in can hear each other so it's it is on our end um Shel can you try speaking again
can you hear me oh yeah the volume is really bad in general like there's sound but it's hard to make out exactly what everybody is saying i don't know if that's just where the owl is or if something's not working right it's
just really difficult to follow conversations probably hard to set up somebody let's see if we can hear Phil all right Phil you ready nope okay Phil has I think Phil might have logged off he might be trying to
log back in okay all right we'll come back to him just two questions so said that uh there would be no elementary school committees it would be a change in this body so I'm wondering like what what would be the makeup of that how would we look at that
and then the second question is at the region we always do have an eye towards what the elementary school budgets are because so there is kind of a streamlining happening anyway but can you explain a little further how the elementary school budgets would be
created and it sound like you said they go first and they're developed but it it's outside because we go with the 5-year rolling average so how what changes happen there how does that streamline the process more so as far as the committee members so one thing I didn't mention
is when this is happening you would have an interim school committee too and that interim committee so you'd have all your regular committees and then this interim committee that would be dealing with like the future region you know what they're red so they're they've been
muted we muted these muted still red yep you're good okay thank you um so what I was saying is that so there'd be this interim school committee which usually is made
up of some of the um high school committee some of the members from each of the elementaryaries we put them all together on an interim committee and that body is charged with creating the budget for the future the future year when you actually become one
region because in the meantime you still have to run the underlying schools um so that would be in the in in between process and we'd have to talk about through the process who would be on it but it's usually the current members but not all of them you know it's like a
couple from each committee and then what you do is figure out for the future region how many members would you want on it and how do you set it up there's different ways to set it up i mean you can have it the same way you do it now as far as voting and everything but you figure out how
many committee members you need with the budget what happens is Darius and administration Shelley would be creating the the high school budget and then they'd be creating the
two ele you know well each elementary budget that would go to the school committee but like I said the each elementary one would only go to their members from that town the school committee members from that town so they basically had a subcommittee and they
would talk about theirs and you know Sunderland would talk about theirs and deer people would talk about theirs and so what do you refer to as centers yeah which is really just their elementary budget once that's been
decided as this is what we would propose for our elementary that would go to the full committee and the full committee who would already have seen the high school budget would see each one you put it together your assessments would just be the regular assess you know it's
5-year rolling average it gets assessed based on pupil population all that would stay essentially the same um and then it gets assessed out to the towns but because you controlled your own budget at the elementary subcommittee level essentially that
budget should be and there wouldn't be any reason not to do it for the other towns it should be what you wanted in the first place so you could keep one high and one might be a little lower um and that's the way it's been working in in the other two districts that I mentioned
just to it's complicated but once you see the language it makes a lot more sense it's just it's kind of hard to explain it um without reading the language to you but to clarify the assessment of the elementary budget is separate than the assessment from the frontier budget no they get everything
gets put into one number so you're going to send one number to the towns which will be the regional budget but within that will be those cost centers that were already decided at the committee level so they would only get one assessment and it wouldn't be elementary
and high school it' be one number so let's say one elementary school went very high had a lot of needs that year 10% increase other elementary schools at 2% are the other towns paying the difference of that cost no the way we
set it up is when it gets assessed those cost centers still stay so there's um there's a multifactor process to figure out the assessment so the high school is going
to be you know one number and then the elementaryaries are set up differently and you have I it's um it's kind of like laid out in steps so you go through step 1 2 3 4 5 then you assess it out so it keeps it so that the other towns aren't
paying for that elementary now that's [Music] beyond net school spending the minimum is set by statute you can't do anything about that but I'm assuming all your schools are probably above minimum but the minimum will be set up by the
statutory formula everything above that is set up the way I'm saying and so that's the part you really usually get more concerned about because that's the extra for certain towns might be 10% higher than some other school so you'll see it
i can't um we can walk through the language and I could show it to you very specifically but it's too complicated to just you know do it off the top of my head i was wondering how how would the development of the elementary school
budgets be in a regional agreement as opposed to how they are now we're still operating within a region and we all do kind of look at each other especially from the the high school is very cognizant of what the the elementary schools are doing but like how how much
how significant a difference would it be in the development of those budgets regionally as opposed to how we do it now because we are still working together now yeah i don't think it would be I think the biggest difference is that you wouldn't have your own school
committee making the decision totally on their own you'd have a subcommittee of the the regional school committee that would be doing it so instead of like if you have a five member board at the elementary level well now it might only be two members or three members meeting
on the on that elementary budget so you're a portion of a bigger body where right now you're just by yourself completely making decisions um so it is different but I think what like Mount Greylock found is it doesn't really it's
not like a substantive difference though you know because you still pretty much control that budget and if you want to stay higher or lower than other places you could still do that um I think the
bigger the bigger difference is so that's the budget and that's what a lot of places are concerned about mainly but there's also like let's say curriculum right now technically speaking every single elementary committee could say we want a different curriculum you know
we're not going to have the same curriculum I don't think you're doing that but you could you would lose that you would lose that ability to have totally different curricul curriculum or um you know something very specific like that but at the end of the day most
regions you're trying to be exactly the same cuz eventually your kids go to the same high school you don't want them to be totally off track with some different curriculum um but years ago that used to be one of the hang-ups cuz that's kind of a newer trend but it used to
be places did want to have their own curriculum you know something totally different and that created problems at the high school though cuz kids were coming in at totally different levels of you know achievement essentially oh sir I see Phil is back and he's been
waiting for a while oh god I still can't hear you phil go ahead i can't hear Phil we can't hear you pause a sec please it's not us it's him
[Music] it's him [Music] there you go no also it seems like it's actually fil [Music]
or could you if you have a question you could tap into the box type into the box it was showing up or shall we repeat what you just said can you hear me yes what did he just say something with your connection because they can hear me
is Shel say what he said or not he's gonna try to call it okay call me Phil sure i'll jump in while Phil so there's the operating budget like for
the salaries and you know like office supplies all that stuff there's also capital expenditures like let's say a school needs to redo their playground or a new roof or other higher cost maintenance things how does how does that get sorted out when it's across
four buildings that would be separate too and that's usually completely separate um the I have a couple regions or maybe a few where they actually split everything even capital projects even
though they don't own the buildings because you'll you'll probably be set up where you would just lease the buildings but you know the vast majority of regions if you're leasing a building from the underlying town that town pays 100% of the capital cost for that
building um the exception to that would be is if you had an elementary where some kids were coming from another town so you had like 70% from your town but 30% came from some other town in the district they might owe 30% of the capital
project but normally if you got 100% of your kids are going to that elementary school you pay for the capital cost and that would be in the regional agreement specifically that way um I see a a phone number just joined phil is that you the phone is muted
i'm trying to guess okay is that not just Okay yeah another filibuster uh pun intended um if if um if we do regionalize does that change school choice funding
hold on i got you on speaker can you speak up yes go ahead go ahead yep okay so I guess a couple of questions for Russ um because we we've we've been doing looking into this for
15 years or so i I I was on a subcommittee with when Regina was superintendent and then I think Marty inherited that subcommittee and the big obstacles at the time to regionalization then was the difference in health
insurance uh co-pays amongst the towns and then versus what Frontier does and they've gotten closer but we're still not on things at the same numbers so what's
the effect of four towns with four different uh health insurance co-pays and then And then a fifth a fifth different with the frontier employees all being at a different rate as well yeah so everybody would go to the frontier
split and now that could be negotiated obviously so with the unions but whatever your current split is that's what they would go to so sometimes when you go through the analysis you might find that the going making the change on
insurance and making the change on the union contract minus you know or deducting out the savings you get for ch uh chapter 70 uh funding or transportation funding so that difference if it's not sufficient I
mean if it's going to cost you millions of dollars to regionalize then you might not be able to do it um it's not it's not just the school employees though because right now for town school employees are town employees so you so if we're doing that for the school
employees we have to do that for all the other town employees as well no no no if the the school employees would no longer be town employees they would become regional district employees and the towns could maintain their current splits so the towns would not change
their splits it would only be the elementary teachers paraprofessionals those employees would go to the frontier rate the towns could keep their rates the same whatever they have now for everybody else like police fire
okay but um but the and the cost to the the initial upfront cost to make that happen you think would be realized through chapter 70 increases as opposed to big big assessment increases to the
member towns no I I don't know what the answer would be to that i think I think what you have to do is a financial analysis to see how much is this going to cost is it a break even or because of insurance and the wages is that so much money that the
transportation reimbursement at the elementary level doesn't cover it most places it's close to a wash but I don't know here when we did those types of analysis in the past and granted this was 14 years ago or so the
answer was it would cost millions of dollars y um and so that's that that's that's where it kind always would get bogged down um and then the other part of it is and and we did skate over this a little
bit you you recommended oh make it possible to close a school um and that's that's a big that's a big elephant in the room in this sort of thing um because you'd be
asking the towns to vote on the possibility of their school being closed by the votes of their neighboring towns well well possible could be possible can mean it's possible as long as the town
involved also agrees i'm just saying you don't want to make it so that's impossible to do like like as long as the town involved agrees it should be allowed to happen and we took a and we took a look at that and the only towns that ever volunteered
agree to to do it we could see was as a result of large payments of other town from the other towns um so that the savings that would have been realized from closing that school were then
pushed off far into the distance yeah i don't I don't think you would I don't know why I don't think you'd change the regional agreement to make it easier to close buildings if anything it probably be made to be harder yeah um I I know we looked at it the the
the original operating agreement says all four towns have to vote jessica was correct about this um that that that all four towns have to vote on amendments in to to uh the operating agreement it it has to be
unanimous um so so that could be the way it is for us a school building closure i mean I don't think you're doing this to be able to close buildings you'd be doing it for all the other reasons I stated basically
right right but um you know the demographics population uh you know uh 10 15 20 years from now is what we're really looking at not sort of the present um but you
know we need a whole lot more information that I guess is what I'm saying um this is not this is not like right to be um just a theory yeah this is not this wouldn't be a I don't it's probably not
on the agenda for a vote it's it's more of a this is more informational to have you think about whether you wanted to vote to basically probably create a subcommittee to talk about these issues to see if it makes any sense to run the
numbers like Phil's saying and then decide because the numbers themselves may may show that you can't do it you know that's possible and my last question is that up until I don't know how long ago it was the state
used to pay the state used to with the special act of legislation give you a financial carrot to do this and and this was especially when the state was pushing to to regionalize which was a big push of theirs 15 or so years ago they wanted I remember when they wanted
one school district for each county yeah um and um and and they were offering significant sums um in special legislation to make this happen and when we we we we tried to put dealers out to see whether that could be available to
sort of put to to put us at zero so that we could start at zero um rather than having to pay to equalize health insuranceances and whatnot and um and and I don't know when the last time the state did pay a a community to do this
but is that if they like it so much will they pay so they have there's been regionalization grants to help you study whether to make a change recently but um I don't know if they're in place right
now or not um but they they have not been giving any real direct financial incentive other than grants to study it i will say though I tried to combine Berkshire Hills and Southern Berkshire
um and there was going to be one high school that was going to be brand new and the state was going to help fund it through MSBA monies and I have seen them give give incentives through that process so like Southwick and Granville
we added um Granville to South Taland the region prek to 12 and when that happened MSBA agreed to do renovation projects for basically all their buildings all at once which never happens so that was an incentive to get
them to do it um so sometimes you see things like that but unless you have building projects that you're looking to do right away or something like that it's I don't think the state's going to give you anything directly other than maybe a grant to study it you all set there buddy yeah thanks okay
take care question I don't even remember what your question was uh school choice funding so one in between schools within the region or you know towns within the region versus the funds that come from outside of our region do they become pulled they
still go to the specific elementary school was the question I would have for you yeah so within like in between your towns if there's school choice between the elementarymentaries that would change because now you'd all be part of one district so that would go away um it
would basically net out between all the towns um school choice as far as earmarked to each elementary I can't remember how we handled that we'd have to put in language about how to deal
with it um my guess is the state's going to say that needs to be pulled but but I'd have to I'd have to talk to them about it to see that's the type of thing though when we do the financial analysis you'd have to look at that see what effect does it have the
elementary metric level question but uh from a curricul curriculum perspective right we're pretty cohesive like on the on the main topics but are there anything special ed or anything like that that would have an impact by being
regionalized that you can think of from school to school so we this This is where it's like where kind of Russ started by saying we don't act like we're set up and it has to do with the people be people some of the
people have been here forever and I going to say many of the uh committee members have been here before you because they set a standard that said we will act together and it goes back to working with you know all the years of hey gentlemen you guys are guests in this building and you should not be just
going wherever you want right go back to the gym and where you're supposed to I'm okay it's a visiting team so um sorry but they I could hear them in the elevator goofing off so um
anyway um went back to my vice principal self so the um so we have acted as one district at any time the good graces of a committee could change that we are going to present tonight a professional
development plan and through the last few years and the professional development plan you know is the driver is the engine of how we change and we bring change to our district if you have one committee that says we don't want to do that we are want to vote something
different it could possibly happen i mean we're seeing disruption in government um I'll end it there but we're seeing disruption in government where you know you could have people you know people with agendas get on committees and try to do change we've really acted with
itself and so there's one thing that I think Russ didn't really emphasize that I really see after being here multiple years is the power of the school committee is very lessened because by the time you are the third or fourth committee to get a policy yeah I really don't really love
it but do I really vote against it because then it has to go back and go through all the other committees again so you really lose voice in governance the way we're set up and that's one of the important things that kind of factor is like and I I know there is a lot of obstacles and there are some that may be
insurmountable you know finances is one of the first ones that we're going to have to look at um health insurance is going to be a big issue because of the towns are on a different um level than than Frontier is um and so I see that but it is something I think this
committee should look at in the sense of it's a broken system to go on forever right if the way it you know when they put this region together in 1958 52 what's the wall say um the you know the role of the superintendent is
not what it is today right the amount of reporting I mean I got a true story I got a thing on the new electronic system they said you did not fill in your S SOA report i had to go through the entire system to look up what school they were talking about to find out what the error was cuz they don't tell me they just say
"Hey your email address is whatever." So I had to go through every single one i found out I forgot to submit Sunderland it was submitted now we're all set but it's kind of like it's going through like it it is that kind of craziness that happens in the other class so I I hear what the other side is saying but so going back to what you're
saying we also have if you have a special ed student um with high needs in one of your elementary schools that can fluctuate your whole your whole your whole setting if we could work as one district to create specialized programs this is just
kind of thinking about how you could you can create savings and keep students local where you could create places where oh we'll send them to you know we there's a great autism program in this particular school where we can send students within our own district rather
than trying to replicate it on a small scale that isn't really working in our own district um there's those kind of things um well you can share specialists too at the elementary thing which you can't really do now so we kind of do
because they because they're in a contract but they go it's it's a mess but we make it work yeah i mean it's not easy to do though because if you were actually a region you could have you could have shared staff between elementary and high school and also between the elementaryaries and that
would they'd all be employed by the same employer if you if you have them employed by different entities the way you might now there's all sorts of issues like potential issues like conflict of interest because you're not supposed to hold one more than one job with two different employers in the same
region so it makes it everything gets more streamlined there's also less chance for mistakes because like what Darius just described that happens in every single place that I have this set up like this it's very
difficult to get through just one budget with having it be exactly the way it's supposed to be in one set of reporting when you're doing it multiple times the chances for errors are much higher um it's just the way it is it's more work it's you know it's easier to make one
mistake on on one budget somewhere and maybe you repeat that mistake throughout all the budgets so there's just lots of ways where I think this setup that just creates more potential errors really shel had her hand up earlier
yeah Shel if you still wanted to speak you're in line thank you uh I just wanted to ask Russ and his experience if we were to hire an outside firm to help with the study even just to give us more guidance what the
rough cost of that is um I'm not sure what Mars is charging right now i It would be hard for me to I really don't know i mean the the regional agreement
part I mean I'm under a retainer so I could do that as part of the retainer so it wouldn't cost anything um anything more but the financial analysis that's that would cost more
money to have somebody do that although Shelley I think I think with the spreadsheets you already have we could probably have a I think the first step if it was me is decide ballpark-wise are we looking at
something that could be doable or not because I think if myself and you and Shelley we look at this and we say "Oh yeah this is going to cost $10 million roughly," then you can just forget it there's no point paying anybody to do anything because it's not going to work
but if we look at it it looks like yeah maybe this could be break even or close to it then I think you might want somebody to do a more detailed analysis to make sure that's correct um but what do you think of that Shel do you think we could do that
initial you know kind of ballpark analysis to see would that it's really insurance it's going to be in the insurance costs and the salaries mainly yeah I definitely think it's doable all right I have questions over there
joe so for strategic plan we're going over professional development i mean if if this fits with our strategic plan we give a better experience to all of our students then it needs to be on the
table and we need to look at it seriously i know there's all sorts of complications with towns and finances i know that but if this gives a better experience for the community and the students in the community then it's really important and and needs to be
looked at in deeper breath uh that's the bigger question bigger statement the smaller statement is someone like Megan Carr or Banser isn't she who pays her does she because she's regional she's going to all the different schools
we have some specialists that cross all the towns we you pay per uh what how many days there are in each building is the percentage of which they which your school pays so if you one day it's point it's two point 2 that school point4
school then we build we put those points together to get a hole yeah you can make it legal by doing a shared cost agreement so that person would be essentially assigned as an employee of one of the
towns and everybody else would share the cost of that employee but it's strange because the person might be working in all those places about equally and only one principal can really evaluate the person
so it's not ideal but that's the way to set it up to make it work if you're not a region it's a lot easier if you are a region because then everybody can give input next question so when you did something does that diminish our administrative
cost with the higher administrators would we still have five principles yeah it assuming you want to keep all the buildings as they are it wouldn't change it really wouldn't change the staffing necessarily i think what it would probably do is just make it more
flexible staffing um being able to use them more efficiently um sometimes that does save some money though because like some places sometimes you have elementaryaries where like you need um music or
something you're never and you can't find a music teacher that only wants to work 02 so you end up paying them paying the person 0.5 just to get them in the door but really only needed 2 in a situation like that you could save money cuz that other.3 could be in one of the
other buildings um but I have no idea how you're Well understand it if you have a 0 2 in your building and then it's a point 4 in this building they get a check from that town they get a check from that town yeah so you know if they get a check from each of the town that they're in and then then how do you
break up health insurance we haven't been going into that and it's even more challenging when they work at Frontier and one of the elementary schools cuz the salary schedules are not the same insurance lie one town inevitably ends up carrying the insurance for
somebody because they work a half a day more than that in another school so it's really challenging for our staff and for the district i have two more questions but I'm mindful of the time we could ask Ross by
email later do you want do you want to take time for two more questions and on this topic if that's okay all right so Russ related to the cost centers right now we've got some um funds incoming that are not equivalent between the five different schools like title one money only Frontier Deerfield and Sunderland
get get title one money if we regionalized would that Title One money just come into the district and not be partitioned the way it currently is um I'm not positive how that would work so we'd have to put that into the financial analysis i'm not sure how the Title
One monies would split out or if you'd lose them potentially um so we'd have to we'd have to look at that too i mean the financial analysis is really that it's it's like Phil said
that's the initial hurdle you got to see if it's even possible because we could look at school choice title one um look at the health insurance really and and the salaries and decide yeah this just can't work because of the cost or you
lose title one completely you know um but we would look at all that and then you'd come up with an analysis show it to you and then you'd have to decide you know is it close enough is it too costly you know maybe it saves money i don't know because you are going to get
regional transportation aid so that's that is a pretty good chunk of money it's just I don't know if it's going to counteract everything that we're talking about my other question is if we need to do a contract cycle transition to get two different teachers unions onto a single
contract what does that negotiation look like do the two unions also need to be bargaining with each other in addition to bargaining with us yeah it's not actually i haven't had that much trouble doing that uh Mount Greylock and Berlin Boilston both
um because I remember in Berlin Boilston we did it over the summer and we came up with an agreement pretty quickly because really you just have to make sure everybody's moving on to the the current scale here at a number that's at least the same as what they were making before
um so that's you know I think everybody kind of agrees to that concept right away because it's what the law says and I think the unions understand like we can't just move we can't move you to someplace that's going to give you $10,000 more
it's got to be the next step that gives you a raise um the health insurance is pretty much they're going to go to the frontier splits so that's it's technically negotiable but that's you know that's what happens and most of the other pieces in the
contract are you know pretty similar now so it's not that it's not actually that difficult in our analysis that's the way we run it and we show it to the unions as we're going you always want to have the unions part of this too because they need to know what's happening they need to know how this might affect them
um you don't want your staff to be worried about it as we go um and really for them other than becoming one union and you know getting the benefits of Frontier basically it you know it really probably isn't net
benefit for them ultimately almost you know other than maybe I don't know about the insurance splits laura had her hand up earlier do you still have a question okay all right thank you the school's decided to explore this strikes me it would take a
year for analysis a year for negotiation so we'd be looking at 2 years before anything would ever happen or two to three years so this is not a quick thing it' be some time yeah it would take because even once you're done with the whole process then you got to go out to all the towns and explain it you don't
want to just go to town meeting and say "Hey new region what do you think?" I mean you don't want to have um you know a bunch of gettogethers in all the various towns saying "Hey here's anformational sens session this is what
we're thinking this is why you get pamphlets on it." Um so yeah definitely would take probably a couple years at least but it can you know contrary to the way it used to be it can be done you know I haven't been able to get regions
together in a long time and I'm not like I don't push something one way or the other because some communities it it may work for you and other communities it might not but the difference I found now is it can actually happen because if you could keep the budgets basically stable
people consider it before it was a non-starter which would never happen julie did you still have a question that most Indians are things okay all right if there's no other question of information yep you got lots to think
about like lots to keep talking about thank you Russ thanks Russ thank you good night everybody thank you thank you you know I'll send the candy around get this energy up for my boy my administrators
okay uh the next item is uh uh the calendar uh so we have the school calendar and the school committee calendar school chat um for the calendars I think we'll have frontier on frontiers and the unions union for the elementary schools uh so the school
calendar this is what we saw before i hope everyone saw the update with the um correction of the date of uh Veterans Day um so that is the version we'll be voting on so I look for a motion from Frontier all right all in favor from Frontier
one two three four five six seven eight damian's yes bill yeah yes and Phil will be the last and Phil yes okay they're doing it by committee folks
are at home okay and then for the elementary schools I'll go in alphabetical order uh looking for a motion from Conway to approve the Union 38 school district calendar motion all in favor from
Conway in Phil okay five from Conway dearfield is there a motion i'll make a motion to approve thank you thank you Mary all in favor
5 Sunderland thank you all in favor okay so that's And that was it from Right yep oh cuz Megan's not here so um 40 from Southerntherland and Waitly is there a motion
second thank you all in favor for Whitley three and0 okay great thank you very much uh so for the school committee calendar this is new uh several weeks ago the chairs and
Darius uh talked about what we can do to streamline evening meetings uh reduce the burden on everyone um so that's what you're looking at in this calendar um it's some consolidation and moving some meetings earlier there are some
meetings at 5:00 and I want to acknowledge that we know 5:00 can be hard for working people um but the hope is that if there's just a couple each month a couple each year and we have lots of advanced notice at least most people can make it work uh so basically
September is standard meetings october is a couple of parent meetings so that's two elementary school meeting committees meeting together they would the agendas are similar so we'd open a meeting together go over the similar items just once rather than having to do it twice and then if one committee does have
something on their agenda that is unique they could let the other committee close their meeting and then continue on with their own discussion um in November we'd have uh Frontier would have a meeting and then the Union 38 would have a joint meeting december there's no standard meetings
there is a chair's meeting on the calendar per our superintendency agreement chair is required to meet once per year so that's then January February budget season everyone has their standard uh committee meetings in March we'd have our own committee meetings
with the public hearing and then do the vote as one um the elementary school has one joint meeting those meetings are really quick they take five minutes we could just start them all together have one committee vote and adjourn one last meeting vote adjourned be done in 20
minutes uh April will be a joint meeting like this uh May another set of paired meetings and then June those are typically late months uh last year at least a few of the committees ended up canceling the June meetings so if there was something to be on the agenda it
could be added on at a later point questions or thoughts on this proposed calendar are we going to vote individually again on this uh or is there going to be one we could all vote as one yeah I'll make
a motion to accept the meeting nights second all right um if there's no further conversation all in favor and then at home we have Bill yes demian
yes elaine yes li yes phil yes and Amanda yes all right passes unanimously thank you okay next up the we're reviewing the U policy Jag access to education and student privacy and immigration
enforcement is this a revised policy from the one our committees reviewed earlier yep so basically um you know the frontier meeting I think a lot of the elementary schools had a meeting following this and have seen this um but this is the first time Frontiers um
brought it back to talk about but after leaving that last meeting I did talk and meet with um Chief Peter of Deerfield and he had no problem with the meeting placed for um processing of immigration law enforcement request by the superintendent occur at the Deerfield
Police Station which is just down the road and is is um um is staffed when schools in always when school's in session so it works out even better so and even if they were working in a different town they'd be coming to the central office to process we could do it
there so um so it's kind of I think a a good solution to where we were with this policy last time so we're just looking to approve that move that forward is it the first reading for Frontier
or are we going to vote it on you know it's an edit to a previous one i think you're okay to approve it okay i'll make a motion to Okay so are we doing individually that's going to say we um this is a policy so you do have to do individually okay so Okay so so do you want a motion in a
second yeah yeah all right okay uh before we move on to voting any questions or comments on it okay so I'll go through the committees and look for a motion and a second by committee so I'll start with Frontier is there a motion i'll make a motion
second yes okay all in favor from Frontier and I have Phil yes bill yes and Damian yes do we listen i only had seven chris is not here right we're missing
Phil phil's gone yeah no Phil's here did I miscount maybe okay that's good we'll call it unanimous front here okay conway uh does someone make a motion motion second all right all in favor
conway one two three and yes all right we have Ela and Phil yes phil okay five from Conway Deerfield someone like to make a motion i'll make a motion to second all right all in favor i vote
from Deerfield sunderland motion to approve policy all right all in favor from Sunderland and a Y with yes on okay four from Sunderland wakeley is there a motion so moved second all right all in favor
three and up great thank you very much okay uh next up the region that is so smooth all right now we're moving on to the uh strategic plan presentation dr mitchell all right as
you know our curriculum directors or directors of education also known as Laura Ramsey and Sarah Mitchell can we share the presentation with you so you Oh you want to share it on the This is the uh strategic plan right
you're going to put that up we're doing strategic plan first right yes okay that one's for you well we brought hard copies so um I think our goal is just to do a little bit of an orientation
slashoverview and explain the kind of feedback we would love to have from you um on your own time as if there is such a thing on our borrowed time from you um
so hey thanks it's almost exactly like what we put um in the packet that's digitally linked um but just for the sake of saving paper we
have Here you go two more plus everybody wants to stand up and stretch okay you should feel free to stand up while we're presenting this if you need to move and you're still playing the elevator it's amazing how it all comes back so this is a draft of um a project that
we have been working on since July a little at a time um systematically and um to conserve papers uh I consolidated a couple of things so it doesn't exactly match what what the online version was i moved the vision up
to the front it explains what we're trying to do with this strategic plan and I bumped the table of contents to the front page too so you can see what there is to look forward to um but basically um it's time for us to renew
our strategic plan which is a way of setting a direction for the district that um set points our compass towards educational excellence in the ways that we need it to make sense now student success in the ways that we will recognize it in 2025 to 2030 it should
reflect the local interests it should reflect the days and times it should reflect the fact that AI is coming into the school it should reflect you know if we decide to go in the direction of regionalization that should be in the plan um and positive school culture is a part of this plan as
well and um we developed this draft collaboratively so we have a leadership team um and we together formed a survey which went out to all of the stakeholders all staff all community members and when we got the survey back
we even had some grandparents say that they were filling it out too which was exciting and um through this survey we collected lots of data um particularly about what would be the most important things to focus on in different forms of
education different parts of extracurriculars different parts of um support for teachers and we added something that was not in the last um strategic plan which is a portrait of a graduate that's a way of personalizing what these goals are for and about and
kind of landing all of our efforts around a vision of a student that could be any one of our children um and I think that this is providing a nice piece of coherence because we've got these big projects but it all drives
towards what we've isolated as six balanced elements that really did come from the survey and then following the survey we had um coffee chats at all five schools and then an evening online um anyone could join if they wanted to give feedback so for these in-person
conversations I'll have to be honest they weren't very well attended but it was an opportunity to pull people in and the questions that we had were um anchored in the survey data so we knew kind of where to ask more and what to invite and then there was open-ended
parts too and the contents um ultimately the design process is on page um I think like four five and six oh yeah the design the design process is outlined on page three
so you can see where we are um we are in between February 15th and April 15th again honestly before tonight it said February 15th to April 1st but I just changed the name for the draft to make it April 15th so we're now on time um
the that's an administrative secret the school committee we're going to ask you after this orientation to conduct a SWAT analysis where you give us feedback on the strengths and weaknesses in this document and what we seem to be laying out as an opportunity for our district
how we want to how you see this leading our growth in the next five years and also is there anything that could backfire about this plan anything that won't be getting attention if we do it this way or that way we're also going to be asking the school councils to do a SWAT analysis and the student leadership
team at Frontier to do a SWAT analysis um so that we can finalize it it says that we would be ideally um asking for approval uh in June but this will definitely be the fall before we get this um before asking for approval
so if you flip through to the portrait of uh a graduate um we had more than six items but we found ways to consolidate and blend different aspects of what the emerging
um priorities were for our community and the way that we listed them in this document is um you can see on page five think critically um and then a description of what that means and then there's a so that for each one
of these so that it's understood not just what it means but what the intent is behind it so that students can make informed decisions and solve problems creatively and then there's a few examples of ways that that would look because we do really want this to be a meaningful document one that isn't
prefuncter and it's not performative but it helps us achieve coherence and integrity with um other work that we do um for example right now the science committee is working on a K12 science uh curriculum review and we can see that
when we read about best practices in science instruction thinking critically is actually part of it and it's nice to have that coherence between our science curriculum vision and our portrait of a student graduating also communicating effectively is important in science collaborating is important in science
respecting different opinions taking responsibility and engaging with the world all of these attributes that are sort of generalized in this portrait actually land in our curriculum review of science and what we're saying we're trying to go for with science teaching
and then towards the end we have what we're calling um this is really where the meat is the enduring objectives and the current strategies so um in the past our strategic plans have had these same objectives which is to um ensure
rigorous accessible and inclusive educational experiences for all students that's curriculum or uh let's see objective two coherence and system equity ensuring internal consistency and equity for students in the program development and
implementation we've added um a category this year of family and community engagement it used to be four things but based on our work we've added five and then many of the things that came from the surveys and from meeting with families have been embedded into
pre-existing categories so curriculum's always been there program deliveryy's always been there assessment's always been there and some of the strategies are enduring but some of them are new based on the conversations that we have so two more little things to show you um
before we talk about the SWAT survey one is it's just fun to be getting towards the end of something that started last July so um we've already started mocking up um the ways that this could look we we are imagining a beautiful document
really because it just feels good to package something that you've worked hard on it's like the publishing finishing stage but we have different ideas about how to show a portrait of a graduate um in a consolidated way maybe using the river to connect our not yet regionalized school district but we are
all in the valley so we can celebrate that with the rivers um and when you're looking at the at the document and trying to make sense of it kind of gets long in the media section so I wanted to hang up a a
poster because I'm an elementary school teacher at heart and um Yep so Um for each enduring objective that has a current strategy there's going to be
an objective there's five of those each objective has multiple strategies there's not just one strategy to reach each objective um for each strategy there's three things there's action steps that you do to enact the strategy and then there's who's responsible is it
administrators is it principles is it or is it school committee and then how are we going to monitor our progress so ultimately we'll be having um like a a timeline for each of our objectives that includes the strategies and who's
responsible and then at the beginning of the year or the end of the year is something that the leadership teams check in on and say are we ahead are we behind do we need to start something do we need to adjust anything and this big picture should be specific enough to get
work done but general enough that the unique needs of each school community can use it for their just their school improvement plans on an annual basis so each of the five schools refers to this and looking for okay we really need to focus on this strategy and this objective this year and we're all going
in the same direction but we're not necessarily working prioritizing the very same objectives and strategies every year it kind of depends on how each community is growing that's how it works so I think we're just taking questions but then leaving you with a
request for uh the strengths weaknesses opportunities and threat and um that's something that I guess I'm imagining you would email us about if that works unless somebody had a better idea um you could just send it you don't have
to either but it would be send to send it to Yeah office so after you complete the form if you could send it to her she'll consolidate it all and then we will look at it and see where it fits in sorry did you say a deadline for it uh
two weeks april 15th I think it says April 15th is a hard deadline no I'm kidding yeah yeah the end of school vacation if you could get at that by then then we can take a look at it and then we can move forward with our student groups and our school councils
at the elementary and secondary level can I ask one content question um the part about student assessment does that anticipate adding yet more testing to our students no student assessment is incorporates everything so we're doing a lot with PLC's and data analysis and
those pieces um so it's about examining assessment essentially so um so portrait implies kind of a finished product is there going to be kind of a kind of like a portrait at the end of your own school at sixth grade
there'll be a check in and feedback goes back to the parents and the student you know put that in your squat analysis talking no no seriously it's a good idea and it would be nice it would be nice to have it reflected and it looks a lot like the international balorate IB program and to
come up with their steps to get to your diploma so I put all the slot yeah yeah that's a great idea yeah also though what you said about the transition that's something we heard from parents in the um focus groups and in the survey and so one of the new additions to the strategic plan is to emphasize support
for transitions from preK to K from 6 to 7 from 8 to 9 and obviously the the big one at the end of high school um but transitions are highlighted in the next five years is something we could work on as a district
comments questions all right so as part of the professional or part of the strategic plan we also have professional development so you'll see that embedded throughout the strategic plan and also we use the strategic plan to help inform
professional development if you could click to the next slide Darius um so we're going to take you through a quick um presentation on what we have been doing this last year and what our plans are for next year so we've got um some
of the accomplishments that we've gotten from uh this year and then um how we've determined we did leave the board three dots in Miss G uh next the hangout
three dots that let you choose to make the overview bigger i think that's it because we usually can control the screen here on the overview there's three dots i think you actually want
to unpin the unpin this so you click on it okay click on that and then unpin oh yeah thank you good thing we have a technology all right so it's a little bit bigger you can go on to the next slide yours
oops and now it's because I uh um I don't know don't watch sounds like a good idea all right anyway you'll get the general idea all right so we set our priority days for it
the bullets went off um we set our priorities for professional development each year by um using a lot of different um different components so we use the strategic plan obviously we use our curriculum review cycle which Laura will um review at the end we have a lot of
state and federal requirements that we have to comply with we do surveys with our stakeholders our faculty we talk with principles um sometimes we'll have some grant money that will allow us to um spend additional funding on particular focus areas uh such as our
behavioral health grant or sometimes there are unique opportunities that are presented to us like the Hitchcock Center and science the next slide so the goals for our current year were focused around and Laura and I work very closely together there may be
different needs at a particular elementary school there may be different needs at um elementary versus frontier but as a whole we work together closely together to make sure that we're really making sure there's an umbrella that covers the entire district uh PK through
12 so this year we focused on a multi-tered system of support we spent an entire day in November we had a mini conference uh which I could click on here but you guys have been here for a really long time so I won't but trust me when I say there was a full schedule we had a keynote speaker there were choices
of workshops and teachers really had a good selection of um opportunities that day all around the theme of multi-tered systems of support we also continue to work on our equity action steps and that came out of the equity audit that we conducted a couple of years ago we
parsed those out so that we were working on particular steps each year and then this year we've been working on our science um curriculum review and that's been a really um interesting and neat process because we have been doing that K through 12 we have high school students um high school teachers there
as well as elementary teachers um so some specific goals this current year that we've have for elementary professional learning um largely supporting the new curriculum initiatives um so you can see there's been new initiatives in ELA math English
as a second language and um there's an updated version of our social emotional learning program Second Step also um we set goals to do professional learning around anti-bullying and the anti-bullying curriculum within Second Step which um is an add-on that not
everyone had before this year but this year all the elementary schools are are teaching um those five lessons and then microaggressions how to recognize and respond to microaggressions and then in addition to the science curriculum review we've been um doing a digital
literacy computer science review with the um library media center teachers working on the technology program and then some of the details at the secondary level uh we've been looking at the role of data and this kind of speaks to what you were talking about Jessica with assessment what does data look like
in our school system do we have enough what kinds of data we're also expanding our knowledge base around students with executive functioning challenges which is more and more students these days um we've continued our work with restorative practices and then expanding
our use of culturally sustaining educational practices as well so accomplishments or achievements for this year um like as I previously mentioned we had a full day um MTSS conference um we had um Lynn Lions came
in three times i know she's amazing um and we had her do an evening presentation for families we had about 125 people attend that which is which is quite large for us um I remember the days when I would have nutrition speakers come in and we would have six in the audience so we were thrilled that
we were able to get out the word and have so many families come and uh join us for that and we also had a presentation at the secondary level in the fall and then in the winter we had an elementary presentation uh with some crossovers some people attended both um because she really is um quite
impressive um that's there she is in this very space yes right here that's secondary um accomplishments at the elementary level um there's a wide variety of initiatives that we provided
the essential trainings for what you don't see here related to um English lang ELA and math and um ESL and secondstep are um not just the workshops but the sanctioned times on early release Fridays for teachers to dig into
the new resources to collaborate to problem solve so that's one of the ways that we supported the program was not just with this list of three-hour two hour one hour trainings but um making sure that there was time throughout the year for teams at the school level to
work together if you click ahead um we also had accomplishments around uh oh those are some artifacts from the work some vocabulary math and ELA artifacts you can keep clicking we had
um a successful workshop with someone named Mandy Lavine who did the the microaggressions um workshop and this Friday staff will have a choice between attending um an executive function training with Sarah
Ward or uh responsive classroom leader Mike Anderson what we say and how we say it matters how teacher language impacts um student self-esteem and school culture and I would say the overall accomplishment has been more choice this
year than in the year more choice between workshops more choice in the um how to use an early release Friday and if we keep going um another couple of successes click ahead uh the curriculum work is going
well please keep clicking and um oh speaking of choice uh we had a great response to elective book groups this spring we have um local people who are in a position to facilitate uh chapter studies on building thinking
classrooms um in mathematics grades K to 12 uh open windows open minds developing anti-racist and prohuman students and literacy foundations for English learners and just by offering these as optional ways to um to grow many teachers have signed up for all these
electrical groups keep clicking please um so here's a little bit more detail about what we worked on this year so we had Sarah Ward in several times to talk about executive functioning um we had translate gender in and similar to
the elementary we had done um workshops on microaggressions last year and this year we built on that work with that organization we used um Fabioa for the first time this year to with the faculty he was working with students um last
year and this year work with faculty on restorative practices we have a brand new data warehouse called open architect which I think I talked to you a little bit about um last time when I was here and that system is working really well for us is providing a dashboard and we
have lots of different ideas about how to add new dashboards in order to get some of this assessment data up there so that we can look at it a little bit more efficiently um we are using Vector and then just this spring we've contracted with Solution Tree which is a large organization that does a lot around true
PLC work as opposed to uh PLC light work um and then of course always we're doing curriculum development with our departments so next year uh we are looking at um district-wide learning objectives we're going to continue on
with our work with PLC's so this year was really or this spring was really an introduction to that work next fall we're going to work uh roll out some more professional development and we're anticipating that next spring we will start to dabble with the true PLC model
um there are many many details to work be worked out and we're working very closely with our department chairs on that initiative um we're going to roll out the ambitious science teaching which is the book that we've been using as part of our science committee work um and it's really applicable to all
content areas i mean it's got some great ideas in it uh we'll continue to parse off our equity action steps and move on to year four of implementing those and then again multi-tered systems of support uh specific goals for elementary next
year i uh I'm still meeting with um instructional leadership teams to make sure that we're aligned in these goals but um if everything goes the way I believe it's going um our ELA curriculum is going to get the most of our attention um it's been a challenging and
rewarding but also challenging um resource to adopt and um in a 4-year program of implementing a new curriculum the first year is usually try it the second year is do it and the third year is refine it and the fourth year is own
it so we are hopefully going to be refining it next year we've been through it twice we're more adapt and more agile looking for the things we need and understanding how what we do in September gets picked up again in in January and again in March and with that
ability to um anticipate we can do more vertical alignment with one another uh that means teachers and grades that are adjacent to each other can talk about how are you um how are you teaching the painted essay template and how can I build on that and if you don't do that
you know someone could say I didn't do that so you'll have to redo that those kinds of nuanced um alignment pieces we can work on calibrating the use of rubrics the program comes with rubrics that um we can look at student work and everyone can assess it using the same rubric and if it's assessed differently
talk about what led to those differences and interpretation of the standard or the work um how might we want to tweak this rubric so that it fits our context better um there is a new data platform uh that has been very helpful with math and so even though I have this mostly
under ELA it's still part of implementing our new curriculum learning how to um use this new way of reporting student progress um it it automatically aligns it with the standards which is pretty handy so we have a summer committee looking at how we might use
that um because it'll be a new a third year it'll be a chance to meet with art and music and technology teachers and say "These are the big units in ELA how could we work together to like the second unit of the year?" in ELA is science focused could we do some
scientific drawings in art class that would supplement the study of frogs or the study of fossils or the study of birds the students are doing um and we have questions about writing and handwriting and um we're also going to
be breathing into um our best practices emerging from science there's no new resource there's no new curriculum there's no big shift for teachers but we want to um take a couple of our early release Fridays to do shared reading or to do some model lessons and just begin
to grow in the direction of what we've I've named as our instructional vision for science um but there's no new curriculum coming in science just growth in terms of um best practices sorry oh yeah um I wanted to say that our curriculum review cycle the reason
why we have something on every single burner on the stove and in the oven and in the broiler is because during the pandemic we got a little bit out of order so in trying to come back every year it was like okay 2223 let's do language arts and ESL and 23 24 let's do
math PE and health and here we are in 2425 let's do science library and technology and we were going to do social studies next year and keep putting our ducks in a row but really it's super clear that we have as much as our burners and ovens and boilers can
hold and we just need to take a year to reflect and refine and um digest all of the good things we're making and so we've um decided to put social studies um art and music in the following year not next year but like go ahead and cook
what we're working on a little longer before doing a curriculum review here and then the cycle repeats um after that we are going to take a bit of a breather so that we can do well with what we've got and then plans for next year for secondary looks really familiar
um because we really we strongly believe in doing multi-year initiatives um if you do something one year and then drop it it just doesn't gain any traction so we're essentially going to continue on with our PLC learning our open architect data um we will bring Sarah Ward back
we're hoping to do some more uh consultation with her rather than some of these presentations that we've been doing um again restore her practices and um and then really explain expanding our PLC model and really digging into data
questions thoughts yes I'd love to hear you and taken a year to kind of reflect and redefine a refine a question with all the PD you're doing this is a lot i brought up last year too how do you know where it's working and where you need to
improve because you're again you're right it's very similar to what we've been doing for the second year like for example how do you know PLC's are going in the right direction how do you know faculty your teachers and staff are understanding transgression training where's your data i know you said do a
lot of data driven kind of planning where are you getting the feedback to kind of evaluate your PD yeah really good question so there's a couple of different ways i mean our main driver for as far as monitoring PD is our classroom observations and getting in
there so for example just one really small example um we did u Sarah Ward again for I think it's been like our fifth or sixth time with her she has some really specific pragmatic strategies that she suggests um and George was doing observations last week
and he said "Hey I saw this in a couple of classrooms." And so you can see it visibly on the board being used um we don't do a lot of top down where we're saying everyone has to use this model um because we really feel that people need to use it where it's going to fit but all of this we should be seeing in the
classroom with the PLC when we get to the end of that project uh we should see regular meetings that are run under the PLC model with data using to to drive instruction i mean the whole ultimate goal is um you know increase student learning which we see through
achievement data um and that's you know that's the ultimate sometimes it gets a little fuzzy about how you tie a very small specific thing into that bigger piece but a lot of it's classroom observation do you want to add uh we're starting to look at
collections of student work now that the especially with ELA that initiative having done two years of that we have work samples from all of the grade levels that were um looking at we've done a couple of collaborative looks at student work and I think we'll do more and more of that it's actually it seems
to me like part of it is getting feedback from teachers on what how what they're what the how the questions change like the questions used to be where do I find this how does it work and now the questions are um what's happening to student voice that's a really different question than where do
I find the rubric and so as the questions change we realize that we're making progress with our implementation and then now we're looking for how does it impact students and where are we seeing what are we seeing in the student work Um and I I I could talk about that a lot
longer but I I I think student work is the place to look for it next um thank you i'm uh conscious about my own volume of emails and what I can uh keep up with and and and also that you guys do so
much work and what we get is this little snippet of like we did this this and this and I bet that you guys could probably go on for a long time about lots of things i wonder whether or not we could get some like briefer synopsis as things come up like here's what we
covered in this so that it it's a little more meaningful to know like what's what's encompassed in this particular program does does that make sense like it's not just culturally responsive we're doing this and continuing conversations but it's like it's a
little more robust to give us a better idea about what things are and it might not be we'd be here forever if we did this as an annual like here we go but maybe a monthly or quarterly do you mean home school committee or do you mean parents in general uh I definitely
school committee okay yeah definitely for the school committee okay okay sure definitely i'm sure parents would love it too but No actually parents don't always love it sometimes yeah but yes for school committee by all means it's a fairly easy lift because we
do that for faculty to explain you know what's coming up and and all those types of things so we could easily put together a document that just talks about what happened with the workshop i think that would be really helpful to take this kind of information
perspective about what all entails yeah thanks that would probably be really nice addition to just like that's why everybody's here is for actual children so to like bring some student work and say this is what we're learning from this work that would be a great exercise
if there's time um will PCs be meeting on release days or will there be dedicated coverage time we're going to do we're we're looking at the model so we just today so we've had a couple of trainings this spring and just today we were talking with department chairs about what that looks
like um I don't think we'll be able to do a ton of it during the early release Fridays um just because the way they're spread out we'll do some of it because we have to do the professional development during those times but we're looking for some dedicated time that would happen during the school day on a
regular basis um and so we're still working out those details but really good question exactly exactly it's the pragmatics of it yeah exactly i just wanted to close it by saying obviously you can see the amount of work
the administration is working on to get all these different options and that kind of stuff but as I said it this is the engine of change in our district and it's also the mechanics who are constantly working on this engine are the teachers and they really are putting a lot of time and hours into it and
while we provide that time as part of professional development um it is also a big ask on them as we continue to um try to improve our craft every every week as we have professional development that kind of thing so I just want to say that because in here we saw pictures of students we didn't really saw pictures
of teachers and I and as I was sitting here reflecting it's like it is a lot of work on them and um getting that balance of feedback and also pushing them is that is that what we try to do within that plan all right thank you very much okay we're getting there i will be brief
i just wanted to talk for a little bit about um professional development for school committee members uh last fall we had a sort of open session for new members and returning members and it was really well attended i think it went pretty well thank you to everyone who was there uh we are planning on doing
that again next year um if you had any feedback or thoughts on it I'd be open to hearing that probably in the fall like last year um I want to remind everyone that uh the chart in the course uh course is um is
required in for new committee members in their first year if you are a new committee member or are older member who wants refresher course there's a a one coming up in Greenfield on June 7th i know there are several members here who are going to be attending so there will be familiar faces there um and I just
want to give a shout out there's a lot of great recorded uh sessions available on the NASC website they have their learning lunches series there's a lot of recorded videos you can watch just if there's a topic you want to learn more about that's a great way to do
it that's all I have okay uh update on legislation regarding school funding i'm going to turn this over to Jessica she did a lot of work i have you got one you want to go first i just wanted I was I actually piggybacked off you put it on the agenda
but I piggybacked that I don't know if folks I did add it to the um email I sent out that kind of broke down the agenda but um the federal government did put out a note to the state of Massachusetts um about um title six which is basically
I mean you can read through the document but they're basically going um and asking not asking demanding that um in order to receive our federal funing funding that we have to sign off that we will not um we will not um violate the
civil rights in their interpretation of the civil rights um by um there's lots of legal language in here but in summary um promote one race over another and a lot of the talk of DEI work um is putting one race over another depending
on how that work is done and they're also very much going after institutions that have um either quotas or um things based on race um and such within it so I just want people to be aware that that
came out last Friday right now the state of Massachusetts the the uh AG's office and Desi is basically saying to the districts wait we're ex our legal team is examining this you may have also knows if you've been paying attention to the news the New York state has said
that they are not going to be signing off on this that it is a violation so there's a big legal kind of thing going in in actuality how it affects us our DEI work doesn't go down and violate anything that they're saying within this
document um we're talking about lifting um you know lifting all people within our work and that kind of thing there's no um there's no discriminatory practices within it at least in my interpretation the question is that the interpretation gets more and more loose or whoever is
looking at that but um there is a concern that there's this kind of sign off in it and so um and where is that going so it is something please you know if you have a minute read through that document um because there's going to be a lot of talk about it in the next and I believe also the state got a 10 day
extension so it's not 10 days from this from the 3rd is now the 24th of um April i received a letter two days ago or yesterday can't remember what day I'm on um that they they extended another 10 days so it's going to be a lot of talk
about the news on on on what's going on there and so I know Jessica you were at you were at the state house all day today so you may know more know more than I do on this okay i also talked to Russ and I was hoping I was if I got lost I was going to have him talk about it too he said
that the federal government has been so unpredictable that he doesn't know where it's going to go so he said it's really going to be in the hands of lawyers and that kind of stuff and um really the best thing to do is pay attention but kind of wa watch and see where how the state level plays out and then it may
come back to the local level about where do we stand um in the request of the federal government so I don't know all that i don't want to predict ahead and get people um worried or or fired up when we don't know where it's landing but it is something um that came out of
the blue last Friday thanks um so I've been doing lots of legislative advocacy and just wanted to update all of you i might have information that hasn't reached you wanted wanted everybody to be on the same page about things that are going on um there has been a lot of enthusiasm
since the start of the new year um that the legislature says they are reopening chapter 70 funding formulas but I want a reality check on what that actually means i asked Natalie Bla and Joe Commerred you know what steps can we expect what is the timeline and what I learned was really surprising there is a
Senate bill which is um co-written by our own Joe Commer and um the Senator Jason Lewis who is the chair of the joint committee on education uh which would establish a commission to study the needs for uh updating chapter 70 it
would not result in an actual bill and formulas that would then immediately be enacted so basically they would they would come up with a report which is due in June of 2027 they would make their report and then the legislature needs to negotiate well which of these
recommendations are we actually adopting what are we adding to these recommendations so really reopening chapter 70 this session probably means that we might see impacts like the absolute earliest it could be is FY29 probably not until FY30 or FY31 just
wanted that reality check as we're talking about that so um we are very actively advocating for um the inclusion of some sort of rurality or sparity factor which leads into my my next thing so I am co-chairing MASC's rural schools
committee um I'm working with 24 other school committee members from all across the state who represent rural school districts um this is why I was at the state house today it was the joint ways and means public hearing um I believe it is still going on they were expecting it to be a 10-hour hearing i got to testify
only three and a half hours into it they didn't tell us the order of the speakers or anything it was an experience um but in case you all don't know about what are specific rural schools issues um this is what I think is the crux of it i'm going to read you part of my
testimony from today in addition to the challenges that all public schools across the Commonwealth share rural schools face an additional reality because of our low enrollment we are not able to achieve the same efficiencies of scale as our suburban and urban counterparts a public school requires a superintendent a business manager a
director of special education a principal a school nurse a school custodian school secretary regardless of whether it serves 600 students or 100 students because of this the commission found that it costs on average 17% more per student to provide a basic education in a small school district compared to larger school systems and that
difference rises to 23% more costs per student for a basic education if that small school district is also a regional as most of us already are um before I continue reading this I just want to point out that um as co-chair of the rural schools committee I'm also speaking on behalf of some of our
neighboring rural school districts who are in a much more dire financial situation than we are so please don't think that I'm uh being hyperbolic about our situation this is not what I'm about to read is not referring to FRS38 this difference is not yet
accounted for in chapter 7 the funding formulas rural schools advocates are already pushing for the inclusion of a rurality or sparity factor in the next chapter 70 overhauls but in the meantime rural aid is not just a band-aid it's an emergency life vest for many of our districts rural communities have already
regionalized our schools closed buildings reduced services and programming and cut costs the reason that I ran for school committee in the first place is that rural schools pay 18 of the lowest 20 average teacher salaries in the state many towns have repeatedly passed overrides simply to remain operational and some are now
pushing up against the levy ceiling meaning they have nowhere else to go the very real fear is that these districts will have to start cutting the few remaining programs that keep students engaged then families with means will abandon their public schools as a result and districts will will enter a so-called death spiral with no known
exit in case you're already mentally critiquing my plea for help please know that further regionalization is not a viable option for most districts some of our rural districts are already maximally geographically or regionalized with six seven or eight towns joining together to run a very small number of
schools they have students who spend an hour each direction on the bus every day which is a serious equity issue those students aren't able to participate in after school programs including sports because there hasn't been a late bus in decades they can't do homework on the bus because rural cell signals don't exist across the entire bus route and
the teenagers can't work after school jobs because of the time spent in transit add this to the barebones curricular offerings that rural districts are struggling to afford and it's easy to see why rural students are being left behind so that's just a quick summary of rural schools issues in addition to the issues that every
district across the state is facing um there was outstanding turnout today on behalf of education funding i would say in the three and a half hours that I attended it was 80 85% about education a lot of it about um reforming chapter 70
formulas there was really good representation other than me for rural aid um Gateway Regional in particular um so that we had South Hadley we had Ammerst we had and Gateway brought not only high schoolers but fourth graders who were excellent
um so bur a was mentioned over and over and Joe commer was the vice chair um is the vice chair of of the ways and means committee and actually incidentally right before I testified um the the co-chairs were called out by the
sergeant in arms with no explanation so as I was testifying my own senator was was the uh was chairing momentarily which is wonderful um so on rural schools issues um the rural schools committee is uh working on
two priorities right now the rural schools bill has been reintroduced the rural schools bill um would codify this rural aid so it would become predictable and not subject to annual appropriations um it would add all these other things for for transportation for special
education for um incentives for regionalization i didn't want to interrupt Russ but um if if the rural schools bill passed in its current form which is not that realistic but it includes um three years of $200 per student when you regionalize so that might be some assistance that we could
get if we regionalized our other priority is just the funding of rural aid so rural aid was recommended in 2022 to be funded at $60 million a year this year it was at 16 million if you account for inflation that's only about a quarter of what the needs actually are so that's why we are
advocating please fully fund it next year um they can use money from the millionaires tax to to fund that that is an option um two other very quick updates uh last year a year ago at our joint meeting we voted on a resolution support
of lowering the voting age for municipal elections that passed in the annual town meetings in Sunderland Conway and Wley uh failed by three votes in Deerfield it is coming back to Deerfield um Natalie BL is filing home rule petitions for or
sorry does Conway also have Natalie BL i don't know these home rule petitions are being filed it won't actually be enacted locally until until um the legislature approves it they are sitting on a pile of these including Boston and Northampton hey Phil yes yes
thank you um so yeah it'll be coming up at the Deerfield annual town meeting at the end of this month and finally MAFC's Day on the Hill Beacon Hill advocating with with legislators is coming up on May 6th you are all invited to come participate it's it's a really interesting day a
really good introduction to the process you spend basically the morning at the UMass Club which is a a really cool space with a beautiful view out into the city um they serve us breakfast and we get to hear speeches from various MASC leadership and different legislators um
and state figureheads um about education issues and then we go and we visit with different legislators to advocate for the issues that we think are important or if you don't know what you want to advocate for you can just listen it's a great experience so that's what I wanted to update thank
you for the time thanks Jess thank you all that thank you for your work all right we are through the agenda if anyone doesn't have anything else to add I'd be looking for a motion to adjurnn so we got a motion second second a
second all in favor and everybody online unanimous all right thank you everyone thank you Karen thank you adjourning at 813