Okay. Good evening. Uh, I call to order the meeting of the Hamilton Regional School Committee on Thursday, May 1st, 2025 at 7 p.m. And I invite you to join us in the pledge of allegiance. Algiance to the flag
United States of America to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, liberty, justice for all. Okay. Um before we get started, I want to remind everyone that this meeting is
being recorded and livereamed by HW Cam. Um we will have an opportunity for citizens comments. It doesn't appear that there is a any citizen comments in the room. Is that accurate? Okay. Uh Mr. Tracy, do we have
any citizens on Zoom who would like to give a citizens comment? Nobody on Zoom. All right. I'm going to just make sure I'm accurate that there's is there anyone in the room who wants to give a citizens comment? Okay. Um All right.
Seeing none, I will spare you all the spiel about citizens comment. Um, and we will go ahead and close that. Um, at 7:02, uh, next up, we have a review of a portion of the school committee
protocols. Uh, Jen, would you be willing to read that? As elected members of the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee, we including the superintendent accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best
education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in conduct of our business. Members of the school committee will make no independent commitments or take any independent actions that relate to the school district. When school committee members
attend meetings or other committees or boards, they will speak as individuals. They may only speak for this committee when designated to represent the committee. Thank you. Uh next up, we have a portion of our uh school committee mission
statement. Trent, would you be willing to read that? The Hamilton Wenham Regional School District School Committee's mission is to ensure our schools create graduates with a passion for lifelong learning together with the critical skills needed
to maximize their potential. The Hamilton Winnham Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that attracts and retains highquality educators by acknowledging and respecting their expertise and professionalism. Thank you.
Um, next up we have the consent agenda. Um, does anyone have any items that they would like to have held from the consent agenda? I have one. I'd like to hold the minutes from April 17th, 2025. Anybody
else? David Pledo. Um, I move that the Hamilton Regional School Committee uh approve approve the consent agenda um minus the April 17th minutes um as
presented in tonight's meeting agenda. Second second by Amy Kunberger. Um there is no discussion. Um there is no need for a roll call vote. Um, all those in [Music] favor and that is unanimous and the
motion passes. Um, I held the minutes from April 17th because we do take it seriously to get um, our citizens comments um, accurate and uh, one of the citizens
name is names is spelled incorrectly. So on the page two um about halfway down um it's Beth it's listed as Beth herd but her name is Beth her h E R
um so I my request would be to edit that anyone um yeah that's fine Um, I move the Hamilton Regional School Committee approve the minutes of
April 17, 2025 with the correction to Beth, correct spelling to Beth Hur's name. Um, okay. Second by Jen. I'm just making sure I covered everything. Um, all right. Is
there any discussion? Okay. All those in favor is unanimous and the motion passes. Thank you. Um All right. And we'll let um Bev know so that can get adjusted.
All right. Next up, Mr. Tracy. This is always a fun way to start off a meeting for me. It's um each year we are given the mass which is the Massachusetts Association of Superintendent Schools um certificate of
excellent award excellence award for uh student in the senior class who um best exemplifies academic excellence along with all the other things that our students do in school. So, this candidate, this actually awardee
tonight, consistently earns 98s, 99s, and 100. This year, she's taking five AP courses, the most of any senior to earn essentially perfect grades in college level courses, is indicative of not just her intelligence, but also her attention
to detail. She puts her absolute best effort into everything she does, and truly loves learning. She's the kind of student that stays after class to ask questions about a new concept, not because she needs the information for an assignment, but because she is genuinely
fascinated. After high school, she looks forward to pursuing a double major in bioengineering and biochemistry at Northeastern University and plans to earn a PhD. She notes, I want to participate in scientific research that not only questions boundaries but also enables me
to grow as a scientist. I am dedicated to pursuing scientific research that contributes to improving quality and access to health care for people across the world. She is as prepared as she could possibly be to thrive in this course of study. By graduation, she'll
have taken every AP math and a and science course we offer at the high school. She loves the theater and has been an integral part of our tech team throughout high school. As the assistant stage manager, she's designed the set, costumes, and props for our school
musical and our competition piece for Drama Fest, One Lane Bridge. She earned an award for puppetry with the shadow puppets that she and her crew integrated into the performance. For her National History Fair project, she developed a 10-minute performance based on the woman
most famous for indust industrial epidemiology. A history and science enthusiast herself, this woman's story spoke to Maddie, an avid crafter. She also enjoys crocheting, sewing, and glass blowing. It is my pleasure to award the annual
certificate of academic excellence to uh the high school valadictorian, Maline [Applause] Kerry. Congratulations.
Thank you so much. Congratulations. Thank you. And congratulations. Um, so we'll let anyone speak that wants to. I Maddie, I just want to say thank you for coming here to allow us to get
to enjoy hearing about the success that you've had and the things that and it's exciting to hear about where you're going next. Um it's why we do this work is because we want to hear and learn about the students in our district. Um
so thank you for allowing us to get to little glimpse of it. Thank you. Thank you. Congratulations. Congratulations. Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Have you met Dr. Honda? Because you will very soon. Got to get ready for AP
classes. I mean AP testing. You what a joy. That is so much fun. Thank you. Okay. Um next up, uh Mr. Managi is going to discuss with us a little bit about cell phone policy.
Good evening everyone. Uh we're very happy to be here tonight to talk about the change to our cell phone policy at the high school uh which will be in effect uh next year. I'm very fortunate to be accompanied tonight by Kendall Arnold. Kendall is a sophomore at the
high school and she was one of the four student members on the task force that helped put together our new policy. So Kendall and I will be sharing the microphone a little bit tonight and I'm sure you would much rather hear from Kendall anyways. So she gets to do a lot
of the talking. Thank you. So the task at hand was to update our cell phone policy at the high school to promote reduced student anxiety and stress. And we brought together a task force of students, myself, parents, faculty, and administrators like Mr. Money to
recommend a policy for our school. Why we're doing this? We're doing this because the increasing dependency on phones and electronic devices in the school has significantly impacted student learning and mental health. Constant access to to social media,
streaming services, and online distractions leads to students struggle with engagement both in class and socially with their peers. We've noticed that instead of actively building connections, students have not been present in class, students have been dividing their attention between their
environment and their screens. The state has been creating a policy well a bill called the study act and it is seeking to implement b-tobell restriction during the school day and limit access to cell phones and personal electronic devices and pro it proposes
standards for social media companies that encourage safe and responsible use. We've we've researched a lot of different um sources and a lot of sources consist consistently say that students are more engaged, form stronger
connections with their peers and experience more improved mental health when phones are set aside during the school day. Okay. So, there's a lot to be said about um allowing kids to be a little bit more focused during the school day. Um you
know, we want kids to be engaged. uh the consistent routines that teachers try to establish in class and trying to build community in class as well. Um in terms of relationships, uh kids build relationships by looking at each other and talking to each other, interacting with each other. Um you know,
responsibility um in terms of how you budget your time, I think, is really important. And making sure kids um have the things that they absolutely need to attend to learning. Um and finally, behavior. um you know, behavior um can either help or get in
the way of learning. Um and certainly cell phones can interfere with any of the things that we just tal that I just talked about here. Um you know, and Kendall spoke, you know, broadly about um you know, why we're considering or not really considering, but moving to change our policy next year um regarding
cell phones. Um, and here's a little bit more of um information, specific information um about the benefits, okay, of getting kids to maybe step away from their cell phones a little bit. All right. So, the the history of this,
okay, came up um during the school year earlier earlier on. Uh the building leadership team, which meets every other week, it's just a group of teachers, myself, uh Mr. Becker. Uh, we heard from a few that, you know, kids in their cell phones are really driving everybody up the wall. You may have noticed that at
home yourselves. I don't know. Um, now we we have a policy in school where it's not supposed to be out in class. Okay? We really shouldn't see cell phones in class, but it's, you know, it's like anything else. It it depends upon how well that's implemented and enforced in
classes. And, you know, it it's it's uneven at best. Okay. So some classes kids had their cell phones, some classes they don't. Uh but also during passing time, lunch, power block, kids have access to their cell phones. Um and that was something else that the teachers
brought up. Um so you know, we discussed this at our school council. We discussed it with student government and we thought the best way to move forward was to establish a task force. In other words, to get stakeholders involved. So we had teachers, administrators, students, we had parents on it. Um, also
our school resource officer, Gina Bertelli, uh, Craig Genualdo sat in for a few meetings as well because we wanted to hear from many different voices. Um, we did look for community input. It was easy in school to hear from the faculty because they're there. Um, but we also
surveyed students, surveyed parents. I'll talk a little bit about those results towards the end of this. Um, we looked at the book an anxious generation to give us a little bit of research data. um you know what what what has been the impact of cell phones and cell phones in school in particular and we
looked at a bunch of other schools around us including Ipswich right up the road this year they implemented in a way for the day policy which is what we're talking about here um we'll get into the details of that in a little bit um and then you know after considering um all
the information uh in the bullet points above you know hearing from stakeholders um you know listening to the research what it said and you know just looking around at other schools what they have done or are doing. We drafted a policy um for the school council to consider
and the reason why school council has to consider it is because it is a change to the student conduct portion of the student handbook and that is the body that ultimately has to vote that in uh that change. So school council needed to have a significant voice in this
process. All right, the policy. All right, so what does this actually look like on a day-to-day basis? So, kids will show up to school. Uh, they'll have their cell phones with them and they'll go to home room. When they get to home room, what they will do is they will put
their cell phone in a little blue tray that has a slot for each cell phone and it will be numbered. Okay? Go in the tray. Teacher will take the tray and we have lockers right outside the room that hold the tray and those cell phones will
be locked up uh for the school day. Kids will have time at the end of the school day. They'll we give them a couple minutes uh at the end of the day to go pick their cell phones up from their home room. And that's we're really just following the model uh that Ipsswitch put into
place. And we did spend a day there, right, Kendall? Yeah. What was it? Well, let's hear from her. You don't need to listen to me talk. Um Kendall, why don't you explain a little bit about Ipsswitch, what you saw there and what that felt like. Um I noticed a lot of conversation and a lot of eye contact
which Hamiltonum. Not necessarily that people aren't doing that, but it's not as common. And I noticed with my peers especially, that we're kind of in our phones, even myself included, we're kind of we're kind of staring down at our phones, kind of texting instead of having conversation. And I noticed at
IPSWitch, it's a lot more face to face conversation, in-depth conversation. It's not just short glances at each other. And it's kind of like saying hi to your friend and then having a conversation rather than just going back into your phone after you say hi to them in the hallway. And another thing that I noticed there's more engagement in
class. Even at Hamiltonum, we we're not necessarily on our phones in class, but I noticed that at IPS, a lot of people have like higher attention spans and they're more paying attention to what the teacher saying and they're kind of more engaged and they're ready to learn rather than ready to look down at a
device right after the teacher's done talking. Okay, so well put. Thank you. Um so anyways, back to the policy here. Um, after uh the cell phones have been put in the lockers, like I said, kids go to class, pick it up at the end of the day. Um, you know, the biggest change I think
is going to be during passing time because they're just not going to have their phones with them. And also during lunchtime, you know, they're not going to have their phones. Um, you know, like Kendall said, uh, when we we went to lunch at IPS High School and it was really loud, um, at the presentation the
other night that Mr. Tracy was at, um, and he gave, um, you know, his perspective on things. you know, one of the other panelists there talked about how loud schools get again when all of a sudden they have to talk to each other. Um, and so I'm looking forward to that. Um, you know, hearing that volume of
voices again. Now, kids can the word is probably not worded correctly, opt out, like you don't get to opt out and decide to bring your phone to school. Kids can say, um, I'm not going to bring my phone to school at all, therefore I won't put it in a locker. um we could talk about
some of the implementation challenges of this, but you know, we feel it's just something we should um offer to families who would rather us not hold the phone for the day, then okay, fine, just keep it at home. Um or, you know, some kids could keep it in their car, too. I mean, that's a possibility. We're not going to go rifling through cars. Now, kids are
still going to be able to use iPads, laptops, and Chromebooks. That's the distinction between us and Ipsswitch, okay? Because, you know, we we've given kids iPads in the middle school and and a lot of them when they're younger in the high school anyways, they still use them, but you know, eventually they migrate to laptops. Some have
Chromebooks. Um, but we have a lot of personal devices in the high school. Ipsswitch is a Chromebook school and they're only allowed to have the Chromebook itself and that gives them a lot more control. you know, we've been a sort of bring your own thing for years
now and and upsetting that that culture and that routine just isn't worth it. Um, there's some challenges associated with it, but I I don't I don't think it's worth, you know, pushing hard to say, "Okay, everybody has to have this device." That plus we didn't really budget for that either, so that could be
a problem. We know. Yes. Um, and the other the last bullet point there talks about a senior privilege. Okay. And this is something that Ipsswitch did that I thought was pretty smart. Um because the group that will feel most agrieved will be the seniors. The freshman coming in
have absolutely no clue what to expect anyways. But the seniors on their way out are going to be like, "Are you kidding me? My last year high school." Uh well, what Ipsswitch does is after the first quarter, okay, if a senior hasn't screwed up or violated the cell phone policy by bringing perhaps a
burner phone into school, handing that in because that does happen. Mr. Mitchell, the per the principal up there, said that's something that he had to deal with a lot in the beginning. Um, but if you know kids kind of keep things together, the seniors, they're allowed to keep their cell phones on them during the day, but we can't see it out. In
other words, it's got to be in their bag, hidden someplace else. I don't know, but we can't see it. Now, you might say, well, how is that a privilege if they can't use it? It sounds like more of a temptation. If you remember, we said at the end of the day, kids have to go back to their home room for two or
three minutes. Okay, that two or three minutes once the senior privilege kicks in at the start of second quarter is going to be like gold because they get to flee the building while everybody else has to hang out and get their cell phone. Um, you know, and I think I think it's a fair thing to do. Um, you know,
they kids have been there longer than everybody else and not for nothing, uh, next year nobody's going to be taking their cell phones from them. So, I I believe it's an appropriate measure to take with our oldest learners at the high school. That's the policy. Now, with the policy
comes um enforcement realities, okay? You know, what do we do um if somebody keeps bringing a cell phone in? Well, you know, the first infraction, you know, let's say we see a kid walking around with their cell phone or it's out in class or whatever it might be. Um we would politely say, "Please hand me your
cell phone." And the kids will politely hand it over. I know they will. Okay? And that phone will stay in the main office till the end of the day. They got to go pick it up. We let their parent know. Uh the second time it happens, um the phone will go to the main office. Uh parent will be notified and then we add
the convenience step of the parent having come pick it up. They'll love that. Um and then the the student will has volunteered to stay after school basically by doing this for a day. Probably not a good investment on their part. Um and then you know you get to
repeated offenses after that. Um, you know, we're kind of looking at having to up the game a little bit. Um, you know, perhaps doing an inschool suspension, which is the last thing we want to do, but if somebody's not listening, u, but you could also look at losing extracurricular privileges, um, some of
the events, things like that. That's usually not a a step we have to take with kids, but, you know, we need to have that in place. Um, you know, and the the key to this at the beginning of the year, um, it's really going to be on me and Mr. Becker, right, Kendall? Okay. is is enforcing this correctly and
fairly um and promptly to make sure that everybody gets the message that you know we're serious about this. It's also going to be really important that we explain to kids why we do this and we'll talk a little bit about you know how we're going to roll this out later on but you know that this is really kind of
the policy is you know kids put their phones away during home room pick them up at the end of the day. We have reminder things in here called enforcement um to hopefully make this policy work well for us. Now, what supports the policy? Well, parents, we
need your help. Okay? So, please don't call or text your kids during the day because they don't have their phones. Um generally, everything that you need to u let your kids know during the school day could probably wait till the end of the day. Um however, there are times where
you might need to get in touch with your kids. Um because I know that, you know, as high school kids, you may have responsibilities for siblings. Um there could be a million different things that they have to do. We're really trying to train kids to use their email. I mean, I
could send kids the entire school an email that says the first person to come down to the office will get $500. I would be completely safe with my $500 because I just generally don't read their email very well. Um, but we're trying to force
that. So, if you do need to get a hold of your kid during the day, you know, please, you could email them. Now, if it's an emergency, like in an emergency emergency, anyways, we would want you to call the main office because the last thing we want um even now is for somebody to text a kid about something
horrible that's happened and then all of a sudden that's ground zero for it. We'd rather get that message first and and marshall our resources to be able to help a student out. So if there is an emergency um you know call the main office and if a kid needs to call home they can come down to the main office.
We actually do have a phone there that kids can use. So those are things that parents can do to support us, you know, and the outcomes for this, you know, really what we're looking for, like we already said, focused learning. Okay, you these little sayings that are
at the bottom of these slides here, we found these on the internet, strangely enough, okay, but you know, being where your feet are, phones away, mind's engaged, all this kind of stuff. You know, you need to focus in order to learn. Okay, if your brain is shifting away every 30 seconds looking at a
notification, you might as well flush down the toilet what you had done for the previous 10 minutes because it's just going to be gone. It hasn't been encoded in your brain yet. Um, you know, mental well-being, um, you know, the school climate, I think, is impacted by this. You know, moving away from what's
going on on this piece of metal and plastic to, you know, what's going on with the person sitting across from me. Um, just getting kids more engaged. uh not only in their classes but also just in the community of school as well. You know that's what we will have to measure next year. How do kids feel about this
as we move along you know there but there are challenges and Kendall you heard about some of these challenges correct? You play a sport right? Yeah. Okay. She plays a sport. What do you play? Cheer. Okay. She cheers. So, you know, one of the biggest
questions that came up, well, what do we do if cheer practice is cancelled? Or what do we do if all of a sudden the cheer coach says, "We are going to have an extra practice or the 8 million
things that happen with sports or any activities." I'm imagining a lot of you played sports in high school at some point. What happened when practice was changed? When there was a rain out, we figured it out. Okay. Things happen. A
dime. Yeah. Right. Nobody's head fell off as far as I know. Seriously. So, we've talked about ways that we can notify kids that there have been schedule changes. You got to remember, they're still going to have laptops.
They're still going to have Chromebooks. They're going to have all this stuff. We are going to likely reenable the messaging app on the iPads if kids still use an iPad because that may be a way um that we share information. But there
are also a number of apps that are out there that the teams use. Um also pushing kids towards email and things like that. Um but there are there are ways to solve that problem. Okay. Emergencies. Everybody asks what if
something awful happens in the school? kids all have to scatter, whatever. The first thing that first responders say is that they do not want kids on cell phones because what happens is all of a sudden there are going to be 450 different streams of information going
out, coming in, and any bit of information that comes out there that a kid may just put out because they heard it, the first responders have to to act on that. And all you could be pulling their resources in different directions. We need kids to pay attention to the adults that are in charge during these
emergencies. We don't need them on their phones, okay? We have ways for kids to contact. You know, the nice thing about being at the high school is like we tell them if something bad happens, get to the white church. If you can't get to the white church, just get the heck out, go to a neighborhood, knock on the door,
go to the police station, whatever it is. And there are ways to contact and make sure that we're all okay. Uh but the cell phone doesn't need to be part of that. We talked about this at length with uh Gina Bertelli and that's exactly what she told us and you know we've heard that in other places as well. You know what if we have a kid who has
medical needs um diabetics for example a lot of times use your cell phones. Well obviously you know we make provisions for that. Okay. Um you know and stronger student engagement ultimately that's what we're looking for at the end of the day. Um you know and how we measure
that. Do we actually see that over time? Because we're going to want to be able to show that to the kids that we've made this change and it is helping you. But how do we do that? That's a question we're going to have to answer because that's not always clear. You know, how do you prove you guys are more engaged? We don't like this policy. Well, okay. I
don't like a lot of things, but I I do them because they're good for me. Um, so we have to figure out how we're going to do that next year. Parent support. Um, so if you look at the blue and the red, those are kind of the people who are, yeah, we're kind
of for this. And if you add those numbers up, it's about 3/4 of the parents who responded to the survey. As you can imagine, about 3/4 of the kids who we surveyed said, we're not too thrilled about this policy change. So that that inverse relation
relationship, okay, um isn't surprising. Um but it's something that we'll have to work with next year. You know, like I said, we've told the kids about this a little bit. Student government's definitely aware of it. The students and stu uh school council are aware of it. Kendall is aware of it. Um as are the
other kids on the task force. Um but we we'll have to do more PR, you know, as the school year goes on. Uh so our next steps for this um school council approval um in terms of you know how this is going to fit in the student handbook and we've already gone over
this three or four times with school council different readings of it you know adding and subtracting some things um presenting to students and parents at the end of this year. So right now I'm in the mode of saying everything is going to happen after graduation. Okay. So after May 31st is when we'll start
this work um with students and parents informing them, okay, here's how it's going to work. Um here here's why we're doing it so that you understand that there's a purpose to this. Okay. And certainly offering the opportunity for people to ask questions u because
there's probably implementation challenges that we haven't even thought of yet. Um but we have to have a new answer for those or an answer for those questions. Um, and so then we'll be rolling out the policy in August when school starts. Um, when we talk to not only our teachers because our teachers need to understand the policy, what
they're supposed to do while they're in the classroom. You know, if you know a kid takes their phone out, what is their job? How do they interact with a student in that situation? Um, you know, but also kids and parents as well, okay? Just to remind them. So, we want to do it at the start of the summer before
everybody leaves and then again when everybody uh comes back to school. Okay. So, Kendall, did we cover everything? Okay. Kendall thinks we got everything, so we might be good. Does anybody on the school committee have questions for us?
I have a question or John, you first. Um, I have several questions. Um, what about smart watches? So, we talked about smartwatches, earbuds, and whatever other weird devices are out there. Um, we figure we
can tackle one thing at a time. We'll focus on the cell phones. Um, because I I I think that if we kind of start crawling in the direction of, well, what about this, what about that? I don't know that we have the bandwidth to deal with it. You know, I think if we start with the phones,
um, you know, that's that's a good place to begin. Now, kids, they may still have earbuds and I I have no idea how they would still listen to music, but if they do have a laptop or Chromebook or whatever, they can still connect like and some kids listen to music while they work. Some teachers want them to listen
to music because it keeps them focused. Um, so they still have that capability, but you know, it's it's tough um with all the different devices that are out there, but we figure we'll start with cell phones. Can I add to that answer? So, I was fortunate the other night to be invited to Endeott College to be a
panelist um um with a group that was supported by the Lutz Foundation. Uh it was a teen mental health event specifically for phones and devices in school called schools lead the way. um there. And as a member of the
superintendent association legislative committee, I've been working with the attorney general's office who is um really got a bill moving pretty well through the state house right now that is a bell-to-bell ban for the entire state. Um which is all personal devices.
It's it's not even specific cell phones. So there there is something in in gear and that's part of what what we were talking about at Endicott the other night. Um you know we had I don't know 60 or 70 people in the crowd that were just trying to learn about it and how to figure out all the different devices and
watches came up and earbuds and all the you know like Brian said they there's more devices out there than you you can imagine. But it it's this new bill that's that's currently um in in the state house um education committee is specific to bell-to-bell
uh phone free and personal device free zones and it covers all personal devices in schools. So that'll be a whole different thing for people to to to wrestle with. Chen, did you have another question? I have two, but Amy should go. Okay. Oh,
go ahead, Amy. Thank you. Actually, it's sort of a comment question. I really appreciate this. This is a topic really near and dear to me. I love on your benefits slide the responsibility piece because I think so in my university
classroom, I have students struggling with not being able to stay off of their phone and they will talk to me about it. How do I do this? How do I stop using my phone? So, it's definitely a concern. I like the idea that you're pointing out not only just taking the phone or
putting them away but responsibility like helping students develop better habits where distraction comes into play. I think it's sort of um two equal things like putting the actual phone away but also teaching students how to manage their time and not get distracted
especially where we're going to allow other devices which I totally understand the logistics of needing laptops and iPads at school. Um so I guess this is more of a comment than a question but I just think that that piece is just as important as physically putting the phones away like teaching our students
how to manage that. Thank you for those other people, Jen. Okay. Um, this is just something to think about when you're developing policies is what are students going to do if they
have to show up late for school or if they have to leave early. Correct. So, what will happen is if a kid shows up late or has to leave early, they will check their phone in the main office and that's just where it will stay for the day. Um, so we'll have a little blue
tray in the main office that will be manned by us and uh, you know, if a kid's got to leave for a doctor's appointment, they'll just grab it on the way out the door. And, um, my last question is, are teachers going to have to put their
phones away during the day? or what alternatives are they going to have to use because my daughter has multiple teachers that have them do during class activities on their phones, right? So, that's the that's one of the
sort of questions I probably should have put on there. Um, you know, the instructional use of the phone, it it does have a place, I guess, in that, you know, a lot of times, okay, take a picture of your work. Um, something like that. a lot of voice recording happens. Um, so those
are going to be some operational challenges, but they're technical challenges and I think you can figure it out, you know. Um, IPS switch has figured it out, you know. I know, um, in art class, which is a place where you have to take a lot of pictures of your work. I mean, that's just what they do.
Um, so there they they bought a bunch of cheap digital cameras and they that's how they've done it, you know, and I think that's doable. You know, how do you do it in other classrooms? We're not going to buy 800,000 cameras for all the classrooms probably. So, we're going to have to think about how we'll do that.
Um, you know, also doing things on paper and handing it to a human being is not a bad alternative either. That still does work, you know, so maybe there's going to be a little bit more of a return to paper and that's okay, too. And will the Alice trainings be modified to take into
account that students no longer have cell phones? there the the instructions that we had before for this was, you know, get out of the building, okay, and, you know, get to the white church. You know, we never really said get out of the
building, call us on the cell phone, let us know where you are. Now, that was obviously an option before, but you know, we're going to have to reinforce the fact that if you have to leave the building quickly for an emergency, okay? Um, and you need to let us know where you are if you're not able to get to
that rally point, you know, we've given students options of what to do. You know, if you make it all the way to the police station, you you'll let them know where you are. If if you're just in some random neighborhood, knock on the door and let them know like something just happened at the high school and we've been told that we got to inform the
police where you are. And the police know that and that's exactly what they've told us to tell the kids to do. Trent, so I'm very much in support of this and I want that on the record so that my children can watch the video at home.
Um I do have some questions though. Um first is what happens at the middle school. So they they they have an away for the day policy there. Um and you know it it might work that
might work better with middle school kids, high school kids that just it doesn't seem to work as well. They they want a little bit more freedom or what you know whatever. It's a developmental thing. Um, so, you know, taking this step here is more necessary with high
school kids, I think. Um, I'm also not sure on the percentage of kids in the middle school who have cell phones. It could be 100%, it could be 50%, I have no idea. Um, I can tell you every kid in high school has a cell phone. You have a cell
phone, right? Okay. So, Kendall has one. um and so do the other 443 kids who are there as well. So I think the numbers thing is a little makes it more challenging at the high school. I I guess this is maybe more of a comment to to Eric than I think that um
having some kind of harmonization across would in culture a you know cell phone policy from entering the building that you're going to be in for the next what seven years to exiting that building. Um
and then my second one and thank you for giving me that number. 437 444 total students at the high school. Kendall is one of them. 444. Okay. So 443 plus Kendall. Yes. Um so um just
like back of the napkin math that means that the high school is going to have between a quarter million and half a million dollars of other people's property in its possession. Yep. Does that have a liability issue for the
district or did you encounter any stories from Ipsswitch about that as well? I heard nothing from Ipsswitch about that at all. Um, you know, that we're we're taking a step of locking it up every day. Um, you know, they go there's a big blue locker outside of each classroom that the teacher has a
key to and they'll put it in there and it stays in there for the day. Um, yeah, I understand that we're taking it. Um, but you know, a lot of the things that we say, you know, if you put stuff in your locker and it gets stolen, it's not our responsibility. You know, kids
leave stuff in the locker room all the time. Um, and that's that's not our responsibility. It's their property. Um, we are taking it away for the school day, but it's locked. um you know the the liability part I couldn't speak specifically to that but it's not
anything that Ipsswitch or anybody else that's doing something like this that I've heard from heard about. And my last question um is in the context of IPS switch where they are are given a Chromebook and they have control over
that device. Um because we don't have that approach. Um have you encountered any um stories or data or information about you know students just changing their
mechanism of communication during the day to an online messaging app in response to the messaging on their phone being not available. Kendall, why don't you speak to that? What do you plan to do next year? Um, I have a school iPad,
so I mean, I probably need the messaging app to be available, but one of the ideas that we had is nobody's really going to be taking out their computer to text in the hallway, which is one of the things that we noticed is people just looking down at their phone in the hallway. And also, nobody's going to be
eating and typing in the cafeteria at the same time. So then people are still having conversation anyway. And also, it's a lot easier for a teacher to notice a computer on the desk and somebody typing away than it is for someone to notice a phone like down underneath the desk. So, I think it kind
of works both ways. Like, nobody's really going to be on their phone, but also nobody's going to take out their bigger device to be texting even if they have the opportunity. I think that's a good point. You know, kind of trust you. Yeah. Yeah. The size of the device, I think, you know, it
makes a difference. Um, you know, it's really hard to hide texting on your laptop or whatever it is. Kids are absolute geniuses at texting on their lap under their desk. They can send uh an accurate text message without even
looking at the phone. Um, it's actually pretty amazing. Um, so we'll be cutting that out next year. Now it's still this still requires that you know as adults we move around the classroom that we design our experiences um so that way we
are you know engaged with the kids and with the kids during the lesson um you know it still happens now even with laptops I'll walk into the back of a classroom okay and start watching Celtics highlights with a kid um on their laptop so the stuff still happens they're still human beings they're
adolescence it's not going to be perfect certainly um But, you know, taking cell phones away, you know, or or separating kids from their cell phones, I just think is going to make u the the time that they have at the high school during the school day more meaningful. Once we
get over the initial shock of that and it does take probably about I don't know 3 weeks to a month or so is kind of what we heard and then after that it's just like this is how we do business. So, we have to deal with that initial shock to the system.
Um, one more question. How are you going to measure student engagement? That's one of the questions that I don't have an answer to at this point. How do you measure I mean, how do you do it anyways? That's one of the most difficult things to measure in a classroom because everybody thinks, you
know, kids raising their hands and screaming out answers and and looking like they're totally crazy about a subject is is engagement. Well, a quiet student could be incredibly engaged in the lesson. They're just an internal processor. Okay. So, how we we measure
engagement, you know, in school, there's a lot of dimensions to it. You know, there's the academic engagement, but there's also the social part. You know, maybe I could um put some kind of noise meter in the cafeteria tomorrow and then do it again next year. Um, you know, once they don't have their cell phones
anymore, it'll a little bit louder perhaps. I think there's a a cell phone app that measures engagement. Probably is. Um right. Um I just I wanted to well I did have a it's just a thought about you know you were sort of saying what
obstacles one of the things I was thinking about is when you know when you were talking about parents respond or par what parents need to do to help when I was thinking about my own experience when cell phones didn't exist when I was in high school but you know when the kids are going to go down to the office
to make an emergency call they need to know what phone numbers they're calling right so parents are going to need to tell them and they're gonna I like I I don't know. I don't want to put you on the spot, Kendall, but how many phone numbers do you have memorized? Right.
Right. Um just saying, you know, back in the day there were a lot, you know, and so they're going to parents are going to that's just something to throw out there. Parents are going to need to make We also have everybody's contact information in the office. So if a kid's like, uh, I don't know my parents phone number because I just hit a button,
right? Or I only know or I only I only know the cell phone number. I don't know the work number or the this number. You know, if it's a real emergency, kids are going to need to have the access to the important contact information, right? Um and and that's something you could ask
if switch too, like how do they do that? Um uh and um I guess that's I just also wanted to say, Kendall, I think this is admirable that you're doing this work. I know it's we all know here what it's like to be
tackling a challenging issue that you're not going to necessarily make everyone happy. Um and I appreciate you diving into that work and doing it in a thoughtful way. Um and I just want to say one thing that Kendall mentioned that kids are on their phone and kids are doing this and I want to just say
it's actually human beings are on their phone and human beings are sucked in and human beings are it's not just kids. So, I um I just want to make sure like we're all real about that. It's not just teenagers. Um anybody else have
anything? I just had one thought while you were talking about um public safety and the police officers, you know, what they would prefer would happen during an emergency and students leaving campus. Would we consider like call boxes, you
know, near the end of the street or like we have on a college campus? Um, something like that might help because I've had this conversation with parents and as a parent, I understand kind of the push to be like, I want to get in touch with my kid if something's
happening. Like, I understand that. Um, so I wonder if that would kind of help those folks feel a little better knowing that kids have a way to call the police. That sounds like a Mr. Tracy question. Yeah, sorry. That's a that's an Eric question. We could get the school
committee to put that in the budget. I mean those are those are realistic things I think campuses wrestle with once you start right down that road of saying okay no technology and now all of a sudden everybody's got to leave the building. Um so that those those are
good ideas. I mean, I think I think as we go through this process, other ideas will come up. And that that's what we talked about Tuesday night at Endeott, there was just different um we're very bit very different school district than say Boston or Worcester size-wise, but
also like capacity wise. It's it's small and we're we can move much more quickly than some of the bigger schools in the state. So, I think the some of the advantages are that we can get our kids from the high school to the white church really quickly. Um the other thing is our police department is really quick to
respond. I mean they are there in minutes having been the principal for eight nine years there. They they are there really quickly when something happens. Um so that helps too. But that's a good I mean that's something to think about like maybe there are strategically placed call boxes you know
at at four points of the campus or something in case kids do get stuck because we just tell them to run not you know we don't generally direct them where to run but just run. Okay. All right. Um, so I just had to So
we will this we will see the school committee from the school committee point of view will see this reflected in the handbook. Yeah. Is that correct? My you and I my understanding is that you know any change to the student handbook the way that you're looking at it is
does it agree with all of our policies? You know and I tried to think here of like you know is there any sort of policy encroachment and I couldn't really think of anything off the top of my head. So that maybe that's something to consider when we bring this back with any other changes. Yeah. And we would
expect to see the handbook in the end of June. Is that right? After graduation. After graduation. I said end of I said end of June. End of June. Second meeting. Anything after graduation. Yeah. All right. I think I think the when Brian and I
talked about this, this presentation was so that if you had questions or concerns or even suggestions, send them to Brian so that he can incorporate it because they're still doing the work, if you will, with some of the committees and task force um digging into the work so that when they
get to the handbook piece, the school comm school council approves it. It comes to here, go through that process, and then he's ready to go for the beginning of the school year. And again, I think we'll have to dig into it again halfway through next year and say, "Okay, Kendall, how's it working, you know, and and trying to find out from
the student perspective where things are working well or not or talking to parents and bringing them in." So, I think that's that's the commendable piece of this. Parents have been involved, kids have been involved, faculty been involved, kids and faculty have talked together. So, that's a
that's a big um a big piece of making this more successful because everybody's kind of having that same conversation. We're not just creating a policy and saying, "Here you go, kiddos." You know, I can tell you as a former principal, as Brian said, when anything new comes in, the seniors are angry at you and the
freshmen don't know any better. So, it takes usually a full cycle of students uh to get that balanced out. It's good work. All right. Thank you. This was and thank you for doing this now so that we get to really fully digest it ahead of seeing it in the in
the handbook. That's helpful. All right. Well, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Kendall. So much. All right. [Music] All right. Righty. Um, next up, Eric is
going to talk about the Northshore Education uh budget. Annual. Let me just make sure I can get back on. There we go. As probably remember um annually we just um are asked to highlight the approved
budget from the Northshore Education Education Consortium. I am one of 20 board members. Um we are also members of the consortium uh because they have very specific and specialized programs for students with uh disabilities that we
cannot um host in our own in our own facilities. This is an outline of a little bit about their programs. They have a number of programs, but also their budgets and um some of their summaries uh from previous budgets. It gives a little bit of an idea of who's involved in the board. Uh
how how the the mission and vision have adjusted. It actually stayed very similar this year than previous years. Talks about member non-member dis districts. We are a member district which gives us a discount on rates. Um, I think we have I think we have 11 kids
in in there right now. And so it varies by throughout the year. Some years we might have 15, some years we might have five kids involved in in one or or more of the programs. Um, it talks about revenue sources and then an overview of some of the increases and and the
consortium is dealing with the same things we're all dealing with. uh they had to increase their tuition rates um because of collective bargaining a 9% increase in collect after collective bargaining um 15 to 20 I think it's about 18.5% uh health insurance
increase staffing levels have been budgeted roughly the same but they they're always shifting their staff for specialized needs nurses or people specific to a a program and then um o occupancy expenses for this current year
were higher because they had to move kids around. They did a $14 million HVAC project last year and into this year, which is just about complete, and that movement and renting of spaces for kids will go away. So, um that will be will
be helpful. And they'll continue to look at capital projects. They're also looking at, you probably saw it in the paper, they run the um the high school uh for students with uh drug and alcohol addictions recovery high school. And they're having trouble actually getting
kids in the facility. And you know, we've talked a lot about that at board meetings and talked a lot about that with them. They're looking at just kind of a new space for that type of a program. But one thing we're learning is that schools seem to be doing a better
job working with kids and families with addictions, whether they're alcohol, drugs, or or combination. Um, so that seems to be slimming the numbers down in in in the recovery high school, which we we found interesting. So, they're going to shift their model a little bit to see
where there may be a better uh need for that. Um, so this outlines all of their budget stuff and their their final numbers. And uh, I also wanted to note that we're doing some work with them through the superintendent group. The Northshore Superintendent Round Table,
which we are a member, I am a member and, uh, the Northeast Northshore uh, consortium are working together to try to figure out how to combine transportation for out of district students among the the members of the
consortium. So really saying, okay, I got a kid going to NEC, you got a kid going to NEC, you got a kid in switch going, you have one in Rowley. Can that be one route instead of three routes? So we're looking at uh building these more efficient routes. And uh currently they
they're targeting anywhere from 10 to 24% savings on out of district transportation costs for uh many of the member schools. That's not that's not final. We're still that has to go out to bid and contracting but um it looks like it could result in a savings because we
are bringing kids I mean the number of these programs are limited in our area so all of the districts are bringing kids to similar programs every day. Um so this is a a good opportunity. We've we've spent uh we've had three different meetings with all of the superintendents
in the Northshore and all of the special ed directors brainstorming different ways to not only tackle the transportation issue but also to tackle the the budgetary shortfalls of circuit breaker and how do we say all right I have two kids that need a specific program you have two and you have two
can I host them at my building and you pay me a percentage to so we're looking at different ways to lower some of those out of district costs by sharing space or uh we've even talked about franchise models uh bringing in somebody like Northeast the Northshore consortium u
education consortium to to do uh like franchise work where they have a program they're already good at it they know what to do if I have uh a room open or a space open that makes sense they would come in and run that program and we would bring in um kids to fill that
program because there are there what we're finding is there are a lot more students with more individualized and very specific needs, especially kids on the medically fragile side. That's a that's a really difficult niche to fill. So, when you only have maybe one at each
school district or two at each school district, it's really hard to they get really expensive really quickly. So, we're just digging into this with the Northshore Education Consortium. they've been a really good partner at helping us to keep the cost down, but also working
with us to do training and um and digging into some of these these investigations, if you will. So, it's it's um it's a request of the consortium to present this to the school committee since we are members. Um the information
is great and they're always very willing to do tours and things too if people are interested in looking their programs. There there are there are some fantastic programs for kids. um specifically in right in Beverly. I mean right right next door. So that that's helpful for us
right next door. Okay. Thank you. Questions for Eric? Okay. Thank you. Um all right. Uh next up, I'm hoping you all pull up your calendars. Um
and we are We don't need to pick it right this moment, but it would be nice if we could. So, Eric and I are going to throw out the first possibility for a date for our annual retreat in the summer. Um, so
we're throwing out August 16th, just on the off chance that everybody says yes. That's a Saturday. Yeah, we should do 8 to 2:30, I think. What's the other one? No, he's saying that we should do 8 to 2:30 on a Saturday. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um
so I heard one no already. Oh no, I'm away. No. Okay. Um that's okay. I will I just figured we'd give it a shot. Um I will um I don't know. We'll try to send out some other dates. Um I can do
them or somebody could take a stab at it. We could we usually we've tried a couple and sometimes it might work. Um, so I think, well, let's just give a little bit of parameters. Eric, you're done meeting with the leadership team when? So, we we meet with the leadership team on the uh 5th, okay, of August. And
we'll have any anticipated pre-work done for the committee to manage. So, you would want to be after the 5th. Yep. And then we don't I don't think we actually have our first meeting on the calendar yet, but you know, we'd be looking at like a couple weeks after the 5th. Um,
would be ideal. So, Does it have to be a Saturday? It does not have to be a Saturday, I don't think. But we've, you know, people, we've done that in the past because people are Yeah. work count as work for you. Yeah. Um 23rd of August. Does that work for
anybody? I'm out of town. Out of town. Um August is tough. It is tough. Well, let's I I do want to address that question about I mean, are there days that are not a Saturday that people Yeah, I can August 22nd. I'm looking at
you. Yeah, I'm not on the 21st and the Yeah, I'm flexible. Yeah, many of you have flexibility in the summer. Is my is my flexible from you, too? So, does anybody have But it sounds like people are away those weeks. Different people are away,
including myself. I'm away the week of the Are you the 15th? 15th of August. Yeah, we leave on that date. How about I'm gonna try one more and then we'll uh send out 5th 18th. Oh, that's what you said. I'm away the week before. What does
Monday the 18th look like? Uh oh. I'm away. That's the same weekend. Long weekend orientation. This is a very long weekend you're going on. We have new teacher. Okay. 18th and 19th. All right. So, what about the
20th? It doesn't overlap with new teacher orientation Wednesday. I could do that. Let's get Yeah. So, I'm still away. I haven't gone away for like seven months, so I'm away. Okay. So, like I'm probably
the worst. All right. And and just And then then So, the week before that 10th through the 16th, people are away. 10 like that week. The 10th. Oh, you're away the 21. You're away the 21st. Oh, Dave is away the 21st. I don't know what time I'm gone. Why don't we We could book the 21st. I'm not sure when I'm
flying out cuz I haven't I've reserved my room but I haven't got my flights to Chicago yet. So I'm hearing people getting later. So but I just want to make sure the week of that 10th through the 16th is I could I I think I can come back the 20th. I I mean I think I I have
it booked but I I could probably come back the 19th. It's just me going away by myself to something. So if you you want to do the 28 thing that works for me. I mean yeah I could leave a day early and come back
a day. Yeah that's a lot. Yeah. Other people 20th I would just need an hour window because I have to do some work with the state house on that day at 10 a.m. Um 20th. Yeah 20th. Did we do it? Yeah
let's do it. Oh my gosh. Okay. Oh my gosh. impossible to find something. Okay, I'm putting it in. Okay, the 20th. It's a It's a Wednesday, right? It is a Wednesday. And we'll if you can pencil it in for like all day,
but as Eric said, we typically do like 8 to 2, 9 to 3, something like that. Um, great. Thank you all. I appreciate you all doing that work. All right.
Um, okay. That's going to be the cheapest flight right there. You know, there's going to be like $300 cheaper. Flights are pretty good right now. It's always how it works. They're not bad. The only thing that's not um so at our last meeting, we
um did not uh do the school committee subcommittees. I did hear from most of you um about subcommittees. Um people were really open. Most people were happy on the committees that they're currently on. People were open
to doing more committees that were on. Yeah, I was actually going to make a suggestion and I don't know if it needs to be a motion, but I'm wondering if for continuity sake we I'm proposing we stay on our current subcommittees. Um, does that need to be
a motion? Uh, I think if we're Yeah, I mean ultimately yes, because we're because eventually we're going to vote. Um, so um do you want to make a motion we can discuss? I move that the Hamilton Regional School Committee
um reorganize our subcommittees by remaining on our current subcommittees. Second. Okay. So let so just for clarity let me just make sure I know um so the motion would be that the committees would
remain unchanged from the FY25 school year or right correct okay um okay so let me just make sure I know what that means so negotiations is currently David Pledo David Frinkle and
Dana and policy is currently Jen and uh no yes Jen Cart Julia and Amy no me and Jen okay sorry see this is why that's why we write it down and Amy and
then uh and then capital Finance is Jen Julia Julia and Trent okay I just want to make sure that I have that so that um
Okay. Sorry, I just needed a moment to Yeah, let's clarify. Okay. Um, anyone have any discussion? Do people want to say other things? My only question was literally if I was on the policy or I'm sorry, say it again. My only
question was literally is whether or not I would be on Oh, because that was sort of a temporary Yeah. Which I have no problem staying on. Um, was it because was it was it you Jul was Julie on policy? It was Julia. Yeah. Okay. Um, and Julia, I think you wrote
to me that you were flexible in terms of Yeah. Yeah. I can be I can Well, that's I mean I am I still in policy or not still in policy? No. No. We Sorry. I'm on capital finance. I can stay in capital finance. That's fine. And if if something Well, I think the
question is I think David David like is No, I don't mind. I don't mind. Okay. Okay. Well, if it becomes too I might I might mind too much. Let me know. And that is something we can certainly it's these are Thank you all for things can get
modified over time as you know as um other people. Did you have something you want to say? Negotiations. Yeah. I I think that unfortunately avoids the the specific vote for each committee. I'm sorry, say it again. That that actually
uh not only obiates, it removes the possibility of of uh um making a different decision on any specific committee. So it's essentially sayingction of everything at once. I don't think it's I don't think that's
procedurally a good idea. So you're not in favor of keeping them the same. you're in favor of taking each committee separately and okay um you want to share more about that or you don't have to well I did
pass along my preference which was was the capital finance right I believe what you said is that you wanted to do negotiations which you're on correct um and then that you open to capital finance correct um and just to be clear
other people did too. Like I believe Julia for example said I want to be on um capital finance and I'm open to being on policy and so other people and Jen I know said something similar. Um so I
don't like just to be clear it's not just you that said they're open to being on other things. No no I wasn't implying that. I was suggesting that that uh if if there's uh if there's more people wanting to be on a committee than there are positions on the the subcommittee,
then you probably need to have a vote. So, we have a motion on the table to keep everything the same. Um I'm So, that's really the motion that we're discussing. And so I hear David is saying that in terms of this motion, it
sounds like you're saying no, you'd rather not keep everything the same, right? Other people have other discussion before we vote on this motion, which is keeping all the committees the same. Okay. Um so everyone's clear that if we were to vote in favor of the current
motion that's on the table, it would just keep all the committees the same as they were before. If the committee were to vote against, then I would be anticipating another motion so that we could go through each committee. And my
hope is we would still be able to fill the committees this evening. Everyone? Yes. Got that? Okay. Um All right. So, all those in favor of the motion that's on the table, that is uh five in favor. All
those opposed. Uh one opposed. Uh those abstaining, one abstaining. So um that is five in favor, one opposed, one abstension, and the motion passes. Um I
do so we will for the moment remain as we are. I do think um like as the new year starts if people um want to revisit um it's certainly possible especially I
know the two of you were yeah is there like do we revisit it every few months or we don't we don't but people can certainly ask to and certainly things could arise I mean like as an example you know um like we don't anticipate
that there would be a tremendous amount of work for example in negotiations but it could be that things change and then suddenly there's a lot of work in one you know so um okay um thank you all um and I will
um put that out sort of more officially than my scribbles here um all right next up I think we have Q3 financial We're not done. A little Uh thank you guys for joining us
tonight. We are here to review our FY25 uh year-end forecast as of quarter 3 which for us ends on March uh 31st 2025. So, just to dive into some of these numbers, uh you can see here that I'm
projecting a FY25 year end balance of approximately $47,000. If you compare this uh to quarter 2, uh we're kind of in line. I believe on quarter 2, I projected about a $430,000 uh balance at the end of the
year. So, it's relatively the same. Uh although there's only about a $20,000 difference. Uh we do have some major swings within each category. Um there is a summary towards the end that I'll get into. Uh but again, even though there's
only a $21,000 swing, I believe there was about a $4.3 million uh difference going either way. So some additional expenditures and some uh less. Uh but I hope that displays to you how kind of volatile the budget can be even from one
quarter to the next. It is a $42 million budget and some of these expenses uh we're inputting nearly 18 months before they actually uh come to be spent. So a lot of things can change in between uh that time and the actual time we go to
spend the funds. So like normal uh I have it set up under both categories. Presented in front of you now is the summary by location or department where we break down the five schools in each individual uh major department.
This is that same uh dollar amount, the $47,000 residual balance, but based on our DESIE categories, uh you can see that some of them are uh currently in a deficit and some are projected to be in a deficit. I will go over it a little
bit more in a moment, but I'm not asking to transfer all of the negative balances at this time, which I'll get into uh in a moment. Like all of my presentations, I try to be as detailed as possible. So when you look at the first exhibit
tonight, uh slides 8 through 26, uh is a complete breakdown like I normally do of every single um location or department and then by each of our 11 desi categories. I try to be as detailed as possible within those sections. Uh so if
any variances pretty much over $50 occurred, I tried to break it out within that detailed section uh within those individual slides. Like normal though, I'm not going to go through all of those slides in their entirety. I'm just going to stick with the summary, but if there are
any questions about any of those other sides, uh please don't hesitate to ask. I'm going to point out that um exhibit two on the school committee agenda has two charts. Uh it's the normal summary chart that's also included in this presentation. Uh but there's a second
one. So normally we would do uh any summary variances from the approved budget uh till the year end. So that would include the entire 470 uh $47,000 balance. But I also included a summary of any changes from quarter two
to quarter three just so you can see what may have changed between uh my prior forecast and tonight's forecast. So just to dive into what are some of the big changes to the year-end forecast based on what's changed between
quarter two and quarter three. Uh the very first thing here is really the kind of meat of the presentation, the biggest change and the biggest request that I'm asking for. Uh so just to get it out of the way, it really revolves around the first two, our capital items and our out
of district um tuition costs. So all of you know that the high school and middle school boilers failed us this winter. I believe that happened around Christmas time uh in December. Um we have three units there. Uh at the time all three failed. We spent about the next month,
so pretty much all of January, trying to almost Frankenstein the boilers. So, we were taking some parts that work from one and bringing them to the other. Uh, but after doing this probably five or six times, uh, we decided that things are still failing.
The same devices are breaking uh, even after we replaced them a few days later. So, by the end of January, uh, Curtis, Eric, and I met and we kind of decided that enough was enough. we really have to replace these. Let's stop trying to sink money to keep them going. So we
engaged with a architecture/engineer to help us design the scope and the spec specifications that we would need in order to go out to bid for it. Uh that happened in the January time frame. Uh they gave us a date back. They said it would take them
about three to five weeks to get us the documents back. We received the documents back, but they were uh lacking certain details that we needed in order to go out to bid for each of the individual uh DAM
subcategories. So, we went back to them and had them update some of their numbers. Uh we have not uh some of their information. We have not received the final draft back yet. Once we do, that then has to go to our attorneys for
review where they will uh kind of sign off on the whole bid package before we can go out to bid for it. But our concern right now is we don't have those documents back. It's May. Uh we anticipate that in the next week or two
we might get them back. Uh and then it has to go to our attorneys. They're probably going to take three to four weeks. Uh and when you fast forward sometime between uh two and six weeks from now, we're already midway through June. Then we have to uh post the bid.
It has to stay open for at least two weeks. Uh that's a minimum. It's more like we're probably going to keep it open for about a month because we're going to have to have mandatory site visits uh for the contractors to come in and view the area. But at that point, we are past
June 30th. And if we don't have a signed contract with a vendor by June 30th, I can't create a PO and I can't encumber the funds against our FY25 budget. So what happens there? There's really a couple different options. If we don't
have that signed contract and I cannot create a PO, the funds would normally fall to END. And everyone knows how confusing END gets once that happens. those funds are locked until the state reviews and certifies our END report.
Sometimes that doesn't happen till February. So if that were to occur, we would not be able to access those funds till the earliest point of February, which is well into our heating season. Uh even at that point, we would need
town approval to spend our END funds. uh another option uh those funds fall to END and like we have done in the past we would incorporate uh that money and those funds into our 27 budget uh and
plan to do the project in 27 but that means for all of FY26 we are not going to have working boilers up there and we are going to have to rent uh temporary boilers for all of the next heating season. This is obviously something we
don't want to do. So our request tonight is to actually take those funds that we originally set aside for the boiler project, transfer that money to our out of district tuitions account and use those funds to prepay our
FY26 out of district tuitions. And then when FY26 opens, I would ask for a transfer from our tuitions back to our capital just like we did at the beginning of this year in order to fund this project. So if you remember around
quarter two, I asked for the tuitions money to be moved uh to our capital to make it. Now we're asking that they moved back again in order to prepay the 26 tuitions uh to free up the funds in 26. This would just cause a smooth
transition. We wouldn't have to pause any work. We could continue to uh work on the project and hopefully have it complete before or into the beginning of the heating season next year. Again, otherwise we're waiting till either
March or even July of next year, which again is something we definitely uh would rather avoid. Um, did I want to say anything else about that? I think I think I got it all. I know that's a lot to consume about it. So, I can stop and take questions. I'll kind of move on and then
everyone can ask their questions at the end, but I know that I know that's a little flip-flop with the with the funds. So, figured out to ask while it was fresh in your mind, but if you're good. Yeah. You good? Okay. Good. Yeah. Um, so
that's basically our capital and our out of district tuitions. Uh just moving on, every quarter we kind of release certain accounts. So if you look back in quarter two, uh we released our any health insurance savings. As you move on into the year, we release other funds. The
reason I do this is because I always try to be as conservative as I can when building the budget and when forecasting so I so I can ensure that we always end up in the black. Uh so some things we do in quarter three is kind of release any
unemployment funds that we might have, our daily substitute and our workers compensation. So for unemployment, we did very well this year. Um we have a residual balance of approximately $330,000. Uh what happens here is when a
fiscal year ends, uh there's always either terminations or non-renewals. Uh but what really is a guess is how quick do those individuals uh find another job. So maybe they're um
you know terminated in June, but they find a new job in another school district September 1st. They would only be on our unemployment for two months. But you could have people that don't find a job right away and maybe they're on it for the full um length of
unemployment. But for this year, we did very well and we have a minimum uh number of people on unemployment. I believe, excuse me, if you wind back all the way to July, we only have about three people during the entire year who collected unemployment. So, it really
was a good year for us uh in terms of our unemployment liability. So, at this time, we're not anticipating any more um layoffs between now and the end of June. That's why we release the funds in quarter three rather than at the beginning of the year when there's a lot
more time left in the calendar. Uh kind of the same thing with our daily substitutes. The bulk of our substit uh substitutes and our absences occur in quarter 2 and quarter 3 because that's when the bulk of the school year happens. Uh so what I did here is we
have all of the data through March 31st and I projected that out till uh the last day of school on I believe June 18th. Uh, I'm anticipating that we're going to have a balance of about $45,000. So, those funds were released into our into the Q3
forecast. And then last but not least is our workers compensation. How this works is uh we receive a bill for our workers compensation liability around the September time frame. We pay that invoice, but in December, our workers compensation liability comes to the
district and performs a workers compensation audit. Uh usually after the audit there is an adjustment to our premium and we get a second charge in February. Uh now that that charge has been realized and we know what that
final amount is, I can release the remainder of our workers compensation budget which is approximately $34,000. So I don't want to release those funds in quarter two because we don't know what that additional second charge is going to be until quarter three. So, a lot of these things uh we
don't find out until after quarter 2, which is why during certain quarters we release some of the funds because we have final data. Uh just moving on, we do have another vacancy. Uh sadly, it's within my office. Our district accountant uh got a new job I believe at
the end of January. So although we are realizing savings for the district of about $35,000, uh we are causing me a lot of stress and losing hair because I do most of the accounting work at 9:00 at night once all the kids go to bed. Uh the my job I
do during the day and then with the accountant it's done at night. I also have received a lot of help from my assistant uh Sammy Buo who's been uh sorry Sammy Barrett, she has a new name, new last name. um she's been helping with the accountant work. So between the
two of us, we are uh kind of splitting the duties uh of the district accountant. I have posted for it, but we do not have a ton of applicants. So if anyone out there knows anyone who's looking to be a uh regional school district accountant, uh you can send
them my way. Uh but nonetheless uh we are realizing a balance at this time if the position stays vacant uh through June of approximately 35,000. Uh we have an update to our utilities. Uh so utilities at least for
me are very difficult to predict. A lot of it has to do with how is the weather going to be. And as you know even the weather men and women get it wrong. So, I'm not going to be the best at determining how much gas and how much electricity we're going to use based on
the weather. So, all I do for utilities is I look back at FY24 and FY23, look at how much we spent in the fourth quarter and try to project out what I think we're going to spend for this year. What I did for this year though was applied a
30 to 40% increase because as you heard me say in the last quarter, we received new utility rates that are anywhere between an increase of 30 and 40%. So again, I took an estimate of what we spent the prior year and applied a 30% increase. Uh that made a change to
our utilities of approximately $128,000. So we are seeing a if this uh comes true we are seeing a very big uptick in our utility charges just like a lot of us are seeing at home. Uh next which I'm sure everyone uh would have
realized is we are seeing an uptick in our maintenance and facility costs. Uh we are having more contractors come in and perform uh updates and fixing uh equipment that is failing. Uh that has increased by about $123,000. Uh we are also realizing a few
medical or FMLAs within our custodian group which is causing the need for other custodians to pick up additional shifts. Um so we are we are operating at a higher level of overtime distribution of approximately
$23,000. Uh the facilities and custodial supplies are seeing an uptick in costs uh just like everything uh in the economy right now. our paper supplies and our chemical and cleaning supplies. Uh their costs are increasing and at this time we're predicting that we're
going to be about $11,000 difference. Uh in terms of our long-term substitutes, we are at this time averaging a very high long-term substitute rate. Just like in our facilities department, we have a lot of FMLAs and a lot of uh births within our
teaching population. Uh right now we have five long-term substitutes uh currently in house who who will be here until year end and we have one more additional that will be here until about miday when the person they're covering
for returns. Uh for us that's a high run rate. We usually don't have up to six long-term substitutes uh in any given at any given time. Uh so that is high for us this year which uh we will accumulate about an additional 123,000 before the
year ends. Uh last but not least is our update on school choice out. So this is Hamilton Wenham residents who are attending other public school districts Ipsswitch Beverly wherever. Um the state charges us for this. So every single
month the charge that we receive comes directly off our chapter 70 payment. Uh we do not input this data to the state. So the other school district notifies the state that a student from Hamilton Wenham is attending their schools. Uh my
concern with this is I don't have the data for these additional charges. So starting in January, uh the state started charging us approximately $5,000 more per month. If you project that out to the year end, it's about additional $35,000.
I won't receive that list of students till June. Once I do receive that list, we're going to go through each student and verify their address, make sure they're actual Hamilton residents. Uh because in the past, there has been students input in other districts uh
that were claimed as Hamilton students, but they actually weren't. They were another town students. If that happens, we do get a refund, but it doesn't happen till the following year. Uh so we do have to recognize this additional
$35,000 charge in our current uh 25 budget. That really kind of wraps up the highlights of what our major changes are between quarter 2 and quarter 3. This is a summary of all of the other changes
and all of those changes between quarter two and quarter 3. Uh just as you can I mentioned before, there's about a $1.4 4 million swing in either direction. Obviously, the bulk of this is our prepaid tuitions and our capital costs that really does make up uh more than
75% of that variance. Uh I can't remember if I said it or not, but also included in exhibit two is this same chart. Uh a little bit bigger for you to read it a little better. Um and all of the differences from the approved budget uh to the year- end projection. So,
right here, the negative 21,000, that's the difference between the Q2 update, uh, the Q2 forecast and my quarter 3 forecast. If you look at page two on exhibit 2, it'll show that 407,000, which is the total uh, total change from
budget uh, to year end. One thing I will point out is I did mention in quarter two um, that I in error uh, left off the salary scale advancement savings. I did incorporate that into quarter three. I believe we're realizing savings of
around $30,000 I think um uh $21,000. So what that did uh was we realized savings from our teachers salary scale advancement. Those are teachers who did not meet uh the actual requirements to move but we did
incorporate those additional funds. Uh so we had savings there, but what it did was added to the deficit within our additional FY25 cola above our budget. So it's a net zero. Uh it just increases one line and decreases another. Uh I had
made that error in Q2 and mentioned that I was going to update it for Q3. So the following slides uh 8 to 26 is that detail uh broken down between each DESA category and each department. Again, I am not going to go through all
of it, but if you have any questions, uh please don't hesitate to ask. I'm just going to advance to the uh request slides. I I was interested in the the breakdown of the m that extra maintenance. Yep. Like what it is specifically?
Yeah, I thought I saw as you skipped through that there was a list. You mean the maintenance DAC? This guy. Uh sorry, just hold on. You want to look at that? You can check it out. Yep. Thank you. Yeah. Take your time.
Okay, thank you. So, just remember this isn't maintenance across the district. This is just the district-wide maintenance department. Each individual school has its own maintenance section, which would be broken out if I'll just go to the high school um just because
it's the first one going back. They also have a maintenance and operations section. Uh that one that I just had displayed there is the districtwide maintenance. Uh so if you really are honing in on maintenance, uh you want to look at all of the five individual
schools, you also want to look at central office um because central office contains a little bit of utilities and also uh minor updates to the building as well as that district-wide maintenance DAC. So thank you. Really want to look at all of them if you're trying to look
at the maintenance specifically. One more. Um, so tonight I'm only asking for three transfer requests. Uh, that is to fund obviously the tuitions in lie of our capital projects. Uh, it's to bail out the operations and maintenance stack
and also the other teaching services. I'm going to go back to that in a second. Uh, this is that same desi category. slide from the beginning. Uh you'll realize my projected balance kind of at the end here. There are other desi categories that are in a deficit that
I'm not asking for a transfer tonight. Uh that's cuz if you look at the current balance column, they're not currently in a deficit. So this is me projecting out what I think we're going to end the year at. Uh they are small balances, you know, $16,000. Once you start transferring
these funds, uh, you have to track them separately and it gets a little bit more confusing. Uh, personally, I'd rather leave the funds there until year end and see if we actually realize a deficit before we stop moving the money, just like we do every year. Uh, when I
present the Q4, the final year end, we do a kind of our final budget transfers to bail out some of these deficits. Uh so right now I'm only asking for the bigger ones that I feel are definitely going to end in a negative balance. Uh and those are the three here. Our
tuitions, our operations, and our other teaching services. Uh so again, we're just asking for the three transfers tonight. Um this is the motion. I will come back to it in a moment. Uh and then again we're asking for um the approval
to prepay our FY26 out of district tuitions with our FY25 funds. Thank you. And I can take any questions now. I'll go back to the motion slide just so it's Thank you.
Um have questions for Vinnie? Nice work, Vinnie. Means I did good. No questions. Very detailed. Um, all right. Uh, David. Sure. Um, I move that the Hamilton
Regional School Committee approve the FY25 operating expense budget transfers as recommended here herein by the assistant superintendent of finance and administration and as presented on the previous slide entitled
FY25 Q3 transfer request. Second second by Julia. Um, okay. Is there discussion? Okay, looks like we're ready to vote. All right, all those in
favor that is unanimous and the motion passes. All right, back to you, David. Sure. Uh, I move that the Hamilton one regional school committee authorize the assistant superintendent of finance administration
to prepay FY26 out of district tuitions and with FY25 funds not to exceed the amounts established by MGL chapters 40 subsection 4E and chapter 71 subsection 71D. Second. Second by Jen.
Um, all right. Is there discussion questions on this? Okay, we're ready to vote. All right. All those in favor? That is unanimous and the motion passes. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Thank you for all that work, Finny. The boilers are going to be a lot. Yes. Um okay. Um next we have committee reports uh capital finance.
Um so our next meeting is June second. June 2nd. Um okay at two. We haven't met um since our last school board, school committee meeting. Okay.
Uh policy. Uh our next meeting is scheduled on the 14th at 7, but I was going to see if we could reschedu to the 21st because it's fifth grade parent night at the middle school. Okay. Well, I will let you guys debate that. Yeah. Or I can just send out an
email. I don't know if it's easy an easy answer to just move it to the next week or I'll just email you. Yep. You guys want to look at that right now? I don't have access to my summer. Okay. Okay. Calendar yet? That's fine. Um I do
have a question for capital finance. The capital finance the that whole capital um submission and approval process. Is that published and available now or? No, we won't start that
until September, right? September. So, we wouldn't have anything published or approved yet. Right now, we're still in data collection. Data collection of what? Of what the projects are are that people want to have happen,
right? So how do how do we get visibility of that as it builds? Process is that the subcommittee will review it in September and October to prepare for the budget season. So the the subcommittee will take whatever submitted, prioritize the list based on
the information that Curtis gives them, costing and things like that. Then that will come to the committee before just before we start the budget process in October. So the rest of the committee won't have visibility of that until that point is what you're saying. You're on the
subcommittee. I think you're on the subcommittee, right? Trent's on the subcommittee. So there was a subcommittee based on that that policy that the committee approved that manages that process up through um the final prioritization of the list.
Okay. So, um, and I know we're a little off a little out of order, but so in to sort of piggyback on that in maybe I don't know at some point it
might be helpful, I guess, to get maybe that's in the fall to have this the whole committee get a clearer understanding on the actual process like how it all Yeah, we report on the whole I mean I think that will be as maybe that's what you were saying but I
think it would be helpful to bring it to the whole just for us to understand the I think this is the first time we're actually going through this formally in this manner so it might be best for us to wait until the process is over so we
know what works and what doesn't because if we told you like in advance we're going to do X Y and Z and X and Z worked but why right I guess maybe and maybe Even this might even be the place for it is on this report like as you're going through it the more information this
committee can have just the better like it might just be as simple as that that like when I say capital finance that you guys will give us an update on like how the steps so that we do know what's going on because it is new. Absolutely. Yeah. All right. Great.
Um okay. Uh anybody have So we kind of backed up but does anybody have anything else about capital finance? Um, I have something to ask policy. Um, which is a while ago, uh, I requested
policy to create a list of, um, of sort of which things in this body, uh, sort of a cheat sheet of like which things in this body require different, um, you know, super majorities and different. So, is that something that you guys are working on? Do we have an estimated date
of when that might be? Yes, I after our next meeting, I can give you a date. I we kind of got interrupted in that process. No, I know you did. Starting that over. Okay. Um yeah, it's it's on our radar. Just I my my hope is that
that would be a useful document for I know it would be a useful document for me, but for anyone who's sitting in this seat. So I I'm hoping that that will materialize at some point. Um negotiations. Oh, I'm sorry. Did
anybody else have anything on policy? Okay. All right. Sorry. Negotiations. Uh, we're getting together Monday, correct? Yep. We have a meeting posted for Monday. All right. Anybody have any questions on
negotiations? Uh, okay. Secretary report. So, um, yeah, I'm gonna tell you I forgot about this again. I'm going to actually resend out the email to everybody, um, and and just sort of see where we
are. If I do it right now, then I know I won't forget about it. At least it's in motion. Um, and the only other thing that I would like to put out there and maybe you and I can talk or or Eric and I can talk or is that um I really do
want to make sure we get the executive session minutes and that's going to require us to make sure they're all ready to go so that the first time we have an executive session um we can approve them all. So, um
All right. that would be a good thing to have ready to go. Um, but I think that's on that list. I believe the executive I think it was two. I'm just trying to pull it up again. Um, but I'd love my vision is to
do that in one batch whenever we have our next executive session. It makes it easier. Um, Eric, uh, just some a few quick items. Today is National Principles Day.
Oh, send out messages to thank our principles for the work that they do. This is an interesting flurry that's coming at us. Tomorrow is school lunch heroes day. So, all the people who uh work and serve lunches in our schools, we'll celebrate them tomorrow. And then
next week kicks off um teacher appreciation week. It's always the first full week in um in May. So, reach out and thank send thanks to your favorite teacher or your favorite principal or even your favorite secretary because
admin assistants kind of get left out because their day occurs during school vacation. So, Wednesday during school vacation. So, we we uh have sent out our thanks and appreciations, small gifts for people. Um, just wanted to bring that to everybody's attention that those
things are coming up. Next week is uh also the kickoff of AP testing in our in our classrooms at the high school. So, that's always a an interesting time and stressful time for our kids in AP classes. Um, and then I I just wanted to
say that I'm I'm happy that we um this week I read to 11 classrooms. I have one more to go. Uh uh we have for neurodiversity month for for April we have uh put together a list for teachers to sign up to have me come
guest read in their classrooms and their books about neurodiversity. We had a presentation earlier in the month um for each of the the elementary schools and then I um went out and read probably 25 different classrooms through April. It
was fun for me but we had some really good conversations. We read um books about, you know, being different and what it means to be different and opened up some conversations. We talked a lot with the younger kids about ways to um start a conversation with someone like
someone sitting alone at the cafeteria. How could you start a conversation? Um, what about someone that somebody, you know, is is ignoring because they are different or look different or um or a different race or or you know wearing a hat that people don't like, whatever it
may be. The you know, we've had great conversations with the older kids, the fourth and fifth graders. We did really presentation instead of reading a book. Um, had some great conversations with them about ways to make connections with their peers and also people within the
community. So, it was it was a though interesting to thread into my schedule, it was a lot of fun uh to go into the classrooms and have those conversations with with kids. That's it. Thank you. Um people
have questions for Eric? Yeah. Um the the roof, the high school roof or Yeah, the high school roof. The report that was originally done um I guess a year or two ago was it? 2023. 2023. I wanted to
find out what what did that cost and from a statement of work point of view, what's what's different about this $450,000? I mean, I can think of some of the things that are different, but I I wonder is there was there a proposal
from the the people doing the $450,000 worth of work or is that just a anticipated cost or do you have a foundation for that? So, the $450,000 that was recently approved at the last meeting by the committee y was to use uh
stabilization funds to begin the proc the MSBA process for repairing replacing the high school roof. It's similar to the building process that we have now with with the you know the elementary school process is the feasibility phase,
schematic design phase and then the actual um replacement of the roof. So much shorter, not not as uh dragged out as a full building. Uh so the initial $450,000 was um our anticipation of what
it would cost for our OPM and our designer to be brought on board and working with the state and talking with them and you know kind of getting those numbers. The state in the ARP program assigns OPMs and designers. We don't we don't interview them and and hire them
on our own. We basically are just setting a a a sum of money aside based on other projects that have been done in the community in the Massachusetts communities that are similar to ours and then the state assigns OPM project manager they begin that process just
like the building feasibility schematic design and then they'll by the design we'll have actual costing from that. So is there an underlying statement of work that lays all that out? Not yet specific. Not yet. That's what that's what'll come from the feasibility and
design stage. No, I meant a statement of work of of the work to get that I guess. Yeah. So the if you go if we go on to the MSBA website, feasibility process for ARP is is spelled out. Um very similarly again
to the building process where feasibility is examining the project. Uh the designers begin to dig into uh replacements, different options because they'll present different options. They'll also uh look at uh things like
uh water intrusion, rot, uh structural issues that may occur and they'll they'll come up with a a final kind of here's the direction to go. So they'll similar to the building, we'll have a couple choices to make at the end to say let's go with you know I forget the
thickness but whatever mill thickness of roof versus some other Yeah. Like that previous report laid a lot of that stuff out. Mhm. Do you have do you recall what the what that cost? I don't. Okay. I thought Gary had done that. Can we find
out? 22 23. I don't think we didn't pay anything. I don't think we did. I don't I don't believe we paid anything for that. We didn't. Wow. It's very comprehensive. I'd have to look to make sure. Yeah. I'll let you know. Okay. Thank
you. Anybody else have any other questions for Eric? Um, I just wanted to say on Eric's report, I happened to be fortunate enough to go into the office right when Eric was getting the um, I believe they
were kindergarteners had written like written back about having gotten to read the neur Eric reading the neurodeiversity book to them and nothing better than kindergarten pictures and writing about it was really great. Was great to read though. Lot of fun. Yeah,
I was and I was very impressed with our kindergarteners and all the things that they all the insights they had. That was really cool. Um, all right. Um, so for my chair's report, I don't have too much. I do just want to um mention that
um my understanding is as you all know um I did um after this committee voted I did um send a letter as directed by this committee to both Hamilton and Wenom select boards
um requesting um that the um requesting in addition to the warrant of the school building um project at the special town meetings and my understanding is that both Hamilton and Wum select boards will
be um making decisions about that this upcoming week I believe Monday and Tuesday Monday and Tuesday of this week. Um I also just wanted to share that um I am going to um offer office hours
um as a another opportunity for um citizens to share their views, ask questions, chat with me. Um people can always send me emails and I often reach out and tell them that I'd be happy to make a phone call to them. Um, but I'm
also going to offer some office hours. I'm going to do that for the next few weeks on Tuesday mornings um from 10 to 11 um at the central office. Um it's something Huh. It's nice. Yeah, it's something that I know that some of our other elected officials
on other boards do. So, I'm going to offer that. Um I am also going to offer office hours. Okay. Um, I am going to start on May 8th, which is a Thursday, 1 to 2 at the library. And my goal is to have them
every Thursday, 1 to two at the library until the 5th of June. Um, because I have dur duty the next week and then school year's over. So, I will probably post about it on Facebook. Okay.
Um, oh, one more thing. Sorry. I wanted to mention um I'm I will host on Zoom. I will talk on the phone or people can come meet with me in person. So I will put out info on how to do that. Okay. Amy likely knows more about how to host
office hours than I do. I do. So she'll be on that. Um Dana, I was just wondering um you spoke about um the both board meeting on Monday and Tuesday, correct? Um, I know, and this might be a
question for Eric as well, that they invited um you both back. I know Hamilton invited you both back for the meeting on Monday. Um Oh, yes. Yes. And I also, like I said, I I'll definitely I'll go to that one too. And
then Tuesday, I have to just check my schedule. I know I'm What's that? The one in one. Yeah. Yeah, I can go to that. Um, but I I do know that there's sort of this other conversation that's been going around and floating around that, you know, I want to make sure that
we're putting out there that uh has been sort of brought up on from some other boards about some possibilities of um the like a vote not needing to go to back to a town meeting. Um, and I'm just
sort of nervous that we haven't discussed that at all in, you know, in in house with us in that I don't want there to be any sort of surprises if it if something pops up on Monday or Tuesday.
Um, you know, so I'm I'm trying to find figure out an opportunity just to sort of at least bring that up that So, okay. So, well, I'm not sure. Let me make sure I understand what you're saying because this board did take a vote and we had a
very specific vote in which and I followed through on what was directed to me. Um, and you're right. We didn't take a vote or discuss any other option. You're right. It's out in the sphere. There's all these other options that
um people have. I mean, in other words, including there's a you know well anyway. Yes. Go on. I don't know quite what you want to do with that. I want to make sure that there is something. Yeah, that that there is a buzz going on. Um there seems
to be um some legal opinion that there might be a another option for a um a vote that could be had um to get the funding
across that. I want to make sure one people don't feel like it's something that's coming that's hidden under the surface and sort of coming from this direction but to sort of know that it is
there and acknowledging publicly that it's you know something that we've heard and um I believe have even asked council about to see the validity of Yeah. So I think that was Yes. Yes, I think that
was well articulated that that that I don't want to say incorrectly the original but I didn't come from that's actually why I'm talking around myself because I don't have the it didn't originate here but a legal opinion was
asked for and and and I have seen the legal opinion and the the legal opinion was about I mean I don't know how much to say because it didn't come from us and we haven't asked for that and this nobody I guess nobody here is
I don't even know what you're talking about. So I guess there was a legal opinion. I believe that it was asked for by one or both of the towns I believe. But so the legal opinion the towns do you mean the select? Correct. And they
asked who? They asked their legal counsel. The town council their legal coun the opinion. It's very complicated. I have read it. I am not a lawyer. Um, and I'm gonna try to answer this question,
but but no, I mean I can try and I can So basically mass general law, it appears in a very complex to me way. It appears that there is a mass general law that would
allow a regional school district or regional school committee to hold a vote on a debt exclusion such as the one that's before us in a different way where the school committee would actually run a
vote. Um, and that vote would only require a majority of the two towns. That being said, to be clear, that did not this committee nor any individual
member of this committee nor the district did not ask for that legal opinion. We did not seek that out. Um, it got sent to me.
Um, and I did see it. I don't know what else you want to do with that. I'm not looking for like I'm acknowledging that this committee has voted and spoken already about I do think it's going to get brought up next week. Um and I you know um I I
definitely want to make sure that it's it's out in the open. Right. Well, could you please share a copy of of that opinion? It's it's not confidential, is it? No, it's not confidential. It's not it's not from our legal counsel though. It's from the Right. It's so we would have to ask the select boards to share
it. So, but just to be I guess what I'm trying to say and then anybody can speak and but what I'm trying to say is from my point of view this committee took a vote and we asked a specific thing of
the select board and it was not that it was not what I just described. It was so I I don't I feel confident when I when I we talk about when you speak for
the committee if someone asked me I spent a lot of time saying I'm not speaking for the committee I'm just speaking for myself but in this point I am speaking for the committee. The committee took a vote in which we directed me to ask the select boards to
put this back on as it was to reconsider as it was. So, I just want to make it I I think David's right that that's out there in the world and I'm trying to clarify that it isn't what we asked for. It isn't
something that we didn't come from us. So, that's really what we need to say. Well, no. Well, I think David just wants to be out there. So, go ahead. I'll talk. No, no. I I think that that's sort of perfect that you know, it is out there. Um, you know, the
the you know, we voted as as a board on, you know, what direction we feel like we should be moving in. Um, and then I do think, you know, Monday and Tuesday are going to be interesting. And I want to make sure that, you know, we're sort of
we know we're all kind of on the same page there. I know this conversation is a little tricky because it's a complex um idea and sort of goes in a different direction than our already complex regional agreement. Um and
um you know again sort of coming into Monday and Tuesday um in in the discussions that are going to happen there. you know, so so many times and especially in the past sort of month or two, it seems that the, you know, people have spoken and and come up and and and
individual ideas have all of a sudden snowballed into these, you know, um like, oh, the, you know, certain this board is now saying that they're going to do this and and everything is sort of steamrolled so out of control that, you know, um it's really important to
discuss over and over again how complex these issues really are in that there's a lot of conversations that go on all the time. Um and and and you know again especially there's we live in such
an educated community that there's so much stuff that comes comes in from you know um the public and you know asking people certain questions and you're trying to answer them and so many times I do want to jump in because you said something really important there that I
want to highlight is that is that um the select board the whoever Exactly. I I believe it was the select boards of one or both towns. I think what you said is really important. They were exploring as they should a lot of different
options. They were doing their due diligence by getting a legal opinion by looking at all the options. And by doing that, that isn't them saying this is what we want to do. They're just is this something is this
is this it's a question that people get and they and they did the best to try to answer that question accurately and I think that's so I'm sorry to step on you but I think that's point of order. Yep. We are well beyond our posted meeting time. Sorry.
That's a great segue. Excellent. Um all right. Uh thank you Trent. Um okay topics for future meetings. body. Um, all right. Unless anybody has
anything else, I would be looking for a Would you like a motion to adjurnn perhaps? Yes. Okay. Second one. All right. Second by Trent. Uh, all those in favor? Roll call tonight. And that is unanimous.