Speaker 1: It is 6 0 1 on May the fourth. Happy Star Wars Day, everybody. We'll start with a roll call. One of our members is online, so all of our votes tonight will be roll call. Dr. Welch. Speaker 2: Present. Speaker 1: Mr. Patel? Present. Ms. Goeth Present. Ms. Collins? Here. Mr. Brunell present. Dr. Fugman. Speaker 2: I Speaker 1: Know, I know you're here shy. It's okay. And Ms. Gomes just joined the Zoom as well. Okay.
So we are, I don't see, am I looking at the, Nope, I'm not looking at the right agenda. Please hold ex. Got it. Right here. All right. So I am going to make a motion to enter into executive session A, to conduct strategy sessions in preparation for negotiations with non-union personnel, or to conduct collective bargaining sessions or contract negotiations with non-union personnel. And B, to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining or litigation.
If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining or litigating position of the body, of the public body and the chair. So declares. Speaker 2: And do Speaker 1: You And I do declare Second. Second. You get that? All right. Roll call Dr. Welch. Yes. Ms. Patel? Yes. Ms. Eth? Yes. Ms. Collins? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. Dr. Fugman. And I'm a yes. So 6, 0 0. We are now in executive session. We should return at approximately seven o'clock.
We're back from executive session. Re Good evening. All right. We did roll call. So we're gonna rise now for the Pledge of Allegiance. In a moment of silence, Speaker 3: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Speaker 1: Thank you. We, we take that moment of silence, honor all of our troops serving domestically and abroad. This meeting is being broadcast and recorded by Pegasus for future consumption.
We will start with announcements. Dr. Bash, do you have any before I have any? Speaker 4: I do. I have one brief one. It's, it's, I'm so happy for this, but I'm also so sad to announce that Linda McGrath will be retiring in July. We are so lucky to have had her the last several years. Truly, she's, she's definitely my right hand. So we wish you, we have a few months left, but super. Wish you the best of luck. We're incredibly grateful. Speaker 1: We can't hear Pegasus, can't hear. We're holding.
Speaker 2: Sheila, can you hear now? Speaker 1: All set. All set. All right. Your, Speaker 4: Your direct, your direct stuff is also posting up there from the chat, just so you know. Do you want me to make that again? Yes. Okay. Less eloquently maybe in, in version two, but just wanted to say that Linda McGrath is retiring after how many years, Linda? Here? Three, three years. But how, how many? 24. 24 years. Wow. We're incredibly excited for you and incredibly grateful for your dedication, your work ethic, your partnership, your humor. So, we'll, we're gonna really miss you. We get a few more months left, but ha, happy for you.
And that's the announcement that I had. Thank you. Speaker 1: And we will be every meeting between now and then will be just a roast theme is what we, I was thinking we would do one. I I have an announcement, just a community event. This was it this Friday and Saturday. The sound and spirit has their concert on at on five eight at 7:00 PM and on five nine 2:00 PM at the high school. The theme, the, the name of their performance this, this time is Shine on. It's a celebration of 15 years of them performing.
So it's a really cool event if anybody's interested in that. Any other announcements? Ms. Brunell? Speaker 5: Looking back this weekend, I was able to be at the Family Promise walk and homelessness. Kristen Pope was there with me from the select board. It was really a wonderful event. So I just wanted to thank all of our community partners. It was, it was at the high school held by Family Promise, but it just was a real, it was a moment for Natick to really show its best colors. The Rotary Club was out grilling food. There were bouncy houses.
We had School of Rock was there with many of Natick's fine student musicians playing. It was really just a special event. So I wanted to thank them for that. Tomorrow we are having the budget subcommittee from three to four. It will be online and in person. So you're welcome to join. And I wanted to say good luck to all the students that are taking AP tests over the next two weeks. This is a big season. A lot of work has been done by teachers, administrators, and students. And this is a moment of culmination for them. So good luck. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Sp. And then I
Speaker 4: Have one too. It's the time of announcements. I, you just reminded me, Ms. Brunell, I had the privilege of being at a, a special celebration last Wednesday night, I wanna say, or maybe Thursday, where there was a rededication of a 50-year-old bicentennial quilt that was done at Benham by fifth graders in the year 1976 by our educator who's retired. Ms. Mihal from some of her students were there actually who had been there and they all knew each other. They remembered who did what parts of this quilt. It's on display at the library
and it is absolutely phenomenal. But the thing I wanted to say is a relative newcomer tornadic, it really just showed the community we have here, the connections and bonds that really left a last a lifetime. So that was definitely an impression I had. I wanna talk and give a shout out to the Wilson Chorus who sang a rendition for him from Hamilton. And I do admit to getting teary. It was amazing. So we have such talent and such good people and it was really on showcased last week at the library. Speaker 1: Alright, one more for me. It's just procedural.
In tonight's meeting, I'm gonna try something a little bit new and tell everybody in advance that if you look at our agenda item seven B school committee goals update for the current year, we're not going to take tonight. So we're gonna postpone that to a future meeting. And just as an early heads up, prior to us doing public speak, section eight A, the Memorial school education program scope options will just be a presentation tonight from the from the central office and then questions from the school committee members, if there are any.
We will not be taking public comment during that agenda item tonight. There'll be plenty of opportunity. That conversation's gonna be an ongoing conversation. So just as an early heads up. All right, moving on. Public speak. Where'd my glasses go? Nobody, but I'm gonna read it anyway. Public speak is scheduled for a period of 15 minutes. Each speaker will be permitted a maximum of three minutes during which time they can speak about topics within the scope and responsibility of the school committee. All remarks will be addressed through the school committee chair. Public speak is not a time for debate or response to comments by the school committee.
Nobody signed up in advance. I don't see. I don't see anybody online. Alright, moving on. We will, there are no student reps today and I don't think we got anything from them. Ms. Combes, are you? Here? You are. Would you like to go next as our METCO rep? Any updates? Is Speaker 6: Sheila, Speaker 1: She's online too. Yeah, we'll get to Sheila. Ms. Es, can you, is she a co-host? Ms. Billon, would you like to go first? Do you have an update? Speaker 7: We don't have anything to report at this time. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. And Ms. Gomes, now I see your co-host. Any update?
We will come back to you. Speaker 6: I was unable to mute. Oh, Speaker 1: Thank you. There you go. Yep. Speaker 6: I apologize because you're hearing any feedback. I am in the car, but no updates at this time other than I wanted to say thank you to the school committee for sponsoring my ticket to the 60th opportunity ball that happened last Friday honoring Dr. Jean McGuire. It was an amazing night and just wanted to say thank you for giving me that opportunity to be present for that moment. It was a really good event. Well, Speaker 1: You're welcome. We're glad you had a good time. All right,
we're gonna move on to the consent agenda. Any motions move to approve the consent agenda. Second, moved by Ms. Brunell, seconded by Mr. Patel. We will now vote it's a roll call. Dr. Welch? Yes. Ms. Goeth? Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Pernell? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. And I'm a yes. 6 0 0. Moving on to the superintendent's report. Dr. Speaker 4: Okay, the first item here is an update on spring meeting. And that was really just to put on the record the deck
that we used in presenting to town meeting last week. We presented late in the evening and we received an overwhelming support for our budget with the omnibus passing. So we're excited to update the committee. You probably already know that, but also the public. And just to express deep thanks again to this committee for your support, to our budget subcommittee to our town partners, the fin com, et cetera, for just a good budget season. And thank you Mr. Gillis, for all the work you do behind the scenes as well. Speaker 1: Before we get any comments or questions from the committee, I would just like to share briefly.
I was at town meeting that night and it was pretty cool to sit there with a lot of people. So of course Dr. SP was there and Mr. Gillis and Ms. Baloni was there and Ms. Miller was there and Ms. Manza was there and Dr. Ferguson was there. So a lot of representation from the central office. And they sat, I forget exactly what time the topic came up, 10 o'clock, a little after 10 o'clock. So after working like for five months on this budget
and then a full workday plus, and there was a strategic plan steering committee meeting that night, two for three hours, we all went over to to town meeting and presented the culmination of it. Like a really great process. And so while I am sure many town meeting members might not have known that the entire central office was sitting in the room with them, it did not go unnoticed. Certainly by, by me or by, I could safely say by the whole school committee that everybody was there. And so, you know, we thank you for all the hard work.
It was a great process. And I think we start again in what, like a week? So tomorrow. Tomorrow we start again. That's right. Tomorrow actually. So thank you for all of that. Any other comments or things from the committee before we move on? Mr. Patel? Speaker 8: Just wanna say thank you for sitting through all that and I heard about it and we're work as a town meeting member. We're working on making sure you guys don't have to sit through all these other articles that last hours and hours in the future. We're lurking, we're learning the parliamentary motions 1% of a time.
Thank you. Speaker 1: Alright, Ms. Corset, Speaker 9: Please. Yeah. So I had a question about other items at town meetings. So the field study committee Yes. Gave a report. Was there any, were there any questions or feedback from town meeting members of the public that we should be aware Speaker 1: Of? Yeah, so the field study presented on at the end of night two. And the, the gist of that presentation was to just give us status report on what the process has been. The final report from that, the natural and synthetic turf field study group, long, long, long name
is to finalize the report over the next few months and then present to the school committee. So that's what's gonna happen next. So there was no data presented. There were, it was, there was no evidence presented other than here are the people that we've met with. This has been the process so far. This is what's remaining. And so there were, I I I wasn't there, but I've heard there were a couple of questions. You were, you, you were there so you may even Speaker 5: Speak to it. Julie did a great job as always. And she was, she made it very clear that the committee is not gonna come back with a recommendation for town meeting. But she also, I think our committee needs
to know she made it, she stated that the field behind the high school football field is separate from the committee, from the decision that the committee or the not decision, but the, the study group. So it's just important for us to be aware of 'cause that was communicated to the community that those are, that there are two separate processes happening now. We haven't done a lot about that other field, but I just wanted us to be aware that that was very,
that was emphasized a few times that this is, they are separate processes. Speaker 1: Thank you. It was smooth. And, and Ms. McDonough will bring back any of the, she had said and she will bring back any, we have a meeting, the, the field study group has a meeting next Monday and so she'll, we'll, it'll be on the agenda to discuss the things that came up in town meeting. Okay, Speaker 10: Great. Thank you. Speaker 1: All right, shall we? Speaker 4: Okay, we'll move on to the next item, which is an ASAP program update. And I'm pleased to introduce Megan Renzi, who's, who's delivered presentations to us previously
and is the director of Natick ASAP program. Megan Leads leads a program that serves more than 600 students across our middle, elementary and middle schools, providing before and after school care that many of our families rely on every day. The work's grounded in very strong relationships with kids and families and close coordination with schools. And under her leadership, this has become a really stable and vibrant well run program with experienced staff and strong participation. So we're excited to hear your update tonight. Speaker 11: Thank you very much for the invitation. And yes, I'm Megan Renzy, director of and Elementary Enrichment Program.
Speaker 10: Now I've got a green light. Yep. Good Speaker 11: Job. Speaker 10: So tonight I'm going to share a brief overview of both of those programs and a bit more information specific to ASAP programming, enrollment and registration. So both of these programs are district partnered and take place in the buildings, but they operate independently and are fully funded by tuition, including subsidizing fees for all of the families who qualify for financial assistance through the Natick Public Schools. As Dr. Bash indicated, ASAP serves over 600 children before
and after school across six sites. We have four elementary, early risers programs and six afterschool programs across all of the elementary and middle schools. And we offer early release and vacation day programming. Elementary enrichment is a separate program open to all families at the schools where the courses are offered. Those are two sessions each year of eight week after school teacher planned and LED classes. And those are open to any families who attend that school,
completely unrelated to any enrollment at early risers or asap. As Dr. Bash also mentioned, all of our programs are rooted in relationships with children, with families, and with our partners in the schools. At asap. Children are supported by consistent, trusted adults every day, which we know is a key protective factor in terms of mental health and youth resilience. And they're in a community where they feel safe to be their authentic selves. Families are enrolled in our programs for an average of six years, but we get to know some
of these kids well before then. They come in as little sibs at pickup and some well after when they return. As high school mentors. The opportunity that we have to see a caregiver for every child in our program every day builds incredible trust. It allows the ASAP staff to notice and identify family needs if they come up. And then the collaboration that our teams foster with schools means that any needed support can be extended throughout the day. And in some cases even back home.
Families often share their appreciation for how well the ASAP staff know their kids and that they have been supported so well and celebrated their growth over time. And now onto ASAP staff. These folks are the heart of our programs. More than half hold degrees or certifications right now, more than 60% of our instructors work in the schools during the day as teachers, paraprofessionals, counselors, lunch monitors, you name it. All of our leadership staff are safety care trained and all of our instructors and leadership staff members
complete mandatory professional development related to their work at AAP. Each year. Our retention is strong among our leadership team. The average years with ASAP alone is nine and many of our instructors have been with us for five or more years. And it's that consistency that allows us to foster those relationships that are essential to the impact of our program now a day in the life. So kids come to us at the end of a long school day. Some of them have been with us at early risers since 7:00 AM
They may come in running full speed, they may need to decompress. So each afternoon follows a predictable routine that includes snack and check-in and a variety of activity blocks, including homework, help, free play and enrichment activities. But within that structure, there's a lot of flexibility and a lot of choice, which allows the teams to provide the indi or to respond to the range of individual needs in these large groups of children. At the end of the day,
social emotional learning is embedded in all aspects of the afternoon in play, in problem solving and in interactions with peers and with staff and these images. Thank you Mr. Grath. Reflect what we aim to create every day. A sense of belonging, opportunities for hands-on learning and exploration. The kids are building friendships, they're trying new things and they're developing skills that will support them in and out of school. We're onto enrollment and wait list. So next year we will serve approximately 640 children
across early risers and asap. At this time our afterschool sites are full. We have openings at early risers and when you look at that wait list number, about 270 of those children were not enrolled for any of the programs they requested. And the remainder have partial enrollment. So maybe they are in early risers but not yet asap. Maybe they're enrolled for some days at asap, but not all the days they requested. But a data point I want to clarify is that many of the children on that list are already enrolled in one
of the other excellent programs in Natick. We are not the only game in town. They may prefer to be enrolled at ASAP due to location due to peers that attend our programs. Maybe they have another child enrolled with us. But that wait list number is not the number of children who will be without afterschool care in the fall. So our enrollment capacity and therefore our wait list is determined by the availability of dedicated space and qualified staff.
And of those two things, staffing is by far the most significant driver. Each of our sites serve 60 to 90 children each day without a nurse, front office staff on onsite administrative support counselors, crisis teams, any of the other infrastructure that's available during school. They are responsible for all of those things. Supervision, safety, behavior and emotional support, medical needs, parent communication, emergency response, and dismissing those 60 to 90 children every day to safe adults.
So we maintain those child to staff ratios so that teams can respond effectively to all of those things, many of which are happening at the same time without compromising safety or disrupting programming. Expanding ASAP capacity requires adding and retaining staff who can take on that full scope of responsibilities and that work. The recruitment and retention of highly qualified staff remains our greatest challenge. With the support of this committee,
we have made significant investments, we've increased instructor pay, we've added retention and referral incentives, and we have expanded our recruitment efforts. The results have been improved retention of our longtime staff and we continue to bring in strong candidates. But the ongoing turnover due to the nature of our part-time afternoon only instructor positions continues to keep us from taking that next step of increasing the total number of our staff, which is what is needed
to add more seats at asap. Our registration process is designed to balance access, equity and the needs of working families for all of our programming At ASAP and Elementary Enrichment, we use a registration window, not first come, first served to ensure that all of the families have opportunity to apply, reduce barriers to access in that way we share registration information with schools. So families who might need additional support, becoming aware of our programming and accessing the registration process, have time
to receive that support. And when demand exceeds capacity, placements are determined through a lottery system. This spring we reviewed those procedures and whether they still best meet the evolving needs of our community. We analyze the process at more than 20 school-based programs and the Natick preschool and after that work have concluded that next year we'll combine wait list and new family registration into a single window. We will reset the wait list annually and we plan to streamline the information
that's published about the process to make it clearer, more transparent, easier for families to navigate and support them and making informed decisions about this very important factor of family life, which is before and afterschool care. We're very proud of the role that our programs play in supporting Natick students and families. We appreciate the ongoing support of the school committee and I'm happy to answer any questions. Do, Speaker 1: Do you have anything you wanna add before we do that? Speaker 4: No, just thank you to you and your team for all you do every day. And behind the scenes what you don't see is you are one,
a lightning fast communicator and kind of operationalizing when need be. So it's like behind the scenes what you do is fa. Fabulous. Thank Speaker 10: You. Speaker 1: Any questions or comments from the committee, Ms. Goeth? Speaker 9: So I have two questions. One's about the, the new process for ASAP registration, the new lottery. So do I understand this that there's no more carryover of participation from year to year that everyone will reapply every year for a spot? Is that what you, you said you were gonna combine the wait
list in the existing registrants. Speaker 10: Oh, I may have misspoken. Okay. So our current process is three steps. Current families have the opportunity to re-enroll and at that time, younger siblings may also be re-enrolled. Then there's a an additional next period for families on the previous year's wait list, not yet enrolled in any programs. And then the third phase is for brand new families where we're gonna maintain that re-enrollment period for current families and for siblings. Where is being merged is those second two phases.
So wait list families and new families will be in a single lottery. Speaker 9: Okay. And can you tell me more about why that decision was made? Speaker 10: Absolutely. One of the proposals that came up because it is a very real and reasonable source of frustration for families that are on our wait list year after year, is access and equity. This question of once you're enrolled in asap, this spot is yours and that that can box out new families. So we looked at options like the one at the preschool
where any child not currently enrolled for a specific schedule is all included in one lottery. We ultimately decided that that didn't best meet the needs of our working families. What it would lead to is actually more families with split care across the district. But when we looked further, we also recognize that while in years past families participating in wait list registration really were receiving priority access and recognition of the fact that they had been on the list year after year.
But as demand for the program has increased as enrollment retention has increased, nobody's leaving. 'cause our staff is too wonderful that those families on the wait list were still not getting days. And so we had created this elaborate system that takes time to administer and was setting false expectations for these families. It was no longer a process meeting the population's needs that it was designed to do. Moving it into a single lottery system should be clearer for families, easier to follow.
And in that way more equitable. Speaker 9: May I have one follow up question. So will there be an announcement before the lottery for the wait list and the new applicants about how many positions exist at each school or how many openings there are? Just to further set expectations. Speaker 10: We don't publish the number of openings at each school. It's too fluid. And because we wanna protect the privacy of the very limited number of families who do receive priority access, it's the more, most volume vulnerable populations in the community. Families who are protected by McKinney,
McKinney-Vento status or DCF. So we will publish the change in the process, but we always are clear with families that space is limited and that they should have alternate care plans available. Speaker 9: Yeah. Okay. Well I understand that and thank, thank you for being so clear about that. I really appreciate that. I would just say that having year, many years ago, my kids are in high school now, been on the other side of that, it would have helped to set expectations. Had I known that there were actually only two spots available in my child's grade,
I probably wouldn't have bothered applying at all. Right. So I'm wondering if there's a way to communicate like historical availability. 'cause it's very clear from this table that you presented that there really is no availability, right? Because we're fully enrolled. I'm just wondering if there's a way to, to just further set expectations by maybe communicating past like numbers of new families who were enrolled. That's, that's just my thought. Speaker 10: Absolutely. Data. We could figure out a way to assemble and publish because you're right, availability tends to be limited to new kindergartners
and to our before school program. Speaker 1: Other questions? Dr. Welsh? Speaker 12: First of all, just really appreciate your program and the work you do there. Both my kids went through the program and it was invaluable to us and it really meant a lot to us and to them. You, you mentioned that the program is self-sustaining. You also financially, and you also mentioned that one of the limitations to expansion of the program is staff. What is the chicken and what is the egg there in terms of if, if the program can sustain itself with additional tuitions And the limitation is staff, what are the cha what are the challenges then
to expanding enrollment If additional hiring would lead to additional enrollment, which would bring in additional funds to support the additional hiring? Does the the circular nature of that question make make Speaker 10: Sense? I I understand what you're saying completely. Okay. So our goals in continuing to increase instructor pay rates are always to attract and retain more staff. Our current scenario is that we pay very well for the rates in our field. And what we are running up against is challenges outside of that factor.
It is folks leaving us. So to get into the numbers, we hired 21 new folks this year in instructor and leadership positions. We were really excited to bring those folks on board. We lost 22 and we didn't lose them necessarily because of pay. We lost them to full-time positions. We lost them to school, we lost them to literal moves sometimes to full-time positions within this district, which is wonderful, but a hardship for asap. This is a puzzle beyond Natick, beyond Massachusetts.
It's a field-wide challenge. Yep. But it's a great question that we're always trying to resolve. Speaker 12: No, I I appreciate that, that there may be a labor market factor bigger than the district that you're talking about perhaps. Thank you. Thank you. I yield back. Speaker 1: Anyone else besides me? So just out of curiosity, and you don't have to answer tonight, but it's something that I'm just generally curious about. On, on slide seven. And thank you for the time in the presentation. The, the one that has the, the 26, 27 enrollment wait list, 640 children en enrolled in early risers or asap and then the, I did the, so it's 730 total
students, is that right? The 517 that are maybe not, or how many unique people? Like Speaker 10: What? 640 unique children. Unique Speaker 1: Children. Speaker 10: So that's the total number of children that are enrolled in either early risers or asap? Or both. Speaker 1: Or both. Okay. So here, here's the actual, my actual question. Yes. How many families is that? And so the, the, the reason I ask is because I wonder if another data point would be a projection eventually of, I have, let's say I had a young child
that's in one of the programs and then another child that is likely to be in the program. Knowing that in advance might help plan how many openings there might be with the, and I know you can't guarantee that my younger child is gonna want, or I'm gonna want my younger child to do that, but, or that you're Speaker 12: Not the pronounce Speaker 1: Or that I'm not the pronounce. And but the, it would be an interesting data point to know the difference between, I'm guessing there's a large percentage of families
who have one child in the program now, but a second child on the way who ultimately join the program. That might not be true. Speaker 10: I would agree with that, absolutely. Speaker 1: But it, it does I think help inform potential projected openings Speaker 10: That's data for people on Speaker 1: Provide. Speaker 10: That makes sense. Thank you. Speaker 1: Summer camps work the same way. So. Okay. Anything else? That was all I had. Yeah, please. Speaker 9: So I'll set a question about the enrichment program. Yes. So I was just curious, so it's two eight week sessions a year offered potentially at all elementary schools. But do we have, for this last year,
were there programs offered at every elementary school and were the same number of programs offered? There were, Speaker 10: There were programs offered at every school. The same number of programs were not offered at every school because courses are created and designed by the instructors who offer them. So that is, so whatever the instructors interested in leading courses propose in terms of content format and grade range. That is what's offered at that building. Speaker 9: And the instructors are not ASAP instructors. They're who are they?
Speaker 10: They are school day educators. They could be teachers, they could be paraprofessionals, interventionists. But yes, they can't work at ASAP 'cause they're busy at asap. Speaker 9: Yeah. So then a que then just a final question if that's okay, Mr. Chair. Yep. Please. So is there any, anything that you could do is your group could do as the administrator of this program to kind of invite certain courses to, to be taught so that there's more consistency from elementary school to elementary school about the numbers and types of offerings? 'cause I appreciate that teachers have great ideas
and my kids did some amazing programs, but if we're not pulling that, what we need the those courses to be, I'm concerned that sometimes there's a gap and that one school will have like four amazing programs and another one will have one that can only service, you know, 40 kids. Speaker 10: So that is true. Absolutely. So what we have, what we can and have done is made it as attractive as possible to teach an enrichment class. So the stipends are generous and we try to make it as frictionless
and experience as possible for these teachers at the end of a long day to then also teach an enrichment class. But in terms of providing similar experiences across the schools, I believe the only way we could do that with fidelity would be to contract with outside providers. And that's a different type of program than is elementary enrichment as it currently stands. Speaker 9: Thank you Speaker 1: Ms. Brune. Speaker 5: Just to comment on that, I would love to see elementary enrichment include that exact type to allow us to bring vendors into the school system.
One, I think teachers are doing an incredible job during the day, and if they're not able to take on that stipend in position, our kids shouldn't have a lack of opportunity. And I heard over and over at the strategic plan about partnerships and how much people want to see partnerships built in Natick and I, you know, I personally know people who have wanted to bring things to the schools and weren't able to because of the structure and the way that this program was set up. So I think that there is some opportunity to think about.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Okay, so in closing, I appreciate the segue to strategic plan, which you'll hear about in a few weeks on June 1st. And I can confirm that there will definitely be a piece around community partnerships that has a leg of sort of afterschool care. You know, I continue to say, I think there should be a partnership beyond just the schools, which I think we're echoing here and we've learned a lot and we have just great expertise, but we aren't serving all kids. And nor is it the Natick public school's job to serve all kids, but we do all care about our kids and how well they're doing before and after school.
So it behooves us to kind of help build that out. So appreciate it and exciting. Year three will kind of start on that and through the strategic plan, I think. So thank you so much for being here and for all you and your team do. Thank you very much. Thank you. Moving right along. Yeah. Okay, so the next item on the agenda for me is just a brief reporter update that Mr. Adi Lynch, the director of our meco program, and he's here online, is going to provide, there is a memo that is attached, but really it's just kind of to get it into the record
and he's gonna give a brief overview of that memo. Welcome Adi. Speaker 13: Thank you so much. This next memo is an informational update on our METCO program. And so at a high level this year, Natick served 50 METCO students across Benham Wilson and the high school. And what we had a continued focus on academic support, mentoring, family engagement, and access to extracurricular activities. Our program has expanded elementary participation,
which I'm really happy about, and also strengthen middle school leadership opportunities. Very proud that this spring we are graduating six seniors. And so in the fall our district will be welcoming eight new students, bringing our total enrollment number to 52. And that reaches our current DSI approved program cap of 52. And so at a school level, enrollment is going to look like this. We'll have 12 students overall now at Benham starting in the fall, we'll have 19 students at Wilson Middle School
and we'll have 21 students at our high school. And I'm really proud of this number, especially at at Benham because it's just reflecting the continued growth at our elementary level and it supports a more stable K through 12 pipeline over time. And just thinking about when our program started about four years ago at about five students to be up to 12, I'm really, really happy about that. Looking ahead, the focus remains on strengthening our cohort development and maintaining strong family engagement, expanding leadership opportunities for our students,
and of course, continuing to monitor the academic progress and attendance. So this memo is being entered for the record to provide a clear snapshot of the program and next year's planning. I appreciate the support always from our school committee and just some dates to keep on your calendar as we close the year. Our METCO alumni game is May 15th, 2026 at the Natick High School at two 30. And our METCO cookout is gonna be June 6th, 2026
at 12:00 PM at Franklin Park. And that is our METCO update. Speaker 1: All right, thank you. Mr. Lynch, any comments or questions from the committee? Ms. Bruno? Speaker 5: Ani, thank you for the memo. I was wondering about the new process for METCO families to be able to choose between different districts. If you saw a difference in that process from the school perspective. Speaker 13: Say a little bit more. What do you mean from the school? Speaker 5: Well, so I think initially when it was implemented, my understanding was that metro districts were a little, they were curious as to how it was gonna play out because
before families didn't necessarily have as much choice. Speaker 13: Yes. So with the help of our METCO directors association working in tangent with our new president, Candace Sumner and some of our state reps, DESI is no longer making any changes to that per se. So the current enrollment process and families getting a chance to choose their top three districts is retained. But I haven't heard anything about any necessary changes, but that was a possibility. But I'm really happy that our parents get a chance to pick
where they, they can send their children. Speaker 5: Okay, thank you. And then just one more question, the seventh graders that are coming in, that's a difficult school year in my experience as a parent. And so I'm curious about that transition versus bringing two students into Behe. Speaker 13: Certainly for me as a director, I always think about those particular critical years. And I'm very happy that we did bring in some students in that grade this current year, they're doing really well academically.
I try to give our families that knowledge like this is going to be a leap from BPS to native public schools and give them as much support as possible. The reason why I didn't do more at the elementary level is because our mini bus seats up to 29, but I never want to get at that crowded. And then two, I can only enroll the files that I'm given from Meco Inc. So if there are no sixth grade files or fifth grade files, then seventh grade might be the more populated grade
that families have applied to. And, and that's how that rolls or how, that's how I enroll our students. But I didn't want to make benham larger than 12, which brings up another point because we don't have a bus monitor on that bus. And so it's, it's really just trying to make sure everything is balanced so that, that's how we came up with that number. A lot of factors. But I hope that makes sense. Speaker 5: I appre No, they really do. And I understand many of them are out of your hands. They're not outta the hands of the school committee. However, because I think that as we look at funding, that
to me would be a priority if we've expanded into the elementary school. I think we need to find funding to expand the program to its biggest capacity in order to enable students to be in the district long enough, develop those critical relationships in the early years so that they stay in Natick and have the best experience going forward. It actually pains me that it's because of a bus in some ways. I know that's not the only answer, but I think we need to do better, to be honest. Speaker 13: I I certainly agree. We have some really brave parents that enroll their students in elementary in kindergarten.
And I know for me as a director, a bus monitor will be a, a answer to prayers. And for our parents, that's one of the greatest requests. Very grateful that our bus driver, our drivers over the, this year we've had three already in the elementary, have been really exceptional in terms of communication and, and giving me enough intel and giving families intel. But that monitor would be a wonderful, wonderful addition for me to feel comfortable adding more in our elementary program.
Speaker 2: I Speaker 1: All set. All right. Thank you Mr. Lynch. Speaker 4: Okay, thank you. We'll move on. Thanks so much. Thank you. Okay, we're moving on, on my report with an update from Erin Miller. Erin leads a large and complex part of our organization supporting more than a thousand students with disabilities across the district in overseeing in-district and out of district programming. And she's going to give us her annual update tonight. So welcome, Erin. Speaker 5: Oh, there. All right. Hi everybody. Thank you for having me tonight.
Tonight I'm gonna have a little di bit of a different presentation than I normally have in the past. I've done, I've given you kind of some numbers around our evaluation processes and our, and our case loads. I thought tonight we'd talk a little bit more about the, the Office of Student Services visioning. And I'm gonna give you a little snapshot of some of our, the, some of our numbers. But tonight I'm gonna focus more on that, what we're, we're really working on within the department. So on the first slide, you'll see just kind of the goals for the department this year
and how they align to the bridge plan. You're gonna see a lot of intersectionality with different departments in this conversation. So those are just as a reference what those our goals look like. Next slide. So if you wanna look at the, this is the overall special education enrollment over the last 12 years. So you'll see that we have been, our department has been growing, our number of students with disabilities has been growing steadily over especially the last five years, which is commensurate with other districts.
It's very, this is very much the projection we're seeing across the state. I will, I do wanna say that for FY 26, while all the other years reflect October one DSI counts, this actually does our DSI count at October one was 1100, and now we're down to 1069. So we are down a number of students this year throughout the school year. So, which is actually not as common in the last couple years. Our numbers have grown. Our overall number of students with disabilities have grown by the end of the year. Right now, we are actually down, meaning
that students are either, I'm gonna talk about our evaluations, but I students are, are, are coming off IEPs or are not being, we're not evaluating as many students we have in the last few years. Next slide please. So just a quick snapshot of kind of some of our, our, our metrics. So we have 67 students who are participating outta district programming right now. That is, that again is consistent across the, the, my six years in this role. So that is very much, we fluctuated anywhere between,
you know, 63 and and 70 students. So that is, that's a, a really steady number. We're really working hard to have our students come back to district, but we also have a number of students who move into the district. So we have students who are also receive, needing outta district services. And like I've, I've talked about throughout the budget process, we have a number of students who are moving into our district who require outta district programs that we're responsible for. So that number has been pretty steady. Again, you already saw this number, but we're at 18.5 of our number of, oh, excuse me. This is our students who participate
in specialized programs. So we have 198 out of the 1069 students who participate in either our access program, which is our, our program for students with intellectual and cognitive disabilities. Our, we call them Compass or our therapeutic learning center programs, which is our students with social emotional disabilities. So that's a really strong number to say that we are supporting 200 students who within district pro programming that otherwise if we didn't have those programs could be out of district.
Now, not all of them of course, but that's really important. That's something that struck me 11 years ago when I came to Natick, is the level of programming that we have. We've expanded that to next year we will have a program at all of our schools. We've talked about the memorial school expansion. We'll have a therapeutic learning center at Memorial next year. So now we'll have one on both sides of our, both sides of town to filter into our middle schools. So we are continuing to grow those programs and it's really helped us maintain students within the district. And then this last number is just, I've talked about this in previous presentations about our
initial evaluations. So right now we have 212 initial evaluations to date. And 99 of those students have qualified. So 46%, which again is a consistent number of the number of students who, who typically qualify for special education throughout the year. The difference is that we, last year I think we ended on 330 initial evaluations. Right now we are on target to end at the maximum around 240. So that's a significant difference. That tells me that something is working with, whether it's
through our, our through our intervention or through our tier one instruction or whatever that might be. But something that's a, that's a great story to tell that our initial, that students aren't needing as much evaluation, that they're, they're not leading to special education evaluation. All right. So I wanna talk a little bit about some of the, the, the work that's going on in the district and into next year and into the next many years. So the first thing is in conjunction with, with Ms. Maloney's office teaching and learning, we are really working on
our, our, the learning walks. That has been a huge focus of our learning walks, is looking at our, not only just our tier one instruction, but how special education teachers are incorporated in that. Looking at our co-taught classes, looking at our programs and really evaluating that instruction as well. The executive instructional leadership team that is the team that consists of, of, of the leadership, of the instructional leaders at the district level. So myself, Ms. Baloni, Dr. Bash, our ML department, Mr. Cook, the, the, all the people that work with Sue
and Dr. Ferguson has been really helpful to, in, in, in defining our instructional vision for all learners. Not just, not just general ed students and special ed students, but for all and every each learner. I'm gonna talk to you a little bit about our middle school and high school co-teaching vision. I'll go into that, the next few slides and our elementary inclusion vision. Next slide please. So some of you may know, this is my 11th year here in Natick and I think my second year here, we recognize that
the majority of our students at the middle school and high school level were learning outside of the general education classroom. We, we had were take taking what we sometimes call pullout or replacement classes. So they were taught by their, they were getting their English class taught by a special education teacher with, you know, eight students on IEPs. And we realized that we wanted to look at that differently. And so over the years we really looked at incorporating co-teaching model where we went from, in two years we went from one co-taught classroom to 35 sections of co-teaching at Natick High School.
We did an incredible amount of work on planning that out and looking at the logistics of that and also ensuring things like co-teaching does not exist. Well if it doesn't have common planning time, if we don't have teachers invested in it, meaning devoting not just doing a year of it, like giving two years to really assess whether or not that co-teaching relationship is working. So we really put all of, we an incredible amount of professional development went into that. What we're realizing is that, and this is ownership from, from my department in particular, not the staff themselves. We have to revisit that.
We have to look back at that and say, are we, is is, it's not only, it's not about about doing away with the model, but it's about thinking about how can we improve the model and how can we support the teachers implementing this model. So next year we are going to be engaging in a co-teaching pilot where we are at the middle school level. We are gonna be having both teachers from Kennedy and Wilson who are going to be part of this co-teaching committee that we're gonna meet regularly. We're going to assess our co-teaching, we're gonna be hiring some professional development to help us look at the model as it currently exists
and then inform how that might look in the future. And then, and then implement that with our, with all of the, our colleagues who, who co-teach at the middle school and high school level. Another piece of that at the middle school level in particular is there's differing views on, on, on different models at the middle school level. For example, there is a content-based model where the special education teacher is highly qualified in one content area and might be a co-teacher across multiple grade levels or multiple teams on one grade level.
The other model is the team model. The team model is where the special educator might not be highly qualified in one specific content area like English or math, but they kind of support all areas and they're on one team. And there's a lot of differing views on that. I'll be on, I was a seventh grade special ed teacher at one point in my career and as my, I love the team model. The team model was great because I felt part of a team, I knew every student on that team, every student on that team knew me and our schedules aligned and there was so much great, there was a lot
of great aspects to it, but at the same time I didn't always have the content skill to be able to support the students and really have that co-teaching relationship where I could really support the curriculum. So that's another piece that we'll be assessing next year, particularly at the middle school level. And our principals and everyone, our special ed administrators are all on board to recognize are we going to make a decision as a district that we go to a content model or a team model rather than right now we're having a little bit of both at each school. And so next year we'll assess which model is gonna be our, our district's model moving forward.
Next one. Thank you. Alright, so the elementary inclusion vision. So this conversation is, I think in here I have somewhere talking about currently our elementary service delivery is there, the services I, this is not any type of indictment on the services that are happening. 'cause the services that are happening are, are incredibly thoughtful and purposeful. But as the district is looking into a model of really strengthening our tier one instruction, the guiding question that we've been having
with elementary educators and principals and so forth is how do special educators support the tier one instruction at the elementary school level? Right now, 90% of our services are in a pullout model. Now, I wanna clarify that paraprofessionals still go into the classroom, but, and paraprofessionals are able to, to ensure accommodations are being met. They help with behavioral support plans. There's so many great things that they do every day in that classroom, but they have a different skill set than special educators.
And so the conversation we're gonna have for the next, for next year is we are looking at two schools, Memorial and Bennett and Behe. And we have reached out to, we've had conversations with principals and SPED admin and we've had our next meeting with the interested parties to, to begin this inclusion pilot model where we're gonna have special education teachers pairing up with general education teachers and creating an inclu an inclusion work model where special ed teachers are in the classroom. I wanna be careful and not say co-teaching because co-teaching is a, is a lofty goal, right?
Co-teaching somewhere, we aspire to something like that. But our goal right now is to really think about how can special educators even be providing the same services they might have done through pullout in the gen ed classroom. So we're thinking more that pull aside model, that small group flexible grouping model. The other piece is, is it's a perfect time to start this with our literacy audit. A new literacy curriculum is a perfect opportunity to begin some of the shared work. It helps not only helps our students, which is the most important thing, but it also helps our special educators be part of the general education curriculum
and learn that alongside their gen ed peers, colleagues, excuse me. So there's a, a very, you know, prescriptive pilot that's gonna happen with that group as well. We have, we are going to be looking, looking at assessing that model. We have pilot teams that are gonna be working together. We're gonna have monthly meetings. And again, that data will be used to help inform the, the FY 28 and 29 school year. Next slide. The other big shift this year was, I, I think you all know that our special education coordinators moved into the special education leadership role.
So they became unit B administrators. I have to say it's been in incre incredibly successful for many reasons, but it's really shown the value of these folks and what they bring to the administrative team. They're, they're valued as, as an administrator in that building and, and very much part of the instructional team in that building as well. So the things that we've really been focusing on is our looking at our instructional instructional vision in, in addition to the, they've been participating in some of the learning walks that we've done as a, as a district team. But we've, I've also been doing those
with Rachel Stanton, the assistant director. And I have also been doing those separately with them as well to do it at as a, as a, in a smaller version. But it's been, I've had one, I had one special ed admin who said, this is the best PD I've ever had. You know, just doing this level of learning walk and the debrief and really following the model that Dr. Bash has introduced to us this year, the program leadership. So we're really looking at the, the special ed administrators really assessing their programs, supporting the programs in their buildings and,
and in particular looking at the staff ratios of those pro programs and, and ensuring that we are being as efficient with our staffing as as possible. And then the shared vision, again, all the things that I talked about tonight, they've all been instrumental in the inclusion co-teaching and talking about the, our, the future of what special education might look like in here in Natick. Lastly, I just wanna share that last week we had CPA, we presenta a present, we do a, some events that we share with CPA. We had a n na neuro-diversity fair where we had parents,
a parent panel that that presented to, to, we had about 30 participants and then after that the panel event families were able to go into a vendor fair and there were about 15 vendors from around the community where parents could learn about resources in the local community. And it was really a great event. And we just, and I really, I wanna talk about, I just wanna say thank you for the relationship we have with CPAC and that that we do these shared events and the feedback is give us more. So that's something we really wanna look at for next year. And what's not in here is, I just wanna also name
that Wednesday is the Natick is hosting the unified track and field state meet Natick. We are, we're three peaks right now. We've won three years in a row and we're hosting again. So we're hoping for, for number four. But otherwise if anyone's around on, on Wednesday and can stop by the field, it's a pretty magnificent event. It's kind of my favorite day of the year. Nick d Antonio is the coach and he really puts that all together and it's just, it's a great event, but it's, but that is, that will be happening with, I think there's,
there's usually about 50 schools that come to this event too, so it's a pretty great event. So just wanna plug that Wednesday, May 27th. So is it, I thought there is a, the pasta dinners planned for Wednesday, May 26th. So I'm thinking it's the 27th. There is sectionals is coming up. Sectionals is this Wednesday? Okay. Thank you for saying that. I was good sectionals. He told me, he said okay, he said this way I must have had the dates for, I'll clarify for everybody. When, more time. More time. That's good because we have more time to play. That's even better. Sectionals is this Wednesday at Lincoln Sudbury Regional
High School, which is also an amazing event to go to. Yeah. And then all the kids that do well there. Thank you Ms. Brune for Claire. I would hate for people to show up at the field on Wednesday and no one be there. Thank you for that. Yeah, I'll get the right date out and make sure we share it out in the newsletters and all that. Thanks. Yeah, I think that's it. Speaker 1: Questions from the committee. Dr. Welch, Speaker 12: Thank you for your work on this and thank you for being here to present. My question is about the co-teaching model proposed at the middle school next year, and it's a two-parter. The first part is to what degree are we limited or to what degree do we have options based on the licensure
and professional expertise of personnel currently in the district and specifically at the middle school level? Speaker 5: So that's something, I mean, in terms of options, I think most of the teachers, a lot, many of the, some of the teachers have dual certification and there are some that are highly qualified in different areas, but there are some that quite honestly, they, they might have special education licensure, but they might have more of a, you know, typically special ed teachers, I'll be as speaking from one, we're either really good at math or we're really good at literacy. You know, so you'll, you'll find some of that interest based
as well from the special ed ed teachers. They'll ultimately have a dis they'll, they'll, they'll define which path they might wanna go to. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 12: And the second part of the question is, in your experience of the two models that you're considering, which one is more highly correlated with better student outcomes? Speaker 5: So I wanna say that I, I, I respect the fact that from a special educator, being part of a team is really, really important. But I would say the content model is definitely the more effective model. Yeah. And I, and, and speaking from someone I who brought, who,
who created this co-taught model at the high school level, that is exactly what we do at the high school level Yeah. Is a content. There are, there are certain teachers who do math, science, social studies and, and English. Yeah. And it's, and it's, it's, it's been effective in the, just having that familiarity with the content and being able to truly see when you walk into some of those classrooms, you're not sure who the special ed teacher is or who the gen ed teacher is because of their, their level of expertise with the content. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 12: Okay. Thank you. I yield back Ms.
Speaker 5: Brunell, I thought the idea of the summer planning this summer that you put resources towards that, is that just for elementary or is that across that that is so all pilot teachers will have that, that ability this summer. I wanna say that is something we've, we've done for many years. We've offered co-teaching planning this year we're looking at it a little bit more targeted about the pilots. But yes, that is something that overall, that is something that, that we would like to invest in. Over time. It's been, it's been a great use of PD that people, you know, especially newer pairs, to have that time together and to be able to establish roles.
That's a pillar of co-teaching is knowing who's gonna be in charge of what, who's gonna do, you know, who leads the warmup versus who leads the direct, like the who's the homework checker? Those things really matter when you're thinking about a co-teaching model about who do and defining that. So those are the part, the part of the pieces of the, of the planning sessions that we look at. And then knowing, so it doesn't look like one person's a visitor while one per, so you're knowing like, what am I doing week one? Do our documents, say Ms. Miller and Mr. Gillis on it, right. Like, so we're sharing that ownership of the, of that classroom. Yeah. I think that's excellent.
I'm so happy to see that it, during the school year. Are things gonna need to change with professional development or schedules so that we can continue that type of co-planning throughout the year? So this will be committee work that I'm funding after school, so, we'll, the, during the school day. Another piece of this investigation is really looking at how can we build in systems that have common planning time. We've been able to do that at the high school, at the middle school. It's been a little bit trickier with, with just the scheduling, but I mean, and they do have common planning. I wanna say I, I do wanna be clear,
they do have common planning, but there's a lot of different things that go into the, their, their planning times. Whereas the high school's a little bit more, their schedule's a little more prescriptive to that, you know. But I think the, the middle school has a much, the many more days in the schedule. So there's a lot of different things happening during that time. But yes, that would be something you're thinking of. Yeah, absolutely. And then my last question is about, when you're talking about the 90% happening outside of the classroom and wanting to transition that into the classroom at some point, is that going
to require having, and I think this is Dr. Welch's question, maybe related, is that gonna require more certified special educators in the district? Potentially. But I think we have to look at models. There are different schools that do this differently. And that is something part of this work as well, is we'd like to go out and we'd like to examine what, how schools are, are implementing this. I do wanna say that we did this at the high when we did this at the high school. Now 10, 10 years ago or so. We were able to do this through attrition of other staff. You know, so for example, paraprofessionals, a number,
a certain amount of paraprofessionals. Can each e equal a teaching staff? There is no plan to eliminate paraprofessionals. But if paraprofessionals, if they're at the high school level, what we did was we were able to, through attrition, through paraprofessionals leaving, we were able to add special education teachers and add no new staff to create that model. I mean, we didn't add, we didn't add one FTE. So those are all the things we're gonna look into. But there's no, I wanna be clear that there is no plan to eliminate anybody to get these, this would all be done very, you know, carefully and,
and thoughtfully. Speaker 1: Thank you. Anyone else? Okay. Thank you Ms. Miller. All Speaker 14: Right, thank Speaker 5: You. Speaker 4: Thank you. Okay. The last item on the report from me is revisiting the FY 28 non-binding planning calendar, which is a new piece that we've kind of introduced. I'll remind the committee that back in February I brought forward a proposal to adjust our calendar process so that families and staff have earlier visibility while still keeping the school committee's formal approval
at the appropriate time. So tonight reflects that shift and we're bringing forward a preliminary calendar for 27 28 for early planning purposes only. It's not a final vote on the calendar, the intents to give the community a clear view of dates while in advance, while preserving the committee's authority to take that binding vote in November. So Sue has developed two options, right, that she'll review today. And we are going to the motion before the committee is really to endorse the FY 27 school calendar as a non-binding planning calendar for yearly visibility and planning purposes.
So we are asking the committee to vote on this. Speaker 14: Yeah. So the first memo, just as a reminder, is that we had agreed that we would come to you in April. We're now in May, but with a non-binding draft calendar, sorry, of the TW 27 28 for planning purposes for families. And then in November you will vote this calendar for the 27 28 school year. And we will also bring you a 28 29 for a non-binding for the following year just for families
to have a better sense moving forward. So that's what this memo that's being projected is for. And then if we can pull up the other, Speaker 2: Thank you. Speaker 14: So there are two versions that are linked here. Version A has a start date. No, you can just, version A has a start date of August 25th, which is similar to this upcoming school year of August 25th, which is the week prior to the week before Labor Day, which is not the ideal. We went with that for this upcoming school year just
because Labor Day is so late. Version B has a start date of September 1st. Last day of school with no snow days would be June 14th last day of school. If we were to have five snow days would be June 22nd. I think that this is probably the version that most families are comfortable with, familiar with what our educators are most familiar with. Speaker 1: Okay. So just as a reminder, we're doing this now to basically catch up on the new process. So in the fall. Correct. We'll do this one more time
and that will be the normal routine cadence. Speaker 14: Yep. Speaker 1: Right. So this is just to, to catch up any comments or questions from the committee on option A or option B? And is it your hope that we will endorse one of those options tonight? Speaker 14: Yes it is. Okay. Speaker 1: That, and we have that action item on. So option A or option B, questions and motions while people think about it. I can sing Is Speaker 2: This, Speaker 1: This is the, I think option A and option B were on the previous discussion. Speaker 14: They were on a previous agenda. Yeah.
And we decided to postpone it because we wanted to come back to you with a reminder of what the agreement had been around how we were going to proceed moving forward with giving a two year. That's right. Plan. Speaker 1: So this is not the first time that we, we've seen these. And again, these are not binding. These are Dr. Welch Speaker 12: Within option A and option B. What, if any, is the impact on high school exams and the end of the first semester? Speaker 14: There's no impact. That would be of concern. Okay.
Speaker 1: No more Speaker 12: High yield back. Okay. Speaker 1: Does anybody else have any comments? If not, if anybody would like to make a motion on or, or has a thought, a motion on which one they would prefer or that they think is the choice and we can discuss the motion. Dr. Welch, Speaker 12: I move preliminary approval of draft version a Speaker 9: Second. Speaker 1: So draft version A is the one that starts in August. Speaker 12: That is correct. Mr. Chairman. Speaker 1: So we have a motion as a for preliminary approval of non-binding option A. Are there other motions? I would, I would put forth a motion on option B
if there was a second on that second. So now we have both. Great. Okay. So we can discuss in debate. Dr. Wels, the motion maker. Do you have any thoughts on a Speaker 12: August 25th is fairly consistent with the start date for FY 27 that's coming in the, in the fall. It's fairly consistent with the start date that we have had for the year that we are currently in. And lastly, I believe it gives us maximum flexibility if there are serious inclement weather issues.
Speaker 1: Any other, okay, so other comments? 'cause we have both motions are equal so we can debate them both at the same time. Speaker 2: Please. Speaker 9: I like option A because I really like finishing before Juneteenth. 'cause I feel like that that's really disruptive to have like a random day off right at the end of June. Speaker 2: Okay. Speaker 1: I'm gonna just make a quick comment. Just say, yeah, please. Point of order. Speaker 5: I know that you didn't mean to say that Juneteenth was disruptive to our calendar. Speaker 9: No, I'm saying having a holiday that is coming right at the end of the school year
feels it would like, it would be nice to complete the school year before that holiday rather than have it fall in the last week of school. Speaker 5: Understand Speaker 1: That's how I interpreted. So just a, a comment on, on B. My concern with, with a, and it's the, the one of the challenges doing this so early is it's sometimes hard to tell summer camps should be done by then but aren't necessarily done by then. And for the folks, and this one is a a, a personal one that I'll happen to be experiencing for the folks who are dropping
any college students off that earlier start might get in the way if they have other students. So that's the only, that's my my the that consideration for any of the families who might have a student that they have to bring to college. I think any calendar is gonna have these challenges on one side or the other. So are you about to have a comment? Yeah, please. Speaker 8: Which option better aligns with the other towns and the sports schedules with other towns as well Speaker 1: Please? Speaker 14: Most of the other towns typically start either the week before Labor Day or the Tuesday after Labor Day.
And if I may add to that, although if you want me to pause 'cause Dr. Fugman has a hand raised, Speaker 1: Well, you can finish your thought. Okay. Speaker 14: We received a lot of feedback from members of the community with this last calendar as well as from our union members after the vote on the calendar. Because we started the week before, the week before Labor Day for this upcoming school year that it was out of our traditional cadence of when school starts.
There was a lot of negative feedback around that, that we have traditionally started the Wednesday before Labor Day for students. And this would put us a option A puts us a week before that. And there was some negative feedback around that as folks always have anticipated it being the Wednesday before Labor Day, both from our union partners as well as from community members. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. Fesman. Speaker 15: Yeah, I just had a question, Ms.
Malvo not, not related to the previous question. So option A says this option provides additional instructional time prior to the winter recess period and allowing anyway are both option A and option B or one over the other balanced in terms of the first half of the school year being prior to the winter recess period. I mean, is that, is that the point? I'm sorry, I'm, I'm not being very clear. Is version A more balanced between the amount of learning time prior to winter recess period and
after winter recess period? Is that what that point is? Speaker 14: Version A has five in oh five school days in August where version B has no instructional days in August. So it does shift instructional days after though winter break. So there is a difference there. Speaker 15: But from an instructional perspective, is the assumption that that's better to have more data? Speaker 14: I I don't know that it's better or worse.
Yeah, it's just a statement of fact. Yeah, Speaker 15: Yeah, yeah. I was just trying to figure out, because I, this is a comment I'll, I'll say I don't have, I'm struggling to figure out which one is better personally. I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what are the different, I mean I know what the differences are. I'm trying to figure out which one is better, which one is worse. I mean the only advantage I I can think of right now is version B is more traditional. And I know that one of the issues that parent parents raised last year with this upcoming year is that they felt we had made a,
a significant shift. I know we didn't, it was just the way the calendar worked. But I'm wondering if sticking to traditional start dates makes it easier for parent, for families to adapt because they can, they know what to expect even though obviously this whole process starting today, starting, you know, may two year, a year and a half in advance should help that. But that's the only benefit I can currently see between version B and version A. So anyway, that's just my thought. Speaker 1: Thank you Oscar. No, Speaker 5: I think we're in the best of both worlds here because it's non-binding and I think that we going for it through,
we're gonna get feedback either way that we vote. And so if we need to change the vote based on feedback, we could, the feedback that I heard mostly about this this coming year is that we did not give enough time. And because Dr. Stash created this system, we're gonna give people ample time. And I have heard consistently over the years from teachers and from parents that every day in June is lost. So I think April, I think version A moves us more in line with a direction about student achievement. And I would like to see the community react to that.
So I'm gonna vote for version A. Speaker 1: All right. Without other comment, I think point Speaker 12: Of information. Yes please. Mr. Patel raised the question about athletic schedules. If anyone can speak to this, I would appreciate it. But my understanding on athletic schedules is that those start dates for fall sports are set by MAAA are not specific to the start date of school. So the football team, as I understand it could start practice on the date set by the MIA. Yes. Is that correct? Yes. Okay. Speaker 1: All right. So just as a procedural thing, I, if we,
I like, you know what Ms. Pernell said, I think is a is a good point. And if we were gonna make a change now, we don't want to make changes a lot, I probably would advise any families listening to not book their vacations for 2028 just yet. But I do like that we're doing this earlier. So with that procedurally, we'll vote on the first motion first. So you're voting to support the option a draft A, if that succeeds, there's no need to vote on the second motion.
All right. So the motion on the table is to have a non-binding point of order. Yes please. Are there comments from the public? Not at this time. Thank you. So we're gonna vote on motion On on the motion to approve draft A. Alright, so we'll do a roll call. Dr. Welch. Yes. Ms. Corse? Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Brune? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Speaker 15: Yes. Speaker 1: And I will be a yes as well.
Convincing arguments. So 6 0 0 that is our draft. There is no need to to do the second motion and we'll move on. So we have a draft non-binding FY 28 situation. Speaker 4: Can I make one comment as we close that please before you remove? Yeah. So thank you for that and thanks for kind of entertaining the idea of moving this up. We're gonna learn from this, it's our first time doing it and I think the whole next step is really around really intelligent comms that manage expectations.
So, you know, this turns into our camp setting their timelines because they rent properties. Like they're all, there's all sorts of kind of pieces that fall out. That's why we made that binding vote happen in November. So I think when we do the comms around this, we're gonna be really clear, like you said Mr. Brand, that we're not, we wouldn't advise booking vacations. We wouldn't, you know, I, I'm sure the high schools won't gonna wanna consider prom weekends and what they reserve. So there's a lot of fiduciary decisions that get made based on such a vote. So I think it will behoove us to be,
it's our first time going at it. So we're gonna ask some patients and we'll communicate in really specific ways to manage those expectations. So I'm just saying it on the record. Speaker 1: Great. Okay, so school choice. Is there anybody online to talk about school choice? So this is an opportunity for anybody in the public to give their thoughts but maybe prior to that we should hear from the district. Speaker 14: Sure. So we come to you every spring to, as per the policy that you need to annually consider whether to participate in school choice and whether
or not to open it up. We give, make the recommendation to you on whether or not we have seats. We believe that there are seats available that we could open up in the past several years we've come to you and let you know that we don't feel that we have the available space to be able to open up for that. And based on our current kindergarten enrollment, which is down very slightly from last year, but we also know that we have many families
who have not completed their registration and that we typically see approximately 25 additional enrollments over the summer. We do not believe that we have the capacity to be able to have school choice open for the coming school year. So we would make the recommendation not to open it. Speaker 1: Okay. And so before we hear from the committee we'll hear is anybody online who would like to speak on? Okay. Procedurally, I guess now
we can hear from the committee. Anybody on school choice? Dr. Welch. Speaker 12: I'll just ask a question either to Mr. Gillis or Ms. Baloni, anything to comment on the financial impacts of either accepting or not accepting school choice? Speaker 16: So the state asked you to make a decision because you can't stop students from leaving. You just have the choices to whether or not you wanna accept them. And when you accept them you get $5,000 per pupil plus any special education increments from from the sending town, it gets deducted from their chapter 70.
So when we get into class sizes of what I'll call the, the mid-teens and we know there's seats available and we wanna stabilize and maintain our class size instead of potentially reducing staff. The program seems to be a match but the state really hasn't put any strong support into it because when I started in 2001 it was the same dollar amounts. So when the state wants to better encourage and support the choice program, if they put, you know,
more money into receiving students 'cause it costs, you know, anywhere between 18 and $30,000 to educate a student depending on which district you're in in the state. Yeah. 5,000 really is kind of around the perimeter. Speaker 12: Thank you. I yield back. Speaker 1: Okay. Any motions Speaker 5: Move to recommend Sorry, move that we this move that the Natick school committee votes no to open school choice for the 26th, 27 school year. Speaker 12: Second. Speaker 1: Any debate Ms. Goeth? Do you have a second?
Speaker 9: I just have a a a maybe a point of order question. I'm not sure. Is that the motion or are we voting to close school choice? I thought school choice was automatically open unless we voted to close it. Is that not correct? Speaker 1: So would you like to propose a friendly amendment? Speaker 9: Yes. That we vote to close school choice for the 26th, 27 school year. Speaker 5: Take that friendly. I just read the bulleted Yeah. Sentence. But I will take that friendly Speaker 1: Amendment. The motion maker accepts it. Does the seconder? Speaker 12: I do second. Okay. Speaker 1: Any other debate? Then we shall vote. Dr. Welch? Yes. Ms. Goeth? Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Brunell?
Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. And I'm a yes. 6 0 0. Thank you. The the only other thing on the chair report, part of the agenda was the thing the school committee goals that we are gonna push to a subsequent meeting. So now back to you Dr. Bash. Speaker 4: Excellent. So this falls under the MSBA update. We have two pieces here. I'm gonna do the first one first, which is the Memorial school education program scope options. Okay. And the first slide please. Okay. So just to frame this session, the purpose here is
to really present that should say four 'cause we added another one, 4K to four pre-K program options for school committee consideration. We're hoping to give you time from now until our last meeting in June to weigh in so that we can really operationalize ourselves in the summer to create this program which is part of the MSBA requirements. The feasibility actually requires us to move forward with one direction, so not multiple. And that's why we're seeking guidance from the committee today. We'll review those options. Again, it's four, not three, I apologize for that.
And we're seeking school committee direction on or before the 16th. And that'll give us time from June until August to draft the educational program. It's a templated document from the MSBA that we hope to complete and finalize in the fall. Next slide please. I'll remind people this is a slide we've shown a town meeting. We're gonna continue to show it because it's familiar to us. Where are we? We're in the feasibility phase Module three of the MSBA process. Next slide. And again, this is the document we've been showing when we present
to the SBC school building committee as well as to this committee. We've already, we're well underway and I have another document later in this meeting around the OPM procurement process and there's a link to the memo there that I'll show later on today. And after that, which will type close out by June 1st, we're gonna move into the educational program. So this is very timely. Next slide. Okay. The educational program, because assuming you may not have read the entire template, which is linked here for those who would like to take a look at it and probably in your own time not today, is a multi-page document that would, we will be submitting
to the MSBA in the fall. It includes things from a philosophy and curriculum piece to grade configurations, whether we're gonna have a five section, a six section school, how teach teacher planning will work in the spaces where the lunch and cafeterias will be, et cetera. It's, it's really an overview of the entire composition of the school and the philosophies behind it. So that's really meant to be an overview but it's a significant effort to pull this document together, which is why we need guidance. Next slide. This is an important slide because it really anchors us in what has been
provided to us from the MSBA. Our current enrollment in memorial school is 436 students plus or minus, I think I did this deck a month ago. That's K to four. The MSBA we're very generous and gave us an allocation of 570. They don't do that. They don't just go here's 134 more kids. But the reason why did they did that. And I really credit Mr. Gillis and the team on the work we did with the enrollment study that we did and really advocating for the fact that as a district and we look across our elementary schools, we have two schools with modular units that are aging
and they took that into account and added an additional 134 student spaces to, to make it five 70. It's important to name here that this does not include neighborhood pre-K, which if pe, if the committee recalls, when Mr. Gillis and team wrote the original statement of interest in April of 2024 prior to me arriving, one of the main critical reasons for getting this project was a shortage of capacity in pre-K, which we were able to just demonstrate at the district level. So what they've committed to us, the MSBA is a a school
of 570 students in K to four plus neighborhood pre-K. Mr. Gillis has estimated that in conjunction with our team to be about four classrooms. We don't have four classrooms in writing, we're telling you that's an estimate but we think it's a pretty good one and we would obviously have to advocate for that. So this is kind of trying to frame what the base reimbursement rate, which is 45.11%, which can go up depending on the configuration of what we eventually bill. But the base would be about 45 cents on the dollar that we would be reimbursed if we billed a school around five 70 plus four or plus neighborhood pre-K.
So that's an anchoring and kind of what's been offered to us from the MSBA. Okay, next slide. So when considering options, we felt it would be helpful to give a recommendation to the committee regarding what to prioritize. So the first one in the environment where we just received this, you know, allocation from the MSBA but also in the wake of an override where we are having higher taxes due to that override and we're eventually going to be considering asking for additional appropriation for this building, staying within that 570 student model in neighborhood pre-K
might make sense because that way we're being reimbursed on every dollar or close to every dollar. Two is we have a significant need to ease high school space constraints. This has been discussed previously so hopefully I think we've kind of talked about shooting three arrows and hitting one target. If we were able to ease the high school space constraints, which you'll see in a few of our options in a moment, that would be a really compelling, I think compelling to voters because everyone in our town who has students are gonna go through this high school. Most everyone but not everyone's gonna go
through Memorial Elementary School. And even if we had the middle schools it would be two, you know, there'd be half of our people going to one. So linking this to a high school space constraint, which is very real. And by the way at the bottom here we wrote principal blocker had prepared a capital request for this fall for modular units. That's how compelled she feels to ask for additional space that Mr. Gillis estimates would've been a 1.6 to $2 million capital request just to solve the very compelling issues with overcrowding at the high school for data we have about 16,
well 1,632 students at the high school right now and it was built for 1325 so we're already over by 300. When you go and look at the current number of kids in, in Wilson and Kennedy, that same group that moves into the high school is the same numbers. It's not 1300, it's 1600. And so even though those schools aren't at capacity, they're much newer. So they were built with that capacity in them. When those classes of four classes that are in those schools now move up into the high school, we will still have the space constraints. Okay, so number three, this I think is easy
to meet in all the options that we said, but we wanted to elevate it here that we wanna design a space that fits all learners so it fits our students with disabilities, our multilingual learners. We can serve kids in small groups. Number four, we want to maintain our current district capacity for pre-K. We currently use physical space of 10 classrooms. That doesn't mean there's 10 pre-school classes 'cause some have a morning and an afternoon mix. But we wanna keep the capacity we currently have. And then we also, we are spread across three sites right now and you'll see that in a moment, but behem, the high school and the east school swing space, ideally we'd move that
to two or less because it just has much more efficient use of resources. Most of our students have occupational therapy, speech therapy, physical therapy. There's one leader over all of those buildings. So it just would help with the running of those. So those are the priorities which are gonna come back to you in each of these options. I'm gonna pause right now and just see if there's questions before I move into the options Speaker 8: Comment. Yeah, I would encourage me option four, maintain current district capacity for preco pre-K to be maintain or expand personally. Speaker 4: Yeah it you're gonna see on the next one to add an 11th classroom it would take some
trade offs so fair enough. Well said. Well well received. Okay obviously comments anywhere along the line but at least I wanted to make sure before we go into those options. That was clear. So the next page please. So I'm gonna go through four options. They're all in the same format. Option A, we're calling a swap of the students who are currently at east into the new memorial. We wouldn't change NHS. So you can see the current distribution at the top. We have no classes at Memorial, the current or the new behe. We have one classroom in what we're calling alternate space,
which is currently east. We only have an agreement to be there until 2030. So we don't have an agreement or commitment from the town to be at east longer than 2030. That's a very important piece to understand. And at high school we have five classrooms for 10 total. This option A would create four pre-K classrooms at New Memorial we would simply move them out of the space at east. So we would relieve that swing space but it doesn't solve the problems at NHS having NHS still having five classes or having the class at Benham. So here you can see on the bottom I've listed the
priorities on the left. We maximize MSBA, right? But we don't e ease those high school constraints because we still have the five classrooms there. We've designed our space for all learners. We've maintained the current capacity at 10 classrooms but we haven't managed with this option to reduce it down to two or less sites. So that's the way to read this. Let's go to the next slide for option B, which does move us down to two sites, which would be at the alternate space of east school or alternative six classrooms and then the new memorial. So this, in this class we move all
of those five classrooms outta the high school. We move one out of ben hem and we move them into both the new memorial and alternate space, which would be swing space for the town. So we get to two two site model but we still haven't relieved that east space or the swing space, the alternate space. And that's where you see that negative. So you see the five green check marks, we meet every other piece but we don't have a resolved pre-K location from the town beyond 2030. And that's a challenge and it's not guaranteed whatsoever but it looks good on paper. This we meet every other one Next. Next one please.
So here could be a dream would be a one site memorial where all of our whole preschool program gets added to the new memorial and you see every other one move out. This is ideal because we basically meet everything, we ease the high school, we clear the e space or the alternate space. The issue is we'd be ending up asking for six additional classrooms for which we did not receive a reimbursement from MSPA. We'd pay every dollar one-to-one. Okay. And the last one, so this option is again three sites, but we do solve the high school problem here.
We would move all five classrooms out of the high school. We'd move an additional one to Bennett Hemingway, which we feel we could find a space for that there. We'd add the four new ones to Memorial and we'd have to maintain that east school or swing space of an alternative space, but of which we don't have an agreement. So you see there and there are the negatives. We don't get down to two or less sites and we still have that problem with we don't have a guarantee from the town for using E school or in a different alternative space at this time. And the next slide goes really through a summary slide where you can kind of see it all in one place. And I mean the takeaway here, which is the first bullet,
no option meets all of these priorities. Each will require a clear trade off decision. And I think a very compelling and core decision is how much we wanna prioritize moving the pre-K out of the high school to relieve the needs there. Which I think are very real principal blocker's, very willing to come talk to the committee should you, should you need it. But I think she's issued memos and we've talked before about that the, the other pieces around site consolidation, we're used to it right now our leader goes to three sites. We could we handle that? Yes, I think that's a little bit
of a less of a concern. And then that use of the e-school or alternate space has a time bound constraint for 2030. So that's really the piece Is there, what's the next slide? And here's discussion. I did put one slide in the appendix that we worked on with the town to give a little bit of a history around east space as a swing space. It might be worth. Yeah, just showing which is that we've been using, this is very helpful for me to learn being new here that the swing space there has been used at East for 30 years or so. It's changed what's been in there. It's currently used by the school's lease free for,
for those four pre-K classrooms. We have ASAP offices there and the YMCA is also there. There's potential legi, very serious logistical challenges with converting that space because right now it's classified as park space which has different rules with the legislature, requires legislature signature on that and can take quite a bit of time to move out of that classification. And also the town made a lot of investment for the property for general public use with the playground in the fields in the parking lot. So undoing that could get some attention, you know. And then the current commitment is through June, 2030.
So that's it. So we wanted to open it up for discussion, answer any questions or for the committee to have its own conversation around this. Speaker 1: So thank you for the presentation. The slides are I think quite helpful. Procedurally pleasure of the committee. This is a long, I mean it's a lot of things to think about. So my question for everybody is do we want to ask any top of mind questions now do we wanna absorb this and have it at the next meeting, have like a longer conversation once people have had a chance to actually think about it and formulate questions now that they've heard the presentation, what do we,
what do we have the appetite for tonight? We can do anything. Yeah. Ms. Cor please. Speaker 9: I think it would be helpful to ask a few questions and maybe suggest some additional data points that we'd like to see before considering the options fully. Speaker 1: That's great. Do you have those in mind? Speaker 9: I could start. Yeah, so I think it's a really interesting, really interesting thought exercise to think about how, how much resource the town is putting into preschool now already. And with some of these options that would involve either expanding a build that would require additional
town expenditure to build a building like make memorial larger to have 10 preschool classrooms there versus in the future potentially not having access to the east space or having to modify it. I know it's too early to really talk about money, but I think understanding the scale of that expenditure would be helpful, especially given, you know, the situation we're in as a town. Speaker 4: So we anticipated that question I asked Mr. Gillis to kinda, he's done eight buildings I think if I have it right to kind of give us order of magnitude.
Nothing to like put a PO on, but what we think six classes in the associated, let's say office or overhead space because of all those different ancillary providers, roughly what that might cost over and above the four that are already allocated from MSBA. That's your question. Yeah, yeah. Speaker 16: So estimating at about $914 a square foot for 2027 and about 8,800 square feet for six classrooms and office space. We're right around, we're just right around $8 million
for a permanently designed asset for the next 50 years for the program that would solve all of it under one roof. Not saying that that's definitely gonna happen, but looking at and studying floor plan options, layouts on the, you know, the two most likely sites that we're gonna look at, there could be some other things that come up. Whether or not that fits and works is one of the things that the, the building committee will, will decide. So And could it be, could it be less than that? Yes, because how we work the rest of the program
with the architects, you know, might be able to shave off square footage enough to, to make it five classrooms worth of space or a few less offices. 'cause there's always choices to make, whether it's 900 square feet or 860 square feet a classroom, how big you want other spaces to, to fit in the total allocation to make it work. So I think 8 million would be the kind of the high end and it, you know, could be lower lower than that. Speaker 9: Okay. No, that's, that's very helpful. And then we're the plan, if we needed
to bring in modulars at the high school, we were talking the quote was 1.5 to 2 million for how many classes would that be? Two for just two classrooms. Speaker 4: And it's an estimate, just to be clear, Speaker 9: Not a quote, an estimate. And then those modulars have like a 10 year or so lifespan Speaker 16: Before about 15 if they're new. You know, I got the estimate from the colleague that just did added four classrooms last year and, and they were paying about 750,000 per classroom. So estimate for that to go up a little bit. And then, you know, that, that range comes from exactly
where you're gonna tie in in the building. It's, it's not like you can just pick any old spot on the wall and make it convenient. You know, you, you need, the cost can vary. So there's not a lot of spaces around the perimeter, perimeter of the high school that aren't, that are available to add a classroom if you've driven around the building. Right. So I don't know exactly, you know, what that cost would be without knowing what's behind those walls to, to, to connect. So that's why there's that kind of range there.
Speaker 9: Okay, thank you. That's that's very helpful Speaker 1: Set Dr. Fugman. Speaker 15: Yeah, I have more of, I guess it's not a specific question for tonight, but more of kind where my mind is is wondering too and what would be helpful in future meetings. And it's very much along the lines of the questions that Elise just asked. I was just thinking, I was thinking about it a little bit more broadly and I'll be just very honest. My, as I'm thinking about this new memorial school, I know that how important it is
that we build this memorial school and I, and I'm thinking about how do we make sure we present the case to the town, which will eventually we'll have to vote to approve this school. So I'm already thinking about that vote and how do we plan, how do we bring it forth something to the town that we feel good is that we feel balances between the cost and the need, the physical, the need for physical space. So on one hand we want to make sure we're proposing a plan
that is big enough so that we're accommodating the space that we need to the extent we can. So it is not just about this elementary school, but as Dr Sp said, the the idea of the preschool also actually helps create more space in the high school and, and just in general just helps us to better organize the preschool, which is a really important program for the town. So we wanna make sure we have enough space to do all of that. And at the same time we wanna demonstrate that this is as cheap of a, not cheap,
but that, that we're making, that we're building this as cost effectively as possible. So every step of the way I'm wondering similarly to what at least is asked, what is the cost benefit analysis? So if we spent $8 million in preschool classrooms, additional $8 million in class classroom preschool classrooms, how do we demonstrate that that's the right value of the town? And in fact, it sounds like if I'm doing the math in my head correctly, that based on the numbers that Mr. Gil gave, that it's actually cost effective
to build those preschools now in at Memorial with the town putting additional $8 million in rather than building the modulars, which, you know, might seem like they're cheaper but don't last as long you have to, we'd have to reinvest in them multiple times throughout the next 50 years. So that's just my, my general thinking is how do we demonstrate it's big enough that we're not gonna have the same problem that the high school had last, you know, when we built it, which was that it was too, too small by the time we opened the doors and at the same time that it we're not spending a single
dollar more than was absolutely necessary. So I don't know if that's helpful, but just as we're having this conversation as moving forward, that's just my, my thinking. Speaker 12: Okay, Dr. Welch, as best we can estimate, if a school is approved for 570 students, ballpark, do we know what the square footage that is? Is it 50,000 square feet, 70 500,000 square feet? Speaker 16: It's probably between 90 and a hundred because they're, they're saying that that they'll accept neighborhood pre-K, you know,
should we decide to add it? They don't wanna put it into our requirements, so to speak, but they're amenable. Yeah, I mean like Dr. Smash said like the first two times we applied, we, we didn't get in on the, the third try we put in for a severe existing overcrowding. And we can demonstrate that because our pre-K program wasn't fitting in our elementary schools. Right. We, we had to be at the e school and that's an acceptable, acceptable use. So without,
without there being a pre-K program at the existing memorial, they didn't want to tie us to a certain amount. They wanted us to figure it out and understanding that the modulars at Lilja and Brown weren't gonna last forever. How we would potentially change those zones a little bit. And it's not overly complicated, but it could be a buffer or a change to the, the, the neighborhoods and the streets that are closest to where Memorial is now or where it could be so that everything kind
of flows the way it should. You're Speaker 12: Talking about changing like attendance boundaries? Yes. Yeah, yeah. I gotcha. Right, Speaker 16: Because if, if we have close to the same number of kids, but yet some classrooms are going offline in one building, we need to have space for them in a new building with, with permanent classrooms and that's, those are all things that got us to the five 70 plus. Yeah, we're calling it four classrooms. They could say three, they could say five, they could say four. We're gonna have to make our case to them, but we're gonna do that when we submit our preferred design
after feasibility studies and our preferred schematic to MSBA for approval. Speaker 1: Alright, Speaker 12: Thank you. I yield back. Alright, Speaker 1: Other comments? I have one, two, and I think we should take this up in more detail in, in subsequent meetings, but the, just to just, and correct me if I'm wrong, the 1600 plus students at the high school, the building was built for 1300 whatever and change the 1600 does not include the students who are preschoolers. So it's 16, the, the, the humans that are going
to school in that building. It's the 1600 high school students plus the correct however many preschool students minus the capacity is the overage. Okay. So I think I and, and I want to contemplate it more and I think just to put it in people's heads, it's something else to think about. There might be at least worth discussing a, like a lowercase option E if you will. And that is, and it would require a lot of collaboration of course with our town partners, but to consider the idea it would cost money and we should figure out this as well, if there is a way
to put the money into the Johnson building as my, my, I have a concern about Memorial having all of the classrooms, which is, it's the farthest away from everybody. There, there, there, there are a lot of things to discuss but I wonder if there is a way, and I don't know what it would cost or what it would take to, to make the Johnson building enough a DA compliant to support. I love the program at the high school that allows high school students to work in the preschool. So keeping it close and more central
would would be a big benefit. I, again, I don't still early and I don't know what it would take to make that happen or if it, but I think it would be great to have conversations with the town partners, Mr. Erickson and the town administrator and sort of at least exercise if that is something that could be feasible and worth consideration. I, I don't know, but yeah, please. Speaker 9: Yeah. Yeah, I hear you. And I wonder if another way to incorporate that would just be to add another criteria here that whatever the single preschool location is, is that it's close to the high school physically. Speaker 1: I think that's a good suggestion. I just don't know.
I mean I don't wanna, rather than Speaker 9: Dic rather than maybe having your eye on one specific that's, there might be more Speaker 1: Options out. There's fair enough. Right. And I, and there's gonna be a cost no matter what we do with all of this. And so I think to to Dr. Sen's point and to, to yours Elise, like as our ne at our next conversation to get a little more insight into the various costs, I think would probably be helpful. Right. Speaker 4: Yeah. Just to affirm and we've said it a few times, I, we are definitely committed to our early childhood program and partnership with the pre K no matter where it's located. Just yes, it could be a cost but we're committed to it
and so that would be a factor. Great. Speaker 1: Right. Speaker 12: Yeah. Mr. Chairman, would it be appropriate then to formally request from this committee to the professional staff that option E that you've just described? Speaker 1: Would it be, what would be the formal ask? Speaker 12: The formal ask would be some sense of what the scope and cost would be for a fifth option that accords to the criteria you've just described. Meaning using another town building and making it suitable for Speaker 1: Use. So I, I would say yes and I mean we can make that ask,
but it's not gonna be a vacuum thing. So it's gonna require conversations with town administration. Yeah, understand and, and the select board and ultimately if that's the path. But certainly at this stage, and I don't know what we think is the right procedure to get some more information from Mr. Erickson maybe or you know, his office work together and how we want to do that to, just to put it on the table. I don't, I think we should exercise all options and figure out what's best for everybody and that's gonna include educational priorities and student outcomes and financial considerations and all the things from you.
So please, Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean that's, that's bigger I think than our district administration. I think it's a really huge discussion. There's a group working on the purpose, eventual purpose of that building. You know, we considered it and thought about it. It's not like I appreciate it but it is something we have been considering whether it's there or any other swing space. So I think the idea of alternative space is big and we would need the help of broader than ourselves and the town administrator to kind of deliver something to the school committee. We're interested in helping and being at that table,
but I don't think it's an independent exercise, just town and schools without a lot more instruction. I did hear the request for a cost benefit analysis from some of the things that we're talking about today. It would be helpful to kind of know what you want for, to help this committee make this decision and give us like circling back to the purpose of the meeting, it's really so that we can launch our work from June to October on an educational program that has the committee's desires. 'cause ultimately as we do think about that vote, whatever we're building our program on is
what we think we wanna really deliver to this community. Yeah. And as Dr. Folkman said, this is an incredibly important building for our town. We really do have aging modular units and we have an aging memorial school that does that just isn't fitting our needs. And that's not just us thinking. So that's the MSBA thinking so as well. Speaker 1: Alright, so do we have a good sense of what we would like to explore further the next discussion? Money priorities? Speaker 4: Do you feel like Speaker 1: You know what, yeah, do Yeah, that's
Speaker 16: Sure. I I understand what you're asking. It's a little bit outside the scope of the Memorial school project and I've been in the building enough times. I would need architectural help to come up with an estimate with the number of levels and things that are there. Like I could not, it, it's not, it's not something I can figure out from square footage from the ground up. This is, this would be an kind of a complex addition renovation that's beyond my skillset to come up with a decent price. Speaker 1: I think, I think and correct anybody can correct me if, if I get this wrong, I'm not sure everybody's looking
for specific numbers so much like you gave the ballpark, which I think which is, which is good. And I wonder if we can get a similar ballpark for, we know what the modulars would cost at the high school. Roughly if we, we there's, there's not gonna be a way to predict what would happen in the e-school in, in 2031. Like what that cost might ultimately if, if at all. But like if we, if we could explore what it would take to do work at Johnson to make that building enough ready, what that might cost ballpark. Like I just think ballparks, am I wrong?
Because if one is, if one is $20 million and one is $2 million and they get us the same educational impact and like that's useful information please. Speaker 9: Yeah. I'm wondering though if it might be just too out of scope to do any work on costs at Johnson because we don't have any oversight of that building anymore. That's right. That's correct. It's town building and they do have this whole process going on and we have expressed a need for preschool and afterschool care. So I'm wondering if that would just be not time or resources well spent doing that at this time. I almost feel like this, it maybe we want
to consider this philosophy that if we are gonna have a single preschool, we have certain criteria about where it would be located, what it would be near to, and those things rather than doing anything. Yep. With Johnson is my thought. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell please. Speaker 5: I think option D does what you're talking about without putting the specifics on Johnson. Speaker 1: Can you say option, did you say D And which is for those who are, that's three sites. So that's four classrooms in memorial, two at Benham and four in East. Speaker 5: Oh, I'm sorry, I thought it said zero on east
Speaker 1: Zero additions. Speaker 5: Oh, okay. Speaker 1: Stay stays the same. Okay then. Speaker 5: Is that what you meant? So No, I meant, I meant whatever the, what option is the one that takes the school, the preschools out of East School Speaker 1: A. It's only C. Speaker 5: It's Speaker 1: Only C. Well, A takes 'em out as well. Right. But it leaves them in the high school. Speaker 5: So I think I, so then I think what I'm hearing is that taking preschools out of the eSchool and the high school are, I'm not gonna say that's what I'm hearing, that to me is the priority
where those preschools end up is out of our control. And so I think we need to move ahead, move ahead with a plan that would allow the town to envision that the preschools are no longer at the high school. And the reality is we don't have the preschool at e school in 2030. So whether that ends up with the $8 million that Mr. Gillis quoted tonight into the build, or if the, if the town or this committee decides that's too much at one site, then we would need to look for a different site.
But I wouldn't wanna bog us down into us into a process that is not our own. Speaker 1: Alright. And I think that with the eSchool, it's not a guarantee, right? We, I guess, right. What is, how is the, do you, what does that, how does that work? Speaker 4: The, the eSchool space? It, it's sort of, we have a mutual agreement, right? We don't even have an MOU. We were, we started to draft an MOU, we have a draft, but we didn't conclude it until we kind of move forward with this. But we have a, let's say a gentleman's agreement of 2030. Right. The pieces I, I'm kind of listing as possible financial considerations for us to think through
is what the cost of the mods would be at the high school, which we've given you a rough number, what possibly it could cost to lease space for such a preschool. Right? That's a lease is always an option. What the sixth classroom addition to memorial to make 10 classes at Memorial would cost, which again, you just did it back of the envelope, but kind of putting this all in one place. And we can talk to, with the committee's permission, we can talk to Mr. Erickson and kind of see the appetite around Johnson and see any, if he has any cost estimates. I just, I'm just naming that we would eventually want some kind
of partnership in that conversation. Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I, I think that that's, I think that that's fair and I think everybody's done a good job of stating the problem that we're trying to solve. And so perhaps before we go too far down trying to solve it, let's get more information so that we can make a better educated decision. Did you have something you wanna add? Speaker 12: Just the superintendent said with the committee's permission? I would just encourage conversations. I'm only one member of the committee, but I would encourage conversations with Mr. Erickson with the understanding that the MSBA is a funding mechanism that would support the work at Memorial.
A potential debt exclusion vote is a funding mechanism that would support the work at Memorial. I'm entirely uncertain and I recognize I'm a new member of this committee, but I'm entirely uncertain what the funding mechanism would be for a substantial renovation of East or Johnson or, or any other space. As much as I personally would like to see those spaces used for an educational purpose, and I would just share with my colleagues that creating space at the high school is a priority for me and I will vote accordingly. Trying to ensure long-term stability for preschool program is a priority
for me, and I'll vote accordingly. And I'm concerned about what happens after 2030. Making sure that we have a stable funding mechanism is a priority for me. And making sure that we can put something before the voters that they're likely to support in light of the fact that they have just taken a, a substantial step to support us last year Yeah. Is a priority for me. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 4: Yep. Speaker 1: We've, we've done it. One more agenda item. Speaker 4: Thank you. This one hopefully is quick. Oh, sorry. There's one more. You know, this is really just procedural. We talked about the OPM process related
to the MSBA At our April 6th meeting, we gave a summary of kind of where we were, but for the committee and for the public and really for the future. We wanted to document that process. So we attached a memo. That memo documents the process used by the Memorial School Building Committee. It's co-authored by myself in the building chair committee chair Steven Miler, where we selected the committee selected Ro Hill as the OOPM. We're in the middle of negotiating that right now. It's not a presentation tonight, but a summary of kind of that process at the high level. The memo outlines a very structured procurement process.
We're bound by rules around this M-C-P-P-O, which is what Mr. Gillis has that certification. There are tight rules around how this thing is bid out and the process we use to select such make such a decision. I'm happy to say there was a quorum there when we did the final interview with the three finalists. I think if I didn't go and count them, but I tell you the room was that you couldn't find a place to sit. So I'm, I'm thinking there's far more than a quorum, but I'm gonna safely say there was a quorum there. We have very dedicated members of the MSBC.
We even had non-voting members there, so it was an extremely open process for that. Based on that, RO Hill was identified as the highest ranked firm. This was based on a rubric that is also, was also kind of done in as part of this process and approved by the MSBA as well. So it's a very prescribed process and agreed upon process. So this memo really makes clear that that work was conducted through a publicly posted process with representation across the school committee, town and community. And that updates were provided to this committee along the way. And so we've entered this into the record to make sure there's a very clear record
for the community and for the committee. Speaker 1: Thank you. Any questions? Alright. Thank you for the update. One last order of business. Let's all sit here and stare at each other. Thinking about it. Speaker 4: Move to adjourn. Speaker 1: Second. We will do a roll call. Vote. Dr. Welch. Yes. Ms. Corset? Yes. Mr. Patel? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. And I'm a yes. Six zero. Zero. Thank you. Goodnight everybody.