00:01:01,570 S1: What? 00:01:19,129 S2: Is wrong with you? 00:01:27,000 S1: I told you. 00:01:54,870 S1: So. 00:02:25,900 S3: Test one two. Testing. 00:03:08,330 S1: That's. 00:03:11,830 S4: Where we are. Ready? 00:03:15,870 S5: Okay. Good evening. Um, I call to order the public hearing number two of the Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee on Thursday, February 8th at 6:33 p.m.. Um. Oh. All right, no worries. You you haven't missed. You haven't missed much. Um, okay. Yep. 00:03:48,169 S5: Something's not working. Okay. 00:03:50,000 S4: Mike's not working. 00:03:50,800 S5: Oh. Oh, okay. 00:03:52,330 S6: I didn't even notice. You've been projecting. 00:03:54,169 S5: Something. I know. 00:03:55,370 S6: Oh, it's like the camera is not cutting to show the program on YouTube or the SD. 00:04:01,569 S5: Card. Okay, take a minute. We'll we'll take a brief pause while you work out a technical issue. 00:04:19,029 S1: Okay. 00:04:21,269 S2: So I'm really. 00:04:23,100 S1: Sorry about this. 00:04:26,569 S2: This is. 00:04:29,170 S1: Not. 00:04:30,129 S3: Valentine's. 00:04:30,829 S1: Day. So this is. 00:04:50,870 S1: So? 00:05:25,730 S1: Many reasons to. 00:06:09,129 S1: She told the audience in any one of these sequences. 00:06:15,470 S1: That I would just have to slowly. 00:06:57,230 S1: I mean, I still have. I don't know. Come on. And then you just. 00:07:06,430 S1: Have. 00:07:10,430 S1: To go. 00:07:14,329 S1: Back to something that. 00:09:23,529 S1: Over the course of the. 00:09:41,230 S1: Next. Yeah. 00:09:46,129 S1: Okay. Why do you say. I know it's all about the gravitational radiation. 00:10:11,629 S1: You. 00:10:14,870 S1: Know the materials? I like. 00:10:24,129 S1: The. 00:10:40,529 S1: To come forward. This is to use us. 00:10:45,669 S1: I want to say I want to. 00:11:06,230 S1: Try. 00:11:09,029 S1: To get. 00:11:12,730 S1: People to talk about the people who work in the hospital system. 00:11:22,029 S1: And so on. So I guess I would like to see something that. 00:11:33,100 S1: Is going to be possible to address that. 00:11:45,500 S1: It was at that time that. 00:12:05,700 S1: You. 00:12:11,730 S1: Said you are not. 00:12:17,500 S1: Going. 00:12:31,830 S1: To. 00:13:00,200 S1: I don't. 00:14:56,129 S1: You know. Right? 00:15:03,330 S1: Yeah. 00:15:09,470 S5: Okay. All right. 00:15:11,000 S4: Sounds like it's working. 00:15:13,470 S5: All right. Um, so, um, after a brief, uh, I'll call the meeting back to order after a brief technical issue, and, um, and we are back. So we are back in public hearing number two on the Hamilton Windham Regional School District FY 25 Five budget. Um. And we will start. Uh, Vinnie, uh, it's going to give us a presentation on the budget. 00:16:34,799 S7: Well, thank you everyone for joining us tonight. We are here for our second public hearing on the FY 25 final budget recommendation for the Hamilton Regional School District. Now in the for the agenda tonight in the exhibit there is a link for a 52 slide presentation. I do not plan on going through the whole 52 slides more. Just kind of a mid-level review of kind of the major budget changes year over year. But for any of the members in the audience or anyone on TV, you can go to the school committee agenda and find the full exhibit that details out every change year over year, based on our school location and broken down by D.C. category. 00:17:26,000 S7: So when we originally look to build our budget, there are a list of main things that we look at when you break down our budget it represents. It includes $25.3 million in salaries. In addition, there is 6.7 million in benefits and fixed charges that are included. That's a total of 32 million and represents 72% of our entire budget. So major shifts year over year are obviously linked mostly to our staff and to our salaries. Therefore, we mainly look at our collective bargaining agreements where it states all of our Cola adjustments, our step increases, and our column and lane changes. Ultimately, though, that really is the main change year over year. And what contributes to that increase from FY 24 to FY 25? In addition to that, we do look at if anyone has declared any retirements or any staff turnover. And these two areas, we sometimes see savings year over year because we either a higher, more um. 00:18:41,369 S7: Teacher that falls higher on the salary scale is usually replaced with someone who's less seasoned and falls lower on the salary scale, and therefore we realize savings year over year. In addition, which has been a hot topic issue, is our health insurance enrollment changes and any premium rate increases that I'll get into in a little bit more detail later on in the presentation. But one of the first things we look at when we go to build our budget budget is our enrollment shift. This is how many students reside in Hamilton and how many reside in Wenham. We take the total and break down by percentage. This gives us our total distribution of expenses during the budget process. So how many percentages of students live in Hamilton? Breaks down to how much percentage of the budget that the Hamilton taxpayers have to pay. Versus the Wenham taxpayers? In summary, year over year that we've seen an increase of 17 students. Five of them in Hamilton and 12 of them in Wenham. So what does that do? What does that do to our budget? Year over year is what we call our enrollment shift. And for FY 25, compared to prior years, we had a low enrollment shift this year. Only roughly $24,000 shifted away from Wenham and went towards Hamilton. We like seeing this year over year because that keeps the budget kind of. Consistent and reduces those hills and valleys throughout the budget cycle. So a low number like this is really what we what we look for year over year. 00:20:26,430 S7: The next thing we review is our revenues. Year over year from FY 24 to FY 25. The school district saw a lot of growth in our revenue. This was also experienced in FY 23. So we're carrying that forward to FY 25. Year over year, we are realizing an additional $375 in additional offsets and revenues. This represents a growth of just under 6%. But one number that is also included in our revenue sources is our end account for FY 25. We are realizing a reduction of $870,000 as it relates to Indy. So if you add this amount to our other revenue sources, it does paint a little bit of a different picture. As you see here. It's kind of the opposite effect. A reduction of Percent. However, for those of you who have seen the presentations, we really try to match our excess and deficiency with one time expense offsets because A&E is a one time revenue source. So even though our revenue has dropped 870,000, the exact same amount was reduced out of our expenses. So the net result on the town isn't there's no change as as a result of our reduction in. And it's just an overall reduction to our spending throughout the fiscal year. So really when you look at our revenue, we've seen a lot of growth from FY 24 to FY 25. 00:22:02,730 S7: The next thing we go to look at is our expenses. So we start basically from scratch and add in all our personnel and build out our health insurance premium rate increases and meet with each budget holder and go through their non salary accounts and entering all the information presented here is our overall operating budget. Year over year we are seeing an increase of just over 1% and it represents just under $500,000 increase from FY 24 to FY 25. Our final gross operating budget that we're requesting for FY 25 is $44,569,320. 00:22:45,470 S7: This is our operating side. We in addition, we do have debt service. Debt service is big capital projects that we do throughout the year or in past years. And we take a loan or borrow money and we slowly pay that down every year. We currently have six projects that we took out debt for the Cutler roof, the Baker boiler and Winthrop boilers, the Winthrop sprinkler system, um, uh, Various projects during FY 21 and for FY 25, we have two new projects, the Cutler Feasibility Study and the Athletic Complex. I'm just going to skip forward to grab the number. 00:23:31,700 S7: Uh, so year over year for our debt service, we are requesting an increase of $1.4 million. You can tie this back directly to the first pay down of the athletic complex. Complex upgrades. Uh, in addition to that, 1.4 million are net operating assessments to the towns. We are requesting an increase of 992,000. This represents for our operating budget a 2.9% increase year over year. But when you add this to our debt service, it does paint a little bit of a different picture. In our total year over year assessment is coming in at 6.85%. However, just to remind everyone that is because of the debt service which most of that was voted as a debt exclusion outside of prop two and a half and outside of the levy limit. 00:24:28,569 S7: So here forward, I'm going to go through our operating expenses and just highlight some of the major changes year over year, just from a high level, high level view. With our enrollment shift, we are seeing a slight increase in enrollment at the elementary level and a slight decrease at the secondary level. So what we tried to do during the budget process was match that with our salaries. So we did shift some people around and add some staff at the elementary level, but we reduced that at the secondary level and across the district in our district wide programs like Central Office Technology and Student Services. All in all, for the elementary level we are seeing an increase of 1.6 FTEs. At the secondary level, we are seeing a reduction of just under two and a half. And in our district wide programs, we are recognizing a reduction of just over five and a half. The net result is a reduction of six and a half FTEs, which reflects a 2.2. 1% decrease in our overall staffing levels. 00:25:41,700 S7: So I'm just going to go school by school and highlight a few major categories from from each school. For the elementary school, we are seeing an increase year over year of 190,000. This reflects an increase for Bücker of 2.25 FTEs. The major cost drivers relate to those salaries and the increases related to staff that are already present. Right now we do. We are requesting right now. We did reallocate a 1.0 FTE ESL teacher from the Central Office DAC to the Bücker elementary school. Even though this isn't an increase overall across the district when looking at Bücker alone and is an increase to Bücker of approximately $55,000. In addition, we did reorganize our elementary specialist positions for the Bücker elementary school. We did allocate 0.2 additional FTEs, but again, you'll see a reduction in either Cutler or Winthrop. The net result across all three is is is a zero FTE increase. But when looking at Bücker alone, it is an increase of 0.2 FTEs which represent it represented a $15,000 increase in this category. 00:27:01,369 S7: Continuing with Bücker. And you will see also at Cutler and Winthrop is we've requested two a total of two FTE library teachers to be dispersed across the three elementary schools, which represents a 0.66 FTE for each building. So you'll see that two more times throughout the presentation at the Bucur Elementary School. It it translates into a $44,000 increase under our other Teaching Services desk category. In addition, we also reviewed all of our ESPs. That's a new acronym this year. They're formally known as our Teaching Assistants. With our ESP reorganization, we moved a lot of people around the elementary schools for the Booker Elementary School and ended up increasing their overall FTE by 1.0 and cost approximately $33,000. 00:27:58,470 S7: Some offsets, though, relates to our FY 24 end for FY 24 budget. We did allocate approximately $126,000 in one time expenses to make some upgrades to the gymnasium behind us. We completed those upgrades, and since it's a one time end offset that is being removed out of the Bücker elementary school, which is causing some of the reductions here. 00:28:25,200 S7: Moving on to Cutler, you'll notice it's a smaller year over year increase compared to the other two elementary schools coming in at just over $27,000. The main reason for this is we saw a lot of programs leave Cutler and go to the other two elementary schools, especially in terms of our student services programs. We shifted whole programs, which incorporated two teachers and three PTAs to the Winthrop schools. So when I get there, you'll see there's a substantial increase to Winthrop. And that's because, again, a lot of the movement from Cutler went over there. Um, but for the Cutler Elementary School. And again, what we're seeing across the district is our increase in enrollment at the elementary level. And for the past four budget cycles, it's actually caused an additional classroom teacher needed for every single grade one time a year. So for the past four budget cycles, we've had to add a 1.0 grade school teacher every single year, and that works its way up. FY 25 will represent the final year. Hopefully that we have to do this as now there will be seven classrooms for every single grade across the district. So hopefully that flat lines over the next couple budget cycles and we no longer have to add that additional 1.0 grade school teacher. In addition, as I just mentioned, we did trade in a 1.0 FTE teacher in order to come up with additional ESPs to help provide coverage in our Student Services department. Those positions were eliminated, were traded in, and moved to the Winthrop Elementary School. This resulted in a $91,000 reduction to the Cutler Elementary School. 00:30:18,170 S7: I continue with with Cutler. As I mentioned, we also have our 0.66 library teacher that will be at all three elementary schools. For Cutler, that increased their overall budget by $35,000. Again, you can see here a reduction of additional ESPs in the tune of $86,000, which represented a reduction of 33.0. Um ESP teaching assistants. 00:30:46,099 S7: Moving on to Winthrop. You can see that it is a bigger year over year increase. And again, that's because a lot of the Cutler expenses were moved over to Winthrop. That's why reflected here is a $343,000 $3,000 increase year over year. In addition, the Winthrop Elementary Elementary School in total is going up 2.65 FTEs. One of them is which, one of which is a new TLC special education teacher, which were estimated to cost just under $91,000. In addition, a big item for Winthrop School is the cola on their base, which is coming in at just under $71,000. 00:31:29,299 S7: Again, just pointing out the 0.66 FTE library teacher for $48,000. That kind of wraps up the library teachers across the three elementary schools. Again, in total, it adds up to 2.0 FTEs. In addition, currently for FY, our FY 24 budget, we have basically 1.5 pre-K ESPs in each classroom. We're requesting to add one more additional pre-K. SP pre-K does run a shorter day. That's why here it's only reflected as a 0.8 instead of a 1.0. That's just because the hours are a little or a little less for the pre-K program. In addition, we had a request from Student Services to increase our physical therapist teacher at the Winthrop Elementary School. Right now they are a 0.8 FTE, and we had a request to increase it by 0.2, making it a full 1.0 position. This is costing us approximately $20,500. 00:32:38,170 S7: Moving on to the Miles River Middle School, we again you can see a little higher year over year average coming in at just over 6.3%. A lot of this has to do with the reallocation of our curriculum leaders. Historically, our curriculum leaders were always documented in our budget as a 1.0 teacher. In fact, they really are a 0.6 teacher and a 0.4 curriculum leader. That 0.4 really should fall to our Instructional Leadership DC category. So for the FY 25 budget, I'm making the correction and we've moved out point four of all seven curriculum leaders from the high school teacher's desk category and put them in the instructional Leadership desk category. But we split it high school, middle school because they oversee six through 12. It was it was unfair to the high school to have 100% of those salaries charged off to the high school, so we split them 5050 between the high school and middle school. In addition, we have $106,000 for the Cola increase on the teachers contract as well as the reallocation of our ESL teacher that was previously documented in the Central Office DAC. When we get to the Central Office DAC, you'll see the reduction there. They are also split 50 over 50, so you'll see it again when we get to the high school slides. In addition to kind of help with the increase enrollment at the elementary school and to help pay for the need for additional staff at the elementary level, we are planning on a 1.0 FTE reduction at the middle school to kind of help reallocate some of those FTEs to help with the increased enrollment at the elementary level. 00:34:36,699 S7: Just another topic at the Miles River Middle School I wanted to point out this year is the first time that we are allocating a pool of money to help with the DC field trip. This year, we did run into a few hardships where some families couldn't financially afford the trip to D.C., so we had a request from the principal to set aside some funds to help support those families in need that want to take the amazing trip to our nation's capital. So we've set aside some funds. We don't exactly know what those funds will turn out to next year or how much is needed. Right now, it's kind of just our estimated guess on how many people actually applied for it this year, or are asked about it this year, I should say. Moving on to the high school, we are actually seeing a reduction of $22,000. And this is again mainly attributed to that curriculum leader reclassification. Over $200,000 was removed from the high school and put over to the middle school again for that additional point, for half of the point for curriculum leader Uh, base pay, as well as the stipends and fte, uh, supervision stipends that they receive. 00:35:58,500 S7: Um, that was that one. In addition, we are seeing a good Cola increase of approximately $122,000 for the teachers D.C. category alone. Uh, just pointing out the other half of the ESL teacher that was reallocated from the central office DAC. Uh, just like we saw at the middle school, at the high school, we are anticipating a reduction of a 1.6 FTE classroom teacher. Again, to help shift that staff to the elementary school where it's needed because of the increase in enrollment at the elementary and the decrease enrollment at the secondary level. 00:36:39,800 S7: Uh, in addition, during FY 24, uh, we reallocated some positions and caused a and the the result of it was a reduction of a 1.0 ESP at the high school, which translates into a $31,000 reduction for our other teaching services desk category. On top of that, this year we also reduced a 0.5 FTE guidance counselor position at the high school. This resulted in savings of $50,000 reflected in our FY 25 budget moving forward. 00:37:18,269 S7: For our athletics department, we are seeing a $71,000 increase year over year, or roughly just under 12%. The main cause of this is the need for additional trainers. What happens here? There is multiple practices and multiple games occurring at once, and we only have one trainer to oversee multiple locations. So in terms of safety, there was a request from our athletic director to add an additional trainer next year to help oversee different locations at different times. In addition, we did move out $18,000 of field maintenance that was historically charged under our user fees and included in the cost that we charge each student to participate in the sports. We have moved that out and and are charging it directly to our operating budget, and are not using fees to offset that. In addition, under the last kind of green item here, um, we did have a request again, for safety reasons. That's the sports that do not have an assistant coach, that we fund an additional assistant coach for that sport. And again, it's because of safety. If something happened out on the playing field with a student and the only coach that was out there had to assist the student or go with the student to wherever they have to go to receive services, there'd be nobody there left to look over the kids that are still there. So there is a request to add additional coaches for those teams that currently do not have one. That additional request for coaches, combined with the reduction of the field maintenance or the reallocation of field maintenance, is really what's caused the reduction in our overall user fee match. Even though we are incorporating new assistant coaches for those sports teams that do not have one for the Central Office DAC, we are seeing just over a 1.5% increase year over year. Some main drivers here is a $44,000 increase, $44,000 reallocation of software. That was it's that was historically, um, included in our instructional materials desk category within the technology DAC that was incorrectly coded as instructional software, and it really is administrative software. This includes things like Aspen and Budget Center accounting software. In addition, we are seeing a $37,000 increase in our long term sub and short term subs for FY 23 and currently year to date for FY 24. We've seen a real uptick in absences and an uptick in the usage of our FMLA policy. Therefore, the the need for increased substitutes, um, has resulted in an increased need for substitutes, and we're carrying that forward into FY 25 00:40:22,530 S7: for our transportation for FY 25, our it is our last year of our three year contract. And in it, it includes a $51,000 increase for the general contract price to transport, um, our students to and from school. In addition, we've we've established a second scholarship fund. This is outside of athletics to help pay for kind of any student based activities. This includes field trips or clubs that some families have shown a hardship and not able to afford. We thought it was a good idea to help set aside a pool of money, so we can ensure that all students have an equal and even chance to engage in any of our activities, whether it's during school or after school. Some offset here is a $50,000 reduction to our calf bailout. So historically, the cafeteria has run a deficit. But ever since universal free lunch came around about two years ago, our cafeteria department has either broke even or generated a little bit of a profit with the state. Um, finally putting in universal free lunch Indefinitely. We feel confident that the cafeteria will continue to either generate our profit and break even. So we've reduced the line item for the reserve in case they run a deficit. 00:41:53,900 S7: In terms of our maintenance DAC, we are seeing an increase of $28,000, or roughly 4.8%. The main driver here again is a reallocation of expenses. Historically, all of our internet charges across the district was charged off to the technology DAC. And this is really a utility, just like your phone bill, just like your water bill, and should really fall into the maintenance category. That was just under $15,000 and really does represent most of the increase within this DAC. In terms of our benefits and fixed charges, we are seeing a substantial increase year over year of $1.1 million. But just to point out, $500,000 of that is for one time end offset to our OPEC account. This is our other post employment benefits as part of the overall, uh, I believe it was just under $3 million in end offsets. Um, $500,000 is being dedicated to OPEC. Um, this is a very good amount. This, combined with our FY 23 amount, has really placed us much higher in our overall OPEC liability and really reduced our our net liability year over year. I believe in total, after this payment is complete, will be uh, our balance will be just over $3 million, which really is a great thing. And just over a three year span. We've really we've really done good work in our OPEC trust fund. Uh, in addition, we are recognizing a substantial increase in our health insurance premiums. Health insurance really is outpacing our entire budget. This isn't just a Hamilton Wenham issue. It really is a statewide issue and a countrywide issue. Health insurance costs are rising dramatically, not just because of inflation, but because of usage across the country. And we really are anticipating a a pretty good increase in our premium rates for FY 25, which is why we're reflecting such a substantial increase in our health insurance lines. In addition, we did get hit pretty hard for our Essex retirement liability payment this year. What happened here is Hamilton Wenham, along with a lot of communities on the North Shore. All has to contribute to the Essex County retirement liability. It all depends on how much your payroll is from year to year. Hamilton. Wenham for FY 24 accounted for approximately 2.1% of their overall liability with our new ESP contract. Our overall salaries increased a little bit. This, in turn made our overall portion of the liability 2.3%. So that's an increase of 0.2. And on the surface that might not sound like a lot, but the annual liability is $50 million. So 0.2% of $50 million is just south of 70,000. This is added in to our normal year over year increase on the liability. So if our portion of the overall liability did not change, our year over year increase would be around $60,000. With this increase, it adds another $70,000, which is where we're coming up with our 133. That is about a 12% increase on that line item alone. And really did, um, really did hurt us this year, this year with the Essex retirement contribution, in terms of our capital acquisitions and improvements, uh, we are seeing a reduction year over year of 1.2 million. But everything you see on this slide directly relates to end offsets. So for FY 24, we had three offsets that we placed in a $1.7 million capital stabilization fund transfer, $275,000 for smart boards, and $300,000 for theater lighting. Again, because that's an E and offset. It's a one time expense that gets removed after the budget cycle is over. And then we review if there are any new FY 25 end offsets. Just like I had mentioned with OPEC, we are also contributing that same amount to the Capital Stabilization Fund of just under 500,000. In addition, we are recommending the final phase of our four year smart board replacement project at the end of FY 25. This will mean that every single smart board in every single classroom across the district has been replaced. Something that I believe the teachers are very happy about. In addition, we are requesting $225,000 to replace aging equipment to possibly make a few upgrades again to the Buerkle Elementary School. And we're also looking into purchasing a passenger van to help with athletic busing issues and help reduce the overall user fee costs that we're seeing there because of rising transportation rate increases. 00:47:19,699 S7: For our schedule, for our special education. Um, DAC, we are seeing a year over year decrease of $355,000. This again goes hand in hand with that reallocation of staff from the secondary and district wide down to the elementary school. Because of that change in enrollment. So reflected here is a reduction of a 0.8 student services administrative assistant. That's reflected a $43,000 savings, as well as a reduction of a 0.7 FTE physical therapist and a reduction of $45,000 for some of our home services and tutoring aides that, excuse me, that are extended through after school programs and after school tutoring that is also being reduced. In addition, we are reducing a 1.0 FTE psychologist, which we're anticipating will save us just under $5,000. Student services really worked hard this year to kind of rearrange our transportation. This is for out of district students. We try to team up with community members around us who have students going to the same out of district school as we do, so we have a cost share situation going on. Just as an example, we could have a student in, you know, Ipswich or Raleigh that attends maybe landmark, which is south of us. So the driver would start in Ipswich or Raleigh, pick up their students, stop into Hamilton, pick up bars and then go to landmark. So we kind of split the cost with that other district. So they really tried to work hard to reduce our overall out of district transportation costs, and it really added up in savings of approximately 136,000. This also includes just changes in our out of district placement in general. Um, so with the less out of district students, they were obviously would be less students to transport and lower transportation costs. Uh, the last item for the student Services department is a reduction of approximately $42,000 in tuitions. But I would like to point out that is not reflective of what is actually going on. Our tuitions actually increased about $100,000 year over year. However, for FY 25, we're starting the phased in reduction of our prepaid tuitions. So we don't love prepaid tuitions. We did them during Covid because it was a situation we felt like we had to do. Um, so we're planning on phasing that out and slowly reducing that amount over the next few budget cycles. This will be the first part of that phasing, and overall, we're planning on using $156,000 in prepaid to in prepaid tuitions to lower our FY 25 tuitions, the net result being a reduction of $52,000. But again, they really went up 100,000. 00:50:31,500 S7: For our last DAC is our technology, where we're seeing a overall reduction of just about $71,000. This really has to do with the reallocation of expenses to other areas. Again, that internet that is now going off to the maintenance DAC and $62,000 in hardware and software that went to the Central Office DAC. In addition, uh, it has completed the installation of all the Wi-Fi systems across the district. Uh, while we were doing that, we did have contracted servicers come in and help us with all the wiring and hanging them all. Since that is complete, we've reduced it our we've reduced our contracted services in the IT department, ultimately saving us about $18,000. 00:51:26,329 S7: I did mention the allocation of the 44,000 and the previous slide. In addition, um, I think I hit both of those, so I'll move on. Uh, overall, just to bring it all back, our operating budget, uh, summary here by DAC. Uh, again, we have an overall reduction of just under six and a half FTEs and an increase of just under $500,000, or 1.3% overall. Uh, right here I do have a summary of all our staffing changes across the district. Anyone can kind of go into detail and see where we are changing again. At the elementary level, we are seeing an uptick where at the secondary and the district wide, we are seeing a reduction. Again, an overall reduction of just about 2% of our overall staffing. Uh, here we have again a summary of all our budget changes that are greater or less than $10,000. You can see the biggest ticket items are our colas and our insurance rate increases and our step increases. Just like I said at the beginning, 72% of our budget relates to staffing. So the biggest increases we're going to see also relate to staffing and our collective bargaining agreements. That wraps up the public hearing. I can take any questions from the audience. Thank you. 00:52:52,199 S4: Guys. 00:52:53,000 S5: Thank you Vinnie. 00:52:54,500 S4: Yes. 00:52:55,869 S7: Longer than I wanted it. 00:52:57,199 S5: Um, yeah. We are in the public hearing session, so if there's anyone in the public who has a question, please approach Mike. All right. Seeing none. Okay. Um. 00:53:13,670 S7: Thank you for anyone I know. 00:53:15,329 S5: Know. Um, I think we'll take questions during the, um. When we get to the agenda item, we'll take questions from the committee if there are any. Um. All right. Thank you so much for that presentation. 00:53:29,329 S5: Um, okay. Do we have our zoom link up? Okay. Um, all right, so at this point, we will, um, close the public hearing portion of our meeting. Um, and we will, um, call to order the regular meeting of the Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee. And we'll, um, remind you all this meeting is being recorded and live streamed. And we'll begin by inviting you to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. 00:54:02,699 S5: I pledge allegiance. 00:54:03,769 S6: To the flag. 00:54:04,769 S5: Of the United. 00:54:05,300 S6: States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands. One nation. 00:54:09,969 S5: Under God. 00:54:11,070 S6: Indivisible. 00:54:12,000 S5: With. 00:54:12,170 S6: The liberty and justice for all. 00:54:22,630 S5: Um, okay. Next up are opportunity for citizens comments. Uh, Mr. Tracy, do we have anyone in the zoom? 00:54:31,500 S4: We do not. 00:54:32,000 S5: We do not. So we have no citizens online who, um, are here to make a comment. And, uh, does not appear to me that we have anyone in the room who wants to make a comment. Okay. Um. Seeing none, I will close citizens comments. Uh, at 724. Um, next up, I think. Is it Jen, would you read a portion of our school committee protocols, please? 00:55:02,070 S8: As elected members of the Hamilton Windham Regional School Committee, we, including the superintendent, accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business. If an individual school committee member receives an email relevant to overall district policy or operations, they will forward it to the full school committee and the superintendent. 00:55:33,769 S5: Thank you. Um, Amy, would you please read a portion of our mission statement? 00:55:40,469 S6: Sure. 00:55:41,599 S9: The Hamilton Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that supports and guides the superintendent to execute and achieve the approved 2324 district goals. 00:55:54,769 S5: Thank you. It was your opportunity to gesture. 00:55:58,329 S6: Oh. 00:56:01,530 S5: Thank you. Um. Next up, we have our student representative Whitney Fitzsimmons is here to give us our report. 00:56:10,199 S4: It's going to get on the screen. 00:56:25,469 S10: Thank you for having me. I'm Whitney Fitzgibbons, I'm the junior class president at the high school. And I'm here today to talk about some of the events currently going on within the district. First, at the high school, it's a pretty busy time of the year. Um, the Hearts and Flowers concert is on February 13th. The one act play performance is on March 1st. The Deca state conference will be from March 7th to March 9th in Boston. Spring sports start on March 18th. The robotics team just had a big competition in Framingham on February 4th, and the robots finished 19th and 24th out of 48. Deca is currently selling candy grams for Valentine's Day and the class of 2025 is selling flowers also for Valentine's Day. The class of 2024 is doing a district wide clothing drive or spring cleaning drive from now until March 15th, and the class of 2025 will be having a fundraiser on Saint Patrick's Day, where we will be selling Saint Patrick's Day themed festive pots of gold for younger families in the community for clubs and sports. Winter sports are starting to wrap up. Swimming and indoor track have been very strong this season. Girls and boys basketball are heading into the playoffs. The cheer team just had a competition at the LaSalle Academy Invitational, where they placed third in the boys and girls ski teams have also been doing very well. The girls are ten and one and the boys are three and seven. The clubs at the high school are going very strong, especially Deca along with science club, robotics, Art club and way more. At the middle school, there's a winter badminton, volleyball and pickleball, intramural student council, chorale, art club, and jazz band. Then moving on to the elementary schools, it's pretty quiet. Winthrop school just celebrated the 100th day of school with a trumpet drama dress day, along with an award food pantry donation. They have Rubik's Cube Club and Lego Builders Club throughout February and March, and a movie night on March 1st at Kettler School. They just had their annual book fair from January 23rd to 25th, along with a Bash the Trash Assembly on February 2nd, and finally at Becker School. There's currently in a cord food pantry drive going on from now until the 16th. There are a bunch of fifth grade after school activities all throughout February and March, and they have a Valentine's Day concert on February 14th. Thank you. And I'm happy to answer any questions that you all might have. 00:59:07,599 S5: Thank you. Questions. 00:59:12,199 S5: I had a couple of questions. I'm not sure that you'll know, but I'm just intrigued about what bash the trash means at Cutler. 00:59:20,000 S10: Um, I'm not really sure. I believe it's just about, like, learning how to recycle, throwaway, um, compost, etc.. 00:59:27,170 S5: Makes sense. Thank you. Um, I also just I wanted to just highlight I, I, I noticed that there's a lot, you know, certainly a cord a lot of different schools are doing things with the cord. And there are a lot of other charitable, um, events going on. Makes me feel just good as a citizen to see that the students are focused on giving back to the community. It's really thank you for highlighting those things. 00:59:51,670 S6: Appreciate it. 00:59:52,969 S5: Um, anybody else have anything else? All right. Thank you. Whitney. 00:59:58,670 S6: Thank you. 00:59:59,300 S5: All right. As always, you are welcome to stay. But we also understand that you probably have other responsibilities this evening. Thank you. 01:00:07,969 S6: Thank you. 01:00:12,429 S9: Okay. 01:00:13,869 S5: Um, next on our agenda is the consent agenda. Um, I will say I have some things to hold. Does anyone have anything that they need to hold from the consent agenda? 01:00:27,230 S4: I'm a bit. 01:00:27,670 S11: Confused in the handouts that go with it. There are these invoices for National Grid, and I am so. 01:00:36,030 S5: So it sounds like you want to hold the prior energy bills. Okay, so that's what we'll just hold that. 01:00:40,630 S11: The on tree aging quick zoom that one. 01:00:43,269 S5: Well we'll hold the whole thing. The prior will hold the whole prior energy bills. Um, uh, is there something anything else you wanted to hold on there? 01:00:50,769 S11: Yeah. Well, that the national grid is the energy. I don't think the ion tree is energy. 01:00:56,969 S5: Um, so. But they're all under, are you? I guess I'm just looking at the content. Are you trying to hold the higher energy bills, or are you trying to hold the warrants? 01:01:05,329 S11: Um, I'm I'm confused about whether maybe Vinnie can clarify this. These these, um, many. Seemingly. 01:01:14,599 S6: I'm sorry. 01:01:17,099 S11: I'm sorry that these many seemingly unpaid ion tree service bills. 01:01:21,599 S5: So just as I wish. 01:01:23,730 S12: Which agenda? Which exhibit are we holding? 01:01:26,670 S11: I'm trying to work out which part of the agenda they're on. 01:01:28,929 S5: Okay, so it sounds like maybe we need to hold because the two financial items there are the warrants and the prior energy bills. Is that what you're. 01:01:37,500 S11: And the on tree service bills. 01:01:40,869 S12: So hold is that but is that the that's under warrants. 01:01:43,599 S5: That's all under. 01:01:44,170 S4: The. 01:01:44,400 S11: It is under the warrants okay fine. Then I want to hold the warrants. 01:01:47,599 S9: It's actually in the prior energy bills exhibit. 01:01:50,800 S6: Oh is that what you're confused about. 01:01:53,500 S4: That's that's that was confused. 01:01:55,099 S6: Is that where it is. 01:01:55,900 S4: Yeah. 01:01:56,469 S12: Okay. So we'll hold the prior. 01:01:57,630 S5: Prior energy bills. Okay. Does anyone else have any other items they want to hold? Okay. I do. Um, I want to hold the minutes from February 1st. Um, and then the field trip extension. So. Sorry. The consent agenda didn't really help us that much tonight. Sorry. Um, Julie, are you willing to do the honors? 01:02:18,769 S12: I move that we accept the consent agenda. With the exception of the energy bills, the minutes from February 1st and the field trip extension. 01:02:31,829 S9: Okay. Second. 01:02:32,829 S5: Second by Amy. All those in favor? And it is unanimous of the six members present. 01:02:42,630 S5: Okay, uh, David, you held the prior energy bills. Um, as, to be honest, I would have held them as well. Um, so, um, go ahead and ask your question. 01:02:51,829 S11: Sure. Um, and I suppose this question goes to Vinnie. What possible explanation is there for such, um, high, high aging of these bills? They look like we one is as old as 239 days. Was two lots. But, um, there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight that are 102 days to 239 days. That's really unusual. Unless you're really strapped for cash. Is there a particular reason why it's taken so long to pay them, or based on their performance, or lack of cash or what? Whatever it is. Sorry. Just it's a question. 01:03:34,570 S4: I'll answer that one because I asked the same question. Uh, last week, Tom came to us with these bills. Um, so I asked him to actually add the memo explaining what was going on. There was there were some abnormal abnormalities with the energy bills, thus the improper title, because originally it was just energy bills. And then the next day he brought us a couple more like the paving bill that came from, uh, some sidewalk work that we did in the portable toilet rentals. So, uh, not acceptable, not something that we, you know, do as a on a regular basis. I think you might remember when we go back to I think it was September is generally when that that first meeting in September is generally clear anything that we missed during the prior year. So, uh, Tom's done his best here to outline exactly why, but it's still not anything that's acceptable and something we're having a conversation with at the district level as well. So it's just we still owe this money. That's part of the approval process, but not an acceptable practice. It's really, really late to be paying a lot of these bills. 01:04:45,300 S11: Tough on local vendors. Yep, yep. 01:04:47,969 S4: Yeah. No one should be waiting 200 days to get paid. Know. You know, especially some of these smaller companies are local companies. So yeah, this is definitely an inappropriate. And in in the conversations we're having we don't expect it to happen again. 01:05:03,469 S11: Terrific. Thank you. 01:05:07,070 S5: Does anyone else have any questions? 01:05:11,969 S5: Okay. Um, Julia, can we have a memo on that? I mean, yeah, motion on that. 01:05:17,500 S12: Do we have a motion after each? 01:05:19,599 S5: No. I want to vote on the entire exhibit. As there's an exhibit. 01:05:23,699 S12: You want to vote to pass the exhibit? 01:05:27,530 S5: Well, I think the vote. It's. 01:05:30,400 S12: Yeah, okay, I move. Yeah, I move that we approve. Um, item D on the consent agenda. 01:05:39,570 S9: Second. 01:05:40,199 S5: Second by Amy Berger. Um, is there any further discussion? Um, I guess I just will add my voice that if David hadn't said something, I would have, I was concerning. I did appreciate the memo. I think that was helpful. Um, I think it's helpful to acknowledge, um, when we don't meet sort of our expectations. Um, so I appreciate that. Um. All right. Are there any other questions? Comments? Discussion. All right. Looks like we're ready to vote. Um, all those in favor? And that is unanimous. Of the six members present and the motion passes. Um. All right, I held the minutes on February for the February 1st. Um, I had actually a question for, um, a committee member. Um, which is you, Jen? Um, the minutes I went back and watched the recording, the minutes at the very beginning state that it says, um, Dana Lara. Today the school committee is being live streamed, blah blah blah. She stated that member Jen Carr was attempting to participate remotely, but at this time, the connection is not working. I went back and and watched what I said to make, and it doesn't really say that. It says I don't see Jen yet or something like that. I just wanted to clarify whether I didn't think that was really what happened, that it wasn't that you couldn't connect or were unable to attend. 01:07:08,800 S8: It wasn't that I couldn't. 01:07:09,929 S5: I just wanted to make sure because I my motion, I guess I move, um, that that be, um, corrected or. I don't exactly know what I'm moving. Um, I moved to amend the minutes to state that member Jen Carr was anticipated to participate remotely, but had not yet arrived or something like that. 01:07:33,570 S12: That's fine. Just a second. 01:07:35,929 S5: Second by Julia Campbell. Is there a discussion? All right. All those in favor? And that is unanimous. Of the six members present and the motion passes. Um, I also held, um, the field chip, uh, extension. Um, I was hoping, Eric, you might just be able to provide a little more information about what happened here. And. 01:08:00,900 S4: Sure. Um, if you've flown at all in the past six months, you probably have run into an airline issue. We have a group that, uh, at the high school is planning to go to Spain during April vacation. Um, unfortunately, the, uh. 01:08:16,430 S4: Flights cannot be that cannot come out of Boston, which originally they anticipated they'd be able to fly out of Boston. Uh, the company has, uh, basically stepped up and covered the expense to bus our kids to New York to get a plane there to go on the trip. The dilemma is, they were supposed to be in school that Thursday. It was Thursday, but they need to leave earlier in the day because the four hour bus ride to get to New York to get on the plane. So I just wanted the committee to be aware that that is happening. It will happen on the other end, too. Company has world strides, has taken the expense of the buses and all the food, the feed kids when they get there. And so it's not coming out of anybody's pocket. It's just an irregularity with flights. They originally had flights scheduled out of Boston. Those flights were not available when they got to this point in the year, and this is the result. So no change in the trip, trips all still on and going as forward. They just need to leave, uh, during the school day instead of after the school day. 01:09:19,699 S6: Um. 01:09:20,729 S5: Go ahead. 01:09:21,270 S9: I just want to. Are the buses like charter buses or Peter Pan buses? 01:09:26,300 S6: Are they. 01:09:26,899 S4: They, um, coach buses? Okay. Yeah, they paid for coach. 01:09:29,729 S6: Not school buses. 01:09:30,500 S4: Not school buses. 01:09:31,399 S11: No, no, no. 01:09:32,529 S4: They are coach buses. 01:09:35,069 S5: Um, and I just want to clarify that even though this is occurring on both ends, April 20th is not a school day, so they're not correct. It's one day that they are missing that we didn't anticipate. 01:09:46,569 S4: We expected they would be in school Thursday the 11th. They're just going to have to leave that morning to get to New York to get the flight. 01:09:52,369 S6: So that's a lot a lot of traveling. It is. 01:09:56,600 S11: It's a pity because you assume you can go from Logan straight to Kennedy, which is where the Spanish flight would come out of which is this is David. Sorry. Yeah. No, I, I, I'm surprised that they wouldn't do a short hop by plane from Logan to Kennedy and the Kennedys. Where it go? That's that is a long bus ride. 01:10:17,670 S4: Go to the change minute. Uh, change and the size of the group going. We presented a difficulty, so I think it was anticipated a while earlier, you know, months earlier. They probably would have been able to pull that off. I think it's just because of the size of the group going and, um, the last kind of the last minute, by the way. 01:10:36,899 S6: You know. 01:10:37,300 S5: Also having, having had this exact thing happen to me. If you have to buy those tickets separately and they're not linked to your other ticket, if that flight is delayed and you miss your flight to Spain, you're not compensated for it. I learned that one the hard way. Yeah. Um, so. 01:10:53,300 S12: Okay, I move that we accept item C on the consent agenda. 01:10:57,729 S8: Second. 01:10:58,869 S5: Second by Jen Carr. Is there any further discussion? All those in favor. And that is unanimous of the six members present. Thank you very much. 01:11:09,600 S6: All right. Thank you. Thanks, Eric. Um, can. 01:11:12,100 S8: I make a request? 01:11:13,329 S6: Yep. 01:11:13,699 S8: I have to go to a, um, family activity, and I really would like to review the student start time survey. Um, can we table that till the next meeting? 01:11:26,369 S5: Um. 01:11:29,569 S8: Or are we going to vote on it? Is this something I. 01:11:31,970 S6: Think we're. 01:11:32,399 S8: Providing? 01:11:33,300 S5: I think we're providing feedback. So. Right. 01:11:35,869 S4: If you have three minutes, I can tell you what I was going to ask. Okay. That's all. 01:11:40,199 S6: I want to. 01:11:40,470 S5: Do. Without objection, can we move. 01:11:41,829 S6: Forward to the move? Go ahead. Ben. 01:11:43,569 S4: Everybody okay with. 01:11:44,170 S6: That? Okay. Yes. 01:11:44,869 S4: So I put this on here at the request of Jen. Last meeting, we were going forward. This, uh, this is kind of the first iteration of survey. I wanted to to put it in front of everybody on the committee in case you wanted to add anything or reword something, or you thought something should be changed or adjusted, just let me know and then we'll plan to send it out after vacation. Okay? That's the only reason it's on the. There's no vote. 01:12:10,899 S12: When would we need to get you feedback? 01:12:13,000 S4: Uh, probably before vacation. Okay. That would be good bye by the 15th. 01:12:17,970 S6: Okay, I knew that. 01:12:18,899 S4: That would be great. 01:12:20,029 S11: Okay, great. Thank you. 01:12:21,300 S5: Um. All right. So there we go. All right. Okay. And I have feedback. I'll give it to an email form. 01:12:28,500 S6: And that is here. Appreciate it. 01:12:30,170 S5: Okay. Um. All right, given that, um, right now, if we back up, uh, the next item of business, if I'm looking correctly, is item nine a adopt the FY 2025 budget, which we have a very specific motion. 01:12:53,670 S6: Yeah, I don't have it. You have it. 01:12:57,699 S5: You can put it up on the screen for you. Julia. 01:13:00,800 S6: No. 01:13:01,130 S12: Do you think I can see that? 01:13:02,069 S6: Yeah. I can't believe it. 01:13:04,899 S12: I can try. Oh, here I can. It's all. It's all caps. Okay. I'm going to say this now. Okay. We'll see. Okay. I can probably see that. We'll see. I move that the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee approved the final FY 25 general fund expenditures. Budget of $43,790,174. 01:13:30,600 S12: This includes general fund operating expenses after offsets in the amount of $41,723,480 01:13:41,970 S12: and general fund debt service expenses in the amount of $2,066,694. 01:13:53,970 S12: Furthermore, the gross operating expenses of the district before offsets have been allocated by the DC defined chart of Accounts according to the summary by DC category chart included in this budget presentation as detailed in the exhibit. 01:14:10,300 S6: Excellent. 01:14:11,300 S8: Can. Can I make one change before I. 01:14:14,300 S5: Second, you have a friendly amendment. 01:14:16,630 S8: Uh, yes, a friendly amendment. Uh, we said 2025 instead of 20. 01:14:22,600 S7: I immediately changed it before I put it up. 01:14:24,970 S6: That's why I ran it. I think I read 25. 01:14:27,770 S12: I read 25 right there. 01:14:29,500 S7: You said the right. That's why I ran up here. 01:14:31,369 S6: Put it on. I was. 01:14:32,000 S8: Reading off. 01:14:32,529 S6: Of this. 01:14:32,899 S4: I did the same thing. 01:14:33,970 S5: Okay, so I I'm understanding that you are choosing not to offer a friendly amendment, and I'm still. And I'm still waiting for a second. 01:14:41,930 S9: Second. 01:14:42,500 S5: Okay. Second. By Amy Cooper. Okay. I think we got that. Okay. Um, okay. 01:14:47,729 S12: Got it. 01:14:48,100 S5: Um, are there any questions before we move to debate and discussion? Are there any questions? Clarifying questions. Does anybody want to repeat everything that he said earlier? 01:15:02,270 S12: Repeat all the. 01:15:03,069 S6: Slides. Um. 01:15:05,899 S5: Is there any discussion? 01:15:11,000 S11: No, it's been done. 01:15:13,300 S5: Okay. Looks like we're ready to vote. Okay. Uh, this motion requires. 01:15:20,300 S7: Majority of the. 01:15:21,300 S5: A just a majority. 01:15:22,970 S4: Of. 01:15:23,130 S7: The whole. 01:15:24,329 S5: Of the whole. Correct. Right. That was my point. Right. Exactly. It requires a majority of the whole, um, not just a majority of those present. Um. All right. All those in favor? And that is unanimous. Of the six members present and the motion passes. 01:15:39,829 S7: Thank you guys. Congratulations. 01:15:41,270 S6: Woo hoo! 01:15:42,399 S5: Thank you. 01:15:44,600 S8: Have to sign anything. 01:15:45,630 S6: This time, Vinnie. I always forget how you guys. 01:15:49,270 S5: Um. Wow. 01:15:51,069 S6: Yeah. You don't need that now. 01:15:52,229 S5: I was going to say that was a good time. 01:15:53,569 S6: For. 01:15:53,670 S7: You, but it's over. You can. It can. 01:15:55,069 S4: Fall. 01:15:57,399 S5: We just did it. 01:15:58,630 S6: Oh. Thanks, Dave. Yeah, right. 01:16:02,100 S12: Yeah, I read that motion with all the numbers on it, so you can thank me for that. 01:16:07,770 S5: Were you waiting outside the door? 01:16:09,430 S6: It was like. 01:16:10,300 S12: Oh, yeah. So you didn't have to read the 43 million. 01:16:13,000 S5: Um, thank you very much. Um, for all of the hard work that everyone put into that budget. But especially thank you, Vinnie, for. 01:16:21,270 S6: All of that. Yes, yes. 01:16:22,800 S5: Um. 01:16:24,000 S6: See you later. 01:16:24,600 S5: All right. Thank you. Jen. 01:16:27,100 S6: That's okay. 01:16:27,800 S12: Um, no. 01:16:28,600 S6: Okay. First. 01:16:29,800 S5: Uh, so are we. Do we feel like I know that, Jen, I know we have a departing a person that's leaving, but, um, we briefly touched on the school start time survey. You don't. We don't want to have a discussion at all. 01:16:43,369 S6: We're just. 01:16:43,800 S5: No, just. Okay, so. 01:16:44,869 S4: Just for. 01:16:45,270 S6: Feedback. 01:16:45,600 S5: So. Yeah. So please provide written feedback in the form of an email to Eric on the school start time survey. Review. That's all we need. 01:16:54,100 S6: Yes. 01:16:54,529 S7: Thank you. Thanks, John. 01:16:55,600 S5: Okay. Thank you. Um, all right. Next up, school and district report cards. 01:17:04,899 S4: So this this week, the school and district report cards came out. DC had cleared them for release. Uh, were required to to put them out by the 15th of February to our families and our community. Um, the district report card went out yesterday, uh, so that actually, they all they all went out in the same email, but the district report card was kind of the lead. And then each of the principals will send by the end of this week. So by tomorrow, many of them are already out, um, their own building level report card with their own letter. And then certainly there's opportunity for, uh, parents to chime in if they need to, especially if, if, um, it's a title one school, just so everybody knows, the one school in the district that is a title one school that receives entitlement funding from the state is the Bücker school. Um, so it's kind of a special condition where parents and caregivers can really ask for some pretty in-depth information, including whether your child's teacher is licensed in the grade level and subject that they teach, whether your child's teacher is teaching under emergency license or a waiver. Uh, you can ask about the college degree and major of your child's teacher and whether or not your child is provided services by a paraprofessionals and if so, their qualifications. Just so people are aware of paraprofessionals in our district called ESPs. Now, this is just a kind of a form letter from the state. But the report cards are out. We encourage everybody to take a look at the report cards, both the district and, uh, each building and, and, um, you know, if they if they need more clarification, we're asking people to reach out to their building principals to get building level clarification. And certainly I am always available to review the report cards. Um, if I can get this to pop up here and it really just breaks down a number of things, like, you know, who are our students? Teachers are how many kids are in the district, but then gets into, uh, deeper things like attendance. What does attendance and discipline look like in our distance? We average a 95%, uh, attendance rate, which is excellent. Um, then when you start to look at days absent, our days absence is actually improving. We're down to 8.8 from 10.1 on average across the district. Student discipline is really low. It doesn't even show on the chart. It's so low for our district. And then it goes into success of high school outcomes. How prepared basically our kids for success after high school. And then it looks at things like graduation rates for kids who graduate in four years or five years. And in our district they they have it's interesting thing they give 20 and 21 the data for four year and five year, and then 22, they don't give the the five year average because the school, the year just ended. For those kids it would have been 2023. So they the DC's always a year or two behind. So that's why it doesn't show. That was the first question I got when this was sent out. But generally 97% of our kids graduate in a, uh, for a 4 or 5 year in 2021. That was down a little bit in 22 to 95%. And, um, it'll be interesting to see what the percentage is on the five year and 2022 dropout rate is up. And this is a this is a product of a small school district. This represents a couple of kids. This does not represent a gigantic pool of kids. Um, so when you go from usually having 1 or 1.5 kids drop out, it depends on where they are in a year. Um, you know, we're up to 1.8, which is actually one student dropped out and never returned. Uh, other kids that left the majority of those kids come back generally. Uh, some kids leave the district and we can't track them because the state can only track within the state. But this, to me is this 22 number is an anomaly, and we know it'll be down. Uh, next for next reporting. And then it looks at things like graduation rates and enrollments and what they call college grown college going rates. Eights. Um, so just some interesting data. Uh, spending per student and that that looks at it from a perspective of state and federal funds. It breaks out. You can see how much it's a huge amount of money we get from federal funds for our for our schools. But again, the majority of the dollar spent come from, from, uh, state and local funds. Mostly local funds. We get as you know, we get about $6 million in state funding between chapter 70 and transportation and circuit breaker. Um, and then accountability data, which is where everybody's interested. We are making substantial progress towards targets in our district. So no intervention or assistance. But we continue to grow and learn and, uh, work within the district on on the variables within the district, like, um, the work that we're doing next week with, with the principals, they're all reporting that formative evaluation data. And for them, it's looking at the data and showing how the data is shifting in their buildings from the beginning of the year till now. So, you know, we continuously look at that and, and, you know, work with that, with our principles, but also with our data teams all the way down to the, to the grade level. So today I was in a data meeting for kindergarten over at the Cutler Cutler. And it was really, really cool to see, um, you know, what they're looking at with kids and how they're bringing kids along. And kids are making really good progress, especially in kindergarten as they go through the system. So report cards are a little bit limited in scope, but, um, it's just kind of a big chunk of information for people to see. And I always tell people to go to the our website for more information and reach out to the principals of your child's school for questions or issues. And if you can't get answers there, please, please reach out to me or at my office and we will find the information that people are looking for. 01:23:11,770 S5: Okay. Um, can you talk right into the mic? 01:23:15,270 S13: I can do that. Thank you. Uh, what? Um, over the past, say, three years, are areas that you've seen improvements in the report card metrics, and what are areas that you look at and say there's still room for improvement moving forward? 01:23:33,970 S11: Yeah, we. 01:23:35,329 S4: So the report, interestingly enough, the report cards don't align with the work that we're doing in our at the school level because the school level is not 100% focused on MCAS. MCAS is that snapshot in time. And the work we're doing at the school level is across the entire year. So we go back to our literacy data. We're seeing really good grade gains now that we've established a literacy curriculum. Um, and we're focusing on math this year. So we're starting to see that kind of turn now as well. Um, we're looking at subgroups or our subgroups have really shifted to two subgroups for us looking at special ed. We're seeing improvements. Uh, but we need continued Improvements there. Low income students seeing some improvements but need to really focus there. And that's part of a second. So a second piece of this is our SLA Student Opportunity Act plan, which you will see in the second meeting in March that gets submitted to the state. And that brings all this to kind of like to the subgroup level. This is kind of the wider range. And that subgroup level work that we're doing is part of our intervention system, our mtss, and our measurement and accountability that we're doing across all the way from grades one through grades ten. Now using Audibles and Star Renaissance and some of the other, um, assessments along along a child's journey through the, through the district. So we're seeing literacy improvements that are really big, uh, from go back three years. When I started this thing, when I highlighted the issue with literacy, was that third grade Cutler, third grade Booker and third grade in Winthrop were probably not the same experience that has shifted dramatically. Our teachers have done unbelievable work. Our our support personnel has done unbelievable work to take on that new curriculum and to work to build the system up. And you know, again, that's that's a 5 to 7 year process. We're in year two really when you when you think about where we kicked in the literacy curriculum last year, we'll do the same thing with math. We're we're we're doing a multiple curriculum review process for math to determine at the elementary and middle and high school, with best math programs for our kids to use. So we're in that process now with the state, and that will again help us to drive improvements along the way. We're mostly focused on subgroups. We really that's that's the push from the state as well, because they link the subgroups and the push on subgroups to accountability moneys, which is built into the. So funding. Um, right now, we haven't we haven't seen the final budget, but the governor's budget came out with a paltry $30 per student in in. Kind of monies to put towards improvements, which for us is about 48 grand. Last year we got $60 per student, which was a, you know, a little a little. Bit more money. But still, you know, these these curricula cost 150 to $200,000 apiece to just to just up get, get up and running. So it's, uh, we're moving forward. We're making progress. We put monies aside for master to, to use, uh, for specifically for these curriculum purchases. So we have those things covered, but we're just constantly reporting out and and later on in the school year, you'll see the literacy presentation and see some of the gains that we've made over the years. But just looking at the kindergarten grade, uh, today, when you start to look at how many, how many five year olds can, you know, identify and recognize all the letters, all 26 letters. And this time of the year, two years ago, it wasn't 24 or 25 out of the 26 letters. It was 18, 17, 16. So I think, you know, those those are pieces of the puzzle. Along the way, there's just lots of, um, data discussion going on to drive that shift and that change. So I think you'll I think you'll see a shift in, you know, um, the Cutler school last year, their accountability scores were low. Um, which is reflected in this report card. But I think you'll see that shift because there's been a pretty, pretty heavy focus on the intervention specific for those those kids that are in need and mostly related to subgroups, but also kids who may not be in in particular subgroups. 01:27:46,170 S13: Thank you. 01:27:46,829 S6: Yeah. 01:27:48,430 S5: Other questions. 01:27:50,630 S12: I have a quick question. So this data is mostly based on MCAT scores and attendance and kids going to college. It doesn't take into account all of the I mean it can't because they do this for every school in the state. So it's just that sort of bird's eye view. It's not. 01:28:07,529 S5: Uh, there is a you can there are a lot of tabs for subgroup information. 01:28:11,029 S6: Yeah. 01:28:11,229 S5: Okay. But but on those measures. But you can put out by various subgroups. 01:28:16,170 S4: The report card. The report card like I'll use Bücker school. So, um, let's use um perform on state tests. There are links at the bottom of each section. 01:28:26,100 S6: Okay. 01:28:26,630 S4: That you can click on to get more in-depth data. So you can click on that and it takes you to the state, uh, district profile. So then you can really get into, uh, this is a rabbit hole. If you're going to do this, do it on a Saturday morning or something or a Sunday morning, um, because it gives you all of our information by, you know, comparison for MCAS, item by item results. So you can start to look at what kids are, where kids are doing well and standards, and where kids need, need some some help and some support participation rates, growth reports, you know, so it goes from this to that. So the report card is it's like I always tell people it's really not a lot of information. It's the broad overview. But in the report card you have those opportunities to click on more advanced data and more, uh, detailed data. And it's it's pretty fascinating. You can really spend far too much time examining data and really looking at you can go through everything. You can look at student data, you can look at teacher teacher data in the district by school, by the district. Um, you can you can do trends, which I just popped up there. And when you click the trends, they give us schools that we compare to, and then we start comparing our data to theirs. Um, so it's fascinating data enrollment shifts. You can add other schools into this and do comparisons. So lots of fun if you're a data person. Great, Benny. 01:29:51,800 S6: Yeah. Thank you. 01:29:54,600 S5: All right. Other questions. 01:29:56,369 S11: Just one quick question. The, uh, this is I got an isolated report that there was a sort of blip in student absences and teacher absences just this last week. I was wondering whether you were seeing that in the overall numbers. 01:30:09,699 S4: Across the district. 01:30:11,300 S11: Well, list across to the high school and the middle school. I don't know about the rest. 01:30:15,369 S4: Yeah. I mean, it shifts around in the winter. It shifts around from building to building. I mean, you see flu, RSV, Covid, all of those basically come through the schools during December of January. You know, so it depends. One school has 100% attendance. Like the other day I was at Winthrop and it was 100% attendance for teaching staff, which, you know, which when you go to another school, it's probably 94%, you know, you got 4 or 5 people out. So yeah. Chips. Chips around. 01:30:45,670 S11: Yeah. No, I was just curious because the national figures are going up like crazy. 01:30:49,930 S4: Yeah. Are they not reflective of the national? We're not we're not seeing that level of absenteeism. But it's pretty. It's pretty similar to what we've seen in the past December and January numbers do fluctuate pretty quickly. And then they they taper out, usually right in March where they have in the past taper March, April as we get into the spring. 01:31:11,170 S11: Fair enough. Thank you. 01:31:13,430 S12: Oh, and I would say, are you talking about chronic absenteeism, David? 01:31:17,399 S11: No. Yeah. Because it cycles, as Eric says, based on the season. Um, and I was just curious as to whether it's exceptional. The wastewater, the the where there is wastewater measurement, it would appear that there's a lot more than is being actually diagnosed. 01:31:35,800 S12: Okay. I thought you were talking about chronic absenteeism. I just heard a report on NPR about it. And I would say our numbers for, like, chronic absenteeism are way below national. But sorry, that wasn't what you were talking about. That's that's like 15, 12, 15 days absence, 18, 18 days. Okay, okay. So that wasn't what you were talking about, but I thought that might. 01:31:55,770 S6: Be. 01:31:56,199 S12: Because I had I'd heard. I'd heard about that, too. And I know it's a national problem, but I. I don't see us actually experiencing that. 01:32:03,430 S4: Massachusetts is is recovering, but still, there's lots of work to do, mostly in places like the Gateway Cities. Yeah. Um, the larger cities and larger school systems, we our attendance has been pretty good. I mean, we're we're even. Last year we were trending down, um, two weeks ago. The the commissioner tried to bring the, uh, chronic attendance issue to make a hammer out of it to, to really force school systems to make shifts. And the board of education, state Board of Education voted no, leave the accountability measures the same and let them continue to do the work they're doing. And I think, you know, one of the things you can do, you can see at our schools is principals are reaching out. Nurses call every day when kids are out there sending letters home, they're meeting with families. So, uh, our people on the ground are doing the work to to help to lower that. So I think you'll see improvement. You'll just see continued improvement over time. 01:32:56,829 S11: Are they at the same time collecting root cause? You know, I know that previously you've said that they're somehow not able to say this was because they went on a family holiday, or they had this illness or that illness. 01:33:08,869 S4: Yeah. The state doesn't differentiate between an absence. So if your child, you decide, I'm taking my kid out the week before February vacation because his flights are cheaper. That still counts as an absence towards the chronic absenteeism. And we still have that issue. We run into that issue fairly consistently in this district, um, where people travel during the school year. We, we try to reach out and say, please don't do that. There's only 180 days of school. We want kids to have the most time in school as possible so we can give them everything they come for. But, um, yeah, we're still wrestling with that a little bit. 01:33:42,630 S11: Can you tally it as you go? I mean, or is that a too awkward a question to be asked? 01:33:48,029 S4: We can tally it, but the state, when they pull our data, they just isolate it as an absence. 01:33:53,630 S12: Parents don't have to say, I can say, yeah, Colin's out today. Sorry, I don't have to say why. 01:33:58,569 S4: Even if it's an excused absence, the state doesn't differentiate. They just say an absence is an absence. So it's it's tough because we we we have a system where Johnny had to go to the doctor's or broke his leg and his out of school. We know why this child is out of school or there's a mental health issue, but the state doesn't differentiate. And that's really the the conversation that we need to have with the state. 01:34:19,829 S11: Yeah, the public health people should be asking for for a better granularity of the data in order to better understand what to do about it. 01:34:30,630 S6: Okay. Other questions. 01:34:34,630 S4: So this was just information. I just want everybody to know they went out. I assume most people will receive them because they have kids in school. But just in case. 01:34:41,569 S5: No, I definitely went down a rabbit hole. 01:34:43,569 S6: And it was. 01:34:45,329 S4: Easy. 01:34:45,500 S6: To. 01:34:45,630 S5: Do and and not sure I retained much of it. It was just very interesting to look at, but, um. Okay. Um, next up, let's see where we are. Uh, committee reports, uh, capital Finance. Jen is not with us. 01:35:05,399 S12: We met. I don't remember last week. 01:35:09,170 S6: Two weeks ago. 01:35:11,600 S12: It was two weeks ago. Okay, so we probably don't have anything to update since we reported out last week. Okay. 01:35:16,600 S6: Nothing to report, nothing to report. 01:35:18,430 S5: Excellent. Good work. Thank you. Uh, policy. 01:35:22,399 S11: Well, we had a very spirited meeting. That's a fair description. 01:35:25,569 S5: I'm sorry. 01:35:25,800 S6: You had a. 01:35:26,329 S11: Very spirited meeting. 01:35:27,470 S6: Spirited me meeting. 01:35:29,369 S11: And, uh, came to a resolution that we would at a future date, maybe in a month or so, uh, put on the agenda to, um, a motion to recommend a motion with regard to indoor air quality. 01:35:44,229 S5: Okay, we will look forward to that at a future meeting. 01:35:47,029 S11: And and I did feel it was actually more than spirit. It was actually quite valuable. Previewing of what? How complex it is to really get across all of the related issues. So I thought it was valuable to have the discussion in the subcommittee. I really felt so. 01:36:05,270 S6: All right. Thank you for. 01:36:06,569 S11: That. Thank you. 01:36:08,229 S5: Um. All right. Uh, negotiations. 01:36:14,100 S14: Excuse me. Uh, we had a strategy meeting on Tuesday. 01:36:18,100 S6: Tuesday. 01:36:18,500 S4: Tuesday. 01:36:19,000 S14: And, uh, we actually have another meeting coming up on Monday with the, um, excuse me, union representatives. Hopefully we're getting close to a resolution at this point. 01:36:34,069 S6: Okay. 01:36:35,029 S5: Thank you. Um, anybody have any questions? Okay. Um, Secretary report. Um, David did send out a Spreadsheet. Thank you for that. 01:36:48,970 S6: Yeah. 01:36:49,569 S14: Um, so it looks like I said to follow up email with you. Did you get that? All right. Um, so assuming the school committee is caught up after today, I'm assuming we voted those two in negotiations. We have a couple that need to get voted in, and we'll do that on Tuesday. I mean, I'm sorry, on Monday. Uh, Capital Finance has a slew, probably about 16 or 18 here. Um, that looked like I had one question. The nine, 13, 20, 23 did. I didn't see that in the year. 01:37:23,569 S6: Okay. 01:37:24,329 S12: I don't know. 01:37:25,369 S14: I'll let you look at that spreadsheet. It's the only one that's yellow. Um, but I, I gave, um, Julia looking through the notes. A couple of them said that they were voted prior minutes but didn't name the minutes, so I just suggested actually doing a, uh, um, like in a consent agenda and just voting them all in at once. Um, having her share the notes she has, and then they'll be all caught up. And then policy seems to have for outstanding, but I don't know where they stand. 01:37:57,729 S12: I submitted the latest minutes and then I had to amend the August ones, and then we weren't sure if we'd voted on the September ones. So we need to do a consent agenda probably. 01:38:13,029 S14: I don't even see August and September around here. 01:38:15,130 S12: You haven't seen them? Okay, I'll send them to you. What's that? I'll send them to you. 01:38:18,699 S5: So for. 01:38:19,270 S6: This. 01:38:19,430 S5: Year. 01:38:19,829 S12: Or for. 01:38:20,500 S14: I, I'm just looking sort of what I have, um, that I had pulled out from the info you sent me. Okay. Um, so, yeah. 01:38:30,069 S6: That's very. 01:38:31,130 S14: Helpful to handle on getting this. 01:38:33,130 S6: Yeah, it's. 01:38:33,899 S5: It's it's sounds like we have a plan. I did want to add, um, one that was missing, which is that the full committee is actually missing a minutes from the quintuple board in November. Um, and I already sent Janelle, um, an email, and she's going to check with Bev and figure out, um, how that. I'm not sure how that happened. 01:38:59,000 S6: But. 01:39:00,130 S4: I'll tell you. 01:39:00,930 S6: Offline. 01:39:01,270 S12: Do I need to submit those? 01:39:02,729 S6: No. Okay. 01:39:03,930 S5: No, no. 01:39:04,800 S12: Oh, God. Give me some more minutes. 01:39:05,970 S5: But there's a. 01:39:06,399 S6: Reason. 01:39:06,600 S5: I looked. There's a recording of it so the minutes can be recorded. 01:39:09,600 S4: It's in. 01:39:09,930 S5: Process. It can be created. 01:39:11,029 S4: It's in process. Reach out to Bev today. 01:39:12,729 S5: Okay. Yeah. So that is so the the full committee has that to do to take care of. And it sounds like Julia has her hands full figuring out capital finance and policy. 01:39:23,600 S12: Well, it sounds like honestly the majority of those can just be voted in a consent agenda. And then there's maybe 4 or 5 outstanding still. But I've written them. But I'll just get them to Dave. 01:39:32,970 S6: Okay. Yeah. 01:39:34,270 S14: Actually there's it looks like a lot, but it actually I think we're pretty okay. 01:39:38,329 S12: We're getting. 01:39:38,800 S6: Squared away. 01:39:39,800 S14: It's it'll be more cleaning up. Good. Those. 01:39:42,699 S5: And that'll be good. We'll look forward to March. Having a secretaries report with a lot. I mean, there's always going to be something just because. 01:39:50,069 S6: There's always. 01:39:50,630 S5: A catch. 01:39:51,029 S6: Up. 01:39:51,170 S14: But yeah, we'll see how good I am at keeping up with this. 01:39:53,670 S6: Yes. All right. So we'll. 01:39:55,899 S5: We'll look at. 01:39:56,569 S6: We'll. 01:39:57,430 S5: We'll look. 01:39:57,770 S6: To. 01:39:58,100 S5: It is pretty right to not not the next meeting. But the second meeting in March will we'll look for the next secretary report. Um, thank you for that. I appreciate. 01:40:07,000 S6: It. 01:40:07,930 S5: Um, Eric, to you for a superintendent's report. 01:40:12,270 S4: Great. Thank you. A couple of a couple of repeats, because I think they're important to repeat. I know, uh, Whitney had hit a couple of these, but I want to congratulate our cheerleaders who took a third place at LaSalle Academy. That's a that's a big, uh, big win for them. So that's exciting. Um, tomorrow night, the ninth, uh, the deca bingo night at the high school. It's from 6 to 7, $10 to get in. Uh, They they do more than bingo. So, you know, it's a little dance, a little excitement, a lot of music. Um, and some bingo doors will open at 545. And then next week, our annual Hearts and Flowers cabaret. It is. I just want people to know it is in a different location. It has been in the past in Danvers, it is the Black Swan in Georgetown. Um, it starts at 7 p.m. it's a great event if you've never been. It's it's a very unique event with our singers and musicians. And that starts at seven. That's on the 13th Tuesday. Tickets are $35. Covers, uh, access to get in or d'oeuvres and beverages, uh, cake and coffee. And that is it. And just people. I just wanted to remind people to look out for their their building level report cards. 01:41:30,399 S5: Thank you. Questions for the superintendent. 01:41:34,930 S5: All right. Thank you very much. Um, I don't have really much to say on the chair's report. Um, I did want to just report out. I did go to. They asked if I would come to the one, um, select board. They were taking a vote to, um, and enter into conversations about the regional agreement. Um, and I went and they didn't really need me, which was perfect. Um, which was great. And they did, in fact, vote to, um, begin negotiations. So I believe that we have all three. Um, Hamilton has voted and one of them has voted, and we have. 01:42:10,369 S6: Voted. 01:42:11,170 S5: A long time ago. Um, and, uh, so I think we're going to get started. Um, I after tonight's meeting, I wanted to just bring that to you. And if anyone had any questions or comments, um, but my intent is to contact Mark Terry, our legal counsel. And the hope will be that the, um. And I know that this is the hope of all three boards, that that it will be the three lawyers doing the bulk of the, um, at least initial work. 01:42:43,600 S6: So any. 01:42:44,470 S5: Questions? Comments? 01:42:46,130 S12: Mike. My question is what's the process? So just the lawyers. 01:42:49,770 S5: I think that we I don't know exactly. Um, and at some point I need to get involved in the process. Um, but I think at the beginning, the lawyers are going to and they have done some work already, um, of sort of redlining the document, things that the initial redlining was things. Um, really just things that are no longer compatible with mass general law because the document is so old, so redlining those kinds of things as well as straightforward things, but just really antiquated language. Everyone's a chairman or a, you know, like things like that. And those just, you know, the men of the committee will do this and, you know, like, it just it's just antiquated language. So they just did those kinds of quick. 01:43:31,670 S12: Still. 01:43:31,930 S6: Sets. 01:43:32,270 S5: That I think it's the select. 01:43:35,430 S6: Selectmen. 01:43:36,000 S5: Man. I guess it doesn't matter anyway. Those kinds of things are already been sort of done. But then they'll be rewriting on how to fix. 01:43:44,569 S6: Those kind. 01:43:44,899 S5: Of things. But at some point, Dessie, we'll need to get involved. I don't know if you recall, a long time ago in a meeting, we put the dusty checklist up there and we talked about dusty has a very prescribed checklist on how to create a regional agreement. So our agreement will have to fit into that just dusty. 01:44:00,270 S6: Okay, checklist. 01:44:01,430 S11: But do we have a standard or is this a negotiation really between the two towns. 01:44:06,100 S5: Oh no no no no it's the three of us. The negotiating. 01:44:08,930 S6: Yes. So the three. 01:44:10,630 S11: We have specific substantive kind of changes we want. So other than. 01:44:16,130 S6: Signing. 01:44:16,430 S11: With. 01:44:16,569 S6: Regulations. 01:44:17,270 S5: Things that when we presented it overall the main things that we are looking at is the if you look at the regional agreement, the beginning sections are all about the elections. And much of those um, portions are no longer compliant with mass general law. The way that the. And it's also no longer the way that we actually get elected. Um, the assumption when it was written was that the school committee itself is running an election, which is not something. 01:44:46,399 S6: That's. 01:44:47,529 S5: Legal or done. Right. 01:44:49,199 S6: That. 01:44:49,430 S5: Right. Um, so that's a big part of it, is that is to work through that. Um, we've also expressed and we did again, um, we've expressed to both other boards that desire and I have at the five chairs meeting to a desire to look at the apportionment, which is now a three year average and a desire from our end to expand that out to a longer period of time so that we wouldn't have the extreme ups and downs. 01:45:17,000 S6: Mhm. 01:45:17,930 S5: Um, I don't know. David, do you have anything to add? 01:45:19,800 S14: Uh, no. I think at some point, you know, um, that's sort of where we're coming from on the offensive. I think when this gets, I think there's You should look at this at like, it's like, you know, 2 to 3 stages. Is it going to be this first? This first stage. It's like a lot of this the cleanup of the language that's going to be, you know, not much at all. And then there's going to be a little bit back and forth between the towns on that apportionment. Right. And and just sort of that, um, that power and maybe the setup of this board a little bit, uh, could change instead of having everything, you know, um, I think at that point our role is really going to be a little bit more, I don't want to say like defensive, like, but like I think it's just a better way of looking at it, just to make sure that we're then looking at it like from the district standpoint, making sure that like, each town, you know, isn't sort of just looking at it through a tunnel vision. And we're looking at it a little bit more holistically from the students in schools perspective, and just making sure that, you know, um, where they're I don't think. I mean, feel free to sort of read through it and see if there's anything that, you know, you see that we could be doing because this is obviously the opportunity to, you know, take advantage of, of, of the situation. But I think for the most part, um, you know, the towns have some stuff that, you know, it was written 60 years or so ago. 01:46:50,399 S5: It was originally written, I believe, in 1959. 01:46:52,569 S6: Yeah. 01:46:52,930 S14: You know. 01:46:53,229 S6: So so. 01:46:54,770 S14: A lot of updating that needs to happen just on just the way, you know, each town is run and the state is run as well. But, you know, we just want to make sure that, um, you know, in the process of them trying to organize their business, that, you know, the, the overall sort of health and well-being of the district, that that's really our charge in all of this. So, um, whether or not the negotiation sort of takes the lead there and then brings it to the we will make sure that you guys are well informed throughout the whole thing. You know, as information comes to us, um, you know, so we can work collectively to, to make sure that we're taking care of our end. 01:47:34,470 S6: Yeah. 01:47:35,699 S5: Um, and I will say, I did, um, I did say at the when I'm selectboard or, and at the chair's meeting that one of the things to remember is that we're just opening up discussions and that the the agreement is in place and unchanged unless and until we all three sign a new agreement. So, you know, we're opening up a discussion and we're not throwing out the agreement. It's still in place where. 01:48:05,630 S14: I think we're at a really good place. I in the, you know, my, my ninth year at this point, right in the of the nine years, I probably the most comfortable with these two boards as they sit being the two different town, um, boards that I don't feel like there's any sort of gotcha. Whereas in passport, I would have definitely been been nervous about, um, about really opening this up. Um, but I do think that it's something that really does need to happen, um, in that this is probably the best opportunity to do that. Um, I am still a little nervous, but I think. 01:48:46,670 S5: Um, yeah. And I don't anticipate it being. And we don't know, but I don't anticipate it being a fast process. 01:48:51,770 S6: I think it'll be slowly. 01:48:53,130 S5: Um, and to David's, you know, David mentioned it is an interesting I know mine is written all over I really took it's not that long and I, you know, have read the whole thing several times with pen in hand. And there are just big question marks and circles around things like, does this happen? What is this? What does this mean? You know. Um, so it's an interesting read. Um, and sometimes it serves. 01:49:17,829 S6: Us. 01:49:18,399 S5: Well. Um, you know, we just I said we just got Trent. 01:49:22,699 S6: Because I was able to. 01:49:23,699 S5: I was going to tell me exactly how to get a new member. So it's useful for somebody. 01:49:29,729 S6: Um. Thank you. 01:49:31,529 S14: Goats? 01:49:32,430 S6: Yeah. Okay. 01:49:34,729 S5: Um, I don't think I have anything else unless anyone has any other questions for me. Okay. Uh, do we have any topics for future meetings? I do understand that the policy committee will be bringing forward a topic. Um. Anyone else? 01:49:51,069 S9: Um, eventually we'll have a visual communications update. 01:49:54,729 S6: Okay. 01:49:56,369 S9: We will keep you informed of which meeting. 01:49:59,899 S5: Okay. All right. Great. 01:50:02,729 S6: Great. Yeah. 01:50:04,329 S5: So, yeah, that was great. March ish. 01:50:06,729 S6: Okay. 01:50:07,069 S5: Yes. Okay. Excellent. 01:50:09,229 S11: Sorry, miss. I didn't hear that. Sorry. 01:50:11,500 S9: Oh, an update on the visual communications project. 01:50:15,729 S5: Yeah, we'll put that in March. That sounds. 01:50:17,069 S6: Great. 01:50:17,829 S11: Is there any planned date for the off site kind of strategy session that we had last year. 01:50:26,100 S6: For. 01:50:26,470 S5: The. 01:50:27,029 S11: For the committee. 01:50:27,569 S12: The retreat. 01:50:28,170 S6: Retreat, the retreat. 01:50:29,670 S11: Yeah. Uh. 01:50:31,369 S5: Do you mean the retreat, like. 01:50:32,630 S6: In the summer? Yes. 01:50:33,770 S5: Um, no. But, you know, is that are you. That could be a topic for a future meeting is to get that date on the calendar. Is that. Yeah. 01:50:40,529 S6: That we. 01:50:41,369 S5: Can. Yep. 01:50:46,470 S5: Yeah. I think that's if we want to do a retreat, the sooner the better to get it on the calendar. Um, okay. 01:50:55,970 S5: Anyone have anything else? 01:50:57,399 S11: Yes, a motion to move. 01:51:01,199 S6: Do you have to move it? Oh, yes. Yeah, I move that. 01:51:04,970 S11: Yes, I move that. We adjourn. 01:51:06,430 S6: Okay. Second. 01:51:07,630 S5: Second by Julia. All those in favor? And that is unanimous. Of the six members present.