##VIDEO ID:1ertJF_-C1w## e e going good evening and welcome to the Thursday December 19 2024 regular meeting of the school committee I'm calling the meeting to order uh the meeting will be uh live and broadcast by hcam but before we go into the public uh part of our meeting we're going to have need for an executive session and I would seek a motion from somebody to read aloud the purposes of the executive session both A and B to comply with or act under the authority of mglc 38 say I oh I move to uh enter into executive session um to comply with or act under the authority of mgl C chapter 30A section 21 A2 for the purpose of discussing strategy concerning collective bargaining with the hopkington Teachers Association because having the discussion in an open meeting would have detrimental effect on the school committee's bargaining position and to comply with our act under Authority mgl chapter 30A section 21 A2 for the purpose of discussing strategy with respect to colle bargaining with the Hopkinson School custodians Union Local 1709 afcme Council 93 aflcio because discussing an open meeting would have a detrimental effect on the school committee's bargaining position and to reconvene an open session okay there's a motion by Jamie is there a second a second second by Kyla we're going to do a roll call vote starting with you Kyla yes Susan yes Jamie I'm a yes oh sorry and Chris yes all right so we are entering into executive session at 7:02 sorry e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e e us Al e e want e e e e e e e e e e e you e e e m can you hear that Matt so for would e e um drunk okay Matt should hear that christm l they hell pry figur ni I to little br for REM you to know number is that what they said we in top test test test test test [Music] we employe if we shut down I lose all my us L that I put in for in the got the money back one time we were said weeks were two weeks only am char great all for my IND think C children watch we had it all little have that e are you be e War and do we have our remote excuse me Chris do we have sound y we don't to see going to take off there are a couple people can anyone see who's up there I think sh is coming he is I can't see if he's in there okay all right so all right good evening and welcome back to the Thursday December 19th 2024 meeting of the school committee we have just returned from executive session and we are going to start uh with the joint meeting with the select board and Appropriations we would like to invite you guys all up I think there should be enough chairs for everybody um and just so that um everybody watching from home knows that because we do have one school Committee Member remote all of our votes will be taken by roll call tonight not for not not for this but I I know I'll forget if I don't say it now come all the way in Jo me if you like yep that's good if Bob wants to make sure that we're we're on you need to get that into yes I have made it the request now they have to plant it okay oh I think they trying we have exactly enough chairs that seems odly well organized you know we did tell Bob how impressed we were with this it's great well welcome um if you both called your boards Mike is your the Appropriations called to order as so okay so welcome I think we're going to start with a presentation by Dr Kavanaugh and then lots of opportunity uh Yes actually before we do that we're going to have bu of Allegiance like to I pledge aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the Republic for which it stands one nation under God indivisible with liy and justice for all still waiting on that to go back up is your way just k can you see if is shy on there he is on Zoom okay there we go instruction okay so thank you everyone um I will talk a little bit about the FY 26 budget and then Mrs rck will do all the math for you so thank you this is our first iteration of the fiscal year 26 Hopkinson public school budget as is always true we have approached our budgeting this year stressing financial and fiscal responsibility to the town um and also responding to shifts in demographic and student needs we have maintained we hope H hopkinson's exceptional educational and extracurricular programs we're offering curriculum and instruction that meets the needs of all of our our Learners including their academic their behavioral their mental health their special education and social emotional needs we are accommodating hello uh the enrollment growth that we see as well as any shifts in programmatic um kind of growth and then um supporting our school Improvement plans should we just go okay yeah um all right so if you are wondering what our current enrollment is as of yesterday we had 4,248 students Dr Wagman predicted 4,290 so right now we're about 42 students from where we should be in June the nice thing I think about this number is it's really tracking for us um if we have 42 students join us between now and the close of school in June uh we will be right where Dr Wagman predicted um so that said when we look at the 2526 budget you can see that Dr Wagman's prediction for the end of that year is 4,355 now these are the predictions that he made for us in 2020 and these are the predictions that we've been using historically since then uh hello people on the meeting um the audio is coming from the HD and the video is coming from the Bob ham so I suggest you pin the video from Bob ham and then you will still be able to hear the audio from the second hm and sorry for the trouble that's great can you hear us Jim yes okay just if you can hear us we can hear you we're all good how about do all right should we wait just a couple of seconds till you get that hooked up okay and can you see Chris Masters in there as well I see Chris Chris can you hear us just in the last 10 seconds of area okay great I think we figured it out I turned I turned the mute off so we figured it out great thank you all right is Jim also giving us the thumbs up okay so in the end the FY 26 budget was built for 4,000 they must not be able to hear you over there it must be this microphone on this computer okay thank you Mr Manan we're all set can you hear us yes can thank you great okay so ultimately in the end the FY 26 budget was built for 4335 students um at our last school committee meeting we had a conversation about whether or not we should be updating the um demographic work that Dr Wagman had done in October of 2023 sorry to interrupt if anyone's been talking the last 10 or 15 seconds I Haven anything do we want to maybe Slide the computer down here while Dr cin I was doing a presentation then and then we can try to if we can maybe that would be help make sure we don't unhook make sure the cord yep we don't want to mess with it's an old laptop so thank you great all right I hope that you can hear us now um so in October of 2023 we did ask Dr Wagman to update his work when we look at those numbers they are slightly higher than the 2020 numbers and so what we're seeing really is they we're tracking better to the 2020 and so that's that's where the schools are focused right now however we do have this this other data um so when we look at our staffing requests for FY 26 at Marathon in elenwood we would like to have 05 at each School of a 1.0 FTE intensive special needs teacher and I'll walk you through the uh sort of the justification or the rationale for each of these requests at Elmwood a 1.0 FTE assistant principal at Hopkins a reading tutor at the middle school point4 orchestra at the high school 1.0 French teacher also at the high school point 6 FTE computer science teacher Elwood in the Middle School three power Professionals in technology a 1.0 technician and finally building and grounds a05 custodian so why are we looking for the Intensive special needs teacher uh what we have done here is we are showing you the total number of students enrolled and then we have also taken the percentage of those kids who are on IEPs which is 14.2% and then we divide up the case loads and so what we look at is we say if if you're K to 5 and you're a moderate special needs student those case loads are somewhere around 7 to 13 we think that that's great we're very happy with those numbers but when we look at a single special educator who may have intensive special needs students and in one of those classrooms that number is as high as 12 that can't sustain and so we can reduce that number right now we have two intensive special needs classrooms at Elmwood School if we had another. five it would reduce this 12 and if we had A5 to go to Marathon we would be able to balance the needs of students um who are perhaps our most vulnerable Learners uh you can see and this is this is not great data because it's from 2223 the state has not updated this yet for us we anticipate it will happen in January but one of the things that we like to do is we like to keep our special education averages so that we have about 10 um FTE for every 100 students in 22 23 that dropped to 7.3 I think that when you see the updated data in January you're going to see that that number is climbing and so it's going to look a lot better to us um but right now the only data that we have is this 7.3 um at least through Desi so let's talk a little bit about the 1.0 FTE assistant principal um as you know our elementary schools are now creeping up so that we have somewhere around 650 kids in them uh we have well over s 670 I believe at Hopkins right now 670 for example at Marathon school and so what we can do is we can take a look at what our administrative costs are per pupil and we can also look at our instructional leaders so what we do is we have our building principles function as not just building administrators but also instructional leaders we are very low in that category when people say how is it that your per pupil expenditure is so low we don't spend a lot of money on sort of middle management if you will but at some point what happens is our building principes spend so much time working on things like teacher evaluation or working on things like student discipline or working on Communications home that they stop being good instructional leaders and we need to be able to maximize that if we want the highest quality instruction in our schools so you can see where we are in terms of ranking when you compar us to people like Westwood Welsley Lexington Weston Wayland westbo Holliston Acton box BR Ashland and Belmont our administrative expenditure per pupil is 625 and that sort of puts us in the mix right here but when we look over here at instructional leadership we are at 680 and we are absolutely last in that column and those are the kinds of places where if we don't have instructional leadership there's really no one to guide that teaching and learning you have to to have that if you want to remain a top-notch district let's talk about the 1.0 FTE reading tutor at Hopkins currently there is no reading tutor in the operating budget there is one that works for us through Title One funding but there is no reading tutor at Hopkins school when we look at the spring mcast for grade three there were 326 students who took that test 27% of those kids were either partially meeting or not meeting expectations when we look at that same group and we uh break that down into the students with disability subgroup there were 40 students there and you can see here that only 18% of those 40 were meeting expectations so what we have here um is 83% of those kids were partially meeting or not meeting expectations now can some of these kids be in that grade three group absolutely of course they are um but there will also be some students who are not on Ed plans who are in those numbers and you can see similar um breakdown for the grade four kids so right now grade three is grade four and grade four is grade five if that's making sense to you but what we're trying to do is grow the proficiency of our kids especially in Reading who aren't performing at Benchmark and we know that grades four and five are really that sort of Last Stop on the academic bus before they head to middle school and they start having education that happens by content air area so Ela Math Science Social Studies so it becomes less likely that they're going to have reading instruction embedded in a you know science class or a social studies class or an Ela class so that's the reason for the FTE reading tutor FTE Orchestra I know some people might think that this is a nice to have um it's important to note that this program has grown in 8th grade right now we have 54 students who are enrolled in Orchestra and 7th there are 72 and in sixth there are 92 right now we have 111 students in the fifth grade who are in the orchestra so even with about 10% attrition going from grade five to grade six you're still going to have a 100 kids coming into the middle school who are enrolled in Orchestra and only 54 kids going out so it's a net gain there are 46 students and when we think about that net gain of 46 students we really are struggling to absorb them you can't have that many kids in an orchestra setting without there being two teachers or when you break them down so that you have say the cellos and the violins all doing smaller rehearsals you need to have two teachers to do that and so we're asking for a point4 uh at the high school there is a great demand now for computer science I think we all know that that's the the way the world is going it probably won't be long before things like chemistry are not required sciences and computer science is a required science so last year we added a04 compsite teacher this year we're asking for a 6 because we have that many students who want to be enrolled in that kind of course work we also need a 1.0 FTE French teacher what I've done for you in this grid over here is I've shown you the course cap which for all of the French Classes is 25 and then I'm showing you the actual enrollment for this year I have highlighted for you in Orange any place where that cap is being being met or where that cap is being exceeded and so we need to have another French teacher at the high school those classes are huge and we also have some kids who are taking French on VHS now because we just don't have the teaching staff um the Elmwood and Middle School par professionals those are obviously just D driven by special education numbers so what you can see here is if we look at 2020 2021 22 23 and 24 the numbers of students have gone from 476 in 2020 to 600 students in 2024 the percent has gone from 12.2 to 14.2 and so we keep adding pair of professionals U that's because IEPs demand that so this one feels very non-negotiable and as you know I will always do this because it's something that I think is a source of Pride for us when we take a look at per pupil expenditures and I apologize because this was last updated by the state on January 18th uh what you'll probably see as we continue to go through the budget process all the way through to town meeting is that you'll see that these numbers will change because the state will update them for us in January of 2025 hopefully but you can see where our per pupil expenditure is and we have included 31 communities here and we also have the state in the mix and Hopkinson is at $16 16,17 per student student ashlin's at 16,74 everyone else on this list is above Hopkinton in terms of per pupil expenditure but you know that we are always ranking somewhere in the top five in the state in terms of our academic outputs so I feel really good about those numbers if we break those per pupil expenditures down into buckets so sometimes people will say well are you spending a lot of money for example on teachers or instructional leadership or special education whatever um if you take a look at any of those red circles that's where Hopkinson is in the bottom 25% in terms of per pupil expenditure so I've gone a long way to highlight all of this and not to say that we are doing a disservice to our kids because I think that we are getting an awful lot of bang for our academic uh bu here and our kids do great our schools are high functioning I am very very proud of all of our administrators our teachers our par professionals and everyone else who works and support staff um to make this District what it is and so now I will ask Mrs rmck to go through the numbers thank you um so you can see starting with last year's operating budget of 63,0 144,000 at this time the FY 26 uh budget is salary increase of 2.9 Million and an expense increase of a little over a million the salary increase is of 4.74% and the expense increase is 1.67% so the total increase is a 6.41% for a net we lost the audio slide it a little or angle it maybe different it's coming can can you hear me yes yes we can okay Susan the numbers for uh payroll um does that include the additional hires or is that current that going up that that includes additional hires and I'll get to that breakdown for you okay yeah um I'm sorry it was there a moment ago and backed up I know um so as we do in every year we also offset amount that comes from the general fund using various revolving fees that are charged so we use the parking fees building use um bus fees preschool Athletics and International tuition so the amount of fees that offset the budget is 1, 680,000 uh which is down slightly from the previous year and you can see we've gone up with Athletics but we've gone down in International tuition and that is a decision made um based on enrollment and just not bringing in as many International uh students because um our classes are already too full circuit breaker is much higher at 2.5 million and the special education reserve the request is actually a little bit lower uh a milon 46 so the uh total revolve in offset is 5,313 which is an increase of 720,000 from last year are there programs in place to help folks that can't handle those fees like for athletics or bus services things like that we cover that yes okay y great so no one's missing out because of money corre and there's a school committee policy related to that love it so looking at the gross operating budget that general fund of 67 million the revolving offsets of 5 million the gross operating budget for Hopkinton public schools to operate is 72,5 4,000 looking at this by um educational program you can see obviously the biggest piece of the pie is regular education the next biggest piece is student services and then it's filled out by the other um programs around so going looking at salaries oh weum we jumped to slides two bumps at once I'm not sure why that's okay uh I mean this is just a very simple visual that um the the budget is always 80% salary um so when we're building the the most everything that invested in people so looking at the salaries breaking that down our contractual obligation is 2,298 th000 for existing employees the staff requests is 690,000 so the total uh salary increase again is the 2,989 th000 is that increase due to uh current rates or will that be increased with contractual Union negotiations or that is the figure that that is an estimate of Union negotiations and existing employees so that could existing contracts and estimated so oh so it that could go higher in the union negotiations it could go higher could go lower too it's an estimate so when you break down uh what the requested um positions are again the contractual is the 2.2 million special education at 211,000 which are four FTE instructional cost and enrollment growth is 143,000 the 2.4 FTE and support at 335,000 and we like to take all of both the salaries and expenses and break these into these buckets uh to make it more digestible and understandable for the public so the total salary increase again is the 2,900 which is 8.9 FTE can you go back to that slide please Sur special education 21,000 for four employees correct four additional employees correct professional meaning three of them are par professionals so it's not a teacher salary it's a par professional salary okay cuz like if you divide 200 Grand by four it's 50k a pop that seems awfully low to me yes if you go if you go to the next slide so it is one teaching position which of course will have a higher salary and then three PA professionals but in addition we also had to increase um both preschool and nurse sub accounts that's all included in that 211,000 so while it's four FTE there also are sub increases in there as well okay I this is shahul you may have mentioned it but you going in and out so I may have missed it off of the salary increase how much is attributable to um contractual obligations and how much is net new or net addition so contractual obligations is2 million 298,000 and staff requests are 690,000 oh thank you y uh so going back again into the detail and this really is just um basically what Dr C what Dr kavanau spoke to earlier but this shows you the the cost of each of those positions um so again we just discussed student services the instructional cost and enrollment growth uh 2.0 teaching that's a middle school0.4 and a high school 1.6 point4 FTE technology and this is actually the reduction of the 6 of the integration specialist being replaced by a 1.0 technician so it's a increase of 04 but it's actually less money so it's a 2.4 FTE at 143,000 administrative at support and facility enhancements a 1.0 Elmwood assistant principal a 1.0 reading tutor for Hopkins a 0.5 custodian and an increase to sub accounts districtwide of 153,000 and that is to align with actuals in the past couple years so it's 2.5 FTE for a cost of 33 $5,000 for expenses the expense increase is 1,56 and the next slide just shows you again by educational program and you can see that student services that most expenses um a lot are contractual obligations uh so with student services uh the cost is the highest then going into transportation and you can see the breakdown of each of those slices looking at the expense increase again using those same buckets contractual inflation and current Services increased 271,000 student services increased 278,000 instructional cost enrollment growth and replacement Cycles increased 56,000 getting into the detail contractual inflation and current Services Transportation the new contract rate for 35 buses is an increase of 117,000 Technology software hard hardening of security and inflation at 116,000 regular education which is supplies inflation and supplies enrollment of 21,000 and then miscellaneous others of 15,000 looking at student services the increase is 278,000 transportation represents 243,000 tuition's actually decreased by 3,000 because of the increase in circuit breaker offset of 700 70,000 supplies increased 11,000 and contractual Services increased 21,000 instructional cost enrollment growth and replacement Cycles increased 56,000 Transportation represents 93,000 which is one additional bus and adding tiers to existing buses curriculum is 230,000 which are textbook license renewals those licenses are expiring vocational education at 118,000 that's norfol agricultural enrollment and Technology of 66,000 these are teacher lease um replacements for their computers so when we take both the salary and the expense and add them back together uh contractual inflation and current services for both salary and expense represents 2.5 million special education 489,000 again four FTE instructional cost and enrollment growth 650,000 and 2.4 FTE Administration support and facility enhancements 335,000 and 7 uh 2.5 FTE and when you take that and look at it in terms of percentages contractual inflation and current Services the increase is 4% special education 78% instructional cost and enrollment growth 1.03% and administration support and facility enhancements 53% getting to the total increase of 6.41 1% and we can stop there for the operating thank you do we want to take questions on the operating budget now I would think so okay want to start um why don't we start with Appropriations to start on the other side of the uh table if you guys have questions that you like to ask your questions or comments regarding the um pres operating budget going to start with you guys if you had any questions or comments on the start with the I did have a the uh this figure for the uh teachers in the previous slide is a difference of like 400,000 you said 2.9 something for a contractual increase for FY 26 uh so this is what we're paying now for the current salary the 2.5 is that am I misinterpreting that yeah so there's two pieces to it so we talked first about the just the salary and then the contractual inflation for current services on the expense side so the the current services for the two together is the is the 2.5 so roughly about probably around almost 400,000 more for the teachers for FY 26 2.5 you said 2.9 for FY 26 so roughly you want to go back to the salary you're asking about the overall cost for what the base cost is that's I think looking just at the increase piece is is this the number you're looking for yes I think I think he's also looking for what it the what we're paying out in salaries total not just what the difference is what the it was on the um I think on a pie chart so essentially 2.2 is the contractual and about 700k for additional asks for the new additions is that how we read it that's correct but I I think what he's asking though also is what that right there what the current salary um that one yes what we're already paying out in salaries this year we're obviously not that's a slide 2 that's a full budget that's that one yes that the the 50 million figure right there is that right so I I see the contractual and the staff request what was that again and and maybe I missed it the new ads mhm the 8.9 FTE okay so as uh Brian said that figure based on Union negotiation could go up or down we don't know at this point correct that's all I have oh yeah hi so I do have a question um this Caroline um I'm not quite clear on can you please clarify a little bit so the uh increased um assistant principle or any other instructional leader cost versus teaching and administrative cost are they in the same category or they're separate like how how they all all salaries are together they all together yes um a second question will be for transportation there's a budget item for the transportation and a separate one for the new request is that so we have a so what's the total we have the contractual increase for our existing services our existing buses and then uh we're looking to add an additional bus there was a presentation we gave uh maybe last school committee meeting which showed that some of our ride times are still over um an hour and some of our capacity is still over um what's allowed on the bus so this is adding a bus to alleviate that can you remind me What's the total for transportation yeah just add together What's the total for the year estimate so the contractual increase is 243,000 and the additional bus is 93,000 okay all right thank you mhm G no I don't have any questions thank you I just have a a couple uh one is I saw it like on the last slide there you have the special ed um C I guess the funding a million dollar funding for the special ed That was supposed to be like a one-year thing to create this fund and I don't know we in the third or fourth year of adding a million dollars into that fund for special ed or for the cir you know for the circuit breaker to catch up at what point are we you're not looking for the town to to feed that extra amount into it where the circuit breaker catches up with the special web needs so there was not an intention of circuit breaker catching up so the whole mechanism behind pulling that out of the operating budget was that it would not increase by 2 and a half% or 4% or whatever percentage the school's operating budget increases each year it would just stay level so it was a way of pulling out some of those expenses because uh special education expenses can go up and down and fluctuate annually but that is that is money or expenses that will not go away so that will always be a request okay and where is that in here I saw that on the last slide there so the special education Reserve got a million 46 okay as long as you're on that slide the preschool revolving goes from 2:30 to 3:20 um I think I remember in one of your past meetings that um some some of that there is tuition to some folks and that there was a decision not to increase the rates for the tuition um that's something that could be reconsidered given that we're such a crunch to there hasn't been a decision not to increase the rates they just have not been reviewed okay that's that's it for me all set yep uh who's here sorry you have any questions no I I have to hear you from Halo last night it makes me very nervous um and perhaps you could give us a little input on this budget how it's going to affect the overall um sure that goes back to the $4 million deficit correct yes I had the majority of what's included in this school presentation already built into the budget so we are currently um maybe $100,000 off here or there um so with we're still in the negative $4.7 million I remember the four I don't remember the 7 on top of that 688 to be exact appreciate so no significant changes when you say the old word that makes me really nervous with with the other increase in taxes in the next number of years uh we are not going to have a happy public I don't think we have to ask for an override y sir I'll come back then I don't have too many questions is all very well explained I guess that's a good point about the preschool for the kids that do pay tuition seems like we should be making that market rate at least you compfortable to what you pay for for other private pres school for the kids who to pay um and then I don't know like the problem is we don't have all this money right now but I know you know it's still in flux maybe things can change um but if anything can be found with grants or you know for a half a year hard a year we should definitely all be pursuing grants on towns side to course but yeah it's all very well explained and I understand are increasing and I understand inflation all your expenses are increasing but it's just we just don't have quite right money we need now I think question all set Mr Manan can you hear us uh yes I can go right ahead if you have any questions oh thank you so couple of questions one is the revenue side um we went a little bit down not of a lot 100K down from last last year do we see any opportunity to increase that are you talking about the revolving offsets the revolving offset thank you so we we're we're actually 720,000 over what we did last year okay so we're doing better here is that what I'm hearing I thought the top part showed 1.7 versus 1.6 so we lost 100K but the bottom part made it up and we um we are adding more 700k more that's correct that's correct yes that's good to hear thank you and then um I actually may be asking questions if it's uh repeat uh sorry for that we missed a lot of the audio one is that how does this overall budget as we are looking at now now and hopefully the negotiation uh will go as predicted and maybe better uh that will be even better but uh as it stands what is the overall budget impact is this in line with what we were expecting um in overall budget maybe Susan and uh Kyla you can help there well I I think according to what kylo is saying um folding in all the Departments including the school um you are over budget by 46 eight eight million but shadul to your question what the school presented tonight has been included in the sources and uses document that was presented on Tuesday night we're only off by a 100,000 or so uh yeah but was it included on the Tuesday nights or it has changed from there no it has not changed okay got it yeah that was the question so uh overall we are 4.6 and change over that's uh where we were on Tuesday and today's budget also is along the same lines um so that's helpful uh and then on the sped side just a general question I think um uh Dr kavana share some variance in the learning um challenges on I thought it was mcast for the sped students and uh I thought everything was very data driven and I appreciate how you have presented nice job in presenting and being very data driven on all the asks on that particular one I always also you know uh try to be cautious on all fronts I think the forget the numbers but 68% was having learning challenges on mcast and for that we are adding 04 you think that is significant enough to improve that uh it's just a you know thought I know we are all trying and for good reasons we all want to balance the budget and uh minimize the cost but that's one that's start up to me that is that is that looking sufficient and you are all experts in this yeah just to be clear um it is a 1.0 FTE reading tutor so it is a full-time position um and as we're looking at those numbers so for example if we took all of the students in grade three who took the mcast test in the spring of 24 there are current fourth graders and if there were 326 of them 27% of them are not uh meeting a benchmark at this point in time they're either partially meeting or not meeting and those are Ela scores or reading scores um so 27% of the 326 we're talking about like 80 kids who are not at that Benchmark and that's only grade four grade five obviously has it its own numbers there um so we are looking for that position to ensure that our kids are um able to read when they are in those intermediate grades U because as I've said earlier they'll go off to middle school and um it gets more and more challenging to do reading instruction when they're in content area driven classes I know what you're asking you're asking is that enough and I think that that's what Mr CER who is the principal of Hopkins school has asked for and I think he has analyzed the Staffing and he's analyzed the student needs so yes I think that's enough thank you than um thanks for find that one I last one for now is that uh it's great that we are at you know number 27 of 29 uh in terms of First Student cost and I always wonder and good to you all the staff and really appreciative of all the good work that you do what what do you think Secrets us for the ROI versus the cost and the reason I asked that is there's also some me [Music] that and today I think I like how you also gave the various um you know subcategory level cost comparison which was very helpful for me but in general what what do you think you know is our strong suit to make it happen as the cost RSE number 7 and quality and education Excellence wise in the top Med CL yeah I think you may have answered your own question and that's excellent I think that um our our teachers are very Governor sorry I think that our teachers are very dedicated to their craft I think our building principles are very invested in all of the kids and I think we have a great group of kids and families who are really invested in high quality education and so you know it's that that sort of Excellence that everyone is striving for all the time um and I think that's what gets us our scores thank you com to that let's course thank you all again for for the good work and again this is a challenging you know budget year as uh it has been in the last couple and with the de inclusion increasing and all those we will have to look for you know as much as we can for alterate revenues and uh if there are other options that you can look at for Grants or state level stes those are all open and I understand they don't line up right now where you are it's a challenging situation and on that I was talking to representative jamesa as well and on the SP front if there are and there might be you know some opportunities that we could looking at as well but those are all you know I know you all know better and we're all trying to um Harvest as much as possible that's something we definitely want to keep on our read but thank you this was a good well documented presentation apprciate that great thank you Kyle do you have any questions no do you have any questions no you sure yes I have a few um first of all I think great work to date that was obvious that teachers staff custodians everybody chimed in and built up a budget which I think is a really great presentation you can see it in the work that came out so very well done thank you for that uh I emphasize the word to date great work to date we are just beginning this process really in the public view anyway we have a $4.6 OR7 million deficit right now that's kind of rare that's a little on the high side based on previous years the O word has been mentioned a couple couple of times this is way too early to say we're going to do that I get why it's being mentioned but it's way too early I'm talking to our friends that are going to report on this it's way too early to say that we're going to do an override that is not the case right we don't know what we're going to do yet because it's still very early so we all we've done great work to date and thank you for that but it's to date we got a long way to go we might solve this thing on May 4th or whatever it is who knows we'll figure that part out but great job so far how is the budget Advisory Group doing it's good we meet on Thursday mornings and then again on Thursday afternoons do we have good participation in that is everybody being able to make that and it's all good Reon yes okay all right so we're doing that and that's coming in some of this so This none of this was a surprise to the budget Advisory Group right okay all right great that's good um because that's going to be really important that that group is getting together now and understanding each other and the concerns because when it gets a little dicey and this is going to get a little dicey for the community as was mentioned earlier we need that budget Advisory Group really communicating well to figure this out so I'm glad we're meeting and getting that organized but you ain't seen nothing yet right this is going to get really interesting here in come marks probably um we're going to check into a couple of different things in terms of how much free cash has come back on average or typical over over the last 5 years which I don't think has been a lot uh we want to check what the increase has been typically Over The Last 5 Years things like that just so we can have a few benchmarks internal to our community as to how the schools have been funded over the years um and you know bottom line is we want to keep figuring it out so we can fund the schools I think that's really really important message as well the schools are the backbone of the community and we got to make sure that we take care of them a couple of kind of specific questions the French teacher again I didn't think there was a lot of money in that 1.4 for increased instructional I think it was $143,000 what is that French teacher salary so we typically will um budget for a new staff person that Masters step five in the salary grid which is around 75,000 75k okay we used to talk 50 Grand per teacher now we're talking 75 but that was a long time ago so that makes sense okay the replacement Cycles at $56,000 what are when you say replacement Cycles what does that mean like regular maintenance vehicle like what is that I don't need the Gory details but I'm just curious what you mean by replacement Cycles so when you're looking at so slide 28 yeah I don't have the numbers but it's up there now um if you go down a couple more that one okay um so uh for instance curriculum so the textbook licenses and um Mr Le can speak more to this but the licenses are typically a uh well now we can go for six years and so when they expire you need to reup and these are mostly in the math uh curriculum area for the textbook licenses um the vocational education these are just students that have shown interest to attend norfol agagi so we have to budget for them that's outside of the KE Tech vocational um which is budgeted on the town side and then technology um the teacher computers uh there's a replacement cycle of five or six years and so these are um a set of those um computers for the teachers that need to be replaced to give you an idea got it okay that makes sense all very much education based not so much changing the oil on the trucks things like that right right got it thank you I I do have a callary to that on the technology you have textbook license Ren don't you have uh license renewals for some of the software that we use within the school like Adobe or word or Microsoft re yeah those those are all covered as part of just recurring expenses as opposed to a replacement cycle so is that it listed somewhere that's part of the contractual obligations so for instance we have a contract with Adobe you have to continue to pay that contract so not really a replacement cycle thing it's a continuation of a contract so that's embedded somewhere in one of the yes okay yeah and I believe the power school license has gone up quite a bit this year power school is very expensive MH in years past there was a lot of discussion around guidance staff and having sufficient you know numbers there to make sure that students well-being is cared for along with everything else uh we didn't talk guidance this evening really is that do we feel that that is sufficiently staffed to maintain a a well-being you know uh Focus for the students everybody feel good about that we feel like those ratios are good the student to counselor ratios we feel like they're good okay great um and then last question uh for tonight anyway so this doesn't include a capex plan this doesn't include uh anything new we need like a HVAC system or a new floor in a gym or this or a that right so the the last couple of slides are just the requests that when through on the capital capital plan got so if you're okay with the operating we can move into this can we give the school committee an opportunity to comment on on that as well great thank you and actually I did I do have one question that I forgot to ask earlier um about mcast and if it's a long answer we can talk about it at a different time but um given the vote in November what changes do you anticipate to mcast in the district and your administration of it and I know you know we're talking about addressing needs of kids who are not meeting expectations early so they don't the you know the Gap doesn't widen but what do you predict is going to be the trajectory of that sure so that's actually my superintendent's report tonight um but I think the reader doest version is that nothing is really going to change uh we are still going to administer the te the test the state and the federal government still expects a 99% um 99% participation rate on the part of the kids and so the only thing to really change is that um if you don't before you had to meet a competency determination through a test score and then maybe through some course work you don't have to do that anymore the plan now is to have your local school committee determine what that competency determination will be and so that's one thing we'll talk about tonight okay that's really helpful thank you I'll Stick Around for that very quickly that the mcast gives us so much data about what we're doing well and what we need to work on that um I I think we use it and we use it well so just to if people on the school Comm I know we've seen bits and pieces this is the first time we've seen it all together here but I want to start Chris just because I know that you're online and the connection can be tenuous did you have any questions or comments on the presentation for the operating budget okay he made that all right I'll Circle back to you if you can't hear me um but and then start down do you want to start Kyla I have no question okay Jamie thank you for putting it together I think we're really working hard to keep the numbers as low as we can our goal was level services so was going to say the same thing but um also just for folks who are watching this at home this does go up on our website under the the school committee under the budget tab for people who want to look at this presentation um tomorrow or when it gets up there I find it there tonight but it will be up tomorrow so doesn't go up before we discuss it but Georgette will usually put it up the next day in case anything changes last minute before we can I make a for the Orchestra program I went to the orchestra concert I am violinist and I was in awe it was abs and it's just strings it was absolutely amazing I can't remember how many students were up there they did picado like one instrument so that money is like really really well spent believe they've been using volunteers from the high school to help the students because of the large amount this year too as well so being very Savvy we're yeah we are very fortunate and have been um for for a number of years to have a very strong music department oh yeah to compliment our or other strengths uh do you want to go ahead into the capital capital sure um so quickly what we have put forward um for Capital uh for an end of life replacement is the HVAC um districtwide of 735,000 storefront the entry doors these are the entry doors going into the middle school on the water tower side of the building um those have deteriorated there is a sewer pump cover which is on the driveway behind the high school it is a metal cover that covers the sewer ejector pump that is down in an underground chamber and that has been damaged over time by heavy vehicle traffic um so the the doors are are bent and Technology replacement 100,000 and then student needs the Adaptive playground um that has been put forward by the Adaptive playground Committee of 1,243 th000 so happy to take questions on that as well on the Adaptive playground is that fully funding it there or is that including some CPC contribution bringing so it was it was presented to the CPC um this is the full amount because this was done before votes for the CPC I believe they've voted to fund 300,000 of it does this have to be on school property so the Adaptive playground committee looked at all the locations throughout town and they determined that the marathon location was the best location to get the highest use I think we can get more CPC money if we don't have it on school property the the the issue is that there's only one playground in town that isn't on school property and it's EMC so if the Adaptive playground was put in another location that's akin to segregating children who need an Adaptive playground from typical children go so I I will say so when they narrowed down all the sites the potential uh locations one of the the sites that was in the the final uh was Fruit Street and the committee within their discussions between the noise that exists uh of all the activities that are going on at Fruit Street the traffic um Fruit Street actually got voted down so that would be probably another logical place that people would think the playground could be sorry sus can you get closer to the microphone how about Center School behind Center School we have any plan for Center School what's that we have a new plan for Center school now well I I don't think we should get into like all the detailer I'm just saying there's more funding if it's not on school property that I know so can I also just add and maybe you want to comment on this more in depth than I did because I wasn't on the Adaptive playground committee but they started with 198 Parcels of land they were looking at in hopkington that were town-owned to build the Adaptive playground they narrowed it down to 30 32 32 and they looked at a set of criteria to determine the place where they wanted it to go it's not going to get more CPC funding this year for sure U because they' gone through and voted and because the feeling I don't know if you watched the CPC meeting but what the expressed feeling in the meeting was was that because there was a a committee that was not just school it was a town committee that had looked at this in depth uh to determine the best location and because they had determined that to be the best location that they weren't looking to change the location as a whole on that committee I I I am not opposed to the active playground at all I think it's a great idea I am opposed to adding another million two to our debt when we've got 198 or whatever it is million of debt plus the other stuff we had before the new schools and the taxes and blah blah blah I do know we can get some more money if it wasn't on school property if it has to be on school property okay but we have to make that very clear to a lot of people that this is the best choice and this is the best educational Choice as well right another factor is that most of the children using that adaptive playground are receiving services at the marathon school right and that's part of the education and and that includes three and four year olds for for folks at home that aren't aware that our integrated preschool is located at the marathon school as well um and folks that are receiving Services um you know that are in our our youngest kindergarten in first grade as well in addition um I was on the playground committee and the ability if parents are taking their kids to EMC and they need an Adaptive playground they can you know with two sets of or two parents they can take the kids who need the Adaptive up to the Adaptive and EMC and still be parked in one place so it it still is going to get usage when normal playgrounds get usage and there's also that they could play side by side which is so what the adap program playground is is also trying to um they playing side by side yeah okay wec hold on one second Amy is in the middle of saying something oh sorry I was just going to say like I remember when my kids were little if the oldest one was playing baseball at EMC and the younger ones can't sit through a baseball game we would head over to the AMC playground but it could get pretty full and I mean there's a lot more kids in town than when my kids were little so that's is an orlow for EMC Park too um so I think it's I think it is a really good site for it did did CPC did did the attorney say they couldn't fund more than 300,000 or they just chose they chose they chose they just chose and they are not likely to rote at any point the vote was tonight they voted on this last last but they're voting on all other projects tonight right and they won't revisit it at all before there's a long time till it's not meeting but yeah they struggle with the on property thing I I know that's what I heard okay but the commission ability had a rep on the committee and they also felt the right and to be fair when they were going through and voting it the majority of the committee did not struggle with that there were a number of members who spoke up and felt that it was the right location for it yeah there was I know at least one who did not like that location but just sorry so when we look at capex for the schools for FY 26 proposed that's not a bad list compared to years past right so I see again work to keep it reasonable and tight as we can possibly be but that $2 million goes in addition to any operating cost challeng we might have and that goes on top of the tax burden that we've already set for the new schools to be built so that 125 that I I have the average house in Hopkin to know pays the8 $850,000 house pays 1225 and FY 25 right in 26 it starts to go up it's going up to 185 by fy3 okay with nothing else happening this is more money adding to that number everything that the police needs fire needs everything else is adding to that number so the average house in hopkington I think it's going to be over $20,000 by fy3 easily because we're going to be doing this with other stuff too other departments that's the challenge we have folks that we Cann ever lose sight of that's all I ask you to 100% agree with you and I know that that was a piece of what we looked at as we were going through our Capital planning um from the beginning of this year that's why I'm pushing on the CPC to give us some more money pushed them harder yeah that would be great um all right have some yeah Shu you were gonna say something yeah thank you again the audio was in and out but I wanted to understand uh what was the reason that CC funding may not be available for this did you get of it or discuss that that that was that was their vote they voted to to do $300,000 in CPC funding for the adapted playground it it had to do with you know multiple factors it would be hard to um I I wouldn't want to misstate by trying to just cherry pick a few okay but but part of it is what their available funding is um for what they consider this bucket of type of funding for all all the projects they were looking at and because they did have quite a few applications for funding okay I yeah I I'm in agreement and I think we all understand our challenges with capital projects our overall debt um situation and how it's impacting our um taxes and something you know we have been watching and talking about for quite a few years now and we have to act to our restrain that or manage that uh and and most of the investment are very much well very much necessary but we at a point where we absolutely have to have you know more i' say control over how but that said I thought CPC would be a viable and very relevant uh option for this uh I heard some of it sorry again the audio and all that combined out of processes and would probably follow up on uh you know outside discussions but offline discussions but generally I I think you know we have a health CPC fund and uh we have done similar projects with CPC in the past and uh we of course uh depend on our wonderful volunteers there for making the uh proper uh decisions and evaluation of the but that said we I believe we had a dog park a couple of years years ago um where we also spent a few million dollars and this is you know our most vulnerable uh uh students and would definitely have a great impact on their uh lives their um uh enjoyment of that time that they're spending at school and the age and considering that I would highly you know um recommend and look for opportunities to work together how we can avile some of these um options through CBC and as Brian mentioned if it's a location issue I don't know a whole lot about you know what are the constraints there or is it some other way we can reconcile that um I I would strongly recommend that we try to get things uh get these together and get the bright Minds together thank you you want to go over to to mik I just add to that that I do believe that the Adaptive playground is the perfect kind of uh need that is for CPC it's a perfect match and I really don't think we should have to add a million dollars on the oper you know our other funding source to pay for this that I think something before we approve this in terms of having to go to town meeting I really think there should be some agreement whether we put it off for a year or whatever but there should be a plan where there's a compromise that we can get full funding for this that is definitely my opinion on on this type of project it is something the town is nice for the town but that's what CPC funding is for and this is the perfect type of project and I I'd be hesitant to move forward to have the town pay for it on top of it when there is that kind of funding there should be that kind of funding allocated through CPC there are actually 45 towns in Massachusetts that used CPC funding for adaptive playgrounds most on school property so the I agree um just to follow on to what Mike was saying could you I I I don't really trust my memory but there there was you guys requested this last year and and the year before the year before and CPC asked that it that this committee be formed to study where the best location in town would be that was done it came back to the original location that you had proposed but as I understand it they don't want to fully fund it and my question is how much in the lapse of that time how much has the cost of the project increased from where you started to where we are now and what I mean it's hard to see into the future future but would inform a little bit what a future delay might cost further well it's it's difficult to really delineate that so three years ago when we went um to the CPC we went for 1 million for the playground um and that that was denied the second time we went back uh they gave us 100,000 for design and and Engineering um with that money we were able to come up with an actual schematic design so what that million dollars would have bought us three years ago is hard to say because I couldn't pay for any schematic design without money okay fair enough okay thank you so sorry um yeah I just wanted to um get some clarity in this I remember um when my kids were little that they're n now um I took them to like a the marathon playground and I I was told to leave they couldn't use it because there were some preschool or something in session so I don't know what the clear guideline is if we build this at the school on on the school property are we giving residents the town is any clear guideline you can use it you cannot use it whatever because right now now for all the playgrounds on the school property all the people I know they're hesitant to use it they all go to EMC or other public playground they people are not that you know cuz they they're not clear it's very they we need some your guideline like who this playground is for and the time and stuff you know otherwise I don't think it's a good image yeah I mean I my children are little I have two six-year-olds and a 9-year-old and and we've been going to EMC playground on the weekends and it is not only us it is 50 60 families that go back and forth between marathon and DMC because there's a path with no vehicle traffic in between the two um so if school is not in session the playgrounds are there's your problem yeah school's not in session right CU When school is in session Town she's speaking to and that's why the CPC was par because when school is in session the children who need adapted playgrounds are in school MH want fun you got to figure that out that's only one way thinking that's not what everybody else is thinking but when the children who need an adapted playground attend school for special ed services so the children four necessar know that right what if there's some other occasions other you know kids or you know family visiting they have a kid that has a need then you take them to there what if there's other situation sure versus having none so and I think you rais a good point both of you about wanting to make sure that there's Clarity in terms of when playgrounds are opened in general um so that that that's something that could be accomplished in a number of different ways and should be considered um as part of the project thank you I I think we could get this solved if we get information out to the community about how and when a new playground could be used by the broader Community who by the way is paying for it through their CPC taxes you know like I give you money no you can't do anything but give me the money right that's not a good sell so we got to figure this one out I think we can solve that problem and I'd like to be able to figure out how to do it now and not put it off for a year I don't think that's fair to kids so if we can do it and sort it out but it's it's a rub in town we all know that we've had this for other things soccer fields and tracks and you know I get why we can't do certain things now but uh little kids on the playground we should be able to figure that out I without interfering with what they have to do in school too you know are the CPC meetings televised or can people watch I would like there's a zoom link um I don't know if they record though I don't I don't think think they do it's Google meet a Google yep but it's not unless they prate I would like to hear the reasoning my understanding a little bit to Mike's Point was um I think the CPC gets a lot of requests for recreational funding which is what the bucket this comes out of so they may have depleted their funds for recreational they what if I can just add to that's exactly one of the points that came up and I believe the figure that they had said they have for that bucket is $600,000 for this year and was not the only request this was but there's another bucket right that can be used for anything so and they could also borrow that million too and their money could pay the debt service on correct right so there's ways to do it where we don't deplete them for other projects and we get a reasonable interest rate and I know we're going to bounce up against it someday but we're not there yet uh our total debt you know debt limit um we got some wiggle room there um we got to balance all that out but I think for a million dollars we could do that and still keep a lot of other things going it's just this notion and that you know the taxpayers are asked for something but they can't get anything in return I know there some can get some in return but the community doesn't feel it's a return for them so that's where the challenge is and I think educating the community is a piece that sure has not in part obviously it it we've not hit that point in the cycle to any year to date that we've been discussing this but there are you know hours that would be just the community it wouldn't be reserved for school that it's you know school's in session for a part of the day it's not it's 180 days out of the year um and it's you know obviously not in succession over the weekend and on vacations and whatnot one thing I wondering I'm sorry go ahead think I'm I was wondering and I apologize if I'm interrupting anyone the audio is um terrible and I fully appreciate you know it have can happen in Technical Systems one thing I was wondering would it make sense if um this is our kind of first joint session in one of the upcoming joint session uh we could invite the CPC and have a you know elaborate understanding across and work together to find a resolution that works for everyone as I do feel that you know and they heard from some of many of the colleagues if I heard correctly that CPC is probably the most appropriate uh but we apparently have to dot the eyes and tees and understand each other and see where we can align things better just thought can I ask one more question and whoever was on the playground committee was there any conversation about not locating the entire um adaptive playground obviously at EMC but adding some pieces of adaptive equipment so that that which is available all day every day has at least some better access for families while they don't have access to the one when the um kids are in school Su Susan you were the representative for the school committee was that discussed no I don't think we thought about that did we Susan so there's a lot that would have to change to the EMC playground to make it fully adaptive uh for one thing the surfacing would have to switch over to the port in place and the port in place rubber is one of the very expensive pieces to a playground but that is step one of making uh any playground truly accessible um so and I do think that EMC may have just added pieces of equipment through Park and wreck um so I'm I'm not sure I do think that I recently saw state grants for this kind of project I'm not positive but I will look for that and see if I can find it I'm going to put my engineering hat on uh these uh costs uh end the life have we gotten quotes or these internal estimates from people in town or does do you break this down further in another CH chat or a spreadsheet or anything so the storefront doors and the sewer pump cover both our estimates the technology our estimates the HVAC is a couple of different pieces one piece of it is a feasibility study to look at the high school in terms of replacing um you know long-term pulling out the gas and replacing with electric so part of that is a feasibility study another piece of it is looking at replacing a chiller in the high school with a larger Chiller which then we can retrofit the UNIF univent that are in classrooms and provide um both Heating and Cooling which is an advancement to where we are with the high school so it's a couple of pieces so you haven't actually sent out uh requests for prices from possible vendors not all of those no so you know if we're only placing one or two doors I build houses you know it's not granted this is commercial if we're only replacing one or two doors on the side that you said of the middle school to me that's very ex excessive that's just my personal opinion without seeing quotes coming in my second that's probably not tied here the uh school expansion of the $48 million I don't know if this would be under capital or us I got to believe that what was signed there's going to be cost escalations due to material increases and everything before they start you know putting foundations in and steel or whatever are we going to see something you know possibly more in in the next year or two asking for more money for the school expansion talking about the Hopkins school right expansion no th those uh contracts have gone to estimator several times and we actually running under budget on the school expansions we have have we it's already been bought we bought them like we've got Subs it's going so there's contracts in place so it's been already signed sealed and delivered you know assume it's a firm fixed price contract you know and the the storefront doors those are two sets of double doors you know two and two so it's it's not just a right so you got two and then you got two behind it two of those there's 16 four across how many across it's the doors you enter for Town meetings yes oh okay it's those yes it it doesn't make it clear you know yeah I know so it's six across but doubled on so that would be really like 12 y so at what point will we see a fir a price you know to this I that that that is an estimate that we receive from a contractor but that's not something that is a signed contract I can't sign a contract till it's funded okay thank you any other uh questions from Appropriations on the um Capital plan okay good good about the select board I think we kind of jumped that's okay just want to make sure we didn't miss anybody I think we're good okay all right and anybody from the school committee I know we've looked at this extensively I appreciate the conversation about the Adaptive playground it's something that I feel really passionately about and I really appreciate the verbal support at least even if we're still trying to figure out how to fund it all right then I think that's um brings to a close the the things we had to discuss on the this part of the joint meeting unless you guys have anything else to add to that I think we're all set all right well thank you both um Appropriations and select board for coming out second all in favor I as Brian had said earlier this is still early in the process and we've got quite of ways to go and I know we've we've been down this road many times uh from this point in December all the way to getting much closer to town meeting hopefully before may we figure this out but I'd like to be optimistic but thank you see guys thank you thanks for the cooking to was great she wants you to take more take one on the way out yeah all right so that uh I'm going to circle back to our reports um we um which comes starting with the financial report Susan if you want to probably it's available for everybody Nan see Chris is yes I did know Chris um because the audio is not on but thank you so we can actually probably close close that Zoom at this point you want mess up the computer you de any problems it was Mr LeBron thank youing it hard tonight sitting here trying all right okay so the uh financial report this is through December 11th um and what I tried to do is just I'll just go through kind of the cover page to begin so at this point we are running uh $14,000 positive variance in payroll um but a 71,000 negative V variance in expense so at this point in the year we're running um about a $57,000 deficit um variance in the operating budget looking at the payroll accounts uh Personnel attrition we have a positive variance of 177,000 uh long-term subs and grants we have a negative variance of 7,800 columns these are teachers changing um Lanes going from a master's to a master's 15 for instance we had a budgeted amount so we went over that budget by $1,000 not a lot salary Reserve same we went over by 19,000 positions that were added after the budget process and we'll go through those are 200,000 but positions that have been reduced is 65,000 so the net of that gets you to that positive payroll variance looking at the expense accounts the um big changes student services uh has a negative variance of 17,000 uh Nori Aggie we had another student attend that was not budgeted uh technology our software costs uh inflation and um just some with enrollment has increased so that has um the negative variance of 71,000 so as a reminder the FTE that have changed we have added two Elmwood uh pair professionals uh and those were new requests and Elmwood also gained another pair professional and that was a transfer from Hopkins we've added two Middle School pair professionals and point4 teaching for uh the high school and that was over the summer some of those were funded um Hopkins had reduced one a prayer professional and that's where the additional prayer professional at Elmwood came from they Hopkins reduced an a to create a b but the student need put that one at Elmwood and the high school reduced um one pair professional and that is where the point for wellness came from and those were requests that you heard over the summer for some of those changes looking at the revolving and grants you can see where our current balances are through all the various um uh accounts and you can see what the offset is for the budget for instance athletic there's a $450,000 offset for this year the bus fees and you can see carrying down um we have adequate balances to be able to carry through on those offsets for this year and these are the projections of the revolving accounts that show what we're using as an offset and how far into the future those offsets can carry within the operating budget for each account and then that gets into the detail for each account so happy to answer any questions any questions no all right thank you you're welcome numbers right so then that moves us into the superintendence important all right thank you this is the superintendent report for December 19th 2024 um and as I said previously this is really about ballot question to and the impact that it will have on public schools across the Commonwealth um so as we know ballot question to amended the competency determination requirements so what will that mean for us in terms of mcast participation the mcast is still required for all of our students at a 99 partici percent participation rate by state and federal law the mcast will still serve as a measurement of the quality of your school district highlighting each District's strengths and areas for growth and as we said you see us use those that data all the time um it will help us at a 30,000 F foot level it helps us with subgroups it helps us even with individual students we can look at a kids mcast history and see you know the places where students have done very well and where students have needed additional support mcast is still going to be used for scholarship determination so for kids who get adoms or Copic SCH scholarships and also for the Seal of biliteracy so if we have a student whose first language is not English and that student scores proficiently on the mcast test that would say that this kiddo is Prof proficient in his native language and then proficient in English as well qualifying that student for a seal of biliteracy so just as background information state law says that students have to satisfy the requirements of a competency determination in order to graduate from high school so what will that look like now this is the state language and you can see where it has been stricken and you can see where other things have been written in so our kids now have to satisfactorily complete coursework that has been certified by the students District as showing Mastery of the skills competency and knowledge contained in the State academic standards and curriculum Frameworks in the areas measured by the mcast high school test described in section one so what we used to test was grade 10 standards for ELA grade 10 standards for Math and that included algebra and geometry and then grade 10 standards in science and that could be in any of four areas biology chemistry physics or technology engineering so those are the things now that are must does in terms of the company determination but it also says here and any additional areas determined by the board so let's take a couple of hypotheticals and these may be stretches but it sort of shows you I think what they mean when they're talking about grade 10 in those areas so even if you have local graduation requirements meaning at Hopkinson high school we tell you you have to have four years of English three years of math three years of foreign language whatever those um graduation requirements are let's imagine that um we only had two years of math locally if we had a student who had taken a year of Algebra 1 and then a year of something called consumer mathematics that student would not qualify for a competency determination in Hopkinton because consumer mathematics would not be a grade 10 math and you don't see geometry here so when we talk about grade 10 math it has to have an algebra component and a geometry component if we looked at two years of science we just said that it has to have chem it would have to be either biology chemistry technology engineering or physics so if a student took environmental science in anatomy and physiology you would not be meeting those criteria anatomy and physiology wouldn't meet the bio well in biology they also have um instead there also like stuff yeah yeah like a zoology and a botney kind of component so you'd be losing your botney component in that scenario right there okay because they're both Life Sciences like envirom you wouldn't have right but environmental science would not count on chemistry biology physics or Tech engineering okay that because that wouldn't count toward correct yes all right so what the state is recommending is that we come up with a local competency determination and also local high school graduation requirements those two things would have to be in sync with each other but obviously they are two different things so someone on our webinar the other day said oh will desie give us model language for a local competency determination and they said no not right away so I think we're kind of in our in our own space for a while feel like a flashback Co it surely does does he then not right they don't have it right now at some point will they have it and then all must bow all districts must bow and do what desie says uh if desie is the body that's writing the competency determination then yes we would in 1993 when we all had to undertake mcast and it was going to eventually be requ re ired as a compet determination we all had to do that so if it flipped in the other direction we would all have to do that say it felt like a flashback to me from covid times because we as a a school committee had to come up with what the guidelines were for reopening because desie hadn't come out with it in like literally less than a week after we struggled with it with both the community and on the committee desie came out with their own thing that everybody had to follow anyway do we have a Time line or an expectation of when we develop these competency determinations so right now we are in the absence of one and so I I do think that they are suggesting that we hurry to to graduate in June so it would be and well this group is not in bad shape because they took the mcast in the spring of 203 so in the spring of 25 they would be in good shape if you were in a school district kids had not yet met that competency determination through the test they could actually take that test do we have any students who did not have we have some students who are in The partially meeting category and what they have is called um an educational proficiency plan an EP and if all goes well they should be able to cross the finish line so we can feel pretty good about the class of 25 great how's the class of 26 CU they they the ly took the mcast in Spring of 24 yes but they would have just gotten their results back so Rec now must ask about 27 right well yeah were not going to take that's right they will not be kids who take the mcast test oh no they will but not for competency determination I mean it won't count for that yes yeah I should be careful but they certain it certainly would give you a a look see it who might be in trouble m and because those are kids who have taken it historically we really do have a lot of data you know and you know we obviously have other metrics like when we talk about the star proficiency kinds of tests and locally developed things that help us to know where kids are all right and my last slide is really just have a great set of holidays and I hope everyone enjoys some time away with their family and their friends and the people that they enjoy being with most so yeah it's a nice time of year and people are ready for a [Laughter] break right any other questions okay so that then moves us into the school committee chair report payroll warrant 25011 has been approved warrants 25-44 s 25-45 s 25-4 6s and 25-47 S have been approved all warrants included in the folder uh and annual Town report um is something that is I'll have a draft for at our next meeting um but it's something that we every year the school committee chair writes and then brings in the committee to kind of look at edits and look at what we want to make sure we highlight from the last uh and it it looks at kind of different from what we typically are looking at as we typically look at a fiscal year it looks at the calendar year for 2024 so that is to come do people have any liaison reports um the youth commission was not able to get a quorum so we attempted a without success I had mentioned earlier the sustainable green committee met they had a question about bike rfts at the schools I have the information going for for that all children who are able to ride boats independently do have a place to put their bike when they insufficient numbers that wasn't part of the question okay I I do believe that we have enough the schools have not been coming back to us looking to purchase more because they were overflowing right Hopkins does get a lot of kids who ride bikes though they do they are the winners yeah well they're excited too because they I know they have a lot of the those kids that first walk downtown and things that maybe everybody's not a fan of but um the kids there's a lot of enthusiasm from the kids yeah all right so unless there are any other reports that you want to skip anybody no I forgot the Snowman social Saturday Saturday okay very good I did I did I remembered in the afternoon too my snowman melted well I do believe there could be a little more snow coming tomorrow so okay and I took my kids to snowman Saturday it was impressively attended I would say at least double last year's attendance um it was busy and happy and lots of loud shrieky happy noises I I I love uh how CPAC is growing in so many different ways and reaching so many families that that need that that support and in connection so also since I plugged the orchestra I also went to the band and Choir concerts they were quite good too but I was really Blown Away by partial by strings pardon you're partial to Strings partial to Strings yeah my daughter was performing there that's good the pitot US wow I I just was I I was just blown away all right so let's go into new business uh and start with policy jic which is a first reading of student discipline Dr Kavanaugh okay thank you uh so policy jic as you can see at the end of that policy when it gives you references to Mass General law you can see it's 37h 37h and a half 37h and 3/4 so what you're seeing in this policy is really entirely kind of taken from the law on student discipline interestingly Hopkinson used to have a policy jic and when we did our work on the kerpan policy that talked about weapons in school we eliminated ated our policy jic and we did because our former policy jic only referenced the section in on expulsion and so you can see what um that part references it talks about drugs drug use or um a controlled substance in school it talks about weapons so U possession of a dangerous weapon and then it also talks about uh assault on a member of the educational staff so because we had a policy jic that only talked about expulsion we kept thinking why do we have this and we eliminated it well we are now in the process of undergoing a desie civil rights audit and the department of Elementary and secondary education said you really need to have a policy jic student discipline we know that it only sort of rearticulates everything that's written in Mass General law in particular the the 37 hes um but you need to have one and so we went to the masc policy website and what we've really done is just taken their model policy for this I don't necessarily know that you're going to find much different in this policy than any other on this particular topic so we do need to have a policy jic according to desie and here is the model language okay and thank you to the policy working group for meeting quickly appreciate it good J did this go out to the public at all today today yes and how soon do we need to have this in place um I do think that we could wait till our first meeting in January if you'd like to have a couple of reads that's I would prefer that just because that's our our past practice and does this count as a first reading this is the first reading so that it would give us an opportunity for a second reading on that um any any um feedback from the community or for from any of the schools that wanted to be included I assumed that it went through the principles of all the schools already to look at or no no okay so that and I can do that yeah just they yes and they will say that's that's what the law says so it is typically our practice but I'm happy to Dos anything we doing which was one of the reasons why we eliminated the old jic because we said mgl will always Trump your local policy so that's okay it's all good I appreciate that it has the uh questions and answers regarding children with disabilities and discipline procedures it seems really important that all of our administrators and Community are aware of those things okay that's great thank you and thank you also to the policy working group for bringing this forward the next one is policy jjif athletic concussions um this is at least a how many readings is first reading on this I like we've seen this no no this is definitely a second reading I think Georgette told me we saw this once in November I yeah yeah we did and we didn't do a second reading because we t L it because we were working on the concussion protocols our athletic trainer had said she felt like our concussion protocols really needed a good overhaul so when she did look at the policy which I had asked her to do uh the only changes that she made to it are what you see in the red font and so they are absolutely minimal um she did change the website and someone had said well wait a minute why aren't you using the CDC her explanation was that when you go go to the CDC what you're seeing is training for coaches almost exclusively to for coaches and we also are required to make sure that we are training our athletic trainers nurses athletic directors um the director who is responsible for a marching band if you have one and students who participate in an extracurricular activity and their parents and so it was her feeling that if you use the dph training it's probably more inclusive of all of those groups um we could certainly list both of them if we wanted to use both of them but this was her recommendation uh the other change was dph pre-participation forms and receipt of materials or the school-based equivalent and then she just capitalized Poston concussion syndrome other than that I think our athletic director and our athletic trainer and our middle school and high school principals who were also part of this group that reviewed this and our head nurse Sarah Patterson are all comfortable with what this policy says and does I have a question the CDC link on this does not go to anywhere Oh I thought I clicked on it earlier today and it did so right now it's telling me the page you're looking for was not found it goes to to this and it says when I clicked on the one that the person who wrote into US shared with us the where says website okay yes someone had did someone did send to us an email saying you could use the CDC one that's the one that offers training for coaches so I reached out to the athletic trainer and when I clicked on his link it did take us to head injury training for coaches but she had suggested that she would prefer to yes you've got that right there heads up to Youth Sports so do we still do the Baseline training that we used to do for all of our athletes yes yeah I think it looks good I think they too seems like we should fix the link but well yes but the link would be should be fixed would be my agreement on that um beyond the link um people have any thoughts on oh you know what I think we did fix the link so I don't know I can see on yours that you don't have that little colored website there if you click on from the agenda when I go into here right but I have a link right there that says website and when you click on my link you get to the the appropriate place okay so because you see when I go here it says that Yes mine is not to the CDC mine is to the dph so we don't have the disase control on there do we not have the right version attached to our agenda oh I see the dph is found on its right the CDC would be crossed out on your agenda and there would be a link under website okay which I have on mine no this is from the agenda um yeah sorry the CDC should be crossed out in your agenda and there should be a link on the website on the dph website yes okay so like the the website should be a hyperlink where you click on the word the word website and it brings you to would there be some reason that that this isn't active because it's I see what you're talking about for Mand in like the yeah we don't have that one yep but that is that the only thing that's different on ours can you I can do that for you so Amanda maer who is our athletic trainer has taken out this link right here so in this version and I'm not sure why that's like that for you it's funny because I can see other people in there um if that is stricken and this website would take you to concussion trinings mass.gov and this is for school staff and healthc Care Professionals which is why she prefers that one and then she added school-based equivalents and capitalized postconcussion syndrome those are the only changes in there that's why I wasn't following PS sure right so the website has in fact been changed to the appropriate thing okay yeah I apologize I'm not sure why that happened in yours all right so I'm recognizing it is only a second um reading but it seems pretty solid the way it is to me um I don't know if people feel comfortable moving it forward or want a third reading on it I don't feel like I need to read it again I appreciate seeing that all right so does somebody want to make a motion relative to um to that I move we accept the Hopkinson School committee policy on athletic concussions motion by Susan is there a second I'll second second by Kyla and because we no longer have any remote participants we can just do a regular voting so all those in favor I and it is unanimous and passes thank you very much for bringing that forward the old business item item a is the superintendent search uh you should have all received a copy of the the signed contract with nzda uh and so you you have the ability obviously to read it I just wanted to share a couple of pieces um just partly from our discussion last week or two weeks ago I guess it was um but it the first was that it does include uh the six Focus up six focus groups uh they will also help with the composition and and helping us form the screening committee uh in all aspects along the way they have extensive networks of how they're going to help um look for where they're going to look for superintendent the other piece uh that was not as clear to me in looking at the stuff ahead of time is it's also going to give us affiliate status with NASDAQ for a year um which is over a $6,000 value I know we're not currently affiliate um with them and that we have not used um their projections because we have but they would give us free projections which we might take advantage of just to compare to other things okay I feel like we need to add a line item just giving us credit for that $6,000 I know right um so there's there's that and then um they also will provide a free special ed uh Trend report uh and give us the affiliate pricing on other fee Based Services they have so was happy um to look at the final contract uh and then the other pieces everybody saw the scheduling thing that I had sent out uh everybody responded that January 2nd at 700m is a good time to meet with NASDAQ so that is in addition to our a regularly scheduled meeting the following week and it will be by Zoom because it's just for the meeting with nezda and allowing them to kind of get us going rather than having to wait the following week so wonderful get things up and running so I am uh I feel very good about having them on board and and that we're in a good place with them so that's all I have for that um I'm want to go ahead with the the school year calendar survey sure um so I did share with you the big spreadsheet so that you could go in and read all the comments there are so many of them that there would be no way to capture them in a slide deck um but I started by talking about the purpose of the calendar calendar survey um we know that we have mandated holidays there are 11 of them they are Labor Day Columbus Day and dous people's day one thing Veterans Day Thanksgiving Christmas Day New Year's Day Martin Luther King Jr Day Washington's birthday our President's Day Patriots Day Memorial Day um juneth Independence Day so those are the ones that we have that are non-negotiable and so there are others that we have added to our school calendar over time and we wanted to know how people felt about those uh holidays so our first question was please indicate your affiliation with the hopkington public schools we had 1,328 responses 972 of them according to um this data were parents 227 uh were faculty staff administrator 100 I'm a current Hopkinson public school student and then 29 were people who either live in town don't have kids attending or don't have kids attending right now um so we asked if the district eliminated all the holidays except for the mandated would your student need an exemption from homework or time off from school or any other religious holidays and um about 35% of the parents who responded said that yes they would so if we're talking about 35% of the 972 we're probably talking somewhere around 325 would say that yes they needed some um exemption if we were to take those holties away uh so then we asked the same thing of teacher staff and administrators and only about 177% said that they would need some time away and then we asked the kids and the kids said at 51% yes they would need time other than the mandated holidays how many students were the answered uh 92 on oh 92 students okay all right so then we asked them about the list of religious or cultural observances and I think there was some confusion here because we say for any of the observances that apply to you please indicate the related impact on School attendance so we didn't want people to comment on all of those observances only the ones that applied to them however I think that there was a little bit of confusion there because when we asked about something like uh Dali for example um if you were a person who observed Diwali you probably would need the entire day off or need some kind of early release which would be the red and the orange right here uh but we had people who said no no it's fine I observed a w but I can attend the full day so I think that people who were not people who observed do W were answering that they they could go to school all day so there might be some confusion here but I think what's nice is you do have a sense in here of how many people would probably need that day off yeah well in the numbers if you add up the number of people who would be celebrating all of those up there seem not to be one compatible with another necessarily um or not all compatible with each other and that would be more people than what responded to the survey if you included all the blue yes and I mean really you could probably be a person who because if we look at um something like Good Friday and Ash Wednesday those people might be the same right but I hear what you're saying you are correct I looking at just that one yes yeah so these are all still the ones that are parent ones and um then we can move into teachers and so you can see that the teachers have you know places where they say yeah I observe that but I wouldn't need the time off um so in the teaching staff there was only you know a very small I mean this might be number two two people who would said they would need the full day off for um Ash Wednesday uh a few more for dwali uh Good Friday we had a little bit of a mix right here and one of the things that if we think about the available for a half day or need the full day off um when we take a look at that you know some of the people say I observe Good Friday but I can still come to school I'd need a half a day I need a full day um rashash sh and yam kapor yeah we've got the same sort of thing going on here with our faculty and staff and then when we that to students uh you can see that some kids feel like for um something like Dali they would need the entire day need an early release would want a No Homework Day Ash Wednesday interestingly enough our kids are are really big on that I guess so I don't really think our kids need the entire day off for as Wednesday well they don't currently have it off so correct you can always go late and get your es or just do a dry by in the morning yeah so then we looked at parent religious identification and I really do like this question because I think it gives us um some sincere feedback and it really does help us to know what um the makeup of our community is in terms of the kinds of religious um and cultural observances they might be interested in so these are the parents you can see we have have quite a few here who are identify as catholic christian or Christian um quite a few who identify as Hindu uh people who are either agnostic or have no religion um and then we have a pretty good size uh Jewish and uh Muslim population reasonably good size if we look at our faculty and staff and what happened when we used this the last time was that we said okay is there um anyone who said that they might need Lunar New Year off and when we found that among our teachers in the last iteration of this didn't need Lunar New Year we said that would be great in a year when there was a presidential election when there was not a presidential election because we'd be going to school we could go to school on November 8th and then transfer the professional development day to say January February whenever when a new year happened to fall um so you can that we've got uh again a lot of people who identify as catholic christian or Christian uh a lot of people who identify as Jewish um in this group of kids who responded and oh I'm sorry this is faculty and there are 223 responses and then if we go to the kids now you start to see I think uh in there only 94 responses to be fair um so you've got 35 who are Christian or uh cathol catholic christian you've got 24 who are Hindu you've got 10 who are Muslim you've got six who are Jewish and we've got a good Batch who are also agnostic atheist or say none so all right when school is not in session due to a cultural or religious holiday please select the option that best describes your experience with work that's assigned and doe on the following day and you can select all that apply and so 10 of our kids said that they have never been assigned work that's due um on the day after uh some 54 of our kids said some teachers assign work on the holidays 28 kids said many teachers assign work on those holidays 20 said if work is assigned it's manageable and doesn't interfere with my holiday and another 20 said work has been assigned that is of significant volume and does interfere with my holiday so that's the voice voice of the students and based um ostensibly on their kind of lived experiences and then we asked people parents teachers and students what was most important to them so they had to prioritize would it be honoring diversity representation and inclusivity would it be maximizing the continuity of learning and time on learning particularly in the fall um and then the last one was securing the earliest possible last day of school so the blues are your first priority so it appears that um for parents the first the most popular first priority was maximizing continuity of learning um and then honoring diversity here for teachers um they also had as a first first priority or or most popular first priority uh was maximizing continuity of learning although for the teachers you can see that diversity and securing the last day of school get very very close to maximizing continuity and with the kids it was maximizing diversity that was their first priority and then learning and securing the last day of school came in um what looks to me like almost tied for a second all right um question six to address your top priority above please select your preference from the following options three 329 people said that they would like to maintain the non-mandated holidays that are included in our current calendar 360 said that they want some of the non-mandated holidays but they want to reduce the number of them uh 252 said let's just get rid of them all and I will tell you that the last time we did this people I think had forgotten that December 24th was not one of them uh 33 people said that they would actually like to add non-mandated holidays 335 people said that collapsing February and April vacations into one week long vacation in March was very desirable um I have heard from teachers that if you are a teacher who has children that it's very undesirable because if you are teaching through February and April and your young children are off because the school district that you send them to is off finding Child Care can be tricky very but it's the same thing for the parents that's but the teachers would never be able to take vacation with their with their children would be the if they're they live in another District that does the typical February April and their students have March off they would never be able to take a family vacation we should provide on onsite child care but they still wouldn't be able to take vacation with them let get that budget request through oh yeah I can see that one going through yeah MH use that for your slogan for reelection I'm not reading running again all right so those were the parent answers when we got to faculty and staff um and this is interesting because you do have 44 people who said collapsing February and April would be okay with me but you can see that about I don't know 180 of their peers said yeah not okay with me so um the first one maintaining the non-mandated 60 of the faculty and staff said that reducing the number 101 said that then eliminating all the non-mandated was it 72 um adding only four wanted to do that and with the students 64 of the students said uh let's maintain the non-mandated holidays included in the current calendar 19 said let's reduce the number 11 said let's eliminate them all um 26 said can we add more and in terms of collapsing February and April the kids did not love that they voted at at six only six kids said that would be a good thing oh well moving to Pennsylvania all right and those are the things that I have included in there for you we can go back to any of the slides if you want to look at them more carefully so what came out to me in the survey is there was no overwhelming one way that came out there was not like a ton of people that says yes get rid of the non-mandated holidays and there wasn't a big group that says um I want to stay that it seems about equal I have more to say but I'll let other people comment about that first I think I agree with um Kyla that yeah and I appreciated the reading the comments um from the spreadsheet although challenging to scroll but I appreciated the comments um and I think we had more than one email pointing out that if we were reduce non-mandated holidays choosing which ones were reducing is actually very tenuous as it ends up targeting one group or another right I agree with that sentiment entirely about the reducing and I I know that that received among certain groups a a fairly favorable option to a to reduce the number of um non-mandated holidays that we're recognizing but I personally would not feel comfortable um that to me it would be in all or nothing that we eliminate all non-mandated including Christmas Eve um which is not um has been which has been a traditional day off and I don't know that everybody thinks of it that way because they think of Christmas sometimes as a federal me as a Federal holiday but they lump Christmas Eve together with that and I would not feel comfortable choosing um between any of the group and trying to say that one is more important than the other I know some of the holidays timing wise um looking at like I know like rashan and yam kapor for example um observing those is is difficult if kids are not if kids are in school and they have to be pulled out because of the routines being established at the beginning of the year and missing things that their peers that has been a thing that's been in the past but I Circle back to what you started with kylo which is it doesn't feel like an overwhelming mandate coming out of this it doesn't feel to me I feel like in order for me I would want to deeper dive um and I said this upfront so this is a little bit of my perhaps my own bias towards the calendar um I would want a deeper dive with a subcommittee that took more than just a survey before things were significantly altered just because this is not a clear mandate to me no I also feel very strongly that our values for the hopkington public schools talk about everybody being seen and recognized and and um you know this all means all that we keep hearing from the superintendent um then I feel like that um should include our calendar as well we only had like a thousand parents respond correct not even 929 yeah not even quite and Dr Kavanaugh what would you say the number of parents are in this District so it was 972 that responded um it's it's hard to say because we have over 4,200 kids but there could be siblings right three kids could share two parents right so so well and some households probably had both you know if there was more than one parent or Guardian in the home M they may have had two respondents from one house and zero from others but but given 972 doesn't feel real really representative of probably the number of parents in the district yes with 4200 kids you could probably have 3,000 parents exactly and or more because you also would have some families that would have um parents that have shared custody that living together where there are also additional spouses so that it would be potentially for Parental so a thousand people out of what could potentially be would not is not a good reason to change anything I don't think I also think that people who tend to answer these surveys are people that have something to say that if you really don't care you don't go in and answer the survey but but also I think that's definitely true but I I also think that there's a fair amount of people that um is important as all of our emails feel to us that are going out to people there's a lot of emails right now there are a lot of emails going out and there may be people who didn't weren't aware of weren't aware that's true because again I I as grateful as I am to H Cam and to the you know those that follow us um outside of the meeting here it surprises me awareness well I think back to when we were talking about the charleswood school and bringing that before town meeting and the number of people that kind of very close to when we were creeping up to to a vote on that even people that had young kids had no idea what was being discussed yeah I I still hear people that look at um uh Hopkins and say what are they doing well I guess it you know not that I would know but being a parent is all consuming so who has time to really pay as much attention to doing a survey is you don't think everybody's watching us right now no I don't think so definely not at 10 o'clock T night definitely not I wouldn't be watching and I I I do would support an effort to look at a you know a deeper dive in our calendar I think there are other than um looking at religious and non-mandated things there are other places perhaps where we could have some efficiencies that we don't current that we currently have that we could look at out of the box Solutions squishing something uh but I I don't feel like we have the time to go through that process this year I would recommend that we go forward with the calendar for this year and then we could do a deeper dive next year and I I agree with that and I think we should potentially plan to launch that um before the summer so that it can go through you know late spring um get a group together and that so that coming into the fall we're ready to and that would include like focus groups and Outreach and chances for us to get information from people who weren't able to fill out a survey because we did get some pretty strong feelings from people in the community um via email and I know lots of comments around but it it was a pretty even split I would say in terms of what we were hearing but people who felt very strongly about it and I think their voices are important to hear and important to take into account out of the box Solutions the for example the looking at the vacation was a more popular uh option than what I had guessed so there may be other ideas out there I think that a deeper dive should include a larger community group as well and bring in you know lots of different yes people so but IEC I would support moving forward for the FY the school year that 25 266 that we move forward with the calendar that we have um and then come back to look at this in the future I will second that oh no you have to make it you have make oh you have to make a motion I'll make a motion that we move forward with the calendar that was presented for school year 25 26 okay motion by Kyla and I would second that second by Susan all those in favor hi okay thank you um very much for getting the survey out um and I know that um that that data definitely was interesting to look at and would be a great spring board for a group kind of going forward to look at the calendar potentially over the summer that then leads us into items by consensus which I know is probably deeply disappointing as that means we are nearing the end of the meeting okay superintendent I recommend the school committee approve the items by consensus is outlined in your agenda I move to approve of the items by content consensus second motion by Susan a second by Jamie all those in favor I and then I would seek a motion to adjourn I move that we adjourn I'll second that motion by Susan second by Kyla all those in favor I and we are adjourned at 10:03 our next meeting will be our special meeting on January 2nd which will be a remote uh and but will be publicly posted and available for people to to watch that and then uh we'll get back to our joint meeting on January 9th which take place uh here at H cam so thank you all have a Happy New Year and a safe uh break for everybody thanks and um