all right it's six o'clock so we are going to get started first up the pledge of allegiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for it stands one nation under God
indivisible with liberty and justice for all officially calling the April 16th school committee meeting to order um agenda is kind of long tonight so we will move right along first up is the student
spotlight series i will turn over to Dr all right good evening i am very excited tonight to introduce Mrs jen Young and Mrs michelle King with their Norton High School cubers um so I'll invite everyone to come up and they'll give us a
presentation all right we don't have everyone this is a the club is a little bigger but we have Sarah Liliana Samantha Abby and Kayn and they're going to tell you a little bit about what we do and they're going to do a really quick demonstration
after of a very small scale we couldn't bring our whole doggy pony show down the street even look a little silly pushing it down but um they can give you an idea of how it works [Music] to other
basically about each month yeah twice a month really um we pick out a photo kind of with the theme of the month or something recent that has happened and we make a mosaic of it out
of Rubik's cubes um Oops this is um this one we did of Miss Clark and first we kind of render the photo a bit um we highlight most things that wouldn't really come out if we just put
the photo on there and put it through our website so like on this one we highlighted the hair a little bit more and we zoomed in and now we put it into a website and it already gives us like the outline for it
this is only one section of it a one it usually goes through X and we each get a section we go by um what the rubric kind of says and it's really fun um it's pretty easy to do too since you only have to do one side and it comes out
into this beautiful mosaic and just Oh there it is that's just a a small sample of some of the work that we have done over the years uh so some of them are famous people some of them are cartoons some of them are
maybe locally famous we've got Adah Wigan we've got Mr smith who's retiring we have a few retired custodians up there so um we've taken requests before um and sometimes we just mostly come up with the ideas ourselves i think you
guys should have wheeled it down 123 so why don't you guys start so they designed um like she said we usually use a website but we also can do smallcale ones just by hand so that's what they did a little um uh it's just a flower
because we don't have time for you to sit and watch us put together 600 cubes so they just So Jen the big board is 600 cubes 600 is what we had what we started at we usually do between 560 and 580 now
just because of breakage over the years we don't actually have 600 full cubes left anymore um but that was the original need grant that we got for um 600 it evolved really because there used to be a loaner program and the loaner sent out 600 and so that was our number
to start with but um yeah and as you can see too I mostly put up pictures where we had the board or some of them have like the more primitive board but you can't really tell but like where Manny is and Tom like those and oh and Penny
the the horrible scary clown there that's on his side um we we were really just doing pushing library tables together and doing them flat and then when we did Manny we took our whole show down to the middle school and asked for
tables and I don't think Ronnie Goldstein really understood what I was asking for so we had one little round table and we're it wasn't going to work so my Kramer came out and said "Oh well why don't I give you a piece of plywood?" And they we've like built it on the spot and then later it's evolved
it was actually Marggo who came up with the the model with the wheels that we could actually that we can now push around the building so we do it upstairs we put it in the elevator and we bring it down to put out in the lobby for everybody to see which is a lot more
convenient than um lining them up on tables and hoping for the best so what they're doing right now is working together solving um and you as you can see or as you could see up there too it's not just solving a side so you're kind of it's almost counterintuitive
because you're used to trying to make Bside one color but really what you're doing is matching up different colors so everyone is different um so it takes a little getting used to but anybody can do it we really can teach um anybody who
wants to to do it and it's young me so I you know and I can vouch when I first started um I just will never forget who's working on me and I'm like it's me i would say they're probably they're all better than us at solving all of them
and we've had you know these are different iterations of them now and the kids some of the kids that are up there are long gone i think we started this in 2017 so um and some of those kids could solve in under 30 seconds like they you
know I don't really know how that happens but like I said they're all better at this than we are i used to take the stickers off and try to tell when you're done the corner and it's not solvable and everybody Yeah that's frustrating
we're almost So is there a specific like left right up down the you have to go there yeah so it's algorithms that they have to learn um so usually um to teach it you make the white cross so you put your middle you've got the middle don't
go so you pick that side and then you put the side pieces in first it's easiest to put the corners in and that's just a down over yeah up and around down you know and that puts the corners in and that's like I said we're only doing one layer here we're only doing one side
so um but there were more algorithms to do the additional layers wow we're almost there you know I wish we had something to stand it up but maybe we can
i'll have a phone take a picture yeah you can it's going to be there so you can all So what's like the turnar around time like when you guys have an idea for for one of the pictures like how long is the time you put into making that picture come to the board so unfortunately I end up doing a lot of
the design because everybody kind of chickens out on it and I work on that so sometimes they go quick and sometimes not like the the Lorax the kids did that one totally themselves um so we have had some that they've done on their own but um it's hard to say playing with it
designing it because I just do a little bit i I I go away and don't look at it i come back but in terms of putting it all together we start right after school we're always done by about like what 3:40ish and that's with all the chatting that goes on too so so almost 600 cubes yes
in less than two hours yes yes and that's 25 cubes that they just did and they have a little flower there if anyone wants to get up and walk over and check it out please do all right i can see it from where I am and that was I don't know it's only 6:09
so five minutes incredible job guys and Molly just too Oh Molly just Oh she's over by Molly's here too can we get a picture of you guys all together and we're
taking requests so if there's somebody you want done or anything because sometimes we're sitting there saying "What should we do?" And we kind of don't have ideas so please by all means can I ask one more question were any of you um students in the cubing club at the middle school with Mrs bridges are
you guys all started in high school one okay seventh grade very good that's great we were there when we went to the middle school right so we took our show at the middle school one day and Mrs bridges organized the whole thing so we
saw every kid in school and that kind of got some but yeah Aby's been our great high school recruiter and I'm very nice wow amazing job thank you guys so much for sharing with us that's so cool mrs young can we keep it and I'll return
it to you tomorrow um I'm going to stick around anyway so yeah don't worry yes it could stay thank you very much uh next up is public hearing and vote on school choice participation for 25.6 all right thank
you i think I have to go to the Do I have to open I have to open this correct yes okay uh I'll entertain a motion to open the vote hearing on school choice participation for 2526 school year so second all those in favor
all right thank you so um I have some information to share um tonight based on questions that were asked at our last meeting and some additional data that I've pulled together for everyone so I'm going to go quickly through these slides and then we can open it for discussion
um so one of the conversations that we've had recently is where are school choice students coming from um as most of you know we have currently have 238 school choice students um that number increased just last month from 231 because we had two families that were
originally here in Norton that ended up moving out of town but they stayed as part of our district so the majority of our students come from two communities they come from Taton 106 students and then Attabaro we also have 14 students from Rahobath uh 10 from Mansfield eight
from Rockton eight from Rainband um and then five from North Attboro the Oh I'm sorry seven from East the rest are more ones and twos and often those are our staff bringing their own children with them from their home
community um I also wanted to share some data around the difference between Norton students and our school choice students and as you'll see today there's really not a lot of differences between our Norton students and our school choice students the numbers are pretty close so um Norton enrolled students we
have 255 student 2,155 students versus our 238 school choice students um the special education populations are are pretty closely aligned 24.8 versus 26.5 um the number of students on 504s we
have 9.3% of our Norton students and then 5.4% of our um choice students and then um we're up to actually 70 English learners here in Norton which I was actually really surprised when I saw that number because when I started
overseeing um the English language program we had four students um and that has grown significantly and we actually have zero choice students that are considered elves um I think it's almost like talking about the elephant in the room and um I
had a great conversation earlier this week with one of our school committee members and we were talking about the fact that there's a big perception that the school choice students are exhausting our system and what does that look like um and so what we did is we pulled a little bit of data to kind of
show uh the differences between Martin students and school choice students and I think it's really important for us to remember that when we're having this conversation is that we're talking about kids and that you know um the large majority of our school choice families
have been looking for an opportunity to provide their students with a better educational um chance and you know maybe they're living somewhere that's a little bit more urban or maybe they're working here and they want their children to be with them they know how great their colleagues are and they want you know
their children to have that experience so I'm going to go through some special education data for you um some intervention data and then also some student discipline data um so this year uh we have this is our total number of referrals for
special education as a whole um and there are over 200 so 11% of those um are school choice 88% is Norton and about.3% are our homeless population and so this is important for us to know
that this includes all evaluations that are taking place throughout the course of the year this is students that may be involved in a re-evaluation we do those every 3 years for all students on an IEP it could be an initial evaluation um it could be that we're just looking for
more information about a student or perhaps that we think that maybe they needed um more of a of a structured placement and so you can see when we take a look at this data um our residents are at the top left where school choice is at the
bottom right the re-evaluations are both in red um 64% of our about 65% of our Norton students was a RIAL about 58% of the school choice was a RIAL initials in
both categories 21 versus 26 uh extended eval 1.2 versus 2.9 and then the additional information um was roughly around 12% for both groups so nothing that's really sign statistically
significant when we look at these numbers um and it's also you know one student or two students on an extended eval out of 63 is different than you know one or two students on an extended eval out of 500 plus so then the
percentages I think will help us look at that a little bit more closely and of those evaluations that we did this year um 45% of our Norton students were found eligible and again this is not new eligibility this is
could be for students that were doing their re-evaluation and they were we found that they're still eligible versus 47% of um choice 40 uh 16% of our Norton students were found not eligible versus 18% of choice and then as you can see we
still have between 30 to 40% of um eligibility statuses that have not yet been determined so they're either in an active placement and we're waiting for feedback or they're still going through that evaluate evaluation process the IEP has not yet been
signed um I also pulled some information about um elementary interventions um as you know this year we had to see a reduction in our intervention services at the elementary level we were able to bring back some support after the fall
town meeting um but it's a low percentage of students um that are receiving i actually was honestly really surprised about some of these numbers i was like "Oh I hope we're not missing anybody seeing that you know at LGN or JCS is only six or three stu school choice students that are receiving
intervention." Um and then obviously at the Yell School 33 total versus um four that's because we only have that one interventionist at the Yale school right now so their ability to see they can't see 82 students because they're only one
person um and then if you'll look at the discipline data um one of the great things that we have is something called Swiss S Swis and what we do districtwide at all five schools is we update all of our student discipline data into the
single system so we can pull all of our referrals so this year there's been 177 referrals um 300 of the so and what I did too was I looked at okay how many kids does that really mean because while the Norton
students have 960 referrals that's only 317 students right um versus 117 choice referrals that's 34 students um and I think the thing that's important for us to remember is every kid has a bad day
um you know every kid can have one or two referrals so I wanted to make sure that we were showing like really what the number of students were and you can see the percentage of the resident students with referrals is 14.7 where the percentage of choice with referrals
is 14.2 too again very very close to each other when we're taking a look at some of this data um so I've actually shared this data previously with the school committee and I wanted to make sure that I addressed some of these concerns here tonight um I think there is definitely a lot of conversations
that are happening in our school community about um choice and about um the ways that they're impacting our classrooms and our schools so I I I did think this is important to share with you so you can all see that the numbers are pretty
similar the other big question that we always talk about is special education reimbursement so my friend Karen Winsper is going to say there is way too much on this slide and it is very teeny tiny i can't see her face but I'm sure she's not right now
um but what we've done in the past is that okay this is what we're getting for special education reimbursement what we took that a step further this year and I want to say thank you to Mrs hadfield and then to Mrs russo and to Miss Sanborn and and her office for pulling
all this information together what we did is we looked at every single choice student and the services that they were receiving then we talked about the actual cost we looked at okay as you can see the first column says special education teacher
where you guys see those dark heavy lines each time you see a dark heavy line like underneath um the third line down so you see 76 19 38 and then you see two blank lines you see a dark heavy line each heavy line denotes a different
student so tonight we're looking at one six different students so we said okay what are we getting reimbursed for for the special education teacher what are we getting reimbured for for the speech and language pathologist occupational therapist
counseling PT BCBA or a paraprofessional and then we said what is the actual cost for that person so Casey and Christine and Alex sat down and they said okay this is student number one who is their
special education teacher how many students are in that group what is the hourly rate if there are four students in a group divide the hourly rate by four so I want you all to know the level of detail that went into this analysis
and um it was a huge amount of work but I actually think it's it's really really beneficial so we can all see what the actual numbers are so as you can see the first student um gets support from a
special education teacher we are re what we're reimbursed versus the actual cost they also get counseling service what we are reimbursed from the actual cost and then you'll move across the column the total cost to educate the child for special
education special education reimbursement and the difference so here you can say that see that we're paying or it's costing us [Music] $8224 more than what we are receiving in
reimbursement and if you do that for just one student you might get nervous but we did it for all 63 so if we go down to the next student what are we paying for the special education teacher versus what are we um what is our what is our cost
versus what are we being reimbursed and in that case we're actually um collecting uh $1,200 more than it is costing us i think you guys get how we did this and went through this um so as you can
see student number three special education teacher and OT again in that case we are it's costing us more than we're being re reimbursed student four special education teacher only student five um special education
teacher speech OT and BCBA support cost versus reimbursement and then student six special education teacher speech OT
counseling PT what is the cost versus the reimbursement now I think the important thing for us to know is that these numbers are going to change all the time if we were to do this each and every year I might be working with one
educator that is a veteran staff member and the next year my speech um therapists might be someone who's brand new to Nor so those numbers are going to change and so what the cost for services versus the reimbursement is is is going
to fluctuate year-over-year um but the total cost for services is $330,226.51 [Music] the total reimbursement is [Music] $353,9162 which is a difference to the
good for Norton schools of $16,871 so we are actually being reimbursed $16,000 more than we are spending to provide these services to these students and the other thing I want to mention is that this does not
include the $5,000 that we get for every single pupil that comes in through the school choice program so that 63* 5 that is on top of these costs um there are there any questions about that before I move on because I know that's a lot of
information okay um one of the things we also did was we reached out to staff to see um our staff interested in bringing their students to Norton for next year and we also took a look at our current kindergarten enrollment to see how many of those students are siblings of current school
choice students so siblings we have three um rising kindergarteners at JCS and one rising kindergartener at LGN for a total of four and then we have three staff members that are interested in bringing their children to school that are not currently siblings so one in
grade five one in grade six and one in grade eight um and then we have the recommendation so based on the conversation that we had last time um I'm recommending an additional two students in grade um two at LGN to take
a look at those class sizes there um as we've discussed before the seventh graders um are our smallest cohort district one um I'm thinking we can add two there and then we also lose a number of students between 8th grade and 9th grade some students go to South Eastern
Regional some students go to um Zarian or Bishop Fian and so that is a total of seven spots so we can open up for public comments um or any questions that the committee might have so Dr wheel you have seven spots as your
recommendation but it would be in addition to the staff members correct so I think that's 14 total so four plus Yeah seven yeah 14 total um I just want to thank the staff that put this together i think this is the
most detailed we've ever seen regarding this program so um I know it was not easy for the staff but I do commend them for their work um this definitely puts a lot more into perspective when it comes to the program so thank you to to Casey um Sam Mrs hadfield so um just want to
make sure we thank them and give them their credit where it's due agreed i was going to say the same thing i know I was the one who called for a lot of this information but I think it's necessary when we're looking at our numbers here guess we'll open it up to any public
comment awesome all right any uh other questions concerns suggestions from the school committee i just um I also just wanted to reiterate because I was also part of a lot of the conversations around school choice and um thank you to the whole
admin team that put all of that time and effort and I think this is extremely helpful and I hope maybe going forward we can sort of continue with some of it just to be able to document and really know where school choice um openings are
potentially there and um where we might want to holding back a little bit as well um going forward I do think that school choice is a benefit um I just think that as a district we need to find that number that's sort of in that sweet
spot of where are we going to be able to provide the services and not put a strain on um staff and case loads um so again just wanted to say thank you thank you i comment on
absolutely just come on up you said public comment hi I'm Shannon Taylor i am a special needs teacher at um the JC Solomon um there are so many other things that we could look at about what's exhausting teachers right now and it's not school
choice we you know having kids here and in our buildings i I didn't even know some of my kids were school choice until I was like really looking at their IE and I was like "Oh wow you don't live in North like it doesn't these kids bring so much to our community and just like every kid like right that's why we're
here." This the significant strains that personally if I'm just talking myself sorry Casey and Vinnie um is you know I have I have 17 students on my case load and one and I'm one special ed teacher 17 and that's just me and I think I'm
pretty great but when you're looking at splitting me between seven you know 17 people that's really hard and I'm doing the best that I can but we're trying to provide the service and like today I was pulled to sub for an hour and a half because we didn't have sub for an IEP meeting am I happy to do that yeah i
need I need to help my colleagues and this is an opportunity I could do that and thankfully my district my principal is doing a really good job of if I need to be pulled I'm subbing for a classroom I'm already in so I do get to kind of see my kids and provide some differentiation but there's there's
other things that we can certainly look at to be able to give time back to teachers so that we don't feel so stressed and burnt out and be able to find ways back in but I don't think the school choice is necessarily the way i really hope that like we can keep these conversations on how to keep moving
forward so that we can reduce the stress load on not just the teachers but on the kids as well because I'm not my best self if I'm thinking about 16 other things the same way no no person is but I think that's where we'd like to be able to work with you guys on how to get
there um I appreciate you guys looking to find ways to find the money like maybe it was somewhere maybe we could save all for that we've been trying to figure this out for years um but I think at times it's just that we we have a lot of kids that we're trying to provide
support to and not just the special education referrals but also like like Miss Dr o'neal very sorry Dr o'neal was saying um we have getting those interventionists back was massive for us especially at JCF and LGN so I can see
27 kids in a class next year at Hay that sounds stressful um those are kind of the things that I would be looking at is how can we support that and how can we get some better early intervention so that we can get to these kids before we have to worry about it later down the
line then I want as many kids as I can have please know that I love all of my students the spring fling that was this past weekend just completely warmed my heart to see everyone running around and having such a great time having LGN JCS and Hay together wow I was overwhelmed
um but that was it was you saw me Audrey my face was but I just want to like say again like there's so there's other things that we can think of and if you guys want to continue to work with us we really appreciate that because there is there are things we can do was let's
just find the ways how do you follow that sorry Jen Barley I work at the JCF and I know it came up before about our school choice kiddos and staff and case load and Shannon really hit on a lot of that but when
we're pulled to th it's not because of our school choice kiddos it's because of a substitute problem um our school choice kiddos they're just one of our kids they're part of our community they help create Norton in in our school
system and I think about some of the school choice kiddos that I've seen grow and mature and now they're at the high school level and they would not have had those possibilities if they didn't come to North and as a parent I can't imagine
if if I were in the other parents shoes so we do really amazing things here in the Norton School District and I want to keep providing those services and like Shannon said those kids are our kids bring them on all over um but thank you
for the breakdown that was helpful to see and we're here to help support and work with you guys any comments um I mean I just want to make sure we clarify one thing just because I feel like this always comes up school choice
the students who are here and the siblings who are here are here for until they graduate with us um so you know whatever we do with school choice all the students who are here will remain in Norton schools until either they leave or they graduate um and then I guess my
only thing Dr o'neal would be um would you entertain taking second grade LGN those two spots and moving them to the high school and maybe like 10th grade and why
I say that is again those class sizes are you know whatever 18 for for both uh well I guess it's a little bit bigger at at JCS but I feel like just moving those we know we have the the um siblings coming in for kindergarten I
feel like we're going to kind of backfill a little bit already on that side of things um and then again the nice thing about doing it a little bit later where we do have a lot of our students go to you know whether it be FE or Southeastern uh that 8th to 9th grade um and filling it at the high school
level to me makes a little bit more sense um you know just because again class sizes as they get a little bit bigger to me it's just a little different um so I don't I'm not against doing seven um I would just entertain or look at would would you be open to
moving that to a 10th i think we have two options so we could add two and 10th and make it actually nine based on my poor math the other day um or we could move those second we can take the spots out of second grade and move it to grade 10
um I'd say it's really what the committee thinks is best and um we can go from there i think my thoughts on it are I I wouldn't mind i wouldn't mind adding more spots i It is what it is i would say we could add the
two spots at the high school and keep the two at the LG because in in my thought process with school choice is if the kids are here at a younger age then they're more likely to stay versus we may not get too many new kids at the high school level versus at the LG level
um but I mean I whatever vote is is going to be put in front of me will be a yes for me so that's just a matter of semantics on the number any other thoughts i mean we definitely get to have the space at the high school
my recommendation for the second grade was to just make those numbers a little bit more consistent across those two buildings the JCS will be about 21.4 as the average class size versus we have a um you know the LGN will be 18 so
even those two spots it would be 18 or 19 in those um classrooms but that is certainly up to the committee i agree with Dan i mean I I would I would be fine with adding two for 10th grade but I I would be fine with leaving
the two for second grade as well i'd rather see with the high school i'd also rather see that high school so we can keep the number seven and move the two from LGN to the high school and
I mean I guess I would even be opposed that I mean if we just did a quote unquote five at the high school between ninth and tth grade you know I think that would all maybe give us a little bit better chance i don't know um you know so if it was five and n or three
and two or two and three I feel like that would be a little bit better um and then obviously you know seventh grade being a smaller class it kind of makes sense but some there i'd have to look and see if we could do it this way but we might be able to say
five in grades nine and 10 so like depending on what way the enrollments come in if you had four ninth graders and one 10th grader you could do that um I'll have to double check um legally if we can do it that way but I don't see
why not so if we say five at the high school in grades nine and 10 that would bring our number to eight I believe and then um one more thing here and I know this is an issue across a lot of districts
um I would love for us to put some serious pressure on students who are going to school in Norton but do not live here um and again I know legally there's some challenges to it but I would really like to see a push from administration to make sure uh I would
be honestly open to turning those kids into school choice immediately um and then that way we're actually getting some money back from them and some reimbursement so I would be open to also entertaining of you know giving a final hey this is your last call and then if
we do catch people who are not residents in Norton but attending school here and they're not a part of the school choice program um we we try to do a little bit a followup there yeah that's definitely something that we're working on um it's
difficult because legally we don't have a lot of anything behind us is really what it comes down to so um those are some conversations that we're having that's great had a quick question is there a significance to the nine or
seven number is that the lowest you can go or because when you did you have to move them for two to the high school or like to maintain that number or you could go down any number you could go down to well you could go down to zero but that has consequences but I mean like you
could go down to one so there wasn't there was no need to really shuffle them you just could just the original number the original seven was just based on recommendations and I apparently couldn't do math earlier this week and said 2 plus two was nine so It's been a while must have been a long
week and the recommendations are based on the class sizes and the or what was the number coming from like what was the decision on my recommendations were just based on current class size what we're projecting for next year and just data
trends and how we know kids are coming and going thank you welcome back great to be back uh DAS by Madra um I I apologize i have not followed any of this since
last so I'm a little out of the loop um I I wanted to ask and it's all well and good that we've done the special ed um analysis have we done an analysis on the non-special ed have we figured out first
of all it's profitable i I believe it is i think I've historically been an advocate of of school choice as you know um that being said at the same time and I think this will be kind of near and dear to the next five that $5,000 number hasn't moved in 1983
1983 93 93 sorry 83 93 doesn't matter that right so there is going to there is going to come a time when there's there's an inflection point where or maybe there's not if there's an inflection point of okay when we reach this number of kids we're no longer
profitable we should know what that number is and if there's not an inflection point we should know what that number is too because it's there is a possibility that there is actually an theoretically infinite number of kids that we can add because if we can add enough kids and still hire a teacher
under that we may want to look at that right it's a revenue stream so we should know is this revenue stream profitable or not and where does that profitability stop and and I'm surprised Nick has not said this yet because he used to say it all the time we need to start pressuring
the state and saying that $5,000 number is the wrong number it's not even close any and and I and I do think that it's still profitable because of the you know the variable and fixed costs that I talked about forever but that being said it's not going to be profitable forever
because costs go up at some point that 5,000 is going to become not enough to to meet the needs of each of these kids so I guess my two things are first of all you got a impression of the state that number has to go up and the second part is you really need to do a full analysis of the entirety of the program
to see where it's profitable or where it's not etc and maybe seven's not the maybe 17 is the way maybe we can actually add more and I get Jen you're doing it on a class size and trying not to increase the class sizes but there is the possibility we can add a whole new class with a whole new teacher and if
it's profitable do it at some point there's there's the education part of this but there's the business part of this too right this is school choice is not something that we do because we're you know we're being altruistic and we love the neighboring towns we're doing it because we want to bring in revenue
and we want to maximize that revenue as much as we can that's it nice to see you guys way nicer places than you were just at the wrong meeting dz Nick always says the numbers too low
yeah i mean I think to Denz's point I kind of had a a conversation with Jenn about this earlier you know if you want to stay with me for a second from a money standpoint right we have 63 kids who are in our special ed program plus the $16,000 in reimbursement plus the
$5,000 that we get from the state that's $331,000 that we get from our special ed students on school choice that leaves us 168 general ed edits that's $5,000 a piece we don't get anything else from them that's $840,000 so if you take those two
numbers it's $1.171 million in school choice funding you know now again me and DZ have had some good conversations around per pupil spending in Norton um you know and again 19 or or just shy of 20,000 um you know
we're at the Desi website you know I've obviously had some conversations with Dr o'neal about this as well you know but if we look at even if we're spending $12,000 per student you know if you take those 231 kids take the $5,000 they're costing Norton $7,000 to come here now
again back to Danza's point of filling classrooms and kicking the lights on and teachers and so on and so forth um you know but that's $1.617 million i mean the difference by just doing it that way if we only spend $12,000 per student in Dortmund you're looking
at on paper we're actually running a deficit you know from school choice standpoint now without the full analysis it's very difficult to find out exactly where that falls you know how many kids and what is that exact number um I just have always gone back I know we have a
lot of smart teachers here we have a outstanding administrative staff we have 231 kids in our school choice program the closest district to us is 75 you cannot tell me there's not another district sitting there being like "This
is so profitable all these districts are struggling for money why haven't they opened up for school choice and have flooded their their school schools school choice students?" You know I know Mansfield just opened it they're they're you know obviously way far behind and again we've done this for a while we kind of maybe if you want to say we
jumped ahead of it a little earlier than most uh but I do think you know I something something's got to give here and I and you know I think that number is just extremely high so I think and again I'm not against choice i've said this a thousand times over and over
again a lot of these kids you know friends with their parents and they're you know involved in baseball and everything else um you know it's it's not that it's the simple fact of is is this actually worth it is it is it worth adding to sh even if it's three we added
three school choice students to Shannon's uh you know case load that's now 17 that's now down to 14 you know now again we're not people will never get removed oh but if we kind of freeze it for a little bit here let us catch up a little bit let us get to a good point i feel like that might be the right move
u but again it's it's kind of impossible to tell until you run every single report and know every little thing and know how much you know each kid is 100% cost so hello Laura Gossip the 9 Allen drive i I have a couple of questions that I'm just
wrapping my brain around trying to understand okay so when we're talking about per pupil expenditure that is the total operational cost of everything divied up
amongst the student population yes okay so in theory if those 231 students didn't exist the per pupil expenditure would still be there it would just be higher because it would be divvied out amongst this student population versus
this student population correct am I right on that okay um so then in theory in theory if we're going to use the 12,000 as an example how much approximately would
that $12,000 be that is completely consumable non-refundable that that child walks away with i.e workbooks school supplies paper things like that that actually get burned up
not electricity not any of that because as we've said that stuff continuously exists what I'm curious is an approximate amount of money that that child actually costs that goes away that doesn't exist anymore so what would we say about
$500 of things that like how I'm just just wrapping my brain around this idea of per pupil expenditure population what those numbers actually really are in terms of this idea of there being a deficit versus not a deficit like hard
money that actually goes away i think I can't really answer that because to Denz's point and this was something that we talked about last year as well is we don't have not done the analysis analysis of what that number would be right so I'm looking at you
know the school choice numbers that we have here right now um you know JCS third grade we have five school choice students LGN third grade we have eight school choice students neither of those grade levels would change in terms of the number of teachers that we have
there because you wouldn't be able to cut a whole class for that fourth grade we have 21 school choice students perhaps you could cut a whole teacher there so I I think it's not a black and white answer because you would have to go through and
kind of figure that piece out um what what do we spend on curriculum and supplies and paper towels and toilet paper and all of like all of those things that you know are the hard money the actual hard money correct it's it's really not
12,000 in in our 12,000 world correct like that unless it it comes down to adding or subtracting staff that that's where the where the hard but that but the way that this has
been deliated out that's not so much the thing maybe minus that one fourth grade staff member in theory correct in theory and theory and theory okay thank you all right between last meeting and this
meeting we've kind of hashed this whole thing out um someone want to make a motion so we got to person um I would vote and then close it because um the vote is part of the hearing perfect
make a motion to approve the superintendent's school choice recommendation as presented so move you can do you second it yes because he made the motion motion yes so second
motion by Dan seconded by Sher so all those in favor of supporting Dr mcneil's recommendation is that the 10 or or what was on oh that's Dan is going with what the recommendation was so the
recommendation that from Jen but it was on this paper not my little thing about two moving two people so the motion that Dan is reading is a recommendation from Superintendent O'N which is the numbers you have so we have a motion by Dan a second
by Sher all those in favor i I two all those opposed I so that motion fails do we have another motion um all right i motion to do um the
amended school choice numbers with seventh grade as two and then ninth and 10th grade as five seventh grade second seven i thought we were talking
right and that was move to n you should do me a favor do that motion over and just read how many students in each grade so everyone knows this official public record okay so I motion um for school choice for
the following 202526 school year to include when we go grade by grade first grade 0 second grade zero third grade 0 fourth grade 0 fifth grade 0 sixth grade 0 seventh grade 2 eighth grade
zero ninth and 10th grade five second all those in favor three so that motion passes all those opposed two so that motion passes three
to two school choice is good to go the third motion thank you all right yes and I will take a motion to close the public hearing on school choice participation second all those in favor
all right uh now we're back into public comment period um for our normal April 16th agenda is there anybody in the public who has anything to say good moving on uh vote to approve the minutes of March 26 2025 open
session meeting school committee everyone get a chance to review the minutes i'll entertain a motion to approve so second all those in favor i uh Mr cohen with warrants i've reviewed
and approved the following warrants school expense warrant March 26 2025 $39,993.88 school payroll warrants March 20th 2025 1,140,6.7 i wish to enter that into public record
well done just I would just about to say the last warrant read thank you um next up uh just Antonio with a student rep update all right good evening everyone um from the GCS last week our second graders had the opportunity to work with staff with science and engineering
education development seed Inc on designing prosthetics for injured dogs teams of second grade students work together on coming up with a design using available resources and then had a chance to test their designs on stuffed dogs this week our entire our entire school community is gearing up for your
JCS fun run which is being held outdoors through the school day parents and guardians will have the opportunity to come and cheer on their students as they run and then from the yell this week we are getting ready for break students are doing are doing well finished things up before uh before the vacation this week
is our final of our 2025 ST March Mathness tournament with our 15 home rooms all matched up against one another in a bracket style tournament competing we're looking for each student to do their 60 required puzzles per week with the class with the better percentages moving on to the next round the first
round has home rooms from fifth grade versus fourth grade and our final two home rooms for Miss Lean's fourth grade and Miss Hannon/M Winter's fifth grade home room it's been an intense battle and we'll be crowning our 2025 SD Mark Mathist Champion after this week's final competition couple weeks ago our
students did a fantastic job on their ELA MCAST putting in excellent effort effort taking their time and making sure they answered all the questions and all parts of the open responses during the MCAT days our students start the morning with a morning recess then a snack in the cafeteria with all their friends and
we moved their specials to the afternoon so that the day is pretty enjoyable one for our students and they deserve it for the effort they put in we are so proud of them last Friday night April 11th we had our Hey PTO music bingo event there are prizes concessions music and lots of family fun it was a great night for all
those involved after break we are getting ready for our math MCAST for both grades and science mcast for fifth grades all we ask again is for our students put their put forth their best efforts and then from the middle school middle school sports are in full swing with both our basketball and softball teams off to good starts the season the
girls are currently undefeated and the boys only only lost this season came in an extra inning yesterday when they lost 1-0 mcat season is well underway at NMS and all three have completed the ELA portion of the exam clubs continue to roll along with the N at NMS with many of our clubs doing some cool and
exciting things our woodworking club recently finished their American flag projects the Ruby Skew Club recently finished their latest Rubik's Cube portrait of Mr abdul which is on display in the rotunda the literary magazine club is getting ready to publish their magazines of student work in the drama club is creeping closer to their
showtimes for Annie on June 5th June 21st sorry June 22nd and June 23rd uh a group of students led by Benson Chang and Lee traveled out to the Florest Grove Middle School in Worcester to do a workshop for the playbook initiative and project 351 approximately 30 students travel to Worcester to discuss issues
related to race bias and discrimination this trip served as an eye-opening educational experience for both groups of students lastly NMS is working on gathering materials for our time capsule and getting ready to open our time capsule which is has been buried by the flag pole for the past 25 years and then
last but not least from the high school the big thing at the high school this week is a battle of the grades um the seniors are winning by a lot right now um students have been dressing up for spirit days all week with battle of with the battle accumulating in in Friday's half day where students will compete against each other in activities to earn
their grace points seniors have been winning for the past two years now just saying there will be a pep rally at the end of the day counting the winning grade we also have 35 industry schools and other organizations going to present for juniors and seniors at the opportunity for tomorrow that's all I
have for you thank you very much uh we're going to skip the next agenda item uh on AED so we're going to go directly to number eight which is uh updates on Reed's uh DHH program dr o'neal and Mrs maderas all right thank you i'd like to
invite my colleague Dina Maderos up um to the podium to share some info about the reads program thank you Dr o'neal and thank you to the school committee members uh this is actually a presentation that
I um created for the board of directors for Raids collaborative um Norton is one of our esteemed members as are 19 other communities as of um July 1st we have added Whitman Hansen and uh Brockton
city of Brockton as among our members uh one of uh the programs that we are very proud of is the Reed's uh deaf and heart of hearing program for the past 10 plus years the Reed's deaf and heart of hearing program has been hosted by your
community by Norton public schools as a relatively new executive director I became the executive director July of 2023 i was told uh very clearly uh by the program director at the time Dena we
love being in Norton and it is a wonderful relationship our kids love it our staff loves it whatever you do preserve this relationship it's been so rewarding and um we are more than pleased to be part
of your wonderful community and to be accepted by your staff and students and administration um I was sad to hear that over the years that hasn't always been the case for the deaf and heart of hearing program uh the deaf and hearted
hearing program has been housed in other communities or different portions of the program and they haven't always felt the warmth and the warm welcome that you all provide for them uh and that means a lot it means a lot when you're on the fringe when you aren't always able to
communicate with all the adults and the peers some of our staff are also deaf so I can't say enough about all the wonderful things I heard about Norton and I can honestly say after being the executive director for a year and a half
and then some um everything I heard was clearly not an exaggeration so um again a sincere gratitude for all that Norton has done to work collaboratively with Reeds as uh I started with uh Reeds it
did become apparent that um space has become an increased issue the read deaf and heart of hearing program is continuing to grow there is a continued need for our services uh as well as there's continued need within your own
district for providing specialized services for your students as is the right thing to do it it is to keep students within your own community and as such more and more communities are building programs within so students that you would typically send out of
district you're trying to keep in your district it's it saves money and it's the right thing to do for kids so absolutely the right thing so we have our program growing we do need a couple of additional uh classrooms but we also
have Norton uh needing the spaces that we uh currently use so what I have here is just a synopsis for those of you who don't know me I probably can't talk a dog off a meat wagon so I will try to speed it up from here on out uh and just letting you
know the situation and how it became apparent to me again historically I can only go back till July 2023 so just to kind of present uh Reed's deaf and hearted hearing program by the numbers uh here in Norton when I
did present this I I did also include that we have a program at BP and you'll see that that's delineated uh but currently for this school year and the numbers as of 129 which really are similar numbers uh for right now we do have uh two or three pending referrals
but we are currently still at 52 students enrolled prek to grade 12 within um the whole program keeping in mind seven students are at BP so you have 45 here um physically in Norton in
preschool there are nine students we don't uh typically have our preschool students included in any of the mainstream classes in Norton simply because our little ones are really just trying to acquire um language some of them have parents who are hearing some
of them have parents who are deaf uh but they really are trying to just acquire the basic foundation skills for language and having that substantially separate um class time is really what they need they might see friends potentially um at recess or playtime but it's not really
an inclusive program the rest of the programming K through 12 we do try to offer uh inclusive opportunities and we are grateful for for that opportunity that really is what makes our program stand out um in our area and in the
state of Massachusetts we just had uh a family uh travel from another state from Washington state actually they're traveling to different states to see which program would be best for their child and they want to and they are willing to move to whatever state will
provide the programming for their child so programming for death and heart of hearing is difficult to come by the state does have a few programs uh but none within southeastern Massachusetts that are comprehensive as the program through
reads so um you can see by the numbers that um here are our classrooms our K1 class has eight students and we do have students participating in specials and two attend meeting grades um two three our classes are multi-grade we usually
have at least two grades uh within the classrooms our 23 um classroom has six students and two are participating in partial inclusion and all students get to participate in specials grades four five there are three students uh for
those classroom uh for that grade level there's one full inclusion and one who's fully included and uh two students who only attend specials grades six through eight we have eight students three are fully included three partially included meaning they go out for certain subjects
and um and specials and things like that and two students who only attend specials grades 9 through 12 uh there are 18 students five are included in six out of seven classes so they have an academic support class separate from uh
full inclusion it's generally considered full inclusion six out of seven uh three and four out of seven classes are being included and one and two out of seven classes for total high school uh numbers and then we have seven fully included at
BP as far as staff members that are part of our program we have 10 full-time teachers we have 13 full-time specialized assistants thanks to the opportunity for inclusive um opportunities for our students when I started we had 13 or 14 interpreters
that's only a year and a half ago we now have 17 full-time interpreters and two part-time interpreters to be able to provide that access for our students and we have four full-time specialists that includes SLPs speech language pathologists SLPAS assistants to speech
and language pathologists and counselor here are the building spaces that we currently occupy within your district uh we have I always mispronounce this school's name JC call it JCS jcs okay thank you uh at JCS we
have three classrooms we have a prek classroom we have a classroom for K1 and a classroom for 23 we have an additional classroom space that's used for speech and language literacy and counseling kind of break up that area with some dividers uh and then there's an
additional OTP room space may not be necessarily um the full capacity of a classroom at the uh Henry A yell Elementary we have two classrooms for grades four through five we have one classroom with classroom space which is you uh which is housed for our uh
administrative staff our program director team chair secretary um coordinator of um and interpretation etc and we also have one speech uh literacy counseling all specialist kind of space
room at the Norton Middle School we occupy two classrooms for our grades uh 6 through 8 there's also one additional specialized service space it's actually 0.5 it's shared with the technology department and then we have one
additional OTP space at Norton High School we have for grades 9 through 12 it's the media room space it's not really a full classroom but um it is sufficient for the needs that we have uh
in addition to it it's like an outgo and it has two other you know attached spaces that we use for speech and language building literacy skills counseling room spaces um and again those none of those spaces would equal a full classroom size uh but they are um
useful unique spaces that we access and at BP we have uh some spaces there total for uh building space uh being accessed we have 10 classrooms uh that we access in Norton and we have 6.5 additional
spaces for specialists and we truly are embedded in uh the Norton community we have a student who plays on the basketball team uh with support through interpretation we have a cheerleader on your team we
have our students who my understanding also are in band in middle school i believe I've heard woodworking mentioned uh for an afterchool activity uh we have there's a play i'm not sure which one but we have a couple of students either
participating or helping out with the play uh our students are everywhere and again you wouldn't even try out you wouldn't go for any of these things if you didn't have a level of comfort to even try so
the benefit to that is truly that continuity they're here from prek through high school so by the time you get to middle school you have the courage to try out for an activity or an area of interest or an extracurricular that really means a lot to a student and
that's why you know when I first came along they're like you really want to preserve that not many programs like this have that continuity of prek through high school of getting to know a community and feeling like you're a part
of of um what's going on and that you develop friendships kids know who you are um here when the space concerns arise I did get detailed and then of course I have myself listed like on Bob Dole for
those of you that are my age you'll know that reference but those of you who don't look it up so when I came on in July August um I was informed by Dr craig who was my predecessor uh the executive director for Reeds who was in the process of
retiring that DHH here's the priority for you Dina dhh only has a one-year contract right now in the books which means that um we won't have a place to live after June 24th unless we come up with some plan hopefully an extension
with Norton because um we feel that that's such a strong relationship dina if you don't mind I'm gonna jump in for just a minute just to save everybody long story um so the biggest concern that I had when I met with um with Dena
was specifically around two spaces um number one um the high school uh Norton High School right now our REIT students are in what we call at or what we called at one point the TV studio it's a very
interesting shaped space of um three smaller rooms that were actually designed during the addition and renovations to be a TV studio for our um video and media students and so
it's three small little spaces and it has actually worked very very well for for the DHH programming for their students because they have little small workup like breakout spaces um but what we are seeing is an increase in um our specialized programs at the middle
school needing to move on to high school and as everyone who works at the high school knows while we just did an addition and renovation 10 years ago we really weren't looking forward I think to some of the needs of you know educating students 10 to 15 years down
the road um additionally JCS right now we are you know pretty much at maximum capacity there um but one of the things that we've found is that we need additional classroom space for some of our best programs and LBC classrooms and so therefore when I share that
information and Dina and Rebecca shared that they also need an additional preschool classroom because they're growing well 2 plus 2 equals four and we can't make space out of nothing so just for I don't want you to worry about going through the whole process so
if you want to talk about the the new building so what it came down to and what I um explained in the next few slides were the efforts made and the communication that was ongoing um and we have been talking through this since
I began 2023 yes and we met actually met in July of 23 because we were both in the new superintendent induction program together so correct we spent a lot of time together and I have said to the DHH program uh to our staff because they're like we don't want to leave and I said
well none of us want you to leave i don't think Norton wants us to leave and we don't want to leave Norton um but there is a space concern and a space issue uh so as we tried to figure out how things could work and again I can't say enough
wonderful things about the superintendent you have and her level of compassion as well as wanting to keep this relationship going i think if it had been a new superintendent in Norton that didn't have the historical perspective of DHH program I don't think she would have tried as hard especially
as a brand new superintendent which is a a big role and I've commented my appreciation repeatedly um we did look at different things that we can do um I did my due diligence and I know um Dr o'neal did her due diligence uh they've
tooured spaces we've looked at every nook and cranny and we were able to work out an extended contract for yet another year which would conclude now in June June 2025 so we were able to squeeze out another year um but with the clear
indication that another year after that may not be um squeezed because of the needs from both um communities from both programs and what I did is I tried to find room within our other member
districts and we were not able to be successful with that because everyone is jam-packed within our member districts i reached out to everyone no one had room i reached out to non-member districts i reached out to Mansfield i reached out to Easton i reached out because we also
want to stay within a regionalized area it really became apparent that you know we really need to think outside the box and uh our program director was like "Hey let's see if we can actually find a neutral space and maybe we can still
access a community and bring our kids for inclusive opportunities if we can somehow magically find a place that would be close enough." So we started looking and like a little Christmas wish a building did appear right before
Christmas break in Norton and it's um only a few miles not even a a a mile from JCS and we looked into it and uh I don't want to bore you with everything all the pieces sharing it with our board uh and expressing the need uh the board
yesterday did approve for us to go ahead and sign a PNS agreement and we um have executed a PNS agreement as of this afternoon so I can actually tell you the property is at 399 Old Colony Road Norton uh it's actually next to a very
nice bakery which is probably not a good thing for me but uh it will it will uh certainly be a wonderful opportunity for the DHH program it was used as an adult uh learning facility so it's already
divided into classrooms it will need some cosmetic upgrades and again we've looked into all those pieces and done our due diligence before going into any kind of agreement for it um I can tell you uh the benefits
certainly outweigh our other opportunities we don't have another place to live so if we are able to which we've been approved to purchase this building which fiscally we are in decent shape as a collaborative to be able to
purchase the building it will be a um a five-year uh loan and um we will be able to move as of September 2025 all of our classrooms from JCS to free up JCS for
your students and your um town needs and we will be able to free up the high school which I've been referring to as the bookends what we are planning to do is we still want to give our kids all those inclusive opportunities as much as possible so we are going to also be
purchasing two vans through Reed so we'll manage our own transportation for these two vehicles and we already have staff that have volunteered uh we have people that will be able to be licensed to drive these vans and we um through
our good relationship and talking to staff and administration uh we have the support of the Norton administration to carefully work through a schedule so we can minimize the transportation of our students so our
students can be included say all everything they need is in the morning and then they come to us in the afternoon for a little bit or you know whatever the student needs based on their IEP we are going to carefully orchestrate by making sure that they access that maybe our students get
dropped off as they normally do in advance and they get included and then we go pick them up for whatever portions they need outside of your buildings again for those grades grades four through eight appears to be sufficient space and projections look good when I
spoke with Dr o'neal that we could carve out a three-year um contract when we looked at that and we looked at um that is the picture of the building um when we looked at the expenses we currently were projecting
that we would pay Norton for a rental fee for the FY budget of 130,000 for the spaces and what we discussed with um our business manager and meeting with Dr o'neal and her business manager and also
meeting with Miss Russo is that we want to make sure that we're not jipping any of you because we are accessing your curriculum we are accessing your inclusive practices that we in in discussing it with my business manager
we're like "All right 130,000 for the spaces we're not going to need some of those spaces because we no longer need JCS and we won't need the high school but we want those inclusive opportunities for our students what would be the fairest way because we want to make sure that we're compensating
uh our partners and uh it was discussed that we would pay 50% per pupil cost for ed you know for the students so in other words instead of like nickel and dimeming okay this student is only going for two classes and that's going to be
this portion of per pupil and you know what I mean and doing those kinds of things just flat out every one of our students um that's tied to Norton would we would pay 50% of the per pupil costs and that that means like our preschool
you know our um K through 12 students that are going to be accessing it and that actually means means that the funding for next year would be $229,98 so you would actually keep your classes but you'd be getting more money
for including our students if that makes sense and we're still working through the contracts we haven't signed anything yet we haven't signed anything we would really like a three-year contract so people could sleep at night but so I just wanted to mention that nothing
has been cut nothing has been we're still working through that but it's been you know as um Mrs madro said it's been a great partnership to kind of think about ways creative ways to keep reads here in district and to um continue to have them as part of our school
community and I ideally we would love to stay in Norton um if it turns out that you can't continue to house us and we need to be able to maybe try and be included in another community it gives us a little more time to be able to do
that as well there are a couple of other member districts that would love to have the program and have said you know we you know we love the program we love reads we just don't have the room but we are in the process of building a school we may be able to in two to three years you know we're redistricting uh based on
a building uh that we just were able to get in one of our districts and they said we just need time to redistrict what we're doing and settle ourselves we may be able to take on some of the programming so there's never any security when you're a collaborative because you do
rely on being able to be welcomed and accepted in different communities if you're going to give your students those inclusive um opportunities and our students for the most part I mean they do have multiple disabilities sometimes sometimes they you know have the hearing
loss or are deaf and may have a learning disability but many times they're very typical students like anyone else they just happen to have a hearing impairment uh so we want to be able to be in a community that provides those inclusive services ideally that's what we want um
so as Mrs madera said um we are going to be working with them um the board just approved yesterday the purchase of this building um so this is you know basically hot off the presses i'm sure you guys went right to work as soon as we got off that call um but what we'll
be looking to do is looking at the student schedules at Norton High School um and figuring out a way that they don't have to come back and forth from this new um space multiple times a day um and we've also you know made the
commitment that um they will have a space while they're there it just might fluctuate from um block to block based on what is available so they would have a space if students are not in um included in a in a classroom but the way the schedule rotates and flips that they
they you know need to hang out for an hour before their next class or you know have their academic supports we can do that within our own space um we'll do the same thing at JCS for these students um as you saw at the beginning of the presentation a lot of them are are all
included in specials so perhaps we are placing them in classrooms where we we'll have to be creative with the schedule and be strategic okay that this third grade classroom and this second grade classroom are all going to have specials at the same time just to kind of help with that scheduling piece um
we're very fortunate that um not only is it right next to Flaky Crust Pies but it is literally about a 3minut drive from JCS to their new building so um I I really you know as Mrs madira said like having the inclusion opportunities for
for the reads students is so important and for those of us who are educators that have seen this program over the years and what a impact it has on our school community for our Norton students for the Reed students um it's it's just
an incredible incredible program and I really did not want to see it walk out the door so um there is going to be a lot of collaborative planning in in you know the coming months as we're you know finalizing what this is going to look like um the Yell and the middle school
are going to remain as is uh for the time being and then we will you know as things come up and it we'll go from there administration that is currently taking space at the L will actually be at the new building so they will have
the administration there so that actually frees up an additional space there yeah so and that and that's great too because as you said it frees up another space and maybe we could do something with that um otherbody has any questions concerns i mean I think this
has always been a positive partnership um you know been around as long as I've been on the board here and I and I think maybe you remember this Dr maybe you share that i believe we did a survey of students on on like world language offerings a few years back and ASL is by
far the top choice because a lot of our students being compassionate wanted a way to better communicate with our guests not that they were treated like guests but they knew that they had disabilities and unfortunately we weren't able to work something out to kick off that but maybe that's a future
plan but it was it was I remember the presentation it was overwhelming to see not only are our students accepting you know our guests but now they want to be really in tune with them and and become uh able to communicate with them so it
was it was you know upsetting when we couldn't get the program kicked off but it was it was a remarkable you know occurrence that our students wanted to take things further with some of our guests um it's been wonderful because over the
years Reeds has offered a number of times free um sign language classes for Norton staff and I know a large percentage of our staff have at least taken the very intro one so that's really amazing as well
any other questions um I think the first thing is I'm glad that there's a logistical plan to obviously keep the kids included you know within Norman public schools if you will um Jen Christina I guess what does this
kind of mean um for FY26 budget and then obviously three years down the road what is I guess kind of what is this all going to look like um so as I mentioned earlier nothing has been finalized in terms of the contract but we're working um Christine has taken the lead on this
with um the business manager from Reeds Lindsay and they've been working um you know back and forth on this so ultimately what it would mean is that we would be taking in funds um not necessarily through facilities as we have in the past but instead through
that tuition line um I believe the committee may recall um a couple meetings ago we talked about that one student we have from Dyon Rhobit that attends one of our specialized programs and we accepted tuition um from Don Hobith in order to have that student here that would be very similar to with
the way that we set this up um but those are logistics that quite honestly until the contract settled we haven't kind of um really looked at it too much and it's important to note that while we will be taking in money from tuitions we will be
losing money in rentals so it's um it's definitely a benefit I think for everyone involved but um until we really finalize those numbers it's hard to kind of say and then what is the I'm just reading this quickly like it said Norton per pupil assumptions 200 just called
$230,000 using 50% so I'm assuming 50% is going to reads 50% potentially is coming to Norton is that correct correct and then that number $230,000 is divided by T number 45 45 so the number of
students that are included in the program so what does that equal out to for double check we used the number that was on the DESI website it's the foundation budget per pupil it's not the um 18,000
so okay what what do we have 45 from the program so So it's it's basically you you also are taking out the preschoolers because they won't be accessing anything true so you're taking out probably around $5,000 so now you're looking at
like 36 students if you're going by the current estimate of who we have now and what we determined was you can only estimate by what you currently have for population correct so we're using um current numbers to assess for next year and then
we similar to the way we do school choice um but as as Dina mentioned it is well I'm sorry as Christine mentioned it is the foundational budget for people that is a number from the department of education okay I'll wait for my questions anything
else thank you very much much appreciated thank you very much i don't know how to get on this all right i was not hired for my tech skills absolutely uh hi my name is Rachel
Kierney i'm an inclusion teacher at Norton High School and I just wanted to take a minute to offer our condolences to Dina and to all of the staff um at Reeds and their students they had a very untimely death in their program about a
month ago andrew Kemp who was a very valued member of the Reeds program the Norton High School community um passed away very unexpectedly and it was a devastating loss to his colleagues his students his family um I was lucky
enough I worked with him this year he uh was the Reeds teacher in a geometry class where we have several sophomores in the Reeds program um he was a wonderful person he was a a very valued colleague and so we just sort of wanted to take this moment to offer our
condolences again to to all of the staff and reads all of the students i think it's my understanding most of the students that he worked with he had worked with along the year so he had you know these kids had been working with him for most of their time in the norm public school so it was a a very
devastating loss to the program um we will miss him the students will miss him the staff will miss him so we just want to again say we're very sorry for the for the loss thank you so much for that and on that note um when you are hurting
and all of you know because you've lost sorry to thank you so much for that um very much a difficult loss for DHH and your community has also experienced quite a bit of loss this year and I can't tell you what a support it was because I got
a call right away from Dr o'neal uh from Mr cersei we call him Vinnie and and um and the staff uh the leadership staff um pouring out not only their condolences but offering their resources and uh it was greatly greatly
appreciated again can't thank you enough uh and all of you for being part of your community thank you thank you for bringing that up too um anything else we're good all right next on is the superintendent evaluation discussion and vote um so this is my
first time doing this so I quickly spoke to Jen about it uh earlier today um so everyone's seen the obviously you guys all did your individual evaluations and then I also uh I compiled them all and put them together just for the public record i'll kind of walk through
a little bit quickly um we have to by law I guess uh evaluate the superintendent um during each year we've obviously moved this time up a little bit just so the members who are on the board with our town election being at the end of April um we try to move it up to April so that way the five house who
are sitting here can actually do this correctly um it is a little awkward because this is the only position that we have to review uh in public lucky you Jen lucky me um you know but basically we did a uh sum summary evaluation
report from the um from Jessie we just basically go through exactly um kind of you know where where Jen's at um for you know I'll just kind of quickly go through some of this um her biggest things professional practice goals student learning goals and district improvement uh she met all of her
professional practice uh her student learn her student learning goals and her district improvement goals which I'll go through a little bit more in depth both got significant progress uh she was proficient across many standards uh instructional leadership management and operations family and community engagement uh we actually gave her
exemplary there uh professional culture proficient uh just reading some of the comments from the school committee members and again I'm not going to read all of these we'll probably Did we post this on that yes so it will be posted um it's actually already in the packet online perfect so really yes correct so
if you guys really want to go into that and go through that's great um you know I just think some of these things that I think are are very important uh Dr o'neil has demonstrated strong leadership and effectiveness across several key areas over this past year one of her notable strengths is her deep commitment for to community engagement
through consistent outreach open communication active participation in local events and forums uh she's continuing to build meaningful relationships with families students educators and community stakeholders uh this is definitely strengthened the trust and collaborations throughout the
district um obviously with our you know financial stuff we we mentioned you know the strong grasp uh if you sat through our budget hearings of how much clearer they were laid out uh that's credit Dr o'neal and obviously Mrs hatfield and the admin team and uh overall um you
know one of the growths that we would like to see is a little bit more of organizational management continued efforts to establish clear assistance to find accountability especially around student behavior and teacher attendance and streamline uh procedures to help enhance the district's overall effectiveness and align daily operations
with a broad broader strategic vision which brings me to my next point of u the strategic planning committee has now met twice um so that's another you know step in the right direction if you So uh in summary Dr dr o'neal remains a strong asset to the district demonstrating leadership through her community
connections fiscal responsibility and innovation approach to problem solving um what else is kind of important on here um we obviously go through all of her goals that she set up um you know she's in a pretty good spot um whether it be proficient or you know
definitely progressing um I don't think we have too much more uh obviously Dr neil continued to do a good job with instructional leadership we've seen more uh more growth at year two um and obviously having the assistant uh superintendent Dr aman kind of settling
into his role as well working with many of you out there with the new curriculums uh we kind of expect that instructional leadership area to continue to grow and reach new heights uh obviously talking about the budget you know from you know sitting here for three years and I think you know uh Dan and Sher will definitely agree you know
just seeing the progressive uh you know making it clearer to read you know not just a huge Excel file with a bunch of line items and everything else jen and Christine have done a phenomenal job I think definitely this year and even last year just kind of highlighting exactly where we're at and what we need to do so uh I think our biggest thing is that she
does a great job is our community engagement between the newsletters uh constant communication um she probably well she she kind of has that open door policy um you know so whether it be you know school committee member individually um you know teachers
parents community members in general um she does a great job in terms of making sure uh people are heard and and you know hearing their concerns or or uh hopefully some of their positive feedback anything else anybody wants to add great job J thank you
just be brief you guys don't have to do this publicly so thank you all uh next up is uh which is actually kind of good timing I guess is a vote to approve the superintendent contract oh yeah sorry oh sorry it's a vote good
call thank you okay um I will entertain a motion to approve Dr o'neal's evaluation so moved second all those in favor i thank you all uh now moving on uh vote to approve the superintendent's contract
um so current Jen's contract is uh within the language she obviously is uh signed a three-year deal um back in 2023 just 2023 so 23 24 24 25 she would still be in that same contract for next
year um which would be the same contract that we've had with the same amount of salary and all that fun stuff um this contract is actually extending Jen um for another three years after next year um so basically this gets us to a point where Jen will be with us for the next
four years bearing something crazy happens but we don't see that happening uh hopefully she doesn't leave us um the uh I mean I guess can I take this over to you or what do you want do we just vote on this what do you want me to do um you we can talk through what the terms of the contract were if you want
to or we can just say it will be published online later you know after um it's not really a big secret everything's public record but um ultimately um I'm grateful to have the opportunity to stay in Norton all of you
know that I've spent my entire career here um it's a little bit crazy to think that when this contract ends it will be June of 2029 um and I will have a college sophomore and high school sophomore um so that is
just as my friend Karen Whiter says banana pants um but um grateful to the school committee for giving me this opportunity to continue my work um and like I said the language wise and everything else didn't really change too much so if you are interested in seeing
it all contracts for all of our non-UN admin and our union contracts as well are on our uh public schools website um I will entertain a motion to approve superintendent employment contract from July 1 2026 through June
30th 2029 so moved second all those in favor i Thank you um I just saw Allison walk in which is great so we'll go back to um our number seven uh acknowledgement and vote to
accept donations of AED students if you could come join us podium that would be great so I I want to welcome um our wellness committee member but the important thing is did you mind oh okay did you have fun
okay thank you it's gonna be fun um I want to welcome our wellness committee member Allison Drad um who also works for the American Heart Association um and earlier this year she approached Martin Public Schools in conjunction with Sisters at Heart and
Senator Paul Feny um to help us procure AEDs for the outside areas of Norton Public Schools um we're super excited that we have um I believe seven that are coming and
um a total of nine so yeah so we'll have um outdoor AEDs at Norton High School one um kind of over near the multi-purpose field one over um near the snack shack um and then one behind the
yell by the tennis courts one behind the yell near the tennis courts um we'll also have one near out out out back of JCS near the softball field uh two at Norton Middle School one in the back for the soccer um fields and then one closer
to the front tennis courts pickle ball court playground um and so this is really amazing the AEDs were donated as well as the outside um they're like weatherproof containers so they can be outside whether it's 100°
outside or negative10 um and we've actually had a few issues in the last year or two um at our own events where we had um the AED used at JCS earlier this year we had um one used at a football game a few years ago so um it's
so important to have these um devices accessible they save lives so I'd like to number one thank Allison and her work and and the sisters at heart um for approaching us with this idea and this donation and I'd like to offer her
some time to speak about the organizations um thank you so much and I'm sorry I was late coaching the baseball game um that I would just say on behalf of both the heart association and sisters at heart and I'm sorry they couldn't be here actually one of the was undergoing heart surgery actually so um they
couldn't be here they've worked really hard they um started in um north of Attabaro and then um I had been working with them and asked them to come to Norton um my son is a uh third grader at the LG and plays a lot of sports so I
have always been really passionate about this and had been bringing it forward to the sports boards um but obviously ly there's a price to that so I'd just like to thank Senator Feny in particular who has worked for the last couple years to get a specific line item in the budget for these defibrillators i really do
hope that we never have to use them on the field that would be my hope um but they are there if they're being accessible um they'll be open um at all times like um Dr o'neal said they're in these secured boxes you can call 911 the location will be on the box so you'll be
able to tell um EMS and fire where you are and hopefully they'll get there even at a quick the quickest response they can be it will still um be really important to start CPR and have the defibrillators available um we know that it can happen whether it's someone that goes into sudden cardiac arrest or gets
struck in the wall gets struck in the chest and goes into cardiac arrest it's really important to have them so I'm really I'm very thankful that Norton was open to this um and can't wait to have all the fields covered so thank you i appreciate the support thank you Allison um and these will all be installed the
week after April vacation so um spring sports are starting up and we're you know I think there was a little bit of a delay getting um them up but we are um scheduled for the week after break so thank you so much this is an incredible donation i am extremely grateful it was
a very easy thing to say yes to and that doesn't always happen so thank you yeah I can't take your knock you know obviously it's a huge benefit to Nor public schools but uh I think also just in Nor community in general um
you know as Dr o'neal alluded to you know you had two in the last two years you know both of them were where people were visiting you know and watching the kids games or grandkids games and whatnot so just so super super um you know thank you so much for the work that you did on this because it is uh so very
important all right we do have to vote to accept that um so I will entertain a motion to accept the new AEDs at our um schools and fields so moved second all those in favor i thank you very much
all right and last but not least uh obviously um this is Mrs sherry Cohen it's her last meeting with us uh she's not seeking re-election in our town our town election is uh you know in not not this Saturday but the following Saturday uh Sherry's been an obviously a great
friend um you know even a mentor you know coming on the school committee she's been at this for a long time uh her heart is we're definitely going to make her cry now um you know she's been you know a wonderful uh wonderful colleague up here with us um you know her heart's always in the right place
and has always tried to do exactly what's best for our students uh in the town of Norton so can't thank Sher enough but I'll turn it over to Dr um I think Nick said it very well um Sher has been a member of the school committee since 2016 um
and one of the things that Sherry always says when we're having difficult conversations is I want to do what's best for the students of Norin and throughout the course of her nine years as a school committee member she has always brought that to the forefront of
the work that we do here um she always puts kids first um and I have been very grateful to have Sher on my team um during my last few years as a superintendent but also um she's a wonderful friend and a wonderful person to have in your corner so I have
something for her so I'll come up over here and she's going to come and join me we've apparently got a sign and flowers i'm more of an Irish goodbye appreciation norton Public Schools recognizes Sher Cohen for her dedication to the students of Norton as
a school committee member from 2016 to 2025 i'm sure you need to mine [Music] you want me to share it [Music] if you don't want to we will so that's
your decision um thank you honestly I you know I thought people were here for school choice conversation so I'm a little surprised i knew when my friend Robin showed up that something was up um it's been it's been a good nine years it's uh
we've had our ups and downs but at the end of the day like Jen said you know I I really tried to do everything the best I could for our students um I'm proud of the work that we've done i'm proud of the the friends that I've made they're lifelong friends um and that's that's it
really i just want to thank you guys it's it's been a great run thank you if we haven't seen it here yet we're gonna get there let's go Jerry we can do this um Shannon Taylor JCS um I served as president um of the
Norton Teachers Association for five years it felt like all of those years were COVID years but a significant amount were were and um we're we're gonna talk someday about like before COVID and after COVID we kind of already
do that now but I think being a school committee member during COVID being any person that was public facing and having to make very difficult decisions in the moment with random information coming in from all different
places and all different sides and you're hearing from your neighbors what they need and you're hearing from some the scientists we're hearing from this and that um you led with your heart throughout all of that and at the end of every conversation it was okay so what are we
going to do next and how where do we go move forward it was never that we're going to stay in one place and that's something that I've always appreciated about you and the past nine years that you've been doing this but in my in my experience with you it was never where
do we stop is how do we keep going and how do we keep moving forward but you always have that great lens on of leading with your heart and you can see it when you can see when you when you talk about um the different things that come up
different items that come up you you haven't just skimmed over it you've read it you've asked questions i know you've asked me questions i know other people here have said you know Sher will reach out she'll ask us "What do you think of this what else is going on with this?" She's not afraid of the conversations at
football fields or other things where people might not agree with everything that you do here um because and as much as I know how much those decisions weighed on you because we had those conversations together you you still led
with your with your eyes forward and where do we go what's what's coming forward um I'm not um there's something about being a teacher and looking at a school committee and not really knowing do they
understand what I do do they really get what my job is and how I can love it and be drained by it in the same moment i love my job but there are some days that are hard but to know that there are people that are sitting on the other side that are making those decisions
that also can see that pressure because they feel it themselves too there's something really beautiful about that Sher and you can't It's just a a mold that you've created that I'm not sure how to fill i just need you to know how
much it has meant to for the tears for the for crying when things are exciting and for getting like you know I just we've been through a lot together and I know you guys have a thankless job where you're getting paid nothing to do this all five of you right you're here on
your own valition you're you're reading all these things you're you're putting yourself publicly out there for criticism for for whatever it is and you've done it with such humility and grace um I I I love you Sher and I I hope the best for you i hope that another night
like this you know I mean Danette got to see a beautiful building another night so that was good you'll come back and see us um but you you truly are something special thank you anybody else all good um I just Cersei I guess I'm going to be
here as 13 Brick Street Lord mask because one of the things that Sher did beyond working in the school committee both as a as a parent and um which impacted our lives now I might get tearful that doesn't happen um but also um as a director of counseling is her
work with ITC and the impact that had on so many people in this town um and she carried that forward despite also being here um and doing all the things as school committee and I I think it would be remiss for us not to to take a moment
to thank you at this time for that because again both as director of counseling as a as a a member of the community who was impacted by that i can't thank you enough and so many families I'm sure would would say the same thing here we go
peter Wiggins the mayor and I thank you Sher for your nine years on the school that you part for the kids and you did very well in your nine years and I thank you very much from the still at le games
thank you thank you Sharon again i think we could be here all night praising Sherry um I met Sherry gota be 15 years ago um when she was starting up parks and
wreck I I may with DZ have had some conversations with her about joining school committee nine years ago so I I guess I apologize um it's been a privilege to sit here with Sher for nine years we've we've had
spirited discussions we've had knockown dragouts we've had uh laughs she's had tears um but her humility and her ability to really do what's best for our 2200
students is remarkable and it has been absolute privilege to be here with you for nine years i'll tell you it's it is not easy for me to sit here and listen to all of this stuff um because I don't I don't do any of this for any of this i do it because
I genuinely care about people um so to sit here and listen to this and not be hysterically crying right now and just like the way I am right now um I just want to thank each and every one of you honestly it truly means a lot i saw it on the agenda i thought "Oh Jen do we
really have to do this?" um for you guys to take time out of your nights to be here to do this for me and the things that you've said i I do truly appreciate it and I thank each and every one of you thank you all right uh other business nothing for me just a few quick
reminders uh obviously annual town election next Saturday April 26th uh and our next meeting is Wednesday April 30th back in this room at 6:00 i will entertain a motion to
move last second so move second all in favor i thank you very much have a great night thank you for me