good evening and welcome to the Thursday March 13th 2025 hopkington school committee meeting I would like to ask everyone in attendance to rise and say the Pledge of Allegiance 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 thank you is there anyone here for public comment so we'll move in recognitions and our student council rep
is at a girls hockey banquet tonight so we'll move into the superintendent report all right thank you um so tonight I would normally be delivering a superintendent report and I had one prepared that's not time sensitive so I will just push that out to a subsequent meeting um we have folks here tonight
from uh Commodore Builders and from burtex who are our o who that's the company that is our owner project manager um and we just wanted to have them come in and talk a little bit about the Hopkins um construction incident yesterday so if you guys would come up and join us we would appreciate that
thank you for having us uh Jeff too um managing director for the fex companies where your own as project manager I'm Rob Lan project executive for commo Builders thank you thank you yeah so uh yesterday we had an unfortunate incident on the job site and we wanted to bring
the school committee's attention to it we know that it um has obviously affected the students in terms of their awareness of the project and so uh Bob and I are going to describe a little what happened in uh next steps and what we do from here moving forward so uh thank you about 1:30 yesterday
afternoon 11:30 um a mass climber which is used to erect um the um masonary walls inside the gym there are three of them right now that are installed the one on the uh going in the east west Direction the wall was finished uh it
was getting ready to be dismantled nobody was on it at the time uh for some reason we don't know the reason yet uh the unit had collapsed uh it fell in such a manner that it wasn't a a catastrophic collapse in a sense one leg broke or the other leg
broke and then it tilted it actually just basically according to the description it kind of eased itself down uh across the plane of the of the wall of the East West wall when it did that it connected with the far wall uh
closest to the school it was a section of wall about 8 ft wide uh about 30 ft tall and knocked that wall all over um a masonry structure that structure fell um across the job site and landed uh just
shy of the um walkway um the E uh emergency egress walkway out of the school uh no there was no injuries uh reported uh and there was no property damage we uh notified EMS right away uh a teacher came out and then a neighbor
came over right away and said uh you got EMS on the phone so they dispatched right away um we notified everybody on the job site immediately to evacuate the job site and rally at the mustard point so we could get an accurate headcount um Everybody hung around for
about an hour after that just to make sure we were had everybody accounted for then we dismissed the workers for the day and then we continued our investigation with u the fire department police department uh right now we're in the process of doing an investigation um we've had the um masonry company they're
doing an investigation we're doing one and then the mass climber the actual manufacturer of the um equipment uh flew somebody in today uh from their headquarters uh to do also an investigation on the equipment to why it actually failed so we don't know the
reasons yet um other than it did collapse and then took out the section of wall uh structural engineer was on site today he uh evaluated the wall that fell down um looking to say his report is coming out shortly he
doesn't know if there's any structural damage to the foundation he doesn't believe there is um but he's again he's going to uh issue a report shortly let us know if we have to do any repairs to the foundation if we did it would be only that 8ot section so again not a huge catastrophic uh event to the site
um the rest of the job site was unaffected in a sense there were no other damages to the job site so today everybody came back to work the uh masonry company was on site doing cleanup only and uh they're in investigation so uh I think that's about it right now that's about it so we we
shut down the gym portion today as the additional investigation came in so as Bob alluded to each of the firms involved had their safety inspector come out as did ourselves and so those reports are all forthcoming um and so the work in the gym was on hold while the work overhead in the roof in the other sections of the building is is
still proceeding and so we uh plan on remobilizing and removing that debris uh Tom starting tomorrow once the reports are completed and then we'll re uh remobilize with the rest of the work uh an incident is never an experience that any of us like to talk about in terms of the realities of construction
but the fortunateness here is that nobody was injured um every all the proper procedures were taken all the right people were notified timeliness was uh completed and it was at a specific point in the building where it's not causing other damage to the building that's under construction so it was a very small section of wall
although tall uh it hadn't been anchored to the roof which is why it kind of cast over once the other structure bumped into it well I want to thank the two of you for for coming tonight um I also saved my recognition uh because I do want to thank hopkington fire hopkington police and um our building inspector's
office because they came out immediately um and their first order of business was obviously safety um and I do want to thank Mr CER and his two assistant principles Mrs lamro um and Mrs Richie um they were on the scene and I think
their first order of business was making sure that staff and students were very safe and then of course communicating with parents um and uh students and fam so it was it was really all hands on deck and when I arrived on the scene it was pretty amazing what I saw Mrs rmck
was there Mr Parson um and and really the groups of people in that space at that time were working beautifully together so it was an unfortunate situation but I think the response was admirable so thank you will there be any delays no so the um the section that it
happened in was not on the critical path of the building critical path of construction where the the main portion of work has to happen at all times uh this was on the south face of the building um the critical path right now is running through the northern half of the building so we will have an
opportunity to recover without losing any time on the job even if there's foundational damage yeah y yeah it's in the gym area right now and that's not the like I said that's not the critical path of the job right now got um unfortunate but yes we we will repair it and move right on got
you this the gym being that's being built not a gym that's being used by stud it's a new gym make sure that's clear okay yeah gyms are the most open wide open space in the building so they have the least intensity in terms of construction which is why Bob saying it's not on the critical path all the
walls and partitions and MEP systems are in the other side of the addition and that's where the the real intensity the schedule plays out and any additional costs to repair or fix is absorbed by it Insurance CLA
insurance insurance claim y so the the responsible party ultimately whether it's the manufact the ltft or the Mason or whoever whatever cause it will be the insurance party that carries the the cost and if there's overtime or premiums associated with it that will be part of the that'll be covered as well okay
great anything else all right well I will say thank you again for coming out tonight um again it was an unfortunate situation but all hands on deck it was it was handled well so thank you yeah thank you thank you thank
you thank you and that moves us into a financial report thank you um so in your packet um you have the financial report and this is through March 5th the um right now
we're sh showing a small U negative variance in terms of the total we're running 56,000 um behind in terms of our budget you can see where the the numbers come from the payroll we're running behind
145,000 uh a lot of that is due to increasing the sub accounts um because we're running way over budget on those substitute accounts and as you remember for the 26 budget we adjusted those sub accounts um for
things like this because we keep running over uh so at this time the payroll is running uh at a negative variance of 145,000 but the expenses are running at a positive variance of 88,000 uh in terms of
the um our revolving accounts um they are all trending as expected um the offsets for the budgets um are sustainable as as suspected and our capital projects are
all in progress the only Capital project that is on hold is the Adaptive playground as we do not have enough money from that original $100,000 Grant to move forward with constru construction documents um so that
project for that $100,000 original Grant is on hold everything else is in progress I'm happy to answer any questions good Nancy any questions no thank you I'm good thank
you on to the school committee chair report sorry I'm just toggling back and forth between different screens here so uh warrants 25- 05s 25-0 76s 25- 077 s
25-7 8 s 25- 079 s 25-80 s 25- 81s and 25- 82s have been approved uh all warrants uh were included in your folder and just
uh one email that we all received uh earlier this week regarding uh vaccines and uh a request from somebody in the community for information on um potentially have having uh waivers and
um eliminated for vaccin so I was able to get some information from U both Dr Kavanaugh and um Sarah Patterson our lead nurse and I'm working on a response for that thank you any liaison reports no no not for me and youth
commission is meeting next to me not we any for you ncing and that moves us into new business Dr kavana the revised budget sure thank you um so we have the revisions to the FY 26 budget and I'm going to ask our building administrators
to come up um from the high school we have Mr Bishop from Marathon we have Mrs d from Elwood we have Mrs tinan and from Hopkins Mr CER um we're going you didn't have to sit in
age order it did just work that way I didn't age of school don't have a middle school but we have high school everyone thought you were talking about wow
wow the age of the school but thank you I thought you no clearly Mr Bishop's the oldest clearly student [Laughter]
age welcome all right so thank you we did in fact present um our budget revisions to you a little while ago and we thought that it might be wise for us to think about what they looked like like and hold on them for a couple of weeks which
we've done um and the building principles are here tonight to help us talk about how the decisions were made so I will very briefly go through the timeline again uh the school committee had voted the budget in January on February 4th the select board chair
noted that reductions were going to be necessary and on the 7th we received a letter from the town manager Alaine Lazarus indicating that the dollar amount that the schools needed to reduce the budget by was4 15,000 and so on the 11th and 12th of
February the five building principles met with Mrs Ric and me and Mr lead and we had conversations about how to take the $415,000 out of the proposed FY 26 budget and so then on the 13th which was
the last time you saw this we presented our collaboratively made decisions to you the school committee um there are some truths in this process and one of them is that creating a comprehensive budget one that is really student centered and fiscally
responsible takes us literally months um as much as Mrs RMC doesn't like to do it we are back in school and by late September she is sending all of them letters saying it's time we typically get that Labor Day weekend I like it's not even late September what a
thoughtful pres yes yes all right July 4th no give them a running St yeah maybe it's late September when we start setting up the budget meetings right um but in a 48 hour period the building principles came together and we
always ask them to come and have this important dialogue with us because we believe they are the people who best know what is needed in their buildings I mean we can sit across the street and have ideas about personnel and Staffing decisions and numbers of kids and
programs and all of that but they are the people who are boots on the ground every day today um so when we started to think about um the best possible education for kids given the fact that we had to take away
the 415,000 we really wanted to make sure that both academics and the well-being of children were at the center of our decision- making um and we also knew that if you need to take $455,000 out of a budget you're not going to be able to do that with supplies you know we're not buying that
many uh paper clips and number two pencils and so what we had to look to were Personnel um so we want to talk some more tonight about the par professionals and what we will say about paraprofessionals generally is that their roles vary greatly and we really
do have three different kinds of pars I'll go through them broadly and then if you guys would like to chime in on the pars certainly welcome to do that uh we have car Paras that fall into categories of a par B par and C par the a par
professionals are what we call general education par professionals and we use them to supervise kids very frequently in non-classroom settings so what does that mean they're in cafeteria during lunch they are in the library settings
we use them for arrival we use them for dismissal those kinds of places um they do support teachers and materials preparation so sometimes they're at the copy machine or the laminating machine and they do help to facilitate instruction in classrooms and that is
directed by the classroom teacher the B par professionals are special education pairs they can deliver specialized instruction in accordance with the requirements of a student's IEP B Paris can collect data to measure
student progress and they can facilitate student Behavior plans and then finally there are C pars and those are special education par professionals and they also have ABA certification so they can modify and deliver specialized instruction in
accordance with IEP requirements and I think what's important there is the word modifies uh they can collect and analyze the data to measure student academic progress and student behaviors and they can also provide discrete trial instruction
so did we hit it all yeah well thank you Dr Cav arton um good evening everyone uh and on behalf of my much older colleagues here just wanted to thank you all for having us um you know we recognize and acknowledge that potential budget reductions are not are never easy in regardless will have an impact on
students and our staff and we're here because we've been asked to make some hard decisions and please know that we don't take them lightly uh the process has been very thorough and collaborative like Dr kavanau mentioned we've had a number of meetings uh through which we reviewed all possible options and the reality is there no easy choices uh and
none of this feels good uh but we deeply respect and value every member of our staff Pre K to 12 and understand the uncertainty and concern that comes with these discussions uh so we were going to talk a little bit about how Paris like we talked about Dr K I mentioned the three different kind of types of Paras I
would say there's two buckets there's the general education per and the special education per uh and we're going to focus tonight on our general Ed Pera the a level and how that differs from Marathon school all the way up to the high school so I think we're going to start with Marathon School sure so just
Echo Mr Bishop uh regarding the cuts um and just public publicly state that the conversations where we had to make reductions to meet that budget directive they were difficult they were noty no one wants to make reductions um but I do recognize my fellow principal colleagues
who recognize the invaluable nature of the apar professionals at Marathon because you knowe that that is not on the list to be reduced so I thank them for preserving these roles so I'm going to talk about how we use our apir professionals at Marathon you know as the school that
first introduced schooling to young children it's they're supporting the development of the whole child not just academics the um everyday essential functioning of our building is something that they're part of they fabric of of our Marathon Community and that begins
upon arrival the apare professionals are part of our arrival team they're welcoming students to the day and it's important for many touch points for the young children to have someone who Smiles greets them knows their name and we're all over at Marathon multiple doors to help that traffic flow so those
you who are doing that you you know what we're talking about um kindergarten teachers share a pair of professional so they divise the schedules to best support their class instructionally that's a shift from when we moved from Center School when we were at Center School each kindergarten class had their
own a par professional designated to them part of the shift moving to Marathon was the planned lower class size that we have not yet met that Target so they share a pair of profession and work on devising that that schedule and that the planned
enrollment was a key factor in that shift of sharing a PA professional first grade teachers share four pair of professionals and again the teachers create the schedules based on their instructional needs of when is it that children need support a few years ago I
was here before you asking for an additional pair professional and that was um supported thank you because at that time when we had three the ratio of one pair professional to approximately 00 children just really wasn't effective it wasn't enough time to get into class
to support that so when our apar professionals are in classrooms they're part of that support team in and around the building they're a consistent School member that's part of their team a visual face they're supporting instruction that tiered instruction that was mentioned at the last meeting
they're um receiving training from our Ela director on literacy routines to help strengthen skills they're meeting with our math director later this month to help with math inter learn math interventions they make personal connections with the students they support that academic growth and overall
well-being they are um in the social emotionals ranging from check-ins to promoting positive peer relationships students at our level are getting that sort of scaffolded support to help them develop into positive healthy human beings and
the the hands are essential to what we do and the schedules are revised over the the course of the Year sometimes we have a class that might be a little busier as I say than others and they need help and the teachers collaborate with each other because they need more help at this time of the day that time of the day they want to make sure when it's small group instruction they've got
the extra hands to provide that intervention they do have duties they support arrival a lunch and dismissal um for meetings or consults they cover the teachers but that they are not our first goto for substitute needs we that's why
our sub budget I'm sorry is probably over but we seek to keep them in their scheduled role for that consistency to provide that support that teachers count on students count on throughout the day and we we value that so we really only
do that when we are short sorry um you know they they just are an invaluable member of our team they are part of our instructional approach for the whole child I could talk on and on um but I do know other people have to
talk about things tonight but that so I am grateful for the recognition because as we're meeting you can surely understand it's not you know a conversation you're looking forward to but just the recognition of helping start that Foundation because they know it will benefit the grades later if we
are able to sort of pass along students who have um some solid skills in all areas of development so thank you all for that and I think it's very important to note that there are no aars that were being reduced at correct so this is why
in terms of the um functioning of our school they they are essential members to our school so I can talk a little bit about kind of the other end um and and you know the role of an apara does evolve over the years uh as the need age and
maturity of the student changes um as students get older and more independent oftentimes there's lesser need for as much oversight or management or supervision um for example the secondary level doesn't have recess uh we don't have sub coverage uh because we have
building Subs at the high school uh our upper classmen have privileges to leave the building during their study halls if they're in good academic or behavioral standing so again there's not a lot of opportunities for that supervision uh it's also highlighted by the sheer number of a Paras uh at each level in
the district Marathon has 11 a level Paras uh Elmwood and Hopkins together have nine the middle school does not have a level Pairs and the high school has three level pairs but on the flip side a b Lev PA for example Marathon has four the high school has nine so it kind of changes as the students get
older uh at the high school an a PA typically takes on duties such as monitoring lunch providing Supervision in the library or our tutoring center supporting larger enrolled classrooms uh proctoring mcast or assisting with study halls in the cafeteria basically providing support wherever and whenever
needed but often times with another school Personnel present like say a classroom teacher on a duty a campus Aid or a building substitute uh and and we have added uh two building substitutes in one campus aid over the last 5 years and a lot of times the roles of those two positions in our a level pair of
professions often overlap yeah thank you and so when we were having our meeting um you know Mrs deau did say I can't give up an AAR and we all respected that we knew that the the need that you have because of the age of your kids and the instructional
needs the behavioral needs we got that um but when Mr Bishop talks about you know having a campus Aid or having permanent building Subs that gives him more flexibility and you know the ability to um reduce his Staffing by 3A
Paris so and I don't know if the two of you want to talk about how they're used at Hopkins and Elmwood because I think you each have one there and um people may want to know why is it okay to take one from Hopkins and one from Elwood yeah I would say that Hopkins and
Elmwood are a blend of the middle of the spectrum of what my colleagues just described where um at least for especially at Hopkins the aars have a daily weekly schedule that they follow that would include pushing into classrooms to support um small group
instruction or whole group instruction support the teacher with some needs they may have they might do like executive functioning check-ins with kids help the teacher with copies prepare for a lesson things like that um they have a number of duties for us lunch duty recess Duty
they're also out there greeting the kids when they come off the bus um if you've ever seen the US unload 20 buses at a time that they're there and they're on the front lines uh for us in all of those regards um if we have uh a handful
of teachers out on a given day they will be going and covering those classes um which as an administrator is extremely valuable to have that trusted member to be able to go do that um that can also make it difficult for them to follow their daily schedule which then can make
it hard for a teacher to count on them during their lesson plan so I think that's one of the the functions that um is a little tricky which we'll talk about when we get to some of the other positions but it's sort of a blend between the two they supporting the kids in a number of ways and they also begin
to support the building as a whole um sort of like trending towards what they're then doing at the at the high school so all right so we did have questions from you the first time around and uh one of them it was uh is this a reduction in force and the answer to that question is yes um so there are
five a pars but we are very confident that we would be able to ensure the preservation of jobs for those five individual people should they want to move into a new role in the hopkington public schools so what does that mean sometimes there's a person who works as
a par professional who's also working to get a teaching degree and when they do they say that they're going to leave obviously the par rooll and go out and work as an educator whether in hopkington or somewhere else um I think when we were together last time Mrs rmck explained that there is a lot of turnover in the paraprofessional ranks
and so when there become vacancies we would be happy to have these aars move into either another a par rooll or a B par rooll and we believe that those positions will exist so if they are an a paing now and they are one of the five who are part of this slide presentation
there would be a place for those people to move in the Hopkinson Public Schools um and then I think maybe I will ask you to think a little bit for us about the impact so will other staff be available to take on some of those supervision roles and I think maybe Mr
Bishop this is a question for you because yours are primarily all day long in supervisory roles yes um and so I think we we you know we've had a lot of conversations uh about how we would be able to do that and I think I mentioned we do have some overlap in some of the roles with the building sub and the
campus a with our a pair of professionals uh we also have um teacher duties uh we often don't assign teachers to the full amount of Duties that we can contractually uh so we do have that flexibility to be able to say if we needed some additional support in the
library for a large study halls we could sign sign a teacher as long as it doesn't you know if as long as they don't have just one prep during the day that we can be able to put them in that Library so we have thought about ways we'd be able to make sure we cover the supervision piece for our large non-classroom spaces like the library or
the cafeteria um and then our last question is um will the reduction of these pairs help with the budget shortfall yes because they will present us with a $150,000 budget reduction but the truth of the matter is and I think my
colleagues said it best are we happy about this no no when we all have to sit in a room and think about where $415,000 comes from it's a very unpleasant process um so there were other FY 26
asks and I know people are wondering um why did we perhaps not remove the French teacher from our asks or the reading tutor or the assistant principal um and I'll start by saying that all three of these positions are really student
facing positions and they do result in very specific and very necessary areas of teaching and learning um I know when we have talked about this in the past we said you know that there are students who if they don't have sort of a Hopkinton High
School like in the classroom teacher for French they are either taking a VHS course or even some kids might say you know what I don't really want to take a VHS course and then French that's sort of their last stop on the bus and and that doesn't make us feel so good um Mr
carer has been wonderfully articulate about his reading tutor needs we looked at some mcast data um and and there really are students who do need that kind of very explicit reading instruction um and then finally the assistant principal that role I think is
driven by student enrollment um post pandemic we've seen a lot of more challenging I guess student behaviors the assistant principles have that opportunity in the day to engage with you know parents and families and talk about students and behavior and then of
course we use them for instructional leadership and that's a really important role I'm not sure if I've defined that well publicly but the department of Elementary in secondary education expects that there will be a rating for every single principal assistant
principal and um full-time teacher you know teacher professional teacher in our district and so every one of the people that you see there on the other side of the table works on making sure that those evaluations get done that they get done well that we offer good feedback to
our professionals and and that the uh ratings for those um teachers and administrators will get uploaded to the Department of Elementary and secondary education it's a huge job because as we've increased in numbers of students we've increased in numbers of teachers um and I think that we've looked at you
know as we increase percentage wise with kids the same percentage with faculty I ask a question for informational purposes of course how long does it take you
per teacher to do the observation the rating what's involved in that sure uh we probably each have our own style so maybe if you talk about it um so yeah so at the high school we each
probably have about 50 people that are underneath us in regards to our observations um and you know it starts at the beginning of the year having goal meetings with each staff member to make sure we know what they're focusing on for the year and giving them feedback um we then try to get into their classrooms as much as possible usually for our our
pre-professional staff uh so the first three years there's a certain amount of fulllength observations that you're supposed to be able to uh to do for the staff members uh so you're observing a full 60-minute lesson maybe depending on the time frame of the other buildings usually it's about 65 minutes at the high school uh and then there's a post meeting with that staff member to talk
about what went well did you accomplish your goals and then it takes a little bit of time to write that up you know it's tough to say how much time that is but you know that you want to put a good amount of effort into it and give good feedback so it it that takes a while uh and then that happens through the course of the year we meet the middle of the year with our staff to see if they're making progress to their goals and then
we have meetings with the staff at the end of the year and along the way we're getting into classrooms maybe it's 10 minutes here maybe it's 30 minutes there um you know collaborating with their SML about what they're seeing in the classroom uh so it's tough to put like a number on that uh but it's it's a significant amount of time I asked because I
know having been a teacher and having been observed and how long that process really takes and it's the observation and the feedback is such a critical piece of developing teachers
and I just wanted to make sure people in the community understand that how much that takes and I would say too it it depends on your staff if you have a a newer staff then there's different uh obligations too contractually that we
want to meet to make sure that we're giving them the feedback and the support that they need so if you have a year or two or a couple where you have more uh pre pts teachers then that will bring more observation time and meeting time with them and I would say too there's a difference
between meeting the contractual obl obligation and doing the job really well and I think any administrator wants to do the job really really well which means actually being in those classrooms more often um so that we can give good feedback um and it can't always happen
that way sometimes we have to um prioritize who needs support and who needs that feedback so um that's one of the the things that we sort of go through every year when we work with our staff and then we also review evidence so something with the new evaluation system when we are doing those observation
you're connecting it to an element in the standard so there are rubrics for um special education staff rubric for teachers you have to connect and you know literally connect what did you see what's your evidence of it what's your claim what's your recommendation but we are also reviewing evidence that
teachers have to connect back to that same standard So based on the um cycle of your staff you might be doing that mid year with your teachers that are pre-professional status that that is January February and then other staff it might be May June and we have worked um
with the association the district has over the course of the years how you're going to go about that when we first started this there were like 99 pieces of evidence it was it was it was terrible on everybody's end so now there's an agreement and it's been narrowed down so it's focused because
it's quality not quantity you know sometimes I called people a happy clicker when they were just clicking all the things that it represented and so what is it that it shows and how what does it mean so they're sort of explaining and bringing it to life so we review that we talk about that we give
feedback on that um you have the the formal writeups that you know Mr Bishop was talking about but it's also being a presence in the classroom even teachers that have an incredible teaching skills if they see me with my laptop it changes
things they get nervous all of a sudden and so I often try to just go around and visit and not always have my laptop but then I can't necessarily use that as a write up because I can't remember everything because literally you're writing like everything that's happening um so it there's the formal aspect of
the evaluation system and then being around in the moment on the spot just being like I see what's happening in your class that's great here's this oh tell me about this so it's it's not just the evalu valuation system it's being that instructional leader that's present in the classrooms thank you very much
just to piggyback on what you said we do want the feedback for teachers to be authentic and real and when they read our observation notes and our writeups the claim the evidence um the impact and the recommendation we want to make sure they know that we've been thoughtful about it and that we've really taken our
time Mr Broner and I like to go around the classrooms together and we we watch the same lesson and then it takes time to go back to his office and debrief about that did we see the same things what were some strengths maybe some things that this teacher could work on
so that also take some additional time okay on can I just um Mr coner can you say what pts stands for professional teacher status so that yeah sorry I know I always use the acronyms and I've heard it a few times but I'm sure I'm not the
only one yes in our vast audience who was like what is that yeah yeah so on the first day of a teacher's fourth year they become they get professional teacher status so we say prep pts before they have it did the Angels come down from
heaven song for sure and it's their full year so if you've hired someone in October it's almost like four years so like this this district has high standards and that is something that contributes to that and when teachers are in those first three
years there's a lot of look at at supporting growing is this person fit are they growing as we're we're hoping them to grow because if not then we need to take the steps that um they might not be something someone that's a match for what we need for our students so that's
that's also an important part of the role because that takes a bit of extra time because you've got to document luckily that doesn't happen often but we've all experienced that and that's part of our role too making sure we've got the best staff that we can in front of our students so on the slide that you see on
the screen now um it's when we're talking about the assistant principal request one of the things that you see up there is we've just taken language that comes right out of the um the rubric that evaluates assistant principles but I think that the job is so much bigger than that and
that's why we have asked Mrs tinan if she would join us tonight she has been in the role of assistant principal now at Elwood for three years and I think you've grown into the role beautifully but I think you can speak to how you spend your day and really where where your time is pushed sometimes yes well
thank you for giving me the opportunity to come tonight and speak about my role as the assistant principal at Elwood school for the past three years as Dr Kavanaugh mentioned I have been the single assistant principal at Elwood school and in the past I believe the position of assistant principal um at
many schools was more reactive a student would get in trouble they would get sent to the assistant principal's office for discipline and then they would move on from there fortunately luckily over the past few years the assistant principal's role has evolved into a more proactive
position I've become very passionate about PBIS which stands for positive behavior incentive systems at Elmwood this is both a schoolwide an individual proactive approach to involving students and staff in creating implementing and
maintaining a positive School culture where expectations and core values are identified modeled and taught this takes a tremendous amount of time in organization and effort since the pandemic we have seen an increase in challenging behaviors in students with
social emotional deficits I've recently read Dr Ross Green's research about challenging behaviors and how to resolve them at school it takes a considerable amount of time to implement his philosophy around identifying students lagging skills and unsolved problems the
research suggests that by doing that we are are building relationships including trust with students thus seeing a decrease in challenging behaviors although we are already doing some of this work I would like to explore this deeper with my team it will take more
time to create PD train teachers and then implement this with an I do we do you do model I've been proud of the work that I've been able to do but there is more work to be done I'd like to just share a few brief examples of my tasks I
start each day by working on various coverages for the building every day we have multiple coverages to arrange it's kind of like a puzzle piece or a chess gain this might include coverage for a classroom teacher because we are short a sub coverage for a classroom teacher so
that they can attend a meeting or coverage for a cpar that's part of our intensive special needs program at times because there are so many coverages things unfortunately Do Slip through the cracks and a teacher may not receive timely coverage
from there I positioned myself at the front of Elmwood School to greet students by name as they enter the building to begin a new school day this is probably the favorite part of my day during arrival I may receive multiple bus conduct reports and or Elmwood bus
reports it's my job to look into these incidents watch Bus videos if necessary and have multiple conversations with students and families there are not enough hours in each day to investigate every bus report so far this year we
received a total of 210 bus conduct reports from drivers and Elmwood bus reports which students compose when they have a concern in addition I currently have a basket of over 45 other Elmwood bus reports that I have not had time to
look into I received an Elmwood bus report from a student this week and this is what they look like I'll read it to you a girl named blank was physical on me she was also bullying me I was uncom comfortable I have an obligation I feel
to look into these reports because this is only one example of a student that's having difficulty on the bus and not feeling safe a few weeks ago a student reported something to me at 8:45 in the morning when I was outside during arrival and I was unable to attend to it
until 2:55 that afternoon because other things took precedence after arrival my day is filled with building relationship with students staff and amilies as well as completing daily tasks to assist the principal with the operation of the building I attempt to be visible and
visit every classroom every day so that I can keep my finger on the pulse of things like curriculum instruction discipline climate School culture General daily operations problem solving and maintaining positive staff morale
but it is nearly impossible with 29 classrooms and over 100 staff members every day to have an additional set of eyes ears and hands in the classroom would be beneficial to all when a teacher sees another adult in their
classroom they feel valued and they appreciate the visibility and the fact that we as administrators truly care about their work unless we have our laptops when a teacher has a concern about a student is looking for ideas and
suggestions they are invited to request a learning support team meeting I am the LS coordinator which involves reviewing paperwork and data I schedule a meeting with the learning support team to discuss the student the data and then develop goals and interventions that
will be tried as part of tier one and tier 2 instructions and interventions last year I held a total of 47 meetings to talk about 27 different students so far this year I've held 18 meetings to talk about 11 different students with
more to come before June ideally we should be having multiple meetings to discuss these students their progress towards their goals and next steps I find that I don't always have time in my schedule to coordinate and run those follow-up meetings which feels
like a disservice to the students and the teachers after all of that I often feel like I don't have time to look at data as much as I would like to and have open honest instructional conversations with teachers and staff so these are just a few examples of the type of work I'm
doing and hopefully you can see the need for an additional assistant principal there is so much to do and I do want to do more one hope with the addition of another AP would include moving through the cry off uh to ensure that culturally responsive teaching is understood and is
being implemented with Fidelity and to support staff in this process once again I'm proud of the work I've done but there is definitely more to do thank you for your time and I know Matt um um could maybe talk about the additional assistant principal that he has added
this year and their um responsibilities thank you yeah I think I think the most important piece is the proactive nature that an assistant principal can bring I think you even
when I was assistant principal um prior to be to a principal I always felt like I was on my heels with kids right and I think the best tool that a assistant principal has when it comes to working with kids is building relationships with
kids it's taking time to play basketball at recess checking in on them at lunch um seeing how they're doing when they come off the bus um the one of the best recipes for bus behavior is a quick check-in as they're walking up the bus
steps right and I always felt like I was just behind just getting to the neediest kids but then there were just a couple other kids that needed me too um and we still have that with two assistant principles right we have almost 700 kids but that feeling is definitely starting
to dissipate um our cafeteria Behavior has gone down because our assistant principles have worked uh hard with our um par professional staff that are in there to implement an incentive plan in the cafeteria I don't think that would
have happened with just one of us um so that's just an example our bus behaviors are not as low as I would like them to be but they are lower than last year as well and that's because every time there's a bus note that student is meeting with one of our assistant
principles that morning and it's not a what did you do wrong it's a listening to you know what happened um their perspective let's try to think of the other students perspective what choices could we have made differently or what would we do in the future there may be
Conflict Management now that comes in with that or mediation with the other student so I really feel like having that other person that second person that can that is trained and used to having those difficult conversations with kids is just it it really is an
invaluable role um they can literally do it all I feel like we've had more uh time and energy to move some of the school Improvement um goals ahead we've gotten deeper into the cry up this year than we have in the year uh the last two
years prior um we're still working on how we function as three right and we're still trying to reach every area of the building and every kid but I just think of I came at elementary school I've really realize that there's a spectrum
of where kids are academically but there is also a spectrum of where kids are socially emotionally um how they work with or resolve conflict all of those things things and these people that's where they live um and they're really
able to proactively support those kids well know like you know we're going into a certain situation and um you know Miss lamro might pull a kid aside and say hey are you ready for this let's remember about the things that we work on when we go into a whole school meeting something
like that and then that kid goes in they have that reminder and they do really really well um just another example of that sort of proactive approach um so I know really benefited from it and I know we actually have more to come as we continue to work together which I'm excited
for thank you um so I thought I would also include this because I think that this is sort of photographic evidence um we did have a conversation Friday morning about sort of those extra things that our assistant principles are doing and uh we went to see Mrs deau over at
the marathon school and when we were visiting classrooms it was interesting because you can see Mr Mitchell in the leftand photograph and he is just sitting there on the floor at their level with two little guys and I could hear that conversation and he was telling them you know what guys we're
going to have to figure out a way for you guys to get along you know you both love to play baseball you both love to play golf it's very likely that you're going to stay in the hopkington public schools for the next 12 years and if that is your case like you could be on the same teams you could be in the same
classrooms and and really the work he was doing with that was just lovely um and I think it sort of speaks to you know when you say it's not a situation now where kids are called down to the principal's office and you know the assistant principal is sitting over the
kids kind of looming over the kids at a desk like this is the kind of thing that we see and believe it or not um in the right hand photograph that is Mrs tinan she is dressed as Fancy Nancy a character from literature and I think that that's really like the the ultimate
you're all in also on Friday so both of those things were happening just a few days ago um instructional leadership and like really nice sort of student discipline um and then we often go to data to say are we spending more per
pupil now on Administration and so we pulled this out of the FY 23 which is the most recent data that desie offers to us it's per pupil expenditure by bucket and you can see what those 10 districts are spending on Administration
and on instructional leadership and so when you look at that Hopkin ton is ranked fifth from the top so when we look at that Westwood Weston Welsley Wayland and Ashland are all spending more on Administration than we are so
we're in that bottom 50% even though it's really kind of in the middle but when you look at instructional leadership we are like unequivocally last so if you add the dollar amount that we're paying for administration per pupil and instructional leadership per
pupil we are last of those 10 communities isn't fifth in the top 50% just the bottom of the top 50 not the bottom 50 well I guess I should probably say that they are if you were going 10th 9th 8th 7th 6 that's five and then fifth would get to the bottom
50% okay I struggled actually to figure out which way I wanted to say that but they are they fifth from the bottom I guess is what I should say fifth from the lowest y okay and then that doesn't include the assistant principal that was added
for Hopkins last year that's correct because it's FY 23 yeah so per pupil only shows you that so that person's salary would be added into this Administration across our 4200 kids and then the instructional leadership includes all the assistant principles
the principles and the subject matter leaders how's that number calculated for us um I would have to go back in and look but we you know that we have have two in special education one at the middle school we have Elementary K to 5 Ela and math um am I forgetting people
oh and all the smls yeah so that includes all like the principal roles the assistant principal roles the smls the K I'm just trying to understand what the numbers you know what I can ask Lisa cardi which bucket she puts them into okay okay that would be important but
for me regardless when we look at Administration and instructional leadership we are we are certainly outshone by our surrounding communities and also the communities that we like to compare ourselves to when we think about our test
scores um so where does this leave us um this is uh where we are right now we have reduced an Esau teacher so uh we currently have uh we currently have already reduced this person is what I'm trying to say so we had a person who
left us in the middle of the year so that 1.0 FTE esol teacher uh we eliminated that position in the savings amount the dollar amount of 105,000 we eliminated that one because we looked very carefully at the L student numbers and those numbers are again com coming
down this year we eliminated one last year and we're eliminating another one this year um at the high school as you know Hopkins and Elmwood 5 ftea par Professionals in the amount of 150,000 at the district level we have
par professionals whose salaries will be transferred over to an idea Grant so we're not eliminating the position we're just changing the funding source so $125,000 will be moved to Grants um and at Hopkins the reading tutor in question
we did have that person in there at a 1.0 FTE and we have reduced that request to a 75 FTE which saves $110,000 so all told those reductions add up to $39 90,000 and then we looked at uh
comparable districts and we said what are they charging in terms of preschool what were the program tuition fees we and you know that you voted on this made an increase slight increase to all of our preschool programs and that amounted to an increase of $25,000 in Revenue
sources for FY 26 and so when we take the $390,000 reduction and we count in the additional Revenue source the 25,000 from the prek that's how we get to our total reduction of $415,000 um the last slide that we
always show you is um I'll let Mrs R MC talk to that slide because you always talk about Capital oh I'm sorry this is still my slide I thought we had already gotten to Capital I'm so used to talking about it um so our original uh budget that you voted on
January 23rd was 67 m1906 and today the budget is at 66,67 630 and we are hoping that we will be voting on that tonight and we also have the special education Reserve in the amount of 1, 146,000 which uh bolsters
this budget and now we'll talk about the FY 26 capital I apologize so the slide you see here uh we originally were going to take out the storefront entry doors because we needed to put in the instructional equipment
um in order to solve um some of our negotiations um uh the the reserve the salary Reserve however now we are being told that the storefront entry doors are
going to stay in for the capital request however I believe that we will be going back in front of the Capital Improvements committee um to ensure that they're agreement with this so right now both the stor front doors and the
instructional equipment are in the warrant for town meeting so that's different from what you see this is new information as of four today yeah that cross out doesn't belong so we are going to get new
doors hopefully we are going to asks the the may we have new doors correct they'll have to go in those doors in order to vowe right yes those are the doors you enter unless you're entering on the side unless the doors are really
really broken but they're the doors for town meeting yeah yes all done there are't no other slides thank you um Miss tinan I wanted to thank you for for bringing up Ross Green I personally struggle with PBIS as a
modality I think it's really problematic um but framing everything under Dr Ross Green's approach where we Center relationships and we Center figuring out the source of the problem versus tokenizing hiding problems I think is incredibly valuable and I wish we'd
clone you I really appreciate that work thank you so much for that I appreciate that um do we have any concerns about the idea Grant I don't do okay I know in the larger
context there's um and then um I this is to Mr CER the reduction of the reading tutor from 1 to 75 um you feel confident that that will still cover all the kiddos that are needing support with dyslexia and so
basically what that does is reduces their time to be in the building when kids are there um so are the tutor Falls sort of on the the parah contract and they come before school and after school and and support duties that way too this
is cutting that out so they are here just from 9:00 to 3: when kids are in the building okay so yes so I can still maintains all of that student face to face time for reading support absolutely and our Title One tutor which they have the same role is at 75 this year um so
they they align perfectly thank you that's a big relief a good clarification for everyone to get so all of the reductions we're looking at in people is not being subtracted from instructional time which is the most important thing
correct correct y any questions uh Nancy I want to make sure I don't forget you I don't thank you I don't have any questions I Echo um I I am a big fan of Ross gr and the collaborative problem solving approach um so happy I I was happy with that
piece as well I also feel like this was a great uh presentation and better uh more comprehensive uh and nuanced vision of what uh the assistant principal role having that assist additional assisting principal would add for our
students thank you I would entertain a motion I move that we approve the revised FY 26 budget in the amount of 66 mil 775,385 have a good Friday it's always the best
day of the week early release at the elementary early release at the elementary school o oh districtwide oh it's District everybody get hair ready oh my God you're going to be running down the hall I'm ready I'm ready to go I'm ready to
go thank you aerodynamic all right thank you all again and we're still on time love it um that brings us to the library Grant to find that there we go
okay all right yeah this is a very simple one actually Wendy MacArthur um who is the Middle School librarian has been awarded a grant in the amount of $4,000 from the mass Board of Library Commissioners um
and so she needs for you to just simply approve that she does a wonderful job her library is beautiful it is certainly is yes and she's like a great proponent of kids when you go in there you're mesmerized by the fact that kids keep coming and going and asking about books
and talking about books and um she's very aggressive too and being able to find grants like this so it's really nice make a motion to uh move to approve the explore grant for $4,000 second motion by Chris second by Susan we'll do
a roll call vote Nancy yes Chris yes Susan yes and I'm a yes thank you and that brings us into the tiered Focus monitoring Miss h Hello nice to see everybody good evening I think you have my
slides let those so uh while we pull up the slides I just want to say um thanks for having me in to discuss the tiered Focus monitoring which we informally call it audit which is our every three-year desie audit of the district
as well as special education inside the district so I'm going to cover a couple overview pieces of information for you but I first just want to start out and acknowledge that we are a complex organiz ation to audit because we are comprised of many people our product are
little people and um many uh of the children outnumber the adults and so the thing we're auditing is a very organic and kind of human product and so this isn't like a math audit this is more complex than that um I also want to say
that there's usually three purposes for these Dusty audits the first is clearly compliance right we're looking to be compliant with both the law and the regulations and that's fair very important Jesse also uses this process though to bring in new laws or changes in laws and this is kind of how that
process really happens in schools and finally they um share their new interpretation of existing laws via this audit process and that changes year to year and we um keep track of that so uh broadly speaking you're going to see tonight an overview of the timeline and
we can start there um so our timeline is approximately a year so we started working on this last March and broadly speaking um we've worked between um March in November on an internal self audit That Was Then
submitted to desie in November they then comb through it ask us lots of questions and then they come out for a site visit and then additionally they issue parent surveys have an open public period of
comment um and they communicate with the CPAC and so there's kind of multi prongs happening during this period of time after the site visit they go back they compile a report and they ask us more questions and clarifications and then we received the final report in March so
it's a pretty complex process sus the the process we're in right now began in March of last year correct okay because I I was wondering if you had full control of the department by then
which you did I did did yes so let's just dig in for a minute um so this audit was comprised of um approximately um 11 special education standards and those include a variety of items that are important to just take a
minute and take stock of so each of these items is usually related to a law or regulation and then inside of it there might be a dozen sub items where we're producing examples or speaking to something or documenting something so um
certainly what I think is important to see in these items would be everything from Child find which is how we um identify children in the community who need support the CPAC our capacity to um build out our in assistive technology infrastructure here in the district how
we Implement IEPs and how we monitor that implementation and then um The Lure of an administrator of special education which you're required to have one of so that's a first chunk get a flavor of those then we moved on to another set of special education items those include um
teacher lur so we comb through every license for every specialed teacher and submitted it to desie and they checked every person's license for validity accuracy and match to the job then we submitted all the other licenses for our related service providers and they did
the same process and that's how we ensure that we're providing licensed credential people um 100% of the time uh we don't currently employ any educa educational interpreters for ASL but if we did there's a specific registry for
them and then finally uh we looked very broadly at both professional development uh in the department and then facilities and classroom space and as you guys know from your building work that's a very big and important task uh and we have a lot of spaces to look at and we have a
lot of um things to consider there and then finally um we look at how do we evaluate our programs and services not only kind of formally but informally so that's the universe of special education items we um produced lots of documentation and they came back and
asked us questions and we were found compliant in all of those areas and we shifted gears to civil rights so if you think about the Civil Rights component of this that's the entire District it's not just special education or student services we're think about the whole school system we
had 17 indicators in that area and you can see from the items they're much bigger and broader so this is everything from access to school uh programming to translation across all of our buildings um all the way through how many minutes of instructional time in every building
are provided and um all the way down to our lovely handbooks and you guys helped us out by revising specific items remember in the summer and fall to bring things into alignment and that was part of the process so you were part of it so thank you and then our last chunk really
looks at very important laws and regulations that the state has deemed that almost every cycle we're always looking at so clearly bullying is very important student discipline those laws are very complex um kind of the overall structures we have around
non-discrimination we built and um debuted a web page specific to public notification for every law stating who to call how to get there you know what their phone number is that's very important um and then similarly things that are really important around um
physical Restraint of students and the regul and monitoring of that process uh we also think about students who leave school um without completing a diploma and how do we keep track of them and how do we reach out to them for up to two years afterwards and ask them to come
back see what their obstacles were so those items comprise the majority of the components and then what happens which is kind of wild is they say what else have you been up to and we say well lot of Staff training great ironically on
confidentiality and civil rights so we prove back to them that we've trained people on all of this content um and then again we're looking at our comparability of facilities so what that talks about is um our students with disabilities being educated in locations
in our buildings that are comparable to students without disabilities um everything from location to quality of the space to square footage to Furniture materials and supplies um when the Auditors came they toured our programs um and they toured every building and
they had specific look fors that they were following and then we also look at just our institutional self- evaluation and how we do that on an ongoing basis so uh the outcome is a report which you have a full copy of this is just the last page and essentially they grade
each of those indicators and all of them were found to be implemented fully and so that is a good outcome um I would just AR uh remind everyone here that this isn't the end of the process this is the beginning because now what we can say is we have a
compliant uh infrastructure and now our job is to keep it that way and so that goes to professional development training and support for teachers and staff um to to do those things um and I do just want to say finally you know while this outcome is excellent it
really is built on the the work of a lot of teachers staff administrators who are very committed to these ideas and doing it on a day-to-day basis um so that's a good reflection of where the district's at on these items and I'm happy to take any
questions well before you ask I want to say that when Mrs hansin says that's a very good outcome it's an exceptionally excellent like unbelievable outcome for us to have absolutely not a single sighting and so yes that is to the credit of all the people who work here
but thank you for a Year's worth of amazingly hard work thank you that actually like doing this yeah ridiculous but yeah it appeals to your left brain yeah is there anything I can um I could answer or I'm happy to follow up if you
have specific questions offline too great yeah the time you put into this commendable truly thank I appreciate it thank you very much you have a good night you're one of the best hires that I've seen here oh don't jinx me I won't
just amazing and that brings us into Old business policy ad DDA the criminal record investigation this is the second reading okay um and this one is very easy again I think we talked about this last time it has gone out to the public and all we're doing in terms of changing
add is adding the source which means that we are adding uh that we would be um asking people to um agree to a sex offender recorded investigation as well so whenever we have people who are coming into our schools whether they are like part of a construction team or
a mystery reader they do have a quy that they um are subject to and this would also include the sex offender investigation any questions is there a motion I move to approve the revised policy add motion by Susan second second by Chris we'll do a
roll call Nancy yes Chris yes Susan yes and I'm a yes and that brings us into items by consensus oh are we going to do the sear oh where did that go yes superintendent
search so just a quick update so we on Wednesday we will have a a special meeting with a school committee uh to announce the finalists from the screening committee uh and then also to train and do a workshop on the next part
which is the school committee uh going through the finalists and making a selection by April 15th uh so one thing that we had talked about we did not make a definite decision on um is having doing a site
visits on the candidates I um I would like to recommend that the committee endorse doing site visits and then when we meet with NASDAQ we could come up with uh the site team the team that would actually go out to do the site
visits for the finalists if anybody has any thoughts on that I'm happy to um wait and entertain that on Wednesday but I do think that that would be an important piece uh to get a sense of seeing the finalists in their own districts they will also come into hopkington um get a tour around our
district uh and then also have interviews with us as well as an opportunity um for the community to ask questions and give feedback I think since you've been through this before and you're recommending site visits I think we should do them thank you I it I thought
it was very helpful the last time we did it all right that's all I have done thank you sorry for missing that somehow are we now to the items by consensus M yeah okay um yes so as superintendent I recommend the school committee approved
the items by consensus is listed below I moved to prove you going to remove too is that correct did Georgette tell me that you were going to take out some minutes oh I just I didn't remember getting the February 27th minutes um to look
at like she sent them today right or yesterday Monday so I didn't I didn't review the minutes from the 27th yet it's been a really busy week um I'm happy with the January 23rd minutes but I don't know if
everyone else reviewed the February 27th minutes and are happy with them I hadn't gotten a chance to read them yet I think we'll hold off on them then okay so if we just remove item J okay so I will recommend that the school committee approve the items by consensus
accepting item J I move to approve the items by a consensus REM moving item J she moved it I moved it motion by Susan second by Chris we'll do a roll call vote Nancy yes Chris yes Susan yes and I am a
yes um and then our next meeting on is March 27th that's a regular meeting um and then next week we have a meeting on Wednesday night with a virtual meeting with ndaq um do I have a motion to adjourn motion to adjourn second motion
by Chris second by Susan Nancy I'm a yes Chris yes Susan yes and I'm a yes thank you so much thank you good night everybody agenda 83 yeah the the
admin which was great no I think that was a really important they came I think that really helped clarify do we but we didn't we haven't approved the budget is that correct we just did just did we did that tonight we did that
tonight oh you know I have all