I Hey, get, woo, right, that’s loud, great. Not complaining. That’s a good thing. All right, good evening. Um, I called to order the meeting of the Hamilton Wan Regional School Committee on Thursday, February 27th, 2025 at 7:00 p.m. and I invite you all to join us in the Pledge of Allegiance. Pledge alleg the United States. Yeah Yeah. just Uh, next up, I am gonna ask Amy to read the land acknowledgment. The Hamilton one that is loud. Hamilton Regional School District would like to acknowledge the Massachusetts tribe, the tribe of indigenous peoples from whom the colony, province, and commonwealth of Massachusetts have taken their name. We would like to pay our respect to the ancestral bloodline of the Massachusetts tribe and their descendants who still inhabit historical Massachusetts tribe territories to this day. Thank you. Um Next on the agenda, we have an opportunity for citizens’ comments. Um, there are no citizens present in the room. Mr. Tracy is, is there anyone? OK, uh, seeing none, uh, we will move past doesn’t move on from Citizen’s comments and the time for comments will be closed. Um Next up, uh, Trent, would you be willing to read a portion of the school committee protocols, please. As elected members of the Hamilton Wenham Regional School Committee. We, including the superintendent. and that has been placed in us to ensure that the received the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business. Members will refers and complaints, including issues relating to district personnel to the appropriate person within the district chain of communication. Thank you. Um Jen, are you willing to read a portion of the, uh, school committee mission statement. The Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District. Committee’s mission is to ensure our schools create graduates with a passion for lifelong learning, together with the critical skills needed to maximize their potential. The Hamilton one and Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that attracts and retains high quality educators by acknowledging and respecting their expertise and professionalism. Thank you. Um, next up, I am pleased to say we have our student representative report, uh, this evening we have Anderson Kraft. Um, here to give us a report. Thank you for having me. So coming up on Tuesday, April 1st at 6:30 is the one-man show performed by Jake Ryan Flynn. This show is taking place at the North Shore Music Theater to raise money for the Hamilton one theater program, auditions are taking place on Friday, February 28th, from 3:30 to 8:00 p.m. for all members of the high school courses. Uh, boys and girls basketball will each be hosting home games tomorrow against Cathedral in Amesbury, respectively. The boys’ game will start at 5:30 with the girls game following that at around 7:30. The varsity cheerleaders will have the a meet at 11:00 a.m. on Sunday, March 3rd for the MSAA Regional Championship at Bill Ricker Memorial High School. Then this morning, the 93 members of DECA that qualified for states left um for Boston over the next two days, they will be competing against other schools from Massachusetts. Recently, at the middle school went to intramurals have ended with new ones starting up this spring. In middle school also has many different clubs happening like art, Art Club, Chorale, jazz band, GSA, NHJS and Hallmark Help that have been meeting once or twice a week. At the elementary school last Tuesday, Winthrop school, had a kindergarten and information night for parents of upcoming students. Coming up on Saturday, Cutler is hosting an open house for the incoming kindergartners. And finally, on March 12th and 13th, Bucher will be hosting the annual book fair for all students. Thank you. Thank you. Um, does anyone have questions for Anderson? Um, Anderson, I had a quick question. I just wanted to make sure I got it right. Did you say that the boys and girls basketball are both at home on Friday tomorrow. Excellent back to back. Thank you. Um, all right. Anybody else have anything? They realize you’re gonna be here tonight, Anderson. Well, actually I did that, they told me Anderson was willing to step in. So that’s a, that was really helpful. I very appreciative. Um All right. Uh, Anderson, uh, we are so grateful that you took the time to come. It means a lot to us to get an update right from the students, um. You are invited to stay for the rest of the meeting. However, we know you may have other things that you have on your plate, homework and such, um. So it’s up to you, but you’ll absolutely Certainly allowed to go, if you’re ready to go. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Right, um, Next A, we have the consent agenda. Um, do any members have any items that they would like to hold from the consent agenda. Julia, do you have anything? No. Um, I should have said at the beginning, I don’t think I said any of the things. I don’t think I said this is being recorded and live streamed, and I should have also said that we do have one member who is, um, participating remotely, Julia Campbell, um, so all votes will be roll call votes. Um, sorry about that. All right, did anyone else have anything to hold? And schools get to use the Mario Kart scooter. to ask. And. And we have emotions. You’re going to do it. I’m going to do it right. Uh, I moved that the Hamilton and Retail School Committee, excuse me, approved the consent agenda as appears in tonight’s. Meeting agenda. Second. Seconded by Amy Kunberger. Um And there’s no discussion cause it’s such agenda, uh, Julia. Yes, done. Yes, Trent. Yes, David. Yes, Amy and Dana’s a yes, and that is unanimous of the 6 members present, um. And the motion passes. OK. Um Next up Moving right along to new business. Uh, we have a presentation on some water testing procedures, um like to invite, um, director maintenance facilities and operations. Curtis Whiteman, who’s been, uh, Working on this for a few weeks, tried to solidify and get something in place. Uh, so we’re gonna run the first. ation by you this evening. Switch up on the presentation here. This is automatically just gonna go. It might not. artists, can you also just do a test of the mic to make sure we uh, check 1212 I I tend to project anyway so I just so that people like want to watch the recording. Uh Thank you for having me tonight, uh, members of the school committee. Mr. Tracy, Mr. Leoni, uh, so I’m here tonight to talk a little bit about the water testing plan. Um This was something that has come up, uh, a couple of times since I’ve started and so I really had to dig into a lot of the different, uh, Requirements that, uh, DESE, the EPA. Mass DEP, uh, dictate that we follow, so as such, I’ve developed a plan. I believe that’s part of the exhibit that was provided for tonight. Um My apologies, there were a few small changes. There were actually changes to the law that went into effect back in, uh, October. And uh they were published on the EPA’s website back in January after I’d already created the initial, uh, meat and potatoes of this, uh. Plan, so Um, without further ado, so. The primary purpose of the water uh testing plant is sure we’re providing safe water for students, staff members, um, visitors, any members of the public that may come in. Um Really, any sort of uh drinking source, whether it’s a faucet in a classroom, in a bathroom, obviously our bubblers, um, is considered, uh, as part of this program, uh, there will be, if you read through the plan that I provided. Some areas where we won’t be testing a good example of that would be like a janitorial swap sink. I don’t think anyone’s gonna go in there at any point and try and drink a drink of water, so. Um So the biggest thing about this plan is that I’m trying to bring a sense of obviously safety to the water that we’re providing and transparency. So if things come up, Uh, will react very quickly. Notifications will be sent out and, uh, action plans will be put in place. So So, uh, like I said before, uh, this plan was developed in accordance with DEE, mass DEP and the EPA. Uh, Desi points to the mass DEP, mass DEP points to the EPA and it just kind of goes around in a circle. So, um, I use a lot of the resources that were provided by the EPA and MASS DEP to develop this plan with keeping in mind the most strict requirements of all of that. Um, and again, I do welcome feedback to this. I know, um. That it’s all perfect it’s in development. Um, but certainly, you know, people feel differently. I’m, I’m open for a suggestion to it. Um The, the root of the water testing really started with the LCCA, um, which was enacted in 1988. Uh, and then that basically the groundwork for the LCR, which is when the testing that’s been, uh, required up until October, where it was changed to the LCRR, which is the lead copper rule revision. Um, which there’s a few more requirements in that new, uh, revision that that we have to follow. And I’ll get to those in a little bit. Um The biggest things that are in the plan, so the LCRR and the LCR which were the previous, uh, uh, action items that we had to follow. There was no change in the requirements of the action levels or the maximum containment level goal, uh, the, the action level for lead is 15 parts per billion or less. That has not changed, neither has the copper requirement of 1.3 parts per million. Um So that’s good news for us, um, and we’ll get into some of the testing results and we’ll talk about that when I get to that point of the presentation. So, uh, where we, where are we at today? So I haven’t just been spending my time writing the plan, um. It there’s really a lot that goes into this. So, um, We went through, you know, I, I’ve talked about the commitment to safety, that’s just gonna be echoed through this entire, uh, presentation even at beyond, right? Um, we’ll, we’ll do, I’ll work with Eric and Janelle and we’ll try and get some stuff out in some of the newsletters that go out so that people are aware this plant exists and that we’re taking this very seriously. Um You know, we understand the action levels now, after going through doing the, the research that was required. Training plan. So what’s really nice is that the EPA and DEP both have really good resources that we can lean on for training to send out to the members of the public. faculties, parents, students. Um, it’s a good example, that’s the three T’s and that’s what a lot of this plan was built on, which is, uh, training, testing, and taking action. So, um, A lot of really good resources that we’ll be able to build on and, and be able to provide. Where we are right now and this is, it’s, you can’t really see it’s cut off, but we’re on that part that’s circled, which is the identifying testing locations and fixtures, and I wish I could say that this was going, uh, fast, it’s not. So every single fixture in the district, I have to go around and measure or uh assign a number to a very unique identification code. And if a fixture is hot and cold, both. sides of that need to be labeled, so I’m at the high school now. I’m at 100 fixtures and I’m not even close to done. Uh, so I’m hoping, uh, when I do complete the high school, we’ll, we’ll start getting the testing going there. I’m not gonna wait to do everything. We’ll do everything in parallel efforts so that Um, we’ll get some, uh, data we can act on. So, uh, that’s where we’re at. Um Just another note, this plan does not replace anything that the towns are currently doing. So the towns are going to continue to do their LCR LCCA testing, um, that they’re required to do, and obviously if items come up out of those, we’ll action those. Um, if anything, I look at this as like a to supplement that and obviously as our requirements that we have to follow, so. All right, so Uh, last school committee meeting that I was present at, uh, There was some talk about some of the testing that was done. Uh, I apologize. The exhibit that had gone out previous to today, had some information that was wrong, uh, you know, I made the joke to Eric earlier, this is why I’m in facilities. I’m not one of the teachers here. So I, I failed to move a decimal point a couple of places. The good news about that is that um, Of the, of the testing that I’ve seen and reviewed the data for. We don’t have any lead that’s above an action level. So, the EPA classifies a 15 parts per billion. Or greater as a health threat. In the language that it could be a threat for anything less than 15 parts per billion. So, um, while we don’t have anything that’s above that action level, we do have plenty of data to support, um. You know, the, the, the goal that we need to be working towards, which is zero lead in our water, so. Um Which brings me to my next point, uh. There were some concerns I had about the testing based off my research that I have done thus far, um. Testing methodology was one of the issues that I had. So according to the EPA, we’re supposed to do a first draw and a flush draw. So first draw is, uh, taken, uh, More, it’s between 8 hours and 18 hours. That window is when we’re supposed to be doing the testing. That was not documented anywhere if that had been done. The first draw is the immediate first hit, you take off the tap. You let the water run for a second, for 30 seconds, and then you take your flush draw. Um, I don’t know with what was provided from the data, if the flush draw was those are the numbers we’re seeing if the first draw is what we’re seeing or if it’s a combination. So, um, That was one issue I saw. Uh, not all fixtures have been tested. So when I went through the data, it looks like everything that’s been tested has been in kitchens. Uh, we have done some bubblers. Uh, but it doesn’t specify, uh, exactly what bubbler or what fixture was done. That’s why the numbering is so important. Each fixture needs to have a unique number, um. So, I’m not sure exactly which fixtures were done. Um, there are certified labs we’re supposed to use, according to the DP. Uh, Massachusetts has a whole list of them that we can send this stuff off to, and I’m not sure if any of those were used. Uh, chain of custody on the samples. I’m not sure uh how that occurred or if Uh, who would, who would handle our samples and the other big one is testing 100% of the fixtures has not been done every 3 years, according to what I have. Now talking to some of the people walking around the schools, like the nurses and some of the principals, they do recall back prior to COVID, this testing occurring on a more frequent basis. So this might just be uh an exercise of us to return to normal, and I hate to even say that in 2025, um. But certainly, I think that’s probably where we need to go with this. With that being said, I don’t think any of the data we have thus far isn’t something that we shouldn’t be actioning or haven’t actioned. Um, I do know a number of fixtures throughout the district have been replaced. We put in new water bottle fill stations, new fixtures in the kitchens have been done. So, um, my recommendation here is not necessarily to ignore any of the readings we have so far, um. I think what we should be doing is re-base lining. So, As part of the plan I’m proposing, uh, every year we’re gonna do 1/3 of the fixtures. So, By year 4, we’re going back through the cycle. As part of this first year of testing, any of the fixtures that I believe were tested. Or were suspects will be retested. And so we’ll ensure if there was mitigation that it was effective. If not, we’ll come back to that and, and, and deal with that quickly. Um Curtis, it looks like you’ve got a question. Yeah, sure. Every 3 years testing. do it at school at a time? I’ll do it across the district, so it’ll be a district-wide. Yeah, I don’t know, I don’t wanna just do one school. I don’t, I think we need to, yeah, yeah, absolutely, yeah, that’s a good question. Um So some of the changes that uh I can quickly discuss about the new LCRR testing, and I apologize, it should say LCRR in that third uh Line there, um. is we need to verify that all the service lines of the schools have been either replaced or are not led. Now, talking to Eric, talking to Vinny, I believe that’s already been done. I just need to seek objective evidence to that. So I discovered this, I’m not even joking, two days ago. So, um, Beyond that, there is some other tight re uh requirements under the new LCRR for training, for notification that we will certainly be following. So there may be some more changes to the plan as the days ahead go. Um The biggest thing, again, is the transparency part of this, the, the publication of this, I think this should be available to members of the public schools. Uh, faculty, parents. Um And uh yeah, that’s pretty much the The bones of this thing. I don’t know if there are any other questions? I had a quick question on the On the very last point there, the service lines, those lines that you’re talking about would be. The like the lines from from the town, right? So that coming into the school. Right, thank you. Um Excellent presentation. Really appreciate the detail that went into it, um, and I think that you’ve laid out a, a great plan. Could you just Review for me the um. The approach to moving through the schools over time. Cause you said you’re at the, the high school right now, um, but I think that the lead was detected at Winthrop. So what would be the time frame to get to Winthrop. Yeah, so the, the problem I’m having right now is the labeling of the fixtures. So it I’m not gonna go, I, I’m gonna go one school at a time to label them. Um Certainly Winthrop will be one I’ll stop at next. I’m all, I, I should finish up the high school this week. So, OK, so Winthrop is, is happening in the Near present. It, it’ll really be a question of how long it’s gonna take to get the test results after that point, so. Um, I’ve already engaged a vendor that works with certified labs. They have the certified EPA number, um, so they’re willing to work with us. It’s someone we currently use, so it’ll be pretty quick once, once we’re ready to rock and roll. And then I, I remember looking through the report, there were past positive lead results at other schools, so it’s not just Winthrop, um. So we had, um, interestingly enough here, Bucher, um, back in September this year or last year, uh, we had lead detected. 1.1 parts per billion below the LCR. Um, but it’s not zero. So we’re gonna be seeking that 0 everywhere we go. Testing that was done at Bucher back in um April. Which was performed by the district districtwide showed no lead here. So How in that short a time, how things could have changed. So you think, do, do you think that’s because We’re just testing different. yeah, I mean there are multiple fixtures in the kitchen. They could have just gone to a different fixture. Which is why I think it’s important to make sure when we’re testing that we use to prescribe numbering. that we’re supposed to be using so that there’s no question of what it is. Um, the metal labels that are bottom of all the laptops that we’ve been given or what I’m gonna be using, it’ll be barcoded, so. You know, if I hit the lottery and And up leaving the next guy can come in or anybody could come in and use the barcoding system and it’ll, it’ll always be there, so. Yeah Thank you. Julia any questions? No, OK. No, thank you. Everyone else covered my questions. So, um, just in summary, there is Some additional resources that are on this uh PowerPoint, um, that we can look at. These are a lot of the ones that I have referenced, um, so if you want to learn more about The lead copper rule revision, uh, feel free to uh. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. This is, this is one of the things that I think, uh, having Curtis here full time has been able to kind of grab the bull by the horns, whereas 6 months ago, I was like, right, who’s going to deal with this right now between Vinny, myself and, and No one in the position. So I appreciate having Curtis here. I appreciate his action when we met after some discussions with, uh, some of the committee members we met immediately. He went to work, came up with this, put together the presentation, I think the plan is excellent. I think, uh, you know, the hard part in a small school district is Just as I end up doing these weird jobs, Curtis is going to end up doing these weird jobs of labeling all the the uh pictures, but that first time through. Should be the last time through. as long as nobody peels off the labels, but, yeah. But at least we’ll have it barcoded and it should be a system that’s a little bit more you think at an elementary school there’s going to be a problem of feeling off labels that couldn’t see them. That’s right. Yeah, we’re gonna be hiding an additional one under the picture just in case my my son goes here to Bukhs and I know him very well and he will definitely be peeling off. Thanks again. Thank you. Dana, before we go on, uh, just apropos to this, I’d like to make a motion. Um, I move that the School committee charged the policy committee to um develop a district policy for informing the school committee in a timely fashion of identified uh, environmental or health risks. Uh, OK, uh, Do we have a second? Um, OK, let me try to restate the motion. Make sure that I understood, um. I was gonna say I think we actually have something like that. So Well, let’s just go through the process so that my understanding of the motion, tell me if I’m getting it right, is that you, the motion is to have the school committee task the policy subcommittee with creating Um Policy Around, um. Water testing reporting to the school committee. No, this is just around the um school committee’s policy for The um Uh, uh, uh, for informing the committee, um, I’m sorry, uh, informing the committee in a timely fashion of an identified health or environmental risk. OK. So it’s just about expectation around when we’re identified after it is developed and how we’re identified. OK, so the motion is really around tasking the policy subcommittee with creating um policy language about informing the school committee when there is. Yes, I’m good with that. Um, all right, so questions, discussion. Um, I have a question. What do you You say in a timely fashion is that one week, 2 weeks. Well, that’s what I hope the policy subcommittee is going to tell us, yeah. Oh, OK. Um, my I know you work in the field, so I wasn’t sure if you knew, you know, I think that um I, I love the report that we just saw, and, um, you know, I know that we’ve had, you know, turned over in that position, but I think that if Um If we, you know, just have a clear expectation of what the You know, if it’s identified, You know, how are we going to be informed, and then at what point in time is the public going to be informed in a, in a meeting. I I I think that would be like I said, I think it’s um I, I think there was something like that on the books currently and like in as long as I’ve been here, excuse me, I, I, I feel that we’ve always been. Um, you know, definitely kept up to date with anything that’s come by, but, you know, when stuff comes like policy here, it’s not necessarily for the people in the room. I always think about it when none of us are at the table, right? And how do we continue? Uh, to make sure that the work that we’re currently going on in the reports we’re currently getting. Right, so, so I, you know, definitely like that idea you that idea you that idea you a timely manner. All right, well, within. You know, 2 days or so of. You know, what I guess know what the plan is and. Cause You know, word travels fast and what’s this I heard about leaded Winthrop. Um So, I, I guess I, I don’t want. Uh, cause I do have a question very very specifically about sort of procedure question is, I think. For me, if I had made the motion. Uh, in spirit, I I’m in in agreement that this is would be a good thing to have in policy, but to what David just said, I’m wondering, I guess my, what I would be looking for if I had made the motion would be to have policy review our policies, see what we already. Have And then come back to us either with new language or a recommendation like I think I, I’m I’m curious about whether policy might say we actually already have a policy that we feel covers this or we’d like you as the school committee to say, do you think this policy already covers it well I’m hearing like a friendly amendment that’s my concern is, but I, I hear what you’re saying and I think that’s sort of part of the process. Yeah and we actually look for it and we find something that’s already there. Like, OK, well, here’s something. it for our first reading, is this a strong enough policy to get the feedback from the committee and. Yeah, I guess that’s that’s all I’m saying. I don’t want policy to create a new policy if if I would trust the subcommittee. I think Trump was saying that too, that to trust the subcommittee to Go through the process and decide like. So, and maybe that’s maybe the motion the way it is. That policy would feel free to come back and say, I feel comfortable that I understand what he’s looking for. Yeah Um Oh, yes. OK. Uh, I was just trying to remember who’s on policy. Um Alright, I, we have a, do other people have questions, we have a motion. It’s been seconded. Anybody have any other questions? No OK. Um, so the motion would be. I’m going to try again even though I’ve struggled with it, um, basically to do to, uh, task policy with creating um policy language around um reporting back, um, when there is an identified health risk. Right, right. I could try again I I don’t know, I don’t know if I’ll get it, um. So I move, uh, that the school committee task the policy subcommittee. To develop a Um Policy That Um outlines the committee’s expectations for being um Made aware in a timely fashion, and he identified. In the schools. Thank you. OK. Everybody clear. Thank you for that. As long as Beverly’s clear. Yeah, no, I, I He’s got I don’t know. I feel like I usually I’m able to do it, but somehow, um, OK. Um, all right, uh, David Palito. Yes. Amy, yes. Yes, yes, Julia. Yes. Dane is a yes, and the motion passes, uh. Of the 6 members, you know, unanimously of the 6 members present, um. So And then we’ll look to policy, um, at the next meeting to hear like when you have scheduled. Um To take that on. Do OK. Um Alright Uh, next up. Uh Eric, do you want to speak to this? This is the budget and annual report. It’s the, it’s the budget book. It’s And pop it back up on the screen here. There it is, um, annually, once any uh completes the budget process, uh, and the committee votes on the budget. Uh, we create this book, uh, that we make available to the public. That really outlines the entire budget process, the budget itself and some other tidbits that are, um, built in. So this is, uh, similar to what we’ve done every year. Uh, including things that are basic, like our vision and mission statement, um, some introductory letters from myself, from Dana. Uh, we lay out the the budget calendar and then go through. Each of the uh steps for the operating budget, the capital finance budget. Elementary, uh, we break it down by elementary and secondary. We look at district-wide programs. And then, and then key indicators at the end. And this gets published, um, and made available both at In town halls, both town halls, and then, um, the public library. Senior centers, we can, we distribute it around, around the community as well, so. Um, alright, and, uh, you would be looking for a motion to approve this. Um David, you would, would you be willing to start us off with a motion? Sure, the Hamilton School Committee, uh, vote to approve the FY 26 budget, um, annual report. As presented in tonight’s agenda. Second Second by Jen Carr. Um, anyone have questions. Is there a discussion? Alright. like we’re ready to vote. Um Is Julia there? Julia? stepped off for a second. OK. Uh, David Polito. Yes. Amy. Trent. Yes Yes, yes, Julia. OK. So, uh, that is. 5 yeses. And One abstention. Yeah Are you there? your Julia, can you hear us? Yeah, I can hear. OK, we just need your vote on. Sorry. OK, um, what was the motion to approve the FY 26 budget and annual report and it was seconded by Jen Carr. OK, yes. OK, thank you. Um, all right, and so. That is 6 to 0, um, and the motion passes unanimously of the members present. Alright, uh, next up to you, Eric. This is some information on the Cutler, MCAS, um, analysis. Thank you. Pitch this back to re, uh, Trent and I have been going back and forth on this. He requested that we put it on, uh, an agenda. We’re gonna put on last meeting, but it was packed, so we moved it to this meeting, um, I just. wanted to make sure it was on and he had requested a couple of meetings back, um, So this is the, the updated version of what was presented back in, I think October when the schools did their school improvement reports. This is a more in-depth look at it, so. You wanted to put it here and I don’t know if you want to speak to it. No, I, I really appreciate you, um. Doing this, I was wondering if you would be able to talk about the process. That went into it Yeah, so the, the, the initial process was done during the summer. Um, with the new principal came on board, uh, she and, uh, Jan Clifford, the director of teaching and learning, and I. Went through data, uh, once the information was released from the state. Everybody’s seen that data and it’s not, you know, where we want it to be. So we started to dig into the data and look at some of the things that, um, Reflected Reasons why we created a very generic. Uh, list, which was an earlier compilation of this, which was really These are the things that we’re looking at when we’re looking at Cutler student achievement. Why are they falling below the levels of the other elementary schools, and we dug into that, built it into the school improvement planning process for Uh, the, um, For the principal to present. Part of that conversation beginning of the school year was really talking to teachers and meeting with teachers. We met with the teachers on their first day of, uh, factory meetings, which was during the 1st 4 days before school started. We literally presented all this data to them, and then we started talking to different people through the district and gathering information. Which is how we got to the school improvement plan and then that’s when you had asked for a little more detail on the, the report, if you will, um, and that’s where this came about. Um, I appreciate that, um. Um, so I, I really find the trajectory in the MCAS data that was presented concerning for for multiple years at at Cutler. Um, and it looks to me like a lot of the identified issues here. Are related to um administrative decisions that occurred at the school. Um Those administrative decisions happened over what period of time, do you know? to the current. Last year’s. Administration that person was here for 2 years. Um All the elementary schools work together. So the 3 principles meet consistently. Like tomorrow they will meet, um, they go through the process and say, OK, this is what we’re going to address this, this is how we address this, and if you go back to that time, we were just kicking off CKLA. Um, and there were agreements made between the administrators to say these things would happen. Go back and talking to the other administrators, several of those things did not happen. Um You know, as you look at this, there are, there are Things that are important to the process, like helping kids understand. Just the testing environment. Giving kids the opportunity to get on a computer in 3rd grade, see what the testing environment looks like. Try to understand how to manipulate the tools. That happened in 2 out of the 3 schools. Um, so we started having those conversations with individuals like support personnel, teachers, um, people who are doing our assessment, managing our assessments and our interventions, and that really started to kind of point us in the direction of there’s a consistency here. That’s related to management decisions that were made by administrators agreed upon by all three, but not, uh, consistently followed through. Um So I guess my, my follow up question for that is, um, You know, uh, it looks like a lot of the things here are prospective, things that are going to be implemented, um. So, if we, if we step back in time, where any of these issues identified before the most recent year. And, and acted upon with the prior administration. Not at the level we have now. Not at the level we had now, the, the previous would have been really one year of Of data. where there was a person, the same person who was responsible at that time, so. Once we looked at that data set, that’s the one we responded to. Currently, because the principal, the new principal just came in. This summer, this past summer. OK. was So I guess like what I’m trying to to get to is like, is there um is there a hole in the process. That would be Is, is there a way of looking at this and saying like there’s, there’s a, there’s a, an improvement that can be made in the process of like the, the issue that was identified sounds like by, you know, the in Entire faculty over there and administration was prior administration. Um So if we had, if we had a time machine and went back in time, what would be the process that would Catch it before we Had, you know, the, the real sharp downturn that we saw in the last year to the data that comes late. So you get testing that occurs that starts in March. testing in March, testing in May, testing in June. We don’t get the results until August, which is, that’s when we respond, we start to see the results mid-August from the state. And that’s what happened here. We had one year of data, we knew it was shaky. We were waiting on 2nd year of data. Saying that OK These are the things that these principals have agreed upon. This is a new curriculum that’s in place. These are technology pieces we put in place like typing programs, um, Some of those things didn’t happen at the cut school. Reflected in the 2nd year of of down data, which is how we responded. That’s how we got to this point. No, I, I, I hear you, but uh I’m just looking at it like, for example, the Cutler ELA. Um We look at the total, like, it, it has been a downward trend since 2021, right? Um, if we look at students with disabilities, it’s abysmally down downward trend, um. With Cutler math grades, it’s, you know, was a downward, downward trade from 2019 to 2021, stayed down. Yeah. Um with disabilities, um. It went, it went down appreciably. Only one that’s kind of a sine wave that doesn’t seem to have a, a specific trend other than the last year was really far down, was was science. Um, so I, I look at that and say like, are, is there, is there some other metric other than the the individual data point, like. the trend of Science in at Euchre. And it’s going up. The entire look back period, right? So, um I just, I want us in the future to not be, you know, with 5 years of data pointing in one direction. Um, so that’s where I ask, like, is there, is there a hole in the process? Um That can be that can be addressed. I don’t, I don’t believe there is. I mean, we just finished up this week meeting with each of the principals instead of doing our walkthroughs we did mid-year data reviews where If you go back to the school improvement planning, we sat with them and said, OK, go back to your gap closing strategies. These are the things that you put in place at the end of the year. Are they working? Tell us why or how or or how there may not be. What adjustments have you made with your staff? What types of things have you talked about with your staff through Faculty meetings, individual meetings, classroom, individual classroom observation, uh, through the evaluation process. We hadn’t done that in the past. This is like, now we’re. More in depth than ever, meeting with the principals, uh, having these conversations about instructional leadership and developing that process through all three schools. So that’s a, it’s this year would be very different than previous years. Just in the, the level of looking at data, we spent. Um, each, with each of the schools this week, we sat with all 5 principals individually, Jen, Clifford and I. sat down, looked at their data, which is what I I reviewed DIBEL’s data. Uh, across the elementary schools, Ie data across the secondary. And then kind of came to them with, OK, here’s what the data sets are, here’s what they’re showing us. Tell me. talk about your gap closing strategy. Some are gap closing strategies are related to individual buildings. Others are related to subgroups across our student opportunity, um, act. Requirements, uh, they tend to be similar, usually L’s, low income, and kids with disabilities. So that’s, that’s been our focus for this year. So I, I Love the description of the process. I guess the crux of my question is, like, for the past 2 years, did that same process occur in a documented fashion. So I That that seems to me like maybe that. the gap. That you are actively filling with the change that’s made this year. With the changes, yeah, absolutely, because like I came in in 21, we did a whole year of kind of checking it out, listening, figuring out growing, learning, 22, we kicked in, 23, 24 is when we really started to dig in with CQLA. That was the 2nd full year of CQLA. Uh, which is where we started with literacy and then this year we, we kicked off with math. So we have these now these processes where we’re meeting with, we have a consulting group for math that meets with our elementary. Uh, uh, coaches and the principals to talk about things like what’s happening in the classroom, what are some of the things that they’re actually doing classroom observations with our coaches and administrators, and then bringing it back and running through a process of examining the data. OK, what is it telling us and how are we going to respond to it. So we’re at a very different level by jumping in with this group TNTP. Which was, uh, something offered to us by the state. Uh, that we, we took advantage of. So tho those things are new this year. They absolutely are. So sorry, I got to interrupt trend, but I think what trend what what I’m hearing Trent saying and one thing that sort of is glaring to me. is is when you’re relying on these, you know, Annual testing data points. Right, you have to wait to get the results back to realize that you’re steering the ship in the wrong direction. As I look at this report, you know, the, the glaring thing for me is the technology used to, um, you know, it seems that there’s a lot sort of pointing towards this and and why. Um, we think that the students didn’t test well because they weren’t the administration didn’t encourage technologies for teachers. Now, if you’re meeting with the principal. A new principle, you know, once a month and saying, You know, excuse me, she’s gonna go in there and sell her points while we’re not concentrating on the technology because we’re going doing X, Y, and Z. And she’s gonna be pushing her Agenda, which she believes in and she’s taking that school direction in and meanwhile, so it all sound dwelling group but meanwhile, As we, you know, get this comparative data back to be testing against other students in the district and. You know, across the Commonwealth we’re realizing that this class. is now behind everybody else and Um, you know, so, so what I sort of see it correct me if I’m wrong, Trent is, what are we doing to figure that out before we get the MCAS results to realize like, oops, we made a mistake. And that’s part of the conversation I was just having about the DIL’s data. Uh, media reviews, working with the TMTP TNTP people, um, and really digging in, they have, um, data meetings now. At each of the grade levels. They have PLCs, which are new. Uh, for each of the grade level groups so that they are not only digging into the data but learning together about, OK, what are some of the changes that we can make along the way. What are some of the adjustments that we can make? What are some of the focal points? So we have people that are Specifically looking at the, the data points for each of our elementary age kids and honing in on uh very specific interventions that are needed. Uh Um, ground level, what’s going on in the classrooms, which is our LAC program, the LAC program. Um, we have some, we have a coordinator who is managing the data and working with the coaches and the principals to determine the intervention schedules and then each of these intervention processes are occurring at the kid level individually. So they’re working with 12, and 3 kids to focus on points that the data that we’re getting out of our dibbles and our IRE data is, is being, uh, worked on now and not later. So not after the fact, we’re trying to intervene now. One of the weak points that we’ve we’re learning about as we’ve gone through these data meetings with our Um With our principles is the The gap Uh, closing of the gap. You know, you’re, you’re, you’re Kids on the low side of the gap can’t just make Average pro average gains, they need to make above average gains for the gap to close because your kids on your upper end are still making average or higher than average gain, so part of the conversation is how do we help to accelerate that? For those kids who are in these, um, on the lower side of the gap or in the subgroups like our L so in looking at our L data. To this point in the year, they are, um, you know, in the, in the words of the principal blowing it away. They are really picking up speed. Uh, in a place where they wouldn’t have last year because we didn’t have that, that same type of focus. We have an individual now working in the classroom. We put a lot more specialty people in the classroom. Um, the Cutler and the Bucher. qualify for Title I. Services, so each of them has a math intervention specialist that specifically doing math interventions, and then all of the elementary schools have some type of an LAC program. Um, which has, it’s, it’s run by, uh, the coach and Uh, the LACTACTAs who are all doing individual work with kids. So up until last year, last year was really the first year we really had moving and cooking and this year it’s, it’s kind of blowing much more smoothly across the process. So when you’re looking at, evaluations, for example, principal evaluation, and you say, OK, the, you know, constructional leadership needs improvement. So that’s my tool as a superintendent to say, here’s how I need to drive. Improvement on the instructional leadership side. Um, that’s part, again, part of the process, not, it’s not the public part of the process, but it’s, it’s part of the process of how We try to keep people moving forward. Mm I, I, I appreciate the explanation. Um, I do think that your strategy of Identifying data points that are more proximable and less delayed, that correlate well is sound. Um I I don’t mean to just, you know, go back to it. I, I am concerned about, about the process not Um, I just, I am, because I look at, um, you know, the The root cause analysis identified Really an administrative issue at the school. Um, in several different ways, um, and You know, I think that the administrative, um, principal. And the principals report directly to you. understanding Um And so I think that the the Solution that you’ve, that you’ve outlaid is great. I would love to see it as a District like Um Uh Uh, you know, problem improvement policy or something, so that Again, you know, people uh process, not people, right? When These folks aren’t in this room, if there’s a problem that’s identified, uh, and, you know, everybody is a different person in this role, that we know how we measure. Um, our success or failure in in real time as opposed to delayed time. Um Anyway, that’s got the advantage we have now, so When I took over in 21. There was At that time, uh, interim 2 interim principals. There were 2 people sharing the position. So then 22, 23, 23, 24, which is a window of time we’re talking about right now. That was a principal in 2223. came back in 23, 24 and then kind of left part at the near the end of the year, but, but finished out, um. And then now a new principle again, so that that change is also part of the problem, I believe the the leadership shift over and over and over, so you go back. Even before that COVID time when Jen Clifford was the principal. Then you had 2 interim principals, then you had a new principle. who stayed for another year and then was gone. To start another school and then you have a new principal again, who’s now going to get up and speed that that actually adds a detail in there that makes it, in my opinion, More important for us to be in the schools more often than not, so we’re in the Cutler school quite often. Doing walkthroughs, which is part of our process of and understanding, we have a process of Um Keeping up with pacing across the district. So what are the first grade teachers doing across the district where they are pacing, so the coaches do that work. Um, and they are using that information to To, you know, they may have to go to a teacher and say, hey, listen, you’re 2 units behind what’s going on, and then work with that teacher to figure out what’s happening, whether it’s a, you know, an issue with the understanding or process or whatever, uh, so all of those things are relatively new over the past two years, last year and this year as we built up this MTSS structure out of. Out of my first year of kind of Listening and learning about all the things that were going on. So, would you, um, be able to provide the school committee with like what what the what the process is for when something like this is identified, that you, you’ve just built this year, you’ve built this, this real-time evaluation process, right? Um, I think that would be, you know, excellent to to be able to have, um, and then it’s something that could be repeated. You know, down the line. What we do is usually at the like at the end of last year, we did. Uh, presentation of the school committee of the data and the processes along the way, so we would do that again, we would, because we, we want to look at a full year’s data where we do 3 points across the year. But we’re also doing um checks along the way, if you will, so progress monitoring for For kids all along the way. So it’s not just kind of one stop, one stop, one stop. It is one stop, check in, check in, check in, one stop. Some kids. They made their gains, they move out of the pro the process and we, some kids get pulled in in the process, so there’s always kind of that ebb and flow, but yeah, we can definitely do that. I think that’d be great. Yeah I’ve been, I mean. Part of the problem is also is you’re looking at 5 years of data. After COVID, everybody dropped. It didn’t matter what school you were at. What grade you were at everybody’s MCAT scores dropped across the board. So I think part of the reason this wasn’t identified sooner. Is separating out what’s an administrative issue and what’s a lingering COVID issue? Was hard until we saw a pattern of Bucher and Winthrop going up and Cutler knot. Uh That Made it, I think a lot harder to identify the problem as. Yeah. You’re looking at it, right, so I, you know, as I’m sitting here thinking. You know, about how much change has really went over those past couple of years. Right, we roll through 3 superintendents in 3 years. As well, right? um. Excuse me, uh, I just sort of all the, the switching of positions there, what, you know, I, I’m sitting here looking at like, OK, why do we get it right 66% of the time. And not 100 Right? Because we did, we did OK. But two of the 3 elementary schools we did with the 3rd, right? And so it should be concerning and we should. really be reassessing. The, the worst part of education is also the best part, right? It’s like we learn from our mistakes. You don’t want to make a mistake because it’s kids that were making, you know what I mean, they’re they’re sort of at the end of the day, this is a data this is kids that are. Now behind that we have to catch up, you know, and as you’re going through this process, I, I don’t, you know, like, oh well, this gap still continues cause everyone was for it. I’m like, oh, I don’t care about the gap. I don’t care about them. I care about the actual kids are getting what they need, you know, it’s so. Excuse me, unfortunately, you’re in the position where you. Get the brunt of, you know, we made a mistake here, but, you know, I also take it very personally ourselves. I go, OK, we have to do better, right? We’re all here for the kids. So we all have to do better and make sure that we’re identifying. This in a more real time basis. Excuse me, um, you know, so this, this really helps. In, in the, you know, your, your line of questioning is really helped me sort of think about this on that deeper level, so thank you for that also. I think it’s important to note that Previous to me, there weren’t a lot of moves made with Issues that were Not good. Um, so some of that stuff lingered, um, you know, we’re looking at it from Not only last year, this year, we’re also looking at next year when we look at this data and we start to say, Is this An occurrence at a grade level, is this an occurrence at a classroom level where these things happening and we’re, we’re very willing to, um, take those issues on, whereas in the past, probably hasn’t happened because of the change in leadership, you know, you’re like, new principal, you’re coming in, you’re building your culture, and next thing you know, you’re starting to have to confront an individual about what may or may not be going in the classrooms. It’s part of the job, and that’s, that’s the expectation, but there’s a fine balance there in your first year, the 2nd year, OK, now you can, you do that. So those are the conversations we’re having now in principals, OK. Looking at this data Tell me about this classroom. What are the things that are different in this classroom. Here’s what we see in classroom observations. How does that correlate or does it not correlate? So these are the conversations we’ve been having just this week and talking with uh, our principals about the gap closing strategies and how they relate to even the new implementation of our math program, you know, what’s that look like? Where are people, and it’s tough. The first year of any curriculum is hard. Um, that’s what teachers have seen things is the first time they see it, they’re kind of working through it. The 2nd year, so when we did the 2nd year of CQLA, the 1st year of CKLA, people were like, I can’t do this, I can’t keep up. 2nd year it was like, OK, I got it now and I got the gist of how it works, and then we started seeing that smooth out a little bit more and that’s where I think you started to see the, uh, implementation across the 3 schools, um, some of the the things that you see are very explainable based on the fact that the comfort level of some of the teachers with, with the, the materials, they were just kind of in the groove and and got got it and understood it and others still needed more coaching and that’s part of the this process that we built. Through the past 3 years, so it sounds like your first point on collaboration and coordination. Was that The principles as a group were making good decisions, but then the principal at Cutler just decided, well, I’m just gonna do my own thing. There was no follow through, right? Yeah. Um, That’s my major concern. How do we prevent that from happening again, which is why we’re meeting with them so much more often. Right. The part of that is we’re meeting with them. At their building to say show us. You know, so when we go to a building, we’ll say to a principal, what are we going to see today? And they’ll say we’re going to see 2nd grade CKLA and this is what they’re working on. We all have the access to the curriculum. We’ll go through that with the principal. We’ll go back and really have this whole conversation about the principal. What did you say? What have you seen? What are the consistencies? What are the inconsistencies. So those conversations have not happened up until just, you know, starting last year and this year. I think those are a big deal when you’re looking at, you know, changing a culture and changing a belief system. about what kids can or cannot do. Um, you know, and that’s, that’s been when you go back to when I was the principal of high school, the first thing I had to wrestle with was Believing that there were, there was not two different groups of kids, those kids and these kids, they were all of our kids and changing that mindset of saying they’re all of ours, we’re all responsible for that. So it’s the same type of an approach like, OK, make sure everybody believes that these kids can all do it, bring in the materials we’ve given them really strong materials, research-based materials. We brought in, uh, both this year, last year and this year, support systems from the state this year is TNTP and they’re a group that comes out several times a month. They meet with our coach. and our principals, they also walk through and sit in classrooms, they do observations, they give us feedback. That feedback is turned into action steps, those action steps then, so I will outline that for the committee. I think it’s important that you see the, the bigger picture of what’s what this has grown into since. When we started it 3 years ago, so it’s it’s important piece of the puzzle. I, I again, appreciate you putting the effort into this, and, um, the only additional request I would make, and I don’t know if it’s to you, Dana, is the um MCAS accountability report is a um item that’s up on the website, but it’s on the November 7th. Um, agenda, is it possible to link it to this agenda just so that there’s context. um Um, Hm That’s a good question. I not really because this agenda was posted as this and we can’t really add things. Um part of the, it could be, yes, it could be it could be in the minutes. Yes, right, um, in other words, we wouldn’t the The procedural reason is you wouldn’t want it to look like it was on that people would have seen it had it because that didn’t happen, so does that make sense? Um. But I do agree that that would be. Helpful information, so um, yes, but it certainly could be included in the minutes as something that was referenced and, and with a like that could be done. Um Yeah, and It could have been put on like I we could have done that and that might have been a helpful thing to put on as the exhibit, um. I think as long as they’re in some way, you know, linked so that there’s context to the discussion, it’s helpful. Thank you. All right, does anybody have anything else on that? You say it was November 7th? November 7th. Um OK, uh, so next up, um, the agenda item says Superintendent evaluation procedures and dates, um, ask for, um, all of you to kind of just, I’m asking you, basically pull out your calendars and um, what I’d like to do here is just have a real discussion about Um Like I said, procedures and dates, so when are we gonna, when are we gonna, you know, get the evidence from the superintendent and one of the evaluations can be done. Who is gonna we’re gonna submit them to. What date we’re going to vote on them. I have suggested dates, um, but I am gonna ask, I’m gonna pres, you know, sort of present what my thoughts are. We can have a discussion, and then I am going to ask for a couple of votes so that we all are, it’s clear that we’re all made a decision about. All of these things, um, so. Um As you all know, uh, one of the functions of the school committee is to annually, uh, review, um, and evaluate the superintendent. Um. And I worked, I’ll just tell you I worked backwards, um, so that, um, we would be able to um. have a vote on the. uh compiled evaluation in June. So I’m gonna just, if you guys really literally don’t mind pulling out your calendar so that you can hear what I’m saying. Um, what I’m looking at, and again this is just me thinking. It’s all open for discussion, but I was looking at Eric providing his final, uh, summative evidence. By April 17th, which we have a school committee meeting on April 17th. Um Then, um, On And again, these are just dates that I picked, you guys can, you know, um, we have a school committee meeting on May 1st. I was Looking to be having members submit their evaluations either by that May 1st school committee meeting or if people wanted another weekend, maybe we could make the deadline May 5th. Um That would allow a couple of weeks for uh compilation, and then we have a school committee meeting on May 15th where we could review. The draft And then we would have an opportunity at the. final 2 weeks later. On June 5th for a final vote. I know that was a lot of dates, but I don’t know what people think about that. Um Um I like the idea of the 5th as the due date. OK, all right, and, and I I’m sorry I didn’t hear that. OK. I do too, yes, and I actually that was my note. I actually have that written down and said, because I think that’s the feedback I’ve gotten in past years is that people like. To have a weekend, um. There Um So Those were a lot of dates. Just to be clear, we also have some other things we need to decide around. Um I’m gonna just sort of say a bunch of things and you guys can decide how we want to organize any votes. Typically what we’ve done for the past several years is that, um, because we have an election on April 10th. Um So if a member were to depart the committee on April 10th. Um, they would, in the past, what we’ve decided to do is that they would only be able to speak to anything that occurs before that date. So Obviously there’s, it’s a small window of time, but if there was something that A report or an incident or something that occurred that, you know, Never good or bad, that they, they wouldn’t actually be able to speak to that incident if it occurred after they had left. The committee. Um Again. I just throwing out what’s happened in the past, um. We in the past have not. Invited newly elected members to be invited in to write an evaluation, they would be elected on April 10th. It’s nearly the end of the year, so in the past we’ve not. invited them in again, open for discussion. Um. We’ve also in the past invited if a member were to have no longer be on the committee. We have typically invited, um, those members to come back and participate in the discussion. Um Of the evaluation. But As they are no longer members of the committee, they would not be able to vote. So that was a lot of thoughts, um. I don’t know if anyone wants to throw out anything on that, all those thoughts. It’ll be fine. I, I mean, I don’t really have anything to add. I think that has worked really well in the past. I think it makes sense that somebody who has And newly elected and only been on the committee for few weeks as of the time, or I guess 4 weeks. As of the time when something. I do It’s not really enough info. Right, the evaluation. So I, I like this. plan. Other people thoughts. We all know there’s one more decision too. Which is that, uh, we do need to decide once we decide on all the dates and sort of the rules about, you know, whether elected, you know, when the election who can. We can write. We also have to decide who gets to do the compilation, and that would also be who we would all be submitting those two on the due date, which Tentatively we’re saying May 5th. I don’t know Anyone’s enthusiastically volunteering to do that job. I have a question. Sure, when is the Compiled report due 15th. Well, it would need to be. If it’s on the May 15th agenda. It actually would need to be. The 12th at the latest, yeah, so that it could be posted so that people could review it. Right. And it’s actually, it is a valid concern is that we have 3 members who are up. In a contested election. So It Never not been in the contested election. Um So I don’t know whether that impacts wanting to delegate someone who May or may not be, but on the other hand, we could always. pick someone else afterwards. can still write, then can they still compile or no? Uh, I mean but we didn’t, we wouldn’t have, uh, anything to Compel them to do so, so um, I, I, I think it, I, I’m just trying to throw it out there. So, so I heard David say that he might be willing to do that compilation. Um, I don’t know if anyone else is jumping at doing I know that you’ve done it in the past. Um, I’ve done it in the past. If something weird happens with the election, I can take it over. So do we need a motion or like a nomination? Um, I do think so I think I actually do want to take a couple of votes. I don’t want to take too long on this, but I do want to take some, I think they’re probably easiest to do just as separate votes. Do you think we need a vote on who’s going to do the. Compilation. I do also want to vote about the dates that I we talked about just so that it’s really clear and then I will, of course, send out an email just so that everybody knows that I do want it. You know, I want it to be something that we’ve actually voted on, um. So I don’t know, David, if you wanna make a motion on the dates or do you want me to read the dates, OK. Um, actually we, so Superintendent superintendent. Summaries due April 17th. It’s summaries. Um To have the school committees. by May 5th. Yep, yeah. Writing initials that I’m not going to get and then um. To complete the draft by May 15th, uh. By May 12. For May 15th. Me. All right, I think I could do this. Yeah, my writing is terrible. Excuse me I moved at the Hamilton Regional School Committee. Approve the dates for the superintendent evaluation as follows. The superintendent summit of, excuse me, to be due on April 17th. The school committee’s individual. Um, evaluation submittals by May 5th. And the, um, compilation draft to be submitted. by May 12th For, um The May 15th meeting school committee meeting date discussion. 2nd. Second by Amy Kumberger. Um Are there any questions or comments on that? Going over my head if it makes sense, but. Alright, uh, looks like we’re ready for a vote, uh, Julia. Yes. Then Yes, yes. Uh, David. Amy and Dane’s a yes, and that motion passes. Uh, unanimously of the 6 members. presence. Um OK, uh do We have emotion for. the compiler. I have a motion. I move that the Hamilton Modern Regional School Committee. A point, David Polio as the compiler of the ative evidence for the superintendent. And as a backup, Jennifer Carr. Do we have a second? Second she said she would. All All All Um, all right, is there other questions? Discussion? OK, uh, David. Uh, Amy? Yes. Yes. is a yes, and uh that motion. Passes 5 to 0, uh. John Cars stepped out for a moment. Um, thank you. Um Oh, I’m just making a note. Um OK, uh, do we feel like we need any other kind of emotion regarding who’s gonna write and The newly elected members, anything like that? Do we feel like we’re I’m open to. You missed it, but we voted you in as the backup compiler. Um. So I just had a bunch of other, a bunch of notes which I said, you know, talking about newly elected members and about inviting departed any potential departed members to sounds like they’re no longer with us, but just no longer on the committee, um, to inviting them to participate. Again, that’s just been our historic practice. I don’t know if anyone feels like we need a motion on that. I I, I don’t think so. Which is fine. I just wanna, I just Didn’t want to do things Unilaterally. Excellent. Thank you all for walking through that. Process with me. Um All right, anybody else have anything on that? No? OK. Uh, alright, next up we have an agenda item which is just around external communications, um. And we’ve had some conversations about this and, um, I know it’s a very broad topic. I know, um, but Eric, uh, and I sort of did some work. We did discover sort of a useful. Policy that already exists that speaks to some of the concerns, um. That have been raised, um. I don’t actually, I don’t really have a lot of thoughts on how to actually structure this conversation. Um, I just know that. People are looking for, sounded like people are looking for sort of guidance around. Best practices about. Communicating I don’t know? Huh? What’s this link taking me to? It’s a policy, you’re not getting there? Oh. I was like, it’s a. Um, yeah, so, no, no, no, I, I mean, this is, it’s a school committee member authority and it does, it just addresses, it’s the BBAA school committee member authority and it addresses, um, some of the Duties and responsibilities and sort of um norms and guidelines that are norms and expectations, I guess, of. School committee members. I put this on here. I, I don’t have an a like I’m looking for what other people want to talk about about this or about something that isn’t addressed by this. I think that um I appreciate you putting it on here because I think that We live now in a world where there’s a town newspaper, there’s social media, um, and that means there’s lots of different ways for school committee members to um To, uh, speak, um, publicly in in in indelible fashion. Um And I think that it’s worth having a discussion of, um, you know, a concern was, was brought up previously about a public communication, um. I know that we want to preserve people’s um You know, uh, rights, um. You know, in Public communication, but also, I guess the, the thing that I find to be most useful about the discussion is how are we being like very, very clear to the public, when something is An individual’s opinion. And when it is not an individual’s opinion, right? Because that’s the, the first thing that I see here in the authority, um. Is like really a discussion of like the the times that you can and you cannot speak on behalf of the committee. And I think that the, the ways in which we communicate externally right now that can be muddied. Um, very easily, right? Like, I could write something on a Facebook post and I could use we, um. Or I could just, you know, respond without including Um, you know, any kind of pronoun whatsoever and Um, nobody, the, uh, I’m then um Depending upon everybody that reads that to be able to interpret that as, is that my opinion? Is that the opinion of the school committee? Um, and it just, it, it does, it does get confusing. And so I think that if we Um If we have You know, guidelines that we all agree to as we know. Um, you know, they don’t. I don’t know to what extent they can be binding, but at least they would be something that um everybody would be comfortable with, even if the messages that were said were not necessarily things that people agreed with. Yeah, and I, I did wanna add, which I didn’t put on here because it isn’t a policy, but I did. I actually printed it out because I didn’t realize it was gonna be quite so long, but um, The, you know, the MASC does have a handbook that does also speak to it, to this again. It’s You know they’re not It’s not a legal document. It’s a handbook. It’s, it’s a, um, but it does speak to social media and it does speak a little bit about it’s a useful document which Um, I’m happy to refer people to, um, I do think one of the things I found helpful in looking at policy and then looking at the handbook. You know, people absolutely have. Can Make statements on social media about their own opinions, and it is important to try to make clear that you are speaking as an individual and not for the committee, um, or if you’re speaking. For the committee Make sure that you’re saying that you’re speaking for the committee, um, one distinction that I found helpful when I was doing a little bit of research and thinking about this topic was, um, Thinking about whether the topic that you’re speaking to is something that is Going to be be going to be coming before the committee. Because You know, something that is going to be coming before the committee, um, you know, and this, the handbook speaks to this, but sort of gets is that you’re ideas that you’re, you’re supposed to enter the meeting with the potential to listen to your colleagues and Potentially change Your mind or come in uncertain about how you might want to vote and so That’s an area where one wants to be really cautious about putting something out if it’s a matter that’s going to be coming before the committee, um, wouldn’t that if it was a matter that we knew was going to become. Go before the committee and we posted it about on social media. Isn’t that a violation of open meeting law? Like I’ve been real careful about that. Well, it’s certainly if I, I, and I am, it’s certainly a violation of sort of what all of our sort of the policies and kind of the norms around the the ideas that that’s your job as a school committee member is to take that up in the committee and use your position in the committee. Does that make sense? I, I, other people can speak because I, I am not. I mean, the other thing I try and do in the very rare occasions that I have to email one of my kids. Uh, teachers about something as I always preface the email as I am speaking as a parent to you, not as a member of the school committee, and that’s literally like the 1st or 2 sentence in any email I send to a teacher. Um Just to make sure that it’s like completely clear. Yeah, and I would say that it’s That’s never a bad thing to do. And also, I would say, you know, in other words, if you’re Writing an email that is just simply You know, I have a question about yesterday’s homework assignment, um, that’s very clear that that’s Really just about I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement on every there’s nothing bad about doing what you’re doing, but I also would say, you know, there’s plenty of times it’s very clear that you’re talking specifically about your specific child and that. You know I think the open meeting law issue would be if. on social media, one of us. Posed or answered a question and they and the discussion started to happen that’s definitely a violation, you know. Agree with China. This does make things really muddy with social media, like, and I, I am careful about posting on social media. I try to just, if I rarely do, but if it’s like, you know, someone’s like, oh, I wish that there was a presentation about X Y Z and I could say, oh, there’s a presentation about XYZ next week because that’s just factual public info, but I try really hard not to express. Opinion about things that we’re discussing in the meeting, but I guess like reading through some of these policies, which I’ve actually been reviewing. Uh, for a different reason. There’s really not Um clarity around exactly how to. You know If two of us chime in on a post, nobody else can, you know, like it’s not that specific, so. It is just something to be careful about. You know, in, excuse me. The Sort of time that I that I I’ve been here, right, when stuff like this becomes an issue, it doesn’t matter what the policies and procedures are they’re gonna do it right and unfortunately that’s the unfortunate thing. I, I just think with sort of Um, time. Wisdom and sheer exhaustion. I have, you know, tried to I find myself sort of less and less like speaking. publicly, especially on social media about, which is very tough because, you know, right now trying to whip up support for a school vote, you know, so the other day I actually found myself. Responding to some stuff online, you know, I’m like, oh, no, here, but it was just a simple fact. You know, the new parking is actually has a queue for 70 cars. Oh, how is that, you know, and explaining the those fat and then, you know, but it’s so tough because at the same time too. No matter where I go in town. You know, people know who I am and And I’m on the school board, so when I’m having conversation. You know, about anything, so like, oh, what’s. You know what’s going on there and I’ll say, well, you know, Watch. You know, like, what I would like to see is this and hopefully the board. You know, we agree with it when we talk about it, you know, together and you know. But that, you know, but that’s what I’m like face to face. I I would never type anything. I think that is like a solid fact. Well, and that is an important difference because when you’re talking to one person face to face, it doesn’t invite. All the rest of the committee is not there to chime in. You’re not having a debate or discussion. You’re talking individually with a citizen. And And that is a different situation and that is something that’s changed that the landscape is different when you’re out in the social media. So I have a, I have a question that you kind of sparked when you were talking about. Um When you started your comment. What is, oh, I know, cause you were like, what’s to stop somebody really from saying what they want or doing what they want. And that’s kind of the question I’ve been having when we. discuss this topic. What is to stop any of us from Doing what we’re talking about. Like I don’t, I don’t want to. I, I really believe in these policies and the ethics of not speaking for this committee, but There’s not really a policy that says what happens if a member does and that’s true, and it really is a matter of and that our protocols kind of say something along the lines of when people get off track. They’ll get called out in this. Meeting and that’s really the only um. You know, there’s not. Right, we don’t have school committee jail a little bit like what is the action that we can take the current member of public office that can’t be recalled. Right. I, I, I’ve always thought that’s a little. It’s like if you can recall the select me you should be able to recall the school that’s too, so that’s only in the past couple of years, I yeah, I, and I, I don’t know the answer. I, I, but I do know that that is true because I have gotten to answer that question for members of the citizens, um recalls, um. So, yeah. Um So I think the accountability comes into this group. I mean, unfortunately, unfortunately falls on the individual. Right, and it falls on all of us as individuals but it also falls on the committee. Right, but The reality is there is no community jail. There’s nothing, right? So if you go through the process, and I’m not saying I know firsthand, but if someone on the committee was to file an open meeting law violation on the committee, the AG would then get back to whoever the chair might be and say you have to resolve this where you then take the entire committee and say we can’t do that anymore, and that’s the resolution which is the. problem in the first place. Yeah, not saying I know that from firsthand information, thank you for that, um. Yeah, and I, and I, and I think ultimately I, I mean, the ultimate Judgment is on at the ballot box with the voters, um, but that’s a long time and that’s not, I think. You know, I think it’s they’re having this conversation, right? as as much as I joke. Again, I’ve been here 9 years at this point. And I’ve had, you know. This Come up every few years or so, it just. And every time we go back, we look at The wording of the policy and everything, and we make it a little bit stronger, and the more you talk about it, the, the more solid. Do we create and the more solid base. Excuse me, um, you know, the committee gets and the foundation to continue. The work to move forward. So as long as we just sort of keep doing that, keep reminding ourselves why we’re really here, right? What we’re here to do and. And you know, um, At the end of the day we go home to our you you know we’re, you know, we’re OK and then, but like, you know, these conversations are always great to have. it Very frustrating at the same time. Um Oh And I think it needs to be made public. Like I don’t think any of us were aware. Of How Stressful, the problem was. Until we were informed what was going on. Yeah, and I, I mean, I, well, I guess that’s what I’m saying is that. When we were sort of Amy was sort of saying about what, what are the consequences and the consequences are, you know, it’s a fine line like people are people and I love, I mean, I think I love Trent having sort of push to have this conversation because maybe the answer is that it would be good. If There were an opportunity for people to bring forward questions before they take action in this meeting, like, you know. Um You know, or Ask ahead of time. I’d like to do. Something, and I’m not sure, and I, and, and that certainly, that has happened. I have had people email me and ask, you know, can I do something? And I’ve, you know, consulted with the MASC or whatever to find out like. Yes, you can do that. No, you can’t, um. But I think that it would be great if people were more proactive about. Like I’d like to do something and To David’s point, sometimes that’s not easy because you’re just looking at a post and you’re like, I can answer this, you know, um. And, but again, we all make mistakes. I mean, I. Uh, you know. So I don’t know that it needs to be called out every single time someone makes. A mistake. I that things happen. I mean, I You know, I’ve told many times before I was in the grocery store and I got a phone call from Michelle Bailey who was like, you cannot do that. Um, you know, and it was a genuine mistake. I, I genuinely. You know, had thought that I was within. Sure, I mean, it makes sense 3 years, I think it’s fair to have a little leeway, but I’m just thinking I haven’t gotten a call from Michelle. Well, just I think you, you brought this back to operationally. Is there operationally any, is there any operational You know, recommendation that we would like to, to make to committee members, like, I Jen was talking about, you know, If I’m gonna send an email to an individual teacher, this is what I do. Um, I’m Less concerned about 1 to 1 communications with there being a misapprehension of I’m speaking for the committee or I’m not. I’m, I’m more concerned about You know, a An editorial that is, you know, in a, you know, uh, something. 5 years from now, if it doesn’t say it explicitly, right? Um, and so I know that, um, Is, is that something that we would Say like You know, we want that moved to the front of, of, of a discussion like, and there’s no enforcement, it’s just like, that’s If you’re, if you’re going to have, you know, a The editorial or a social media post or something that could be um perceived as, you know, speaking not as an individual. a social media post, it’s harder to put that big long, you know, disclaimer, but in my opinion, is, you know, uh, an easy way of doing that. I don’t, so I’m gonna look like a Luddite when I’m talking about it it So you’re the smart one. Um, yeah, no, I, I think, um. Mm I certainly, I, I don’t know that we want, I, I, I like the idea of sort of establishing like the best. practices and norms is that it’s always good to say, to clarify I’m speaking just for myself or in my own opinion, or Something like that. Um You know, and, and remembering that there are You’re allowed to have opinions and you’re allowed to and and and even like. You’re And that does that disclaimer does. Allow you to do that. Um And that’s important to note, um. as a separate thing, there are separate sort of. Uh, norms around not doing that for something that’s going to be coming before the committee. Um So like it’s a very different thing, something that’s already been. Voted on by the committee and is now moving on. You know Saying your opinion on that, it’s, it’s, it’s already the committee has already made a statement on it. The committee hasn’t made a statement on something yet. Um I would caution people against. Putting a lot of opinions out there because the idea is supposed to be coming to the committee with an open. Mind or potential mind. That makes sense. Yeah. I, I appreciate the discussion. Uh, Julia, I don’t know if you have anything to I just making sure you don’t know, I appreciate the discussion. I think that all we can do is what we’ve been doing because there is no. You know, like you said, there’s no real consequence, um. Other than accountability and Having these kind of open conversations. So I think it’s just important to, to continue the discussion and to share resources like this, as, as much as we can. So I pretty much agree with everything that was said. Yeah, and I’m happy to, I mean, I know you could all find it, but I’m happy to send the link to the MASC handbook, um, which did does have sort of an ethics. Uh It’s not a chapter. It’s like a few pages, a couple pages on, um, that was, I, I thought helpful, not, nothing, not that it was brand new, but just helpful and Sort of spelling it out Um OK, are we ready to move on? Mhm OK. Uh, Vinny? Mm You’re gonna do the prior year invoices first, right? Yeah. OK, the first thing on my agenda for tonight is approval on prior year invoices. Uh, now what happens here is, as you know, on June 30th, our fiscal year ends on about. Uh, the middle of July we officially close our books if an individual ordered or uh Contracted within an individual and did not submit an invoice or did not submit a purchase order by the time I close the books in July. Um, they don’t have any funds in cumber. Therefore, any invoices have to be brought in front of the school committee for approval, uh, because mass general law states that we can’t pay prior year invoices with current year funds. Uh, this happens, we bring this forward to the school committee, probably 2 times a year. Any invoices we receive after or around July 15th, we usually hold on to them till about the October, November time frame and then bring all of them forward for vote and then anything we we receive after that, we usually hold till about February or March and bring it forward again, uh, instead of bringing them one by one because it would almost be every other meaning you’d be voting on one invoice, uh, today, we just have 4 invoices, uh, the bulk of them are invoices that were. Left behind by an individual who doesn’t work here anymore, so they Uh, their employment ended for whatever reason on June 30th, and we subsequently received invoices after that and then the 4th invoice, uh, the vendor did not send it to us until about October. for these 4 invoices, uh, so we can get the vendors paid. OK, thank you, uh, David, do you wanna start us off with a motion? Um, I moved the Hamilton Regional School Committee. Oh Approve the payment of the. Invoices. That’s agenda. Um Under new business. Letter F. 22 by Amy Kumberger. Uh, anybody have questions? Is there any discussion? Alright, looks like we’re ready for a vote. Uh Oh, Julia Yes. Trent. Yes Uh, David Yes. Amy. And Dana’s a yes and that uh motion is approved unanimously of the 5 members who are present. So my next item for tonight is to review the FY 25 year-end financial forecast as of quarter 2 ending, uh, December 31st, 2024. Uh, before I dive into it, there’s just one thing I want to mention or maybe one thing I hope you take away after all this is. Although we’re considered a small school district, we do have a $45 million budget, and there are a lot of things going on, uh, every year. By the time we, uh, approved the budget on February 8, 2024, and by the time we end on June 30th, 2025. In that 17th month period, a lot of things can happen that change from our budget to our actual, and on top of that, there are a lot of moving parts to the budget. You have all your expenses, your revenues and your offsets, changes in any one of them. are going to be reflected in your changes, uh, to your forecast. So if there’s one thing you take away is that there is a lot going on and a lot of things can change before the year is over. Uh, so ultimately, uh, we are happy to inform you that at this time we’re projecting we will end fiscal year 25 in a positive balance of approximately $430,000 as you see after I go through the presentation, this really is uh an extraordinary feat, uh, considering what is going on this year. Uh, this is that chart based on our department or location are 5 schools and our 7 district-wide departments, uh, spread out. is that $430,000 balance. This is that same chart based on the 12EI categories, uh, the Department of Secondary, uh, elementary and secondary education, states that are regional school district has to monitor and approve their annual operating budget based on these 12 DEI categories, uh, you’ll notice off to the right is my projected column. There are currently 7 deI categories that I am projecting my end, uh, in a deficit at year end. Tonight we are only asking for transfers for 4 of them. If you notice the 3 in the middle, uh, they’re really small balances, and I don’t. Uh, I think that by the time the year ends, we might be able to close that gap and not need the transfer, uh, and the reason for that is, once we start issuing transfers and we start moving the money around, it definitely gets a little more complicated and a little more confusing, so I always try to at least leave as much of the budget as the original to help explain everything. When we come to Q3, if those 3 Uh, DESI categories are still projected to be in a deficit. I’ll ask for a transfer at that time, uh, but tonight, as you’ll see later in the presentation, I’m only hitting on the other 4. So like I do with all of my presentations, I really try to make as much detail in it as possible. Um, there are 19 slides towards the end of this, uh, presentation that break out all 12 of our schools or departments. Uh, based on all 12 of the DEI categories. So even if we had one teacher that was at one school in one DI category that worked one additional hour that we didn’t budget for that additional funds are listed out in the detail at the end. Uh, so I literally detailed out every single change in value, no matter how small or no matter how large. Like most of my presentations, I’m not gonna go through all of that detail. I’ve made a couple summary slides that I’m going to go over and then I’m going to advance to a few of the detailed slides that I’d like to go over with you, uh, because I think they’re big ticket items that you should at least know a little bit more about. Uh, so obviously the first thing on here, uh, in terms of the summary, we’re gonna go over our deficits first, uh, the big, the big thing is our negotiations. Now everyone has heard me talk about it at nauseam as it relates to the 26th budget, uh, for those in the audience or at home who haven’t uh listened when we created our, when we approved our budget on February 8, 2024, only one of our 5 union contracts were settled, uh, therefore, we had a put an estimate on what we thought our cola was going to be, our cost of living adjustment. When those 5 contracts were finally settled, uh, the result left us in a deficit of about $1 million in our salary accounts. So again, we put in an estimate of what we thought everyone’s salaries were gonna grow year over year and those actuals came in, which resulted in a deficit of about a million dollars spread out across the school. In addition, another deficit we’re facing is in our out of district costs. Uh, one thing I will point out is the balance you see here is not the ending balance that I’m going to discuss in a moment, uh, but it is a large deficit that we do have to deal with. Uh, there’s two sides of it. There’s the tuitions where we have projected a $435,000 deficit, uh, before offsets and then our transportation, uh, deficit for our district is coming in at roughly 260. 4000. Uh, the last thing in terms of our deficits is our building and our building equipment, uh, as many of you know, most of our schools are about 70 years old and this year, more than any year since I’ve been here, our equipment is really failing, uh, at a much higher rate, uh, Curtis has been ripping out the hair that he doesn’t have on his head over the past few months, uh, related to all the equipment that’s failing. Uh, the biggest thing, as we’ve discussed with you, is the high school and middle school boilers, uh, at this time. we are estimating that we might, uh, end with a $485,000 deficit that I will go into a little bit more detail in a moment. I do have a minor update to the slide as it relates to Buker’s uh flat portion of the roof that I’m gonna get into more detail and the detailed slides, and then last, our high school and middle school AC uh air handler unit in the library failed at the end of last summer, and we’re estimating that that is going to cost an additional 140,000. that this year. Uh, on the flip side, we do have some surpluses that are helping us out in handling our deficits, uh, one big thing is some of the, uh, great financial decisions that Eric had made over the past few years as it relates to our audit district tuitions, uh, ever since COVID back in FY20, uh, the district has prepaid tuitions every single year. They’ve ranged anywhere from $1 million to 1.4 million, uh, for those of you who are here. In FY20 when the schools closed, uh, we were left with the residual balance at the end of the year. Uh, we had thought when FY21 was going to start, that we were gonna have a huge surplus of new expenditures, whether it was PPE or whether it was some sort of equipment to help with the hybrid, new technology, so the decision was made at the time to use FY20 funds to prepay FY21 tuitions, which ultimately frees up that money in FY. 21 to spend on something else. Well,, 1 FY21 ended, the exact opposite happened that we thought was going to happen. We spent less money than we anticipated. Therefore, every single year we’ve rolled forward those prepaid tuitions, uh, saving them for a rainy day and for FY 25, uh, it’s A monsoon, as you’ll see in a moment. Um, one other thing is around our health insurance. Uh, this is the area you may have heard me talk about a lot. This is really where I set aside. Um Kind of additional funds to help us out during the year, uh, in case we have any unforeseen items. So with health insurance, there is a lot of moving parts. Just to go through some of them, you have our participation rate. So when we set our budget, we take our very last invoice, which is either January or February, depending on, uh, which one we pull and we budget for exactly how many people are enrolled in health insurance on that day and what plan they’re in. But when the next year rolls over, we could have a drop in participation. So not only are we budgeting for every single member that is enrolled as of that day. If we have any vacant positions in the budget, we also budget full health insurance benefits for all those positions. When we approve the FY 25 budget, there was 12 vacant positions. Out of those 12 vacant positions, only 5 of them actually enrolled in health insurance, which ultimately, uh, represented a $240,000 surplus from those individuals not taking health insurance. Uh, it’s about a $22,000 for each individual’s, uh, benefits in their health insurance for a family plan, and we budget the full family plan cost for each of those vacant positions, making sure we cover our liability. it could ultimately happen. Every one of those people could enroll in our health insurance. It is unlikely, but it could happen, and this is again where we see some of that residual balance at the end of the year, uh, because it’s unlikely going to happen, so I try to build in some of those additional funds within the health insurance. We also have a, uh, this year, unlike other years, we have a what I’m calling a negotiation placeholder, uh, so as I mentioned, we didn’t have all of our union contracts settled when we approved the budget. The COA that I placed into the budget. After seeing what was going on in other communities, I felt might have been a little light, so I tried to incorporate a few additional funds, the $184,000 is equal to a 1% cola for the entire district. So I incorporated a, a more funds within our health insurance account, uh, to cover any additional cola that may have occurred. In addition to all of these, you have your health insurance premium rate, so everyone knows that your health insurance increases year over year. For our FY 25 budget, uh, working with, uh, NFP, our insurance brokers and Harvard Pilgrim, when we set the budget, I set it at an increase of 9.99%. They had told me to do 10%, but it really just didn’t feel right to me to be double digits, so I made it 9.99 to make myself feel a little bit better when we actually went to negotiate, we were able to negotiate a 4.9% increase, uh, so that is a reduction of 5. 9%, which on a For, uh, which on a roughly $3.5 million line item represented $164,000 savings because of that reduced uh health insurance premium rate that we were able to negotiate. In addition to these three things, when we go to set the budget, uh, like I said, we incorporate the benefits for every individual who is actually enrolled, but we also build in an additional 1 to 2% for enrollment growth, because anyone at any time could walk into the door and say my spouse lost their health insurance, they lost their job. I need to enroll in the district’s health insurance. So we always try to build in a little bit more for any of those instances, and again, 1 or 2%. So that additional participation growth was about worth about 82,000 and as I mentioned before, our participation actually dropped. So not only do you have that drop in participation, but now you have that additional, um, growth rate that also is going to be left at year end. Uh, the last item just for our surpluses is around our salary savings from vacancies. Uh, this is an item we see every year. It really varies from year to year and it’s very unpredictable, uh, for FY 25 if our vacancies continue for the remainder of the year, uh, we will be looking at Uh, a balance across the district of about 350,000. Now this could change, we could have one of those positions filled, uh, tomorrow, and this number would be reduced by the time the year ends. Uh, one of the biggest positions we currently have as a vacancy is our school psychologist, uh, where we budgeted about $101,000 for that position, and it has been vacant for the entire year, and we anticipate it will stay vacant till year end. OK, so like I had mentioned, I usually try to detail out all of the, uh, additions and subtractions in our variances throughout the year. Uh, I’ve included here our summary chart. I’ve tried to categorize all the major expenses, uh, and put them all into buckets. This is included as an exhibit, uh. In your school committee packet if you want to see it a little bit bigger. Uh, one thing I would like to point out that I noticed, uh, this week, I did make a little bit of an error. It does not change the bottom line, uh, but historically, when we set our budget, we know what everyone’s salaries are going to be for the next year. So when we put in their budget and the next year actually comes, when we run our analysis, most people come up as 0 because we budgeted exactly what their salaries are going to be. If a variance does pop up, there’s really only 3 reasons it would happen. You have your salary scale advancement, so somebody submitted, uh, to move along the columns in the salary schedule, but didn’t meet the requirements and therefore did not move and did not receive that higher salary. So you would see savings there. Uh, the second reason is turnover so that individual was here, we budgeted for them, uh, but for whatever reason, they’re not with us this school year, and we have a balance left over from their salary. The third reason is really just an error. I put in the wrong amount for their salary, and now there’s some sort of variances there. The error that I made was around the salary scale advancement. So for this year, there was a 4th thing that threw it off, and that was the cola. So everybody was coming up as a variance because we did not budget enough for their salaries. It skipped my mind that out of that number, I should have backed out the salary scale advancements for the people that did, that did not fulfill the requirements. So I incorrectly I counted here at the bottom for the additional FY 25 cola of roughly a million dollars. It should be about $80,000 higher, and there should be one other line item on the left-hand side for salary scale advancement savings. It does not change the bottom line, they would still be 428,000 at the end. It’s just where I categorized that, uh, in case somebody is looking for that number, uh, within this chart. So if there’s no questions there, I’m gonna advance to uh the few detailed slides I want to go over that I wrote the numbers down for somewhere. I can just click. So the first one is maintenance, uh, as I had mentioned, um, a lot of our equipment is failing this year. So there are two big ticket items that we’re looking for, uh, transfers for tonight. Again, that is the high school and middle school library AC unit. Uh, I believe at the, uh, during last summer, um, a lot of it was leaking. We tried to repair it, uh, it did not last very long, and it started leaking again, I believe a few weeks later. Uh, so at this time, we are going to put out to bid. replacement of that AC unit on top of the library, uh, we’re estimating that that will cost about $140,000 sorry, one thing I wanted to mention, uh, DESE has rules on where these things get categorized. So if we make an upgrade to one of our pieces of equipment, and it is less than $150,000 it gets classified as extraordinary maintenance and falls to our maintenance dock. $150,000. Uh, it gets categorized as a capital item and goes on our capital in fixed assets, DAC. So because these, this item is under 150,000, it’s why it’s in this spot right here. The second item which we are Not completely committed to yet is fixing the Cutler parking lot. Obviously all of the upgrades we’re making at this time we’re really, we’re really not focusing on Cutler and Winthrop. However, it is a little bit of a safety issue. We really want to see what happens with the vote before we determine exactly what we’re going to do here, but I am setting aside about $50,000 to fix some of those gaping holes that are there. Uh, we did have a few students and a few employees, um, trip in those. areas, uh, so at the very least, we’re at least gonna fill the holes, but again, it really depends on what happens with that vote on what direction we take. Uh, the next item here is around our capital acquisitions and improvement and replacement of our fixed assets. Uh, so right now, this number needs to be updated, uh, as I mentioned before. So, Eric, uh, myself and Curtis, uh, met last week and one of the discussions we had was around our year-end balances. Uh, so we were looking at it and we were determining that we were probably gonna be somewhere around our 430 to about 600,000 at year-end. Uh, so we came together and really tried to find what kind of project or project being one, because there is a lot of projects. that we can tackle between now and year end. Um, as I said, we’re really trying to stay away from Cutler and Winthrop, and as you can see, we are putting a lot of money at the high school, middle school already, so obviously we went and turned to Bucher. Um When you look at Bucher, you look at the heart of the building. What do we really need for the place to function. You need your heat, your roof, your buildings, and your ventilation. While our boilers were replaced here about 6 years ago, so those don’t need any replacing. Uh, so then we looked at the roof. There’s two different sections of the roof here. You have your original building where the roof was replaced, uh, about, I think 18 years ago I think 18 years ago I think 18 years ago I think 18 years ago and then you replaced, I and there’s the flat portion in the back, uh, that needs some work done. So one of the items we thought was to start working on replacement of the roof in the back of Bucher. Uh, we estimated about $200,000 to replace. that. However, since we met, uh, and discussed the Bucher roof, we received an update from our engineers on the high school, middle school boiler replacement and the new estimate they gave us was 210,000 more than what I built into this budget. We are going to be putting that out to bid within the next 3 weeks. If that value comes back the way they think it is, we might not work on the Buka roof this year. We might have to divert all those funds to the high school boiler because that is much more of a priority for us right now if anyone’s uh driven behind the high school, middle school, we have rented a 18 wheeler trailer that has a Boiler rental inside of it that is currently heating our building. Um, it is very expensive. It burns oil and not gas, which is twice the price. Uh, so really, the high school and middle school boiler are a lot bigger priority than the current uh. the roof. But again, if those bids come back lower, we’ll probably focus on the Buca roof or if between now and Q3 if additional funds free up, maybe we still look at doing the buka roof, but currently right now, that is being put on hold and all those funds are being diverted to the high school boiler replacement. Uh, we are currently estimating that the boiler will cost somewhere in the, in the forecast right now, we were budgeting at about 450. We are moving that up to about 650. and At the boilers that are currently there. OK. One last thing, I’m gonna go over is the special ed um out of district tuitions. Before you move on. Um, you can, you can just like do a hand signal, I’ll I’ll interrupt you, um. The, so, um. That’s a lot. Yep Is there any way in which the decision for next fiscal year to use END. To cover operational expenses is stealing resources from this. Um Yes, if we didn’t have the funds this year to cover. So if we didn’t have the money this year, We wouldn’t have, probably would not have made that recommendation to do that for the. 26 budget. Does that make sense? So yeah, I’ll, I’m gonna ask questions slightly differently if we didn’t make that decision. Does it change the way that you approach these. problems Moving forward We Did not do that, no, because I would still choose to use this year’s funds to replace the high school, middle school boiler. We have to start that process right now. If we wait till July till July 1 to start that, we will not have heat. I, I hear you, yeah, and we don’t need the heat in July in June, right? We need it, we now, um. Are there any of these capital projects. That are going to. Uh, bleed over into the next fiscal year. In And will those projects be impacted by that decision. Uh, some of them may bleed into next fiscal year and. to do that means there’s Almost no funding for those projects. Um, unless we free up funding within our 26 budget or unless, uh, we get approval to use some of our capital stabilization. So we do still have, we could still act on some of these things if they were an emergency, but yes, making that decision does pull away resources. From our And Anything that we don’t know that’s going to break from July 1 on. So then what is going to I’ll stop and let others comment, yeah. OK, um. Um, I guess if, if that does happen if we do have these projects that bleed over and or something else breaks, let’s just assume that’s a probability. Right Um Are we not going to potentially, let’s say we have a $250,000 unanticipated cost that year. cruise next year. Are we going to not have the ability to respond to it. Because of the decision to use END to cover operational expenses. Uh, I will say our ability to respond to it is a lot lower. It is not completely out. There are other resources, uh, we could draw upon, but with that decision. Lows our ability to react to. Yeah, no, it does. And then the light dimmed like has the same effect at the moment. That is without a doubt pulls away from our ability to respond to any. Going down next year, OK? So then if, if we do run out of money next year to fix these things, what is, do we have to go to a special To vote Uh I would what the committee wants to do, my recommendation would probably be to tap into E&D. though So Residual balance in our END that we could use for something like this, but the towns would have to approve it. The voters would have to approve that. In addition, we still have approximately $500,000 in our capital stabilization fund that we transferred this year that we could tap without. approval $500,000 that’s like one air conditioning unit. Or like a dozen eggs, yeah. I, I, I, I will say I, I find. You’re panic I, I hold off So, uh, the Q3 report because they think it’s a much, you know, we, we see where the like, oh wow, we have no money or You know, there’s a little bit more, but your concerns are definitely very valid. especially the way they seem to be breaking around here. And to be honest, my Q2 is still conservative. When we get to Q3, I really Unleash the funds that I don’t think we’re going to spend just as an example between Eric and I, we probably have about 70,000 in just Um, had a word for it Contingency fund, sorry, that aren’t included in that 4 170,000. So I have not incorporated that we are not going to spend those. Y really Kind of unleash the what I don’t think we’re gonna spend. I still have some reserved here. And there are assumptions made that every budget holder spends everything that happened that never happened. So we know we’ll get some bounce back. But I do want to actually say the level of panic you have right now really is your true welcome. You know, you’re you’re Yeah there’s just so many balls in the air. Should I move on to my tuitions, Um So I’m just gonna start in a different order that’s presented here just to help kind of explain it right here it’s just in, uh, order of the dollar value, uh, but when we create our 25 budget and we’d look at what we anticipated we were going to spend for out of district tuitions were coming in at about 435,000 over budget. So that means either we have additional students that were outplaced, which I believe is not accurate. I believe there’s only one difference what it really is is the students that we did budget for. are going to either more expensive schools have raised their price more than we, uh, raised our budget for it. So because of that, uh, we’re looking at a $435,000 projected deficit for the tuitions. Uh, that’s what you saw on the, um, second slide I went over. However, we are receiving an additional $120,000 in a circuit breaker offset. So that’s the state reimbursing us for our out of district tuitions that we spend. It’s a mandate that they put on us and they fund some of it. They don’t fund all of it. We’ve gotten word that we’re going to receive a about another 120,000. That would bring our $435,000 deficit to somewhere around $315,000 deficit. In addition to that, as I had mentioned, we had prepaid $1.3 million in tuitions at the end of last year. If we did not do this, I would be seeing a much different story right now. We would be talking about hiring freezes, expenditure freezes, and a complete budget freeze. Which means we would be telling teachers and principals. You’re not buying anything else for the rest of the year. Whatever is in your building right now is what we’re using. There’s no more orders for your pens, your paper, whatever you’re ordering is completely on hold until July 1st. Whatever vacant positions we have right now, we’re taking them off school spring and we’re not hiring them. If a vacant position occurs next week, for whatever reason, uh, someone comes in and says they’re resigning. We are not replacing that person because we need to bridge that gap and cover our deficits. So if we did not prepaid tuitions, we would be in a much dire situation right now. I understand that not everyone loves the prepayment of tuitions. It definitely makes things confusing, but again, if we didn’t do this, we would pretty much be in a $700,000 deficit right now. And We were trying to be coming up with ways on how to cut our costs between now and June. However, yep, you can, yep. you need a drink. OK, so. This is for this year. We use last year’s money to pay for this year’s tuitions. Did we do the same thing for next year? On here I’m stating that we might do it, but only for $100,000 next year, and it’s for the same reason we have been doing it to just give us some sort of However, If something happens between now and June, I’m just. The boilers at uker go down and it’s another 600,000, but we won’t prepay any tuitions and we’ll use all that money to do it. But if we end the year right now, as I think we’re gonna at roughly 430. I will be asking you guys if we can prepay a little bit for 26, but it’s It’s less than 10% of what we prepaid for 25. That is correct. And I would be more than happy. I just didn’t. This was me introducing that I wanted to do it again. If we have Um, a larger The decision really needs to be made, because remember, whatever we end with this year. Is gonna go into our 27 budget. And remember in 26, we use 2 million. To supplement the budget. So The discussion really needs to happen at Capitol, how we want to end Um 25 We gonna the 27 budget Use some of it to fix something else. Are we going to use some bit to prepay, to help if anything happens and 20 6. So That will be discussed in capital before. year round. This was me introducing that. I still would like to prepay. If, if we assumed that next year, It’s going to be similar to this year. And that meant that if we didn’t. prepay $1.3 million of tuition. We would be in that bleak. future that you just described that $1 million in additional cola. OK. We have settled contracts for 26, and we incorporated That additional million into the budget. So it, it In terms of salaries, it won’t be as bad in 26 as it was in 25. In terms of building stuff. I’m not sure. OK, so that, that almost reassured me and then it went back. day. I have a question. It sounds like there was some surprise about the rise in cost of tuition for this. My item, do you, is there any way to anticipate or know whether that will happen again. Um, OSD has already set their rates for next year, I believe it’s like 3.6 problem here was we had students switch schools. Um So like, you know, how would you know that? Yeah, that’s really no way to anticipate that, especially, uh, 9 months before the school year starts. OK. Um, the state does have mechanisms to help out with that. Uh, if you do, if your tuitions. I believe if they rise, uh I think it’s 15% year over year. There’s something called extraordinary relief, where they give you more circuit breaker money to help offset that. Uh, we are under that threshold at the moment though, so. OK on that slide. Yeah Um, so just to go over it tonight, we are asking for the transfer of our 4EI categories, that’s our teachers, our pupil services, our operations and maintenance in our, uh, capital and fixed assets. Again, our teachers, um, it’s related to our additional cola, our pupil services really relates to our, um, deficit in our outer district transportation, and then obviously our operations maintenance and our capital, uh, revolves around the additional need to replace. high school boiler and the AC unit. school we’re asking for those 4 transfers, uh, so we can get going on some of those projects. questions. I forgot to mention this. I’d like to at least extend an offer. I know a lot’s going on and I know it’s confusing. If anyone wants to meet and talk about it, uh, one on one and go into the numbers a little more or just understand better how the budget process works. Please don’t hesitate to reach out. That’s what I’m here for. I understand it’s confusing. I applaud you for understanding how it is through my, you know, 6 budget presentations a year. So if you really have further questions or you go home and you think of a question, really don’t hesitate, don’t hesitate to ask, so. Thank you. And I’ve asked many a question, so. He’s telling the truth. They’ll go through it. Um, Do you wanna start us off with the most? Uh, excuse me, I moved the Hamilton and Regional School Committee approves the FY 25 operating expense budget transfers as recommended here. In by the superintendent of Finance Administration and is presented on the previous slide entitled FY 25 Q2 transfer request. Second by Amy Kluberger. Um Hold on one second. Right. OK Um, OK. Uh, does anybody have questions? Mm mm scatching. Um OK, uh, So I think uh Julia has departed the meeting. So, um, all right, so. Now we are all in the room, so, um, looks like we’re ready for a vote and we no longer need to do a roll call, um. Everybody’s clear on the motion. Right, all those in favor. That is unanimous of the 4 members present, and the motion passes. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, very nice. I like the juggling. That’s very nice. That. Excellent. Um, all right, uh, let’s, uh, run down some committee reports, uh. Capital finance. I Let me see. on OK, yes, we did meet. I, I wrote down 3 or 4 p.m. but not the date, so we met on a date at 3 or 4 p.m. and um Vinny went through a presentation on the budget projection at the end of the year. Um And regaled us again with the importance of the tuition prepayments that we just heard about and then we scheduled our next meeting for March 17th. OK Thank you. Um, palsy. policy. So I finally got a good. Number of dates to meet. I’m just waiting on Janelle Dia back to me about a couple of evening dates. OK, and now it sounds like you guys have 2 tasks tasks now. I wrote them down. Excellent. I can put together an agenda. Yep. Great. Uh, negotiations. Mm Nothing to report. Um, and then we have a secretary report. So yeah, uh he emailed out earlier. A very in depth and extensive. Deep dive that uh Janelle. Did, uh, using. But I will say that I came up with the idea for the spreadsheet but um yeah, she went back uh. I think found every missing thing since the beginning of time here. Um, cause there are a few from, you know, 2017 that. I don’t even know how to begin trying to search for that stuff. I’ll check my notes, seeing as I was here bridge and like, I mean, I could guess, but. But we have to figure out what’s gonna happen if those can’t be found, but they, I did see the data went through and actually threw a lot of notes on here, yeah, so those there’s 4, those are accurate, those 4 that say duplicate dates that they are, they’re accurate, that they are missing, but they are also listed above, so they’re listed twice. I just sort of forwarded this out, um. Just to get it to everybody, but I definitely have to go and do a deeper dive myself, so I’m, I mean, I’m hoping I, I, and it’s very funny because to Trent’s point, I did think to myself, I’m going to write on this document, it’s a shared document. Is this going to be OK? Is it, I really thought about it. I really was like, we are not deliberating. I’m telling you I have a draft um so it’s um, so. Um, and then I just wanted to say on one of the things that I filled in, one says Amy wrote the draft, Dana has it, I have it. You wrote it. And for some reason I have it, so I’m really like draft that you wrote. I don’t know why it’s in my, but it is, and I have it, um, and then figure out throw them all on a cassette, so what I was saying, so I did, I briefly spoke to Janelle this morning because I was saying to her. Like as an example. Uh, you’ll, if you’re looking at the document that David shared, I have a draft of capital finance minutes from 2022. I have it in my file. And so I thought to myself, well, can, can I just send it to Janelle? And she said to me, yes, if you send me a draft and say, Put this on the next agenda. She’ll do that. So like if I sent her the. Capital finance minutes from that date in 2022, she’ll put it on your next capital finance. Oh, I see. OK. Agenda. for you to review. I mean, I don’t know that that’s what the, uh, but I mean, it seems like. I mean I mean I mean we could just put on as long as it’s not. You know, anything we did, um, You know, an executive session that we could just put it on a cassette agenda to approve. As a committee, no, I think that that’s probably true because most of the other drafts that I have are all negotiations, which all do have executive sessions, which is why I was not thinking that way, um for a for a negotiation session, right? A Yeah. So, yeah, so, I mean, I think absolutely. So would then the procedure be then if people have these, they should send them all to you, or do they, should they send them to Janelle to say let’s Compile a uh. Well, all I would do is forward them to Janelle. So I don’t know if it’s easier for her. I’ll ask her. OK, and just let us know procedurally what you want us to do because I did, I have, I just was, I asked her about that specifically about that capital finance one, and she said, well, yeah, they just put it on and then whenever they have the next meeting, it’ll be on there. And you know, it’ll be fascinating reading about what happened in May of 2022, you know. Um, this is what you really start to figure out who who really runs the show. Um So, OK. Um, but The hope is that people will go through and. Um Oh yeah, I mean, I, I am. And I could just ask that where I wrote down, Dana has notes. Mm-hmm Notes is Broad The term So let’s just say if you have notes, you might want to say. You might want to actually chime in. It’s not like a draft is like I’ve got it. I got this, um. So. OK. I’m just looking. I just added another. Executive session that I know I have, so I’ll go through. Thank you for putting this together. This is really. I. All right, so, um, you know, we are meeting next week if possible, I would like to put this, um. Under the Secretary report next week just pop everybody look at this so that we can just say who’s filled it in, where, what is, what’s missing. Um, when I was on with Janelle, I also did sort of talk about um. sort of format for the um Minutes, they can definitely be brief and to the point, um, but I will ask that we put them in. You know, they should be in full sentences and With some level of punctuation they should need to be. Edited just they should need to be. Ready for public. Viewing because it is the official. Right, exactly. I goes back to those notes I was talking about are gonna need some. Um, OK. Anybody have anything else on that? No. OK. Thank you again, Janelle. Yes. And. Um, all right, to you, Eric. All righty. We have some good news that we received yesterday in our MSBA. We attended the MSBA, uh, Board meeting, uh, they, at which they have, uh, voted to approve the Cutler Elementary School project in Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District to consolidate the student population of the existing Cutler element elementary school in Winthrop Elementary School and construct a new facility serving grades 1 through 5 on the site of the existing Cutler Elementary School. They approved the maximum total facilities grants of 48.9 million, um, and Um, the possibility of increasing it to a higher number of 49.7 million based on owner’s contingencies throughout the project. Uh, we have 120 days after this notification to uh send in all certifications of local approvals for appropriation and necessary local votes, um, showing acceptance of the cost of site, the type, the scope, the timeline and the cust for the, for the entire project. Uh, we get those votes from the town clerks when the town meeting’s over, uh, and when, uh, the ballot is is finalized, so we’ll, we’ll Cross our fingers for those two days and take that information and. Send it back to the, the MSBA if The community votes to Support this project at Both town meetings and both uh ballot boxes, the uh state would then execute a contract with us. Which basically is a contract, uh, that supports this document and the approval by the board, um, that they would They’re very willing to be involved in paying the grant amount. And in within our project, so that’s, that’s good news for us. We, uh, we wanted to try and get that done before we got into town meetings, so we knew our final numbers, so we, we had that. Meeting yesterday, uh, Dane and I attended along with members of the, the project team, uh, Vinny as well to to. And Curtis was on that call as well, so it was, it was exciting. We had a number of our, we had a state rep on there. Ms. Gassner, who uh spoke. Uh, about the project as well, so. Um Good support all around and we’re looking forward to continuing the process in the same vein last night. I did the 5th and final, uh, public forum, uh, for the project. In which we did a day in the life of a first grader, um, we had a new video set created to help us to, uh, vis help people to visualize that and what it would really look like. We also went over the tax implications for both of the towns, uh, using the information that we have received from both Hamilton and Wenham Fincoms. I got to say both groups did a fantastic job of breaking down the data, simplifying the data, and really going deep into the numbers. If you want a lesson in regression theory, um. When I’m been comm took 2 full meetings and went through. Uh, a fabulous breakdown of the numbers and whether or not they were willing to support it and, uh, both incoms are supporting. This project as presented as the best option given all of the, um, the, the things that are, are happening around the community, uh, along with our, our budget, their budgets, their capital expectations, our capital expectations, so. Uh, some good news there, and then Um As part of the, you know, the forums ended, we did 5 forms, but we’re also doing some, some open house tours starting Saturday, uh, 10 to noon at the Cutler school. We’re gonna open the doors and let people in and show them, uh, what that building’s all about, and we’re also going to repeat that on the 15th, same time, 10 to 12 and be myself, uh, some members of the, the district and, uh, members of both the OPM and architectural team will be there to answer questions, and we still have a couple more zooms that we’re going to do. Some elementary parent groups, uh, as well between now and. Tell me. The other exciting news was we, uh, so fascinating that we’re doing this already, but we had our kindergarten parent night for next year’s kindergarten class, which is exciting, uh, it’s great information and we appreciate our administrators and our kindergarten teachers, um, in our specialized staff who attended that meeting and really laid out the information, uh, Jane Caufield comes out and lays out the process of registration, how to get to the forms that And, and really helps get that going. We have, uh, more than we had last year at this time, we already have over 50 kids signed up, which is more than last year, um. At this time So we’re looking to hopefully hold right around the same number, probably 7 classes of kindergarten students next year the trend. And then finally, um, It was mentioned earlier, but I got to say it again. Good luck to the 93 students who took off for, uh, Boston today from the high school to the DECA state this this weekend, so today, tomorrow, and then the award ceremony will be Saturday, so we’ll know Saturday, uh, and also good luck to our boys and girls basketball teams who are, uh, entering tournament play tournament play Friday night at the high school. Both games will be there back to back, boys first and girls will uh begin right after the boys’ game is over. That’s all I have. Thank you just texted me ask Eric about any updates about Decca. None yet. They just got there. Um, all right, thank you for that. Um. Um. Eric, do you have an update on when we’re going to have a public available calculator for people’s tax implications. Have Have Have the end of next week or the one after. OK, so this is a problem. We are 5 weeks away. Right? We’re 5 weeks away. And there’s no way we’re going to be able to get this calculator in front of everybody that needs it. Right, like how are we going to, how are people going to make an intelligent decision. Based upon what they can afford, if they don’t know, it’s been on for weeks for the Final sites. We, we put it out last night. Put out what information? On the tax rates The tax impacts can go and find their tax impact. Yeah, you could if you attended last night’s forum, you could figure out your tax impact based on The numbers that we received from the Hamilton and Wenham Fincoms. We also have a sheet coming out. On Monday, I think Monday or Tuesday of next week that will break down, uh, the 20 years and the Annual rates of increased, so The bond is a decreasing bond, and it’ll decrease over time. So yes, you could figure out. Based on your assessed value. Um, people can also go to the DLS website where you can just put your own house value in, and it’ll give you your number. Uh, for each year because it’s a decreasing you have to, you have to back up. So first you said it’s, we don’t have the information. And now you’re saying that it’s in several different places. So I, I just need some clarification. I don’t think I don’t have any information. I just said we had the information that we gave out last night. OK Um, then Vinnie said that it’s gonna be available sometime next week or the week after. Yeah, it’s a finance group that we work with that’s putting together the calculator, so as soon as they can get it. Put together, we’ll get it out there OK, so then a calculator doesn’t exist at this time. OK, then what are all the other things that are being discussed. So the last night’s forum, we presented the, each of the towns, their current tax rates for FY 25, the average value of a house in each of those in the two communities, and then the breakdown over a twenty-year span. Of the decreasing bond based on a 4.5%. Uh, bond rate. OK. This is maybe the 10th time. That I’ve asked for this. And I think that it is, it is not meaningful to say this is your average house, because nobody lives in the average house, right? Um, people are going to be making decisions based upon the household income that they live in. And so we have to allow people, and, and we have to give them time to find the information, and then to make a decision around the information. And that means it can’t be something that comes out 2 weeks before the vote. It’s not going to get in front of everybody, but early next week is So I can finish my sentence. Early next week, we have one pagers coming out that will have the same information. If you’re, you know, you take your house value, divide it by 1000. And then here’s your multiplier for each of the years. We, we cannot be asking people, that that is not, that is us failing to communicate. No, I know the value of their access it on their tax. Um, bills, and then if we give the cost per $1000. I think that’s something people are capable of. I agree that a calculator would be easier for folks, so I like that idea, but I don’t think it’s impossible to come up with a number. I think it looks like we’re not trying to be transparent. So can I just jump in and say about Um Eric just mentioned, um, the Wenham Fincom spending all that time and I actually at Eric’s recommendation, I actually watched the. When I’m Fin comes to meetings where they did this work and it was. Really detailed and what. I mean, they, my understanding from watching the meetings is they are um finalizing what they’re going to present their finalizing what the slide is that they’re gonna present. And while I appreciate you’re looking for a calculator. I actually found the slide to be quite what they’re creating is a it’s a 20 year. You know, block that shows you for various house. Amounts, you know, how it decreases, where it starts off at. year one and then goes down. chart, which is Different than just plugging in one number and coming up with what it is for this year like it was am I making sense about what I’m, I, I understand. I just, I think that We, we are always trying to, we’re always in this situation where the message that we’re trying to send and the message that’s heard is confounded by the fact that We, we think we’re being transparent, and we think that we’re communicating clearly. And people have lives and jobs and kids. the only side of the information that we’re giving them. is not the one that’s going to actually be the tax impact, which is Going to be substantial. Right? Yeah. It just is. There’s no way around that, right? We put that out there. The the biggest voices against the project that I have heard, are about the taxes. Yeah We’ve known for a very long time. What the maximate cost is going to be. We now have the actual cost. And I think that it it is really incumbent upon this group to do the work that’s going to get the information so that people can know what is the impact going to be to me I I agree with You, what you’re wanting to do. But having watched or and having watched. The, the work that the Wenham Fincom. I do, in other words, the I don’t want to speak, but, but the Final. Each town’s Fincom has to be the one that. Does that work because yes and no, right? So, so I actually mentioned something like this to um the other night on the School board school building committee meeting, right and I I even I even said like even if we instead of just saying, oh, the average house in Hamilton’s 800 and the average trusted. When it was a million, which is I think the two numbers that they’re using. I’m like, even if we did a, here’s the Um You know, the average for 600, 800, a million, 1200 or whatever. So you work it So so you at least you’re breaking it down more. Because I hear you. Know who loves the idea of watching those meetings and the stuff, the people that are already going to vote yes for it. I’m I’m not suggesting people watch that meeting, that’s not what I suggesting what Trent is saying, right, what I hear Trent saying what I completely 100% agree with them with is, is we need to, we need to, it is our job. It’s not. You know, the Fincom’s job, the FICO’s job is to figure out what the numbers are. It’s our job to know market our product if we think this is what’s best and what we need to do is we need to make this. As clear as possible to these people that are on the fences, right? These are very, the numbers are very real, right? They’re, they’re, it is a big number, but I mean we’re going through. You know, the budget tonight, and all I’m thinking of is like if we don’t build new schools, things you keep going to break down and you know what I mean? And and so it’s a very real thing and you know, it’s funny and I don’t mean to put words in mouth, but I’m I’m, I’m hearing him say, well, if we want to get this new school built. This is the material we need to get into the hands as soon as possible to these people who are on the fence, right? I mean, I, I’ve said all along, I think we’ll get a majority of the room. It’s getting that 66% that we need. You need, you need to get a lot of people there that we need. You need, you need to get a lot of people there No, I agree. What I was saying was that it is we want to. The numbers need to come from the Fincom. The the numbers they need to do that work. I hear what you’re saying about communicating those numbers in a way that’s a usable. For for people. It’s a different, I guess I was just trying to, you know, even to sort of take it one step further. You know I very, I’m privy to more information than most. In all of this, right, I’ve seen these numbers and then I’m like, what is my assessed value to my house, you know what I mean? Like, so like there there’s even like that. I’m like, is it here, is it here? You know, and like, so like even even became a calculator is still having them to chase them down to. You know, I’m sure I have a Bill, you know, lying around someplace or whatever, but like having to go and actually do that work, the least, the less work. We can make people do the better it is for us. In our ultimate goal. If we see that the school is our ultimate goal. I’m sorry. Um. That we have very defined ways that we’re advertising this, right? It’s Going through your newsletters every single um The principal has it sent out in their weekly, um, it, you’re taking out ads in the newspaper, like, we, we can all right? That’s I think the good news is we’re all in agreement that we want to broadcast these numbers. So maybe thinking about like concrete ways that we all agree are. Going to achieve that, can we, can we do that now? Can we make some? Well, I mean, I think this calculator is really it, at the town level, the towns in Trent had asked last meeting. To have the, you know, can we send out a letter to every household, the towns will not do that because of the, uh, The, the way the numbers work, they’re not, you can calculate it out for 20 years. The only one that’s going to be accurate is the first year because it’s going to depend on the split. Each year across the two towns that will that it changes, yeah, every, every single year. That’s part of the problem that they’re they’re having and saying, let’s send this chart out because Wenham, excuse me, Hamilton has a chart that has just what you said, 500,000, 600,000, 700,000, up to a million dollars with the impacts, easy to do. But I Trent wants to hone in even more on if you’re 859,070, you know,, $700. I get that. I understand that yeah at this house, right? Like, and, and I, I do think that it’s really concerning that, um, you know, the when I Fincom was in the newspaper. prominently last week, right? Um. That, that, that, that Whether or not that was the intent, it reflected very negatively on, on the trajectory of The school district, to my mind. Um, and I think that, I think that we need to be as, as uh deliberate as possible in getting the information that people are going to use to make their decision to them. And what really concerns me is that we’re we’re getting closer and closer to a point where, you know, like next week is is. One month out. I think that we should have a calculator that we are advertising in all of our Um, venues. by one month out. And we’re meeting again next week. So yeah, I mean, I think that’s a great goal. I don’t know how we know. I mean, I don’t know why it can be done. It’s a Google. It’s a finance group that we work with that works with bonding agents to make sure the numbers are accurate and make sure they, they literally taking each town’s data, pulling it in, and Creating the calculators, they’re creating 21 for each community to try to figure out when and why again so we can keep haunting them and you can that I’ve been working on with Eric has. The sample charts and the dollar per dollar amount per 1000. So in the meantime, we can prioritize that to get on next week’s meeting for approval, and then we can distribute it to like library, senior center, places that we have identified. That folks might not get information online or via email. We also have two other charts coming out next week that are. We were waiting for final numbers from the Finals that’ll break down the 20 years again. When you get into year two, it’s not an accurate number. It’s going to shift slightly depending on what the split is. I don’t think people are voting based upon what’s happening on year 19. I think they’re going to be the most accurate. Right. So. It is good to show that’s that, so it’s the it’s. You know, both of the, I mean, that’s an important point that it’s the most expensive, so that you don’t have this fear that it’s gonna be. to throw some more Do we have Anything rolling off. Expenditures in the next couple of years. that we Uh, yeah, there are a few, but they’re, it’s very small it’s at the end of, it’s at the end of life cycle you have the your towns may have things rolling off, like, in other words, that’s part of your tax. I get, I’m trying to figure out what I can do to get people to say yes, right. Like, oh, it’s here, but this is coming off, but if it’s. Yeah Um, the, the documents that you said you’re putting together, are we mailing that to everybody. That’s the, that’s the purpose of it. I think you’ve included it in your emails, right? OK, but we’ve, we’ve done town mailers on the project to the whole town, right? I would put probably more detail into it than. Because this is really a one-page. Quickie, like, here’s the school budget on one side and on the other side, here’s the breakdown of the. The tax implications, so. I think that if, if we had, you know, 6 different to 500,000. Estimates of what your year one looks like, and we were able to put that out while we’re waiting for a calculator to get built that may or may not. be built in a time that allows people to get it, at least that would be something that we would be proactively getting to everybody for Hamilton. We just, we just need to do it for a while. Hamilton’s already done that work. They, they, we can basically steal their sheet, update their numbers and recreates the same thing for, for one of them. OK, so that’s, that’s part of what’s occurring. Monday or Tuesday of next week, we, we’re going to take The sheet from Hamilton, the sheet from Wynham, now that they’re done. Make them look the same and then get those out to people and we can, we could include them in the mailer. I just, I worry about. that the Fins worry about sending something out that shows 20 years, it’s not really accurate. And we put a footnote saying yeah, that’s that’s what their conversations were like, how do we make a note on this presentation that this is not the right this is our best. Estimate. Your 2 shift depending on the shift, year 3 would shift depending on the shift. Um, it would just depend on how I don’t think you need, you know, to that. I think all you need is year one, you have, you know, 500,000 to, you know, 1.2 million. Well. Right, except you want to make sure that people understand that it is 20 years. I mean that’s information they need to have like. Right, you know, some people don’t know what that means. Like that’s a good point to be really clear about like this. Like that just to be, I mean, in other words, to be clear about that like this is how much it is and and. Well, anyway, what I, I already said what I thought the. This is what we presented last night. What’s on the screen. This is a sample of what I presented last night. Um One for Hamilton, the next slides for Wenham. They’re based on average single family, we can, uh, include this in tomorrow’s weekly, if you want to put this out, kind of like, actually, I think it’s already in there because it was part of the forum. Um, and then the idea is to really take this and make, say, 6 columns, 5,500,000 to a million or you can go as high as you want and then literally crank out a spreadsheet based on the, the increase uh per 1000 each year, which we have the charts from both Hamilton and I’d like to say I do agree that a calculator. To trans is is a good idea. Yeah, we’ll get it out there as soon as we can get it I mean I’ve seen this information before and like to me. Like if I was like, wait, the numbers just changed, but I was, I switched to one. I’m sorry. I was like wait. But I do think this is useful information, even though I know that that Like, yes, nobody lives in the average family home, but you do have a general idea, like if you live in Wenham and it says that the average family home is a million dollars. You have a general idea, like, is my home worth more or less than that, you have an idea and it says, OK, it’s gonna be $2100. You like, OK, that’s a ballpark. It’s a starting point because I think You know, a couple of months ago, people would have. No idea what ballpark we’re in. At least this is like, OK, I get it. This is how much money we’re talking about and I agree with you, for people that are not food insecure. People who are like going to be voting that You know People who are going to be voting that are living paycheck to paycheck the, the small difference between, you know, something makes a big difference. I, I do think though that for that same group being able to show that, you know, it decreases over time is important and it’s interesting like it decreases over time, it doesn’t decrease. Mm It’s It’s a, I mean, it gets down to half the amount. At year 20. But it doesn’t decrease drastically, but just knowing that like it’s never gonna be more than the first year is. good information, right? Like that. So I think that means it’s time. Yeah, no, it is just about, um, it is, yeah. Um Right, so we’re planning on turning the one page, the one sheet. Flyer into a mailer. Is that what we’re talking about doing, or are we talking about a mailer that exists that we’re adding this to? There is not a mailer that exists. We, we can use that as a mailer. OK, so I just want to talk about the timeline a little bit because if we’re wanting to bring this to the meeting next week so that we can be approved and we would mail it out within 2 days. We need to stuff them and. OK, so the post office and whatever their cycle time is for to be on the agenda, right? OK, yeah. Although on the on the on the agenda needs to be. Yeah, yeah, we can add the exhibit on, on Friday or Tuesday’s do that. I wanna actually say that so people can hear that. Is that like? We as a committee do this what I think our agendas, and I did not invent the way the agenda is done, and I think it’s done really well that we put all this information in an exhibit form on the agenda. It’s really great for people to be able to have that is not required. So as long as the information comes to the committee and to the public at the same time. It’s fine. So in other words, the agenda, if, if If you’re presenting the flyer at the agenda, I mean at the meeting for the first time, that’s not ideal. Because it would be nice to have us have time to see it, but it doesn’t mean we couldn’t do it that way. Um, so we start tomorrow pushing out the tax rate impact goes out in my weekly, that’s the first time. Well, the 2nd time we started last night. Yeah, that, that The 3rd time will be Monday or Tuesday of next week, and then we’ll. that fire approved, get that out, get the calculators up and running. We continue to harass the the people that are working on it for us with the warrant? With the warrant? No, because Hamilton doesn’t mail. Only when males there weren’t to each household. Hamilton does not and I don’t think they would let you put. Yeah, I have to get permission from the moderator just to use it at our meeting, so. had an override In a debt exclusion. 2018 or whatever, uh, Mike and Jeff are still here. We did a mailer that we actually. Mailed like a 4 by 6. postcard. OK, so if we approve this Thursday of next week. Then we can start sending it out. Is that feel a little more concrete. Oh And I agree I support having a calculator that people get, we’ll get you right now because you’ve put it out. I mean, you’ve already put it out publicly, so let’s push it out like the what you have. put the QR code already. So by the time everything gets done and mailed. It should be up, well, it’ll be on the same page that, that’s what I’m saying it’s, it’s really time to streamline and clean up all the information, right? We, we, we, we have a data dump where we’re overly. And you you know, overly transparent, I think is the word. The term fre used last meeting that is really the case, right? It’s We’re we’re so transparent, no one can see anything. Um, and now it’s time to really get to the. the gist of, of the messaging and you’ll see the website change tomorrow. I, I think tomorrow it’s scheduled to change. We were updating it yesterday and today. Right All right. Anybody have anything else? Check Yeah. A lot of boxes moving around. It’s all box-based. Um, all right, does anybody have anything else? Um, uh, my report, I don’t really have anything to report. I did want just official, uh, I mean, I, I guess the only thing I’ve is that I did want to just officially confirm regarding the Upcoming school committee election, um. On April 10th that we, uh, um, time for nominations. Um, has and the following people have submitted, um. Papers, uh, Jeff Austin, Courtney Ashwood, David Frankel, David Plito, and Amy Kumburger are running for, so that’s 5 people running for 3. seats. Everyone could still change their mind, but, um, but nobody else can join in. Um. Uh, anyway, I didn’t, and that is. Oh, I was gonna say something else, but it’s gone from my mind and it’s almost 10 o’clock. Um, all right. Um Second All right, that was motioned by David Palito and seconded by Trent. All right, um, all those in favor. Yes, and we are