Speaker 1: Good evening everybody. It is six 30 on the dot, and we're gonna start the, the regularly scheduled school committee meeting. So first we will do roll call. None of the members of the school committee who are missing tonight are online right now, so we will not do for roll call is always individual, but for the rest of the votes, we'll just do show of hands unless Mr. Al is able to join us later and we'll switch. So, roll call Dr. Welch. Present. Dr. Fugman present. Mr. Patel present. And I am present as well.
The two doc, two people who are not doctors are over here. All right. So if those who are able, please rise for the Pledge of Allegiance. In a moment of silence, Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States Speaker 3: And to the republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. Speaker 1: Thank you. We hold that moment of silence to honor all the men and women serving our country. Bless you. All right. Announcements. Any announcements? Dr. Stash? I have one in any other members' announcements? I have one.
So I participate in something called Leadership Metro West, and as part of that, it's a annual cohort. Every year there's new cohort as part of that, each year the cohort comes up with a sort of a service project, a community project. Our, our, a big part of ours this year is a blood drive. So I am just wanted to share with anybody who's listening. We are holding a blood drive on May 11th at the Danforth Museum in Framingham. It's from 8:00 AM until 1:00 PM You can register.
There's a, according to the American Red Cross, there's a severe shortage of, of blood donations as of like January of this year. So you can, if you're interested and able to donate blood, you can do so by going to Red cross blood.org and then you can search for a sponsor. So if you search for Danforth, you will see the event and you can sign up for you have, it's not a walk-in, you have to sign up for a spot in advance and we would really appreciate it. All right. No other announcements. Public speak. Speaker 4: I have one announcement. I'm sorry. Late. Sorry. That's
Speaker 1: Okay. As opposed, is this is different from your you? Is this your update or your just a regular announcement. Speaker 4: Oh, just kidding. It's an update. I will wait. Thank you Matt. Speaker 1: Not a problem. All right. Public speak, nobody's there. Okay. Public speak is a schedule for a period of 15 minutes, minutes. Each speaker will be permitted a maximum of three minutes during which time they can speak about topics within the scope of 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. Anyone for public speak? Seeing none in the room and nobody online.
All right, we'll move on now we will do updates. Ms. Gomes, would you like to go first with me, the meco update? Speaker 4: Sure. Good evening everyone. I just would like to take a moment to just highlight and celebrate some incredible achievements of two of our Meco students. The first student, her name is Deani Williams, and she attends Natick High School. She, her mother shouted her out. Ms. Tania, I hope I'm not butchering her name. She mentioned to me that she's had an outstanding year both academically and athletically.
She's played varsity basketball this season and was named Baystate All Star, which is an incredible accomplishment. She's also reached a personal career high of 31 points in a single game this year, but also beyond athletics. She's maintained her honor roll status every term this year. And so she's, you know, demonstrated her commitment to her excellence and her academics and her mom is just proud to share that she'll also serve as varsity basketball captain in her senior year. So this is this true testament to her leadership,
her character, and her perseverance. And the second student I just wanted to shout out was Madison Con Conna. Conna. I am, I'm probably butchering her last name so I apologize if I am. She's excelling also in multiple areas. She's a member of competitive dance team and has recently earned several awards at their convention this summer. Her team will be traveling to Orlando, Florida to compete at nationals with their award-winning hip hop routine. And academically, Madison continues to shine and she's earned honor roll for the second consecutive term
with all A's and B's. And I forgot to mention that Madison is a Wilson Middle School Stu METCO student. So I just wanted to kind of share this kind of like something new, but I think it's worth highlighting the successes of our students. So thank you so much for taking the time to recognize and celebrate our students tonight. Speaker 1: Thank you. That's an awesome update. We love to hear things like that. Miss Billion, do you have a, any updates? Speaker 5: Unfortunately nothing like that, but Speaker 1: Thank you. Tough act to follow. Yeah, and we do not have a student rep at the meeting tonight. We didn't hear anything, so no update for them.
Okay, so we'll move on to the consent agenda. A consent agenda. Need a motion motion to approve the consent agenda. Second, moved by Dr. Fugman, seconded by Mr. Patel. Any discussion? Seeing none. All in favor? Any opposed? Four zero. The motion passes. And with that we'll move to the superintendent's report. Dr. Stash. Speaker 6: Excellent, thank you. We're gonna go a little bit up out of order. And first I'd like to say good evening.
We're joined tonight by our Goodine, who's the supervisor of land facilities and natural resources, also known as LFNR for the town. And he'll walk the committee through the current status of the Natick High school practice, field work, and help frame key decisions ahead. Welcome, glad to have you here. Speaker 1: Alright, thank you for the introduction. Usually Speaker 6: You get to come to the table, Speaker 1: Come you, come sit with us. This is not the normal format. It's all right. You're probably gonna be here presenting for the next 55 minutes. So we wanted you to have a comfortable seat, right? Oh, I thought the rule was 10 minutes. Oh, perfect. Even better. Awesome. Well thank you for the introduction.
Some of you folks might be wondering or probably asking why is a public works official here in front of the school committee tonight? But some folks may not know that the town of Natick Public Works manages all of the outdoor space at all of Natick public schools. Things that are specific to plants and athletic fields, athletic fields in general over the whole town. The school department properties represent over half of that athletic space in town. So when it comes to what's available, not only for Nat
athletics, but also the general public and youth sports, what is at the Natick Public school properties really represents a really important part of that whole. So tonight I was asked to speak to the Natick High School field design project for our quote practice field. And essentially this is an opportunity for improvement to our underutilized space. So working with the administration in Matt Gillis on contracting with tie and bond, we started with a $200,000 appropriation that was awarded at town meeting
and hired, excuse me, an engineering firm, Ty and Bond at a contract valued at 91,850. And to date, phase one and two are complete. That's a just shy of $22,000 spend and a $22, $2,200 encumbered expense, which time balance says we're up to date. So I'm assuming something must be in process for that. So plus or minus, doing pretty good project status. So like I said, in the previously phase one
and two are complete. That includes a survey documentation, which is really important for wetlands delineation, a draft existing conditions report, again, which is important to a lot of permitting and design and a draft concept. So that's where we stand today. Our next phase of that contract or next phase of the project would be phase three, which is design development. And that's pending roughly valued at $67,000 left on the contract. All right, so what is phase three?
So at a crossroads, really need a decision at some point along the process of what are we gonna build a natural grass, a natural turf grass field, or a synthetic field. There's a question about the site. So the site can be either surface, there's no really remarkable difference in the construction impact to the existing conditions. So the size would be the same. The location's pretty much the same. Site preparation and site work pretty much the same. What you really need to consider is
what are the expectations for performance and what are we constructing? And that's gonna really govern phase three. Within phase three there's some electrical investigation for lighting. A lot of the lighting, existing lighting is, is aged and old and some of the electrical feeds to the property are are old as well. So we'll look to update that infrastructure to accommodate newer style lighting. And then phase three would be, you know, a,
a final design concept. There is a recommendation to hold on a few items because it's very specific to the timeline of the funding. And do we get a project go, no go. One of those things is the Wetlands Protection Act and permitting with the Conservation Commission, their permits and approvals do expire. So the recommendation is don't go too far and have something expire and they have to ask to extend it. So try to avoid that. And then some geotechnical services for field lighting. And it kind of all depends on the whole scope of the design
and how much lighting we would have. I was asked to present a slide or some comparisons between natural grass, natural turf, grass and synthetic fields. This is completely within the lens of a sports turf management lens. So you could look at natural grass versus synthetic, you know, in terms of toxicology, in terms of primary care position, academic lens, you could look at it as all of those things.
So this is, this is specifically to sports turf manager's lens natural grass would rebuilding a field or building a new field or renovating a field would have lower initial capital costs compared to synthetic turf. Generally higher initial capital costs, natural grass plus or minus. It's all gonna depends on the literature and site specific, but would have higher operational costs yearly. And a new natural grass field at the practice field location would likely require
one additional full-time employee just to meet those expectations. And of the sports and that level of sport, synthetic turf, about 5,000 operational costs generally would not expect a full-time employee for that option. Natural grass generally is not an option for the field. The sport of field hockey, I don't know the specifics, but I believe the Massachusetts Inter Interscholastic Athletic Association MIAA does require field hockey at certain levels. At high school sports be played on synthetic fields so that
it, there's a downside for the natural grass piece. For natural grass, there is a difficulty meeting the standard of care for football. And if you watch professional football on tv, they struggle with it. So we certainly struggle with it at the municipal level. One of the benefits of synthetic turf is there's really no remarkable concerns for football in terms of performance of the field. Natural grass does have some performance limitations for lacrosse at the municipal level management. So if you think of lacrosse or lacrosse is fast, fast ball, a lot
of ball bounce is important and you know, linearity of surface is very important. Consistency. So natural grass is a little, a little difficult with lacrosse. Lacrosse is very aggressive on a gold mouth for synthetic turf. It's definitely more consistent in its performance for lacrosse and field hockey at the municipal level management and natural grass goes without saying, definitely has some field availability. Availability issues, excuse me. And season length is really dependent on weather variability.
So an example, you know, March generally was dry and generally warmer than average. Everybody seems to get really angry at March, but we had a really good march and we still barely got the high school sports out on time with their, their schedule date. Synthetic turf does have the benefit of limited weather impacts and extends those shoulder seasons. So you can have an earlier spring, a later fall. And then a good example is like a Kennedy Middle School that offers, you know, some winter opportunities as long
as it's not snow covered. And that's those two go hand in hand. The higher initial capital cost is really where you benefit in increasing the, the shoulder seasons. That could be it. I don't remember. So happy to answer any questions or help with comments. Do you, there's one more slide after this, right? If you, if you, if you want it. Yes. I thought I had one more. There it is. All right. So the future, some future considerations and some additional cost tasks to move forward beyond phase three is some of the permitting, it is near the
100 foot buffer zone for a wetland area in this, this area. And any work does catch a corner of that. So we would be within the a hundred foot buffer area. So have to consider some mitigation options there. Electrical, this would include electrical design once some of the existing infrastructure is analyzed, some construction documents to go out to bid, some bidding services, project management, of course, public engagement and probably a little harder to quantify it at at this point, but is consideration for displacement of the user groups
during construction and cost impacts. So the timeline of the project, the start time of the project and which groups is that gonna displace not just high school or middle school sports, but also youth groups. And that is the final slide, Mr. Chair. Alright, thank you for that presentation. Dr. Bash, do you have anything you wanna add to that before we Speaker 6: Get to the committee? No, just gratitude for your work and kind of the recommendation came out of a letter Mr. Erickson and I had written and moved through school committee. So thanks so much and this is kind of a update
as we said we would do. I think you've made it really clear kind of what the asks are for the committee to consider. Speaker 1: Yeah. And thank you for being here. We'll do questions in a moment. Just for other people's context. Art joined us two weeks, it was two weeks ago at the field, the natural and synthetic turf field study group meeting. So we heard a lot of this stuff at that group too. And so he's been part of that process. All right, so procedurally we take questions and comments from the committee and then if there are people in the audience who would like to ask questions, we can do that as well. So questions from the committee or comments
or thoughts? Dr. Fugman? Speaker 7: Yeah, I know that there's, so thank you for your presentation and specifically for that comparison between artificial and natural turf. As you know, there's a lot of interest in the community about that decision and has, there's been a lot of discussion even in town meeting about it. One of the concerns I heard about artificial turf is specifically the health risks. And I'm wondering, I'm assuming that within art, the bucket of artificial turf, they're probably different kinds. And I'm wondering if there's a, if you have a sense of,
are there, are there certain products that are safer or healthier than others within the category of artificial turf? Speaker 1: So not specifically safer. So everything, whether it's artificial turf, whichever company it may be, it all has risk at some level. What the research that we generally go by most, most appropriately would be the E, some of the EPA studies, this stated that the risk of using athletic field is generally no larger than, you know, risk that you would have doing other things. There are a lot of concerns with synthetic turf
and a lot of new research coming out. There's a lot of research to support it. There's a lot of research against it, so it's very difficult. But I wouldn't say that one specific synthetic turf is more safe than, than another. They each have their risk. Speaker 7: If we can have a follow up question, are there certain steps that the district can take to mitigate the risk once we have it? So the way we maintain it or certain hours of operation or, I, I, I really don't, it's not my field, so I don't really know. But are there certain strateg are there certain things we we can do to mitigate the risk
Speaker 1: Field? I feel Speaker 7: That's not my field. Yeah, I get it. Speaker 1: So it, it is difficult to say. So you know, there's, there's, there's options for different infill. So if there's a concern of a specific risk of crumb rubber or allergies to wood fiber or coconut, you can consider different options for that. The other options to that are plastics or recycled shoes and, and those type of things. And, and all of those infills really just delay it to a, a certain disposal point.
Lost my train of thought a little bit there, but what's that? Another pipe? Yes, you really got, got me good on that one. But in terms of management, you know when you, for construction there are ways to slow down the, the storm water off of the field into a natural area. There's catch basins collections for that you can slow it down through the profile much like a natural grass field would do the same thing. There's concerns about heat in the summertime. So you have to look at when is your greatest use in what season that is. And you can mitigate the risk there
by just not using the field and going somewhere else. You know, some of the research with heat is it also cools very quickly. So it's very elastic I guess in terms of sunlight. So if the sun's out and it's bright, it's very hot. If it is cloudy, it cools down to wicked fast. So all, all things to consider. But there are management things to reduce concerns for risk and exposure, whether that's health in terms of like health body or is that specific to sports medicine risk.
Speaker 8: Okay, thank you. Speaker 1: Any other questions from the committee? Dr. Welch, Speaker 8: You mentioned turf and you were just alluding to this and answering Dr. Ferman's questions, but I'm wondering, as you're just talking about turf, could you help those in the community picture what we're talking about? In other words, in the community now there's a turf field at the call center, there's a turf field at the high school, there's a turf field at Kennedy Middle School. Which of those is the closest comparison point that the community could picture being the turf option for this field that we're talking about now? Speaker 1: So probably the greatest example would be
maybe a hybrid between the field that's at Kenton Middle School and the one that is at the Cole Center in terms of construction. So you wouldn't, we wouldn't be looking to, you know, conversations with athletic director and whatnot, wouldn't be looking to recreate like this what we would call the stadium field, which is the one that's at on West Street right now. So we wouldn't have, you know, big stadium on each side. And Speaker 8: Yes sir, that that refers to the seating. I'm more referring to the substance, the playing surface itself. Speaker 1: So those are all pretty much the same. Okay. In terms of their plastic fiber. Okay.
The only thing that is different is Kenton Middle School is what is called a brockville infill and that is yellow pine chips. Okay. And its performance is a little bit different than crumb rubber. It can get a little bit slippery at times and it does freeze at times depending on the weather conditions. So some extra consideration for use and risk for that. Okay. Speaker 8: Would the chair indulge me in one more question please. You mentioned in one of your slides that there was a difference in the level of availability between a turf field and a grass field.
To what degree are you able to quantify the difference in availability between those two options? Speaker 1: So the national standards for natural grass fields are roughly 600 hours per year with a recommendation of a resting period. Now resting period is broadly defined in the literature of, you know, after five events every other week. Like, and it really all depends on use and, and what you can manage for the expectations and, and the usage of the groups synthetic fields
for yearly hours, probably over a a thousand to 1200 per year. Yeah. Speaker 8: Thank you. Speaker 1: Did Speaker 9: You have Mr. Patel, what's, what's the following up on Mr. Welch's? Dr. Welch's question, what's the field use demand per week right now for that field? Speaker 1: Yeah, so for the practice field that demand and use is lower because it's just not as good. It just doesn't offer what we need it to offer.
But an example on, say the varsity grass field, which is behind the stadium and both the stadium, what we can measure, there's a lot of folks that use the fields that we're not sure of, but what we can measure, we're anywhere between 1200 to 1450 per year on the natural grass field. And that is generally three times the national standard for, for use. Speaker 9: And is there any disposal cost associated with it? What like, I, I don't know what the tariffs, what's the lifespan and like if you wanna get rid of it,
does it, does it have a cost? Speaker 1: Yeah, so that cost, so example would be the stadium field was recently recarpeted and that disposal cost is, is is part of the contract cost for that. The life expectancy of synthetic turf is depending on use and depending on, you know, how well you care for it could be as low as eight years and as many as 12 years. I, so we got from 2011 to about 2020 of the outta years for the synthetic field, grass fields are probably seven or eight years.
You need to start thinking about a major renovation, not in terms of like digging up the whole field and sub grade and all that other stuff, but, you know, re-level and linearity and reseeding and, and rest to let it regrow and rejuvenate. Speaker 9: Thank you. And can, is it possible to build, like in town, is there a space to build two grass fields instead of one turf? Speaker 1: Good question. So I think when we met with the, the synthetic versus natural grass committee, you know, if you look at a map, if you look on the web GIS
and you start clicking on parcels and properties, there's not a lot of open space left to build synthetic fields. And I think that's really, or not just athletic fields in general, that's really got us in the crunch that we are in as a community is the demand is much greater than what the space can outdoor space can provide. A good example of that is native KU soccer uses the property EL bank and that is, that is huge and still doesn't meet some of the demands for, for their group. So I just, I don't know where it would go. Okay.
Speaker 9: Sorry, two more questions Speaker 1: Before you do that. Okay. Any other, so the norm for people watching at home, we have, we do two questions or comments each, we make sure everybody else has a, if there's no one else that has a comment, you're free to have another. Speaker 9: Thank you. Sorry, this is just for my education. Where's field hockey currently played at in Natick if it's not app? Oh, it's the fields that we have, right? The turf ones, Speaker 1: Correct. Yeah. So field hockey is, they'll practice at the Cole Center when the Memorial Stadium is busy with other sports football
or track and field. Their games are played on the stadium field on West Street. Okay, thank you. But that, it conflicts with all, all of all the sports if, if you've ever been there. It's crazy at night. So. Yeah. Speaker 9: Oh, and the last one, considering the town has a moratorium on the turf fields, how soon do you, does the town need to make this decision for I guess between natural turf and natural or turf? I mean Speaker 1: That might not be a question for you unless you can answer it.
Can you answer that? I are you able to answer that? I know you can. I can answer or I can provide some information that might help come to an answer. Does that work? Sure. So there is a $0 appropriation for a new field and I do not know of one on the capital schedule. Both, you know, combination town and school. All set. Yeah. Thank you. All right. One comment for me, we'll go to the public, I just, because I don't wanna take up too much of your time. I would encourage people, because we had a conversation a couple weeks ago that was a bit longer.
The report that the natural and synthetic turf field study group will be putting together will be presented at town meeting and we'll have a lot of this information that art has shared plus more including a lot of information about maintenance, ongoing maintenance specifically of both types of fields. So I would encourage people who are listening or watching this meeting to also tune into that if this is a topic that you're interested in before you go comments, questions from the public, Dr. McKenzie, I know you or anybody online. Okay.
Speaker 3: Donna McKenzie town meeting member just sworn in as finance committee member. And I am also the citizen petitioner who successfully presented the advisory moratorium on artificial turf fields. And I have a couple questions, Mr. Through the chair. Isn't it the case that Mr. Goodine is really an expert in natural grass fields and that we are actually pretty blessed to have him in this capacity that other municipalities look to him for guidance on natural grass fields
and with one more person on the staff of DPW can do this. By the way, DPW is my favorite department. You saved the sugar maple that my dad planted in front of my house. You said it didn't have to be taken down and when my dad was in a wheelchair a couple times you came and you picked up leaves so that he wouldn't slip getting into a van, going to a medical appointment. So you do amazing work. But I, am I correct that you are an expert in natural turf, right? Speaker 1: You're comfortable answering that about yourself? What's that? You can answer that about yourself I'm sure
Speaker 3: If you don't often get that chance. Speaker 1: Yeah, so I, I do have an associate's degree in turfgrass management, excuse me, a plant and soil science degree, bachelor's degree from University of Amherst and A MBA from Bentley University. Been in the business in the professional business for over 25 years. I've served currently on the, as president of the New England, we just changed her name, new England Sports Turf Management Association and also served as president of the Massachusetts Tree Wardens and Foresters Association.
So that's a yes. Speaker 3: That's a great, yes, thank you. And I'm wondering, are we looking at the things that like Yale University does with the way they mow the grass of natural fields in order to extend its playable hours? It's much more than 600 hours and the type of grass that's used on those field. And are we looking at everything possible to do natural grass fields? And I have another question that has to do Speaker 1: Dr. McKinley, hold on. Sorry. Can we let him answer the first Okay of those? Yep, go ahead. Yeah, so we follow best management practices on all
of our natural grass fields. University of Connecticut recently put out a, a new brochure brochure. It's about an inch thick on best practices for natural grass fields in terms of selecting turf grass species. We work with a a couple of vendors that select some of the best seed that's grown in the world. It's all grown in Oregon. My professor at University of Amherst was the leader in the NEP data, which is the National Turf Grass Evaluation Program where he looked at every single blade of grass
and said this one's better than that one. Right? And this one should go to athletics and all that type of stuff. So that technology and that research is all there and we follow that closely. Speaker 3: That's great. And I understand we still have our pilot natural grass field at Memorial School and it's still being taken care of as a natural grass field. I don't wanna waste any more questions on this though. And I do wanna say the ton of Wellesley in 2007 since it began using artificial turf, never allowed crumb rubber. You might know that crumb rubber is filled with carcinogenic
materials, it has microplastics, it has lead, the ton of Wellesley has never used it in its infill. And we have at least two of our fields and the one to be replaced at coal is full of crumb rubber. And Ms. Vickers very poignantly brings socks that her children wear that are filled with that crumb rubber that comes off on them. And I just urge, as you all consider this to think about that and it's, it's tempting
to go cheap when you do this, but our children's health is at stake in this and the outcome is still there on the effect of long-term health. I had three people in my neighborhood die of cancer in one this past year and it's very awful when that happens. And the jury is still out on the long-term impact of these kind of plastic fields. So I would ask you to consider it that there's also hybrid fields. You can weave natural grass with artificial turf, 10% artificial turf and that will also extend the playing ours.
I just would urge all of you as you think about this, to be creative, be creative as possible. Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you Dr. McKenzie. And just I, Ms. Vickers, come on up. And a reminder to everybody also watching this is not the end of a discussion, we are not voting on anything tonight or near that. So there'll be continued conversations and we always encourage people to participate. Ms. Bickers, Speaker 10: Thank you very much. So if it's okay through you, Mr. Chair, these questions I believe are for Mr. Goodine. Speaker 1: They're not for me. Speaker 10: Thank you for being here tonight.
I was at the turf study meeting when you presented and I have a question that I didn't, I just feel like it would be great if I could have a little more clarification in understanding the chart where you're saying that it will take one extra person in addition to 25 to $30,000 a year. So I'm trying to understand if that means that one grass natural grass field, 'cause I understand turf stands for both we call natural grass and artificial gra turf turf. So I'll try to be clear, my understanding is
that from this, you are saying that one natural grass field will actually require one FTE of 40 hours a week every week, all year long for one field. And is that how much we spend on time? We spend on every natural grass field that we have in town and does every natural grass field that we have in town actually cost us 25 to $30,000 a year each to maintain And how, Speaker 1: Excuse me. Excuse me, Ms. Bickers? Yep. I'd like to do one question at a time.
Yep, sure. So we can, and we'll keep it as quickly, quick as we can. 'cause you covered some of this, but go ahead. I just don't want people to get lost in three or four questions. Yeah, sure. So the national average and, and we're pretty close to that for the care of natural grass fields, it is about $10,000 per acre and most fields are about two acres. And for the intent of this field to have sports like football, we would definitely have a lot more work than we would on say the varsity field, which is just soccer. So considering filling divots, trying to keep the linearity
from football, the hash mark area and the wear area and the wear pattern of football is very difficult in the fall time with reduced sunlight and a lot more paint. So we benefit now that football is played on the synthetic field, which we don't paint the football lines. So that's where that extra labor would come in into play a Speaker 10: Full eight hours a day, five days a week, all year long to maintain one field. Or would that, the reason, what I'm trying to get at is I don't think that actually one person is gonna be maintaining
that field eight hours a day, five days a week. And that perhaps this person is also going to do other things and that having an actual additional person on DPW wouldn't be a bad thing. Speaker 1: Yeah. So the maintenance of, if, if this field were to be constructed in natural grass, it will not be maintained by the 11 people that we have. And it's gonna put us over a capacity. So whether it's half FDVD, one FTE, I mean to be determined, there'd definitely be synergies, you know,
for that person at other times. But it, during the season, definitely, probably most of the day. All right. You have one more or are you done? Nope. Can we make 'em quick? Sure. Speaker 10: Thank you. I wanna make sure that as we move forward in this process, this is a general request that we actually ask every single team stakeholder because I know that cross country and track and field have some interests in being able to use that space as well. And so I feel like the design always talks about specific
sports instead of all of the stakeholders. So I would really like to make sure moving forward that we have asked all of the team stakeholders to make sure that everybody is being considered so that the, the whatever happens in that field can be utilized by more than just football, if that makes sense. And then they have permits already been pulled from con com? Speaker 1: No, no. All that stuff is on hold, on hold. We're pretty much in a concept piece and, and design for that. So the, the ask from the other groups
and participation is, is still to come. Okay. Speaker 10: Thank you very much for Speaker 1: The time. Thank you. Is Ms Lather still online? Yes, Ms. Flas, welcome back. Are you with us? She Hello? Hi, Speaker 11: Kate Lathers precinct date, I don't, I don't know if I'm misheard. Did I hear you say that field hockey requires playing on a turf field? Speaker 1: So the athletic director could answer that best, but I've been told that field hockey at the senior varsity level is required to play on a synthetic field.
Speaker 11: Okay. 'cause that's not what I've, I have a field hockey player, it's not what I've read in the rules. So I just kinda curious because I just wanna reiterate the making sure that we hear in from all of the stakeholders and make sure we have really good information about the requirements. 'cause I do sometimes worry that the availability of better fields gets biased towards some specific sports and, you know, fields that are, I wanted to just make sure there's equity baked into this process and that we have really unbiased complete information about the cost and benefits. I'm personally on the fence on which way I would lean,
but I do worry that sometimes these conversations are biased towards a particular turf outcome and I just want to have all the information. Thank you. Speaker 1: Thank you Ms. Bill. And this is an opportunity again to, to reiterate the report that is gonna come out of the study group that I am the school committee representative on is by design intended to be as unbiased as possible to cover all different, we have every week we're meeting with different stakeholders and collecting feedback from everybody to put together a report that will not make a recommendation, one type of field or the other. It will just be informative
and Art graciously spent a lot of time with us as one of the stakeholders. All right. Without any other questions, thank you for coming. Appreciate your time and we will move on. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Thank you so much, Dr. Bash, you've got the floor? Speaker 6: I do. Okay. I'm gonna go in order and we'll move from there to, there's an item D then a, we can ignore the D and just look at a, if they're duplicate the update on strengthening tier one academics. And those of you familiar with our bridge plan,
we'll know this is part of our focus area number three, which focuses on academics. So based on my goals and many people in our district schools, we wanna kind of give you an update on where we are. So I think I'm welcoming director of curriculum and instruction, Mr. Chris Cook, who will be presenting. And Jody Cohen, principal of Kennedy Middle School. Welcome. Thank you. I'm super excited about what this work is. So no, no wise classing over here. Super excited to hear. Welcome. Speaker 12: Thank you. Yeah, it's been a, a highlight
of this year so far for me as well. So thank you. And thank you Jody, for, for joining me in this presentation. We can fire up the full year 26 bridge plan and objective number three. Instructional excellence and support systems certainly falls in line with the work we've been doing this year. With our learning walks around formative assessment, the central office team expanded with three new roles this year. And so a lot of our work at the beginning of the year in the learning walk process was to calibrate with the new central office team and to develop a tool
and protocols for the learning walks as a team and throughout the district. That was really the, the main focus out of the gates. And ultimately to gather district-wide data to inform our decision making moving into next school year. And just to dig a little deeper into those strategic objectives for this year, we highlighted strategic objective or district priority number three deep in tier one instruction by strengthening the use of formative assessment during teaching. And we used that formative assessment umbrella rather broadly in terms of the data collection,
qualitative and quantitative. That really needs to be aligned to learning targets that are standards based and student friendly and will ultimately lead to differentiating based on student needs. So this purpose is at the, is in the protocol. So if you, the document in the appendix, the first tab has this purpose written at the top. It was shared across the district. So in the natick public schools learning walks are collaborative non-evaluative observations focused on student learning and instructional practice
grounded in research-based practices. This process uses evidence gathered through observing student work and interactions to inform professional learning, strengthen coaching and support continuous educator growth. So our, our mission at the beginning was definitely to make teachers comfortable with these teams coming through their, their classrooms. You know, when you have central office and you're building administrators walking in, in groups of three or four depending on, on the team sizes, we made sure through our communication that this was a non-evaluative process. And the learning was both for us and them.
And so far we've had a lot of success. Every school in the district has participated from pre-K through the high school. We're hitting that 20 learning walk mark and 180 plus classroom visits. And when you do the math, which took me a minute, that's roughly 40 hours of coordinated time in the schools with the executive instructional leadership team. Our learning walk teams have expanded to include the vice principals, special education administrators, department heads and coaches, which Ms. Cohen will talk about in a couple of minutes. Our, our teachers opened their doors, took risks,
and like I said before, the district learned together, especially at the central office level as we got to know one another. And it's been evident as the year has gone on that those school improvement plans that were focused on formative assessment are, are showing up in our learning walk data. And we see the learning objectives and the data collection in those walks. And, and that is evidence that those school improvement plans and district priorities are in line. And just in terms of the logistics, 'cause I know there's a lot of different terms for classroom visits, whether it's walkthroughs,
observations, learning walks and that sort of thing. What we did in, in, when we delineated what learning walks meant for us, it was a team of educators going in for no more than 10 minutes. We would take low inference notes and we have a look for tool, which you can see in that doc in the appendix as well, that we would reference for strengths and opportunities based on those low inference notes. So if Jody and I were on a team with Sue, we'd go in for 10 minutes, we'd take our low inference notes individually, we'd debrief in the hallway for five minutes
and then go on to our next visit. And then after our three visits, the whole group would get together with everyone that had had gone out to classrooms and we would debrief there and share our observations and reflect on the process. Like I mentioned before, we designed our own look for tool so that we could have our own natick way of conducting our learning walks. And for the biggest resources that we used, our Katie Novak's Universal Design for Learning Look fors, the Center for Applied Special Technology, familiarly, known
as cast, is kind of the birthplace for UDL. We used the culturally responsive instruction observation protocol and the new teacher project, which has its own rubric for doing classroom visits. So again, you can see that in tab four of the Appendix doc. And there were hours spent in EILT from version one to the version that we have now and the feedback from, from our walks that, that inform the current iteration. So like I said, round one, the calibration
with central office was one of the biggest priorities and testing the tool. So we wanted to make sure that it was sensitive to what we were looking for and we wanted to improve the specificity of it as, as we went along. And we gathered feedback from the building level teams in terms of how the process went, how the tool worked, and really wanted to, to hone in on, on the best version of the tool and the process. In round two, we expanded the learning walk teams that depended on, you know, which building in terms of how
that was organically growing to vice principals and special ed administrators and coaches eventually. And the look fors evolved in that process as well. And round two is where we could really start to see those emerging patterns across the district that would inform our practice. And in round three, which we're in now, we are continuing to expand those teams and evolve in terms of the protocols and the data collection and starting to paint a picture for our instructional focus for next year. And this is where Jodi can share her experience in this
whole three round process. 'cause her building has conducted all three at this point. Speaker 13: Yeah, thank you. Thank you. This process has been really fabulous for Kennedy. When we did round one, it was me and the ELT team together. And the last round that we just had included myself, my upper school vice principal, my lower school vice principal, the special ed administrator, the multilingual lingual language department head, the science department head, the math department head, and two instructional coaches. It was a large group and exciting at the same time.
At Kennedy, we have been through 33 classrooms, which is about almost 60% of the classrooms at Kennedy. So we've seen a broad spectrum of, of different types of classes and a a a large group of teachers everywhere we have gone, we have been learning together with the instructional leadership team and with my own team. Anyone who knows me as a leader, this being my fifth year, I would say collaboration is probably the backbone of everything that I do. And it really meant a lot to me to bring this team in.
At this point it's a broader viewpoint and it's informative for our team and for our school. So we've been learning together in conjunction with the leadership team and starting the conversations about where we are and where we wanna go. So all along, I just need to say that we have seen absolutely excellent educators who are passionate about our kids here in Natick, and I'm very appreciative of how welcoming, welcoming they have been, how much they've leaned into feedback and just really happy
to have us go into the classroom. That's not a change actually. They continue to impress me every day. I, so my hope going from here going forward is that we will collectively as a school leadership team work to give Kennedy the very best academic excellence that we can and take the information that we've learned through this and going forward to make Kennedy even stronger. Speaker 12: Awesome. So in terms of the goals for learning walks, at the start of the year,
we had originally hoped to conduct two rounds, and we've been able to extend that from two to three rounds. We're partway through round three, as I mentioned. And the evolution of the tool and the protocols themselves have helped us focus in on more granular data collection, especially in the way that we're conducting our debriefs as a team at the end. And through a Google form process, we're able to dig deep into those strengths and opportunities in that look for tool to help us shape
what we will focus on in the full year of 20 26, 27. And so looking at next year, we plan on continuing to expand those learning walk teams, which again, is happening organically as as principals invite more and more educators to the table. And we would love to see teachers included in the not too distant future. And our Spring Institute, which is a series of professional development sessions with leadership throughout the district, will in part be informed by the learning walk data
that we're collecting now and our communities of practice for the 26 27 school year. We'll also be informed by the data that we collect here, and that will be our spring institute into the summer work that really helps to launch that roadmap. And our instructional leadership teams across the district at each building are continuing to grow and develop based on this process and the conversations that we get to have as we conduct our learning walks. Speaker 1: All set. Would you like to add anything Dr. Bash? No, no. All questions from the committee, Dr. Fuchs.
Speaker 7: So I have a couple of comments and a question at the end related to my comments. So I'm excited about this work. One specific reason I'm excited, and I'm wondering to what extent this, I, I think this is part of your thinking too, but one of the things I've always admired about Natick is that there's so much, so many pockets of excellence. Of excellence, instructional practices and learning walks can be an excellent way of skilling up pockets of excellence. When you walk, walk into a classroom as, as your purpose says, it's not about evaluating your teachers, it's about understanding
how instructional practices are put in place. Sometimes it could be to improve them and sometimes it can be to under better understand them because they're successful, because, you know, so this is a great way to not only improve the teachers, the instructional practices that you observe, but also to pick up on the right, on the excellence and scale up. So that's one of the things I'm, and this is the best way of doing that, scaling up excellent instruction, is through wearing walks. So that, that's why I'm excited about it. I, I, I must say the the slide that I was most excited about is the last one, which, not this one, the outlook in 27. You're, I know you're saying that the,
the groundwork this year, I'm really excited to have teachers come into the observations because that allows for great learning between teachers. So, and, and it, and also I think drives better, the mess not better, but it, it, it further drives the message that this is not evaluative. You know, when the superintendent walks into a, a classroom, no offense, it's the superintendent walk into a classroom, you, you know, that's very different than when the classroom, when a colleague comes into the classroom and observes. So I think that conversation, I think those conversations will be very helpful. And then also seeing the second and third and fourth slides, bullets,
how those learning walks are actually gonna be infor what is the flow of information into improving practices or into just scaling up good practices. It's not just about improving. So that, that's what I'm especially excited about. And one thing, you know, I'm sure this will be done anyway, but like, I'd love to hear a year from now, this is a process and our science a process, but I'd love to hear what were some changes or what were some great practices that were discovered through these learning walks that we are now expanding on? My, my question, I did promise there was gonna be a question there in that is, and this might be better
and well actually both of you probably did, went on these walks. What, how has that been? How have they been received by teachers? Are teachers excited? Are teachers, I'm sure there's a range of emotions we all do, we all have, you know, but I'm just curious how is that going? Do you feel that the purpose of this learning walks are well received and and understood by educators? Speaker 12: Do you wanna share from Kennedy's perspective? Speaker 13: Yeah, many of my teachers have just responded with, thank you for coming. When I send out an, an email saying, Hey, we're gonna come by your room. The, the response has always been great, can't wait.
It's really a welcoming environment and I feel like the educators are proud of the work that they're doing and also wanna lean in where they can do better for kids. Always at Kennedy. Speaker 12: Yeah. And in a broader sense, you know, sometimes when the email goes out, thanking them for allowing us to, to visit and, and see what's going on in their classroom. Sometimes there's questions or deeper explanation in terms of their practice. By and large it's been positive and, and very welcoming. And especially once a few visits got underway
and there wasn't any sense of an evaluative nature, nothing was showing up in TeachPoint or the evaluation system. And a lot of it was basically gratitude and, and positive feedback from those who visited classrooms. Speaker 7: Great. Thank you. Thank you so much for this. Speaker 13: Yeah. Today I just wanna tell you that one of my teachers wrote me and said, thank you so much for the feedback, I just wanna be the best teacher I can be. So this Speaker 1: Is, put that on the poster. Yeah, Speaker 7: That's awesome. That was, that's really great. Yeah. Speaker 1: Other questions, comments from the committee? No, so one from me and Dr.
Fugman articulated it better than I could, but I saw just a comment. We talk or I've had plenty of conversations about students feeling a strong psychological safety, right? They perform better when people feel safe. And it seems clear that the teachers feel that way too. You getting feedback is hard sometimes. Yeah. Even if it's good feedback, you're nervous, what's it gonna be? And the, and that, that the, these learning walks have been welcomed is a really good indication of people feeling safe in the workspace.
And that's I think really important. So good work. I look similar to Dr. Foxman. Sure. All of us look forward to continuing to get updates on all this. All right. So thank you. Yeah, Speaker 6: You're welcome. Speaker 12: Thank you. Speaker 6: Thank you. Okay, moving right along. I sticking with teaching and learning each year around this time you're, I think you're very familiar because we gave a recent update about where we were with the curriculum audit this year, the literacy audit that's not on the table for today. What we wanted to do is give a bit of a window out in the next several years about
where we're headed with our curriculum audit process, which we do in a cyclical nature. So who's doing this one? Chris Cook back on again. Speaker 12: Sure. And this was in a, in the memo that we submitted basically our, our K to four pilot program for the literacy curriculum is wrapping up and the five to eight pilot program is as well. So those decisions will be presented at the May 18th school committee meeting. The high school English department presented their findings in February and we're working with the department
of elementary and secondary Ed to gather feedback on that process and vet resources for outside consultants to shape next steps. That process is going to extend into next year. We did mention that briefly at the last update around the literacy curriculum process. So in terms of the timelines in the coming years, so we have math that is entering year four of implementation. The health and wellness curriculum is entering year three, the English department we just mentioned. And we are looking at five to eight middle school science
for next year to begin an evaluation process that may expand to the high school as well depending on the capacity there. And then we have social studies and music coming up in the full year 28, followed by fine and performing arts and world language in 29. And then library media technology in the 29 30 school year. So this is to help get us back into that continuous cycle of review after the disruptions due to the pandemic. And depending on how these various processes go,
we may make adjustments and of course if there are any changes to state frameworks that accelerate other, you know, a department higher up on the list, then we'll take that into consideration. Speaker 1: All set? Yeah. Great. Any questions? Anything to add? Speaker 14: I would just add that you'll see on this that next year we're talking about science at the middle school and then potentially moving up to the high school. We did not mention elementary school. We were very thoughtful in that process. They are just in year three of a very heavy lift of
math curriculum and then moving into a very heavy lift of a new literacy curriculum that takes a lot of work for both of those. We, we need to give them the time and the space to put their energies into learning these two new curriculums, implementing them well and not adding one more thing onto their plates. And that's what we're gonna do right now so that they can do that well and really focus on on
what they need before we ask them to add another thing onto their plates. I also wanna go back to the conversation about the high school literacy review. We had an exceptional meeting with the director of literacy and humanities at dsi and felt that having an outside consultant come in and work with us in reviewing the curriculum was really the best next step for us. And that's not something that we can do quickly
because we really need to be thoughtful and take our time to do that well. And so that's why we're gonna move that into next year. Speaker 7: Great. Could I ask a quick question? 'cause I'm, I'm looking at the future audits. Is an audit always accompanied by new curriculum or is that, 'cause the past two have been, and I'm just curious, when we're thinking about science social studies, it doesn't mean we're necessarily gonna get new curricula, right? Speaker 14: It doesn't necessarily mean that we're going to, for example, we did the health and wellness and we did not adopt a new curriculum.
It really depends on what our student performance looks like. It also depends on what's available for high quality instruction materials. It's very possible that when we look at, for example, the middle school science, that we will want to adopt a new curriculum that's high quality instructional materials because that is evidence-based research backed. It's the best thing for kids. I believe that our middle school science department head is wanting to do that. I, I'm in agreement. I believe Chris is, is possibly,
I don't wanna speak for him in agreement with that. And there's some really strong curriculums out there. I again remind not just the committee, but at everyone out there who's listening that there's no unicorn curriculum. There are strong horses and everything has to have modifications to it. Desi will tell you that. But there are, when we look at art or music, there's no curriculum to purchase.
But there are ways that we can audit our curriculum to make sure that it is aligned to the standards and that it is meeting the needs of our students. And DESI has been great in working with us on how we do that and how we do it well. But where there are places that we can purchase high quality instructional materials that are evidence-based and research-backed, we want to do that. Speaker 7: And thank you. And I noticed that specifically science, that is the purpose. Five to eight is curriculum audit, whereas the other ones are review. So that might be broader than, yeah, that makes sense.
Thanks. Speaker 1: Great. All right, moving on. Speaker 6: Okay, there's one more item under my report. As we were, we did a memo, I guess earlier in the winter with the calendar, which is school committee approved. And we decided at that time to follow up and provide a non-binding calendar recommendation for the next school year. And so Ms. Baloni is ready with that today. Speaker 14: So the last time we did a calendar, I gave you four options. I believe the calendar for next year for the 26 27 school year didn't provide us based on the way
the calendar falls. None of them were great options because of when Labor Day falls, how the holidays fall. And if we started, when we typically do right before Labor Day, it was going to push us very late into June. But the calendar for 27, 28 looks much more promising. So I gave you two options. The first one, draft a follows what we have, what you have voted for 26 27, which is starting the week before, the week before Labor Day, which
you've received some positive feedback on, but also some negative feedback on draft B is more in line with what we typically do starting students starting the Wednesday before Labor Day. It then the way holidays fall, the last day of school would be June 14th, which is a very reasonable end day with giving us five snow days, pushing us to June 22nd. It goes to June 22nd because of Juneteenth,
which again is still a very reasonable last day of school. Speaker 1: So why don't we chat for a second about procedurally how we, this is a, for those listening, this is a lot Earlier, we're talking about 2027 and 2028. Procedurally, how do we want to, at some point we'll vote for this, but it won't be tonight. What are your thoughts? Speaker 6: So it's, I appreciate the question and the discussion. What we've learned is every once in a while something pops up where we're like, ah, if we just had the calendar earlier. So a lot of times we hear from the high school principal
who's trying to book venues for prom for example. It's very important 'cause kids are fundraising or earning money for that and they, we can get a cheaper, you know, venue when we put the money down earlier, that's one thing. But we've recently heard kind of about camps. Right now camps start to put their prices out in, in advertising November for kids. And our calendar comes out after January. And so that's troublesome because you know, right now, with our school year very crunched up that last week when people have pretty much committed to having camps, meaning it can camp providers,
it's gonna cost overtime for us to be running that. So I think it's, it also behooves us to do this financially, to better lock in and kind of know what we're handling and, and early messaging to everyone so that we can serve our families with camps that run all the way through. But that also, we don't lose money on them. And so we called it non-binding, in which case, you know, whatever vote would be made today I think would be an initial vote. And, and then we of course have the policy that revisits that formally next winter. But I think we should be feel pretty solid about the vote that we make because I do think some decisions will be
made in November around it. So, Speaker 1: So does it, oh yeah, please. Sorry. Speaker 14: I, I believe that what we had agreed upon, or what the committee had agreed upon was that in November you would vote for the following school year as well as a non-binding for the second school year. So every November you would have two. So this is to get us caught up. So I believe that what you would, Speaker 1: I know what you're gonna say Speaker 14: Do is to agree to one of these as non-binding. So that you formally voted in November
as well as in November. I will come to you with the 28 29 calendar to agree to a non-binding for that. That Speaker 1: Makes a Speaker 6: Lot of sense. Just to add on, thanks for that recollection. That pulls our calendar up from January to November and that's what makes it kind of like, makes sense. So this is, yeah, you might not even need to vote on it, but because you'll vote on it formally in November, that's what you're saying. Speaker 1: So pleasure of the committee. I, I think if I'm just to synthesize that, not tonight, but before long we should vote on this, on one
of these options as a draft to catch us up. And then in November, just to repeat, we would vote to make it from draft to final and then vote a draft for 28 29. Does anybody disagree? Dr. Fugman disagrees. He always Speaker 7: Disagrees. No, I don't disagree. I think it's a great idea. I'm assuming you we're all probably thinking the same thing. And this will probably would've been done without me saying it, but I'm just a little bit nervous about the idea of having a draft calendar out there and people making plans based on draft.
So I'm wondering, you know, I'm assuming we would put in big letters like draft all over it and maybe with a brief explanation of that, just because, you know, one of the things we learned this year is just, there's always misunderstandings. You know, it's always hard to get the word out. So that was just the one thing that made me a little bit nervous about the idea of a draft calendar. The other thought I have slash question is, do we want, and this could be offline, but do we wanna brainstorm ideas of engaging the community? So whether it's one of your newsletters or, or some way once we have the draft to say, here's the draft,
here's what the committee currently has on the table and we'll vote on November. What do people think? Not, I don't wanna, I personally, I was thinking the town uses flash vote, for example. And the problem with flash vote is that it gets you, it's a very close end. Well, it is, it is close ended, not very close ended, it's close ended. So you don't get people's comments. Thought exchange may be better because I'm, I'm personally to vote on a calendar. I'm interested less in the percent people who like A versus B and more about getting people's thoughts about how does A versus B impact them.
Like the kind of thing, you know, we know about camps, but are there other things that we, we haven't thought about? Like what are all the considerations we want? So it'd be nice to be able to collect that so we're not just sitting on a draft and waiting for November, but we're actually like actively engaging. And that's something that committee can take on. Or if you want, you know, we can figure that out. But I'm just wanna make sure A, we have draft delivered and B, that we're actively eliciting feedback so that there's actually something that we're voting, that we're voting in November for something that we actually are well informed about. Speaker 1: So I think it would make sense
to have on an agenda soon when the whole committee is here, a discussion about this process so that everybody is on board with it. We can do that soon and then decide at that discussion when we wanna vote for the draft and if it should be in a newsletter with big billboard lights and a disclaimer that everybody has to sign off on in the timeline because I, I think that's, I mean, it will feed nicely into the next agenda item as well. Any other comments? Speaker 6: Yeah, if I can add that sounds like a great plan. I agree with the engagement. I think it needs to be framed kind of as we're not voting
for one or the other, or you'll experience what I do on a snow day and that won't be fun. Nobody, you're gonna have half the people happy and half the people not. That's just a fact. So I think I like how you're framing it, like pulling in kind of what we might not have thought about so that the committee can consider weighing those items too. I'd also heavily recommend that in addition to, you know, constituents of parents that we are absolutely connecting with the union on opinion and I'm, you know, that's implicit in what you were saying and that I'll remind the committee that after our last meeting when we did vote the calendar,
we sent a memo, which we're happy to resend where we have quite really that offering, which Sue remembered better than I did in terms of the dates and kind of our procedure that we were recommending, which it sounds like you guys wanna do. So we'll be happy to reshare that. Speaker 1: Great. Any other comments, questions, thoughts? All right, moving on. Is it me now? Speaker 6: Your turn. Wow. Speaker 1: All right, so Shai engagement update. Do we should, should we wait for the next meeting when Mr. Bruell is here? Is she was the three of us? Or do you wanna what do we think?
Speaker 6: We Speaker 1: Can wait probably. Okay, so we're gonna wait and do that. The, the Dr. Fugman and Mr. Brunell and I were discussing that, where we were on that topic. And so we'll wait until she's here. Oh, the next thing's me too, but for real. All right, so the, I'm gonna do B and c, the tech budget agreements and the tech quarterly update and proposed FY 27 budget as one thing in the materials are links to, to this information. And so I just wanted, I figured I would share the high level
summary, but you can certainly read all of that. We have not voted the tech budget yet. That's gonna happen next month, May 8th actually at the May 8th meeting. But the proposed budget is a 14.5% increase over last year. That is some of the factors associated with that are an increased enrollment, 3.4% an increase in salaries, that's approximately just a bit over a million dollars in salaries. 20.6, almost 21% increase in fringe benefits. They've had a lot of,
of their employees moving from individual plans to family plans. The, the, the way they assess member districts hasn't changed. And so those are some of the big things. If you, if you read the, the whole document, one of the things that's in that document that you'll see is that tech, the Education collaborative had a settlement with teca, which is not the same organization, it's the online high school on a buyout for the remaining two years of the sublease.
They, they have been subleasing space at the school, at the building in Walpole. So in FY 27 that there, the budget includes one, one and a quarter million dollars of revenue from Teca. That money drops off in FY 28 to $0. So they're already the board and the school is already planning on how to make up that revenue. So if you haven't read the document, I would encourage you to do it. Ms. Parks, the executive director does a really nice job of putting that whole thing together and I don't wanna repeat everything that you would see in the document, but
that's the tech update. Great. All right. The next thing which we will just start discussing tonight, but we will not make any real final decisions on are the, is the thing that we typically do in the first meeting post reorganization, which is discuss subcommittee and and liaison and study group and work group assignments. So we have a bunch of things and there is a spreadsheet which we can share with everybody. Again, Why don't I share it real quick so that people can see it.
Speaker 15: It's Speaker 1: Already shared. So let's see, subcommittee. All right, so One of the first things that we should do is think about anybody who's currently serving on a committee, subcommittee, whatever it is, and is no longer able or interested in that. We can say, so now you can think about it. The idea for anybody listening, these are the subcommittees and liaison positions, they take additional time each, we all have lives outside of school committee.
So it's Im, well not me, but it req. We want people to have a chance to think about what they would like to do. So I will start with one that Ms. Brunell is not here, but I've, she told me that she is going to step off of the Memorial School Building Committee and given the timeliness of some of the things that she is doing or that, that that committee is doing, we do need to find a replacement. These for additional context, these are not votes,
these are volunteering positions. So we need a representative that that committee has one rep from the school committee. Anybody interested in that? I am. Mr. Patel is interested in that. Anybody else interested in taking that spot? Well that was easy. All right, so I'm gonna put you into the spreadsheet. Jamon. Thank you. So we have a new rep there as for the rest, and I shared it so everybody else can, I can see everybody else's in there. One thing that I just wanna mention, because the election happened, the strategic plan
steering committee originally was intended to have two voting members of the school committee. And the, our METCO representative, Dr. Welch was on, is on the steering committee prior to being elected. My belief we are not a quorum there. I don't see a problem with him continuing, but I just wanted to put out there, there would be three elected school committee members there now. So it's not, it's certainly not an open meeting law problem. But you don't think so? No. Okay, good. Yeah, of course not. Okay, so it
probably makes sense for anybody to look at these various assignments and then email me, just me, not the whole school committee, anything that you would like to change, things that you're interested in, things you're no longer interested in. So I will just tell you, it probably makes sense for me to no longer chair the policy subcommittee. So there'll be an opening on that committee. I'm on tech and have been for six years, but if somebody else would like to go, that would be all right as well. It's actually really interesting. So if anybody has any thoughts now, we certainly, you can share them. If you would prefer to marinate, you can do
that and email me. And then at the next meeting we will discuss again and, and sort of finalize assignments. We wanna make sure, you know, Matt and I ran into a situation, we found out like we have a PCC liaison, but we didn't really have anybody going because the person who had PRI previously assigned is no longer on the committee. So there was a little bit of a vacuum there. We have, we definitely have an opening on the net zero committee and CPAC. Let's see what else we have. Did you say budget? The budget subcommittee is going to need a new,
certainly a new member and a new chair. So everybody knows subcommittee chairs are, are chosen. Once we have the volunteers of the committee, the chair of the committee is chosen by the chair of the school committee. So we'll need to do all that. So they Yeah, we can, I can do it. So you can see in the spreadsheet the word open is in a, is in each spot where we, I'm gonna make that each spot where we definitely need a person. And otherwise that's all we're gonna do about that.
Unless anybody has any thoughts or comments? Nothing. Okay, great. Moving on. Speaker 6: Can I just clarify? Yeah. Is Mr. Patel now on that committee so that I could have, he's Steven Miler start to reach out. He is. Okay, Speaker 1: Great. We do not need a vote for that. It's a, it, it's like any other thing. So he's now, you're now official. Thank Speaker 6: You. Welcome to more email and meetings. Thanks. Speaker 1: We're really interesting stuff. Yes. That project only has like four and a half more years to go, so, so you're doing great.
Good job. You're already in, so it doesn't matter. Alright, speaking of, is this you or is this Matt? Speaker 6: We're gonna start with Mr. Gillis and I will cover the lilja a RP. So OPM processes, Mr. Gillis. Speaker 16: So we received six proposals. We had a review committee review all six of them, and we selected and scored them to the rubric that we put out there. And we have three finalists. Laroy, Laro Hill, left field in Accenture. They've all been invited to interviews next week at the senior center starting at five 30.
And there'll be another one at six 30 and then seven 30. And then the plan is for the, the whole building committee to select the top ranked firm and we'll submit that to MSBA for approval. Once they approve it, then I think we, we will negotiate the contract, hire them, and then move forward with the project. Which the next step would generally be then working with MSPA to hire the architect. I'd like to thank all of the, the people that volunteered for the committee. They did a lot more reading than they thought they were going to do.
Speaker 7: Grassi is the OPM. Well, OPM. Does LPM help choose the architect firm too since you bring them on board by then? Speaker 16: No, the owner's project manager is supposed to be our, our owner's representative and independent of the architect and the contractor. They're supposed to help us make sure we get everything we're supposed to get out of the project. Speaker 7: Good. Thanks. Speaker 1: Any other questions? Speaker 6: Okay. So the last item we have related to MSBA is just an update from Jillian Wilson Martin, the sustainability director.
The committee may remember that Jillian presented on February 9th about a sustainability project related to the HVAC system at Lilja and a heat pump right map, it's expensive, it costs around $300,000. And she recommended at that time that the committee, you know, allow for her to explore a 30 day extension with the MSBA, basically because we were waiting on a grant that she was filing. And I'm very thrilled to, to share on her behalf and we'll share the memo via email that the application
for the $150,000 climate leader community's technical support grant was approved. Which means that the $300,000 project, we have 100,000 of utility incentives already on the books with Natick. Add this $150,000 grant and it's really just a $50,000 request at fall town meeting. So this is wonderful news and we're deeply appreciative of Ms. Wilson. Martin's grant writing skills and her advocacy on behalf of the town of Natick and its schools. Speaker 1: She is a pro, she's comments, questions, seeing none.
And with that one more item on the a agenda. Motion to adjourn. Eight o'clock. Second move by Dr. Fr. Been seconded by Dr. Welch. All in favor? Any opposed? No, thank you everybody. Good night. Awesome.