##VIDEO ID:lhoEgjDm4Sk## all right I'm going to call this meeting of the shet spray school committee to order 703 [Music] um at this moment it doesn't look like we have any public comment any public uh public people here to comment so um not seeing any of that like to move on to our review of the agenda the perpetual calendar I trust we've all kind of seen the uh the agenda um as far as the perpetual calendar I just want to apologize I missed I had the deadline wrong for the hour Town um it was a little bit of a short deadline this time around and I put it in my calendar wrong and so when I went to write it I was already too late and I think that uh from talking to I don't know if it's Joan or Joyce I'm going to get the name wrong now but um in to her the school also did not submit anything but she was able to put some stuff in on the school's behalf from like what we already kind of had in there she said so um hopefully she said they'll let us know with more advanced notice for the next Edition prior to town meeting uh the next edition of our toown and I'll make sure that I write something up for that and I'm sorry uh sorry that I missed that deadline um the other stuff that's on the perpetual calendar that I as I go about trying to revise it um we're still info Gathering goal setting on the budget um but Caitlyn's got that well under hand um school council is in here as in October for first meeting I don't know where that stands um and yeah basically most of the stuff that we have going on in the next few months has to do with budget um in all areas both Union 28 amoris Regional and uh and here in our our local committee um as far as today's agenda two things that I know um are not necessarily on the agenda but I think should be in under um either new business or um in reports would be um we did have emmer had a preliminary fourtown meeting um after our last meeting on September 29th so I'd like to report out on that um at some point and then also uh Jen had brought up at the last meeting two ideas really um the idea of sort of or maybe it was Anna um a PTO school committee sort of get together meet and greet um and also about reviewing the homeschool policy and so those things um we might want to discuss at some point as we move through today's agenda as well um does anybody have anything else to add or anything else to discuss along the lines of uh the calendar the agenda and I'm sorry I'm getting over a cold so if I sound sniffly and Coffey that's where I'm at I'll try to silence myself as much as possible all right so uh let's move on to warrants all right I have two accounts payable warrants 30007 from October 1st for 50,50 31 and 308 from October 15th for $ 37,9 4734 had three payroll warrants 307 from September 30th for 9,127 308 from October 15th for $19,750 7 and 3081 this was an additional one also for October 15th for $1,568 78 there are no gifts or gifts or grants okay uh moving on the approval of the minutes for September 19th 2024 um I know Leah you had something that you wanted to correct or add to this I believe yeah do I have to so there's a motion to open discussion on it as well as a motion to then vote on it is that how it works okay um well so I can make the motion if you want do you want sure go ahead um I motion um that we discuss the minutes or I I motion to vote on the minutes for September 19th 19th y 2024 do I have a second I second that all right eight seconds uh all in favor please say I Mayu T long sorry Le sorry Le I I know there's like order that I mean um Jeremy I think you have to before the vote ask if there's any discussion oh I'm sorry thank you very much Shannon yeah before we vote there a motion gets put on the floor by somebody moving in seconding then it's on the floor then you have discussion and then at some point the chair is going to call a vote on it okay this this is where you would amend right okay yeah thank you now and now you can offer amendments okay sounds good thank you um all right so on page two um I wanted to recommend clarifying the language around uh the conversation on the vacation so instead of where it says it says that we have out vacation if they leave their position I'd like to recommend that we update that with it seems as if we could pay out a lot of vacation if the person were to lead their position so that's the first recommendation and then the second one would be on page five to replace EIP with IEP okay so it seems like we could pay out a lot of vcation if a person were to leave their position and then the other was on page five change EIP to EP okay so uh as a point of clarification Trevor do we need to vote on those amendments before we vote to amend vote to approve the minutes or can we do the whole thing at once yeah so what's happening is um Leah offer these two um amendments I've got them you know I I took those down um and then the vote is is going to read that um your vote uh to approve the minutes as amended so you just take one vote okay great thank you um so can somebody move to unless there's other is there any other discussion the motion's already on the table all right Perfect all right so all in favor of uh accepting these minutes as amended please raise your hand and say your name Taylor I hi Mayu any uh was there any any abstains or any uh against no okay not an abstention but Jack I in favor thank you thank you as well okay I thought we got I thought we kind of talked over some people so I was just trying to make sure thank you all right so the mitts are approved as amended um unfinished business updates we've got capital projects in the building process discussion there was some discussion last week about um Nate and Kaitlyn and maybe even an checking in on the status of some of these things that we weren't sure of so um the floor is open if anyone has things to discuss don't I appreciate you sending me that info though Jeremy that was helpful okay any anytime you want to meet an and go over anything I'm open and you know you can email me and we can set up a time that sounds great that'd be great so I oh go ahead sorry go I was gonna say I think I emailed Ann as well it was just the it was um Jackie's previous list of um of the capital projects and where they stood and I just I think I just sent that out yes thank you so much so at our last meeting we had talked about looking into possible msba what what could be um eligible projects in within the the union there are some other big capital projects that are coming up also at other schools so I just today actually um signed up for the update there's going to be an update with msba about new projects funding they have coming out and that is November 1 and it's going to have a live um it's going to be a webinar but then a live chat so you can get further information so I did sign up for that because I think it'll be useful for shsb but also some of the other schools so I will report out on that at the November meeting okay thank you very much Shannon um anything else around uh capital projects and building process okay so uh moving on to new business and discussion we have to discuss today our mcast and accountability um presentation who's in charge of that one and is to present I've got you I've got you this is this is such good such good stuff that like really we could have flipped a coin over I want to present you present no it's really good stuff it really is absolutely amazing you should be so proud of your school and the work that you're doing to support the shutesbury elementary school is really it's definitely paid off so let me see about sharing my screen so then um let's see all right do I need special permission to share it or are we good to go let's see and there's a green button at the bottom I think you can share yes and for some reason it is not allowing me to you know what Shannon if I share this to you will you be able to just share it listen I have a green button I might not be able to share either all right let me it looks like I might be able to so if you send me I love it it's on your way it's on its way all right yep thank you so much sorry about that I was more worried about my soft Focus filter for tonight so screen it shows that anybody can share so I don't know uh I don't know why perfect I I'll I'll definitely figure that out for the next time but um did you you all set okay Shannon's in the I'm just getting it and I'm going to share it out okay so just to um piggyback what Shannon was saying it's absolutely incredibly amazing news I mean your school has done such an incredible job and it was it was tricky because as I Was preparing to speak on this I really wanted to speak to you about why shutesbury Elementary School is just such an incredible place I know I've been here for a short amount of time I accept no responsibility or like no accountability myself on getting you here at all I know that Jackie did a lot of work and your staff really did an incredible job so the um it's really the people it's really the people and their attention to detail and the interventions that are provided on the daily basis and there's always multiple opportunities for students to learn and to have gaps filled in and for small group opportunities that really has um sung the the story here okay good so we are yes so um the first thing that that I have is the overall classification for accountability so every year Massachusetts looks at schools that have enough data to talk about um sort of where they are it's kind of like a ranking system so for the most important thing is is to to note is that the school dist the the excuse me the state of Massachusetts determines sort of what your targets should be so that being said um the targets that were set for shutesbury elementary school the school has completely um done better than what the state thought that they should do so that means um we had sent a letter about it at the beginning um when we first received our our scores was that because of the um the multiple years that they have had in achievement growth and their progress with their students and work completion and the work that they did with reducing chronic absenteeism the school was able to get a percentage rate that put them into a very distinguished category that is um that blazs into their accountability percentile so um in speaking to that their school percentiles take all of that sort of information and pull it into a number and our overall classification is a um School of recognition which means that it's a small amount of schools that are commended on their academic excellence and their high growth and also exceeding the growth targets that the state put forward for them so um the count the school accountability rate is 85% so that means that the school does not require any intervention from the state and everything that the um teachers and students are doing is working so and teachers when I say teachers I mean Educators staff all the people that go into the work so um in embedded in that is a lot of direct instruction in literacy and numeracy and a lot of people making sure that students have um fil build in the gaps of the different standards that they're required to know by the end of the year um if anybody wants to uh meet with me to talk more about that part of it I would be happy to so I don't want people to fall asleep so I I'll I'll keep moving on um we've also it's should be noted that we just received this information so staff has had some input but we haven't done a total Deep dive yet into what um the scores mean so they'll be you know we'll have more information about that as we look more specifically at it but um if you look at the first two charts this is a comparison of our Ela scores in we're comparing the same students to each other so a lot of times when you go on to the Massachusetts accountability scores you'll see them comparing um fifth grades over several years but this is actually just looking at the class of if you can believe it 2031 our current sixth grade students and um I just put the prior year the 2023 when there was 15 of them there still is 15 the 2023 data and comparing it to the 2024 data which is right above it so um in Massachusetts in their accountability scores you'll see that the blue that means that the student has advanced and they've exceeded they've demonstrated a comprehensive and in-depth understanding of the standards and they're able to provide sophisticated solutions to complex problems in the green that's proficient so that means students are have a solid understanding of the challenging subject matter and they're able to solve a wide variety of problems the orange it means um it needs Improvement it's a partial understanding and they're able to solve simple problems and the warning is red the red category and students are demonstrating um a minimal understanding of the subject matter so it's important to note too that we know that M the mcast is one data point and we do a lot more with uh assessment than just relying on the data that we're getting here so there's um social emotional data there's there's obviously um entrance and exit tickets that we're looking at to really help us determine what students need so we we do we we recognize that so if um as you notice and I'm not sure if you're aware but the um the school has also adopted two different major curriculums it's the math curriculum and the ELA curriculum so they're also um in the beginning stages they've some some of the um classrooms are two years in and some are three and typically when you're doing an adoption of programs like that you'll you don't really see too much growth until year three so for the students to be in such an early part of of an adoption and to have these kinds of scores is really it's really amazing so um you'll notice that we were able to have our students that were in the warning category completely move out of the warning category and then um we had more students that were able to hit the advanced so it's a really rigorous Ela program and that's really um sort of speaking to that if we scroll down am I going too fast or is this kind of accurate about what people are want to learn about or too slowly you let me know I think it's great okay it's so it's so magical and like Shannon said we were G to arm wrestle about who got to tell you all this stuff because it's so incredible um so okay they uh this data also tells us that we're at an exciting planning place where we're going to be able to do more um sort of Outreach type of programs and accelerated ideas and things to help keep our students that are at the Advan keep it to have them keep advancing so then if you look down math um has a has a similar story we went down a student which is it can be tough with the smaller numbers we're not exactly sure how that all all works out but we've definitely they've been able to move out again this series of numbers the math that you're seeing um the 2024 and 2023 and 2022 that's looking at three years worth of math you'll see that the bottom chart is that the um I think I'm sorry my screen looks a little different there yep there you go so the bottom has more students that were in the warning and then if you scroll up just a little bit Shannon they can see the the recent ones sorry there you go perfect so then you'll see that it's been reducing in the in the red category um for the those students for the math an can I ask a quick the The Little Numbers I assume that's the percentages oh absolutely great question that's why I added um the number of student enrollment for that year so that that helps people to to see that better yes thank you so um again same thing early adopting with Bridges and math again we we we tend to notice that students won't we don't see that kind of growth this quickly but it's really commendable it doesn't mean we want the students to start to forget their math facts that's still important um so something that's really commendable about this is I think the intervention blocks that students are getting in addition to tier one instruction that's really helping um move our students along so students don't necessarily have to be in a small group for the entire year but they can get extra support and standards that they might be missing um if you go up just a little bit to the class of 2032 our current grade five students that's showing the growth that again that we're that we're seeing in comparison from 2023 to 2024 am going the right am I going in the right direction I I think so what page you want okay this is says current grade five right here there we go yes perfect and you're Ela and I'm in ela so that's perfect good work so um again uh that's that's incredible to get all of the students if um like to to maintain the proficiencies levels at these stages in early adoption of a program is really it's really incredible um if we scroll down to the um math grade four are we in the same spot yep and then we'll go to grade three perfect good um similar story the the uh We've we've got a lot more students that were able to go we actually had some students that went right from needing Improvement into the advanced category so in thinking about that I would think the rigor of the math program is really working it's really helping um to push kids thinking and they have multiple ways to solve problems and students are able to show that so now if we go down we have a grade three so grade three is the least amount of data that we have but it's an telling us an important story so um if you look at the bottom line what that is indicating is an item analysis so we can actually see exactly what the question was that students were working on we can actually get um copies of their writing when they do the ELA where actually can figure out exactly where the students globally did really well in some areas and also um needed Improvement in other areas so that can tell us whether or not we're on the right track so if we scroll down a little bit more I don't want people to think that we're using this to teach to the um we're using this to teach to a test because what that test is representing is the standards the Massachusetts state standards which is exactly what we need to be doing and if you scroll down a little bit more as we're looking at item analysis and we're really kind of going through more about where the right spot yeah you're totally perfect okay I just wanted to show you what a state standard look like so if you look at the example that that's question 19 and how students responded and then it further drills down if you scroll down a little bit more it'll tell you exactly what the question was and then we can have the conversation about are students just not understanding the question are they fully reading it are they able to identify the fraction whatever the question is so we can really help help them um move on so um that concludes what I was going to share tonight about about the mcast um yeah that is just a little um sample of what the actual standard is so people can get an understanding of um how we use that data to to help support what students are learning um I think it's important to note that the school is always working extremely hard to make sure students are getting what they need whether that's um like a supportive conversation if they need some cheerleading if they need to have more time to solve problems whatever that looks like the staff is so incredibly caring and um intelligent like they are just really able to to provide students with what they need so it's it's a pleasure I'll tell you so again if anybody has any further questions or wants more clarification or more understanding I'd be happy to um to meet with you and show you what they're doing an can you share that document with this yeah absolutely are all your emails in the they're all on the shared email right obviously I just answer my own question okay yes we'll do that Shannon one thing I do want to point out about the school of Distinction is it recognition or distinction I can't remember which but they there were only in the whole Commonwealth they only chose 20 schools and those 20 schools were showed growth not not just their overall score but that sometimes it's really hard for har High performing schools to maintain a high accountability rating because 40% of your score is growth well if your students are performing at a high level they're a little bit disadvantaged in how how much can they show on that 40% um and this year most schools took a dip in their accountability rating because they tried to adjust um to keep all schools vested um they tried to adjust the formula so what happened is schools who may have performed the same or even performed higher numerically may have had a little bit of a dip in their accountability rating um because of the new um breakdown and how that it's calculated and um shsb is in a good position that they met all their targets they exceeded all their targets um I as someone who came from turnaround schools I wasn't even sure what to do with this data when I looked at it I'm like oh so this is what it looks like you know same but but in all honesty when I go into the classrooms and I've walked around they're the staff and it's you know kudos to the environment that's created there they are not saying oh you know look at us we're we're good we don't have room to grow they're we had PD this week they're actively engaged they're you know really um still looking to enhance their school set so this is this is a big deal um they they should be be very proud and Ann's like where do we go from here and so I'm going to share with them what I told you with your challenge I said well I guess now you have to try to become a national Blue Ribbon school because that's the only next thing and so she's like oh God right no pressure I mean and school recog I say that in justest but it it really is exciting and um you know good things are happening there it is it really is and as I was to Jackie when we found out I just want you to know I called Jackie when we found out that the school was a school of Distinction with Ann's bless like because um she deserve she helped create that climate right and so Ann and are coming in we're just going to try to keep the ball moving right um but she was very glad because she's in a school that has a very different picture and she said and I did ask if I could share this she said this came came at the perfect time because I was really doubting my own ability to move schools because the school's in just such a different place and as someone and an knows who's done that work it you can do so much and movement is comes in small small steps and so this was really affirming to her to see that and she said it invigorated her to serve students in another part of the state so who owes to her and I want her to get the credit that she deserves and the staff and PTO sent flowers too so they are very very excited about the news for sure but to like you said to be a a school of of Distinction is just it's and recogn it's actually termed School recognition it's it's incredible like you need wins in all those categories and they I believe they're just gonna keep doing it so and there were only two in all of Western Mass two w that's right that is amazing and can I not that it really matter but is that just is like the schools recognition that's just like individual schools high school middle school elementary school all of them y oh wow y so yeah that's um amazing amazing and they kind of do a roughly a 5050 split like half of them are secondary and half of them are Elementary and sometimes the the accountability overall rating doesn't always it's certainly a factor but you know you could have an underperforming school that you know made a 25% gain so I mean it's it's a school that's a assessments demonstrated some sort of remarkableness about it and so kudos to this school yeah I just I mean I appreciate too hearing from you guys like because you're new and you come in and you look and you see the same things that I think you know got many of us involved in the school committee or in this you know uh this school Community um we obviously all have vested interests in this school and so uh yeah it's it's really great to know it's great to have what you already feel be proven in the data as well like that it's not just like yeah we feel like we have this great thing going on but like actually you know it's it's there's some data and some rigor behind it to uh to prove it so thank you anybody else on the committee have questions or um comments about the mcast and accountability all right so uh moving on to the superintendent report all right I did mail email a copy um but um I will give you the highlights here um so tomorrow we have um shb will take part in um a professional development day that is known as curriculum day um this year's will be hosted at Swift River School all of the Union Schools will be coming together to uh learn together um we will have a um keynote speaker Dr Stewart Al abon um he is a leading expert in trauma informed practices and what that looks like in a school setting um he's going to be providing the keynote but then he's also going to be leading um some small group work with um Educators so we're we're very excited about that Lindsay Rodriguez our um curriculum director has done a tremendous amount of work around um securing grants to bring him in and to have this um learning opportunity for all of our um Educators so we're pretty excited about that uh we have completed uh with all the schools our first round of instructional walkthroughs and we are starting our second round next week um I talked last time a little bit about what that format looked like um I know in um at our last meeting someone had asked about gee could um school committee come and be part of that protocol and see what that looks like and so I am going to um work with Ann and with Lindsay to coordinate a a walkth through that if people are available certainly no pressure but that you could come and just see what that process looks like um but I am going to let Lindsay get through tomorrow before I even tackled her with that so there's more info about that to come um Union 28 applied and received a three-year waiver for our special education parent advisory Council which is known as CPAC uh the state mandates that each district um and in the Commonwealth have a CPAC to advise and collaborate on issues regarding special education um it's really challenging because all of our schools are their own little district and so um we've applied for the waiver so that we can have one joint um advisory uh Amy langon our director of student services um has been really working hard to try to build um a a working group that can serve as a cohort and um support for each other and to provide guidance to the school she's been at all of the open houses she's been posting on community pages and um the school Pages um she has right now about 10 families throughout the union who have expressed interest in taking part and so they're just working on coordinating best days and times and will it be remote or not and and all of those details uh the leadership team including Ann met with the Franklin County Sheriff's Department to schedule our school safety drills we will have three safety drills throughout the school year uh the first drill will be in November and that will be an announced drill um and then we'll the format will change from that point on um I know you folks have settled your uh contract but the other three um schools in the union will be going into contract negotiations all in the same year um and Caitlyn um brought uh to the leadership team um a program called liex or litic I'm not sure if I pronounced it correctly Caitlyn can correct me um but it's a we bought a three-year package so you will be able to benefit from it in your next round of negotiations um but it allows us a Data Bank of over two-thirds of the Commonwealth's um contracts um their language it's you can pull it right up you can create a dashboard where you can compare your um compensation packages and benefits and all that with area schools and it's a livetime and one of the things that Caitlyn when she was talking about this um stated that it really takes the feedback from the uh business managers was it takes some of that personal um angst that can come um when you you know the school committee is bringing an offer and sometimes it can get contentious and this is just a program everyone can see they can share it and it really takes some of the emotions out of it so we have purchased it um it's a we did split it um between the schools um for $3,500 um for three years uh today I attended the Franklin um county regional office for govern governments I think is what they call it um it's a cohort of all the local municipalities um and they offer a lot of different trainings and today I went um for um the cyber security training um that was specifically for mun small municipalities and K to 12 schools um I brought Debbie Lee from shutesbury went with me because I wasn't my tech skills are pretty limited um and uh she accompanied me and so did the um Tech uh person from Irving Elementary it was mindboggling I was a little anxious about technology and now I'm even more anxious and they really just it was a tabletop drill and they really talked to us um about how quickly um information can be compromised and what is our legal responsibility and um I've signed up for the next two trainings because I'll be frank and it's something that's going to come up um in my presentation to the Joint Committee um we it's something we probably have to look at because um it is so prevalent it was mindboggling when they were sharing the information and because our schools are linked to our municipalities if we have some sort of um compromise it can be really far-reaching really quickly um and the state police have a lot of resources so it was beneficial um but uh I'll be I'm sure to be reporting out on that um going forward um some upcoming events for me as the superintendent for the rest of the month I have the Franklin County Superintendent uh Round Table um I have a webinar coming up with um the mass uh massach Desi commissioner talking about updated um things coming down um The Pike whether it's lure for teachers um different funding opport unities and I know School committees were invited but next Thursday marar Regional is hosting a Chapter 70 funding um Symposium um and they have uh extended that invitation I think Robin shared it out um but I will be attending that I believe Caitlyn is also attending that um and then I have another school safety different not cyber security um sponsored by desie for all superintendence um which will complement our lockdown drills and that sort of information so that's what I have any questions I will mute and listen thank you very much Shannon any questions for Shannon okay um I did I I guess I'm I am a little curious about the the liex program and how I mean so I guess language and compensation like I'm kind of curious how like in real time having just gone through uh the negotiation process like Kaitlyn I'm kind of curious you can talk about it if you want when you get into your own piece but just how it's going to make things easier um it's a pure curiosity I think and Caitlyn can speak to I think it's also going to be more timely that you don't have to go you know sometimes they say well you know in Frontier they're getting this and in ammer getting this and what is impact there's a lot of that back and forth this there a lot of back there so it saves a lot of time certainly she brought it to the table so I I'll let her speak to it but I was pretty excited when she was giving me the quick tutorial um Caitlyn yes so uh I heard about it from the Franklin County Business managers meeting there was a couple of the business managers that were so excited about it and um they were like and this is what it looks like and one of them turned our laptop just to show them the stuff it wasn't the greatest tutorial but it uh kind of you know piqued my interest because we just did get off of this bargaining cycle and with having you know one last year and now doing the other three in one year I'm like I'll use any help and resources I can get for this round so we are going to use it for the other three see how it goes and then when we're back here and I'm sure every in the school committee is still going to be here in 3 years for for the next round and um and I'm really optimistic about it so what it does is it is it has all of the contracts across the state but you give it 10 comparables that you want 10 districts that you would like to look at in comparison to yours and then it really breaks down at every level at a you know Master's step you know highest step at a bachelor's step you can pick any any step or any part of the scale um any column and it'll show you right where your your teachers contract ranks and we'll show you all of your unit B also so you can compare all of the clerical custodial Food Service all of the the hourly wages and that was great but one of the things I'm most excited about is that it also has um it shows you all the districts that had the greatest increases and it also shows you which part of the contract changed that might be the reason for that so there was if there was a school that had a 4 and a half% increase but then it gives you a column where it says well that's because they extended their school day by 15 minutes a day so it shows you the kind of give and take of what led to that Cola it also has a breakdown of um all the benefits so for um if you were talking about in negotiations about paternity leave you can look at across the state what those benefits look like in different contracts so you might say no no wait no one gets that much but here's sort of a trend and here are some that we're comfortable with and some language you can um it also has all the contracts in so you can click and then and it has the full contract if you want to look at something specific but then there's also the projection tool where I have inputed for the other three schools um how many teachers are at each step in column so if we have a proposal that say 333 over you know three years it'll instantly give me what the the financial impact of that is if we said well let's compare that to 234 it'll then put them side by side and show you the comparison between two so I'm excited about the the um the time saer is and also like Shannon said and what a lot of the feedback we got is that especially around benefits takes some of the emotion out of it and um and shows you just what are what are the trends and what's realistic so we're we're really excited about it I'm sorry we missed out by year for shs Berry but I think it's goingon to really helpful in the future yeah just hearing you talk about it I can totally see how that would have helped us um quite a bit at our at our negotiative meetings Leah yes um yeah just to add on I um had to do some of that work in my last job um Shanny can tell you about the spreadsheets that I was putting together um to do to compare across regions and um even under understanding the impacts of some of the changes that we were considering against the three years and what our budget was going to be it was a lot of work so it would have been helpful to have um something like this ready made as opposed to all my Excel work though my skills like it it helped with my skills but it would have been nice one thing I was really struck with when Caitlyn was giving me the tutorial is that it lets you see the picture too so sometimes the n ative is well you know if I were it at ammer I'd be getting this much and it lets you see well that's true but here's after year three that Gap that you're seeing is actually reversed I mean that's what we were finding like it looks like it's it's really beneficial to new teachers but if you're a veteran teacher where do you stand and so it let you have all those variables that if you were trying to figure that out would just be you know so timec consuming to you know so what does step five look like for everybody you're not that's just it's really labor intensive and so um and then they my experience that I've shared with Leah sometimes they question your numbers and so this is this is just right there everyone can look at it it's instant you can click it um and so I think that it will certainly be beneficial I'm sold totally sold that sounds everything that I every I just feel like again you know half bought it I know yeah I think half of like half of what we just dealt with in our negotiation cycle here like all of the anxiety provoking pieces of it and the reason that it dragged on had to do with a lot of that back and forth and like everything that all three of you just spoke to were like exactly you know what we experienced in various parts of that drawn out process so I hope that this will make it easier and take the emotion out of it and uh yeah that sounds great um any other questions or any other things for uh for Shannon all right moving on to Caitlyn okay so I have a couple quick things and then I'm going to get to the end of your report so couple uh we did the uh retro pay after the contract was ratified signed off on we were given the goahead from Adam retropay went into the paychecks on the 15th so that was the most recent one um very little um we had one kind of payroll error for one teacher that was over or one um staff member that was overpaid that was very quickly fixed and that was pretty much besides that everything was very smooth and um and our human resources payroll person Jess did a jesselyn did a f like a f fantastic job she worked on Sunday to make sure it got done for that payroll cycle so that they would have it on the the earlier payroll um so now we can kind of just move on into our regular payroll Cycles with that said we're in a the best position of the four schools that we know what to expect next year for salaries so um I know going through negotiation cycle is is a hard year but it makes the next few years much easier when trying to to budget for the for the next year so the FY 26 budget the first draft the sort of first preview you're going to have will be at the next school committee meeting uh no yes the next school committee meeting in November uh because our school committee meetings run with on cycles of um Leverett and Swift forer are the first week of the month and shots Barry and Irving are the third week of the month um it works out pretty well to do um shuberry and Irving in that third week of November and then the the other two schools in the first week of December so you'll have that at the next meeting and at that point I think we'll have um a better picture of the Union 28 part of the budget but it's likely that we're not going to have that finalized until the January meeting uh but we'll take the what we have after the JFC meeting and and kind of use those numbers as here's what we have and here's what it looks like right now but then you'll have um December and January to and February to to kind of work through the budget season so the end of year report those were due on November uh sorry on September 30th ours were submitted on the 27th I have they've been submitted I have uh what's called the uh certification statement that needs to be signed by the town accountant the superintendent and the chair of the school committee with approval through a vote by the committee so what the certification statement says is that to the best of your knowledge this is what are word the numbers that we're reporting on and I'll give you um I'm going to give you a kind of brief rundown of what this report looks like I can send it to you also there's to the best of my knowledge our numbers and what I've received from the town are um are correct on the report but I also have to go through because we were audited last year because we're on a three-year cycle for a single School Municipal District um what I go through the audits that might give some that might give me some edits to make in the future and those can be done through amendments just through the the Desy website so just because I you know I believe these numbers are correct and we've reported correctly doesn't mean that we won't have amendments in the future or there might be things that we've picked up on that need to be changed it's just a statement that says that the best of our knowledge these are what our um interview report is so let me share my screen um can I share um you should be able to it says they allowing it from multiple people but I'm in the security privacy that's what yeah that's what happened to me too and I think we have a security block on it so um I don't know if there's something that we have to download but you did you did you did get it to share didn't you at one point and when you if you want to share it with me Caitlyn I can try to share it yep I can share it with you so is it a is it a setting on your all computers or does something that I know I was so optimistic it's a security setting for us I think um I know because I can see it says here on my side it says all participants can share just one at a time that's all yeah yeah it must be a computer-based it's us yeah because it keeps bringing me um open system preferences security and privacy to Grant access okay I am going to try to share this but I lose my visual so if it's not sharing you'll have to tell me because I won't know okay thank you again Shannon sure and and while Shannon's getting it up I'll just Echo um Caitlyn in terms of it being very normal to have amendments done after the audit so um it's not anything concerning thank you can you see it I can see it if you could go to the second tab the one that says EO y oh goodness now you want me to do tabs hold on I saw a great meme this week that was like you know XL was created in 1985 and it was a picture of somebody looking joyful and happy and then there was a picture of like somebody after Excel was created looking like Madden Ang I know you add pivot tables and the stuff that Excel can do now it's it's I'm even like no I'm too old can't I love a good conditional formatting though for sure so this is the top section of the the the big tab is end of is the eiy 24 and it's going to be really long um and it kind of it takes what a lot of the other tabs have and generates it into here in different um ways of kind of looking at the data so the first one is revenue from local sources the revenue we have is tuition from individuals that would be our preschool tuition and Shannon you can go down the ones in blue are autop populated from the state so Chapter 70 um Transportation uh some of the grants those all come in from the state um those numbers I can't edit um or you know tuition from school choice you can go down then the next is a revenue expenditure summary for different kind of categories so the first one is the school committee so you you notice the columns at the top have regular day special education and then undistributed for things like uh school committee expenses uh superintendent a lot of the central office that's not broken down by regular day and special education because those are all just undistributed there there for the entire district and keep going and you can go with kind of a slow pace and tell um someone can tell her to stop if but it'll it'll um we can kind of keep rolling other District administration business and finance these are all central office Legal Services yep and keep going technology curriculum directors now it starts to get being broke down by special education and regular education for department heads that would be our um student support services and then the supervisory and the non-supervisory for our curriculum director then it goes into school leadership building these are now into the instructional categories for um principal for everything that that takes to run the main office clerical um contractor service usually like our copier and office supplies then teachers professional salaries broken by regular day and special education medical therapeutic services like our ptot uh substitutes are instructional assistants librarian and then we go into some PD portions outside professional development and these are all within the general budget so these are this portion is not include grants or any of our revolving funds this is just what we're taking out of our general ledger that we have our guidance counselor and adjustment counselors you'll notice that we don't have much in there because that was eser funded last year so that will be in a different place Psychological Services or school psychologist some things we don't have at attendance and parently liaison Services um Medical Health Services some Transportation the transportation we have that is paid out of the school local budget is just for special education we don't pay for transportation for um the five star buses through our school through our school budget that comes from the town which you'll see later and if you have questions about any of this let me know I don't know that I'll be able to answer a single cell at a time without um kind of digging in to make sure that my answer is is complete and accurate and then we are into the building so custodial Services heating of building Utility Services grounds all of the building stuff maintenance of buildings meance of equipment insurances payments to other districts this would be an out of District placement but other than that we don't have any other um tuition or payments to their districts now this is the re the expenditures by city or town so we've got Transportation which is paid for by the town retirement contributions and insurance for active employees um this information's collected from the town because we don't keep that uh the town Budget on the school side and payments from their districts in C blue they're also autop populated by the state tuition or school choice tuition for regular um day and special education and tuition to Charter Schools that's comes from the town's budget then we have expenditures from federal grants this is where I have to put in all any anything we purchase or paid for out of any grants goes into these lines so if we a teacher adjustment counselor or uh purchases for supplies curriculum any of that and also if we have someone that is um paid for out of a grant we still have to pay for portions of their um insurance through the grant that gets paid directly to the town and you keep going this you can scroll right through because that's for Regional School District we're not one and then oh back up and then this is for so this is instructional expenditures to the general fund um schedule three um and a lot of them are the same numbers because we might take a tab like the schedule three is a tab at the bottom that's where we put I put in everything and then it pulls it all into this and kind of different areas so Shannon you can go pretty quickly through this one because it's going to be a lot of the um same stuff this one through instructional expenditures for Grants and other funding sources again you've seen a lot of these numbers they're kind of regenerated in different ways of looking at it then little further a second here sorry Leah I'm sure you miss end reports uh special education so here's where to break down special education expenses by um students in prek versus students uh in K through six and report on circuit breaker people Transportation what we spend on students inside a mile and a half and outside a mile and a half I don't know if there's a better way but basically we have to have to get a list of student locations and then I use like Google Maps to figure out who's within and outside of a mile and a half to see how many students are uh reimbursable and those that are not reimbursable that are outside of of that amount that are within a mile and a half and then special education um our special education transportation gets reported there uh then there's some vocational that doesn't apply to us and then schedule 19 so now we're looking at the 2425 budgets not what we spent last year but what we plan on spending this year what we're budgeted to spend this year so that way the state has the information to say this is what you budgeted and now here's what you spent and then they can compare the two and look for anomalies or and other pieces and then here's what the city town has budgeted we have to look at the fy2 budget for shs Berry um and I will say it's difficult for a few of our towns because they don't have separate lines for School Employees versus um the rest of the Town employees so I have to um reach out to the town Treasurer Ryan who's also our treasurer for Lever for New Salem Wendell and kind of um ask him really nicely if he can break out all their budget for how many are School Employees and how many are not and just give us a School employee amounts and then schedule 19 here's the annual school budget for next year from revenues other sources and then that's more uh Regional and then the summary is kind of everything together all fun types here's what we spend um and you can get to the bottom of that it gives us sort of a a summary and that's the first tab this is the Big Tab this is the end of your report has everything some of the other tabs are not um are are just ways of putting information and it pulls it into this Shannon if you could go to the third tab reports so here's some comparisons and go down if the system picks up on a huge difference let's say that we spent uh 1 million on um teaching staff one year and then we um spend 2 million the next year it's going to flag it and say can you check those numbers and if you scroll down some more and keep going this is where it would tell us whether there was an error and there weren't any places um where there were we picked up on anything that was um that was outside of of um a reason why we knew something or um actually don't think they had they flagged any for that and at the very bottom of this information is the big part the one that we um get going at the bottom of this is where we want to um meet maintenance of effort so maintenance of effort is we've spent over 90% of what we spent the previous year to meet maintenance of effort for title one and we've spent yep at the bottom there so fidea maintenance of effort we need to spend over what we spent last year on special education expenses to meet maintenance of effort for idea if you don't don't me Ms of effort they can ask for you to return the money or be not get funding in the future for title one and idea so it's really important that we made maintenance of effort we have met it for both Title One and for Ida which is great it takes a lot of the workout there are exemptions for instance we qualify we qualified for an exemption last year for I for idea um I'm getting a little confused which one was lover and which one was shsb because we had to show the exemptions for both but one reason it could be is if you had a student that was an added District placement in sixth grade and then they've graduated on we're not going to spend we know we're not going to spend as much on special education expenses for the next year and that's when you have to tell the state well we had someone graduate out and here's all the invoices and here's the payroll stubs and here's and then they can say okay you're cleared for this year luckily we don't have to try to get exemptions for either one because we've met maintenance of effort and um the other tab I'm going to show you that doesn't already appear is schedule 20 nope schedule 18 yeah so this is where we report on our teachers contract for fy2 24 so they collect all of this information um about the current teachers contract what col is they've had uh what the salaries are at different steps different levels uh longevity teachers um working year benefits and so we just provide the state with all information about the contract through schedule 18 and that's about all I know I can tolerate of looking at an end of year report um so I stopped sharing is that all right perfect thank you so we can discuss it and if you would like to um vote to have to allow the chair to sign the end of year report certification statement then you can do so it doesn't mean that there couldn't be any things that need to be amended in the future it's just to say to the best of our knowledge here's our report is um in line with our expenses okay anybody have any questions for Caitlin Okay so would have to have a movement to um allow me to sign the end ofe certification statement is that correct and then for all right I moved to I mooved to have um our chair sign the end of year report certification statement second did all right all in favor by Jack ey all right all are in favor thank you guys very much um principal report oh one thing is it okay if we use sign no it's okay I'm actually done but is it okay if we use docy sign for that Jeremy uh yes please I mean unless you just want to come visit me at Tech and then you're more than welcome to come over and I'll sign it there too but is a restaurant open yet uh only on Thursdays um so yeah okay thank you um so principal's report and so I figured with the mcast data that that might um probably do it so we don't go till midnight tonight unless you know love it but um honestly I really it's been incredible they did the Apple store today I don't know if people are all familiar you probably all are I think I've tried all your baked goods it was it spectacular I've never seen a cooler field trip they walked up the hill the kids walked up the hill to a local Farm they donate all these apples the kids take all the apples home and then over night all these miraculous Apple Creations come I mean it was unbelievable i' have to get new pants so it was incredible and we had the um Chief the the state police officer came by today and he happened to pick the best day ever to come visit us at shutesbury but um honestly it's I I just have wonderful wonderful things to report everything's going swimmingly we're very excited about the contract being settled and all of that being taken care of and we're full steam ahead right well and you know apples are healthy so don't worry about it that's literally what I said yes um all right so uh ammer pelum we don't have Annie here but maybe this would be a good place for me to just kind of very briefly kind of go through um what was discussed at the first uh FL toown meeting uh as far as the ammer regional stuff I I just want to say that this is really early I think based on last year's experience um they're trying to kind of get some feedback and have us understand things earlier because it felt like last year uh I don't know it was my first year last year so I don't really know but it seemed like it was kind of um a little bit of a hot mess um one thing I will say is that I I'm hoping that the new superintendent in amoris and this is just my own personal view is uh gonna stay there for quite a while she's really great she's Dynamic um and you know compared to last year she came right in uh identifying obviously the big issues that they have there and then coming up with some really basically she and her people created all of the things that they showed us within four days and it was basically like identifying the issues and here are some really outside of the box ways that we're thinking about dealing with this um which was frankly very refreshing um to hear so what she said is you know it's very very early we have to think outside of the normal last year was definitely a Band-Aid um between the Regional Middle School there's $5 million in salaries Amis Regional High School 12 million 2 million operating budget uh Central is like 3 million with a 13 million operating budget most of that being Transportation um and as it is there's some big gaps and she showed like basically six different scenarios of um ways that we could go from the base above the base and all of them result in a deficit no matter what um there were none of those six scenarios that we like and that's fully funded and level and we're good um so like no matter what there's going to be some cutting but they're thinking about all sorts of things from um the possibility of fur all staff for a day um trying to reduce Transportation costs because they're going into a new um their their transportation contract is up this year so she's hopeful that they might be able to figure out something there um but she really wants to she has this idea over the next few years she really wants to move from this kind of outdated level and line item budgeting process and get to a more performance-based budgeting that aligns Financial Resources with educational outcomes which though very sort of theoretical in my mind still is an interesting thing that I have not heard of before um so really her idea would be let's figure out how we can move from Level funding to line item right now and then as they get more settled in move towards a more performance-based uh funding structure um and they're looking at really I mean if you've read the papers recently they're looking at some interesting ideas including kind of um restructuring the region to patch like Financial groups and increase student performance um they want to consolidate the central office and they're thinking about really the most interesting thing and the thing that's got the most pressed so far is this idea of Shifting 7 to 12 to one building so basically mothballing the middle school and moving everybody into the high school building as like two separate schools within that building um it would reduce like three professional staff um and I think it would they'd have like five building leaders a five building leader reduction by doing that and they could save up to 100,000 um it was interesting that on the same day the day before or the Friday before the fourtown meeting there was an article in The Gazette about um these Financial issues in the same thing uh at the same time there was uh the Pioneer Valley Chinese emerging school was going for a going before the state to ask for a 100 more seats and and one of the things that was interesting is that the deficit in hamis is about equal to what they pay out in Charter School costs so that was another thing that was sort of discussed there um and as they looked over some of the other options were like becoming a desie Innovation school um because they're finding that people are leaving because of voke tech and people are leaving because the offerings don't match where they see themselves in high school so she's really focused on like what do the students want the students deserve the best but can we just agree on how to provide the basic and then try to figure out how to get these learning outcomes and fund these learning outcomes that might cause students to be a little more invested um and so again like overall what I want to just kind of put out there is that it seems like this superintendent and this Administration is thinking differently and trying to figure out new ways but all of them are going to no matter what we're going to be in a situation next year and I think um the finance committee already knows this where we need to kind of last year we all every small town in the region upped above our guard rail numbers to fund the ammer schools and um that's not sustainable and so we have to figure that piece out um but Susie who couldn't be here tonight is is very optimistic that as far as shutesbury goes we are going to be okay with however it kind of shakes out so I'm following Susie as my leader on that because she knows all things like that so um that's very again it's very very early um but that's kind of what the superintendent um thinking down there so that's not the amoris pelum regional update but that is the fourtown meeting update so if you guys have any questions I mean really like I said it's very preliminary it was a lot of just kind of spitballing here's where we're at here how here's how we're thinking um but at least it's not just like well we have this budget and we're going to keep doing everything the way it is and how are we going to fund it it seems like there's a lot you know for four days of thinking I was really impressed with some of the options that they were kind of throwing out there so that's my piece um yes Jen Taylor just real quickly wanted to say first of all I think the reason we're missing Anna is because there is an ammer regional meeting so uh just reason I could be mistaken on that but I'm pretty sure I saw that that's true um and also just wanted to say that um the idea of consolidating I normally would not be for for putting seventh through 12th in one building but knowing the dynamic in ammer and what's going on in I think that that's probably a really great idea just putting by two sents in on yeah and I think I remember you last week asking an Anna or last week last month asking Anna if the superintendent was aware of the mold issues and the issues in the uh in the in the Middle School um the Middle School pool also has been broken for the last month it just got fixed this week um so like I I think this might answer a little bit of that question I think they look at the Deferred maintenance and the state of the middle school and it feels like something that's underutilized I had the number written down somewhere but I think the actual High School is rated for like 3,000 students and they've got like a thousand something in there so there's the capacity there the other interesting piece that I didn't just mention was they have talked you know as we were talking earlier in the year about what they were going to do with that sixth grade that they have to move out of the school that they're rebuilding um um there is an idea there too to move the sixth grade into the high school building as well in a very functionally separate space with its own Administration which would seem to be kind of along the lines of what we thought they might think of doing which was like basically asking the region to permit this but not expecting pelum or shuberry or lever to kick our students to them so that seems to be where her head is at right now in that space as well and granted there's a lot of time to figure those things out that's where um that's where she's at thank yeah Leah um to the point of um having 7th through 12th grade in the school I actually went to a school like that and had an amazing experience um in that kind of environment so um if if you guys want for some additional support around pushing that when that does when that conversation does come up I'm happy to sh to share yeah and I think part of that idea is you know last year when they were talking about the staff cuts it looked like at one point the thing that was put on the table is well we're going to have to get rid of foreign languages and here's a way that maybe your program isn't as robust but you can build it and have those instructional people be moving easily between different grades and providing those um those services so you're you're trying to provide like we're what what they're talking about is committing to the basics and then trying to build out from that and I think that's really where she sees that working is we can get all these people in the building we can get rid of some central office staff we can get rid of some um you know building leadership staff which are going to be expensive and it also shows that we're kind of trying our best to like support the students and not just support the the bureaucracy of the school is I think kind of where she's coming from on that uh Shannon I was just gonna say that having a middle and high school within the same building happens all over western Mass I mean it happens at Mahar it happens in Turner it happens at Mohawk I mean it's not unheard of so I think to Leah's point you can have some really Innovative great programs and sometimes it's a benefit to some students with program offerings and keeping middle schoolers engaged if they have more options so it's it's not a bad thing and I know it's not my Lane but just going to add that two sense that it's it might be new for amers but it's not new in Western mass for sure yeah I think that's the thing that's hard though is I think that it would have been Unthinkable 10 or 15 years ago in a place like amris or Northampton that you would be in that sort of a situation but I know that you know even working where I work at Tech I know that various schools even Greenfield moving the eth grade up to the high school for a while their Hope was that they could get people invested in the culture of like that we are you know we are Greenfield we are Amorous and then you maybe don't have the same kind of bleeding out that you do when the kids get into high school so like I think there's a lot of different reasons to do it and it definitely is a model um you know it's definitely the model for regionals around here but it looks like maybe it's becoming more of the model for for some of the bigger municipals as well so we will see it's still like a we'll see what she can push through and see how the talk goes obviously we're still kind of bystanders on all of this right now we have very little say on it um until something is actually moved to happen um so moving on uh Jen was there a c s meeting that you attended that had anything to discuss there was a lot in the Cs meeting um although really probably not a ton of it actually fully pertains to us um I am gonna try and just freeze through this report as possible but um they had their 50th anniversary celebration at the ecotarium in Worcester which we many of us were invited to all of the CES board was invited to um it was 100 members staff members also and that was a great success they had a lot of fun um I did not make it to that unfortunately and see uh over the summer they added gutters to lacasita and cleaned the gutters on Main Building there were um signs for neutral gender neutral bathrooms installed uh and a couple of other building updates I don't need to go into um let's see the biggest thing I think there's a new health and wellness digital instructional guide that they just put together and there's going to be some PD for all of the fizzed teachers in the area um to kind of get up to these new standards and put out this guide for health and wellness curriculum which is exciting for me as a health coach um and see on I'm sorry just making sure that all of this is directly pertaining that I want to report on um I think really there's just really education mental health was a big Focus um and something that they're really working on right now uh that's something that they're going to be work on bringing to all of the schools just kind of more supporting they're trying to get a better understanding of exactly what's needed um and then uh they are meeting with the Commonwealth preschool Partnerships initiative team uh and that was at the Northampton Public Schools so I'm not sure exactly um how that's going to affect all of us but I know that they're working to try to align to those standards and really try and get us to a better place with Early Childhood mental health uh we talked a lot about mental health coming out of the pandemic and and even continuing through the pandemic here um and let's see I think those were the big things um that's I think probably I could probably leave it there I don't think there's much else that I really needed to report out on to us that's good thank you Jen yeah all right um so moving on policy reviews we've got a first reading on relations with non-public schools communicable diseases and relations with police authorities um we don't need to take a vote on that but I just want to we should have all read them I guess is all I'm saying uh second reading tonight on um educational opportunities for military children educational opportunities for children in foster care and student absences and excuses um does anybody have any discussion of those three um policies hi yes um I actually had um something on the communicable diseases oh sorry y we can go back to that one y um in paragraph three I think we need to add public um between of and health the massachusett Department of Public Health um thank you thank you for looking so closely at it I totally just read that before the meeting and didn't see that at all um and then for the group that we're on now for second reading um is it the second leading one the one regarding relationships with um non Public Schools that's also in the first reading first reading sorry yeah um so that one for the first reading um I just had a question on when this process would actually be used yeah that's a good question I guess that would be I think a question for an and Shannon more okay so should I come to the next policy um to just ask because I don't need to take up the time it's already gone out of policy so um okay I'm just I just want take a quick look so if you'll bear with me I can't think of a time that we would actually use it to be honest um but I think if you had um I'm trying to think of a time that you would actually use it um I can't think of one off hand isn't that awful I I think I mean for me I think at the high school level I can see how this policy gets used when you have sure a Dr if you have a drug infraction or something else that like you don't want to necessarily criminalize it if possible like you want to deal with it like we have different responsibilities as staff and administration of a school and you know have working at a school that has a school resource officer like they have a very different set of they have a very different lens and a very different set of of um a very different set of operating procedures than we do as instructors or administrators so for me this policy and when I read it in the policy committee too it reads more just like kind of statement of like we're going to keep the best interest of our students in mind when interacting with police and in law enforcement agencies that it's important that we recognize that we have a different role than they have but also to be supportive of our student health and safety you know in the cases of abuse or something else that would be necessary to involve the police in that's kind of the way I read it and passed it on to this committee okay that makk you and I think the other thing you know so much of what we do in the policy committee and we this can change but the normal operating procedure has been kind of just taking these Mass Association of school committee kind of boilerplate language and kind of accepting that um unless we have like we made some changes to the sexual harassment policy last year to add in some more um a more kind of uh we added in some more gender uh gender affirming language into it to try to codify that in the school um so like they're totally open to additions and deletions but a lot of the stuff is just really straight from um straight from the mass Association for school committees is it also like um if we're sending a student to a private school to use Title One funding like would we private I believe private schools can use Title One funding I don't believe that they they have access to that okay um you're you were referring because now I was confused about which policy you were talking about like when would we approve a a private school that's the one you were looking at yeah the one that talks about when we would send someone to a private school like relations with nonpublic schools yeah like I mean I I'm assuming like parents would just put their child in a private school it has to go through school it doesn't I think when I read this I read more of like if you did a parent Co-op so it's not really homeschool but it's a PRI we would have to endorse that but if someone came and did I mean if it's a charter or something like they have their own licensing things that and they're not going to come to us for it so I this would pertain more to like a parent Co-op group as a private school except that I think that's also like I was just again um in Amor right now A a former Co-op like a former home school Co-op is now um actually applying to become a a school in the interests of not getting funding but in order to be able to do field trips and approach some other things and they did have to go before the school committee um to have their curriculum approved and I think this is also that piece so if like somebody wanted to open a private school in shuberry we would have we would have to we don't have a lot of say but we would have some we'd have to be able to look at their curriculum and say like yeah this seems like a comp piece yeah so that's what I read this one as sort of like how we do for homeschool right if somebody wants to do home school we're not going to say they can't but we do vet their you know are they teaching to the standards are they on grade level um and even Charters have to report like when the Pioneer immersion is increasing we got a formal notification um about the very limited grounds that we would have to object to it um and and one of them fell under was the curriculum not did we have reason to believe the curriculum was not appropriate or something like that all right thank you guys sorry yeah I I really appreciate the questions as well Le I feel like it it's always helpful because I feel like so often I feel kind of lost in these things I'm like well if the mass Association and school committee says it's good I'm sure it's okay um and I really think that having somebody with a critical lens and a grammatic lens is really um important to this as well um just because uh Shannon just brought this up too uh the one thing that we did talk about doing in policy committee today was uh Jen in reference to your homeschooling policy that was just approved again last year but we'd like to um we're going to bring it back to the policy committee for next next month's meeting and we'd love to invite you to come along and and discuss it with us there um so we'll bring it back into the policy committee and we'll kind of start over there and see what we can see what I'd like to hear your feedback on it and your experiences or what you've heard of experiences with it so thank you would you do me a favor and just shoot me an email about that Jeremy just list right after no problem um so uh at present moment it sounds like we don't have any amendments to the second readings um so again we need someone to move um to approve someone to second and we need to vote on those three policies I moveed that we approve the um policy jfab educational opportunities for military children the policy jfab BF educational opportunities for children and foster care and the policy JH student absences and excuses for approval a second all right all in favor please uh state so and your name uh my UI tayor long C by Jack I so that is unanimous and they all pass uh don't need an executive session so uh future business we have the shsb policy committee which I will email you about as well Jen um next uh next month is Thursday November 21st at 6:30 we've got our next school committee meeting uh November 21st at 7:00 following that policy meeting Union 28 joint supervisory um is on November 18th at 7 o'clock I believe that's me and Leah and Nate if I remember correctly um are there other future agenda items that we need to consider all right hearing none somebody want to move to adjourn us oh uh Jeremy you mentioned a couple things at the top of the meeting maybe we should have them added to the Future agenda So like um the there were a couple things Jen had mentioned at the last meeting yeah so the home the homeschooling policy was one of them yeah the homeschooling policy was one of those which we're going to bring in the policy meeting next time what was the other one oh my goodness I wrote joint with PTO joint party with PTO the PTO thank you very much Leah the PTO and school committee kind of a meet and greet yeah um go ahead Jen yes you are I was just goingon to say I wish we had pulled something together for open house to be nice to do that in the future potentially for a number of us to attend open house as well well I will um I'll add that to the perpetual calendar that I'm currently uh currently editing so that it'll be on there do you want to share that peret yes yeah I mean I haven't shared it already no I didn't because I think all actually that's not true for a long time all I had was a paper copy that was handed off to me by a former chair of the school committee um but I did get a digital copy so I will try to just kind of add the edits that I have so far and I'll send that out and what would be great actually is if you're part of a committee like for example Jen's CES and there are things that are happening if you could just add those into the column on the on the peral calendar as you see them so that we can update it what I found is even in today's meeting like you know in October it's said uh the the assessment in mcast accountability presentation it's there so it's actually not as off as I think it it's not as off as we thought it was but it is from 2014 it is a decade old so like as we go through if we could just update it I think Caitlyn especially for you I'm sure that the budget column is kind of off from the way that you operate things and so maybe you and I could just talk about that and try to update it or I could share it out and you could update it and that would be fine as well um so yeah I'll share that out uh I'll share that out after the meeting today yeah Jay the only other thing I brought up last meeting which was real quick was just about maybe changing the September school committee date in the future so just putting that out that that would be a good good thing to add to that as well is to just check for the conflict with the block party right okay okay um yeah it would be great also like whatever if if there is a conflict like today if there's a conflict with the ammer regional school committee meeting you know avoiding things like that as much as possible would be helpful as well I know we have this set for the third Thursday but I mean there's nothing saying that we can't move it on a time where we need to okay um do you want to say anything else Jen about the PTO and school committee kind of get together I don't really know how to go about kind of starting to figure that out but I'm happy to be part of it yeah sure so I think um like I said great if we can insert ourselves kind of into things that are already pre-existing for next year so open house the Yahoo boohoo breakfast on the first day those are great opportunities for us to do meet and greets and then I think maybe just doing because we didn't get to do that this year um there is the upcoming Library uh and Town Event at the shutesbury Athletic Club if anybody's interested in doing that and kind of representing school committee there as well um but I think if we can do one form Al just meet and greet at the elementary school it might be nice to do like a coffee hour either in the morning or do maybe one in the one thing we did with PTO at one point was switch off morning meetings and evening meetings because some people can do mornings and some people can do evenings so it's sometimes nice to have like one in the morning one month and then a few months later have one in the evening so different attend let's let's let's put this on the agenda for next our next meeting and let's just talk about because I think it might be really great to have like a liaison I mean it would probably be Anna because it would make the most sense but to have a liaison with the PTO um and to have maybe even um maybe even just to kind of have and I know like Tech like any sort of school events where it would be appropriate to kind of appear as school committee members um you know that might be something that's useful and even like cheesy as it sounds some like magnetic name tags that have our names and just say school committee on them so that like people feel comfortable coming up to us and talking because I do think that like I usually go to these events as a parent not as a school Community member um and not that I necessarily want to like invite a whole ton but like it would be good to feel like people could approach us and know who we are um if they do have things that they want to talk about so maybe we can talk about that a little more next meeting definitely awesome thanks so much Jeremy all right so does anybody want to move to adjourn us because I move to adjourn today's meeting Jeremy nice thank you second second in by Jen all right all in favor hi May Taylor all right thank you guys all so much I look forward to seeing you next month thank you everybody --------- ##VIDEO ID:D3oJD86EUwE## there we go uh so we'll call the meeting to order at 6:34 um welcome everybody um first order of business approval of the minutes from September 19th 2024 I second that no you have to move I get a second I moved to approve the meetings from all right uh I'll guess I have to second it all in favor Nate I approved 633 Perfect all right uh so we've got some policies for review um sex-based harassment discrimination um Title Nine uh organization of instruction curriculum development student to student harassment student discipline and bullying prevention do we have any discussion on any of those if we have anything that we saw especially for the two of you who are new to the district um is there anything that you want to anything you noticed or wanted to change about those so um I'm trying to make you did you said organization of instruction was that one of the policies that you yeah the second one yep so um there are two policies that are recommended for deletion because MC has deleted those policies because they've been absorbed by other policies okay um one sorry got the two computer thing going on here all right I actually wonder if I have any control I don't think I have any real control over these documents so maybe I'll just take the notes on it anyway I would like to be looking at it while I'm while you're talking about it so on are you ready oh yeah you can start I'll pull it up right here so on organization of instruction um there's there's no masc policy regarding that okay um my my they're recommending that we delete anything like that because that's really a building based instructional decision to be made so they don't have a policy on it the other one um is jba student to student harassment because that those policies are absorbed under different things including the Title Nine um bullying policies that have been Dev veloped at the state and federal level um and so masc has deleted that policy because they feel it's redundant okay so no M masc policy in the um organization of instruction and the student to student harassment is covered in Title Nine and and the local and state bullying guidelines been okay right so Mac does not have a policy on that any longer now that doesn't mean you you don't have to keep it it just might be a little bit redundant because the spirit of those things are covered under other policies now okay so I guess my other question as you know a new chair of this and and everything else like so if we decide to do away with a policy is it just this policy committee here who do we have to vote on that like how do we go about striking those policies if we want to get rid of them so it has to be a school committee vote so what you would do is you would bring it to school committee and say you know we would have the same kind of conversation that this policy is recommending that it be deleted okay um and you know I'm happy to speak to the reasons why and then they would vote um and and what I would do is have Robin when we send it out make note to the school committee members that there are two policies up for deletion so that they should look over them make sure that they look them over in advance um and then unlike first and second read I believe you can just take a vote to delete okay so we can put that on the agenda for school committee for like next session and that should be fine right yep um all right so you'll have Robin highlight those okay so we'll put on November agenda to delete those two okay that works for me um in my quick read through these things become so they can become so tedious to work through um but I didn't see anything um it's funny I don't see anything and then we bring it to the school committee and we have this this current crop of the school committee is very good at finding grammatical errors and small things so I'm really happy to have those people behind me um but I have nothing I have nothing on any of these to say I don't know if anybody else does Nate you got any big uh pronouncements about not on these policies no okay all right I do think that shutesbury unlike some of the other schools in the union tend to stick with what masc has provided for guidance so you don't tweak it yeah yeah and that's where I think it gets a little bit into discussion when people want to add things or take away things then yeah it hasn't beened yeah and I know that we did you know we did tweak a few of them last year I know that um I think we wrote some new language into the uh the sexual harassment one around gender identity and such but like overall yeah they seem pretty boilerplate and I think that works for us as well um so all right so uh if we don't have anything else to say I guess we can just adjourn right so you're GNA move um I just want to make sure I yep we are GNA move acab yep which is the title 9 yep we're going to move IG which is curriculum development yep and we're going to move student discipline and bullying prevention discipline to the full committees yep for vote first read y sorry yes okay and and then we're g to move uh organization of instruction and student to student harassment uh for deletion yep I got those I do think you have to take a vote on those there was one other policy in here um at least on my agenda on homeschooling that actually come up at the school I think Robin Mis said that came up in the school committee yes that um they wanted to take a look at the homeschool policy um which was just updated in 2023 so I think what I'll do is move that to the full Committee just because it was a discussion point I don't remember who brought it up but oh yeah Jen Jen brought it up at the last meeting um to talk about the the policy there and so could we we wouldn't have to review it here we could just move it straight to the the school you if she wants or you could invite her to this meeting um why don't we start there why don't we start by bringing it to the policy committee next month and we'll invite Jen to come look it over and talk with it and then we'll decide what to do with it after that okay so we'll keep that on the agenda but we'll make sure we invite Jen yes okay okay that sounds good to me so we need to vote on that you're so Nate we're going to need to move to vote uh the four that we are moving forward for to the committee for a vote and the two separately that we're moving to the committee for deletion and then I will uh Second and we can vote on it if you are okay I need the names of those right yeah yeah y hold on I think you can just say the abbreviations if you want right can you just tell me the abbreviations right there here we go acab acab IG IG jic jic and jic FB those are going to the full committee for a vote and the policies IE and jba are the ones that we're moving to have deleted okay I move to let me make sure I get this right I move to vote on policies acab IG G A jic jic CFB at the school committee meeting I will second that all in favor I of two and I move to these are going to be moved to the following meeting for policy review uh policy ie no these I'm sorry policy yeah policy IE and policy jba are moving to the full committee for deletion for deletion okay these are going to I move to move these to full committee meeting for deletion i e and jba I second it all in favor I all right and then we will discuss uh we'll discuss the homeschool policy here next next meeting and we'll invite Jen okay okay sounds good to me any other things that we needed to discuss here in policy okay well um do I hear a movement to adjourn Nate I move to adjourn policy meeting I second it all in favor I go make yourselves some tea I'll see you in 15 we'll see you bye you