wait for the bus. Oops. All right, you guys ready all hands in. All right, good evening. I call to order the meeting of the Hamilton Wyndham Regional School Committee on Thursday, September 4th, 2025 at 7 p.m. Um, we are going to start off this evening with the opportunity for Citizens’ comments. It does not appear

that there are any citizen’s comments in the room. Um, Eric, do we have anyone on Zoom? Didn’t, but let me just double check. Is crashed it. Sorry. No, no worries, we’ll take a sec. Yeah yeah, my laptop’s really gonna die. I think 2. There we

go. Do we want to give it a minute, Eric? We should know it right this second Mm not joined Nobody No one in the Zoom room. There’s no one in the Zoom room, so, uh, is there somebody popping in right now? No? OK I couldn’t read it from here.

Um, all right, um, given seeing no comments, I will forego all the um rules and regulations about comments, and we will close this comment and move on. Um Next up, we have a review of a portion of our school committee protocols, um, Julia, if you’re willing. Sure. As elected members of the Hamilton Blenham

Regional School Committee. We, including the superintendent, accept the high honor and trust that has been placed in us to ensure that the students of the district receive the best education possible. To that end, we hereby commit to the following in the conduct of our business. The superintendent and the school committee represent the needs and

interests of all students in the district and place the student’s interests above all others in their decisions while remaining within the limitations of a voter approved. budget. Thank you. Uh, David Polito, would you be willing to read a portion of the mission statement? Sure The Hamilton Wyndham Regional School District. School 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 Wyndham’s Regional School Committee will lead and inspire a district that empowers administrators to seek innovation, responsiveness, and creativity in all aspects of district operations. Thank you Um, next up is the consent

agenda. Does anyone have any items that they would like to hold from the consent agenda. Right, seeing none, David? Uh, I move that the Hamilton and Regional School Committee. uh, except tonight’s kids set agenda as written in tonight’s. um media agenda seconded by Amy Kumberger, um, all the Os in

favor. uh, is unanimous and the motion passes. OK Moving right along. All right. Uh, new business to you, Mr. Tracy, to talk about the um, proposed 2025, 2026 district goals. Thank you. Um, just wanted to bring this back around as we worked through this at the workshop a few weeks back.

Uh, we’ve taken this and broken it out into some deliverables and try to organize it in different segments of the school year so that things. kind of flowed along the school year, um, the first goal forming and launching an AI policy and pilot initiative. This is something I think we talked

about last year, but we, we never really got off the ground. So this, this gives us an opportunity to put together an advisory group to review the new DESE guidance that came out. There’s a lot of guidance that just recently came out 2 weeks, within the 2 weeks before school. Um, and then, excuse me,

drafted up some district guidelines, um, and, and finalize them eventually, identify some classrooms to do some pilots. We suspect that will be high school, middle school, high school is very interested in, in being pilot, so. then we’ll implement those pilots and do an evaluation report of the pilot results at the end of that. And then

that’s where the final draft will come into play. improving teaching and learning, this has been now we’re going into year 5 for MTSS. Eric, I’m just gonna interrupt. Yeah, absolutely. Um, does the committee want to do, do you want to do one goal at a time, or do you want to have Eric go

through all of them and then ask questions and uh. I’m I’m sorry that I, sorry that I, I just wanted to like I think we could do questions and then if we think of something at the end, do general. You wanna do questions as we on each goal.

I think we could. The only person that spoke up and you know it is, and then we could do, you know, if I, if I think of something at the end. OK, yeah, um, I’m sorry, I just wanted to give the people the opportunity of, um, all right, do you have

a question on this? Um. All right, well, I do a little, I do have a little bit of a question on this. I just wanted to get um, I guess I know you don’t know yet because you haven’t devised the or have you devised what like what a potential pilot would. look like or is that something that

hasn’t yet been designed yet. That’ll be part of this process, I guess my that was my understanding of this, but I guess my I mean, maybe it’s just, it’ll just be interesting to hear how it’s going along the way. Like I, it’s hard for me to judge like how long would

we need to do a pilot? I mean, I think it’s great that I’m thrilled that it has pilots not just sitting around and making a policy. I think that’s great. Um, and I, I guess I’m just sort of trying to imagine like how long does the pilot last and then because the idea is

that by June we have a written po or a proposed policy is that we kind of envision it as doing the initial work in the 1st 4 months through December. um, the natural breaks in the school year help us so we target like the 3rd quarter for um, say high school kids, actually to middle school and

high school are very close, so you could say. which is right around February, and use the 3rd quarter as a basis and then during your fourth quarter, you can do your reporting. That’s kind of what we were trying to lay out so that we had enough

time to get everything settled and done and I think. in, in a lot of ways, there are a number of classrooms already doing some of this work and there are a number of people who have led the charge, so we’re hoping to pull them in and learn a little

bit from them before we do these pilots because they they’re, we do have a number of people at the high school, at least who have been um taking advantage of AI as much as possible. um, kind of our, they’re kind of our explorers, if you will. Thank you Anybody else have any questions on this

one? And again, to Julie’s point, certainly we can come back to things at the end, I actually did have one for this one for the pilot classrooms, are they all gonna have access to the same tech in class. that I think that would be kind of

the, the, the idea of the pilot like, OK, if you had something like an iPad, a Chromebook, and a lot of kids at the high school have MacBooks, what that looks like, how does that function part of the pilot will be learning what kids can and can’t access, so I think you’d probably see different

classrooms with different results like the younger kids would probably use a different uh device than than the older kids. The older kids generally tend to all use MacBooks or some type of laptop, so it’ll be a good comparative. just to see what what works and what can’t. We also have to work

with our tech staff because some of these things are naturally blocked out by our software by our software, yeah, so we have to work with them to figure out ways to release that so that. things can be used in the way that they’re meant to be used. Alright, I do have another question just which

maybe is a question for later, I guess, as the goal, as the policy is being developed, but in other words obviously you’re using DESE, you’re getting guidance from DESE guidance from, uh, you know, are there as part of this advisory group or he’s part of the process looking to like surrounding

communities about what they’re learning in their own pilot studies. Yeah, so one of the things that I think everybody knows I’m a member of the North Shore Superintendent’s Roundtable, um, so we do compare notes quite often, especially because all the schools are in this area, so they’re all the local schools for the most part, and we, we

compare notes and I think we may be leading the way on this. Um, there are a couple of schools who have talked about it, but I haven’t heard any definite plans that are similar to ours that are saying, yeah, we’re gonna forge ahead and start moving forward so we may be leading the way and part of

this. All right, goal 2 is the, the MTSS go multi-tier systems of support which we did the uh presentation Jen Clifford had done the presentation during, uh, the, the workshop, and this is really the continuation and this gets harder and harder to write your goal because your goal is really evolving into

continuing to build and grow the process and prune the process along the way. So I think a lot of the opportunities that we’ve tried to get involved with have been connected to the DESE. Um, we’ve, we’ve got an opportunity to get into 2 more academies, the tiered math Support. uh, to

help us with the, the, uh, implementation continued implementation of Eureka Square at the elementary level, um, and then the community of practice for CKLA which helps us to now push grade level writing in, which was in our initial focus, but as you know, if you go back 4 years ago, we

talked about this being probably a seven-year goal along the way. So this really helps us to continue to connect the dots, uh, broken out by each of the schools and some are at different levels. The elementary has really um forged the way, if you will, in, in,, you know, curriculum implementation, getting their PLCs up and running, having

their data meetings now much more efficient and then we’ve been been able to kind of weed the garden if you will, and take out some of the things like we started using Panorama. a few years back and we decided to get away from it because it doesn’t give us the the information that we need and we

don’t want teachers to spend time digging through spreadsheets trying to figure out what the issues are. So, um, we’re working with a different company that we have used all along for our MCA stuff. They, um, have kind of moved into this zone, so we’re gonna work with them they’re a third of

the cost and uh seemed to be delivering a better pro product so far. Um, and then we’ll just continue through the high school. We’re trying to really figure out ways to buttress tier 2 at the high school. It’s a little bit harder, um, at the high school level where kids don’t stay with the same

teachers all day. They’re moving around so much. So we really want to target the ELA and math supports and continue to see, um, kind of how that best practices work in relation to our focal point, which is really looking at the gap between special ed students and regular ed students, and that’s,

that’s the leader ship ’ s team instructional focus is related to, uh, making sure that all kids, all kids in this district have access to grade level tier one curriculum. um, and, and, and, um, supports the bigger piece of it for us now is we’re starting to focus more specifically on gaps that we

see between special ed and regular ed, so you’ll see a lot more of that come into play through this process, and part of that process goes all the way back to the student, uh, the SOA, uh, plan and that plan that gets submitted to the state consistently identified special ed for 3 years in a row,

so we’re like, OK, we’re not making enough gains to kind of let this go. So our focus instructional focus for all administrators this year is specific to figuring out ways to improve instruction to close those gaps related to kind of the the special ed group versus all the peers. Um, those, those

gaps have stayed consistent over time, which is, is a little bit troublesome for us so we’re trying to just figure out the best way to attack that so you’ll see more focus in that direction through our MTSS program. Questions Um have a question I just had a comment.

I really like how you laid it out by school, uh, I think when the public and even sometimes myself included, think about MTSS. We tend to think about it just in terms of elementary school. So I really appreciated. you incorporating everything, you know, that we had talked

about sort of our concerns and then, um, splitting it up into the, the three schools So it’s really all children will benefit from it. And the three levels are in different places, Elementary has definitely led the way. They’re probably 2 full years ahead of everybody and that’s really where the the

foundational work started, so we’ve been able to take some of that foundational work, move it to the middle and high school, which has moved them along a little more quickly than if they started from scratch. Um, so I, I just, uh, no, this is this is very in the very nitpicky, I think, but for me,

the goal to be for the middle school. Um, I actually, um, happy with the deliverables. I I, I think to your point, Eric, it’s difficult when you’re building this, um, to come up with a goal like I, the goal when I first read the very first, you know, it just says middle school will build upon

earlier MTSS work by doing the following, like I thought, thought to myself, well, that’s like a pretty sort of vague as a goal, um I think that the deliverables are not super vague and that they’re, you know, so, so I guess I’m not concerned about it, but I, I, that was what struck me at when

I first read it I, I’m not sure it needs to get fixed. I just, and Julia’s point about like I don’t know how much the public is reading these or looking at these, but We can go back and fine tune it too related to the work that they did last year.

It’s not I mean, we documented pretty deeply worried it’s not it’s not measurable. I mean, I think that though, yeah, like I, I, I think that the, the answer to my question was immediately answered when I read the deliverables. but it was a question when I read the goal.

I just thought to myself, well, what does that really mean? Build upon earlier doesn’t give me a ton of. um but again, I I guess my we can go, we’ll, we can continue. That was just a little feedback on that. I appreciate it. a question. Is there some kind of looking at how, how you’ll know whether

you’ve improved. Is the some aggregate score that can be compared A to the past and B to peer schools in the state, for example. So you, you can in a lot of ways, we have um MCAS has always been our baseline problem we’re running into with MCAS is a concern that because it’s not required, people won’t

take it seriously, which makes it difficult to use as a measure now. Um, but we do have things like dibbles that we can compare to other schools that are using DIBELS as a uh comparative across uh the country actually, so the DIBE’s 8, for example, was, was. that you had aggregates that came in

from any other district in the country that was using DIL. So we do have, um, that type of data. It’s, it’s a little bit different when you look at CKLA and and um Eureka Squared because not every district uses the same. and that’s a, that’s a battle going on. Statehouse as we speak. I was involved in

it today, um, where the state’s trying to make everybody kind of use the same thing all over, um, so it’s hard, it’s hard to compare like a eureka math to to Beverly or Danvers if they’re not using it, but there are comparatives. There’s, there are a lot of schools using the curriculum that we’ve

chosen because they are considered high quality instructional materials, so we kind of fall under that, that requirement of the state while also being able to integrate with with other school districts to just not probably not all local. So would it be helpful and meaningful to make one or more of those measures part of goal setting To

comparison to do a comparison, the absolutes and the comparison. Yeah, I think the, the, the, the big focus this year is really closing that gap between our own special ed and our regular ed. which for us we’ve been watching now for 3.5 years and in some cases haven’t been able to get that to move

at all. That’s really where we focus, so we could add something related to that in there which makes sense since every single instructional leader, that’s their focus this year, all year long, so we could, yeah. Thanks. Well, and I, I mean, I just to feed on that, I don’t know if this is

what you’re getting at, but for me, like the presentation that Jen Clifford gave at um, the workshop with all that data, like for me, that was sort of, that felt like what I was looking for, um, so I don’t know if you’re saying, if you’re feeling like that was the right or if you’re looking

for something more comparing to outside or Yeah, it was historical definitely it, um, so the nice thing is we have 4 years of data. It’s not like it just started last year. We’re starting to now look at those trends across. you know, it’s even we’re even using that in our responses to the state when

they say, hey, what do you think about us going in this direction? Well, wait a minute, we’ve already done 4 years’ worth of work that’s showing us now very clear trends that we want to focus on, so. it’s, um, but I think it makes sense to put in the least, OK, we’re focused on closing this gap and

this is how we’ll see it. So. Alright. Number 3 is the evaluate and recommend school start time adjustments, um this we started, we do have some data we want to dig into it with an advisory committee. um, to use some of the data that we got last year and then some of

the new newer data updated data with some of the new families that are in the in the school community now. Um, we have a couple of schools have, have made the shift or or not, not right in our backyard, but close by so we can check in and

see how those are going, um, and then doing some impact analysis on transportation schedules, kids working after school, babysitting before or after school, like all of those kind of pieces of the puzzle, um, talking with caregivers like the community house, how does this impact the community house? What does this look like?

Um going back and just doing another survey, updating the survey, then looking at a couple of different scenarios and bringing them back to the group to discuss and figure out, get it out to the public, get some feedback from them, bring them back here and say, OK, what does this look like? and

then make a final recommendation. We have All right, and then, uh, continuation, high quality, safe state of the art schools, um. we’re looking at all kinds of avenues and a lot of it is dependent upon the election, of course, uh, so that’s why I think one of these has a note,

the first one has a no positive outcome pending a positive outcome at the townwide election. Uh, this goal would, would end on September 15th because we do have a drop that date from the state of September 24th if we don’t have our docks in a row by September 24th. They’re, they’re, they’re

done. Um and then it goes through that process of gaining bond money, trying to figure out how to, how to uh begin the financing process going back with the architect’s OPMs, uh, and continue to meet with them. We, we, we met with them weekly during the first stages. We’ll certainly meet with them probably more during the middle

stages. It’s a, it’s an important part of the process and my past recollections are we met probably 3 times a week trying to figure out different things like what hinges go where and you know all those little kind of little things, um, and then we want to continue the schematic design

for the high school roof, as you know, we are involved in that. We did get our, our reimbursement rate, uh, certification, which is about 45%. um it’s, it’s again, it’s what they consider to be reimbursable, but it’s a little bit different with a roof versus a building because it tends to have more reimbursability because you’re

not, you don’t have as many products you’re dealing with adhesives and roof material and and labor. So, um, so we’ll continue to work with our OPM and our designer. and, uh, really making getting the process to the point of requesting a debt exclusion at town meeting, um, to, to

complete the roof and get that work done. And then if it passes, we’ll work with bond council to secure the first stage of bonds and that work would be planned to kick off to kick off, uh, just after July 1. in the new fiscal year and then statement of interest or other

school related projects, the, the window opens up every April. Um, so we’ve, we’re looking at the, the next thing I’m gonna present the capital improvement process will bring us a number of items that we can look at and say, OK, these things might need to be deferred or these things are on our top priority

and then looking at what can be um reimbur reimbur um excuse me, submitted for an SOI statement of interest or not. Uh, some of the things we’re looking at, as we know, there was, there’s the, the air handler unit on top of the high school library died last year. It’s about a quarter million dollar fix.

We’re currently working with, uh, Vicky Massoni, who does all the energy stuff for the two towns trying to get some of that reimbursed by, uh, like Massaves and things like that. So we’re looking at different avenues to trying to figure out how to how to secure those, um, the things that we need without

continuously going back to the towns for more money. All right, questions No, this is great I love that. It’s very organized. OK Um, so Eric are we looking for a vote on this tonight? OK um David, you wanna start us off with a motion? Um I moved the Hamiltonwyham Regional School Committee. vote to

approve the 2025, 2026 district goals as presented in tonight’s meeting agenda. seconded by Amy Kunberger. Um, all right, so discussion. OK. All right, um, I guess my only discussion is that I, I know that I did make that comment, and I guess I will sort of just say I I felt like I wanted to say it

regarding the, um, middle school MTSS school, but I I, but I, I, I’m, I just want to sort of say publicly like I am ready to vote on this, even though I think we’ll still clean it up. I think even David’s suggestion of fine tuning the special ed. piece of it as a comparative makes sense

as well. Um I think looking at the elementary description, kind of like picking that up. It just has more to it and then making it relevant for middle school, maybe. but this is great OK All right, well, I, I, I’m OK. I’m not a lot of comments. OK, alright, it looks

like we’re ready to vote, I think so. right, there was one question I, good. Now’s the time. When I looked at the MSBA um, procedures, rules, whatever. um, for putting in submissions, there were some rules related to, um, for instance, if you’re doing a roof, or if you wanted

heat pumps uh if the roof was more than 15 years old. you, um then you, I guess you had to have windows replaced or windows that are up to date, you know, there were, there were some dependencies on there. And so, um as we put in the MSPA submission for the roof,

it may be too late. Um, is that a time to tack on the heat pumps? because without the roof you can’t do the heat pumps according to the yeah, we can ask. I mean, they, they essentially just accept an SOI and say this is what we’ll cover, um, one of the changes that they made this year that

hasn’t been in play was, uh, making sure on any roof work that it’s solar ready um, well at least investigating it like they, they’ll do part of the expenditure for us will be now as a requirement by the state to make sure they investigate whether or not the roof can be solar already, can, can it take

the wea the, the, um the weight of solar panels on the roof, etc. So that’s one of the pieces, but I haven’t seen anything related to adding something in because roofs are generally a single submission just like boilers, windows. I don’t know if they group things up. I mean, we can check.

I’m just not 100% sure. I saw a kind of a logic diagram they publish. for expressions of interest that that tag these things together. It might be worth having a look at it. yeah OK. Anybody else All right Looks like we’re ready to vote. Um, all those in favor? And that is unanimous. and the

motion passes. Thank you, Eric, and thank you to the leadership team for um. a lot of work to create Mr. Colt. Thank you I think the the one reminder of district goals is all the other things in the district get connected to them, so, um, they’ll be deeper work being done. at each of the school

level, and you’ll see those in October when we present our school improvement plans. Those will be connected just as we’ve kind of asked all of the building leaders to connect their goals. to these as well, um, so you’ll see, you should see a lot of through lines. All right, the next one is uh

capital improvement plan, uh, the first exhibit I put in there just so people it’s a reminder, the second exhibit is, I just wanted to review this because there has been some confusion about how it works. Um, full, full disclosure, I actually said I’m a little confused. I I didn’t want to throw you under the bus. I said,

I need a refresher on this to make sure I fully understand exactly how it’s working. So Curtis, Whiteman is the director of facilities Oper operations. Manage Transportation and then 5 other things, but he, uh, he manages this process. He sends out a a um form to the principals in April, and asking each budget stakeholder to give us

information related on project projects they think. So I’ll use one example, Buker principles submitted the Buka roof. It’s leaking like a sieve in a lot of places, so that’s one of the bigger projects, um, and then April through August, Curtis works with subcontractors. He’s been trying to figure out different bid ranges that we’re seeing

for, uh, any of these projects that were uh submitted, they could be as big as the entire parking lot at the high school to the roof, to window replacements, to heater replacements. So, um, that list just gets compiled into one. He meets with a committee that’s combined, uh, of district

people and um people that are in uh two towns. So each town has asked at least a FinCon member and a select board member to be part of this commit each committee. Um, they’ll meet, they’ll go through and try to prioritize based on the information or input we’re getting from the

towns to say, we could probably afford to do this, but not that. So, uh, then we’ll come to the finance subcommittee. um, in October and kind of have them reconcile the list and say, OK, these are the things we can add into the budget. uh, for the November, December cycle of, uh, the budget building process,

and it could, could be in different formats. We’ve in some years we have built some of our capital projects right into the budget and then other years we’ve gone and gotten a requested a significant capital request to separate from the budget. So we’ll, we’ll look at that during the budget process.

That’ll be a decision this group would have to make. And then, um, January we’ll go through the usual votes and February will be in the finalized budget and then that whatever we move forward we’ll go, uh, on the warrant. for a town meeting for a request. Currently they’re in the stage of the committee’s coming

together, that’s September, the committee will come together and, uh, kind of iron out. what makes sense for the communities, the two towns, and then they’ll bring that forward to uh Capitol in October. And that that that you said has a FICO member and a from both towns and it was like, uh, and then,

and that’s our representative is Jen. Is that correct? No, it was Trinity. Oh, I don’t know if Megan takes it. OK, well, I’m glad I asked then. So yeah, all right, um, so that’s something that the that Capital Finance will have to decide, right, because we need a representative there.

correct? We’ll put it on the agenda, yeah. and then Capital Finance will kind of finalize its week and decide what to send forward to the through the budget process. I just wanted to, to clarify it, Dana. had expressed as she threw herself under the bus here had expressed some concern about not having a full

understanding. So I just want to make sure everybody understood how it’s working. Um, it’s hard because all of a sudden something goes it doesn’t go in the process, like all of a sudden in December, you blow a boiler that suddenly takes precedence. So, you know, so we have to be prepared for

those types of things as well, so. and I mean I guess I read this as this is, you know, the capital improvement it’s a capital improvement plan. There’s things that we’re planning for, so it’s, that’s very different than things we can’t plan for, right, that’s something that’s a you know, um is it possible to to come up

with some kind of urgency rating. for each of the items I would tell you, you know, this must happen s expense or it’s it would be nice if it happens in the next 5 years, or, you know, whatever. I think. Something a little bit more semi-quantitative so that you

can kind of stack them up. um an estimated time frame. like when they want it replaced. So I assume whoever’s doing the capital request form if they need it next year. They’re going to say next year. in that form Are you talking about this I’m glad we’re having this conversation because are you

talking about when, like when the initial request is, because I guess I interpreted this, that the, when the com the CIP committee holds this meeting. I mean, it says that they will prioritize the list based on needs, so I, are you saying before that you want someone to be prioritizing or like is that

what you’re saying Not so much making the priority decision but indicating is this uh some um quantifiable level of urgency. that, that’s still not making the decision, but it’s expressing what the situation is. Yeah, I think if we roll this back to September in here. they’re gonna take, say this 10 projects on the table.

This committee’s going to sort through and say these are the priority projects because remember we have to go all the way to April to request the money and they won’t start till July. So that’s, that’s I understand what you’re saying. It’s, it’s harder to do that way because it, even though

we’ve approved a list, say in, in September, October, and that gets included in the budget we still have to go forward to the towns to get the money, um, but if a boiler breaks we might have to lean on stabilization or something like that, you know, so that would suddenly jump to the yeah, this is just

really to help us in the budget process. um, as we, as we build our budget for the, for each, each year. So whatever we come up with and said, OK, these are the 3 priority items that we want to include in this budget. That’s what we would try to tackle for that next school

year, starting on January for uh July 1st when the, when the monies would become available. But I would think that time frame would be an important aspect. In other words, certainly there’s, even though I, I that makes sense. We’re not talking about something that needs, that is going to be done in the next 6 weeks, but

there are certainly things that we could be saying. you know, this really needs to get done in the next 5 years versus something that like this needs to get done as soon as we possibly can get the money. I mean, that seems like that’s an important aspect, I think buckets of you know, this lot

or in this bucket, and that bucket’s gonna cost. 1 million and the, the not so urgent, uh, you know, that’s sort of good at least provide a feel for how many dollars are at stake Mm. rather than just a big lump to the committee Um. Other people

have questions No, um, is I’m, yes, thank you very much, and I, I’m really glad, so I look forward to, so when the, um, Capital Finance meets next time that in our next meeting, then we’ll find out who’s the representative, that would be helpful. OK. um right Anybody have anything else on that OK

um moving on to finance and operations. Um, I just wanted to, um, Vinnie, you sent out some dates and I don’t, um, for the, um quintuple board, and I don’t think they necessarily went out to the whole committee, so I wanted to make sure we got that out to the committee. yep, yep. So I know you probably

don’t want to hear about it now, but I’m already planning the 27 budget. started yesterday Excellent Yeah, and, uh, I plan our next meeting, do the, doing the full budget calendar, but just so you have the dates on your calendar, we are planning the two full quintuple board meetings, uh the first one is

the normal week, which is the week before Thanksgiving. So this budget cycle, it’s Wednesday, November 19th. and then the second full bore quintuple board meeting is the usual week of MLK week. So for this cycle, it’s January 21st. Once I finalize all the dates, the next, um, school committee

meeting. I’ll give you the full budget calendar and hopefully all 5 committees, uh, do commit to those two dates. So last year there was some difficulty trying to coordinate all 50 people, so I tried to do it a little bit earlier this year, so hopefully people’s calendars in November and January aren’t.

Are we wedded to Wednesday nights? We’re not. That’s just the usual night that they always, uh, took, right, and we do have, so kind of because Monday is Hamilton select board, Tuesday is when I’m select board. Thursday’s school committee, so like just in Boston, so I’ll only be able to

make about half of the ones I should. OK. Um, well, and I will say that there’s only the two that you as the chair of those two I can make. I already checked my syllabi schedule. so, and I just, um, for our new member, again, just, I don’t

know how familiar you are, but the quintuple board is, um, both select boards, both FICOs, school committee, it’s enormous. We meet in here, and it’s an opportunity to have, um, Vinnie talk about the budget, have everyone have an opportunity to ask questions about the budget they can present about what

they know at that point about their budgets, what they’re looking for, and I don’t know, even if you want to add anything else about. the only difficulty with the full bore meaning is they want it in November and it’s almost like we’re meeting and presenting with the quintuple board before

you guys have even had a chance to review it. So you don’t see the full budget until the next night on the 20th. So the 19th is really just me kind of introducing it to everyone, the one on the 21st is kind of more engaging with everyone in the town committees we might actually have a Hamilton and

Wyndham budget by that one. Right, that’s, I was gonna say that’s the other thing is that in November they don’t have their budget either, so it’s kind of a challenge for everyone to try to present what they have. So. they don’t have Vinny huh, they don’t have Vinny. They don’t have any and that’s the problem. can happen

I do have book club in November. I’m really disappointed to miss it. It’s really getting in the way. We could do it here during the meeting. Um, OK. Anybody else have any questions on those? Anything? OK, you put it in your calendars, all of you. Excellent. Um, all right, committee reports.

Capital Finance. um, we have a meeting on Monday at 1:30. The um. this coming Monday. Yeah, this September 8th. Great. Um policy Policy, we’re still trying to nail down a meeting time. I sent everyone another email today. I got your answer, Jen, Dude, I don’t know what your availability is. Yeah, I saw

that at the end of the day. Sorry, I’ll get back to you tomorrow. Everybody’s things are drafted. I will compile them after we meet. Do we vote on it in here? Are you talking about the dock, the, yeah, so you, yeah, you guys would be bringing, you could vote in our

meeting, right, the vote at the meeting hypothetically would be vote to recommend it to the committee, um, yeah we’ll have that for next meeting. OK, great. Thank you Um negotiations Um, we do not have anything, um, the one thing I will maybe I’ll ask another is that at some point I do think

we I don’t know what the timing is, but at some point I’d like to have a meeting to talk about, um, the regional agreement because we do have some, uh, some feedback, um, and we’re from the lawyer looking at sort of all the proposals, so it

would be, I don’t know that and we are going to have to start getting together for the um. PA contract. so it would be good to get something on the, get an agenda, I mean a meeting on the books. that would be good. from the custodial union as well if

you guys are gonna it sounds like we, we need to have a meeting then so we can talk about custodial union and an agreement for the um cafeteria workers as well because of the schedule changes. OK. So, yeah, so let’s get that, um I’ll let

you work on that, David OK, um do we have a secretary report I, I forgot I had a meeting today. You’re here. I can’t write for practice. Um OK, well, so um OK, um, I realize now it’s not on here because you weren’t here last time and we did briefly talk about, um, the role of

secretary which you generously took on, um, and there was a discussion about sometimes we toss the new person onto that role. Um, so maybe we’ll put that on the next agenda and have a conversation about whether that’s something Megan’s wanting to take on or not, um. yeah, like I said, if

um, mostly we just talked about that many of us had done that as a new. as a new person. um a good way to pick up, yeah, so something to think about. I will get that on an agenda. All right. Um right, to you, Eric, let’s hear about the opening of

school. OK, we’re putting school. Oh, my favorite day is always that first day of school and I get to clear my whole calendar and get out and about to all the schools and. chatting with people and parents and teachers. It’s, it’s um it was a lot of fun this year again, just seeing

all those little faces come back into our schools, which is really the energy that drives, I think all of us. um if I reel back before the opening of school, we had 4 days of training for our teachers, professional development days before kids come in. We had over 120 offerings uh, for

teachers to choose from for different professional development opportunities for them to choose from. Um, most of them run by our own staff. Some of them were just training for new things like the, the shift to power school. Uh, so it was a good opportunity for everybody to get their ducks in a row before the kids all

showed up and they all showed up on Tuesday and it looks like we’re seeing uh enrollment increases in almost every single grade this year. Uh, we’ve taken a number of uh private school kids back from private schools, both at the elementary and at the high school level we’ve taken a

number of homeschool kids back, probably about 6 or so. uh, back into the district. So it’s good to see kids coming back and families bringing their kids back into the district, um, we’re working with a lot of uh new things, our student information system PowerSchool is new so we’re working through

kinks with that which are you know, this is the 3rd implementation of, uh student information system I’ve done in my career and the same thing happens every, every year you can never start and go. You have to work out a few kinks and bugs. Teachers have been great experimenting and trying

to figure out the easiest way to do things and then share and with with each other, um, the buses, the e-buses are online, which people were very excited about because they sneak right up on you and you don’t know they’re coming. Um, but they, uh, they are up and running.

We’re still working out kinks with our transfer bussing. um, you, some, we have some new drivers and we have some um software glitches that we’ve worked out. This company is the first company to use an actual routing software. Uh, we’ve been requesting it for years and the previous company just

didn’t want to do it. These guys got the routing software, figured out how to use it and routed all of our kids, uh, with the software that, uh, really gets them to be able to hone in on uh, excuse me, exact stops, but it also develops a list for the driver, each driver has a tablet built into

their bus that is like a giant GPS and it just reads the route. OK, you’re going here, take a right here, pick up a kid here, um, the beauty of this is is also um down the road, we plan to open this up so that parents have access to the app that

goes along with this and some of the other technologies but the app will give them an opportunity to pop it on their phone and say, OK, my kid’s gonna be 5 minutes late. You can send messages instantly through there. You can, they can see where the bus is roughly are. It’s not 100% real

time, but it’s pretty cool. It’s uh, the company’s done a really nice job of getting things up to up to speed, uh, working out the kinks. They’re all new to this. These towns, so you know, routing software looks at some of these long driveways into a horse barn as

a street and tried to route some of them. So fortunately we had our people be able to sit down with them and work out some of the kinks. We had some roots that went back and forth over one another, but we were, so those are just things we’re working through this week. Uh, so they’ll be, they’re getting

better. People have reported that they’re getting better and one of the things that uh we’ll continue to do is fine tune it as we figure out our ridership. We actually schedule every eligible kid to be picked up in the software and then as they’re going around, they start to get their numbers it’ll we’ll hone that down

which will speed up the, the route, uh, to get it back onto the its regular schedule. So that’s been, that’s been kind of cool and uh if you ever get a chance, go to the high school during lunch and listen to the conversation. uh, blew me away.

I went there on Wednesday. I said, I got to go up and see you, you know, no cellphones. Let’s see how it’s going. Kids were having conversations, they were chatting with each other a couple of kids were playing Uno. So it was a very different place, uh, than I’ve seen in

the past at the high school. So that was kind of fun to see as well where because we was just chatting it up and doing, you know, doing their thing. uh, Wednesday we also did the book groups. There were 44 books offered by the staff for kids

to read during the summer. And if you’re not fa mi li ar staff members offer a book in May and June, kids sign up as their summer reading. They sign up for a book, um, and then when they read the book through the summer when school starts on

this Wednesday, um, I’ll use myself as an example. I read the book The Woman A bunch of kids signed up for it. We meet for an hour, discuss the book. Kids have to create a project or write something about the book and some of the connections in the book, um,

which, which are interesting to read. Uh, we even had one student do a playlist related to the book, um, in, in he had took songs from the 60s and 70s and associated him to songs that he knew now and it was very cool. So, uh, it’s a great opportunity for our kids to connect with staff members they

wouldn’t otherwise. I mean, I had freshmen and sophomores mostly in my group, and they were like, I can’t believe the superintendent’s doing a book group, but that’s that’s the cool thing about it. Everybody’s involved, um, across, across the district. What’s that? Yeah, it is heavy, very heavy, uh, but it was good.

Um, so it’s, it’s, that’s really been kind of how the opening’s going. We’re, we’re just now fine tuning things as we move forward. It’s nice to have a 4 day week to start out with, and then next week we’ll get into our first full week and I think things will continue to get better, so.

So far so good Thank you. Questions for the superintendent? Oh yeah, the, the, um, email you sent about, was that a, a, one of, one of the ventilators in the middle school and up in high school, high school, high school, yeah high school,, there was a high school ventilator close to the end of the school day, of

course, uh, that started smoking. So they over shut it off, stopped the smoking, fire department came. They had to evacuate the buildings. That’s a, that’s a requirement, smoke, fire out of the building. So they had to evacuate both buildings. When you evacuate the high school, the middle

school has to go as well. So it drew a little monkey wrench into the end of the day, uh, but I, all, all the kids were able to get on their buses and, and get home and ventilate our unit is being uh, it’s a transformer that’s being replaced this weekend, so. well that old the old goods were

used in there catching up to us. Um, do you want to tell us about things that are going on this weekend’s got anything going on this weekend? No. I so this whole week, this whole week has been, uh, if you haven’t been at the high school this week, it’s been packed, uh,

every night there’s been a different game. Every afternoon or evening, he’s been a different game. Soccer, field hockey, boys soccer, girls soccer, and tomorrow night will be the first night football game, the first time we’ve had the lights on, um, in forever. It’s never been lights here, so, um, that will be fun and

exciting. People will be able to see, uh, the fields and get a taste of a Friday Night Lights game in Hamilton and Wyndham for the first time. We’re expecting a huge crowd. um you know, if you can carpool, this is this is where we want you to get out the suburbans and fill them, uh, rather than

bringing, uh, you know, a whole bunch of cars parking will be tough, uh, police will be up there working with us to to help with the parking and then on Saturday night we’re hoping the weather will hold out for us here. There’s the opening of the field, the official opening, that will be a fun event for

the entire community to come, uh, see the tour, uh, the, excuse me, see the fields and get a tour of the, the, um, games and activities around each of the fields is set up so that people can kind of get a tour as they’re hitting each of the events and activities across all the um all the new

fields and through the amenities building, there’ll be food sold, there’ll be, uh, opportunities for kids to play games and lots of games that are out there. Um, there’ll be some general swag being sold. We’ll do a little intro in the beginning and then kind of let people free and I, I hear there might be some surprise guests.

We’ll see. That it’s at 6, right? Starts at 66 o’clock. The game, the, the game, people have asked, the football game is at 6:30 tomorrow night and then Saturday night at 6 p.m. is the grand opening celebration, and that’s community-wide. Both of those events, we expect to be packed.

Um, we were gonna try to run a bus out of at least Winthrop to get people spaces to park so they’re not parked all over oneA, but it’s, it’s, uh, this night, this week, if you’ve been in near the high school, it’s been packed for every single game. They had field hockey and it was the parking

lot was filled. um, and then girls soccer again today and then. the game tomorrow, so there’s a lot of excitement in the air. and the weather is turning right on time, so who are we playing on Triton. Excellent, thank you. And we also have volleyball and golf going on as well. We can’t leave them out because they

don’t have new fields, but they are part of our fall sports. Yeah, the, the, uh, the volleyball team, I think played, I think they played today. I think they played, um, Georgetown today. and then golf played Wednesday, so lots of fun. It’s it’s nice to see all these things kind of ramp up in

the in the beginning of the school year. For me, it’s like, here we go, let’s go golf team had cuts for the first time in decades. It’s a good and bad. I think, I think it was like my 3rd year as principal at high school, so that was 10 years

ago that, that they made cuts and they hadn’t for a long time. It used to be a really popular team. Nice to see it back. Yeah, that is nice. Excellent All right. Anybody have anything else for Eric? Um Serious. I’ll make my own. You want a lanyard. I want a lanyard. I’ll pay.

I’ll pay for it. I I’ll wait in line. You should sell season passes where people can at the beginning of the year just buy a season pass to go to any game at the new fields that they want to. Yeah, it’s actually like a lot, a lot of events don’t, we don’t charge for it.

Like this week, these earlier events, we don’t charge for football, we charge for, um, some of the bigger like tournament games we charge for because we have to, but most of the games um, don’t charge for until we get into the tournament level because then we have to kick some of the

money back to the MIA, so there’s a little bit of requirement, so it, it’s um yeah, it’s it’s been uh a learning curve because now you’re going from really kids all over the, the district to everybody’s on site. Everybody’s using a piece of the pie, and then also just coordinating people coming in and out, um, because we’re

seeing numbers that we’ve never seen That’s, that’s been, you know, Craig, Craig Genuualdos had lots of sleepless nights trying to figure out all the logistics of even like, OK, where is the plug nearest plug located to do this or how do I use my cell phone app to get the scoreboard to work.

So there’s been a lot of those logistical things and I mean one of the, this isn’t funny, but one of the things we dealt with today was when we flushed one of the toilets in the amenities building, it came up through the floor drain, you know, so I’ll look with the camera showed some ston es in

the uh pipes which were probably put in, you know, left in there when they did the initial install with the rough install because there was no building. There was just dirt and they were running pipes through the dirt. So we’re trying to get that cleaned out for tomorrow, so we don’t have

to uh do anything unusual, but, uh, it’s been a lot, it’s been a learning curve. It’s been, it’s been interesting to figure out even how the uh the cheese melting machine works in the concession stand, so I’m intrigued. Now you got to come, right? I pretzels. I chose pretzels. We have a hot dog

machine, pizza machine. We have a pizza oven. What time does it open tomorrow? 5:30 about an hour before, yeah, yeah, and we’re Megan wants to be front and center. Yeah, and I think it’s important for people’s. They’re gonna fade really fast, so it’s all right, a little fun. Is there any arrangements for that would enable the public

under certain circumstances to use the tennis courts, the pickle bully, yep. So right now everything’s locked off because we haven’t finalized the jobs, so we have a um a beneficial use agreement with the contractor Argus to get our sports teams on there because we’re all associated at high school. Public’s not, it’s not quite ready yet, but public,

for instance, uh, would be able to go play pickleball on the weekends, um, so right now everything’s locked just because we’re still under the contract uh with Argus, uh, the, the initial, uh, general contractor. Once we move forward, get everything, we’re finalizing our punch list. Once the punch punch list gets finalized. then we’ll release

those and people will be able to use the track and come use the, the um ball court, softball field, whatever that stuff will be open and available, um, you know, we, we’re doing some education too, like we have had an issue with kids bringing their bikes on the new track and rolling

around the track on with bikes, so we put some signage up. We have more signage coming Um, so there’s a lot of little detailed things there, but we will, yeah, we do plan to have it open. Uh, I even talked with uh resident Monday I was here,

um, putting the sign up to welcome kids back to school and residents stopped and said, hey, the pickleball courts at at Patton aren’t open. Can we use the ones at the high school, but they just, it’s just not ready. But they, they could eventually. I mean, this is a league of pickleball. They have

100 something people on an app that they schedule games and play so they could actually start to integrate. There’s 8 courts at the high school now, so yeah, it’ll be great, it’ll be good for the whole community Yeah. The only time we restrict it is when kids are in school.

because we have restrictions with Cory and fingerprints and things like that. So that’s the only time we say, you know, we appreciate you not coming on when kids are out there during school time, so. Boninnegoni, um. said when we were doing the weight room. the whole redo that that would be made

available to some degree. to the public, but I don’t know how under what circumstances, it’s, it’s hard during the school day because you just can’t have people coming in and out. So I, I’m not sure how to do that publicly. He has been able to do it with teachers. So after school, teachers can get

to it, but I can ask him, it’s, it’s. the, the, the disadvantage is that Jim’s right there and every single kid is going through the gym during the day, so it’s hard to manage who’s in and who’s out because the gym teachers use it for gym classes. Um, so I can ask him see teams use it for

training. Yeah, after school, the sports teams are generally the summer they were there all summer working out, so. yeah, it’s hard to figure out how to get public in there when kids are not there because kids, kids actually use the facilities quite often. I would hope the outside though would

be once it’s all the outside is easier like on a Saturday morning and they probably, they’ll probably be, I would guess, uh, say, say JB football game. and then some practices, but people would be able to access some of the other stuff. There’s a lot to do out there now. You can’t get on the zip

line though because you have to, you have to have license. Yeah, I’ve done that would be good. um right, good, um have students bid on teachers to have them go down the zip line. I’ll tell you there’s a lot of teachers that wanted to. They, they’re like, I want to do it.

Excellent. Alright Anything else Um, all right, so my chair’s report, uh, just a reminder that there is a an election on Monday September 15th. um, from noon to 8:00 p.m. um, Hamilton voters will vote at the Rec Center when voters will vote at the Wenham Museum. um the, um. uh if a

person is not yet registered to vote, um, they can register, um, up through tomorrow is the deadline for registering to vote if you’re not already registered to vote. Um, absentee ballots are available. An absentee ballot, um, is appropriate if you are traveling, if you are away on September 15th, if you’re not

in town. If you have a religious belief that prevents you from voting on that day or if you have a disability that prevents you from voting on that day and absentee ballots can be requested by the from the town clerk until September 8th at the latest. Um, and I Does anyone have anything to

add on that I tried my scribbled notes. We are going to send a flyer out. Yes, that has basically the information I just said identical to or Dana said, but it’ll be just, this is the time, this is the place, this is how you can do, you know, access. It, it’s, it’s pretty limited. The office

campaign finance doesn’t allow us to put much other than time, place, location in there. So we have that coming out. It should go out on Monday. Just depends on each of the postal post offices when they decide to get them out. So, and I do just

want to emphasize, I, I know you all know, but just to like make sure you’re you know, neighbors and people in the community are aware that what’s you know, from a voter point of view, what’s different is that the hours are 120 to 8, um. so. that’s important for people to know, and that’s because of the

the way so yes, thank you for that question. Yeah, so the, um, law, um, under which the we’re holding this election, um, requires a minimum of 4 hours and a maximum of 8 hours, and they have to be consecutive and so this community committee decided on new date. Um, yeah.

um OK. Um, the only other thing I wanted to say was, um, at our last meeting we talked about um having uh agenda item that was um tentatively titled as a test for in our inboxes, um, basically just to provide some feedback about what we’re hearing from the community, um, I forgot to put it on the

agenda, so it will be on the agenda next time, um, just let you know that was my error. Um, and, uh, so we’ll get that. um, and Amy talked about that next, then next time she’s gonna give a little sort of like a report, uh, like a, like a update on

what we’re hearing Um all right, does anyone have topic for future meeting? That’s our next, yes, OK, yeah. um um, anything else OK looks like we’re done Yup. I’ll move the motion to I’ll move the motion to adjourn I’ll move the motion to I’ll move the motion to adjourn. Excellent. Seconded by Amy Kunberger, all those in favor.

That looks unanimous, and we are adjourned at 80. 8:04, but