Speaker 1: Welcome everybody. It is Monday, April 28th, and this is a meeting of the Natick School Committee. I will start with roll call Mr. Patel. Present Ms. Flas. Present Mr. Brand. Present. Dr. Fugman present. Ms. Brunell here. And I am also present. I'm going to make a motion to enter executive session. So I'm making a motion to discuss strategy with respect to collective bargaining. If an open meeting may have a detrimental effect on the bargaining position of the public body and the chair. So declares, EAN, units A
and B, administrative assistance, food service, paraprofessionals, and custodial and maintenance. Second. And we will do a roll call. Vote. Mr. Patel. Yes. Ms. Flas? Yes. Mr. Brand? Yes. Dr. Fugman? Yes. Ms. Brunell? Yes. And I am in the, yes. So we will now enter executive session and we plan to return to open session at 6:35 PM Okay. If you're just joining us, we're just returning from executive session. It's 6 35 and we're reconvening the open session of the school committee meeting.
And we had an open session that started at six in which we did roll call. So we'll now stand for the Pledge of Allegiance and a moment of silence to honor our troops serving here in abroad. Speaker 2: I pledge allegiance, 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: Okay, let me take that moment of silence, as I said, to honor our troops who serve us here in abroad. Any announcements from the committee? No. Okay. All right. So we'll now go to public speak.
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 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. Is anybody in the room or online who would like to speak? I see no one in the room. I see no one online. Is that correct? I don't see. Okay. Alright.
So we will close public speak. So any updates from our teacher representative? Speaker 3: Nope. Just coming back from vacation. Getting ready for our final push till the summer, but that's about everything I right now. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. And I see that our student representative is not present today. Did we receive anything from them? No. No. Okay. They're probably, they're probably, yes. And Ms. Scott, I don't know if you have any update that you'd like. I have no, Speaker 4: I have no updates. Madam Speaker 1: Chair.
Okay. Thank you. Okay, so do we have a motion for the consent agenda? Speaker 5: Motion to approve. Move approve of consent agenda. Speaker 6: Actually, can I ask to remove the course reimbursement? Yes. Speaker 3: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. So we'll speak then to the course reimbursement first. Or can we vote the consent agenda first? Speaker 6: We take Speaker 5: The motion first. I Speaker 1: Think. Take the motion first. Okay. So motion to approve items A, c, and E on the consent agenda. All in favor? Anyone against,
so that is six votes in favor and no votes against. So then we'll move to the topic of the course reimbursement. Speaker 6: Yeah, I just, I don't have any issues with the specific request. I just thought it would be a good idea to take a step back and look at it more holistically in terms of, first of all, understanding how much funding the school committee has for course reimbursement. You know, we just pass an overrides, obviously we wanna be very conscious about how we spend money and, and not only thinking about how much we spend, you know, how much do we have total, how do we spend it?
But also thinking about how do we maximize the impact. So for example, how do we prioritize activities that benefit more members? So for example, as opposed to individual members. So for example, one of the things we're gonna talk about later is in our subcommittee, one of the subcommittee goals has been to bring someone in to do an equity training. Paying someone to train the whole committee or sending as many of us as possible to MASC in November. You know, like thinking about what are some of the big things that we may want first, and then see, you know, is there funding left?
And then, and how do we use that Then using that individually just so that we're maximizing the spending. Speaker 1: Okay. Any other thoughts on that? I mean, that's part of the rationale for, for bringing these approvals to the committee was so that we could acknowledge that people are participating in courses and activities because of, I would assume that we're expecting people to bring the knowledge back from those courses. And I think that that has happened in the past when people have gone to take courses that they've brought
that knowledge back and it has benefited the committee. So I agree with you, but that should be a goal of, Speaker 6: So can I ask, what is, I, I should probably know this, but do we have like a line item in the budget for professional development for the school committee? Or is that under something else? Speaker 7: We do, it's under contracted services. So it could be professional development or if you wanted to have, like, we hired the consultant to help us with the superintendent search. There's always a little, not always, but there's often at least some planned flexibility
for the committee to look into things or go to go to conferences. They're often MASS. But over, over the years I've seen people go to different things Speaker 6: And do we know how much it is? Speaker 7: I can, sorry, I can get that for you. Yeah, around Speaker 6: 20,000. Speaker 1: Yeah. I think that last year when, when Bella was here, she had suggested that we put some money aside with the idea that we would have some professional development training that we want to Yeah. Contract out. Yeah, yeah, Speaker 6: Yeah. I just wanna, I just thought it would be helpful to have a plan as opposed to doing things one off at a time.
Speaker 1: And perhaps Mr. Gils, while you're looking that up, I don't know Ms. Brunell, if you wanted to give us just a couple of words about what this course is about and how you think it could benefit the committee for you to bring that knowledge back to us. Speaker 8: Sure. Happy to. Last summer, I think all of you knew that Kathy and I and Tamika got a grant to go to School Board Partners that summer conference and retreat. So from school board partners, I was introduced to the school governance program that I did last year with Colorado State. Again, that was funded by,
I don't know who funded that to be honest. It's not, not Natick School Board Partners, some grant that they got through that. And that class then led me to omics. So I'll just read it to you. Ed Genomics is a Georgetown University research Center dedicated to exploring and modeling complex education finance decisions to inform policy and practice. I spoke to AJ Craig, bill, the man that he wrote, why most school boards fail and how yours can succeed. He wrote, I don't know of anyone with a stronger set of equity focused policies than school board partners
or the Edge Genomics lab. So that's why I pursued the application. I, I, you know, filled out an application and was able to receive a 50% scholarship from Georgetown itself. I then reached out to MASC for funding. Also ma or MMA Massachusetts Municipal Association and an organization that supports women in elected positions. None of them had funding for local sources. I went back to Edge Genomics and said, what do, what do other people do? And they said, honestly, most districts send people, they,
they cover the second half of it. So I'm not asking for travel, I'm not asking for hotel rooms. So I'm just asking for the course of, you know, the money to, to pay for the course. If it's not something that the, that the school committee wants to do. I, I understand. No, no skin off my back. I'm just not able to put my own money towards it. I understand Chi's concern about individual members, I guess, but I think that, I hope that every time I've gone to take one of these courses, I've brought stuff back.
I also talked to MASC and they were open to me presenting about Edge Genomics, which then would make my, the money that I typically spend at MASC that would give me a free ticket this year. I've also never gotten a hotel at MASC. So I guess after four years, this is where I'd rather spend my money than on a hotel. Speaker 1: Dr. Fon, Speaker 6: I just wanna clarify, I'm not against this. I just think we should have a plan. So my recommendation,
and I don't know if you know, I know we're gonna talk about the subcommittees later on, but one of the subcommittees is a PD subcommittee, which actually both Mr. Brunell and I are on. I'm wondering if we can just come up with a budget for the year and say, let's put in the equity training, let's put in MASC, let's put in this. And so that way we have a whole budget as opposed to budgeting it by let's do this one first. 'cause it came first and then not without knowing if we have enough money for other things. So I just think we should have a plan for the year and include this in the, in that list and then have a, a full plan.
So I'm not, again, again, I'm not against this specific item. I just think in terms of how we proceed, proceed more carefully with like a full plan for the whole year for those $20,000. So that, that's what I would recommend. Speaker 1: Yeah. I just wanted to clarify something too. So this, this course takes place in October, right? But we'd have to pay for it this year. So the funds would come out of this year's budget. Right. And then we would have, I imagine it's gonna be difficult, if not impossible to schedule a professional development training that would take place before the end of this fiscal year.
Right? So we may be talking about two different budget years too, which I think I I I agree completely. Having a plan for next year is the way to go. Yeah. Ms. Brune. Speaker 8: Yeah. I was just gonna say, I, I think that's a great idea because the, the Metro West Leadership Academy was also something that came up a year ago. Kristen Pope and I, Kristen from the select board and I from the school committee, we both did that program and the select board for years has sent people, almost everyone on the select board has attended that and been a part of it.
And the, and the town has always paid that. So when this, I was the first school committee member to want to do it and there really was no process for me to receive funding. So it's not, it's, it's difficult to apply for things like this. Not knowing if you're gonna get the scholarship. I think more of us would probably be in tune to apply for professional development if we knew that there was a way to get funding. Speaker 1: Agreed. Mr. Gillis. Speaker 7: Of course. So the budget for the year for dues and memberships and professional development was 23 9 is approximately $10,470 left.
So Speaker 8: Does that mean I can have a No, I'm sorry. Speaker 1: And then just for the next fiscal year, do we have about the same amount? I'm just thinking of our topic later. Okay. Yeah. Alright. Speaker 7: Super. I think this was reduced slightly this year, but it wasn't changed for next year. Speaker 1: Okay. Super. That'd be wonderful. Thank you. Speaker 5: So I would move approval of how do we of the, this specific course reimbursement for Ms. Brunell to attend the Edge genomics lab thing,
the education finance and certificate in Education Finance for 2025. That program, I didn't bring my glasses. The part about me not bringing my glasses is not part of the motion. Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 5: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. All in favor against abstain. Okay, so we have five in favor. Zero. No. And one abstain. And the motion passes. Thank you. Okay, so let's move to the superintendent's report. Speaker 9: No, we have one of our super Speaker 1: Reps. Oh, oh super. Yeah. Oh wonderful. Do you wanna just Sure.
Speaker 10: Welcome Speaker 1: Any update from our student rep. Speaker 11: Unfortunately Nathan's not here, but I'm here so there's not that many updates that is related to the school committee, but as of this week, it's the start of AP seasons for the next two weeks. So there's gonna be a lot of busy high schoolers. Sports is still in session. Natick's winning a lot, which is great, especially the volleyball team. But other than that, there's no updates from the high school. Thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Over to you. Yeah. Speaker 10: Excellent. Yeah, go Natick and all the sports and all the aps, I think they're gonna do great.
So thanks for bringing that up. Okay. So at the top of the superintendent report, we're really excited to have our director of the MECO program, DY Lynch here, who's gonna come and give you a bit of a spring update and really just your first introduction to him kind of in person at the committee that I'm pretty sure. So I'm thrilled to have him here. And there might be some questions or some dialogue after that. But we're really just presenting an update today and there is a document in the postings about what he's gonna talk to. Speaker 12: Good afternoon everyone. Glad to be here. And I'm very grateful to be able
to present in front of our school committee. I know that our metro program has been a part of our district for a long time and we've been a historic district recently. We've made a lot of changes. My predecessor, Rashida Clayton getting our program into the elementary school and this committee was a, a great factor and I'm grateful for that. So this year has been a really good inaugural year in the document in front of us. I just sort of brought us to September. We had a breakfast kickoff, I had a chance to meet all
of our high school students and it was a great time just to get to know the culture at our school. We had a back to school night in October. Ms Burn, you were part of that and Tamika was there as well. Just to really get a grasp of our home and family community in Boston. We did that in Boston. We had a few outings to the HBC College fair at the Reggie Lewis Center, or rather the track center. Let's see, we also went to a youth conference at Bentley in November and we had
the Harvard Undergraduate Black Students Association come and meet with some of our students here in Natick. That was really, really fruitful. We had a few meetings with Dr. Stash and our students were very vocal in those meetings. We had one as recent as a few weeks ago. And I'm really proud of our, our high school students for vocalizing what they would like to see in their school and also acknowledging what is a part that's working for them. Also, some plans they wanna see in the future academically,
which I'm really proud of. One of our students was inaugurated or rather brought into the National Honor Society and I'm really proud of that student. This past month, out of our 23 students at the high school, 13 of them made the honor roll high honors. So I'm really just happy about the culture and the community that we have in our, our high school to our elementary school. It's a fairly new program as you all know.
So this is our second year at Benham. All of our students that are there are, especially our new kindergartners, are feeling acclimated in the, the, the district. Our parents are really excited about being a part of the Mecca program here in Natick. Our returning elementary school students are transitioning well and, and feeling a part of our, our district. So I'm really happy to see that this new program is really what Rashida had in mind. And this is, is coming, is blossoming very well to close out the year.
We do have an alumni versus staff basketball game METCO alumni. That's the 16th of May. And we typically have a graduating barbecue celebration at Franklin Park in Boston that is slated to be June 17th, excuse me, June 14th. So those are our updates. And I'll close by saying that we have eight graduating seniors this year and I'm, I'm really happy to see all of our seniors graduating and, and having plans for post high school plans.
Yeah. I guess there Any questions? Speaker 1: Any questions from the committee? Mr. Patel? Speaker 13: Sorry, I'm new to school committee and to meko, but at what age do kids come into this program? Speaker 12: Historically we started at fifth grade, but we made a change last year to start our meco program at elementary, starting at kindergarten. Okay. Speaker 13: Yeah. And do we have any in the NA yet for We Speaker 12: Do. We do, yeah. We have currently eight students at Benham right now.
One of the things that I'm hoping to work on in the coming future is to get proper transportation because eight is the max that we can do at Benham due to our van. Our van can only see eight students. So that's, that's our max. Speaker 13: And then they stay through Speaker 12: All the way to, all Speaker 13: The way through graduation. Speaker 12: 12th grade. Yeah. That's what we hope. But sometimes our students do move on to either private schools or they move out of Boston and once they move out they're not eligible for metco. I Speaker 11: See. Speaker 13: Okay. Thank you Speaker 11: Dr. Fugman.
Speaker 6: So thank you so much for coming in for the presentation and the work that you do because this is the first year that we're doing that. We're bringing in students elementary school. I'm curious, have you talked to the parents? Have you talked to, you know, your own perception? How's that going? How's it transition? I mean obviously it sounds like the transportation is one issue. Yeah. But, which I'd love to know more and how we can help with that. 'cause obviously making the commitment to bringing the students means the full commitment to making sure it's a positive experience overall. But in general, otherwise, how's that been? Speaker 12: It's been very successful.
Our current students, we actually had a, a orientation, parent orientation for new families coming into Meco about three weeks ago before the vacation. And most of the parents that I've interviewed are really excited about our district. Academically, they're, they're looking forward to what their students are leaving in Boston and coming into embracing here in Natick. When I speak to our current elementary students and families, they're also excited. So it's, it is been a really, really good year. Great. Yeah. Speaker 6: And actually, can you say a little bit more about the transportation issue and Sure.
Speaker 12: So currently we have a a big yellow bus that takes our students from Boston to, to to from Boston and Natick. And that's for our high school and middle school. And then we have a van, since the elementary school is new, we just had a van that can seat 10, but it's gonna be a driver and also someone that is watching the van, the van and then eight students. So that's just our max. My vision is to have a bus for elementary and middle and then have a van for high school.
And that would give us the opportunity to expand our elementary because just through studies and just my history with meco, those, the earlier our students start, the better they're transitioning to the district is. Speaker 6: And so right now there's the bus and there's the van. So to realize your vision, we would require two full buses or Speaker 11: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 6: I'd love to follow up. Yeah. With just to figure out the cost and see if that's something we can do. Transportation Speaker 12: Is the, yeah. Main. Yeah. Speaker 11: I also have a question about like
how do those meco students get home after school? Because there's like so many clubs and activities that they could participate in. That's a great question. If the bus has to like arrive at a certain time, they might not be able to participate in certain activities. Speaker 12: That's a great question. So we also have an afterschool bus that leaves at three 15 and that picks up the students from both Wilson and the high school. After that, they would have to find a way to get home either through MBTA or transportation from home or
however they arrange that. Yeah. Speaker 11: And for the MBTA, are they able to like, because I'm pretty sure the high school has a program where students can get, I guess it, mic free tickets. I think. Yeah. Speaker 12: We have a M seven METCO headquarters provides that for all of our students. Yeah. Yeah. Speaker 11: So that's like a Speaker 12: Great question. Speaker 11: Do you think other students can also have, okay. Do you think other students can also have that VTA thing or is that just Speaker 12: So non, non Boston students? Yeah, I'm not quite sure of the process for residential students, but I do go to the MECO headquarters and they have a list of all of our students' names
and that's how I get m sevens for our students. Alright, Speaker 11: Awesome. Yeah, thank you so much. Speaker 12: Certainly. Thank you. Speaker 1: Yeah. Great questions. Yeah. Any other questions from the committee? Ms. Brunell? Speaker 8: I echo what Dr. Foxman said about the, the transportation. I think that we should be doing everything that we can at the school committee level to get, transfer our, the seats in the METCO program from the fifth grade start to the kindergarten start. Yeah. So it, my understanding is if there's eight students, there's, were there four students in first grade?
Four students in kindergarten? Speaker 12: So our numbers this year we have currently three kindergartners. We have two first graders and two fourth graders. And so, Speaker 8: So next year we won't be able to have kindergartners. Speaker 12: So next year I had the, it's almost like Tetris, I had to do a little moving around. And so we'll be bringing in two new kindergartners and two new third graders and, and I get numbers based on what METCO headquarters is able to provide. Yeah. So, yeah. Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah.
I think that we are, I mean, probably too late in the game this year. This Speaker 12: Year. Yeah. Speaker 8: But I think that next year we should have that on our radar because it's, it's what we wanted to do initially. And it sounds like that's what you want to see happen for the students. Certainly. And then I would love to do a meeting at the METCO headquarters if that's ever a possibility for our committee. I've seen several other committees do that. And I think I loved coming into the Boston in the spring. Yeah. Or in the fall. And I put it on our school committee calendar June 14th.
So maybe some of us could show up at the barbecue. Wonderful. If you'd have us, Speaker 12: We would love to have you all Speaker 1: Just for planning purposes, at what point would we need to know about transportation for like next year for the incoming cohort if we were going to try to make some adjustments Speaker 12: For the fall? Speaker 1: Yeah, so for this year it's two. Our budget is set for next year's budget. Yeah. So the incoming cohort, I guess that would be fiscal year Speaker 12: 26, 26 7. Before January. Speaker 1: Before January, yeah. Speaker 12: Okay. Because I wouldn't receive any files from Meco
headquarters until February around there. Yeah. But I would, what I, what directors do is we, we, we share what we anticipate because Meco is a seat availability, availability program. So I speak to the principals about what the open seats would be and both Wilson and of course Ben, him. And then once I get those numbers then I can tell Meko how many files I would like to receive for the upcoming year. Speaker 1: Okay. So if we were, if we had transportation
that would accommodate more elementary school students, you could ask for more kindergartners. Speaker 12: Yes. And there's another piece to that. Our district, our capacity is 52 students max. So I would have to have either students graduate or, and it does happen, students do change schools. So I anticipate next year we have six graduating seniors. So we would have potentially six kindergartners hopefully. Okay. To project for that. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Speaker 12: Certainly
Speaker 14: Question if, if we maintain the number of total seats and we transition to, to going to filling with kindergartners. And so you know, at 52 are you nervous about the overall number at each school being too low? O Speaker 12: That's a great question. Speaker 14: You're spreading across 13 grades. That's about four per grade, Speaker 12: Which Right, right. Speaker 14: Significant reduction from what it is now. I mean that makes me, from a community perspective, Speaker 12: I think if I notice that certain trends are happening,
I can also request files for a particular grade to help balance if there is that, that concern. Speaker 15: Yeah. Okay. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: Is it possible to increase Natick capacity from 52? Speaker 12: That's a great question. That's a DESI question because right now METCO has been level funded for the past few years. I was at the State House twice already this year advocating for more and trying to get, you know,
support in our district. All, all of our directors, most of our directors rather was at the State house. So from my intel, DESI is saying that Meco was the largest line item on their budget and they want to be more concerned about reading and comprehension and across the state rather than just meco. So I don't know if netec would grow beyond 52 just out of our control. Yeah, Speaker 9: Thank you. Speaker 12: Certainly. Speaker 1: Any final questions? Thank you so much. We really appreciate you coming to speak with us tonight.
Speaker 12: Thank you. A wonderful, what has been my birthday? Speaker 9: Happy birthday. Speaker 1: Happy birthday. We would've sung if we'd known that we've Speaker 9: Sing Happy birthday. Speaker 10: Thank you. Thank you so much Adi. Okay, we'll move to the next item. We're actually gonna switch order because I'd like to do both MSBA pieces together. So we'll go to C, which is the school choice SY 26 determination. Speaker 9: Okay. Speaker 10: And that we have a memo and Sue Babo is gonna take us through that. Speaker 16: Okay. So every year you need to vote whether or not we close school choice. We are a school choice district and so every year we make a recommendation to you on whether
or not to vote to close it. So in looking at what our enrollment looks like and whether or not we have seats available, I wrote a memo giving you basically the lay of the land in terms of what we have available. And we are really tight right now looking at our current enrollment and our projected enrollment for incoming kindergarten. It's looking really tight and we knew that we do have some space in some places, but this past year we ended up, and we had this discussion earlier this year, we, we,
we had some students that were supposed to enroll at Lilja and because class size is capped at 25 per our collective bargaining agreement, we ended up having to move those students over to Benham where there was a little bit more space We would end up running into that situation again for any new enrollments that we have currently, we have 89 students enrolled for kindergarten going into Memorial, which is looking at class sizes of 22 and 23 at kindergarten. Which is definitely a concern because it's not even May 1st yet.
And we're not done with registration. We always have some stragglers who haven't actually enrolled their students. So my recommendation and in talking with cabinet, I think our recommendation would be that we close it for this coming year knowing that it would be tight and that we are at past capacity at the high school as well. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 16: Any questions? Speaker 1: Questions from the committee? Do we have a motion? Speaker 5: I would, I would move to close.
Close school choice for the 25 26 school year. Speaker 1: Second. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? So that six in favor, none against school choice will be closed for the coming fiscal year. Thank you. Speaker 16: Thank you. I'll file that with desi. Speaker 10: Excellent, thank you. That was quick. Okay, so the next piece, as we mentioned in our prior meeting, we have submissions due on May 5th related to the MSBA eligibility phase. This has two pieces which we kind of briefed
with you last time, but we'll go through again today and take any questions that you have. The first piece we'll go through is the EPQ or the education profile questionnaire and assistant superintendent Balone will take us through that. Speaker 16: Great. So we did review this previously in a previous meeting, which is to the EPQ basically goes through what our current buildings look like and our spaces at the current memorial building and what they're used for, which we know we're struggling.
We're using spaces for multiple purposes right now. We're doing interventions in the hallways. Our learning centers are previous storage spaces that we've converted into learning centers. We don't have the space for any sort of sub-separate special education. We currently don't service multilingual learners in that building. We currently are at full capacity for classrooms Where all of our literacy and math small groups, our intervention is all sharing space.
Our assistant principals office is also a conference room. Our special education coordinator's office is also a conference room and a room for service delivery. So then further down in the document you'll see what our recommendation is for space in terms of what we are hoping for based on the SOI, which is that we were looking for some preschool space, five classrooms, six classrooms per grade, K to four literacy rooms, math rooms,
some storage space for our curriculum materials. A self-contained access, some self-contained access spaces or our sub-separate classrooms, OTPT service space speech and language psych, art rooms, music rooms, you know, physical education spaces, kitchen library, nursing space for everyone to have their own office space and have separate conference room space. And then again there were, they ask about
chapter 74 spaces, which is like Speaker 7: Woke ed, Speaker 16: Thank you folk ed. I was like, I couldn't think of that word. Thank you. And then we wanted to have some collaboration spaces in there as well, which memorial used to have all of that was closed in to make classroom spaces. I know that there were some questions that came in. One of them was about voting. This does not need to be voted. That was a clerical error on the agenda. This does not need to be voted. It was for an opportunity for you to review it and ask questions and, and give any input
that you thought. But then there were some other questions that came in that I think Mr. Gillis was going to share because he's been through this process much more than I have. Speaker 7: So question about a full kitchen in the EPQ with a dishwasher. You know, generally if we say we're gonna have a full service kitchen, they generally know what those appliances are. We don't have to specify them out at this point. Outdoor classroom space, generally a question for the principal and superintendent, again, not necessarily something that's decided at this point,
especially since we haven't finalized the site. That's something that would come up in the feasibility study phase. When they look at options like is it gonna fit well? Is it gonna work well? Do we want it? Who's gonna use it? Et cetera, et cetera. In terms of enrollment, how do we maximize the ratio for reimbursement with the state? Well that's the game, you know, the MSVA, and I'll go over that a little bit. And you have two memos, one from the last meeting and then one from this, this meeting, they're gonna give us
x number of students that they approve for. And in my experience, rarely does it work out perfectly. And you usually have to figure out, are you gonna build the school you want or are you going to only build exactly to what they, they give you for. And so the, the way I kind of summarize this example is if you were trying to build a 20 classroom school and they said we're gonna give you 18.2, are you really gonna try to build 18.2 classrooms? Or if you've got, they say you should fit 25 in a classroom and you say you wanna fit 21, it's up
to you if you wanna pay the difference. So, you know, when I say that's that's the game, it's how many students do they project for us going forward? And we can negotiate with that a little bit, but you know, ultimately they, they get to final say. So we, we, we do our best to make sure that they're not missing any information based on the memo. Oh, that's it. That's it. Yeah. Speaker 1: Thank you. Questions from the committee, Ms. Bruell, Speaker 8: Senator Dr. Thank you. Those were the questions I submitted. So in full transparency, so just about the dishwasher,
I did not see Kennedy's EPQ but because that's a full, we, I don't know if we have a full kitchen, but I don't think we have a dishwasher there. Speaker 7: So those, those are some of the choices you make with what kind of appliances you want in your, your kitchens. But you know, in their form they have full service kitchen, so they wanna know are you gonna do all the cooking and and prep and and things in, in that building. And our answer is yes. We don't really want to have any more satellite kitchens. So, you know, like I said, that's, that's an appliance. So whether or not you wanted a rice cooker or a pizza oven
or dishwasher, like those are all things that I, you Speaker 8: Know, they're all part of the conversation. No, that makes sense. Thank you. And then my other question is just, is this a dream big document that will then or be Speaker 7: Not, not, not really. They're trying to get a, a, a feel for us with how much of a match we're gonna be for their program because they already have standards for these types of things. And if, if our vision is way off, you know, it leads to some longer conversation. So a lot of those questions that are answered, are answered
that should fit right into what our program is, number of classrooms we think we need within their standards. Speaker 8: Okay. Speaker 7: Right. I mean 'cause so when you built, just sticking with the topic of cafeteria, they give you two options. Do you want a cafeteria space for to have two lunch periods or three lunch periods? They don't, they don't give you more square footage. So if you want to have two lunch periods, you have a bigger cafeteria, then you wind up with smaller something else. Right. So there are choices to make. Ah, yeah. So we, we tried to, because I've been
through the exercise more than a few times, tried to answer it in a way that is likely gonna come out. But we haven't finalized any of that yet because we have to be invited into the feasibility study phase where we study all the potential options and they do look at the rest of the schools at, at the same age level typically, at least in my experience, to see how we're utilizing the new school with the existing buildings. Okay, Speaker 17: Thank you. Speaker 7: Okay, Dr. Speaker 6: Fsla. Yeah, so as a follow up question,
what are the next steps? So I guess what I'm really wondering more specifically than that is this is what we think we need. They have their standards, so what happens next? Do they tell us, yes, you're approved or not approved to this plan, do they and and how, how does that lead to the feasibility study? And at a follow up question, just to put all together, one of the things that I'm curious about, which I, I don't think we can answer yet, but I'm wondering when we can, is how big
of a lot do we need? Because by establishing how many classrooms and how many spaces we're kind of determining the size of the school or at least beginning to establish the dimensions of the school. So I'm curious, when do we get to that part, given that we're making decisions now about numbers of classrooms. And Speaker 7: So, so the last part, all all of that sort of gets finalized in the feasibility study phase. 'cause you come in saying, first they have to invite us, they have to think we're a good match and that, you know, we're serious about getting this done
and likely to get it done and be a good partner to work with them. 'cause they're gonna pay for 40 to 45 cents on the dollar for, for the project. And then we do everything you said in the feasibility study phase where we're gonna look at options, pick the, be the school building committee will pick the best option. That's their job, right? Like there is, there aren't too many more things for the, the school committee to really do at this point other than give us some feedback administratively and through your representative on the school building committee or representatives like that committee can, can
and will change before the project is is completed. We, we go through that process and then we pick the preferred option and then it goes to the voters to say, this is what the building's gonna look like, this is how many spaces they're gonna be. And if you've ever seen a school project being voted, you get a rendering and you get floor plans and they tell you what's gonna be in there and then the voters decide yes or no, whether or not they wanna do it. And then it's really in the hands of the building committee to see it get constructed to the plans. And then ultimately, you know, we move in shortly
after the, the building inspector gives us a certificate of occupancy so we can occupy the school and enjoy it for the next 50 plus years. Speaker 6: So a follow up question. So in terms of being invited for the visi visibility study, so they invited us this year already to the program. What is, what are the chances what you invited to the program that you won't be invited further and does is that can they say, we, we chose not to invite you and you're done. Or they Speaker 7: Are really good at giving themselves an out in
numerous steps of the process. So until they say, yes, you're, you're not, you're not approved and that like everything that you'll sign or that'll get voted, you'll, you'll see that. So, you know, we opted to be in, we opted to be in with a new memorial school and looking at initially at least looking at bringing the E-school pre-K classrooms into the new building so we're not overcrowded because right now we are overcrowded or those pre-K classrooms would fit in our buildings.
You heard assistant superintendent about bony say we are, you know, educating in hallways and closets and sharing offices and things. So you know, we're, we're trying to right size the right building so it's not an impediment to the program and if it can provide a little relief somewhere else, even better. So I think, you know, MSBA is looking at how are we gonna get the most bang for their buck as well as ours. So that that's kind of the partnership that they're, they're looking for. And there'll be a lot of questions and answers that we're gonna have to, you know, come up with along the way before we get there.
Speaker 6: Thanks. Speaker 1: Other questions? Speaker 18: Okay. Speaker 10: If I can just thank you so much for the overview and the way, just to remind people of kind of the next steps before that eligibility phase is locked in and we learn whether we're move forward to feasibility. A big piece is due next week or yeah, early next week, which is the EPQ which we just went over and then the enrollment methodology. Then after that we have nothing until August 1st. And on August 1st we sit down with MSBA and we just, it's called an enrollment meeting where we design whether design enrollment
or study enrollment will happen. And then a review of maintenance and capital planning. So basically we have to assemble a lot of documents to show how we've maintained and planned around that. So those are the next big pieces before that vote in on October 31. We do have a meeting later this week with the MSBA just to kind of cover some timing just to check in with them to make, because we don't want any surprises so we're, we'd rather know them early so we can work around that. So it's good to have this kind of conversation to, that's a great question to say like how much, how many of these don't go through and how do we avoid that?
But when I look at the processes, somebody fairly new to this p the front end of the MSBA work, they're really intentional about all these documents that have to be in place prior to their deciding whether there's eligibility and it's a bit formulaic is my impression. I also wanna mention that related to those FI we have five pre-K classes that are not in the high school site. One is at behe in case you don't know and four are at east. East is not our building. It is a swing space for the town which is on loan to us. We are in the process of working very closely with the town
as well as the principle of the pre-K program and Aaron Miller who runs the special education department to work on an MOU with the town and we made sort of an informal handshake which will then be solidified in the MOU to have that space dedicated to us for the next four years, which is, I'm very grateful to the town. I wanna say it on record for that because we need it. We, we don't have enough space and that is swing space that we are kind of using with the town right now. But the intention eventually when you see those five classes in pre-K four would come out of east and one comes from Benham.
Okay. It's not an expansion of the program. Okay, just wanted to make that clarification. If there's no further questions and it seemed like there weren't on the EPQ side, we'll move to enrollment. Don't forget, the next thing is for us to then go meet and kind of have a back and forth, which we're gonna learn more about later this week around enrollment. We have a recommendation for the team here to consider, not to necessarily vote today, but I think we'll go through the enrollment report first from Mr. Gillis and then I'll talk a little bit about a recommendation we have for this committee to consider Speaker 7: That my segue. Alright, so if you want to look at,
at the enrollment projection analysis, the first one, there are two, two memos for me. They both have the same date for some reason, but this, the one that says MSB enrollment projection analysis, it's five pages long. It, it was in your packet last week, but we didn't really go over it. So there's only one paragraph on the first page. And I just want you to just wanna reiterate, we're in the eligibility phase. We submit a lot of information to the state, including enrollment and the enrollment's really the main driver in the scope of the project and how many square feet they're gonna improve to reimburse. And the more students we get approved
via enrollment projection, the more square footage that will be reimbursed for this project. So in a, in a simple math number, if a classroom costs a million dollars, right? And we were gonna get 40 cents on the dollar, that's worth $400,000 that the state would pick up for that classroom for us to have for the next 50 years. I hope everybody kind of follows like the importance of it and why enrollment is so important. But you know, that being said, the real goal is also to really get the right size memorial for the next 50 years.
We see how programs have changed over time. You know, when the schools were built, I'm, I'm confident the people that were just like all of us that were part of putting it together took all the information they had made the best decisions based on what was available and what they knew at the time. And, and their crystal ball could not have foreseen all the changes that were gonna happen. And so there was no a DA when memorial was built and so they felt, well okay, it's pretty accessible, it's all on one floor, you know, whatever else they, whatever other thoughts they would've had. If we go to the next page, we see our enrollment history.
MSBA looks at it traditionally K through 12. I'm pretty sure they're considering our PK enrollment, but their stock form just includes the enrollment history and that's the numbers that we submit to the next page. Looks pretty similar but it's got some more text on it. And I highlighted in blue, this is their initial projection based on the, the numbers that we put in and the 10 year history that's already there. So this is only intended to indicate general trends in district enrollment and is not intended on its own to establish the enrollment
for rejected school project, right? So if we look at K through K through 12 25, 26, right? They've got us projected at 5,186, I mean 5,110 students and my projection was 5,186 for different of 76 kids. And as you go down, if you look out 10 years, that starts to be a pretty significant number and difference, right? There's some notes there that, that I want you to look again. MSBA is only looking at K 12. Note number two, we requested five pre-K classrooms.
I, you know, they did pay for pre-K classrooms in Brookline and in Dedham I live in Dedham and they have a pre-K K complex that MSBA partnered up with them for and paid, paid a portion of of the whole thing. And they paid for AKA pre-K eight building that had some pre-K classrooms in, in Brookline and actually another one that's under construction. So they do do it, you know, this projection is gonna be reconciled later in the process. It's not taking into account new housing permits
and stuff, which is also something we, we submit to them our K enrollment. Sue talked to you about that a little bit earlier. You know, when I, when I wrote this a little while ago, we were at 300 and 330 students on March 26th in kindergarten and they had projected us at 3 29 based on a, a straight linear enrollment. So when they get more information, they're gonna reconcile it, we're gonna have a back and forth and hopefully we get, we get to the right number. You know, there were other,
there was other enrollment sheets that came with it the last time, if you remember the one with a big yellow outline for a three year projection based on a three year historical average and then another one with a five year historical average that helped us get there. And then the last page sort of shows like the, the difference and then a breakout of classrooms if they look at the K four classrooms, whether a number of 20 or 23 students per, so the, the number that we say is our target is something that gets factored into how much space
MSVA is gonna consider, you know, what they're gonna pay for. That's really about it. I think the, there'll be more discuss at this point. There'll be more discussions with, with the MSVA as well as the school building committee with what we're gonna build and then how we get there. And then the second memo starts, if you guys see the one with the natick chart like abridged from what we send out on a monthly basis where I summarize our pre our pre-K to kindergarten students across the district.
If you go back down to comparing the two options on page two of four, if we look at a six section school, right? 15 kindergarten pre-K students in five rooms, that's 75 students, kindergarten, 20 kids per class, that's six rooms, that's 120 students, grades one through four, class size 21 students, 24 rooms, 504 students, that's 35 classrooms and 699 students. That's arguably what we could be designing for. So what, what would be like the maximum capacity?
Well pre-K has its limits at 16 kindergarten and grades one through four using a number of 24. Generally. I, most people don't want to go go beyond that. We could fit 800 students in, right? So MSBA looks at all this stuff and, and so should we, if it's a five section school, we'd be at 595 students. We're at four 50 something now plus 70, 70 some odd kids at, at the E school. Lemme go back and see what, what that was 70, 60, 69 students at the E school.
So you know, we'd be, we, if we moved into the new building today, we'd be at five 20 something students. And when you have a new school in town, you have to consider whether or not people are going to move to that neighborhood shortly thereafter. I think you might recall the high school opened above capacity and, and has remained that way. Kennedy is now at capacity after a couple of years. And the other el other elementary schools especially Ben Hem sort of filled up fairly quickly too. So when, when there are homes for sale in town and there's a new school, sometimes that can be a bit
of a draw for the neighborhood for where, where people will live. So I laid out some options there and some risks between a five section and a six section school and then ultimately summarized at the end on who on decisions, who and when the voters decide by proxy to elect you folks in the select board to submit SOI to M-S-B-A-M-S-B-A decides if they wanna support the project and how many students in square feet they're gonna cost share school building committee once appointed studies the
options and submits the preferred option to voters who again, get to decide by valid vote whether or not we're gonna have a project and, and you know, what what we're gonna pay. And so there's a lot of feedback that can go on during the process there. I hope that kind of summarizes everything, but how enrollment and the program you want to have generally drives what you're gonna design Speaker 1: Questions Mr Brand. Speaker 5: So in the first attachment, and this is more of a, just correct me if I'm wrong 'cause I was trying to understand something, the, the,
the first, the actual enrollment, just a thing that I was what looks like a trend to me, what I noticed was I was looking at the sort of cohorts, so like the students who started in kindergarten in 2015, 16 and then like the class size today, like the total class size at the beginning and the total class size today, what I noticed was from, from the two, from 20 20 20, 21 year, all the way to present day, every one of those cohorts is bigger today than when it started for the previous years. Every one of those cohorts is smaller than the day it
started, which to me looks like a trend of growth and like, and so like for example, this year's grade 12 is smaller than next year's grade 12. So I, I just like, if the trend continues, which has been the trend for the last five years where the entire cohort is growing over their, you know, obviously the growth for 20 23, 20 24 is that they've only had two school years whereas the 2020
to 2021 have had five. So there's more growth, but I do find it in and we don't know what's gonna be next year yet. Although it sounds like already trending to be a larger kindergarten class. So am I seeing that right, that they're less about like the total numbers and more that the younger grades, the trends, the kids who are currently in elementary school, those class sizes have grown every year for the last five years. The total number of students in those cohorts, Speaker 7: I don't think it's, it's always that way, but you know, from the birth, the live births
to kindergarten and then after kindergarten, it does tend to grow. But we always seem to have two or three years where we, where we lose, lose some students. Well, Speaker 5: For sure. So yeah, I think that's a bit of a peaks and valleys. But I guess my point is at the beginning of their time to where they are today is more than when they started. So we, in the, in the lifespan of a school, like I'm, I'm thinking like long-term planning and without knowing the sort, certainly like the cost difference yet between a 30 classroom building and a 35 classroom building.
It makes me nervous if that trend continues to run into a problem where we spend all this money building a school and then we fill it up right away because each, each cohort over the span of their time in elementary school is growing. So I just, I think I'm reading that trend right, right now and it could change right trends, that's what trends are. But I think I under, if I'm understanding it, do you understand it that way? Speaker 7: I, I do, but you know, you're reading the, the actual enrollment chart
and I, I don't think it's, I mean the, the example you gave, it's pretty good. So, well no, they go 4 35, 4 33, 4 29, 4 28, 4 29, 4 22, 4 0 9 in the sixth grade. So there's, yeah, Speaker 5: They go to 3 94 Speaker 7: And then they go to 3 94. So they, they start, but they, you know, they've sort of, they've grown in, in some, in some ways, but they've sort, they've also sort of dropped off. Speaker 5: That's the younger grades. That's Speaker 7: That's what they're, but they're gonna look at that from,
from K to one and then one to two and all the way through. And with a three year multiplier, I've got three grades that are below one, which show a decline and then nine grades that are a above one. So that show a slight increase, but the, the declines are a little bigger than w you know, 'cause it's really hard to be 1.0 like one more kid and then it, it changes the for sure it cha it changes it. But in, in a three year, in a more recent we're,
we're much more stable and that's what it appears to be. Especially if our birth rates for, for this year, the, the live births were three sixty four last year for the, for this year's incoming kindergarten class last year they were 3 97. And so if we wind up with 350, 360 kids, that would be kind of the highest percentage for the live birth years in, in quite some time. 'cause we always seem to come in 50, 60 kids less from kids that were born in town, from kids
that actually enroll in first grade. But we're kind of ahead of schedule based on the amount of births we've had and, and it sounds like an anomaly, but then if you think of the housing market, it's not because everybody that's had a mortgage for a little while before the inflation jumped up, most people aren't excited at the idea of moving and getting rid of a two or 3% interest rate for a 7% interest rate. So they're gonna stay put. Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I guess if I, if I, just to summarize, I am wary and skeptical of algorithms
with a billion different variables, many of which are out of our control. So the only thing that I, because we just don't know, like with what the economy, we don't, there's so many things that we can't control and we don't know or predict no matter what. And so all I can see here is that for the elementary aged students over the last few years, they have, there has been a net positive from the time they started tilt today. And until that trend changes, that's sort of where my gut goes is like that we should lean towards thinking that
that trend will continue until it doesn't. And that it just makes me feel, it doesn't make me feel anything. We haven't made any decisions yet. But like it, it just, right just numbers, it's Speaker 7: Part of how do we convince the state to right to see it that way so that we don't build a building that's a too small or B sort of Speaker 5: Finding this, we Speaker 7: Not not get as much state aid as we probably should have for sure gotten. Speaker 5: Yeah. I'm just venting about numbers. Okay. I'm good Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: I'm getting a little lost beyond the numbers
but also in the decision making process. What are we, 'cause the EPQ is not something that we are, you've presented it to us, we gave you feedback that's gonna be submitted. What are we talking about now from a school committee level? Speaker 7: Just an understanding of the importance of enrollment. There's no, there's no vote on this. On this. We have to submit our information and we have to have backup to it so we can give them, we submit them our enrollment and it's tied to our October one, right? And then we submit building permit info
and they may want to check it and at, at this point that's about all there really is. But trying to get a good number for next year because we won't have that number until arguably November one after the October one data has to be submitted to the state. We're trying to get as as much forward as as practical because we don't want them to estimate too low. Speaker 10: Can I also add to that? So it's a fair question and I think based on this process being fairly new to most people on this committee and many people on the cabinet and from our lessons learned in moving forward to
constructing the group for SBC, we've really wanted to be intentional to keep this group very informed. And so when we initially planned this the first time we went over it, we were like, we're gonna go over it then get your feedback and go over it again. 'cause we don't want any surprises about what we're submitting. So that's part of the goal right now I do actually have another item that Matt and I worked on today. So I apologize that you didn't get documents ahead of time. Linda has since posted them. My understanding is to the agenda and I do have a item for you to consider does, it could be voted today but I think you might wanna consider it and then consider a vote either on May 5th or May 19th.
We'd need it by May 19th, but we can project it here and we'll make sure that you all get this in email that these are more just notes for discussion. I could just discuss it. But we did write them down. So ultimately what we'd like, and this is based on a meeting with Matt, myself and Mr. Myer, the day before we left for vacation where we were really trying to map out all these submissions and we we're concerned, you could see it in Mr. Gillis's memo that we, we have different enrollment projections between the algorithm being constructed by this MSBA
and then ours or Matt's and Matt has a lot of experience in doing this over the years in many different districts. That concerns us because ultimately it makes me think we're likely to get a lower funding formula than we might think we need. And so ultimately we we're recommending that the school committee approves issuing a, a request for an independent enrollment study to be funded with FY 25 funds. That's ultimately what I'm gonna try to convince you guys of. But let me go through it and then it's your vote. The background here is that the district previously asked for prior to me being here in the capital plan
with the town an enrollment and facilities study and that was $350,000. It's since been pushed. We understand in the town capital budget to FY 27. We all know it's all been going on with the override vote. So we're not surprised and that's fine Mr. Gil. You know we feel it's important before we go to enrollment meeting with MSBA on August one that we have a really good understanding and none of us are experts in this. This is a complicated thing as MR Brand just kind of said, there's so many variables, there's a lot of people who do this for a living so we can split out,
there's enrollment and facility studies. The enrollment study is maybe a hundred 125 grand. That's what it costs. Mr Gillis feels like you could find that funding would be a stretch but find that funding in FY 25 funds to support an enrollment study through FY 25 salary savings on open positions, accelerated closeout of open POS where we pulled the money back and recouped funds from an April budget freeze that he put in place. So not easy, I'm not at all sending that message, but we could probably scrape up those funds to fund an enrollment study with FY $25. We all know the FY 26 story, it's tight,
but this year we could probably pull that out. And the goal would be to have this report in hand by the enrollment meeting with MSBA on August one, which I'll give you the backwards plan to that. And we do have a meeting with MSBA on the 30th of April to kind of firm up that date. 'cause we're not sure if that's anchored and firm or we could have it on August 15th. But right now in our eligibility plan it says August one, the reasons to support this and this is what's listed here. Again, you'll get this memo as a data point for MSBA enrollment meeting. So if we need to have a counterweight to the number that they're coming up with on the algorithm that they do,
and this was just robustly discussed, but protecting against costly over or under building of a school. Strengthening public and political support. Sometimes when an external entity, we could have like the most expert person in which I think Matt is very good at this sort of projecting. But it sometimes when there's an outside expert agency doing it, it can hold a lot of political weight. Especially when as Matt just went through, this will require vote by voters in the town accounts for demographic and housing changes. So there's many other elements they put into this. It could improve and we could use it
for improving strategic planning beyond one building, which I think I've heard this committee discussed before. It aligns with the MSBA a's expectation of data-driven decision making and enhances architect and designer planning. So those are just reasons for it. I think the reason against it is money and we maybe have someone here who can do a pretty good projection but again there's some reasons why we might wanna have somebody from the outside do it as well. And then I just listed kind of, and maybe I'll just leave this for questions in case you have it. We're happy to go through what's traditionally in the content in an enrollment study. I have it here, but we're happy to go through that.
I'm not gonna read it all unless you want me to. But the suggested timeline would be a vote of the school committee to spend those monies on this from FFY $25. We'd need that either next week on Monday or the 19th. It would be a competitive bid process. So we'd release that bid on May 22nd. We'd keep that open and be ready to award it on June 10th so that we could, my understanding from Mr. Gillis is this usually takes about four to six weeks to complete a study that's from his historical knowledge. We didn't go talking to people this time around. We can ask others, but we didn't do that yet.
And we'd want the report in hand by July 21 ready for that eight one meeting. We would anticipate that part of this would be that this group would come and present to the school committee once you're back in session to really poke at it and understand it prior to any feasibility work or any locking of things in. Of course we would share it ahead of time but, so this is a recommendation for this team to consider and I'll leave it there unless you want me to read over the traditional content in an enrollment study, Which I'm happy to do Speaker 1: Questions about that Dr. Fugman. Speaker 6: So I, I think it makes a lot of sense to have this done.
You know, this is a huge project, we wanna make sure we're getting it right. My question is, I guess I'm curious what's what happens on August 1st? 'cause if we get a report July 21st, that report might uncover information in any direction that we might not have expected, right? That's why we do it. So I'm wondering is there still an opportunity for us, and I'm thinking us not just the school committee but the school committee, the building committee, the administration, the cabinet to figure out what does this information tell us and is there anything that we can change? And do we, do we only have nine days between July 21st
and August 1st to figure that out? Or 10 days or is August 1st more of a conversation that where there's still time to work with the MSBA? Speaker 10: I think it's exactly my question as well, which is why we're meeting with the MSBA on the 30th basically because we wanna kind of round out how firm is that August one date, where's the wiggle room? I do think zero pressure, but it just makes sense the earlier we could decide on this, the earlier we could pull all those dates up and the more time we might have to schedule a summer special meeting to kind of meet and discuss it.
For those who could make it would be a consideration for the committee to have. I think I would be recommending this. Honestly it's in our capital plan so eventually it was gonna happen anyway, but I would be recommending it anyway as part of our long-term strategic plan work. As we think about busing as there, this will be such a foundational report for many different decisions this committee makes for long-term planning. So the reason why we're doing it right now, and you know, and I haven't even talked to the committee before about this because we really materialize the idea right
before break, is because we think it could be impactful for this conversation with the MSBA in the 1st of August. That's really the only reason to hasten it. Otherwise I'd say it's a recommendation that would extend, even if the committee says no, we're not ready for that right now. I would still be recommending it for the future in terms terms of strategic planning. And I think we still should keep the what's in the capital plan of the facilities plan as well. Just we can splice those out and not do one right now. Hopefully that answers your question. Yeah, Speaker 1: Thank you. Question Mr. Patel. Thank Speaker 13: You.
Are we bound to disclose this enrollment study to this MSBA after? If we do get it done it, you know, kinda like the lead paint disclosure. Like if you know if there's lead, do you have to disclose it? So suppose the enrollment study comes back and it's in more in line with the state's projections than ours, but we still feel that we want it to be closer to what ours is. Do we have to sort of give them evidence of their projection being more right because of the public meeting law sort of Right. They're, Speaker 7: They're likely gonna ask for our latest studies and their public records. Speaker 13: So you would have to provide that. Yeah.
So it can, that way can hurt us potentially. Speaker 1: Ms. Lathers. Speaker 14: I'm really happy to see it. I mean I think it'd be, it's really feel very hard pressed to even get through a feasibility site feasibility without understanding how we expect the enrollments to change. Not just overall the macro level but in different parts of town, et cetera. So, I mean I think this is long overdue. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: I echo that. I hear Mr. Patel's concern. I guess the, to me the best case scenario is that we build a school that's the right size versus what
could happen if we didn't. Right? So I think especially for public accountability, that's very important. I don't, I don't know if this is when to say it, but I guess I'm just gonna go on record. I've said it before. I think that huge elementary schools are not the way to go. And when I look back in Natick, we have had, Behe at one point was the biggest school and it had five sections of each kid. And that is a big deal because every year your kids move from homeroom A and kindergarten to homeroom B in first grade.
And while you, the teachers do their best to mix kids up with friends every year you get remixed. So the bigger the school, the bigger the mixing, the more kids on the playground, the more kids in the lunchroom, the longer the lunch period exists. Like I just fundamentally, I do not want to see a six section elementary school in Natick. I think five is as big as we should go. But that's not me arguing with your numbers. I just wanna see us and that's why I like this enrollment study. I wanna see us look at the district holistically from a
strategic perspective so that all of our elementary schools, I mean you guys know me, I would open up e school as another school if I could. And I, you know, I mean like I, I think the intimacy of a, of an elementary school is very important in terms of community building and education. I'm an elementary school teacher, but I think that this enrollment study will tell us what we can do holistically across the district. And I would hope that we could stay within elementary schools that have a max of five sections per grade. Speaker 1: I have, I, I think it's a question about the content of the report.
So I know that there's a lot of concern in the public about, you know, planned housing developments in various parts of Natick. Would this elementary or would this enrollment study take that into account like sure. Housing developments that haven't been built yet? Speaker 10: That's a awesome question. Yes. I'm gonna go through the content. Okay. And we could obviously specify this in moving to a bit, I'm, I'm saying what a traditional one is. And actually we have an example of one that Mr. Gillis has access to that we'd be happy to email to the committee just so you can see an example of what one looks like. But here's what it is. And we didn't pull this from
that study, we pulled it more generically. So I think it'll be good to kind of compare historical enrollment analysis. So trends over the past five to 10 years by grade and school demographic analysis, birth rates, population changes, age distribution and migration patterns, housing development impact, which goes directly to your question, review of current and planned residential developments and their projected student yield enrollment projections, short term five years, long term 10 to 15 years forecast often with multiple scenarios. Baseline low growth, high growth capacity analysis,
so comparison of projected enrollment against existing school capacities, methodology description. So a clear explanation of statistical models and assumptions used for transparency and credibility district-wide and school specific breakdowns, projections provided both at the district level and by individual school. And then strategic implications, potential impacts on school facilities, redistricting needs, staffing and long-term capital planning. Again, we'd have to write all this into the bid, but that's what a traditional enrollment study would have. And you don't have to have written notes on all that. I I, we will get this to you.
It's actually posted to the agenda as well. The I Okay. Okay. We should do that. Does that answer your question? Speaker 1: Yes, it does. Yeah. And that's, that's really good to hear. 'cause I think that that would also, in terms of you know, having have sort of public support for this to know those numbers going into the feasibility phase I think will be really, really helpful to show that we've done all our homework. So I'm really strongly supportive of this as well. I'm seeing a lot of of heads nodding. Is this something that we want
to consider taking a vote on today or would we like some time to consider 'cause we could vote today to support this work? Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean there's an advantage to that because I think we can pull up the date to Dr. Folkman's kind of commentary earlier. I guess I'd invite, sorry Mr. Gilli to just bring you in to kind of talk about how you're feeling about the funding of this. Both what it would likely cost and our confidence in being able to fund it with FY $25 because I said that, but I'd appreciate his him weighing in on that Speaker 14: So that we can blame him. Speaker 10: No, we're a team every day a team, but you know, I trust him more
on some of these in the details Speaker 7: She's given me. She's given me, I'm very careful. Speaker 10: She, Speaker 7: She's given me a chance to back out. But no, we, we talked about this ear earlier this afternoon. We can do it. I I, the last one of these I did was in like 20 19, 20 20, it was a hundred thousand dollars. It was from Brookline, which is much bigger district, but everything costs more now than it it did then. So I'm gonna guess, you know, it'd be around $125,000 range for the enrollment.
But like the superintendent said it, it would be used for more than just this particular exercise for strategic planning as well as long-term facilities and things outside of the memorial project. So should we get a funding in the future, we could reduce our funding request to study the other elementary schools in, in a preventative maintenance suggestions for the middle schools and the high school, which was all rolled in at three 50. Now we, if we do this, we're basically choosing to do that in two pieces at two different prices.
So the there, there, there's probably more benefits to doing it than, than holding off even if their numbers aren't really gonna be significantly different than mine. And the state still isn't heavily in favor of it. It, it is independent professionals that don't have a stake in this. 'cause they submit the report, we pay them and they're, they're on their way. So they don't care what we do with it or not. They hope we're happy enough to, to give references and, and they get more work.
But, you know, for voters to say you didn't just make this up, this isn't just school numbers. This is somebody else. There's, there's a, a real value in in that for a lot of voters. So I, I think we could do it, Speaker 14: Ms. Lathers move approval of, let's see, move approval for the administration to conduct an external enrollment study leveraging ffy 25 months second. Any discussion? Just
Speaker 6: One quick question, just in case if we put out this for bid and we get X number of bids and they're really high, we always retain the right to not fund any of them, right? Speaker 7: Absolutely. Okay. But, you know, I'll be making some phone calls to try to get some general estimates and I'll be asking my peers what what they've spent recently. 'cause you know, this does happen. This is a, a field where, where that, that gets utilized.
But you know, people go five to 10 years before getting another independent in enrollment projection 'cause they tend to use it for a little while before they go back out and do it again. Yeah. Speaker 6: Just to clarify, the only reason I ask that is because we're talking about FY $25. So they're limited, you know, we can't make up money that we don't have. So all I'm thinking is if someone, if they all come really high and we just don't have the money, we just don't commit to anything. Right. Ideally we would find the right Speaker 7: Price. Well there'll, there'll be some discussion for scope
of services so that we don't hopefully don't come that far off. Yeah, like if, if you know what you're buying and you have an idea of what it costs, hopefully the market doesn't have a shake up in the short amount of time from you doing your homework and getting a request for prices out on the street. Speaker 10: I mean, I think what we're getting at here is whether or not the school committee would commit would consider a cap. But I like you just said, I almost don't, I think it's irrelevant with the fact we're trying to use FY $25 that are, you gotta use them or lose them anyway so Speaker 7: We can Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah.
I think it's safe. And again, we don't have to just because we bid it, we don't have to take it. Speaker 1: Okay. And I have a Is this is just for elementary enrollment or It's for the all grades. Speaker 10: All grades. All Speaker 1: Grades. Okay. Speaker 7: The all grades. Were the focus on elementary since we have four separate elementary schools. And I would note we're not likely to, we're not gonna rezone for the high school 'cause there's only one and we have two middle schools that we're not likely to rezone for, but they could let us know if we think we're missing something. It's how do we plan the, the buildings that,
that we're kind of dealing with next. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. I see a question from Mr. Patel. Speaker 13: Do we know if we did this for Kennedy or the high school in the past? Speaker 7: Well, the high school would've, we opened that in 2013. So that's, that's basically done right. Whether it was right or wrong, it it, you know, projecting who's gonna be in school or who's gonna be born 10 years in advance is not really hard. Right. Speaker 13: Yeah. My point was because the high school was overcrowded, like you said, right? Like the day it's open pretty much.
So can is there, can we use that as a way to sort of understand like, we do need this, right. Speaker 7: Well IIII think it is kind of worth noting that if you are doing well, like, and we are academically and we're, we're doing, we're competitive with many of our neighbors for housing and quality of services. That natick's a pretty desirable place to be. And you know, there are a lot of people that like the benefit of a new school and a new school is generally one that's less than 20 years old.
Right? Less than 15 years old. 'cause they, they stick around 40, 50, 60 years in some cases even longer. So, you know, you have to, I think you need to take that into consideration in our recent ex experience that when you build something new, some people move to town and go, that looks pretty good. I want that for my kids. Like, I mean, Natick High School is a nice looking building and, and you know, people that have gone in there for SATs or sports or other things, I, I've heard comments and they're like, wow, that's, that's really nice.
And then I tell 'em it's, you know, already thir 12, 13 years old and they're like, well it's still really nice. Right. Speaker 13: Yeah, I was curious because I'm wondering if we building those, I'm wondering if they decided or they relied on the, like the internal natick projections or the MS B's projections. Speaker 7: M MS BA always does their own projections, but every time I've been through this exercise, there gets to be some back and forth. Okay. So that they're not opposed or dead set against changing their mind. But it's, it's not easy. Speaker 13: Yeah. Okay, thanks.
Speaker 1: I mean I think we can say we definitely did not do an independent enrollment study for Kennedy. Right? That's my recollection of that process. So yeah. So this would be adding some upfront research Speaker 10: I'd like to add too, that the way I'm thinking about this is whatever the results of the enrollment study, I mean this is a bit of a dance. Mr. Gillis sort of said that in the beginning about funding. So, but I'm really interested in our own ability to use this to interpret and decide what kind of school and what the vision for the schools we want here in
Natick as a school committee. So as much as I think it's very material and a potential catalyst for getting a better funding formula from the MSBA, I think it's gonna serve so much more of a purpose than just that. Speaker 1: Did I see your another hand? Nope. Are we ready to vote? Okay, so all in favor? Okay. Anyone against, anyone abstaining. All right, so 6 0 0 in favor. So Speaker 10: Thank you very much. Speaker 1: Thank you for bringing that to us. Thank you. That'll be really huge important. It is huge. Yep. Speaker 10: I'm like really thrilled of the reception of this group to
that because it really was something that came up right before vacation. So thank you. And by you're voting it tonight, it really shows the investment you have in it. So Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: I appreciate that Dr. Bash. We, we have been talking about an enrollment report at, at this committee for three years and unfortunately at times it was met with some just uncertainty and so it's so nice to be in a place where we feel certain now that we can move forward with it. So thank you. Yeah. Speaker 10: Perfect. Excellent. We have one more item on my report, which is the non rep schedule with, along with a couple memos and Julie Skipper
and Maulus will be presenting on that or really opening a discussion. I think the documents speak for themselves. Speaker 7: We're gonna let Julie start. You have to be tired of me by now. Never Speaker 10: Welcome Julie. Speaker 19: Hi. Hi. Have you all had a chance to look at the non rep schedule? Okay, so I mean, for the most part everybody got a 2% increase unless there was a market adjustment or no change. We did that. That's what the town had offered all
of their units as well. We've, the positions that are new, it says new next to it. So I don't know if you want me to go through all of this or if you just wanna look at it and if you have any questions, I'm happy to answer them. Speaker 1: Does, do we want to go through it or do we have, just have questions? I see maybe some questions. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: Thank you for this. I, I, my question just is about the substitutes and I just wanted to make sure that you felt as if the rate, I think I saw in the, in the third quarter report
that you we're gonna go over the substitute so Speaker 7: We won't next year. Speaker 8: Okay. So you think that this rate is going to attract substitutes and that our FY 26 amount is also enough, do you know what I mean? It's like both sides. Are we doing enough with substitutes? Speaker 7: I, I believe so. Hopefully we need a few less substitutes. But that's all, you know, you have to kind of go with Hi. Historical average for FY 24. The, that budget was, was lowered to get through the year
because the cuts weren't made in other places and we had salaries we needed to pay and then we saw what happened and that, you know, the FY 25 budget was basically adopted and set out publicly about halfway through the year. And we saw how, how much that was. So going back about six years, made a budget with a historical average. We do sort of compare our rates with some, some other nearby places and we seem to be pretty competitive, right? Like we have a different rate for the nurses. We have a different rate for retired teachers with a license
and we, we try to be competitive to, to bring them in here so we can make the most of, of the day when, when our staff are out. Speaker 1: My question. Okay. Speaker 8: So just the ranges I on the new positions is that based on education between one 15 and one 40, that's a big range in the coordinator of data strategy and student success, director of curriculum and instruction. Are you, do you make that decision based on the person's like education and experience level? Speaker 1: Yep. Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Okay. Any other questions? Do we have a motion move approval of the non rep schedule for FY 26 Speaker 10: Second. Speaker 1: Okay. Any discussion before we vote? Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining? So we have 6 0 0 Thank you very much. Thank Speaker 7: You. Yeah, thank you for the support Speaker 1: Is exciting. Oh, do you wanna update us on those new positions? Speaker 10: What do Speaker 1: You update us when they get
Speaker 10: Oh yeah, we, so I can say right now that the positions have been posted just like we did and I think we explained to you pretty thoroughly with the brown search process. We believe in an interview process that sort of tries to mimic reality of what's gonna be required in the job. So performance tasks oriented around the skillset that we can actually see demonstrated work. It also involves, you know, I don't wanna go in too much into it because I wanna be careful so that when the people come and interview we don't, we don't give it
away in a school committee meeting. But if they're watching a school committee meeting, I'm pretty proud of that. So bottom line is we're making a really participatory process where we have people in the school systems, you know, even for the position that Mr. Gillis has open, we're gonna have principals on that team. We're gonna have people who work with these people day in and day out because we believe our cabinet is customer service to our schools. And so it's very important that they feel good about who we hire into these positions. So I'm really excited. I've already asked the cabinet members who have these open positions to review their process for hiring with me to show me who's gonna be on it and the entire process.
And they've made really robust plans. So I can't wait for them to kind of share with you about how that was done and who lands in the roles. But I, I feel excited about it. So not under my report, but the next piece is under finance. Can we move to that piece or did you wanna do the chair piece first? Speaker 1: I was wondering if we could just finish if we voted the CBAs now while we're talking about money. Yes. So earlier in executive session we approved me memo memorandums understanding for collective bargaining agreements with the paraprofessionals and the cafeteria workers. And now we need to vote that in open session.
Does someone have a motion for that? Speaker 8: Would you like me to move them separately this time? Yes. Okay. So move approval of the memorandum of understanding between the Natick School Committee and the Association of Paraprofessionals of the Natick Public Schools for a dated on April 28th. Speaker 5: Second. Speaker 8: Do you want me to make a second motion or? Speaker 1: I think we can vote this one first. Okay. Any discussion on that? Nope. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone abstaining? So we've got 6 0 0 in favor Speaker 8: And then move to accept the memor memorandum
of understanding between the Natick school committee and the Massachusetts Labor's District Council in behalf of maintenance and custodian's. Local 1 1 1 6 dated 4 28 25. Speaker 5: Second. Speaker 1: Any que any questions or discussion? Okay, well vote then. All in favor? Anyone against? Anyone? Abstaining? We got 6, 0 0, thank you. And I believe that concludes all of our collective bargaining activities for this year. So great job everybody.
Speaker 5: That's Julie. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. So we can move to finance. Speaker 10: Yeah, we do have on here too, which is the formality of approving the last day of school. Should we do that now as well? Let's do that. Sure. Ms. Ney, do you, are you prepared to kind of just at least talk us through that? Huh? Speaker 1: This Speaker 8: Is the most important vote we take all year. Speaker 1: Yes. I believe how many people are asking? Yeah, Speaker 16: I'd be happy to talk about that. Okay. So originally the calendar had 180 days bringing us to June 17th. We had one snow day, which would bring us to June 18th as the last day of school.
If you so vote please and thank you. Speaker 1: Okay. Alright. Do we have a motion Speaker 5: Move to Speaker 6: Approve the last day of school for 2024? 25 school year for, did you say Speaker 16: June 18th? Speaker 5: 18th second. Speaker 1: Okay. Any discussion or questions? All right, we'll vote all in favor? Anyone against anyone? Abstaining. So 6 0 0. Our last day of school will be June 18th. That's great. It's coming back for 20th, I know. Yes. Yeah. And that's a half day, right? It's always a half day. That is a half day. Yes. Thank you. Great.
I, yep. Okay. Do you wanna bring us there or do you want me to, oh, go ahead. So now we'll move on to the finance topic, Mr. Gillis. Speaker 7: So in your packet you have hundred page packets, don't we? But there's a 12 page third quarter financial report and in there it, it, I'm gonna summarize it so I'm not gonna go through all of it. But the general fund, we expect to come down to about $0 being returned to the town or maybe, maybe a little bit, especially with in light of adding another expense for their enrollment,
independent enrollment study. Pretty sure. We'll we will, we'll hit the zero mark with adjustments to all the other funds revolving funds that we can, as well as making sure we, we shake all the change out of all the unended encumbered purchase orders that we have at this point in time grants we're, we're making pretty good progress, a little bit better than last year. We've spent, spent down a little bit more at this time than we had last year and that was sort of a conscious decision to make sure that we get the money from the state
and the federal government. Anytime in my experience, whenever the state or the federal government has sort of walked things back, if you had already submitted your claim for the money, they honored it because you already paid the bill. So we, we, we charged things off to the grants earlier this year to make sure we would get the money due to the political climate. And we got basically almost as much as we could except for professional development stuff, which a lot of that happens in times when school is not in session. So end of the school year, we always have some more things
that are coming up or if they're federal grants, things over the summer and things like summer school, which we can't submit a claim 'cause obviously that hasn't happened yet. The revolving funds, there's some explanations there. But on on the report you'll see the, the accounts shaded red. So the circuit breaker program that is, you know, basically the cash balance, you know, what we started the year with, how much money has actually come in, how much is encumbered and expended. And then we, we still expect more money to come in from the state.
We don't, we don't do the budgeted amount for that. Athletics should be pretty tight. The summer school program money should come in and, and resolve that one school choice. We should end the year with just under a thousand dollars, I wanna say 987. We spent the money down and we're just awaiting postings from the state revenue from the state. And then in some cases postings from town hall school facilities. That one is, is over. But we found that there were some charges made there in error. And so we're working on correcting that with the town,
town comptroller and the, and the facilities department because it, it basically, if we don't charge rent for the activity, we, we can't charge a rental expense to it. So I'll use graduation as an example, right. If we have custodians out there to clean up and set up after graduation, we're not, there's no rental expense to charge that. It just needs to go to the, the general fund account for overtime that the town has because the town has the salaries for the custodians on, on their side of the budget as part of the shared, shared services that we have with them.
So all in all pretty good shape. And I put some back up from general fund reports there so you could see where we're at and that the numbers that are on the spreadsheets that I gave you tie back out to the report. So I guess at this point, if there are any questions, I'm happy to, to take them Speaker 1: Questions from the committee. Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: This is a question I submitted, so I'm trying to reread it to make sure I understand it myself. But the vo tech for FY 26 are we, I, my, I what I wrote was could we work with VO-tech to ensure that we have the accurate numbers
of students applying versus accepted by town meeting? Are we worried about that Aggie tech budget line item? Speaker 7: So The application process and then like the history we find out sort of after our budget submitted, we can make an adjustment so that that number doesn't go over for FY 26, but we are gonna have more students going to the vo agricultural technical high school wall pole agricultural, it's an option for kids to go there. There's a few agricultural high schools, the rest
of the kids go to Keef Tech and that, that's an assessment that goes directly to the town. Yeah. But Bo Aggies run a little differently because they, it's a much bigger net. And so the state sets the rate any any kid can apply to go to school there. And if they get accepted then we're obligated to pay. That's, that's the basic Massachusetts way. If if they're in your zip code, you're responsible to pay and whether it's special ed, voc ed, agricultural or public high school, that that's how it works.
Yeah, but we, we, we could take a look at that. I think. I don't have the number in front of me, but do you have it Sue? Speaker 16: I I don't have it exactly. It was a much higher number of students who applied this year. Yeah. But we could have a large number of students apply and then not all of them go, but the application process happens in March and April and then we don't know, they don't get accepted until May 1st. Ah, so budgets, you know, long closed by then. So we have no idea. And I wanna say we had at least doubled the number
of students apply this year then we typically have. So even if we had planned for more, we never would've planned for 50% more. Yeah, Speaker 15: It's not a it's not Speaker 16: A small number though. Speaker 7: Well it it 27, 20 $8,000 tuition. You know, when you only have a handful of kids like we had a few years ago and then it, you get a few more and then a few more. It adds up really fast. Yeah. So like percentage wise, it, it, it seems shocking, but you know, when you go from, I'm gonna call it one van
with four, four to six kids in it, and then you're running two vans with 11 or 12 kids, it's like, wow, what happened? Yeah, there's, there's just a, there's more and more of an interest in vocational and vocational education for a number of reasons. Yeah, I mean, I can give you one ex personal example. My, I, we live in Dedham, my son's gonna go, gonna go to Blue Hills Vote Deck. They accepted the 240 kids, they had 500 and no, they accepted 230 kids. They had 570 applicants.
So they turned down more kids than they accepted. Like that's pretty competitive for a public school. And, and I'm told Keith Tech has turned people away. It, it's, it's becoming more popular for a variety of reasons and it, I don't, I don't see how it changes in the short term. Speaker 10: I appreciate the question because this is not just a Natick phenomenon. This is like, this is something that Desi is talking a lot about and I think as we work on our long-term strategic plan, this is something we need to think about and hear student, student voice around and family voice around.
But I think we should expect that to continue to have higher demand year over year. Speaker 7: I fit in one man because one kid drives. Yeah. Speaker 1: Any other questions from the committee? Speaker 15: Okay. Speaker 1: Alright. Thank you Mr. Gillis. Okay, so we'll Speaker 7: Move, actually I left out one thing. So part of the, the tuitions, we do have an estimate for some new tuitions, both special ed and, and and VOC ed. So we can see how that shakes out, but that's likely how we'll cover it. We will not be, do not expect to be reducing any other
services should we have more kids going for next year. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. All right, so we'll move now to our, our chairman's report agenda. So this is an update on our school committee goals. So thank you to everyone who, who sent me information. So if everyone agrees, I thought what we could do is just have the, the three goals that are currently being actively worked on are the budget goal, the professional development goal, and the community engagement goal. We just, I, I have been assigned to the capital goal
and we had decided to delay that so that we could use information from Dr. SP's entry report to inform what that goal might look like. So we don't have an update for that one. So if we could just have a short update from each group about where things stand and what activities might be planned for the rest of the year. And then when we get to the professional development goal, I mean, I heard what you said earlier, Dr. Folkman, so perhaps we could kind of talk about making a plan for next year for professional development as part of that. But why don't we start with the budget goal since it's at the top of the list.
That sounds good. Speaker 8: Okay. Kate, Kathy and I were on the budget goal this year. Our goal was to evaluate the budget templates schedule and process with the administration to agree on a budget process plan for FY 26 that optimizes for efficiency, clarity and transparency. We, in the document you can see some of our outcomes. The biggest, one of the biggest being the, with, what was it called? The budget priorities that we put into the budget. The Natick public Schools budget book for FY 26. With a plan to do that in future years.
If you really wanna get into the details, the links to agendas and minutes are all in that document. The minutes we have not officially approved, but I guess as the, at the time I think Kate as the chair, you can approve those minutes if you want to because the, the second biggest out outcome was the budget subcommittee that was created. So in s all in all, we crushed this goal this year. We did, we really did. It was, I think it was a really good experience and yeah, that's all I'll say.
Kate. Speaker 1: I agree. I think the only thing left there is if we wanna just wrap up before we get into next year. I don't think it has to be, I know you guys are really busy. Just a little bit of the pre-planning for next year and stuff. Speaker 10: I could not agree more. I, I'd feel really good knowing like when are we gonna have our first FY two? I don't wanna stress out Matt, but when are we gonna have our first look at FY 27? Right. So some of those things I think we should anchor. Speaker 1: Did he, Speaker 10: He didn't leave. Okay. Speaker 20: They're, they're laughing. Speaker 21: I'm panicking Speaker 9: Over Matt. Speaker 1: Yeah, Speaker 10: It's never done. So I think it would be helpful
and to have Mr. Gillis's input in that what's reasonable to take on next year so we can, we should make another meeting. Speaker 1: Okay. Thank you. Any questions from other committee members about this activity? Okay, thank you. Alright, let's move on to professional development. Speaker 6: I think that's the one that it has. Ms. Brunell, Mr. Brand and Ms. Scott. So we developed a goal, we decided that first year. Oh is that what Oh good. It's on the screen to have an equity training and I think the next step is to select the vendor.
We have a couple of options. So I'm not sure how the committee wants to select the vendor and, and then figure out the specific date and time for the training. I do know one of the reasons why it was delayed, at least why I didn't push for it before to be honest, is because we have Darsa Ahman Jackson, who's been working with MASC on offering trainings for school committees in that process. So I was hoping that we would be able to do it for free
through MISC. I think that process isn't really going anywhere for various reasons. I won't get into it on MAC and I won't get into it. So anyway, so that's why it hasn't happened. And so I think that as this has been something that we've been talking about for a while, we should just do it on our, on our own. So that's, that's, that's where I would say would be the first thing you would wanna put on our plan. And the second one would be MASC conference in November. 'cause that's something very helpful. And then we can explore what other options we would want. Speaker 1: And then just a question. So the training, 'cause we, we had originally hoped
that this might happen this fiscal year, right? But am I making sort of the correct assumption that that's really not feasible at this point? Speaker 6: I mean we could, we could push for it in particular if we decided we can contract with a vendor this year if we have the funding so that we don't have to worry about it. The, the funding next year. Sure. Oh Speaker 1: Somebody, Speaker 6: Oh sorry, got distracted. I have a stranded teenager
so we can contract with someone but before June 30th so we can pay for it now and have that be a summer Speaker 1: Activity. A summer activity. Okay. And then another question on this, so we had talked about an equity training, but some of these are actually like school board. One of these proposals is not for equity per se. Is that correct Ms. Brunell? Speaker 8: I think that I, well, well one, I just wanted to know, I think we have two different documents. 'cause there was a third proposal that I just emailed everyone 'cause that somehow that got cut off the document. That's in our meeting agenda meeting or in, in our agenda.
I think that's on us, not you Linda. But I think the idea, the second proposal here is, and Dar said Amte Jackson would say the same thing. Anytime you're looking at data, you're looking at equity. And so all three of these proposals are really looking, you could call it an equity training, you could call it a data training. It's what you're learning to do is understand what the students need and why they need it and who needs it and then how to get it to them. Speaker 1: Okay. So I guess then just looking around the room here, so this was a goal that we established last summer.
We kind of committed to it in November. We're revisiting now. Revisiting it now. Are we still all on board with proceeding with this? I'm seeing nodding. Okay. Alright, so then I, we need to process then for evaluating these three different options. Speaker 6: Yeah. I'm assuming it's not, the amount is not, doesn't pass any threshold around procurement. We don't have, it doesn't have to be an open No, but it doesn't, yeah, so I think it's just in internally. I mean the school committee just deciding Okay, how to proceed.
Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: One more note. I mean, I will say the AJ Cray bill's proposal, he and I spoke and he was like, don't use me, you're this is, he's like the, the money is, he had other ways that his work could be effective for us. But his, he, you know, it's like $40,000 for a school committee. So he, his suggestion was us that we'd not contract with him. That he certainly, we could read his book that we talked about. We could, he has study questions. Boston public schools for example is are using him right now.
So he didn't feel as if we were at that level of need. And I think also because of the override, we talked about really pulling back and looking for, it's why we got the third proposal looking for ways that to do this work that were not extra, you know, really expensive. Speaker 6: Yeah. And I believe he's not, he's in Texas, whereas the two other people, so the third proposals from someone, so, and ESA is local too. I don't personally have a preference. I'll, I will say, I know if other members, the members
of administration wanted to chime in, but ESA knows our district just because she's been working with our cabinet. The other person is a, also happens to be a fellow school committee member at that neighboring town. So she knows the landscape. So I think they would both be good and both bring different perspectives in terms of what they can offer a school committee like ours and both are local. Speaker 1: Okay. So do you have a, do you have a recommendation of one or the other or is the content different? Would it meet a different need for our school committee? Speaker 8: I think that the darn, did we have a proposal?
The one I, I don't see anything linked here for dice's proposal, but I thought it was $15,000 for a three hour or it, it was, we had more details than our presented here. Speaker 6: Oh yeah. It's not linked. Let me pull it up. I recently emailed it, I think, right? Speaker 1: You did? Speaker 6: Just asking so I can find it quicker. Yeah. So she offered up to, so part one is required req requested to our training, which is what does belong belonging look like in action?
How can we best understand what it means in schools for schools and school committees, school communities? Sorry, I don't have my glasses either. And, and when I say requested, this is what she put in her proposal. This is the conversation that she had last year with Ms. Wong, the interim superintendent as what to propose what she thought what Ms. Wong thought would be benefit us. She also offered a part two. All each of these parts are two hours advocating for long-term change that supports all students communication, communication, leaning in, listening
to multiple perspectives. And then part three, again, recommended planning and moving forward with next steps. Each of each training is, each two hour training is $5,000. So if we do only part one, it'll be 5,000. If we do all three, it'll be 15,000. And obviously we can do just two for 10,000. Okay. I'll also say at M-I-S-C-I actually did her session, a session. She, she gave, she actually did do a whole thing on around equity and data. So it's not in her proposal, but if, so one issue I I think in general
for both proposals is to figure out what exactly we want. Like what is the content we want ask each of them for, for that. I'm assuming the pricing is probably gonna be the same for ESA meeting, $5,000 per two hour session regardless of the topic. But we can always adjust the topic. I'm assuming we can do the same thing with the other vendor. Okay. So you asked if we have recommend, I personally don't have a recommendation for either. I think it would be helpful, and I don't know if we wanna do this now to figure out exactly what we want. Yeah. And then go back to each of them and say, you know, here's the session, here's the kind
of training we're looking for. My recommendation is we do at least, at least two sessions, not just one. I think one focused on that on data would be, is important how to read data so that we can actually quantify efforts towards equity. And I just talk about it in a kind of ambiguous way. So that, that's just my recommendation. Speaker 1: So, and just a question on that. So then you would, so the two pieces would be like sort of learning how to, how to interpret and understand data. And the second would be how to apply that understanding to improve outcomes for all students. Yeah. Speaker 6: Okay. It's specifically within the
purview of the school committee. So how do you use that data policy, policy, budget, et cetera. Speaker 15: Okay. Speaker 6: And, and that's my recommendation regardless of which, who we go with. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 10: I'd like to weigh in if that's okay, Mr. Chair. Sure. So I've been really impressed. I don't know the other person. Full disclosure, I can only say that I've been very impressed with dice's work and I'm kind of hard to please in this area. I'm just owning that we're at, we actually expanded some of our work and I'm happy to share the scope of work
with the school committee so you can kind of see that. What I wanna speak to most is that potential for cohesion across both what we're doing internally and what the school committee would look at. I agree a hundred percent with the data side. I found some of her work that she did with all of our staff in November around what's called scarf threats. You can Google it and look it up, maybe you've already heard of it. It's like resonating with me to this day about how we manage complex change together in partnership with all of our staff. So like a lot of what she talks about hasn't been lost even now.
And she's taught me a lot. So I'm just a huge fan. And I think she does know Natick. I think, you know, I, in full disclosure, she a hundred percent looked over my entry findings as a, as a, a thought partner and, and made me sort of help synthesize and raise up the, the first one, what became the first finding, which was around central office cohesion and working in silos. So she helps push thinking to such a higher level, which I really appreciate. And she can just see through the weeds sometimes.
And that's often what all of us need. So I, I think she's, we are thinking as a district of working with her internally on the pieces of building a long-term plan as well. So we're, I'm happy to share that scope to see to what extent that would match up with what you as a committee wanna do with her or with any partner. Just to see that. So I, I offer that as a one-sided piece with no knowledge of the other person. Speaker 1: Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: I'm not now, I'm sorry, my brain. I had to think back upon our meeting. So initially when we thought, when we looked at the $15,000,
we thought, okay, this is, let's see if there are other options out there thinking that that was too high of a, of a number. And because we thought multiple sessions would be necessary, which is why we then looked at, you know, and truthfully we only looked at two more people and then the override kicked up and we were like, pause. So I think I could see two things happening. I mean, many things happening. I could see us moving ahead with one of these two of the three, I could see us also looking, going back, like Shai said, going back to both
of them and saying, this is what we want. This is what we have, this is the money that we have available. 'cause we don't, we don't have $10,000 available right now. Even if we did a two hour session with Darsa based on our, based on our school committee budget. Or we could also pull back and just, you know, wait and get a few more people in the thing. In this piece, I echo what Dr. Sp said about Darice. I've seen her present three times and I thought she was amazing. Speaker 1: And I guess there's an option too, that we could, if we wanna have two sessions,
we could have one this summer. How do you think they need to be very close together? Could we have one kind of with budget from this year and one with budget from next year? Or, I mean, what's, Speaker 6: If we do this summer, it's, we can do it next year or, or can do both? We can do both. I don't know if Ms. Bilbo has something. Speaker 1: Yeah, Speaker 16: I know you have $8,000 left in what you have. We also have a teacher diversification grant that's directly tied to the Medco 2.0 work that we've been doing, which is directly tied to the equity piece
and is all the work that we did with Dissa last year. And I wrote a grant this year that we need to spend before June 30th, which has money left in it that I could help supplement the work if you wanted to do the two sessions with Dissa so I could supplement the additional $2,000 to make that two, to do those two sessions. Speaker 1: Thank you. Wow, that's incredible. So what do, what do we think that was our original idea, Ms. Lathers or Speaker 14: I, I like the idea of piggybacking on work that you guys are already doing. I mean, I think if we asked for proposal specifically to say
what things do we need to know to speak the same language, support the same goals, I think that would be Speaker 1: Helpful. Yeah. Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna make, oh, Dr. Sson, go ahead. No, you go ahead. All right. So I'm, I'm going to make a suggestion then that we pursue getting a quote from ESA for a two session training with, as Dr. Fiman suggested, a data focused piece and then an application to school committee activities piece. Does that feel like
that would be a good thing to do at this point? Okay. Speaker 6: Alright. So I was gonna offer, I'm happy to reach out to her since we, I wasn't gonna say this 'cause I don't wanna be biased, but now, now that we chose her, you know, meeting that we have for MASC, when I mentioned I was from Natick, she said, oh, I love Natick. So I'm glad we chose her. Yeah, Speaker 1: Good. Yeah, I know we've been trying to, we've been trying to make this happen for over a year now, so Speaker 6: Yeah. So I'll reach out to Speaker 1: Her. Okay. Wonderful. Wonderful. Okay, that's exciting. And then the second piece was, so a plan for next year. Do you think you guys could come back to us with sort of a,
a budget for next year and types of activities that you would recommend that we participate in? Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean, I think it'll be interesting. Personally, I think it'll be interesting to brainstorm what are the things that we want PD on, you know, budget could be one. What are the other things that we want? And I dunno if people want to email any ideas to, again, it's Catherine, Matt, myself, and Tamika. And that we can use that to build a plan. I mean, obviously we have our own ideas, but, Speaker 1: Yep. No, that sounds like a great idea. So we'll do some brainstorming and start thinking about how to have a more structured approach to next year.
Yeah, okay. Because I'm conscious too. I think some people have, oh, sorry, Ms. Feloni, Speaker 16: I was just gonna make a recommendation. Yeah, I think think that the work that we do with Darsa has, we're never done with the work that we do with her. And I'm just thinking about the political climate that we're in and some of the topics that have come to you as a committee. And I think that some of the recommendations that Uma has made to us around some of the topics that we've brought to her based on what has happened in the community,
she's been a great thought partner around that and supporting us in how to respond to some of the things that are happening and how to support our educators around some of the things that are happening. So as you're thinking about professional development and if you're starting the work with her, it may not be a bad idea to be thinking about how to continue some of that work in addressing some of the issues that are happening in our community and how we respond to that. Just a thought Speaker 1: Well taken. Thank you. Okay, great. Okay.
Yes. Oh, Ms. Brunell, Speaker 8: I just, I think that people should only email Shai because of, if you're willing to do that. Oh. Because of open meeting law. So if you have, we can't brainstorm with three of us on the same email's, so Speaker 1: Sure. Speaker 8: Once if people email you, then we can put it in a, in, in a meeting. Speaker 1: Okay. Good catch. Yes, thank you. Okay. So excellent, excellent work on that goal, guys. Thank you. Moving on to community engagement, and I actually had someone ask me today, are you still doing school committee office hours?
So I think this is a timely topic question to discuss. Speaker 8: Okay. So on the school committee, sorry, I'm just trying to pull it up. We created a document called the School Committee Outreach signup sheet. And Mr. Patel, I don't know if you are on that yet, so I will make sure that you are my apologies. But basically we, you know, continued to, sorry, I can't do two things at once. I'll do that in just a bit. We broke out the engagement from January to March to really maximize our outreach to the community around the override and the, and the budget.
So now we're coming back into the, the full plan. We do have, if we felt it was productive, we have farmer's markets that we could go to. There's several other events there. And we have may I thought that was in here. Yes. We have a may virtual coffee hour without anybody signed up and without any date planned. Okay. Ja, I'm Jamie, I'm going to add you now. I just did. Oh, thank you. Okay, so, Speaker 1: And just a question about the farmer's market activities.
Are we like sharing a table with the select board at all or are we getting our own table? Like is it a government table or? Speaker 8: No, so the farmer's market that would prefer us to, to alternate with the select board. Okay. Because of space. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: A shared table is maybe that doesn't create a space, they just didn't want the select board in the school committee to both have an individual table. Yeah. Speaker 1: Okay. Speaker 8: And we are signed up for the September natick days. Speaker 15: Okay, great. Speaker 1: So if people want
to participate in this, do you want us to just like, pick a date and sign up if we wanna host a virtual coffee hour? I mean, what is the protocol for doing this? Speaker 8: Yeah, I mean, I guess that's the question. Like, do we, do we wanna start coffee? We felt like coffee hours weren't necessary during the, during the override because we were having so many interactions in the past. We just, if you see that final tab, the 2022 in that document, we base the coffee hours on the goal, the profile of the graduate
or the goal, the individual school committee goals, that was the topic and people just signed up. Speaker 15: Okay. Speaker 8: Anybody have opinions? Speaker 6: I don't have opinions. I think this is great. One, one thought I would add is 'cause you just, 'cause you were talking about themes, just an observation. Over the past year or two, we've had specific tasks the school committee has and collectively have had in front of us that we used community engagement for. So the superintendent search was one, the override was another one. And so I think it's a nice thing to combine both generic,
not generic, but you know, like broad periods of time when we don't have anything specific just to like engage in community and, and also as we're thinking about new important decisions ahead of the school committee, like, you know, for example, the memorial building to use those for that as well. So just, just wanted to like, have us think about that so there's not Yeah, Speaker 1: I think it definitely helps to have a topic right, that's timely and that people are interested in Yeah. To get people to wanna participate for sure. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 8: Also the, the select board does in-person coffee hours, I think at the community senior center, which I think would just be good for us to plug into our calendar so that we just have a touch base there a couple times a year. Speaker 1: Do you know what time of day or what day they do it? Like Speaker 8: When is, I think they do it at like a lunch, it's a lunchtime thing and they do it once. There's two members that go, they all rotate. They have many, they do, they spend a lot of time in office hours. I'll say that. Okay. I'd be happy to follow up with them if you want me to get their schedule. Speaker 1: I was, yeah, I was just curious like when they get the
most, and I imagine they might have a different audience of folks who wanna talk to them than we would, so it might not be helpful to us to sort of follow their example either. Yeah. So, okay. Speaker 8: Can I suggest Tuesday, May 13th as the next virtual coffee hour? It's a week or we don't, Speaker 1: Two weeks. Speaker 8: Two weeks from now. Yeah. Speaker 1: Is town meeting still happening then, or what, what time of day would you think this would be? Speaker 8: But I don't think it's Okay. I see what you're saying. I I, well we have it from six to 6 45.
So that's before town meeting. Right. Okay. Just tell me you start at seven. Speaker 9: Hmm. I don't think they're saying like four, Speaker 1: Four meetings. Speaker 9: They think, who knows? Yeah. Speaker 1: Yeah, that's true. Yep. Speaker 8: I think no major board can meet on the time. Does a virtual coffee hour count as, Speaker 1: I was just wondering if people's attentions would be divided. I see. If people would, you know, but then again, town meeting members may not be our audience either, so Yeah, I think May 13th works for me. Yep. Speaker 8: I mean honestly you could do six to six 30. They're, they weren't the times we've done 'em,
they weren't, you know. Okay. Speaker 9: Start from seven 30. Speaker 8: Okay. All right. Well then let's keep it Tuesday, May 13th. Anyone that would like it, put your name there. It can only be three people. And Linda, we could use your support with a link as a Zoom link I think is what we used last time. Right? Yeah. And then could the district put that in the engage that goes out. Great. Anybody wanna put their name in now? Speaker 1: I will. Speaker 9: Yeah. Speaker 1: If I can write in it. Yeah.
Then I'm happy to do a farmer's market this summer too. Okay. Once we have the dates. So you're gonna schedule those dates and then you'll let us know. Sure. Speaker 8: Okay. Sure. Speaker 1: Alright, Speaker 8: Great. Speaker 1: Super exciting. Wonderful. Any other discussion on this topic? Okay, awesome. I think that concludes our agenda. Speaker 5: Would you like a motion? Speaker 1: I would love a motion. Speaker 5: Oh, well then I would move to adjourn. Speaker 1: Second. Okay. All in favor? Anyone against? Alright. Six, zero. Zero. We are adjourned before 9:00 PM.
Before 9:00 PM That's a decision.