This government meeting is brought to you by Eastworks and our local cable subscribers. Good evening. The time is now 6:00 p.m. Call the uh Southampton School Committee meeting to order. Uh I'm Dylan Modsley, vice chair of the Southampton School
Committee. Uh chair John Lumber is not present. Currently present are the other three members of school committee. We also have superintendent Vita Peron and uh building principal Lisa Pluto. Uh first matter is approval of the minutes
from April 9th, 2025. Move to approve. We have a motion from Kim. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Margaret. Let's take a minute to go through for discussion. What on earth is that beeping?
Any further discussion? Everyone good? Good. All right. Hearing none. All those in favor I oppose. Abstensions. Motion carries for nothing. Uh, next item. Public comment.
That's a no. They need to get in line, right? One at a time at the microphone. No more than two minutes. Please don't be repetitive. Circulation of warrants. Those are now done online. I believe the last warrants went around about a couple days ago and I believe those were finalized. Yes. in
the day before maybe I signed something sometime. Yeah. Announcements, correspondence. Um, no, there was a postcard that went around on the ballot question that went out to all Southampton households that was sent out, I believe, that came in
yesterday. I got yesterday. Yeah, mine came today. Uh, there's been signs popping around town. There's an election the 20th. I hear there is. I voted today though. You can you can vote today. Well, you could vote. You can still vote early tomorrow. Tomorrow, early voting
tomorrow and then uh it's Tuesday the 20th from noon to 8. Uh reports, principal report. Yes. So the principal's report for May 14th, 2025. Our enrollment is at 481. That is
one down from last month. Um under student life, we have our third grade students presented their magnet projects to their parents in the cafeteria on April 18th. They also invited some other students from Norris to um attend, which was very nice. Firefighters visited
classrooms in grades 1 and three to talk about fire safety. The Birkshere Theater Group is coming to Norris on Friday, May 16th, and they will be performing The Magic Treehouse, um, Pirates Past Noon. Um, thanks to the generosity of Mary Pope Osborne, students will receive
copies of The Magic Treehouse, book number four. Um, and the nonfiction companion fact tracker. I think only a couple grades are getting the book, though. It's not everyone. Uh the North School Drama Club will be performing for parents on the evening of May 22nd and
for students in school on May 23rd, 6:30. And that'll be great now that we have a drama club again. Kindergarten orientation was held on the evening of Wednesday, May 7th. And last day for preschool is June 5th. The preschool picnic is also scheduled for that day at
Conan Park. Field day is scheduled for June 9th with a rain date of the 11th. Step up day for grade 6 is scheduled for June 12th. And the last day of school for students is Friday, June 13th, and it is a half day. Um, we will finish MCCAST testing
tomorrow. Last session, grade five science. So exciting. Um, I think the kids are toast at this point. They are done with MCCAST, especially fifth grade, because they take ELA, math, and science. Uh, the last round of Fastbridge testing will be conducted May 19th to the 23rd for kindergarten and
the 27th to the 30th for grades 2 through six. Teachers have professional development time on Friday, May 23rd. Students have a half day of school. And then under staff news, we celebrated Mrs. Sue Reposa at the Log Cabin on Wednesday, April 30th. Mrs. Reposa is a recipient of the Herald Ginspoon
Teaching and Excellence Award. She's a third grade teacher. Uh it was a lot of fun. And then the town approved capital committee recommendations for our request for new doors in our school gym that lead to the outside and replacing the carpet with tile in the two preschool classes and two kindergarten
classrooms. The total amount is about $55,000. So we are appreciative of that. Thank you very much. Questions. Superintendent report. So the first couple items on the superintendent report are uh just FYIs. The Massachusetts Association of School
Superintendent provided an update on analysis on the budget uh the state budget as it moves forward. And that was just for uh information for you to see what MASS has to say about uh the the the iteration that we're currently on.
Of course, there's a lot more work to be done at the state level to finalize that. The second piece is that Durham uh the bus company that we use uh they were purchased by a company national company and they said that there will be no
problems, issues, concerns. We'll be moving forward in a positive way. We have a two-year extension on a contract with Durham and uh Don Scaparati did a wonderful job negotiating um from 4% down to 3 and a half for this upcoming
school year and then down to three uh the school year after that. So, um kind of the most important piece there is there was only one bidder when we originally went to that budget that item uh for uh for bid and we hope that
uh as we move forward maybe there's others interested so we can have some uh some competition there. Um really good news from the office of public school monitoring. When we first started back in July,
there was some concerns from the office of school public school monitoring that the uh the the findings and the determinations that were made were not acted upon previously. Uh we have subsequent sub subsequently and I say we
but it's really um Amy Drake, Michael Fet and the principles have done an excellent job to respond to the uh findings of the prior uh monitoring report and we are now on time and current and getting ready for another
review in another year. Um, there's another spot on the agenda for the comparison of 2425, but I'd like to just take it as part of my report and it'll just come off later in the agenda if that's all right. Um, I bring your
attention to this chart. And what this chart is, it captures three claim functions for DESIE. Extraordinary relief, specialed increment, and circuit breaker. All those things are defined
there, but ultimately it's about the state trying to um reimburse us for monies that we use for special ed costs, which we all know are going up. The reason I bring this to this the the school committee tonight is
because Michael and Amy have done an amazing job of meticulously going through claims identifying uh uh services that we can claim as reimbursible. And if you look at the last column uh the difference
between um 25 and 24 is $38,000890. So, in each of those buckets, whether it's uh extraordinary relief, sped increment, or circuit breaker, um the work that Amy and Michael have done have netted revenues
that were not netted previously. And it's not because we have more special ed students now. It's because they looked at the services, they identified where we could make claims, and they did the work, the hard work to identify it and
claim it from the state. So, uh, Norris is standing to receive $38,890 more than they have in the past year. And that's all because of the conscientious work that Michael and Amy are doing. So, I I wanted to bring that to your attention. If anybody has any
questions, I'm certainly able to ask uh answer them, but really it's about those three buckets. Extraordinary relief, special ed increment, and certific. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, this is all because they found the stuff that and
did the paperwork to get the claims back where that wasn't necessarily done previously. It's a lot of work. It is a lot of work and I do not I intend not to disparage those who were before us, but I want to recognize the the work that
was done by the team that is currently in place and they're doing a great job and it's being reflected in the revenues that we're receiving. Yeah, that's great. Um, of course we all we talked about the town meeting in uh Southampton and the
fact that the election the ballot is on the 20th. Um, oh this is a good one. Advocacy. One of the things that we're concerned about, everybody's concerned about is the funding from the national level and the fact that uh there's
uncertainty on what we're going to receive in our title grants and our IDA grants. The other concern is that the rural and the regionals aren't receiving uh funding at the same level, if you will, as the eastern part of the state
and some of the more affluent communities or the more needy communities. our our enrollment our and I mean by that the rural and the uh the regionals are down though the Hampshire regional um enrollment is not down but
still the funding mechanism uh is based on enrollment and because of that we as rural districts are not receiving the same funding and so there's an opportunity for advocacy and we have two students uh principal hoaxes um uh Don
Scaparati myself and Margaret are going to uh present at Northampton High School with six other schools. Uh we each have about five minutes and a slide to share and we are going to talk about the challenges that are faced by rural and
uh regional districts and we're going to make some points on how the state might remediate those challenges and help us uh recoup some of the uh some of the revenue losses that we face because of our situation. And that is on the 27th
of May and it's at Northampton High School. Um, the last thing is the skinny budget. And I'm using a quote from um the MASS, the federal FY26 budget proposal from the executive branch is called the skinny budget. And what they
said, and this is very good for us, uh that title one is going to remain intact and title or excuse me, the idea grants are going to remain intact. So, uh, we receive both of those grants and different, um, uh, measures in our five
districts. Uh, the only thing that's really going to be pulled away from us are title three funds, and that's not as significant a hit. So, uh, my anxiety level dropped quite a bit when I saw that. And, um, I'm I'm I'm feeling much better about things as
we move forward. And that's it. Any questions? I'm happy to feel them. Questions? Thank you very much. Chair's report. John didn't give anything to me.
Um Regional, um we've been working on pretty much policy. That's what we've been doing most of I would say. Questions? Okay. Uh PTO
PTO met last night in the library. Uh most of it was they're actually starting to look ahead to the fall for gearing up for some of the fundraising that they start in the fall. They have that work on that starts well before the fall.
Um that was that was most of the meeting. Uh they have one more meeting this school year and it will be on June 10th at 6:30 in the Norris Library. That's it. Are they going to be working on the
holiday bizaar again? They are. Although they're not none of them wanted to say the B- word last night yet. So they were calling it the the festival that happens in the fall because it's a tremendous amount of work and so they're not quite ready to start actually. Are they going to call it the apple pie festival for
the whole year and then go to uh Well, they should just call it the apple pie festival, but you know, tradition, I guess, doesn't matter anymore. Uh, any questions? None. Uh, school council, we are this close. Yeah, we're that close. Finishing
the school improvement plan. Can you get me a copy, electronic copy? So, um, then there's a meeting with the instructional leadership team next week and then school counsel or week after, I can't remember. And then the 27th we meet and then Yeah. And then, um, school council
meets again and we're going to finalize everything and it's looking good. Great. Yeah. Uh, collaborative updates. They haven't their last meeting was prior to our last meeting. It was actually the same night as our last meeting. Um, they meeting again the end of the month. There's been
a lot of emailing going on back and forth. There's they're continuing to face pretty big budget issues over there as is everyone. Um it all trickles down as school budgets are getting impacted and they're cutting services and trying to reimagine how they do things that un
that impacts that impact CES as well. So um the executive director's been holding listening sessions. I think they're hoping to hold that at this point that they're done with staff layoffs and they're figuring out restructuring. Um, but it's it's not a happy time over there.
Um, anyone have questions on that? Select board update. I don't have anything. I would just say that town meeting happened uh last week. Their budget is, as everyone here isn't aware, that the
budget's moving forward for an override vote on next Tuesday the 20th town hall voting from noon to 8. um failure to pass the override would result in uh pretty tremendous cuts at Norris. So 12.5% of the staff staff equivalent of
10 full-time employees. Um budget budget finance team update. Uh Don is currently at the Mazbo conference. Uh she is in Eastern Mass. maybe but uh she's doing work and
collaborating with her peers. So uh ultimately the uh the bottom line and I'm really excited about this is that we we and again my team Dawn and her the business office is really making amazing progress. We have finished and I know
this is not a municipal thing. It's a a regional thing, but we finished uh excess and deficiency for uh Chesfield Ocean. It's been submitted and there's actually money we were able to apply to the budget up there which is awesome.
Hampshire Regional will be done at the end of the month. Uh the the END I don't know that they'll get the the return that Chesfield Ocean did, but we're going to be done and back on track with respect to END. uh the three municipal
count uh end of year reports are are are completed and Dawn is going to submit them this week which is huge for us. Uh and then probably the biggest news the audits for 23 and 24 are starting and um
25 is due the end of um March in 26 and we are going to be on track to make that deadline. I am so proud of the work that Dawn and her team are doing. Um, it's a
grind. It's it's uh it's really challenging uh being dragged back by anchor of fiscal years past while you're currently doing your work in in the in the FY and then you're projecting into the next year. But she's keep her head
above water. She's getting the work done and we are getting back on track. We have a couple meetings coming up with with Desi where we're going to be able to report some things that haven't been reported in a couple years and um I really couldn't be happier or prouder of
the team that that we have in place. Um you know I'm just going around for a ride like we got we got Michael and Amy doing their thing and we got Dawn and her team doing their thing and it's really exciting. Questions. Just one thing I want to say though, um, John, since John's not here,
I forgot we had an ADC meeting too and it was um, superintendent evaluation stuff. So, just a reminder if you guys haven't done your evaluation of the superintendent, it's due tomorrow. That guy. So, just a reminder, that's it. It was just that link we had to fill out,
right? The Google form. Yeah. Yep. Um, I had a couple qu a question. That sheet that's gone around in the past, I I appreciate everything you just said. I believe you. Um I'm a visual guy which the one that had the ongoing track here.
Yes. Can we for next meeting can we get an updated version of that with the check what's been completed? Absolutely. In fact um I don't remember which meeting it was. Oh it was a town meeting in Westampton. That's right. We uh we updated that on the website so I can
share that quite easily uh with everyone. And that's the the most uh up-to-date document that we're communicating with Jesse. Uh and it it it entails kind of the uh the issues that were identified,
where we stand with those issues, and the progress we're making. So, I can certainly share that with everybody in my uh my next report. And where are we at with fiscal year 25 actuals? that we're we're going to be in great
place with that as we finish 24. Uh and what I mean by that is um the most complicated uh actuals to deal with are the pantry regional and so once we get that in place we are going to be uh on track to
get 25 where it needs to be and we're we're going to be making the progress we need to make. That was one of the concerns that people had is well why don't we why don't we have actuals that we can compare but we couldn't do that so we closed out those prior years and so that's the anchor that I feel around
our neck um so we are uh we are on it we are focused and I have all faith that Dawn is going to be where we need to be um with 25 for the the the the benchmarks that we have to hit greatly
Any other questions? Thank you. Um, Dr. Peron, special education revenue comp. We've already covered that, correct? Great. Nurse leader stipend and posting. Yes. This is just an FYI. There was
some issues, concerns last year when that district level position was cut and a change to a stipen position. Um the Sam Peas who is the nurse at New
Hingham has taken on the role of the nurse leader and fulfilled the obligations with respect to state reporting and all those things professional development um that she has needed to do. She's been supported by Michael Fet uh around curriculum and PD
and uh one of the things I did this year so that we didn't fall into the trap of last year was give voice to the nurses. So I sent a Google form out in uh January or February I believe and uh solicited some feedback from them around
how things were going. Are you receiving the support you need? Do you need any of the resources? Is there or are there comments, concerns that you want addressed as we move forward? And I was quite clear with them at one of the PDs this year that the budget just doesn't
allow a return of that position. It would be it would have been irresponsible of me to try to push that forward in addition to a change from Souza to the new model. So, uh, they were good with that. I I haven't heard
any complaints. Now, I might not hear that, but I have gotten feedback. I will be at the PD at the end of May with the nurses, with Sam to again hear from them, give them voice, and uh to assure them that we're going to move forward as best we can with the stipen position.
It's posted, which is what this is all about. Uh I don't know who yet is going to uh apply for that position but once we uh fill it I will then come around to each of the school committees for approval as we must per uh MGL. So this
is really justformational. Are there any changes to the job description? The job description is pretty comprehensive. Um the the fact that Michael is supporting Sam and that she
is also doing the job during the school day was the concern that the nurses had. But as we uh moved through the school year and um they recognized that, you know, things were different and and they
were given voice and they were um given an opportunity to add whatever questions, concerns that they have. Uh things I think settled down a little bit and uh we're moving forward in a positive way. So are there any changes to the job description? No.
Okay. Thank you. So, the same woman who does it this year is not wanting to do it for next year or it just has to be posted regardless. It's posted regardless. It's a one It's a one year. It's a one year thing. It's a siphon position. So, got I don't know that anyone else is interested. Um, but I I
don't anticipate any undue stress and brain work because of Right. you know, thank you for giving the nurses an opportunity because they haven't always had that in
the past and it was really important for you to do that and I've I've heard that they appreciated it. Thank you. Yeah. And one of the things I do is when I'm in the building, that's one of the stops I make is I go to the nurse's office and say hello, you know, just to check in um see how they're doing and so they know
who I am. Uh so I think it's all part of moving forward, you know, in a better way than they were. So, questions, comments, thank you. Uh, business office intern job description. All right, I'm
going to channel my inner dog, but I'm being much more succinct than she is. Um, tell her the the the funding for this position is from the extended forensic work. So, this is no extra money needed for this position, but what
it is is we have an opportunity to hire uh an intern that can do uh some specific work around um uh if you look at the job description that she put in there. um closing out fiscal years and entering ledger work
and doing some of the work around uh preparation for the audit and for the end of year reports as we move forward. Um the the the key is that this person was trained formally at a fellowship
that prepares uh the person for the work that's being done. and uh it's a $25 an hour as opposed to a $40 $50 $60 an hour person. Uh it's a young young person still in school going to be a senior but has the fellowship and training that is
going to allow um Dawn to put the person to work in um a way that's going to get us some real traction right away. And so we were told by our attorney that we need to bring the job description around, share it with everybody, get it approved, and
then move forward. Okay. Motion to approve the job description. Motion to approve made by Kim. Is there a second? Second. Seconded by Jen. Discussion. Hearing none. All those in favor? I I
opposed. Uh motion carries unanimously. Thank you. field trip approval to Albany, New York. Maybe. Yes, this is definitely a maybe. So, we had a hard time finding a nurse and then we had a hard time contracting
with buses. Uh the bus company that we originally were going to use. Bus broke down, isn't being fixed, so we're still searching, but I figured bring it to you, hopefully get the approval, and then if it happens, we can make it happen at the last minute. And if not,
at least we had it approved. So it would be June 11th to Albany, New York to five wits, which fifth grade has gone there for the past few years. Um it's a problem solving skills and teamwork.
Um they'll be tested in order to make it through like a puzzle game room type of thing where you find your way out. Three adventures while beating the score of other teams. It's the kids love it. They have a fantastic time. So I'm just looking for your approval to go out of
state. Motion to approve field trip to five wits for the current fifth graders on June 11th. Second group Jen seconded by Kim. Further discussion hearing none. All those in favor. I opposed
extensions. Motion carries. Uh, second reading, Title 9 policy reversion update 2022. Yes, thank you. Um, I I in my in my uh updates and running running record
kind of of what I do the last time I shared with everyone the uh the language and the letter from uh attorney dupre cuz I know there were some questions about it and um I don't know if you had an opportunity to read it. If not, I
will share uh that and the financial issues with this body so you guys can take a look at it. Um but it really helps put in perspective the fact that title 9 is title 9 and we have to uh acquies and do
what we need to do um with respect to it. I am currently involved in a title 9 investigation as a title 9 coordinator and we are adhering to the the uh 2020 um uh reiteration of it.
So what's in our packet is what we looked at last month that as a first read we were okay with it is so nothing's changed. Nothing has changed. The only thing I wanted to share is that that letter was available for you to read. Right. Yeah. I remember I wrote
that last time. Is there a motion to approve title N policy reversion update to? So this would be to approve policies AC-R ACA and ACAB
GBAA and revert them back to the 2002 previous of the first reading at the school committee meeting of April 9th, 2025. And I think we could do this as a consent agenda of all three if moved. More motion made by Margaret. Second.
Seconded by Kim. Further discussion hearing? None. All those in favor? I. All those opposed? Nay. Um, no abstensions. Motion carries 3 to one. Uh, does anybody else have any business
to bring before this committee which cannot wait till the next regularly scheduled meeting? Hearing none, I'll accept a motion to adjurnn. Move. Second. Second. Second. Seconded by Jen. All those discussion, all those in favor? I I meeting is
adjourned at 6:29 p.m. Thank you so much. Grandpa.